---------------------- Resolutions ~ A Moment of Haven ~ ---------------------- ~~ New Year's Eve AC 196 ~~ L4 Winner Mansion ~~ It was nearly the first day of the new year, and the preparations for the small private party were almost complete. Heero and Duo had stayed at the Winner estate through Christmas and on to the New Year, since they had no pressing business to be about, while Trowa and Wufei had each returned temporarily to their own lives, with promises to be back for Quatre's New Year's celebration. With the festive dinner about to start, the former pilots had begun to gather, only Heero was unaccounted for, and Duo was going to get him. Duo paused on his way to Heero's room on the second floor and listened. He heard a faint music floating down the hallway, and followed it to the closed doors of the upstairs sitting room. Quatre stored his instruments there, and often practiced, but now was certainly not the time to be playing a violin with a dinner to start and a friend to find. Something was off. Duo stood in the hallway and studied the notes. They seemed tentative, and the melody slowly being coaxed from the violin was very simple, and sometimes incorrect. It was nothing at all like Quatre played. Duo carefully opened the door a crack and peered in. He saw Heero standing before the opened glass cabinet, with a violin tucked under his chin, a bow in his hand, and a look that said that he hadn't been expecting the discrete interruption of the concentration he had been paying only moments ago. Duo opened the door the rest of the way and stepped inside. "Dinner's almost ready," he notified Heero, almost shyly for having disturbed him. Heero nodded once, and neatly returned the instrument to its resting place, closing the glass doors and latching them once more before exiting the room. He waited for Duo as he closed the door to the sitting room, and together they proceeded down for dinner. "Didn't know you played an instrument," Duo said casually on the way down. It was a conversational gambit. Duo was curious, but if Heero chose to suppress the fact that he could play, then he could merely grunt something noncommittal and Duo would let it go. "I don't." That wasn't non-committal, in Duo's book. The tone hadn't been harsh or dismissive. Duo rather thought he was trying to get away on a technicality. "Sure sounded to me like you knew how." "I know how. But I don't play." Well, okay. Heero had the technical knowledge of how to do a great many things that he'd never actually done, all having been a part of his extensive education on anything at all that might have been useful to him. Heero, and apparently his teachers as well, seemed to be of the opinion that no knowledge, no matter how trivial, was ever wasted. That was why one could find him cooking a variety of dishes in the kitchen. That was why he listened to Ms. Suzuhara's lessons with half an ear, even when they weren't directed at him. That was why he helped Mrs. Callahan with sewing stockings for the kids. Imagine Mrs. Callahan's initial surprise, however, when, upon being praised for his very neat work, Heero had calmly informed her that he had had some experience with sewing before -- mostly with stitching up humans with injuries. "I can't imagine where playing an instrument would fit into a terrorist's education, Heero." "Assassin's." Duo shot him a questioning look. "I learnt it for being an assassin." Duo had heard the other mention his time with Odin Lowe, but not often, even less often than he heard about his time with Dr. J. Ask Heero anything about his training with the scientist, and he would impersonally relate the facts. Heero didn't consider it to have been traumatizing, merely tough. Before that time, however, and it seemed to be a little more personal to him. Duo conjectured that Lowe had probably served as a sort of father figure for him in his early years. Whether positive or negative, it was hard to tell, but Heero never spoke poorly of him. Duo still, however, didn't see the connection between an assassin and a violin, and said as much. "Assassins often carry high-powered sniping equipment with them," Heero explained. "When people ask questions about the case, often it's passed off as a violin or some other instrument. So it was useful to know a little bit about the instrument we pretended to carry, in case it ever came up." "Ah. Know how to play anything else, instrument-wise?" Heero shrugged dismissively. "All instruments are about the same. Technique might differ, but the notes are always the same." Duo couldn't decide whether he hated it when Heero did that, or not. He always made everything sound so simple, so easy, yet you could rarely fault him for oversimplifying. He analyzed issues, reduced them to tractable or familiar cases, and then solved. And then they were down the stairs and into the dining room, and dinner was served. ************ And then it was after dinner, and they adjourned to a more casual room, sitting around the fireplace, with its merrily burning logs and pleasant warmth. Trowa and Quatre were seated in the tasteful loveseat in front of the fire, while Heero and Duo were couched on the ugly paisley sofa off to the side, whose only justification for being in the room was really the fact that it happened to be comfortable. Wufei had the single seater on the other side with mismatched footrest. "Taking off again tomorrow, Wufei?" "Yes, Duo, as a matter of fact I am. Some of us have to work for a living," Wufei responded dryly. "Hey!" Duo pouted at him. "We work, too. Just not for a living." Quatre interrupted before the friendly bickering could escalate. "Just what are you two living on, anyway? I realize that there are lots of volunteers there, but the funding must be coming from somewhere?" Duo was more than happy to explain. "Not everyone there is a volunteer. I mean, they all are, but it's a community. A town. The people who are there are real people, with real jobs and real lives. The people who were purely volunteers with a cause all left a little while ago, moving on to other projects once this one was well on its way. Now everyone just volunteers their spare time." "So you two have decided to settle down there permanently?" Quatre's eyes sparkled, already knowing the answer. Duo nodded emphatically. "Yup. You guys should come out and visit some time. You can't imagine what it's like. Not just a home, not just a community, but one you yourself helped create. It's... it's... help me out here, Heero." Heero shrugged. "It's great." "Great? It's more than great. It's wonderful. It's ... it's truly cool. Somewhere you can really feel you can call home, you know?" Quatre knew how much Duo had always wanted a home of his own, and how Heero had never had much of one. He was glad they'd found such a happy haven. "Well, if you're looking for a source of income outside of hacked OZ accounts," Quatre proposed. Duo looked innocently at him. "We could always use people of your skill as network analysts, security consultants, and the like. You could do most of the work from your home. Low risk, high salary, project based. Freelance, too, if you like." They looked at each other, then back to the young businessman. Duo grinned. "Thanks. We'll keep it in mind." Heero just nodded once in acknowledgement. And from there they talked about idle and pithy things once more until they each wandered off to their own rooms for the night, leaving only Heero and Duo there, watching the fire burn low. The heat was seeping from the room, and Duo had scooted himself neatly into Heero's side for warmth, as he was wont to do. "So, Heero. What's your New Year's resolution?" Heero raised one of his so very expressive eyebrows. "Resolution?" "Yeah. Resolution. New Year's, back at the orphanage, Sister Helen sat us all down and we each came up with something we wanted to do or be for the new year. I hear it's a tradition, although we only had time to do it once." Duo's expression acquired that sad distance to it that always appeared when he was thinking about the orphanage. If the orphanage hadn't been destroyed, Duo might have had the opportunity to make many more New Year's wishes. "What did you want?" Heero asked. Duo's thoughts snapped back to the present. "That year?" He chuckled. "That year, I wanted nothing more than to be someone's kid. I never got adopted, but I guess I got to be the church's kid. This year? Hmm...." He gave it some careful consideration, then came up with an answer. "This year, I still wanna be a kid." "Whose kid?" "Anyone's. Someone's. I just want to belong to someone...." He quickly shook off the quiet tone, almost surprised he had uttered the words, and started up again more enthusiastically. "I want a fresh start. I want to view the world with the eyes of an unjaded child. I want to be able to hold someone's hand when it's scary. I want to be able to run crying to someone when I'm sad. I want to make snow angels and dance in the rain and play with puppies and tumble down grassy hills with abandon, and have someone shake their head at me with long suffering before sending me up to take a bath!" No matter the illogic of the wish, Heero allowed himself to be convinced of the wish's grandeur and worth by Duo's blissful grin. "What about you?" "Me? What indeed..." he mused. A log collapsed in on itself in the fireplace. "I think I don't want to be anybody. Yes, this year, I want to be nobody," he stately decisively. "Nobody?" Duo repeated, somewhat flatly. There had to be more to this. "Nobody. I want to be normal. I want to lead an insignificant life, unknown by the general populace, just a random stranger you might see passing you by on the street. This year, I hope when my friends call, they just call to say hello, and not because the world needs saving." Duo grunted ironically. "And to think, most kids will say that they want to be mech pilots when they grow up, and fly amongst the stars, or they want to be policemen or firemen so they can save lots of lives. There are probably kids out there, right now, saying that they want to be like Heero Yuy when they grow up." Heero chuckled dryly. "Hn. Been there, done that." "Well, Mr. Yuy. Why don't we see if we can't make you normal this year?" --------- it's funny how i can casually skip over all the events and other character interactions that i don't really want to discuss.... but i wouldn't do them justice. it's rather liberating, really.... _________________________________________ 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 : 12/31/2001 03:07:56 PST