--------------------------
Conversation over an Apple
  ~ A Moment of Haven ~
--------------------------
	I don't know what masochistic tendencies drove me to the church 
that day, but there I was, slouching in my seat in the first row of the 
pews, staring at the slowly shifting patterns of light on the floor.  As 
churches go, I suppose this church was pretty un-church-like.  I can't 
really say why, though.  It had all the standard church accoutrements.

	"Something I can help you with, Duo?"  Or maybe it was the 
priest who presided there.  He was pretty decent, for a priest.  I 
always rather liked the way he addressed me by my name, and not as "my 
child" or "my son" or something otherwise typically priestly.  It was 
nice, knowing I was more than just a lost sheep to him.

	"Nah," I replied casually.  "Just watching the sun set."  It was 
curious, to think that I could watch the sunset from inside the church, 
but there it was, evident in the gradual changes in the angle of the 
fading rays through the windows.  In particular, I watched the colors 
cast by the light through the small stained glass panes set in the 
walls.  Father MacKenzie, fond as he was of the stained glass -- weren't 
all priests? -- was nevertheless a practical man, and had come to the 
sad conclusion that stained glass just didn't let in enough light, so he 
kept its usage down to a modest degree.  I liked the small ones, myself.  
They reminded me of the little pieces we used to have, back in the day.

	The good priest joined me in silence, and sat down on the steps 
leading to the pulpit in front of me.  I don't think he ever quite knew 
what to do with me.  The church obviously meant something to me, since I 
kept coming back to it for some reason, but I never went to services, 
never asked him for spiritual guidance.  In fact, I'd asked him to stop 
inviting me to join the congregation.  To my surprise, he agreed, and 
has never asked me openly again, although he likes to subtly hint at it 
and let me know the option is always open.  Tact is always good in a 
priest.

	All too soon, the gentle colors were gone.  "Time sure flies, 
doesn't it?" I observed conversationally, only to give the statement 
some thought and revise it.  "Actually, I can't believe we've only been 
here a year, so I suppose that's not a very good thing for me to say."

	"A year well spent, I hope."

	"A year gone in a blink, and yet... it seems so much more."

	"I've only been here for about half a year, myself.  I came here 
to get away from the faster pace of the larger cities.... Why aren't you 
religious, Duo?"

	I blinked.  "What?"  So much for all that tact, I suppose.

	"Well, I was just wondering.... Well, okay, it's not as casual 
as all that.  I've actually been wondering for a while, now."

	"Straightforward sort of fellow, aren't you?" I murmured, 
stalling.  I knew that he had said he wasn't going to try to convert me, 
but I rather wondered where this line of questioning was leading.  I had 
to work a little to formulate a properly inoffensive, succinct response.  
"I just don't ... really like God, that's all."

	"But you acknowledge His existence?"

	"Yeah.  But that doesn't mean I gotta worship the guy."

	"Ah.  Yes, well...."  I raised an eyebrow at him challengingly, 
daring him to say what was on the tip of his tongue.  Would he tell me I 
was going to Hell for turning my back on Him?  Did he think he could 
teach me the errors of my way?  Was this finally going to be the 
theological argument I'd always felt was inevitable?  "I almost agree 
with you, there."

	"Huh?"  Okay, that really, really wasn't what I was expecting to 
hear.

	He chuckled nervously.  "Can you keep a secret?" he asked me, 
half jokingly, half solemnly.

	"As well as you can," I replied in the same manner.

	"Truth is.... Yes, I did come here to get away from the 
cities... but also to get away from ... well, from the church."

	This time, my eyebrow raised in skepticism.

	"I don't mean it like--  Well, okay, I do, I guess."  He paused 
shortly to gather his thoughts.  "I have faith in God.  Truly, I do.  I 
believe in His greatness and His plan, and all of that.  But I guess you 
can only watch so many sacred marriages end in divorce, so many men go 
to war against their neighbors, before you just start to lose a little 
faith in... something.  Not God, certainly, but... something."

	I must have had a quizzical look on my face, because he answered 
the question I was only thinking.  "I'm just telling you this because I 
wonder if you have a similar problem to the one I had.  Have, actually."

	"Are you having a crisis of faith, Father?"  And here I thought 
I was supposed to be the one to go to him for my issues with the faith.  
The irony of the situation amused me greatly.

	"Only of the institutionalized structure that surrounds the 
faith.  After a while, I just felt like I was being weighed down by all 
that..."

	"Catholicism?" I suggested wryly.

	He nodded thoughtfully.  "Yes, perhaps that.  So I made a few 
arrangements, and came here.  A nice suburban sort of place.  A place 
where I could get to know the people personally in settings outside of 
the church.  A place where I felt I could help others with their faith, 
but sort of on my terms, and their terms, as well."

	"I liked the Easter play this year," I piped up suddenly.  "It 
was very ... secular."

	He smiled depreciatingly.  "I rather liked it myself.  Well, I 
guess the point of this little talk is that, I may be a priest, Duo, but 
I can be a very secular priest, if that's what you need, and a very 
secular friend.  Don't let my affiliation with the church stop you from 
ever coming to me if you need someone to talk to.  I'll try not to let 
God seep into the conversation.  And that also, maybe if you can 
distinguish between who and what God is, and who and what man makes God 
out to be, perhaps you might be able to find yourself a... a more 
amicable relationship with Him."

                              ************

	There was a discreet knock on the door frame of my bedroom, and 
moments later, Heero's head popped into view.  I raised an eyebrow at 
him, but he just sort of hovered there, so I marked my page in my book 
and set it aside.  "What's up?"

	He had that odd contemplative look on his face.  The one that 
said he knew exactly what he wanted to say, knew how to say it bluntly, 
but was wondering if he should take the time to come up with some sort 
of segue, or surrounding fluff.  It wasn't like him to try to take the 
edge off of the subject itself, if its truth was in particular need of 
softening, but at least I knew that that was just the way he worked.  
The tone of his voice and look in his eye were usually enough to cushion 
anything he had to throw at me. 

	"It's June twenty-fourth," he declared finally.

	Okay, so I admit that sometimes he was just obscure in his 
straightforwardness.  "Why, so it is, Heero," I agreed amiably.  He 
seemed to be waiting for some further acknowledgement of his stunning 
observation, so I obliged him.  "What's so special about the 
twenty-fourth?"

	"I believe this is the day that you designated to be your 
birthday, is it not?"

	I blinked, and did a quick calculation in my head.  Sad, really, 
when I had to calculate my birthday.  Or the day I had chosen to serve 
as my birthday.  But at least it was easy to remember -- if I thought 
about it, that is -- and I found he was indeed correct.  "Why, so it 
is," I repeated wondrously.  I hadn't really expected him to recall such 
an irrelevant piece of fluff.  I expected him to remember it, certainly, 
because there are very few things he doesn't remember, but I didn't 
expect him to recall it.

	"Birthdays seem to be celebratory times, so I thought maybe we 
should do something.  You know, cake, presents, that sort of thing."

	"Why, Heero," I started, "you really shouldn't have..."  
Sometimes, he knew just the thing to cheer a fellow up.  The day had 
been something of a little downer.

	"I didn't."  And sometimes he knew just the thing to crush a 
guy.  "The main problem with that being, it's past twenty-two-hundred.  
The stores are closed, we don't have a cake, and we don't have candles."

	"Oh," I responded rather weakly.  So why on earth would he go 
and get my hopes up...?

	"So I had to improvise."  He ducked back into the hallway for a 
second, and the next came back into the room with his improvisation.

	I blinked when I saw it first.  That couldn't possibly be what I 
thought it was.

	Then I blinked again when he set it down on the bedside table 
next to me.

	Then I laughed my ass off.  Well, maybe not, rolling on the 
floor, laughing.  But a nice, hearty sound of delight, at least.  I 
wouldn't have if I had thought he would take offense.  Really, I 
wouldn't have.  If Ami had come up to me with a similar invention, I 
would have smiled warmly at her, and maybe pulled her in for a good old 
fashioned hug or something.  But with Heero, I didn't have to pull my 
punches.  It had always been like that.  I didn't have to watch what I 
did or said.  It was funny.  He knew it, more or less.  I knew it.  And 
neither of us minded making fools of ourselves in front of the other.  
So I laughed.  And he just sat down on the edge of my bed and waited me 
out with that earnest look on his face, with just a hint of loose 
relaxation and amusement in his posture.

	"Heero...," I said, my voiced strained.  "That's probably the 
sorriest excuse for a cake I have ever seen!  And I tell you, I have 
seen some pretty sorry things in my life."

	He shrugged, the way he always did.  This shrug, combined with 
that quirk of his lips, meant, yeah, he acknowledged the possibility of 
humor in it all.  He certainly wasn't going to join me in laughing over 
it, but he could see it all the same.  He knew it was weird, and in a 
typical Heero fashion, he didn't care.  Of course, I'm sure it all made 
sense in that strange, Heero sort of way.

	"Why bother with a candle when you can just use a match?" I had 
to ask rhetorically.  Of course, why bother with a cake when you can use 
an apple?  Food was food, right?  I guess sticking a candle into an 
apple would have been harder, anyway.  The match wasn't quite centered, 
seeing as how he had set the apple to rest on its bottom, and there 
hadn't been any room for the match on the top, what with the stem there 
and all, so it was sort of sticking straight up on top -- at the highest 
point, in any case, but off to the side just a bit.

	"It was all we had," he explained unapologetically.  Apparently, 
fire was fire, too, and he saw no point in lighting a candle when all he 
needed was a flame for a few seconds.  He plucked the match from the 
shallow notch he had cut in the apple, struck it against the matchbook 
he magically produced from his pocket, and quickly stuck it back into 
the little hole.  "Happy birthday."

	It may have been one of the lamest excuses for a cake I had ever 
seen, but it struck me as the most heartfelt.  Cakes are an automatic 
response to celebration trained into us by society.  Birthday?  Bring a 
cake.  Graduating?  How's about a cake?  Retiring?  Anniversary?  Cake.  
But an apple with a match in it required a little more thought.  Sort 
of.  He could easily have not gone through the trouble at all, and I 
certainly didn't expect him to try to whip one up from scratch at this 
time of night.  "Thank you," I said sincerely, backing it up with a 
bright smile that hopefully conveyed what it all meant to me.

	He cleared his throat a little too obviously, and pointed at the 
apple with a flick of his chin.  I had quite forgotten that it was just 
a match there, and not a candle.  Candles lasted quite a bit longer than 
a match.  If I didn't blow out my match soon, I'd have a toasted apple, 
so I huffed in surprise and blew it out, completely forgetting a 
birthday wish.  But what would I wish for, really?  I already had more 
than I had ever thought I would have.  Maybe I could have made a wish 
for Heero.

	He produced a knife from somewhere as well -- hopefully not his 
pocket, this time -- and handed it to me hilt-first.  "Would you like to 
cut the cake?" he said in a completely serious voice.

	I accepted the knife graciously from him, and removed the 
match's remains.  But after I picked up the apple, I changed my mind, 
and offered him both apple and knife.  "Peel it for me?"

	He took them both wordlessly and got to work.  It just tickled 
me pink, the way he peeled an apple.  He started from the top and peeled 
around it, all the way down, which, by itself, wasn't special, only 
Heero could do it all in one piece.  If he was in the mood to -- and 
apparently he was in the mood, tonight -- he could peel the whole thing 
without really displacing the skin from the apple, so that when he was 
done, he solemnly handed me back what appeared to be an almost perfectly 
fine apple, maybe with an apple flesh stripe from the slight shifting of 
the skin spiraling down it.

	Delighted, I picked up the top end of the loose skin and 
unraveled my apple.  That just blew me away, every time.  Whenever I 
tried it, conserving just as much apple meat as he did, the skin would 
inevitably break right when I got towards the end.  Too lazy to actually 
slice the fruit, I retrieved the knife from him and just cut it in half.  
He took his side, and I took mine, and after a lick at the juices and a 
crunch of my apple, I struck up a conversation again.  "What do you 
think of Father MacKenzie?"

	His shoulders lifted elegantly in another nonchalant shrug.  I 
swear, he's got that down to an art form.  "He's not a very priest-like 
priest."

	Of course.  The difficult conclusion I had arrived at this 
evening was, to him, a self-evident truth he had realized months ago.  I 
should have anticipated that.  "Yeah, I had a little chat with him 
today.  He's... different than I expected, really."

	"You've never given him much of a chance."

	"Eh?  What do you mean?  I've talked to him and stuff."

	"But you don't say anything to him.  You never let your guard 
down around him.  He's a priest.  That makes you wary of him."  Here I 
was, having my psyche calmly dissected by Heero again.  It used to 
bother me, but somewhere along the line, I just got used to it.  
Besides, he usually had more interesting things to say about me than I 
did, and having an objective opinion helped, sometimes.

	I munched on my apple contemplatively.  Had I really been that 
defensive against the priest's friendly overtures?  Yeah, probably.  
Heero knew all about a certain church from my past, and the 
circumstances involved in that whole thing.  The logical leap from there 
to here wasn't that far at all, and if Heero was making the connection, 
then certainly I had to, too.  To be sure, I was probably already aware 
of it on some level, but somehow things always seem to solidify just a 
bit when I actually put words to the ideas.

	I thought a bit more on what Father MacKenzie had proposed 
today.  Maybe if I could apply the same technique here, maybe if I could 
separate Father MacKenzie, guy who happens to be religious, from Father 
MacKenzie, Religious Guy, maybe I could give myself the opportunity to 
get to know him.

	And God?  Could I do the same for him?  Father MacKenzie was 
just guilty by association.  God was guilty of His own actions.  I could 
take Father MacKenzie out of his church context, and find just another 
man within, but God was God.  He wouldn't be God if He weren't a god.  
(You know, I always had a problem with how He chose to be called 'God'.)  
But then again, the problem was to take God out of the church context, 
to see God without the trappings of His surrounding religion, not His 
godhood, and see what I thought of Him then.  Hmmm.  That one would take 
a bit of work.

	"And to think," I chuckled ruefully, "they'd hoped I'd become a 
priest some day.  And now I've got some sort of bizarre priestaphobia."  
I sighed.  "Well, things change, I suppose.  You'd probably have made a 
much better priest than I would have, anyway.  You have much more 
devotion than I do."

	"I don't think I'd make a good priest."

	"Oh?  Why not?"

	"You'd be asking me to put all of my faith in something 
completely outside of myself."

	"But you believe in Relena like that, don't you?  That she'll 
put together and preserve the peace."

	He shook his head in negation.  "I can see Relena.  I can 
question her.  I know exactly what she's doing, and if she falters, I 
can help her.  You can't say the same about God."

	"No.  I suppose not."  I tossed my half of the apple core onto 
the plate and was licking my fingers when something occurred to me.  
"What about you, Heero?  When's your birthday?"

	He shrugged again.  The one that said, don't know, don't care.

	"What?!" I demanded imperiously, glad I had asked. yet wondering 
why I had never asked before.

	He shrugged yet again.  "I barely bother counting the years, let 
alone the days."

	"Well, then!  We're just going to have to assign you a birthday, 
too."  A ran through a few more quick calculations in my head, and 
presented to him my findings.  "I hereby declare your new birthday to be 
August the twenty-fifth."

	"That's not maximizing the time between gift-giving periods," he 
pointed out, perhaps not so amazingly remembering the reason I had 
chosen today as my birthday in the first place.

	"Well, it is, if I move my birthday back to April," I explained.  
He leveled one of his looks on me.  "What?  I chose it in the first 
place, so I get to move it around to whenever I want, right?  So long as 
I don't have more than one per year, it shouldn't matter."

	And, surprise, surprise -- he shrugged again.  That one meant, 
fine, whatever.  You can have your way.

	I grinned in triumph.

_________________________________________
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Kyuuketsuki Miyu, et al., is the property 
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last modified : 10/27/2001 21:13:32 PST