---------------------
   Moving Forward
~ A Moment of Haven ~
---------------------
	It started on L3.  I was sitting at the table one morning when 
Relena said something to me, and I turned around in my chair to look at 
her.  My braid started slipping off my shoulder, and a scant moment 
before it might have landed in my cup of coffee on the table, Heero 
swooped in and saved it from its soggy fate.

	"You should do something about that," he suggested, handing the 
braid back to me.

	"What do you mean by that?" I asked warily, taking my hair back 
and cradling it defensively in front of me.  I got understandably 
nervous any time someone mentioned doing something to my hair.  It 
seemed to inspire all sorts of antagonism, for some reason.  Or maybe 
that was just my sparkling personality.

	Heero shrugged.  "I don't know.  Something to keep it out of 
your way.  A trim, maybe."

	I stared at him as if he had sprouted a second head.  "Are you 
out of your mind?"  You'd think that after living with me for so long 
that he'd have picked up on the fact that I didn't believe in cutting my 
hair, otherwise I'd have done it a long, long time ago.

	He shrugged again.  "Whatever.  It's your hair.  And your 
coffee."  And thankfully he let the subject drop after that.  I always 
knew he was a smart boy.

	At least until the next little mishap.  It wasn't anything 
major.  Some L3 bureaucrat just managed to get his watch band caught in 
my hair while we were backstage waiting for a press conference to begin.  
He only ended up getting out there a couple of minutes late.  The 
pompous fool deserved it anyway.  I could swear I caught him eyeing my 
hair rather avariciously earlier that day.  Of course, later that day, 
the guy just shot me and my braid some hostile stares, like I did it on 
purpose or something.  Yeah, right.  Why on earth would I want to snag a 
guy like that and keep him close to me and my hair for any length of 
time?  Ick.  I was just glad that Heero had the patience to get us 
untangled, rather than propose we just cut him loose.  I would sooner 
have supported me walking off with the guy's watch, although I don't 
think he would have agreed to that.

	Heero was pretty cool about it.  He didn't rub it in or 
anything, but he did give me this sort of expectant look.  It didn't say 
'I told you so,' but it did say something like 'I hope you learned 
something from this little incident.'  Yeah.  I learned that I should 
stay farther away from seedy-looking guys with expensive-looking fake 
watches.

	We were on L4 when I handed over the next piece of evidence in 
the case against me.  There was a closed-door meeting, and we were stuck 
waiting outside.  Of course, Heero had frowned a most mighty frown at 
the thought of leaving Relena unprotected in there, but there was 
nothing he could do about it.  All we could do was wait outside since we 
didn't know how long the talks would go on, and we had to be there the 
moment it ended to pick her up.

	Personally, I don't think Heero could have sat in that one chair 
so calmly if it hadn't been for me to distract him with my restless 
pacing.  At first I started out seeing if I could walk around on the 
nice faux-marble floors without my boot heels making any sounds.  Sure, 
that clopping can be intimidating, but it's probably pretty intimidating 
to watch a shadow approach without making any noise at all, too.  But 
that ceased to amuse me after I rather quickly figured out that it was 
possible, so then I just paced and prowled and bounced and all sorts of 
things.  Out of respect for Heero, I always gravitated back to my seat 
for a bit, until I got bored again and had to do something.

	Every time I sat down again, I had to pull my braid forward over 
my shoulder so I wouldn't sit on it.  Either it would just be 
uncomfortable, or it would hold my head back whenever I tried to lean 
forward or turn my head.  Most of the time, I did it automatically, but 
sometimes I forgot to rearrange my hair, or it slipped out of place, and 
it caused me problems until I moved it out of the way.  No big deal, 
right?  You get used to it.  I didn't even notice it anymore, really.

	But I suppose it was inevitable that Heero would notice it and 
comment on it.  "You should do something about that."

	"About what?"

	"Your hair.  It keeps getting in the way.  Even assuming you're 
willing to put in the time and effort for the maintenance of such an 
accessory -- a significant amount, you must admit -- it's still 
obviously getting impractical.  You have to move it every time you sit 
down.  It gets into things it shouldn't, like your coffee.  You could be 
cooking one day, and it could conceivably catch on fire, you know.  When 
you do things like work on the car, you stuff it into one of those 
muffin caps Suzuhara-san gave you, or you do strange things with writing 
utensils -- and on occasion, eating utensils -- to keep it out of your 
way."

	I stared at him, somewhat coldly I admit.  He didn't really 
deserve it, seeing as how he was proposing his argument in a very 
neutral tone, but he was still attacking my hair, and that was an attack 
on me, and I ended up threatening him in a way I hadn't since we'd 
roomed together in school.  "I'm not just going to cut my hair, Yuy.  
And if you even think about forcing me, or taking matters into your own 
hands, I'll have your balls for breakfast.  Understood?"

	He wisely backed down after that.  But while he didn't force the 
issue, he didn't just let it drop, either.  He'd bring it up now and 
again, whenever another piece of evidence popped up that would help him 
make his case.  He was never so tactless as to repeat the idea that I 
ought to cut my hair.  He merely gave me significant glances when I was 
caught shifting my braid into a more convenient position.  When it got 
in the way, sometimes he would reach out to move it before I could, 
whether to be helpful or to rub it in, I wouldn't know.  I noticed all 
of this, of course, but somehow, he knew me well enough to know exactly 
how much I could take before I got annoyed, and he went no further.

	Up until L2, anyway.  I found myself a little hurt that he 
thought he could convince me.  I wasn't about to give up my hair on his 
say so.  He should have known me better than that, and all the reasons I 
had for feeling that way only got stronger when I was back on L2.  This 
miserable place reminded me of everything I'd lost, and the very few 
precious things I'd managed to keep.  My hair was one of those things, 
and bound up in it were the others: my memories, and my dignity.  No one 
had ever succeeded in making me lose those things, and I'd be damned if 
anyone ever did.

	So it wasn't surprising when I got out of the shower one night, 
and all it took was Heero looking at my hair wrong for me to snap.  
"Okay, that's it!  Just what is it about my hair that you find so damn 
annoying?"

	Heero's eyes flickered for a moment at the door to our room, 
left ajar for security purposes.  It probably took him less than a 
moment to remember that Relena was already ensconced safely in her room 
for the night, and only then did he consent to the conversation.  I 
thought about being offended that he thought of her first, but then I 
realized that I'd be pretty damned pissed if he hadn't, because that 
would have meant that he thought my hair was an even larger issue than 
Relena's safety, and I didn't want it to be an issue at all.  "I don't 
find your hair annoying, Duo."

	"Then what is it?  Why do you insist on trying to get me to cut 
it?  You just feel like being an asshole?  It's not like it's for my own 
sake or something."

	"You don't know that."

	"What's that supposed to mean?"

	He paused for quite a while before answering me.  I guess he 
realized that if he chose the wrong words to explain himself, or if he 
just had the wrong answer altogether, then he would be in some serious 
trouble.  "Duo.  How long are you planning on living?"

	"What?"

	"How many years do you figure you have left in your life?"

	"Wh--?  I don't know.  What does this have to do with anything?"

	"Generally speaking," he insisted.  "One year?  Ten?  Fifty?"

	It was my opinion that he had chosen the wrong approach.  I gave 
him one last chance to redeem himself before I did something I probably 
didn't want to do.  I had faith that he meant well, if nothing else.  
"What's your point?"

	"My point is, Duo, that you're going to live.  You have a life 
and a future.  Hopefully a long one.  Do you really mean to say that 
you're not planning on cutting your hair for the next, I don't know, 
fifty years?  If you think it's a handful now, just wait a little while.  
It'll get worse."

	"It's worth the trouble," I said flatly.

	"You'll be tripping over it.  It'll weigh almost as much as the 
rest of you.  And that still isn't my point."

	"And just what is your point, Yuy?"

	He almost-sighed.  "My point, Duo, is this: you don't seem to 
have accepted the fact that you're going to live for quite a while yet.  
It was fine for you to say a few years ago that you were never going to 
cut your hair.  A few years ago, you didn't even think you'd be alive 
anymore to care.  But now you are, Duo, and you need to take that into 
consideration.  I'm not saying that you ought to cut it all off.  Just 
make it shorter.  A Duo without his braid is like.... like peanut butter 
without its jelly."

	Blink.  I hoped he really meant to say something that made a 
little more sense; otherwise, I'd be worried that that sounded like 
something I would say.  Sometimes he got his wires a little crossed on 
modern colloquialisms.

	"Just... think about it, Duo."

	I thought about it.  I tried to be all objective about it and 
just thought.  It was an amazingly difficult feat.  Well, okay.  I 
started at the beginning of Heero's proposal.  How long did I think I 
was going to live?

	I hadn't thought about it very much.  I'd been living in this 
peace for some two years now, and it still found ways to surprise me.  
Yeah, I'd figured I'd still be alive tomorrow.  Next week, too.  A few 
months from now?  Sure, I could do that.  Maybe even a couple of years 
from now, if I pressed my imagination.  But fifty years from now?  What 
the hell would I do with fifty years?  Fifty years of cushy peace time, 
no less.  Simply shocking.  No wars, no battles, no chronic threat to 
life and limb... oh my.  I couldn't begin to imagine how I might fill 
that expanse of time.

	I tried to picture it, and all I could come up with was a mental 
image of Haven, and me and Heero still living in the same old house, 
only with a few gray hairs.  Wrinkles, too, if I tried reeeeeally hard.  
And Henry was still sitting on our sill, too.  How sad was that?  I 
guess I really did have problems getting a grasp on the future if all I 
could envision was the present.

	Okay, so maybe logically a fifty year old braid did seem a 
little bit unreasonable, but when had I ever been reasonable about my 
hair?  And why would Heero care?  Granted, he had to live with it, but I 
faithfully kept my hair out of the drains, as per our initial agreement 
way back in our dorm days.  But logical or not, I still didn't want to 
cut my hair.

	I knew why I cared about my hair.  Like I said, I had some very 
important things I kept bound up in my braid, and in the days when I had 
practically nothing, it was the one thing I could count on to follow me 
wherever I went.  It was the one thing I could keep with me on the run, 
or in hiding, or whatever.  It was my friend and faithful companion, and 
you can't just go around ditching your friends when they get a little 
too much to handle.  You could strip me of all my worldly possessions, 
and my braid would still be there, a tangible reminder of times past.  I 
didn't want to cut my hair because that would be like throwing away all 
the things I kept there.

	I held them in my mind and my heart, too, didn't I?  I always 
had.  But I'd seen hearts and minds corrupted by things on the streets.  
Denial, drugs, desperation, whatever, all these things could make a 
person lose their most precious memories, and their last shreds of 
dignity, too.

	I never did drugs.  Vowed to myself a long time ago that I would 
never become one of those junkies that sold themselves and everything 
they had just for their next fix, and ultimately their own messy ends.

	I wasn't in denial.  Wasn't I currently engaged in a quest to 
preserve all of it?

	And I wasn't desperate anymore.  As Heero so kindly pointed out, 
I had time now.  I had a life expectancy.  Survival wasn't consuming all 
of my attention anymore.  I had opportunities to stop by a church and 
say hi to them, to look forward to Christmas as a time we once shared 
together, to just sit down and think about them.

	I guess I technically didn't really have any practical reason to 
go lugging my memories around with me everywhere I went.  The physical 
reminder of my memories, anyway.  Given perspective, it'd be like 
hauling around all the photos from your last three vacations in your 
wallet, and that was just tacky.  Besides, I had a stable life now.  I 
had a house, closet space, a garage, a mantle over a fireplace with 
framed pictures on it.  I could even get a safety deposit box at a bank.  
I had... storage capacity!  That was unprecedented.

	I think my braid was so precious to me because that was where I 
stored the things that were important to me, and that was the only place 
I felt safe doing so.  But that wasn't true anymore.  Besides, I was a 
street rat, wasn't I?  Didn't I know better than to stash all of my good 
stuff in one place?  Especially now that I had so many secure 
hidey-holes at my disposal?

	Maybe Heero was saying that... peace wasn't just a vacation from 
the war.  I'd packed up all my things and moved here, with a permanent 
address and everything.  If fighting did break out again, it would be 
like a vacation -- well, a business trip, maybe -- from peace.  And 
maybe Heero was saying that it was okay to let go.  That we had worked 
hard to put a lot of our old, newly unnecessary habits behind us, and 
that this was just one of them.  And maybe he was also saying that it 
didn't matter whether I cut my hair or not, so long as I didn't keep it 
just because I felt I had to.

	So okay, sure I had no more technical reasons for keeping my 
braid around.  How about sentimental value?  That one was a little 
harder to get around.  What would Heero say?  Something practical, 
like... like the fact that we prune Henry regularly, and that has 
nothing to do with how fond we might be of him.  It was necessary for 
proper care and maintenance.  In fact, Henry flourished because of it.  
Yes, my hair's a little different from a hibiscus, but the principle is 
the same, right?

	I wasn't looking for reasons to cut my hair.  It certainly 
wasn't just because Heero had suggested it.  But the more I thought 
about it, the more I realized that my world wouldn't end if I cut my 
hair.  I wanted it, but I didn't need it as my one and only lifeline 
anymore.  I wouldn't lose everything that I'd thought I would if I lost 
my braid.  It wasn't that my hair had become any less important, only 
that now I had room in my life for other important things, too, and 
that... that actually made me feel kinda good.

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

	The L2 stop on the tour was a place for surprises.  First, Heero 
busted out his little speech on life expectancy, and then he finally 
told me what Quatre got him for Christmas.  Whoopee, right?  I only 
wanted to know because they wouldn't tell me.  I mean, Heero's not 
usually the type to keep secrets, although I suppose he would have at 
Quatre's request.  But then Quatre's not the kind of person that gives 
gifts that you're not allowed to speak of aloud.

	But then we got some free time because Relena was closeted away 
with some important people to discuss important things, and Heero just 
out of the blue announced to me, "I asked Quatre to do something for me 
last Christmas."

	"Eh?"  I put down the knife that I was polishing.  "Oh, so the 
secret's finally going to come out, huh?  I knew all things came to 
those who wait."

	"Not like you had a choice," he retorted lightly.

	"Yeah, whatever," I brushed his answer aside.  "So, Quatre did 
something for you.  You know, he probably would have done it for you 
anyway.  You didn't have to go wasting a gift on it."

	He inclined his head in agreement.  "That's what he said.  But 
then I would have gotten another gift instead, and I didn't want 
anything else from him.  Only this."

	Okay, so now he had me intrigued.  Hmm, to shamelessly beg for 
him to tell me, or to wait it out all cool and collected?  "And?"

	"Let's go for a walk."

	Oh ho, so he wanted to play it dark and mysterious, did he?  
Fine, I could do that, too.  I grabbed my jacket, threw him his, and as 
an afterthought remembered to tuck the knife I had been cleaning back 
into my boot.  It just didn't feel right without the comfortable weight 
of it in there.

	We stopped at the front desk of our hotel on our way out.  
Apparently Mr. Yuy had a package waiting for him.  I tried to pick out 
the words on the delivery label that was stuck on the flat, rectangular 
box, but I couldn't get a good look at it as the lady manhandled the 
medium-sized box over to Heero.  It was clear that she was having a 
slightly difficult time with it, and she just about gaped when Heero 
picked it up like it was nothing, thanked her, and tucked it under his 
arm.  I tossed her a shrug and a grin as we left the building.  Heero, 
damn him, was carrying the box with its bottom side out, and that told 
me nothing.  I couldn't tell if he had decided to carry it that way 
purposely or not.

	I thought about asking Heero if he needed me to carry the 
package for a little bit, but the idea that he might get tired carrying 
that little thing, and that I might do a better job of it, just seemed 
somewhat absurd, so I was forced to give up the idea and resign myself 
to not getting to see what was in the package until Heero was good and 
ready.

	Since this was Relena we were traveling with, we were staying in 
one of the nicest parts of the colony.  The posh -- or as posh as L2 
would get for a while -- hotel was near the political centers and 
developing business parks to give easy access for off-colony visitors, I 
imagine.

	We walked in the direction of the corporate centers in silence.  
There were the occasional passersby, but this area didn't really get too 
much traffic, especially in the early evening hours.  People here 
weren't in transit at this time, and this place wasn't a destination 
yet.  After about ten minutes, I saw the office buildings that had been 
nothing more than skeletons only a few months ago.  "Wow," I commented 
idly.  "Those things sure go up fast, don't they?"

	And as I said it, all those things that I had been quite 
studiously trying to ignore ever since we got here made themselves known 
to me.  Damn, and I had been doing so well, too.  But now I was staring 
at the office building that had taken the place of the church I had once 
called home.

	"They're still working on the interiors," Heero informed me, 
obviously oblivious to the fact that that would not make me feel any 
better.

	I wondered why he would know that.  Had he followed up on our 
previous investigation of the site?  Had it had some relevance to 
Relena's work here on the colony?  A third, less pleasant possibility 
came to mind.  "Heero, where are we going?"  I slowed my steps as if 
that might change his answer.

	He slowed to match my pace and turned to look at me.  "Trust 
me," he said simply, and it was like a flat out command and a hopeful 
question, all in one.

	I gave up to the inevitable and trusted him.  He was obviously 
leading me there for a reason, and I didn't think it was just so he 
could see the pained expression on my face.

	As I had guessed, our destination was 13th and Thackery.  Since 
it was still under construction, there was still the old wooden fence 
surrounding the site, only it looked even rattier than before.  The hole 
we used last time wasn't there anymore, but a fence like this always has 
holes in it, and we slipped in as easily as we had previously.

	As I had observed earlier, the exterior of the building was 
finished, barring a few decorative trimmings.  We could see through the 
windows that they were still working on the interior accessories of the 
building, like electricity and insulation.  Some preliminary landscaping 
was taking shape around the building, and Heero led me to a dirt plot on 
the left side of the courtyard.

	He knelt on the floor before it, and I joined him on the ground 
as he pulled his utility knife from his pocket and deftly sliced open 
his mystery package.  He folded his knife up and put it away again 
before he spread the flaps of the box, revealing an invoice, which he 
folded up neatly and slid into another pocket.  Beneath that was a large 
sheet of padded packing paper, which he flipped aside to expose what 
looked to be a placard.  It was made of some sort of metal alloy, and 
was about a centimeter thick on its outer edges.  No wonder the 
receptionist lady had had problems with it.  It was obviously intended 
for outside use, probably destined for the rectangular depression in the 
concrete in front of us, before the dirt plot.

	It was upside-down, but before I could crane my head around to 
read it, Heero was pulling it out of the box.  He removed the foam 
packing corners and held the plaque up in the right direction for me.

	I couldn't read it.  The words were plain and clean across the 
surface, but somehow I just couldn't make it past the 'In loving memory 
of Maxwell Church' part of it.  I just stared and stared and stared at 
it, until I thought Heero must have thought I'd passed out or something, 
but if he did, he wouldn't still be holding the plaque up patiently for 
my perusal.

	I only absently noticed the rest of it, the names and the dates, 
before looking up at Heero and just staring and staring and staring at 
him.  His lips were set in the same flat line they usually were, but his 
eyes had this sort of neutral hopeful look in them, like he was waiting 
for me to react first so he would know what to do.

	I parted my lips to speak, but had to swallow hard before I 
could push any words out of my throat, and even then, they weren't very 
coherent.  "Wha--?  How--?  Why--?  Answers," I demanded from him.

	Something akin to relief kindled in his eyes, but only akin, 
like a faroff distant cousin of it, because he had never been nervous to 
begin with.  He finally set the plaque down carefully on top of the box, 
and then turned back to talk to me.

	"After we got back from L2 last year," he started explaining in 
his soft voice.  "I started thinking.  I know this," he gestured at the 
developing office park around us, "bothered you.  So I did a little 
research into the developers of the site.  As I suspected, Winner 
Enterprises was one of the financial backers.  So I contacted Quatre and 
apprised him of the situation, and asked that he look into options for 
commemorating what had happened here.  It was too late to stop 
construction, of course, not that you would have sanctioned that, but 
there had to be something.

	"It turns out that as a benefactor, Winner Enterprises is 
entitled to something, some wing or room named after them for all 
posterity, that sort of thing.  Quatre decided that this would be an 
appropriate use of that privilege."

	"You and Quatre have been planning this for... months?"  I guess 
it wouldn't have been impossible for them to have snuck it by me without 
my noticing.  Most of the work would have been done on Quatre's end of 
things.  But still... wow.  And for me?  ...Really wow.  And it was 
Heero's idea?   ...Really damn wow.

	He shrugged self-deprecatingly, disarmingly even.  "It's taken a 
while for the paperwork to go through, and for the construction to reach 
the point where it was ready for such things.  I hadn't intended on 
informing you in such a dramatic fashion, but the plaque got finished 
and Quatre knew we were on-colony, so he had it sent over.  We need to 
drop it off at the site office tomorrow so they can install it properly 
later.  There will be a tree planted here, too.  So.  Now you aren't 
alone anymore."

	"Huh?"

	"You don't have to bear the burden of being the only one that 
remembers anymore.  Of being the only proof of their existence."

	I suddenly found myself on a collision course with Heero's point 
from earlier.  My hair was proof to me of all I'd gone through, and for 
years it was all I had.  And now it wasn't.

	Now I had the brain cells to spare to remember it all.  Now I 
had a stability in which to store it all.  And now I had friends like 
Heero Yuy that would go to such great lengths to tell me without telling 
me that I was not alone in the universe.

	I looked at Heero, and the plaque, and the buildings, and the 
metal sky of the colony, and it all just didn't seem quite so dark 
anymore.  This was turning into something so big, so momentous, that I 
felt that this moment in time, this singular epiphany that came winging 
out of the darkness to smack me square on the forehead, needed something 
of its own in commemoration.

	I pulled my knife out with one hand and my hair forward with the 
other.  I wouldn't cut it all off, of course.  After all, a Duo without 
his braid is like peanut butter without its jelly.  I estimated the 
length of my hair at the time the church burned, and decided that that 
would be my offering.  The commemorative plaque was just a hunk of metal 
in which I had no direct hand in bringing into being.  I needed to leave 
something of myself here, something to make sure that a part of me would 
always be here.  I gave it to them not as a discarded bauble that I had 
no use for anymore, but as a treasured possession that I had kept near 
and dear to me for years, only now to have it fulfil a different, higher 
purpose.

	Heero's hands rose as if to grab a hold of my arms and stop what 
may have been a rash decision, but he halted himself and caught my eyes 
instead.  With a serene look, I assured him that I knew what I was 
doing, and he let his arms drop and smiled in his own Heero way, where 
what would be a smile for a normal person spread itself thinly across 
his face, to lift the lips slightly -there- and crinkle around the eyes 
over -there-.

	I smiled back at him, and with one decisive motion, I left a 
piece of myself here to keep the rest of my past company always.



-----
so in reality, it would probably take more than one decisive motion, 
depending on how sharp he keeps his knives, but whatever.

_________________________________________
This piece of fiction is the intellectual 
property of the little turnip that could.  
The basis for this fic, i.e. Gundam Wing, 
Kyuuketsuki Miyu, et al., is the property 
of someone else.  The author can be con-
tacted at jchew@myrealbox.com.  This has 
been an entirely automated message.
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html

last modified : 1/21/2003 02:23:30 PST