[Fic] GW: Table by the Window
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Title: Table by the Window
Author: Keithan
Disclaimers: Gundam Wing and its characters belong to their respective owners.
Rating: PG
Words: ~6200
Timeline: Spire (Fic list here)
Series: One-shot
Characters: Wufei, Quatre
Summary: Wufei knows there are some things that are easier to forget than to remember-like how it is easy to forget that Quatre was the one that led them to battle, that it was his voice that guided their actions and dictated their strategies.
Notes: For caerfree.This took on a different turn than I planned or expected (not to mention, it took me longer too), but here it is. :)
If you’ve read Eve of Change, there’s a very slight reference to it-so slight, blink and you’ll miss it.
Table by the Window
by Keithan
When Wufei enters the café, he immediately feels out of place and many eyes turn at his entrance. The establishment is posh and upscale, but that has never mattered much to him. After all, right now, he is well-dressed: shoes-combat boots-shined to perfection, clothes neatly pressed, and hair tied back cleanly.
His Preventer jacket, more than anything else, Wufei thinks, is the one that catches people’s attention. He feels its weight on his shoulders is the one that places him distinctly out of place.
He glances up, noticing the yellow lights from the low hanging lamps and how it is so different from the white fluorescents in the office. He never thought that normal fluorescent light is harsh and severe to look at, but being bathed under the soft yellow lights of the café, he thinks so now.
The eyes upon him start to turn away, back to newspapers or laptops or books. He is glad for the scrutiny to be over, glad that he can do his own. He walks to the counter and surveys the establishment without seeming to do so. It’s almost full, and he thinks the rush hour is to blame. But there are those who look as if they’ve stayed there for hours. It is comfortable and homey, but the relaxed atmosphere puts him on edge-he is not used to it.
Out of place, he thinks once again, and remembers why Po-a step up from calling her woman, but he still refuses to call her Sally even in his mind-is the one who always goes on the kind of information gathering which involves blending into the crowd or talking-not intimidating-to people.
Your shoulders are always tense, Wufei, she would say. Relax a bit, and people would talk to you.
He takes in a deep breath, and indeed, his shoulders are tense, as they usually are. He tries to relax-loosen up, as she would say. He is, after all, not on any kind of Preventer mission. Being a messenger doesn’t count, at least not until his partner convinced him that talking to Quatre Winner is hardly a mission-an assignment, he thinks instead, just a simple assignment.
The former pilot of Sandrock is not yet in. Wufei knows this the moment he spotted the café from across the street. He gets in line for the counter, scanning the café once more, this time for a vacant table. The only one available is a table on the corner, with one side being a solo couch, if there is such a thing. He is, admittedly, not well-versed in furniture. Cushioned chair, he thinks later, might be more apt.
He orders brewed coffee, when he reaches the cashier, and while he waits for it, he sees in the corner of his eyes a man leaving a table by the window. The corner of his mouth turns slightly. He did not look forward to sitting on the couch-cushioned chair-and sitting on the chair across it is out of the question as he will have to face away from the entrance.
He nods his thanks when he gets his cup, and turns his back to the cheerful Enjoy your coffee, sir! He makes his way straight to the table by the window. He places his cup of coffee on the table, and realizes he didn’t pass by the condiments section to get any sugar or stirrer in his hurry to get the vacant table. He turns, and stops abruptly, nearly stepping back.
In front of him stands Quatre Winner, smiling at him as though he has been with Wufei all along. He holds up packets in his hands in front of him and Wufei glances down and sees they’re a variety of sugars and creams.
“I didn’t know what you wanted, so I got two of each,” Quatre says. When Wufei doesn’t take them, he reaches out to place them on the table. “Don’t you want to take the cushioned chair over there?” He nods at the table by the corner-the one with the said chair.
“No, here is fine,” Wufei answers almost automatically.
“Okay,” Quatre says. He tilts his head towards the counter. “I’ll just go and get myself something, all right?”
Wufei watches him go, before glancing down on the table with a slight frown. The packets-some white, and brown, some paper, and glossy-lay there neatly beside his coffee and he almost swears under his breath when he sees a stirrer there as well, balanced on top of his cup. He looks back at the counter, then decides to sit down before people start looking at him again.
He doesn’t take his eyes off the businessman, though, and businessman is what Quatre Winner is in his tailored pants and shiny leather shoes and immaculate dress shirt-even the end-of-the-day rumpled look it carries seems deliberate. He looks relaxed and at ease.
Wufei takes note of the grey suit jacket hanging from the hook of his wrist when his hand is in his pocket. His other hand is on the counter, fingers touching it, but barely, and he uses it to gesture to the pastry displays or the menus, though he brings it back there again. He smiles at the cashier, and Wufei can see the genuine smile and amusement that she-Anna, his mind, used to taking note of details, readily supplies the name for him-offers the obviously regular customer.
Quatre, Wufei notices, is not out of place here. He belongs here in a way that the businessman, in his stiff suit and stern face, seated one table away from him will never do. The former Gundam pilot leans on the waiting counter as he waits for his order. He is comfortable and so at home that Wufei thinks he’d belong here even if he’d just been wearing jeans and an old white shirt. He waits for his coffee, and standing there and folding his sleeves neatly up to his elbows with a careless air, he looks like he owns the place. Wufei is surprised that he doesn’t mean that in a bad way.
He ignores the urge to drape his Preventers jacket on the back of his chair and sit back just to try to blend in. He doesn’t need to blend in. He needs to be a Preventer-because Gundam pilots and soldiers are not needed in a time of peace, he says to himself, as though he needed a reminder-because he doesn’t think he knows how to talk to Quatre Winner in any other way.
You should relax more, he hears Po’s voice in his mind.
He turns to his coffee, starts turning and lining up the packets to clearly see what they are-brown and white sugar, sweetener, creamer-and prepares his coffee to his liking.
Not when I’m working. And he thinks he should soon listen to her advice because he’s starting to answer voices in his head, and he actually hears her laugh in his mind. Used to working alone most of his life, taking a partner was a drastic change, one that constantly annoys him to the point that even working alone, he now somehow expects a second voice beside him.
But Quatre is a friend, not work.
He doesn’t answer this time and stirs his coffee silently instead, thinking that any voice suggesting Quatre as a friend is clearly mistaken and doesn’t deserve to be noticed. He has to admit, though, that Quatre is-was-once upon a time, a comrade.
* * *
Wufei leans his elbows on the table and turns his gaze outside. He feels the warmth of the coffee in his left hand where he holds the cup, thumb idly caressing the paper holder. He watches, with a slight frown on his face, a sales lady in a store across the street, dressing a display mannequin in a silver flowing gown.
“I know this is not a social call.”
He doesn’t turn his head, but he slides his glance to Quatre. Sitting across the table from him, Quatre Winner is every bit the CEO of WEI, which, in the past year and a half, after the Eve War of 196, has greatly expanded-especially its construction business-to reach all the colonies now and has just started its first serious ventures on Earth. Every trace of the soldier in him, which Wufei thought was barely there in the first place, is gone.
“It can be, you know.”
“I don’t know what Une wants me to say,” he says, not acknowledging Quatre’s last statement. It’s awkward to think that they, or any of them, could be friends when they have not seen or been in contact since the war ended, and when the last hold that ties him to them is the memory of his betrayal. He shrugs the thought away, then turns back to the window just in time to see a limousine pass by.
L4, he observes, has a higher quality of living than the other colonies he has seen.
He looks at Quatre, sees the tinge of the soft yellow light on his face and tries to imagine him under stark, white fluorescent. He sighs, before pushing his chair back. “This is a mistake,” he says, before he even thought of screening his words.
Une sent him here, but it’s his decision to decide whether or not inviting his former comrades will bring any good to the Preventers organization. They need people especially now that the initial rush of the war ending has started to dwindle down. There is still a lot to be done, and not enough to do it. Many civilians have signed up, but they need more people who needs no training and knows what to do and how to do it.
He remembers the Circus when he visited, remembers the lion and the clown and he remembers hiding his surprise when Trowa came out to meet him still in costume. He remembers the junkyard in L2, where he found Duo excitedly waving around some metal scrap before seeing he was there, and he remembers thinking some things, at least, remain the same.
It is far from the quiet and comfortable atmosphere of the café and yet he finds it easier-easier than walking in here and being stared at, easier than ordering a simple cup of coffee and forgetting the sugar, easier than sitting there and trying to act normal. Because Trowa and Duo, he knows, are easier to approach than Quatre.
Of all the others, Pilot 04 was the least pilot he knew. They never really crossed missions or paths or never shared the same prison cell. To him, he was only the pilot of the Gundam Sandrock, a part of the team, nothing exceptional, nothing noteworthy.
And what little familiarity he had with Quatre is now gone.
He is sitting with a stranger, and he doesn’t know how to tell Une that, not only has he failed to recruit any of the former Gundam pilots, but that she also wants to recruit a rich businessman instead.
Wufei is a Preventer agent. He does not go to coffee with rich CEO’s, except maybe when he’s trailing them or watching them or the Preventers suspect them of having connections with the war.
“I’m sorry for taking your time,” Wufei says, and he can imagine his voice and demeanor immediately slipping back into a more professional one-the one he’s more comfortable using-than the relaxed tone he has been trying to adapt.
When he starts to rise, Quatre waves a hand at him carelessly. “Sit down, Wufei,” he says.
A frown immediately makes its way into his face and before he can think, he snaps, “Excuse me?” He stands up fully, looking down at Quatre as if daring him to issue out such an order again. “I’m not one of your assistants or business associates, Winner.” In the back of his mind, he can hear Po’s laughing admonition that he ought to control his temper, but he ignores it, just as he ignores it in real life.
Quatre looks surprised for a moment before he shakes his head. “I’m just asking you to sit down, Wufei,” he says again, and Wufei frowns more at this because the accompanying smile in Quatre’s face is apologetic and gentle and sincere all at the same time. This, in addition to what he’s seen so far, makes Wufei feel more detached and distant than ever from someone who was supposedly a comrade in war.
He reins in his temper, tries to go back to being professional once more because the Quatre Winner in front of him, with his gentle smile and his carefree face, is clearly and undeniably a civilian. “I’m sorry, but I have to go,” he says. “It was not my idea to come here-“
“I still have my ID, Wufei,” Quatre says. “You can tell Une that.”
The special Preventers ID, which Une has issued out to all of the Gundam pilots after the first Eve War in 195 except for Wufei-and he doesn’t want to think about how and why he’d been out of contact to not receive his in the first place-while gives them little authorization or power on everything else, gives them the clearance to go directly to the one in command or to Une, herself, when-if-they need to. He doesn’t think Quatre will ever need to.
“I’ll have it taken as soon-“
“No. I have no intention of giving it up.” And before Wufei can react negatively to being interrupted twice now, Quatre continues with a defeated sigh, “Look, I know why Une sent for you here. I’m not stupid. I was trained at what I-what we-did, Wufei. And while you obviously don’t think so,” he shrugs at this, as if saying he’s not taking offense, “I can tell you have three knives on your person, one on your ankle, one on your gun holster, and one in your pocket. You also have one gun, of course, and one magazine strapped to your belt. Now stop doubting your commander, and please,” he says this with a smile and a friendly gesture to the seat behind Wufei, “do sit down.”
Wufei is surprised enough to just say, “What?” His thoughts are running fast in his mind because he’s sure he’s never given himself away so completely before. He stills the urge to check all the weapons he always brings with him on any assignment just to make sure Quatre’s not bluffing. But he knows he’s not and this… this civilian-he thinks this with a shadow of a doubt now-is spot on in everything. He presses his lips into a tight line, before finally deciding to sit down once again.
Wufei looks at Quatre, while the other takes a sip of his coffee and doesn’t show any unease under the scrutiny. Instead, Quatre seems content to ignore him for a while.
He snatches his own cup of coffee from the table, and turns to look out the window again, glaring at it as though it’s at fault for bringing him here. He briefly looks at Quatre’s faint reflection at the window, and is surprised to see Quatre watching him with a calculating eye, meeting his gaze through the glass with an elegantly raised brow. He turns his glare at him-at the reflection-but Quatre only laughs into his coffee cup.
“Now that’s more like you,” Quatre says, and Wufei tries to slowly reconcile this man with the boy he fought side by side with, once upon a time. It’s relatively easier now, when he’s been clearly talked down to-and he scowls at the thought-than it was mere moments ago.
He looks warily at the unused packets lying on their table, set aside from the litter of empty ones. He remembers, in the back of his mind, that Gundam pilots are not, and never will be, mere civilians.
* * *
“There’s something wrong with that figure, Barry. Have it checked again-no, I don’t care. Tell them I said so.”
When Quatre excuses himself to take a call, he doesn’t leave the table, and Wufei has no qualms about listening in and not being discreet about it. After all, if Quatre wanted his conversation private, he would have stood up and walked a polite distance away.
He remembers now-the soft-spoken pilot of Gundam Sandrock never did make a strong impression on him. But he’s making one now, and Wufei doesn’t know if he should feel impressed or annoyed. This meeting never started the way Wufei wanted it to.
Quatre sighs into the phone and closes his eyes briefly, and Wufei watches as he brings up a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.
“I want it by lunch time tomorrow. I’ll have them-look, listen to me.” Quatre pauses, presumably waiting if Barry’s listening. “Tell them to check the books from last month. I know, without a doubt, that their figure is wrong. I’ll do their job if I have to just to prove them wrong-but no, don’t tell them that.”
Wufei wonders how Quatre’s people deal with the fact that their CEO is barely even two decades old, wonders if it’s not unlike the treatment he sometimes receives from other Preventers, most of whom are still in training. He hates it, and looking at Quatre with a slight furrow in his brow that wasn’t there before, he guesses Quatre hates it too.
“All right. That’ll do. Now go home. It’s half past already. I’ll see you tomorrow.” With a nod, Quatre flips his mobile close and sends him an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry about that.” He doesn’t offer any more explanation.
Wufei frowns at him, and simply asks, “Are you even legal yet?”
Quatre gives him a little smile, before shrugging. He waves a hand at Wufei’s chest, and he looks down to see the embroidered Preventers logo on the breast of his uniform jacket.
“Are you?” Quatre asks.
Wufei frowns at the Preventers patch. Are any of them, really?
He lifts his coffee up, and when he feels its nearly empty weight, he says, “I need another one.”
Quatre looks at his own nearly empty cup. “Me too.”
It is easy to forget, Wufei thinks, in front of the face that Quatre has been showing to him or to the world, for that matter, that he was the one that led them to battle, easy to forget that it was his voice that guided their actions and dictated their strategies. It is easy to forget that Quatre, while not probably a soldier, was and probably will always be, in some part of him, a Gundam pilot.
Wufei silently swears at himself for even forgetting.
* * *
“Have you asked Trowa?”
The sudden question catches Wufei unprepared, and he looks back at Quatre immediately. They’re holding fresh cups of coffee each and neither of them has spoken for a while. Wufei refuses to start the conversation again when Quatre clearly knows what he came here for, and he won’t give in to the silent battle of wills and look impatient. But that isn’t the start of the conversation that he has been expecting.
“He said he’ll think about it,” he answers. He lifts his new coffee to his lips. He frowns. It tastes bitter. When he looks up from frowning at his cup, he sees Quatre holding two packets of brown sugar to him. Wufei turns a glare at him. “You’re doing this to prove a point you’ve already proven, Winner,” he says, and if his voice came out testy, he doesn’t care.
“I don’t know what you mean, Wufei.” Quatre says his name as though they’re friends, and Wufei is sure it’s deliberate after calling him Winner. He takes the two packets of sugar from Quatre’s fingers.
Quatre makes a thoughtful sound. “I’m not surprised,” he says. “About Trowa, I mean. He is, after all, one of the stars of the show, and Misha-why he insists on that name for a lion, I don’t know-will miss him.” He smiles around the rim of his cup, and Wufei notes, as he empties the sugar in his coffee, that Quatre’s eyes are soft and smiling too. “He’s still enjoying himself there, not that he’ll tell you that.”
Wufei’s hands pause, and he raises a questioning brow at him. “You’ve spoken?”
Quatre places the cup down, and tilts his head at him. Wufei feels the urge to look away at the sudden study of his face, but he frowns instead. He’s been doing that a lot, and he thinks he’s even passed the number of frowns and glares he’s thrown Duo when he approached him just two weeks ago. Quatre, instead of taking offense, just smiles at him.
“Yes, we have.”
“And Duo?” The question is out even before he is able to think about it, and Wufei doesn’t know why it suddenly matters.
“Duo called me the moment you left his garage,” Quatre says, voice amused and almost fond. “Woke me up in the middle of the night, not that it matters to him.”
Wufei crumples the empty packets in his hand and throws them on the table. He takes a careless sip from his coffee. It burns his tongue, causing him to jerk. “Damn it!” he says, as he nearly spills coffee all over himself. It still tastes bitter.
When Quatre reaches out with the stirrer, it takes all of Wufei’s control to not just grab it from Quatre’s fingers. He can’t help the scowl from escaping though.
He had been sure that not one of them has been in contact with each other since the closing of the last Eve War. He had been sure that all of them have gone separate ways. He doesn’t know what to think of the others maintaining an open line of communication, though, when he has kept to himself all this time. But it is, after all, his choice, and he doesn’t want to concern himself any more than necessary of what the others do with their lives.
He turns back to Quatre. “Aren’t you going to ask about Heero?” he asks suddenly. He doesn’t know what to feel if Quatre tells him Heero’s whereabouts. He has been trying to follow Heero’s trail, but that’s only if he finds it first. He’s beginning to think that Heero doesn’t leave any trails. If Quatre knows where Heero is, his job of tracking him down will be easier, but he wonders why he’s not at all excited to hear about it.
But Quatre doesn’t answer, and merely holds his stare for a moment. He is surprised when Quatre slowly looks away and turns his eyes to the street outside.
“You won’t find him,” Quatre says.
“You know where he is?”
“No. I just know you won’t be able to.”
He doesn’t know if he feels relieved that Heero, at least, hasn’t surprised him by also keeping an in touch with the others in any way, or disappointed that he’ll have to find the elusive ex-pilot without any kind of clue where to start. “How do you know that?”
Somehow, he’s not surprised when Quatre only shrugs and takes a drink from his coffee. The always present smile is now absent from his face.
* * *
“Did your assignment on the Moon go well?”
Wufei looks at Quatre sharply, turning his eyes away from observing the couple who just walked in. “How do you know that? Our files are confidential.”
The smile is back, and Quatre just shrugs. Wufei finds them-the half smiles and careless shrugs-increasingly frustrating as they are obviously ways of deflecting questions-something that Quatre Winner is apparently fond of doing. He’s been skirting around the issue of joining the Preventers for the better part of their meeting.
“I admit I’m not as efficient as… Heero, but I can hold my own. It was easy to keep track of things.” Quatre has his back turned to the door and the counter but he still turns his head around distractedly to meet the eyes of the woman from the couple earlier. He shakes his head at her, and Wufei doesn’t see if he mouths anything at her, but she nods. Quatre turns back saying, “I know them.”
“She has been looking at you when they came in.”
He raises a hand to point behind him. “WEI building is just a few minutes’ walk from here,” he says. “She’s my sister and seeing you here with me makes her worry. She won’t come to our table, don’t worry.”
“What does-“ Wufei stops, before glaring at Quatre, realizing the distraction for what it is. “I’m asking you about your breach of Preventer security, Quatre. You’ve been following me.” He will not be side-tracked any longer.
Quatre laughs. “No, not exactly. I’m keeping an eye on you,” he says and before Wufei can protest, Quatre’s holds up a hand. “Not always, but enough. After what happened in 196, I promised…” he trails off, before shaking his head and continuing, “I promised that you’d be all right-that we’d all be all right.”
Wufei actually pauses to let the words sink in. When they do, he fights the urge to grit his teeth, but isn’t quite able to stop a hand from slamming down slightly on the table. “You have no right.” His voice comes out hard and low.
Quatre smiles again, unconcerned at Wufei’s rising anger. “No, I don’t.”
Wufei doesn’t know why he’s able to remain seated and appear somewhat calm when he’s sure he would have lost his temper otherwise, and Po isn’t even there to stop him. “I don’t appreciate being tracked,” he says, spitting out the words as if they’re a threat.
“All right, then I’ll just have to check on you personally next time, ok?” Quatre says, and the words are random enough for Wufei that he almost forgets his anger.
“What?”
“I talk to Duo and Trowa, not since 196, but just recently. I never tried to talk to you,” he looks at Wufei with a smile, “I know you won’t talk to me.”
Wufei feels lost with the turn of conversation and he doesn’t know what answer is expected of him, so he remains silent. He knows Quatre is right, though. Before now, he has no reason to talk to him. He looks up when he feels eyes on him and sees Quatre’s sister leave with her companion. He meets her wary stare steadily as she exits the café.
When he turns back to Quatre, he sees him holding his cup with both hands and he’s looking at it as if it’s the one he’s talking to.
“You’re not ready to go back and face any of it yet, not when you’ve just started to find your feet. I represent your past, Wufei, more so than Une, more so than Sally. Sally Po is your partner. She is, in every way, your present and your future. While we, Duo, Trowa and I, and Heero too, are your past. I’m not about to step in and take that from you before you’re even ready to move forward.”
Wufei is surprised enough to stare. He closes his mouth when no words were forthcoming. He never talks about this-seldom and too little with Po, as his partner, and certainly not with Une, as his head.
“We’ve had time after 195 of somewhat getting used to it, to the peace, no matter how fragile it was back then. You didn’t. We’re picking up where we left off, but you’re just starting.” Quatre finally raises his eyes to him, as if expecting a confirmation of his words.
Wufei frowns at him before turning to the window. “Your sister already left,” he says suddenly-they were the first words that came to mind. When he sees Quatre’s brow rise at this, he sighs and says instead, “I don’t want to talk about it.” He is quite thankful when Quatre said no more.
Wufei sometimes thinks he feels guilty for what happened that one year after the first Eve War. He knows better, though, than to be guilty for choosing a path he thought was the right one at the time. He wonders if any of the others blame him, if Trowa resents him for interfering with his infiltration, if Heero still thinks about that fight in the atmosphere as Wufei so often does.
Wufei turns back to Quatre in a sudden thought. “It’s Heero,” he says, but Quatre doesn’t even react-his face was carefully neutral. “You promised Heero we’d be all right.” He knows, as he says it, that it is true. “You know where he is.”
Quatre shakes his head and waves a hand as though to dismiss the idea. “I told you I don’t. He’ll come back in his own time, just as you are here now.”
“I’m on an assignment-“
“Yes, and we’ve been talking about that assignment of yours for a while now.”
Wufei glares at him, before turning to the window again, if only to escape Quatre’s knowing smile. “Sarcasm doesn’t become you,” he tells Quatre. Not for the first time, he is glad to have taken a table by the window.
“It’s easy to forget,” he says, after a while-after he has watched a lady cross the street to the couture shop across it and after more than a dozen men in suits have passed by.
“What?”
“That you’re one of us.” Faced with this life of luxury-posh café in the middle of the business district of the city, in suits and dress shirts and tailored jackets and pants-it is easy to forget the past, unlike when faced with mission reports and old OZ and Alliance bases to neutralize. It’s a mistake, he knows now, to think that Quatre, living in the middle of this kind of life, has easily forgotten. Quatre remembers, probably more than him.
“That I’m one of you? Or that you’re one of us?”
Wufei blinks, startled at the question. He looks back at Quatre and wonders if he is seeing the same boy or the same man he has known since the war.
After a while, he says, “Both.”
* * *
“Maybe in a year,” Quatre says, taking another sharp turn in the silence and conversation between them.
Wufei notices the sudden tightness in Quatre’s smile and the way he’s holding the cup of coffee in his hands, as though he wants to grip it but because it’s just paper, he can’t. “You’ll be ready by then?” he asks, not needing to ask to know that Quatre’s talking about joining the Preventers.
“I’ll offer my help and my resources, of course. I’ve already told Une that I will fully back the organization as long as it keeps to its goal. But no, not until then. I’ll talk to Trowa and Duo.”
Wufei looks at him, a thoughtful frown on his face. “Une told me to approach you first,” he says.
Quatre seems to turn this thought over, before he shakes his head in dismissal, a slight smile on his face. “Manipulative woman.”
Wufei didn’t think about why Une insisted that he approach Quatre first. He thought it odd, and, as it was not necessarily an order, he went about it in his own way-going to Trowa, Duo, then Quatre. Maybe, he thinks, he should have listened to her.
He lifts his cup up, and before he takes a sip, he asks, “Why?”
“Just tell her not yet,” Quatre says and shrugs. “Reconstruction in L3 is going well,” he continues, but when he meets Wufei’s eyes, Wufei feels that Quatre is no longer talking to him as a Preventer agent on an assignment, “but it’s far from being finished. I can’t take on any more responsibilities, not until later this year when the final phase of the project starts.”
The non-grip on the paper cup and the tightness in Quatre’s smile suddenly makes sense to Wufei. And not for the first time, he wonders how he could have forgotten.
He opens his mouth to say something when Quatre waves a hand to Anna-not on counter duty now-who then walks closer to their table. He blinks, thinks whether Quatre did that on purpose.
But as he watches Quatre smile and charm his way to Anna’s good graces-which he doesn’t really need to do anyway-Wufei thinks he doesn’t really mind. He understands that there are some things one would rather not talk about and sometimes forget.
Wufei watches Anna’s back as she walks away from their table, after insisting that Quatre and his companion be served pastries to go with their coffee.
“I was under the impression that this is a self-service establishment,” he says when he turns back to Quatre.
“Oh? Didn’t I tell you?” Quatre lifts a hand and Wufei is not sure if it’s to indicate their table or the counter, where Anna disappeared to. “I own this café.”
Wufei almost chokes on his drink. He looks at Quatre incredulously.
“That was a joke, Wufei.”
When Quatre follows that up with a soft and amused laugh, Wufei swears at his coffee, but he takes comfort in the fact that Quatre must surely know that it’s directed at him.
L3, he knows, is a topic long past.
* * *
When Wufei walks out to the sidewalk, nobody is looking at him and he stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets. He moves out of the way of the pedestrians. The sudden traffic and space strikes him as odd when he feels like he’s spent a long time in a café with solo couches-“The cushioned chairs are comfortable for long periods of stay, Wufei. You should try them next time”-and yellow lights and Quatre Winner.
He glances back and sees their table by the window already being occupied by a balding man with a cup in one hand and a magazine in another. He wonders if he’s waiting for someone and what they’re going to talk about if he is-a past they both lived, the things they share, or will it be the present, like another day at work in an office just a few minutes’ walk from here.
He shifts his gaze away and he looks up. When he sees the other side of the colony above him, he feels comforted. He takes the sight in, imprinting it to memory, knowing that he won’t be able to see such a view again soon-he’s going to be staying on Earth for a while. It’s a different kind of beauty, he thinks, from seeing the open sky. But the circular shape of the colony is familiar and beautiful, and to look at it without feeling any kind of threat and danger is something he doesn’t take for granted-will never take for granted.
If Po is with him, she’ll take one look at him and immediately say something along the lines of, You’re getting sentimental, Wufei.
Sometimes, he thinks he’s putting up with a partner because he wants to get away from his past, because working alone reminds him too much of the war, too much of those years of running and fighting and just… trying to survive alone, one day at a time.
But maybe sometimes, he needs to remember too. Po understands this better than he does, if her small talk about bits and pieces of her life during the war is any indication.
He hears Quatre walk up to him just as he hears the glass door to the café close. He sees him look up too, looking at the buildings and houses and gardens so far away up from them, but so accessible by mere local transportation.
He looks down and saw the mannequin across the street fully dressed in the silver gown, and he can see, even from where he is, that it shimmers faintly under the light. “Your economy is thriving under your care,” he says.
“It’s hardly mine, but I’ll take the compliment as it is.” Quatre flings his suit jacket over one shoulder, holding it with two fingers. Wufei recognizes both the pride and humility in those simple words and gestures.
“I guess we’ll be seeing you in about a year.” He glances at his watch, notices that only a little more than an hour has passed. It feels longer.
“And two others, I’m sure.” Quatre looks back at the café, and it’s hard to miss the playful curve of his lips. “I’ll call Duo and tell him you met Anna.”
Wufei snorts and offers Quatre a withering look. “If he starts calling me, Winner, I’ll hold you personally responsible.”
Quatre laughs. “You should relax more, Wufei. It suits you.”
He doesn’t return the laugh, but the corner of his lips turns slightly up in a shadow of a smirk. He shakes his head and looks back up at the other side of the colony.
Sally, he thinks, will get along just fine with Quatre.
.end
14.11.09
I need a beta or any kind of reading help. In an attempt to beat this fic down to submission, I randomly started writing a scene in my mind, which grew to more than 10k words in just three days, and looks as if it’s nowhere near finished.
That kind of speed surprised me, and there’s a truckload of work left behind with such speed and so many words, and all of it was, and still is, really unplanned and unexpected. I’ve left it alone for now, but I was wondering who’d be interested to give me a hand with a 1x4 get-together-fic-slash-school-fic that’s currently sitting at ~15k words and looks like there’d be a bit more? I’m not yet done, and I’m really in no hurry. I just want to know who I can contact when I get back to it again. Thanks! :)
On another note, I read somewhere that Sally is 19? I always thought she was older. How old is she in the series, really?
Title: Table by the Window
Author: Keithan
Disclaimers: Gundam Wing and its characters belong to their respective owners.
Rating: PG
Words: ~6200
Timeline: Spire (Fic list here)
Series: One-shot
Characters: Wufei, Quatre
Summary: Wufei knows there are some things that are easier to forget than to remember-like how it is easy to forget that Quatre was the one that led them to battle, that it was his voice that guided their actions and dictated their strategies.
Notes: For caerfree.This took on a different turn than I planned or expected (not to mention, it took me longer too), but here it is. :)
If you’ve read Eve of Change, there’s a very slight reference to it-so slight, blink and you’ll miss it.
Table by the Window
by Keithan
When Wufei enters the café, he immediately feels out of place and many eyes turn at his entrance. The establishment is posh and upscale, but that has never mattered much to him. After all, right now, he is well-dressed: shoes-combat boots-shined to perfection, clothes neatly pressed, and hair tied back cleanly.
His Preventer jacket, more than anything else, Wufei thinks, is the one that catches people’s attention. He feels its weight on his shoulders is the one that places him distinctly out of place.
He glances up, noticing the yellow lights from the low hanging lamps and how it is so different from the white fluorescents in the office. He never thought that normal fluorescent light is harsh and severe to look at, but being bathed under the soft yellow lights of the café, he thinks so now.
The eyes upon him start to turn away, back to newspapers or laptops or books. He is glad for the scrutiny to be over, glad that he can do his own. He walks to the counter and surveys the establishment without seeming to do so. It’s almost full, and he thinks the rush hour is to blame. But there are those who look as if they’ve stayed there for hours. It is comfortable and homey, but the relaxed atmosphere puts him on edge-he is not used to it.
Out of place, he thinks once again, and remembers why Po-a step up from calling her woman, but he still refuses to call her Sally even in his mind-is the one who always goes on the kind of information gathering which involves blending into the crowd or talking-not intimidating-to people.
Your shoulders are always tense, Wufei, she would say. Relax a bit, and people would talk to you.
He takes in a deep breath, and indeed, his shoulders are tense, as they usually are. He tries to relax-loosen up, as she would say. He is, after all, not on any kind of Preventer mission. Being a messenger doesn’t count, at least not until his partner convinced him that talking to Quatre Winner is hardly a mission-an assignment, he thinks instead, just a simple assignment.
The former pilot of Sandrock is not yet in. Wufei knows this the moment he spotted the café from across the street. He gets in line for the counter, scanning the café once more, this time for a vacant table. The only one available is a table on the corner, with one side being a solo couch, if there is such a thing. He is, admittedly, not well-versed in furniture. Cushioned chair, he thinks later, might be more apt.
He orders brewed coffee, when he reaches the cashier, and while he waits for it, he sees in the corner of his eyes a man leaving a table by the window. The corner of his mouth turns slightly. He did not look forward to sitting on the couch-cushioned chair-and sitting on the chair across it is out of the question as he will have to face away from the entrance.
He nods his thanks when he gets his cup, and turns his back to the cheerful Enjoy your coffee, sir! He makes his way straight to the table by the window. He places his cup of coffee on the table, and realizes he didn’t pass by the condiments section to get any sugar or stirrer in his hurry to get the vacant table. He turns, and stops abruptly, nearly stepping back.
In front of him stands Quatre Winner, smiling at him as though he has been with Wufei all along. He holds up packets in his hands in front of him and Wufei glances down and sees they’re a variety of sugars and creams.
“I didn’t know what you wanted, so I got two of each,” Quatre says. When Wufei doesn’t take them, he reaches out to place them on the table. “Don’t you want to take the cushioned chair over there?” He nods at the table by the corner-the one with the said chair.
“No, here is fine,” Wufei answers almost automatically.
“Okay,” Quatre says. He tilts his head towards the counter. “I’ll just go and get myself something, all right?”
Wufei watches him go, before glancing down on the table with a slight frown. The packets-some white, and brown, some paper, and glossy-lay there neatly beside his coffee and he almost swears under his breath when he sees a stirrer there as well, balanced on top of his cup. He looks back at the counter, then decides to sit down before people start looking at him again.
He doesn’t take his eyes off the businessman, though, and businessman is what Quatre Winner is in his tailored pants and shiny leather shoes and immaculate dress shirt-even the end-of-the-day rumpled look it carries seems deliberate. He looks relaxed and at ease.
Wufei takes note of the grey suit jacket hanging from the hook of his wrist when his hand is in his pocket. His other hand is on the counter, fingers touching it, but barely, and he uses it to gesture to the pastry displays or the menus, though he brings it back there again. He smiles at the cashier, and Wufei can see the genuine smile and amusement that she-Anna, his mind, used to taking note of details, readily supplies the name for him-offers the obviously regular customer.
Quatre, Wufei notices, is not out of place here. He belongs here in a way that the businessman, in his stiff suit and stern face, seated one table away from him will never do. The former Gundam pilot leans on the waiting counter as he waits for his order. He is comfortable and so at home that Wufei thinks he’d belong here even if he’d just been wearing jeans and an old white shirt. He waits for his coffee, and standing there and folding his sleeves neatly up to his elbows with a careless air, he looks like he owns the place. Wufei is surprised that he doesn’t mean that in a bad way.
He ignores the urge to drape his Preventers jacket on the back of his chair and sit back just to try to blend in. He doesn’t need to blend in. He needs to be a Preventer-because Gundam pilots and soldiers are not needed in a time of peace, he says to himself, as though he needed a reminder-because he doesn’t think he knows how to talk to Quatre Winner in any other way.
You should relax more, he hears Po’s voice in his mind.
He turns to his coffee, starts turning and lining up the packets to clearly see what they are-brown and white sugar, sweetener, creamer-and prepares his coffee to his liking.
Not when I’m working. And he thinks he should soon listen to her advice because he’s starting to answer voices in his head, and he actually hears her laugh in his mind. Used to working alone most of his life, taking a partner was a drastic change, one that constantly annoys him to the point that even working alone, he now somehow expects a second voice beside him.
But Quatre is a friend, not work.
He doesn’t answer this time and stirs his coffee silently instead, thinking that any voice suggesting Quatre as a friend is clearly mistaken and doesn’t deserve to be noticed. He has to admit, though, that Quatre is-was-once upon a time, a comrade.
* * *
Wufei leans his elbows on the table and turns his gaze outside. He feels the warmth of the coffee in his left hand where he holds the cup, thumb idly caressing the paper holder. He watches, with a slight frown on his face, a sales lady in a store across the street, dressing a display mannequin in a silver flowing gown.
“I know this is not a social call.”
He doesn’t turn his head, but he slides his glance to Quatre. Sitting across the table from him, Quatre Winner is every bit the CEO of WEI, which, in the past year and a half, after the Eve War of 196, has greatly expanded-especially its construction business-to reach all the colonies now and has just started its first serious ventures on Earth. Every trace of the soldier in him, which Wufei thought was barely there in the first place, is gone.
“It can be, you know.”
“I don’t know what Une wants me to say,” he says, not acknowledging Quatre’s last statement. It’s awkward to think that they, or any of them, could be friends when they have not seen or been in contact since the war ended, and when the last hold that ties him to them is the memory of his betrayal. He shrugs the thought away, then turns back to the window just in time to see a limousine pass by.
L4, he observes, has a higher quality of living than the other colonies he has seen.
He looks at Quatre, sees the tinge of the soft yellow light on his face and tries to imagine him under stark, white fluorescent. He sighs, before pushing his chair back. “This is a mistake,” he says, before he even thought of screening his words.
Une sent him here, but it’s his decision to decide whether or not inviting his former comrades will bring any good to the Preventers organization. They need people especially now that the initial rush of the war ending has started to dwindle down. There is still a lot to be done, and not enough to do it. Many civilians have signed up, but they need more people who needs no training and knows what to do and how to do it.
He remembers the Circus when he visited, remembers the lion and the clown and he remembers hiding his surprise when Trowa came out to meet him still in costume. He remembers the junkyard in L2, where he found Duo excitedly waving around some metal scrap before seeing he was there, and he remembers thinking some things, at least, remain the same.
It is far from the quiet and comfortable atmosphere of the café and yet he finds it easier-easier than walking in here and being stared at, easier than ordering a simple cup of coffee and forgetting the sugar, easier than sitting there and trying to act normal. Because Trowa and Duo, he knows, are easier to approach than Quatre.
Of all the others, Pilot 04 was the least pilot he knew. They never really crossed missions or paths or never shared the same prison cell. To him, he was only the pilot of the Gundam Sandrock, a part of the team, nothing exceptional, nothing noteworthy.
And what little familiarity he had with Quatre is now gone.
He is sitting with a stranger, and he doesn’t know how to tell Une that, not only has he failed to recruit any of the former Gundam pilots, but that she also wants to recruit a rich businessman instead.
Wufei is a Preventer agent. He does not go to coffee with rich CEO’s, except maybe when he’s trailing them or watching them or the Preventers suspect them of having connections with the war.
“I’m sorry for taking your time,” Wufei says, and he can imagine his voice and demeanor immediately slipping back into a more professional one-the one he’s more comfortable using-than the relaxed tone he has been trying to adapt.
When he starts to rise, Quatre waves a hand at him carelessly. “Sit down, Wufei,” he says.
A frown immediately makes its way into his face and before he can think, he snaps, “Excuse me?” He stands up fully, looking down at Quatre as if daring him to issue out such an order again. “I’m not one of your assistants or business associates, Winner.” In the back of his mind, he can hear Po’s laughing admonition that he ought to control his temper, but he ignores it, just as he ignores it in real life.
Quatre looks surprised for a moment before he shakes his head. “I’m just asking you to sit down, Wufei,” he says again, and Wufei frowns more at this because the accompanying smile in Quatre’s face is apologetic and gentle and sincere all at the same time. This, in addition to what he’s seen so far, makes Wufei feel more detached and distant than ever from someone who was supposedly a comrade in war.
He reins in his temper, tries to go back to being professional once more because the Quatre Winner in front of him, with his gentle smile and his carefree face, is clearly and undeniably a civilian. “I’m sorry, but I have to go,” he says. “It was not my idea to come here-“
“I still have my ID, Wufei,” Quatre says. “You can tell Une that.”
The special Preventers ID, which Une has issued out to all of the Gundam pilots after the first Eve War in 195 except for Wufei-and he doesn’t want to think about how and why he’d been out of contact to not receive his in the first place-while gives them little authorization or power on everything else, gives them the clearance to go directly to the one in command or to Une, herself, when-if-they need to. He doesn’t think Quatre will ever need to.
“I’ll have it taken as soon-“
“No. I have no intention of giving it up.” And before Wufei can react negatively to being interrupted twice now, Quatre continues with a defeated sigh, “Look, I know why Une sent for you here. I’m not stupid. I was trained at what I-what we-did, Wufei. And while you obviously don’t think so,” he shrugs at this, as if saying he’s not taking offense, “I can tell you have three knives on your person, one on your ankle, one on your gun holster, and one in your pocket. You also have one gun, of course, and one magazine strapped to your belt. Now stop doubting your commander, and please,” he says this with a smile and a friendly gesture to the seat behind Wufei, “do sit down.”
Wufei is surprised enough to just say, “What?” His thoughts are running fast in his mind because he’s sure he’s never given himself away so completely before. He stills the urge to check all the weapons he always brings with him on any assignment just to make sure Quatre’s not bluffing. But he knows he’s not and this… this civilian-he thinks this with a shadow of a doubt now-is spot on in everything. He presses his lips into a tight line, before finally deciding to sit down once again.
Wufei looks at Quatre, while the other takes a sip of his coffee and doesn’t show any unease under the scrutiny. Instead, Quatre seems content to ignore him for a while.
He snatches his own cup of coffee from the table, and turns to look out the window again, glaring at it as though it’s at fault for bringing him here. He briefly looks at Quatre’s faint reflection at the window, and is surprised to see Quatre watching him with a calculating eye, meeting his gaze through the glass with an elegantly raised brow. He turns his glare at him-at the reflection-but Quatre only laughs into his coffee cup.
“Now that’s more like you,” Quatre says, and Wufei tries to slowly reconcile this man with the boy he fought side by side with, once upon a time. It’s relatively easier now, when he’s been clearly talked down to-and he scowls at the thought-than it was mere moments ago.
He looks warily at the unused packets lying on their table, set aside from the litter of empty ones. He remembers, in the back of his mind, that Gundam pilots are not, and never will be, mere civilians.
* * *
“There’s something wrong with that figure, Barry. Have it checked again-no, I don’t care. Tell them I said so.”
When Quatre excuses himself to take a call, he doesn’t leave the table, and Wufei has no qualms about listening in and not being discreet about it. After all, if Quatre wanted his conversation private, he would have stood up and walked a polite distance away.
He remembers now-the soft-spoken pilot of Gundam Sandrock never did make a strong impression on him. But he’s making one now, and Wufei doesn’t know if he should feel impressed or annoyed. This meeting never started the way Wufei wanted it to.
Quatre sighs into the phone and closes his eyes briefly, and Wufei watches as he brings up a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.
“I want it by lunch time tomorrow. I’ll have them-look, listen to me.” Quatre pauses, presumably waiting if Barry’s listening. “Tell them to check the books from last month. I know, without a doubt, that their figure is wrong. I’ll do their job if I have to just to prove them wrong-but no, don’t tell them that.”
Wufei wonders how Quatre’s people deal with the fact that their CEO is barely even two decades old, wonders if it’s not unlike the treatment he sometimes receives from other Preventers, most of whom are still in training. He hates it, and looking at Quatre with a slight furrow in his brow that wasn’t there before, he guesses Quatre hates it too.
“All right. That’ll do. Now go home. It’s half past already. I’ll see you tomorrow.” With a nod, Quatre flips his mobile close and sends him an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry about that.” He doesn’t offer any more explanation.
Wufei frowns at him, and simply asks, “Are you even legal yet?”
Quatre gives him a little smile, before shrugging. He waves a hand at Wufei’s chest, and he looks down to see the embroidered Preventers logo on the breast of his uniform jacket.
“Are you?” Quatre asks.
Wufei frowns at the Preventers patch. Are any of them, really?
He lifts his coffee up, and when he feels its nearly empty weight, he says, “I need another one.”
Quatre looks at his own nearly empty cup. “Me too.”
It is easy to forget, Wufei thinks, in front of the face that Quatre has been showing to him or to the world, for that matter, that he was the one that led them to battle, easy to forget that it was his voice that guided their actions and dictated their strategies. It is easy to forget that Quatre, while not probably a soldier, was and probably will always be, in some part of him, a Gundam pilot.
Wufei silently swears at himself for even forgetting.
* * *
“Have you asked Trowa?”
The sudden question catches Wufei unprepared, and he looks back at Quatre immediately. They’re holding fresh cups of coffee each and neither of them has spoken for a while. Wufei refuses to start the conversation again when Quatre clearly knows what he came here for, and he won’t give in to the silent battle of wills and look impatient. But that isn’t the start of the conversation that he has been expecting.
“He said he’ll think about it,” he answers. He lifts his new coffee to his lips. He frowns. It tastes bitter. When he looks up from frowning at his cup, he sees Quatre holding two packets of brown sugar to him. Wufei turns a glare at him. “You’re doing this to prove a point you’ve already proven, Winner,” he says, and if his voice came out testy, he doesn’t care.
“I don’t know what you mean, Wufei.” Quatre says his name as though they’re friends, and Wufei is sure it’s deliberate after calling him Winner. He takes the two packets of sugar from Quatre’s fingers.
Quatre makes a thoughtful sound. “I’m not surprised,” he says. “About Trowa, I mean. He is, after all, one of the stars of the show, and Misha-why he insists on that name for a lion, I don’t know-will miss him.” He smiles around the rim of his cup, and Wufei notes, as he empties the sugar in his coffee, that Quatre’s eyes are soft and smiling too. “He’s still enjoying himself there, not that he’ll tell you that.”
Wufei’s hands pause, and he raises a questioning brow at him. “You’ve spoken?”
Quatre places the cup down, and tilts his head at him. Wufei feels the urge to look away at the sudden study of his face, but he frowns instead. He’s been doing that a lot, and he thinks he’s even passed the number of frowns and glares he’s thrown Duo when he approached him just two weeks ago. Quatre, instead of taking offense, just smiles at him.
“Yes, we have.”
“And Duo?” The question is out even before he is able to think about it, and Wufei doesn’t know why it suddenly matters.
“Duo called me the moment you left his garage,” Quatre says, voice amused and almost fond. “Woke me up in the middle of the night, not that it matters to him.”
Wufei crumples the empty packets in his hand and throws them on the table. He takes a careless sip from his coffee. It burns his tongue, causing him to jerk. “Damn it!” he says, as he nearly spills coffee all over himself. It still tastes bitter.
When Quatre reaches out with the stirrer, it takes all of Wufei’s control to not just grab it from Quatre’s fingers. He can’t help the scowl from escaping though.
He had been sure that not one of them has been in contact with each other since the closing of the last Eve War. He had been sure that all of them have gone separate ways. He doesn’t know what to think of the others maintaining an open line of communication, though, when he has kept to himself all this time. But it is, after all, his choice, and he doesn’t want to concern himself any more than necessary of what the others do with their lives.
He turns back to Quatre. “Aren’t you going to ask about Heero?” he asks suddenly. He doesn’t know what to feel if Quatre tells him Heero’s whereabouts. He has been trying to follow Heero’s trail, but that’s only if he finds it first. He’s beginning to think that Heero doesn’t leave any trails. If Quatre knows where Heero is, his job of tracking him down will be easier, but he wonders why he’s not at all excited to hear about it.
But Quatre doesn’t answer, and merely holds his stare for a moment. He is surprised when Quatre slowly looks away and turns his eyes to the street outside.
“You won’t find him,” Quatre says.
“You know where he is?”
“No. I just know you won’t be able to.”
He doesn’t know if he feels relieved that Heero, at least, hasn’t surprised him by also keeping an in touch with the others in any way, or disappointed that he’ll have to find the elusive ex-pilot without any kind of clue where to start. “How do you know that?”
Somehow, he’s not surprised when Quatre only shrugs and takes a drink from his coffee. The always present smile is now absent from his face.
* * *
“Did your assignment on the Moon go well?”
Wufei looks at Quatre sharply, turning his eyes away from observing the couple who just walked in. “How do you know that? Our files are confidential.”
The smile is back, and Quatre just shrugs. Wufei finds them-the half smiles and careless shrugs-increasingly frustrating as they are obviously ways of deflecting questions-something that Quatre Winner is apparently fond of doing. He’s been skirting around the issue of joining the Preventers for the better part of their meeting.
“I admit I’m not as efficient as… Heero, but I can hold my own. It was easy to keep track of things.” Quatre has his back turned to the door and the counter but he still turns his head around distractedly to meet the eyes of the woman from the couple earlier. He shakes his head at her, and Wufei doesn’t see if he mouths anything at her, but she nods. Quatre turns back saying, “I know them.”
“She has been looking at you when they came in.”
He raises a hand to point behind him. “WEI building is just a few minutes’ walk from here,” he says. “She’s my sister and seeing you here with me makes her worry. She won’t come to our table, don’t worry.”
“What does-“ Wufei stops, before glaring at Quatre, realizing the distraction for what it is. “I’m asking you about your breach of Preventer security, Quatre. You’ve been following me.” He will not be side-tracked any longer.
Quatre laughs. “No, not exactly. I’m keeping an eye on you,” he says and before Wufei can protest, Quatre’s holds up a hand. “Not always, but enough. After what happened in 196, I promised…” he trails off, before shaking his head and continuing, “I promised that you’d be all right-that we’d all be all right.”
Wufei actually pauses to let the words sink in. When they do, he fights the urge to grit his teeth, but isn’t quite able to stop a hand from slamming down slightly on the table. “You have no right.” His voice comes out hard and low.
Quatre smiles again, unconcerned at Wufei’s rising anger. “No, I don’t.”
Wufei doesn’t know why he’s able to remain seated and appear somewhat calm when he’s sure he would have lost his temper otherwise, and Po isn’t even there to stop him. “I don’t appreciate being tracked,” he says, spitting out the words as if they’re a threat.
“All right, then I’ll just have to check on you personally next time, ok?” Quatre says, and the words are random enough for Wufei that he almost forgets his anger.
“What?”
“I talk to Duo and Trowa, not since 196, but just recently. I never tried to talk to you,” he looks at Wufei with a smile, “I know you won’t talk to me.”
Wufei feels lost with the turn of conversation and he doesn’t know what answer is expected of him, so he remains silent. He knows Quatre is right, though. Before now, he has no reason to talk to him. He looks up when he feels eyes on him and sees Quatre’s sister leave with her companion. He meets her wary stare steadily as she exits the café.
When he turns back to Quatre, he sees him holding his cup with both hands and he’s looking at it as if it’s the one he’s talking to.
“You’re not ready to go back and face any of it yet, not when you’ve just started to find your feet. I represent your past, Wufei, more so than Une, more so than Sally. Sally Po is your partner. She is, in every way, your present and your future. While we, Duo, Trowa and I, and Heero too, are your past. I’m not about to step in and take that from you before you’re even ready to move forward.”
Wufei is surprised enough to stare. He closes his mouth when no words were forthcoming. He never talks about this-seldom and too little with Po, as his partner, and certainly not with Une, as his head.
“We’ve had time after 195 of somewhat getting used to it, to the peace, no matter how fragile it was back then. You didn’t. We’re picking up where we left off, but you’re just starting.” Quatre finally raises his eyes to him, as if expecting a confirmation of his words.
Wufei frowns at him before turning to the window. “Your sister already left,” he says suddenly-they were the first words that came to mind. When he sees Quatre’s brow rise at this, he sighs and says instead, “I don’t want to talk about it.” He is quite thankful when Quatre said no more.
Wufei sometimes thinks he feels guilty for what happened that one year after the first Eve War. He knows better, though, than to be guilty for choosing a path he thought was the right one at the time. He wonders if any of the others blame him, if Trowa resents him for interfering with his infiltration, if Heero still thinks about that fight in the atmosphere as Wufei so often does.
Wufei turns back to Quatre in a sudden thought. “It’s Heero,” he says, but Quatre doesn’t even react-his face was carefully neutral. “You promised Heero we’d be all right.” He knows, as he says it, that it is true. “You know where he is.”
Quatre shakes his head and waves a hand as though to dismiss the idea. “I told you I don’t. He’ll come back in his own time, just as you are here now.”
“I’m on an assignment-“
“Yes, and we’ve been talking about that assignment of yours for a while now.”
Wufei glares at him, before turning to the window again, if only to escape Quatre’s knowing smile. “Sarcasm doesn’t become you,” he tells Quatre. Not for the first time, he is glad to have taken a table by the window.
“It’s easy to forget,” he says, after a while-after he has watched a lady cross the street to the couture shop across it and after more than a dozen men in suits have passed by.
“What?”
“That you’re one of us.” Faced with this life of luxury-posh café in the middle of the business district of the city, in suits and dress shirts and tailored jackets and pants-it is easy to forget the past, unlike when faced with mission reports and old OZ and Alliance bases to neutralize. It’s a mistake, he knows now, to think that Quatre, living in the middle of this kind of life, has easily forgotten. Quatre remembers, probably more than him.
“That I’m one of you? Or that you’re one of us?”
Wufei blinks, startled at the question. He looks back at Quatre and wonders if he is seeing the same boy or the same man he has known since the war.
After a while, he says, “Both.”
* * *
“Maybe in a year,” Quatre says, taking another sharp turn in the silence and conversation between them.
Wufei notices the sudden tightness in Quatre’s smile and the way he’s holding the cup of coffee in his hands, as though he wants to grip it but because it’s just paper, he can’t. “You’ll be ready by then?” he asks, not needing to ask to know that Quatre’s talking about joining the Preventers.
“I’ll offer my help and my resources, of course. I’ve already told Une that I will fully back the organization as long as it keeps to its goal. But no, not until then. I’ll talk to Trowa and Duo.”
Wufei looks at him, a thoughtful frown on his face. “Une told me to approach you first,” he says.
Quatre seems to turn this thought over, before he shakes his head in dismissal, a slight smile on his face. “Manipulative woman.”
Wufei didn’t think about why Une insisted that he approach Quatre first. He thought it odd, and, as it was not necessarily an order, he went about it in his own way-going to Trowa, Duo, then Quatre. Maybe, he thinks, he should have listened to her.
He lifts his cup up, and before he takes a sip, he asks, “Why?”
“Just tell her not yet,” Quatre says and shrugs. “Reconstruction in L3 is going well,” he continues, but when he meets Wufei’s eyes, Wufei feels that Quatre is no longer talking to him as a Preventer agent on an assignment, “but it’s far from being finished. I can’t take on any more responsibilities, not until later this year when the final phase of the project starts.”
The non-grip on the paper cup and the tightness in Quatre’s smile suddenly makes sense to Wufei. And not for the first time, he wonders how he could have forgotten.
He opens his mouth to say something when Quatre waves a hand to Anna-not on counter duty now-who then walks closer to their table. He blinks, thinks whether Quatre did that on purpose.
But as he watches Quatre smile and charm his way to Anna’s good graces-which he doesn’t really need to do anyway-Wufei thinks he doesn’t really mind. He understands that there are some things one would rather not talk about and sometimes forget.
Wufei watches Anna’s back as she walks away from their table, after insisting that Quatre and his companion be served pastries to go with their coffee.
“I was under the impression that this is a self-service establishment,” he says when he turns back to Quatre.
“Oh? Didn’t I tell you?” Quatre lifts a hand and Wufei is not sure if it’s to indicate their table or the counter, where Anna disappeared to. “I own this café.”
Wufei almost chokes on his drink. He looks at Quatre incredulously.
“That was a joke, Wufei.”
When Quatre follows that up with a soft and amused laugh, Wufei swears at his coffee, but he takes comfort in the fact that Quatre must surely know that it’s directed at him.
L3, he knows, is a topic long past.
* * *
When Wufei walks out to the sidewalk, nobody is looking at him and he stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets. He moves out of the way of the pedestrians. The sudden traffic and space strikes him as odd when he feels like he’s spent a long time in a café with solo couches-“The cushioned chairs are comfortable for long periods of stay, Wufei. You should try them next time”-and yellow lights and Quatre Winner.
He glances back and sees their table by the window already being occupied by a balding man with a cup in one hand and a magazine in another. He wonders if he’s waiting for someone and what they’re going to talk about if he is-a past they both lived, the things they share, or will it be the present, like another day at work in an office just a few minutes’ walk from here.
He shifts his gaze away and he looks up. When he sees the other side of the colony above him, he feels comforted. He takes the sight in, imprinting it to memory, knowing that he won’t be able to see such a view again soon-he’s going to be staying on Earth for a while. It’s a different kind of beauty, he thinks, from seeing the open sky. But the circular shape of the colony is familiar and beautiful, and to look at it without feeling any kind of threat and danger is something he doesn’t take for granted-will never take for granted.
If Po is with him, she’ll take one look at him and immediately say something along the lines of, You’re getting sentimental, Wufei.
Sometimes, he thinks he’s putting up with a partner because he wants to get away from his past, because working alone reminds him too much of the war, too much of those years of running and fighting and just… trying to survive alone, one day at a time.
But maybe sometimes, he needs to remember too. Po understands this better than he does, if her small talk about bits and pieces of her life during the war is any indication.
He hears Quatre walk up to him just as he hears the glass door to the café close. He sees him look up too, looking at the buildings and houses and gardens so far away up from them, but so accessible by mere local transportation.
He looks down and saw the mannequin across the street fully dressed in the silver gown, and he can see, even from where he is, that it shimmers faintly under the light. “Your economy is thriving under your care,” he says.
“It’s hardly mine, but I’ll take the compliment as it is.” Quatre flings his suit jacket over one shoulder, holding it with two fingers. Wufei recognizes both the pride and humility in those simple words and gestures.
“I guess we’ll be seeing you in about a year.” He glances at his watch, notices that only a little more than an hour has passed. It feels longer.
“And two others, I’m sure.” Quatre looks back at the café, and it’s hard to miss the playful curve of his lips. “I’ll call Duo and tell him you met Anna.”
Wufei snorts and offers Quatre a withering look. “If he starts calling me, Winner, I’ll hold you personally responsible.”
Quatre laughs. “You should relax more, Wufei. It suits you.”
He doesn’t return the laugh, but the corner of his lips turns slightly up in a shadow of a smirk. He shakes his head and looks back up at the other side of the colony.
Sally, he thinks, will get along just fine with Quatre.
.end
14.11.09
I need a beta or any kind of reading help. In an attempt to beat this fic down to submission, I randomly started writing a scene in my mind, which grew to more than 10k words in just three days, and looks as if it’s nowhere near finished.
That kind of speed surprised me, and there’s a truckload of work left behind with such speed and so many words, and all of it was, and still is, really unplanned and unexpected. I’ve left it alone for now, but I was wondering who’d be interested to give me a hand with a 1x4 get-together-fic-slash-school-fic that’s currently sitting at ~15k words and looks like there’d be a bit more? I’m not yet done, and I’m really in no hurry. I just want to know who I can contact when I get back to it again. Thanks! :)
On another note, I read somewhere that Sally is 19? I always thought she was older. How old is she in the series, really?