--------------------- Sick Days ~ A Moment of Haven ~ --------------------- Father MacKenzie was waiting for him at the airport. Heero looked around, wondering about the change of plans. "Where's Duo?" The middle-aged priest fumbled in his pockets for his car keys, finally finding them and popping the trunk to insert Heero's small suitcase. "You're lucky you made it in before the big storm hit," he said, slamming the trunk and heading for the driver's side. "Storm?" Heero had been halfway around the world for more than the last week, so he wasn't quite up to date on some of the local news. Heero and Duo had taken up Quatre's old offer and helped out on a consultant job or two with Winner Enterprises. They had caught the eyes of one of the regular independent consulting groups often contracting with the business, and now they worked relatively often with that group as well, mostly with the Earth-based clientele. It was still project based, so it wasn't a steady nine to five occupation, which was how they liked it. Sometimes, the pair worked together; other times, they took turns taking the calls. They also worked with the Preventers, sometimes, on Earth operations. This latest job was Heero's, but it had taken a little longer than he had expected. Heero surveyed the gray skies. The clouds were not yet looking ominous, but now that he was outside, he noted a fair number of people on the streets wearing rain gear and carrying umbrellas. "Yeah, the storm. It's supposed to hit by tonight. It's predicted to be quite a doozy. Duo couldn't make it," MacKenzie finally explained. "He needed to help Jack with finishing up the roof of the new church, and no one else could do it. Need small, tough guys like you and him to get that stuff done fast. And since he was working on my church, I thought it was only fair that I help him out and pick you up." Heero nodded absently as he stared out the window of the car, watching the passersby hurry from one place to the next. He and Duo had been partly responsible for many of the rooves of the new houses. Some of the townspeople, at first, had been hesitant about letting a pair of teenagers scurry about the hazardous unfinished rooftops, but they soon proved their usefulness and comfort in the high places. They worked well together, and were surefooted and light, not having to edge their ways carefully along, as most of the older, heavier men did. "He's done so much work on the building already," the priest continued to chatter. It was no wonder that Duo liked the man. "It's refreshing to see such enthusiasm in community and spirit, especially among the younger generations. I'm sure I'll be seeing a lot of him around during church activities." "No." "Excuse me?" Heero started a little, as if a bit surprised that he had spoken to and contradicted the priest. "He's not religious," Heero recovered quietly. "He's not?" Father MacKenzie seemed surprised. He was newer to Haven than the church was, so he was still getting to know everybody, although so far, he seemed to be fitting in rather well. "But then why would he put so much work into the church? I've seen that cross around his neck..." "He's not religious," Heero stated again. "But the church means a lot to him." Respecting Heero's tone of voice, which hinted that he would say no more on the matter, the priest let the matter drop. After Heero had been dropped off at home, he left his suitcase in his room, refreshed himself a bit, then turned around and went straight back outside again, heading towards the church to see if they needed any extra help. The wind was picking up a bit, and he considered turning back for a jacket, for he was still wearing the dark slacks and blue button-down shirt from his last meeting, but before he had much of a chance to think about it, he was waylaid by Mrs. Baringer, who was carrying supper out to the work crew, so he took half the load and accompanied her up. Upon arriving, he looked up to see Duo working swiftly, so rather than bother him, he went inside, where he was immediately enlisted once more into performing the odd jobs around the interior of the building, finishing up any little things that might cause trouble during the rains, including making sure the windows were sealed properly, and actually having to reinstall the back door, which no one had quite gotten around to doing yet, after they had had to take them out temporarily to move in some of the furniture. In the rush, no one seemed to remember that he had just returned from a long trip only hours ago, seeing instead only a helping hand. Not that he minded helping, not at all. He would not have taken it lightly if something bad had happened that he could easily have helped prevent. Duo found him later, having finished up just before it started to sprinkle. Until now, he had only seen or heard him in passing throughout the evening. He accepted a cup of hot tea from Ms. Suzuhara gratefully as he leaned casually against the door frame, watching Heero give Annie pointers on how to centralize her home's heating. To Duo, however, it seemed a little obvious what Annie, young, pretty, and single, wanted heating her up. It was probably why she had asked the question in the first place, although Heero had characteristically either ignored the hint, or missed it entirely. His violet eyes became less and less amused, however, as he watched his housemate more carefully as time progressed, picking up on half a dozen little signs that indicated possible trouble. When he had finished his lecture, Duo slid up to his side. "Heero. Why don't we head on back?" Heero turned to his partner, a subtle 'it's good to see you again' lighting his eyes and face, which Duo noticed and appreciated at the same time he took in the faint circles beneath those eyes. No doubt he hadn't slept much the night before, which had been spent on the plane. Heero had never been able to sleep surrounded by strangers, unless there was someone he trusted detectably nearby to watch his back. Annie pouted. "Already?" Duo plied his charming smile on her. "Sorry, Annie. The storm's already reached us, and it's only going to get worse. You should get back soon, unless you want to get soaked." He gave Heero's sleeve a little tug. Heero nodded at Annie, murmuring a farewell, and stood. But rather than preparing to leave, he turned towards the inside of the church. "The ladies wanted me to --" "Let someone else do it, Heero," Duo cut him off gently, grabbing a hold of his arm before he decided to just go on anyway. "You've just gotten back from a long trip." "My!" The two turned to see Ms. Suzuhara. "What are you two boys still doing here? You, Duo, I thought you'd leave as soon as you finished your tea. And you, Heero, I thought you left an hour ago!" Ms. Suzuhara had taken it upon herself to be something of a mother to the two ex-soldiers and watch out for them. "Suzuhara-san. Did you still want me to --" "Heavens, no, child. I don't know what I was thinking, asking you to in the first place, you just getting back and all. You must be exhausted. Just get yourself on home." "I'm fine. I can still --" "No, you aren't fine," Duo interrupted. Heero turned and glared at him in annoyance. He would have liked to have been allowed to finish at least one of his sentences. "What are you talking about?" "You're tired. I've heard you clear your throat on several occasions. Your voice is getting raspy. You're sniffling absently. Look at this!" He pulled Heero's arm up by the wrist and held it up before them. "Look. You're even almost trembling." Barely, perhaps, but there was indeed a very slight tremor in his hand, which might have been normal for others, but was definitely not normal for a precision marksman such as himself. Duo let his wrist go, then laid the back of his own hand lightly on Heero's forehead. "And you're a bit warmer than usual," he added. Ms. Suzuhara blinked, not having noted any of those signs in Heero, even having spent several hours with him. But now, she looked more closely, and at least noted that he did, in fact, look more tired than he would normally be coming back from one of his business trips. Heero wore a blank, questioning look. Duo sighed exasperatedly. "You're sick, aren't you?" he accused. Heero blinked, surprised. Obviously, the idea hadn't occurred to him. It wasn't that he hadn't noticed the raspiness and the rest. He had noted each of them in their turn, and then dismissed them as irrelevant. He pulled the symptoms into the forefront of his mind, and considered. "Hn. I suppose I am." Then he shook his head. "No. No, I don't have time to be sick." Duo rolled his eyes. "Yes, you do. There are no wars to fight, no rooves to fix, no doors to install, not even a sock a darn." Ms. Suzuhara had to agree. "You, young man, are going to go straight home and get plenty of rest. And you, Duo --" "Don't worry, ma'am," Duo forestalled her with an upraised hand and a wink. "I'll see to it he takes care of himself." Ms. Suzuhara smiled in satisfaction. "Heero, get your jacket." Heero didn't move. "Well?" "I didn't bring one," he informed them. Ms. Suzuhara stared at him. "In this weather? Why on earth not?" Heero shrugged carelessly. "I didn't get around to it." Duo snorted, and glanced meaningfully at Ms. Suzuhara. "That's our Heero." He took off his own jacket and draped it over Heero's shoulders, his own glare clearly saying that he had better put it on. "What about you?" Heero protested mildly. "I'm not the one who's sick, silly," he pointed out logically. "Besides, I also brought an umbrella." And he was still dressed warmly, having planned for a day on a cold rooftop. He stuck his tongue out at the stubborn sick one, daring him to challenge him further. Heero wisely chose to comply. Duo snagged the umbrella on the way out, and together with Ms. Suzuhara, who lived only a couple of doors down from them, they walked out into the rapidly worsening rain. ************ Once home, Duo practically had to force Heero into the bathroom to take a long, hot shower. Duo had gotten a little bit damp from the walk, having held the umbrella mostly to ward the rain from his companion. The rain hadn't been too heavy, but it was very windy. Heero had offered to let him take a shower first, until Duo had reminded him, once again, that he was the sick one. Once again, Heero had almost seemed surprised that that was indeed the case. When Heero finally came down the stairs, clad in the loose flannel pajama pants and long-sleeved hunter green top that had been a gift from Ms. Suzuhara, and having taken a shower that was only slightly longer than normal, he found Duo curled up in a comforter on the sofa, in front of a merry little blaze in the fireplace. The house didn't have anything else in the way of heating, and Duo had made sure they were well stocked with firewood. Closer inspection of the comforter by Heero proved it to be his own. "Duo? What are you doing?" he inquired, gravitating towards the warmth of the hearth. Duo turned, the warm firelight doing wonders to his hair. "Well, I don't know about you, but I hate getting out of a hot shower and into a cold bed. So I warmed your blanket for you." He promptly stood up, wrapped Heero in the warmed blanket before he could protest, and forced him down in his previous seat. "Stay," he admonished, heading to the kitchen, and returning with two steaming mugs. In addition to making tea and starting the fire, he had changed into his thick, dry jammies while Heero had been upstairs. "Drink." Heero looked doubtfully at the mug, but otherwise took it without complaint. Duo took a seat near him on the other chair in the room, a small rocking recliner. "So what does it take to get a guy like Heero Yuy sick?" Heero sipped tentatively at his tea and choked it down. "What is this stuff?" he questioned. It had been sweet. Undeniably sweet. "Chrysanthemum tea. Plenty of honey. Good stuff." Duo toasted him, and took as healthy a swig as he could from his own mug of very hot liquid. A little honey wouldn't kill him, Heero judged, and maybe it would alleviate that itch in the back of his throat. He took another sip. "Well, first you give him a job that was ridiculously understated, and an uncooperative client." Duo raised his eyebrow at him. "The museum's old security was ... laughable. It was no wonder they called us in. But you'd think with that break-in they had, they'd believe it was bad." "What? They thought it was adequate?" Heero snorted, then took another sip, savoring the heat as it spread comfortably through his body, which unfortunately also let him know how tired he was. "You would have liked this job. I had to break into the museum three nights in a row before they'd let us fix things." "I hope they paid you extra for that," Duo commented, not really caring one way or another. They were usually paid extra for anything more than mere consulting, but overall they were already paid far more than they could spend. Heero was, well, Heero. Efficiency didn't allow for waste of resources. And Duo was raised on almost nothing, and therefore saved almost everything. Heero shrugged, which could have meant that they did but it wasn't important, or that they didn't and it wasn't important. It worked out to being about the same. "Massive overhaul. And then James insisted on working the project, too, in the end." "Wait, wasn't James sick with the flu? Wasn't that the whole reason we were called in the first place?" He nodded. "Aa, James was sick." That was all he needed to say about that. James didn't necessarily trust them. He thought they were too young to do a good job, and so would have insisted on going over all the plans with Heero, and undoubtedly therein lay the answer to Duo's original question. "You should shower before the water cools," Heero advised. Shower he did, quickly, as usual. He had grown up rationing water, and old habits were hard to break. Besides, he wanted to get back downstairs before his tea cooled to room temperature. Of course, if it was cool, then he could chug it all down in one go of honeyed goodness. When he went back down, he found Heero fallen asleep, still sitting upright on the couch, head hanging over the emptied mug held loosely in his hands in his lap. Duo tsked affectionately at him, then carefully extracted the mug from his lax fingers, knowing how lightly Heero normally slept. He judged it a good sign that he didn't wake, and gently lifted his head back to rest on the high-backed cushions so he wouldn't get a crick in his neck when he woke, and gently brushed his bangs away from his face, where they wouldn't tickle his nose. After tucking him into his blankets a little more securely, Duo finished off the remainder of his own tea while upstairs, putting some of Heero's things away. Then he fetched his own blanket, fed another log to the fire, and settled down to sleep next to the warmth in the recliner, as he had been doing for several nights now. ************ The next day, the storm had worn itself out to a pleasant drizzle with all the shaking of the windows during the night, and Ms. Suzuhara dropped by to check up on them, bearing all the ingredients for a chicken broth, and other foods to fight illness. And as she and Duo worked in the kitchen, they spoke. "So he's worse today, you say?" she asked, chopping carrots. "I wouldn't say he's worse," Duo temporized. "It's not like a good night's sleep would make the cold just magically disappear. And last night it was only beginning. So what we're seeing today is the cold developing to what it ought to be, so I wouldn't really say that he's worse...." Ms. Suzuhara whapped him across the knuckles with a carrot as he attempted to steal one. "Well, he's not any better, right?" Duo nodded. "And he won't take any medicine?" Duo nodded again. He knew Heero didn't like taking drugs of any sort, and he wasn't about to force him. He himself didn't think too highly of them. "Then why is he working right now?" Duo glanced guiltily out to the living room, where Heero was resting on the couch with a warm blanket and his laptop. "Well, you know Heero...," he tried to explain. "Hard to get him to sit still when there's work to be done. He'd never let an itchy throat, runny nose, and fever stop him." Ms. Suzuhara stopped her chopping and gave him a look. "Well, at least he's doing something sedentary!" ************ Heero lifted a brow at the bowl of steaming soup. "Broth?" His voice sounded like ... well, like he had a cold, an itchy throat, and a runny nose. You know how that is. Duo found it oddly cute and amusing. "Yeah. It's good for you. Drink up." Heero fixed him with a hard look, somewhat mitigated by a sniffle. "Duo. I am not an invalid." "Come on!" he encouraged. "It's tradition." "Tradition," he repeated flatly. Duo smiled winningly at him. "Trust me." Heero fixed him with another hard look, but took the bowl anyway. It was sustenance, it was there at the moment, and he wasn't really all that hungry anyway. "Broth, I drank when recovering from a month long coma." Ms. Suzuhara's eyes widened at the declaration. "I understand that. Stomach needs the time to readjust, can't waste too much energy digesting food. But --" "Just drink it already." Duo turned aggrieved eyes towards Ms. Suzuhara and whispered loudly conspiratorially at her. "I think he'd be better off using the energy to recover, rather than argue." "I'm not arguing," Heero disagreed mildly, even as he began drinking the soup. "I'm just questioning the rationale behind --" "Geez, Heero, you'd think you'd never been sick before!" "I haven't." Both of them stared at him this time. "Not like this." Ms. Suzuhara puzzled over what 'like this' might mean, while Duo thought he might be able to conjecture and that they probably shouldn't talk about things 'like that' in front of company, even if it was Ms. Suzuhara. "Not even a case of the sniffles?" Ms. Suzuhara was having difficulty believing it. "If I did, then I would have ignored it," he assessed calmly. "Well," she huffed. "I don't know how you've managed this long, ignoring your own health like that!" If Duo had been drinking some of that broth, he would have choked on it. She had no idea just how much he tended to sacrifice his own health for the sake of others. "So why aren't you just ignoring it now?" Heero considered the matter over a spoonful of broth. Then he shrugged and swallowed the soup. "I've got the time." "Time?" Duo spoke before Ms. Suzuhara could. "Geez, Heero, sometimes I'd swear you're a very lazy person. You only bother breathing because it doesn't take much thought, time, or effort." Heero lifted an eyebrow in self-defense. "Maximum results, minimum effort. Just being efficient." ************ "So, Heero. How's your first time being sick?" Duo somehow asked the question as if he really wanted to know the answer. Heero analyzed his condition. His nose was runny, interrupting his work when he had to stop and blow his nose. His throat was itchy and sometimes he coughed hard enough to make his eyes water. There was a slight headache building momentum, starting from his shoulders and spreading across his scalp, and he hoped it would not impair his ability to concentrate any more than everything else already had. There were muscles sore and aching that weren't sore and aching in that pleasant, you've just used them sort of way. He felt generally weak and tired, and he'd actually almost walked into a wall on the way to the bathroom. He formulated his reply. "All in all, I find this to be a highly unsatisfactory condition that I wish terminated as soon as possible." He reached for another tissue. Duo grinned to himself. 'Ah. That would explain why he's being so cooperative.' ************ "Heero's not giving you too much trouble, is he?" Ms. Suzuhara asked sympathetically. Duo was over at the Suzuharas', returning the cookware that Ms. Suzuhara had left behind with the broth. "Nah. Heero's not one to be very demanding or loud or anything. You know that. He's just kinda bored." She nodded in understanding. "Poor boy must be going crazy right about now. Maybe I should find something to distract him." "No," Duo stated emphatically, startling her. "Don't you dare give him anything to do." "Why, Duo," she replied mildly. "I had no idea you had such a sadistic streak." "No," he disagreed. "You give him something to do, and you're just giving him an excuse. An excuse to do that something, rather than sit down and do nothing at all!" Duo ran his fingers through his bangs. "Look, he only gets all focused and fixed on one thing when he's got something to do. You know he's got that overblown sense of responsibility. Give him something to do, and he'll do it. Give him nothing better to do, and he reverts to being a normal person. This is good." "This is good," she responded, somewhat dubiously, but agreeably nevertheless. "Good," Duo repeated. They were interrupted when Ami walked into the kitchen. "Hey, squirt," Duo greeted the child, ruffling the top of her hair lightly. She pouted at him cutely and tugged the end of his braid in retaliation, the only part of his hair that she could reach. "Whatcha got there?" he asked, gesturing at the folded paper in her hand. "Mom said that Heero-niichan is sick," she informed him solemnly. "And when people get really sick, if you make them a thousand paper cranes, then they'll get better. But Heero's only kinda sick, right? So I figured maybe one crane would be enough for him." Ami presented him with a green origami crane, made from the shiny, foil type of paper, with neat, crisp lines that only occasionally showed some of the white bottom of the paper along the insides of the creases. Duo accepted the crane formally, with two hands and a respectful little bow. "On his behalf, I thank you." He winked at her and inspected it. "It's very nice. I'll see that he gets it." ************ Duo returned to their cozy little home to find Heero lying on the sofa, hands behind his head, eyes closed. His legs were drawn up, and his feet were snuggled under the neatly folded light blanket that they kept on the couch. Duo leaned down and crossed his arms over the top of the old sofa, resting his chin on his wrists as he looked down at his housemate. Heero had opened his eyes the moment Duo approached and now lifted an inquisitive eyebrow at him. "Didn't mean to disturb you," Duo apologized. "You weren't sleeping, were you?" Heero shook his head slightly. "Just thinking," he answered, voice still raspy and nasal. "Big thoughts," Duo commented. Even with his eyes closed, Heero's attention had seemed directed contemplatively inward. "Something important?" Heero took his time in answering, as he usually did. Duo had commented once that it always seemed as if he routinely misplaced his voice and had to go searching for it every time he wanted to use it. But then again, Heero was using borrowed words, so what could he expect? It was an inside joke, the borrowed words. Long ago, Duo had decided that he didn't need so many words anymore, so he had made Heero agree to take the excess and put them to good use. "At the beginning of Operation Meteor, I was given a choice. I made my decision without too much thought, but I knew it was the right one, so I just went with it, and promised myself that I would dwell on it later." Amusement showed on Duo's face. "And two years later, you've finally gotten around to it?" Heero's trained memory allowed him to remember such offhand promises after so long. It was unfortunate, sometimes. If Duo claimed something random, Heero would probably hold him to it when he least expected it. He shrugged a little. "I've got the time." Duo refrained from rolling his eyes at the answer, not really expecting anything else from the typically taciturn man. But poke an idle Heero and all sorts of fascinating things came falling out. "Come to any interesting conclusions?" "Not yet." "Need any help?" Duo cocked his head to one side in an inviting manner. Heero considered the offer, not something he would normally do for any other. Duo usually had some relevant insights into this sort of thing. "I had a choice. I could fight for the Barton Conglomerate. I could not fight at all. Or I could do what I did, and fight for peace. The choice was mine. And I... I could have walked away from it all." "But you didn't," Duo completed the thought. "Because you're too nice." Heero graced him with a mildly disbelieving look. "I was thinking more along the lines of, maybe I was never meant to walk away from fighting and live like a normal person. Maybe my life is doomed to conflict." Duo shook his head. "Gonna have to disagree with you there, buddy. You couldn't walk away because there was no one to take your place. You hate leaving things unfinished. You couldn't walk away because you couldn't leave all humanity in the hands of men who would destroy it. You're too nice to want that to happen, and too responsible to let that happen. And most of all, you couldn't walk away because you wanted peace. Because you didn't want to fight anymore, and the best way for you to make sure that happened was for you to take care of it yourself," he concluded matter of factly. "Now tell me that doesn't make more sense than your depressing little 'fated to fight' answer." Heero's eyes wandered back to the ceiling as he pondered his answer, and Duo continued his onslaught of logic. Living with Heero, he had become rather skilled in debate. "Come on. Emotions are expressed through actions, you said. And you took a big action when you made that decision. Having found no pure logic behind it, you must now agree that the underlying basis must have been emotion, and that emotion would have been that you love peace a heck of a lot more than you love yourself, and now you're only disturbed because you never realized it before, that you loved peace way before you ever got involved in the war, and that you actually didn't come down on orders or for a mission or anything, you came because you wanted to, and, now, for my coup de grace --" He took a breath before continuing. "Ami gives you this." He dangled the crane right above Heero's face. Heero blinked a few times, his contemplation disturbed as he focused on the hanging crane, and Duo grinned in silent victory. This was where guerilla warfare training came in handy. Surprise one's opponents with a swift attack, then run away and hide before they can retaliate. He disliked casting what he was doing in such militant terms, but it really did work, and Heero dealt with the whole emotion thing much better after he'd had time to apply reason to it. He'd do especially better now that Duo had given him some food for thought, some basis from which to start. Much better to retreat before Heero was forced to immediately react to something without being ready. Duo dropped the crane onto Heero's chest and sauntered casually away. ************ Two days later, it was sunny, as if the storm had never happened. Of course, then one would have to explain the crisp, clean tang of the air, and the liquid sparkle on the leaves, with some other story. Ms. Suzuhara was over again, but this time, she didn't see Heero. "Don't tell me he's gone out doing something, already!" she asked, exasperated. Heero was an okay patient, as patients went, but before one could convince him to do anything, one usually had to convince him that it was a reasonable thing to do. Or at the very least, that it was not an unreasonable thing to do. "He's upstairs. I'd say he's recovering already," Duo announced. "Well, that's good to hear." "You know what's even better?" He leaned forward, the better to whisper secrets. "He's actually napped!" Ms. Suzuhara leaned back, her eyes amused as Duo nodded smugly. From anyone else, regarding anyone else, she would have looked askance at the messenger. There was nothing odd about napping. Considering the way in which the message was delivered, and whom it was about, she could well believe that this was an unusual occurrence. Duo continued speaking in a low, confidential tone. "He sort of ran out of interesting things to do, you see, having performed them all with such alacrity already, so failing to find any more excuses not to really just kick back and conserve energy and sleep, he's actually napping!" He nearly chortled with glee. Ms. Suzuhara played along. "So how did you find out his dirty little secret?" she whispered. "Well, he's just nodded off once or twice on the couch. Doesn't really count, since he didn't choose to do it. But once, I suggested that he ought to take a nap or something. Didn't really think he'd do it, right? But I wander upstairs a few minutes after him, just to see how right I was, and bam! I was wrong. But that's not the best part." Ms. Suzuhara giggled, not having felt like such a gossiping school girl for ages. Duo's mood was infectious. "It gets better?" she asked eagerly. He nodded slowly and sagely, as if she were about to be let in on a great big juicy secret that she'd better keep to herself, cross her heart and hope to die. "Not only was he sleeping...." He paused for dramatic effect. "I found him curled up, on top of his covers...." He waited again, and Ms. Suzuhara slapped him playfully on the arm. "...In a sunbeam," he concluded. Ms. Suzuhara gasped in delight. "Tell, tell!" There was obviously more to the story, the way Duo hadn't lost that smirk. "Not only was he in a sunbeam, he was carefully arranged so that he fit perfectly into that little square of light coming in the window. And, he had even put himself on the leading edge so that he'd get the most of it as the sun set. And then -- get this. And then, he wanders down an hour or two later -- very rested looking, I might add -- and I say something like, 'Short nap,' or something, and he just shrugs, you know, in that little Heero way he has of shrugging, and he says, 'Sunbeam went away.'" Now he was almost crowing with joy. "A sunbeam? Can you believe it?" Ms. Suzuhara couldn't say she could. "It was the cutest -- " He stopped suddenly, eyes bright and alert for something, and a few moments later, Heero walked in the door. "Oh, hey, Heero," he said, his tone abruptly, yet seemingly naturally, reverting to normal. Ms. Suzuhara turned around to see Heero leaning on the frame. It was a little unnatural, sometimes, the almost preternaturally sharp senses these two boys possessed. Heero was wearing a warm black and silver sweater that Ms. Suzuhara recognized as Duo's. He gave the two an odd look before proceeding to the sink to wash his mug out. "I thought I heard someone drop by," he greeted their neighbor. Ms. Suzuhara smiled her greeting at him, unable to quite reconcile the somber young man she knew with one basking in the sun. "I hear you're feeling better." He shrugged, in that 'little Heero way', and Ms. Suzuhara had to smother a chuckle. "How could I not?" he responded graciously, if dryly. "With two such mother hens taking care of me?" Duo stuck his tongue out at him, which Heero naturally ignored. Ms. Suzuhara, however, was not at all displeased to be called a mother hen. There was just something about these two boys which raised all of her maternal hackles, perhaps, she might have admitted grudgingly, even more so than for her own daughter. Maybe it was just that these two were so much more ... well, quite frankly, more stimulating than her own child, and in her opinion, they obviously needed a maternal hand. Ami was a very sweet and sunny child; all in all, a very good child to be responsible for raising, there was no denying that. She supposed things would get more interesting once Ami grew up and noticed boys and wanted motherly advice. And she was very lucky, she supposed, that Ami thought of these two as big brothers, or good cousins. She certainly didn't want her as infatuated with them as the rest of the town's young ladies. Her mother hen instincts kicked in again. Maybe she should have had herself a couple of sons, but unfortunately, the untimely death of her husband had made that impossible, and she hadn't yet found anyone else who had caught her eye. In the meantime, these two would do nicely. "Now, Duo, you better make sure you don't get sick, too." "Me? Get sick?" He thumped his chest heartily. "I don't get sick." "Yeah, right. I'm sure that's what Heero used to say, too." "I'll have you know I happen to have a stellar immune system. Docs said so. I never even contracted the L2 plague, and I was sitting right in the middle of it." Heero snorted derisively. Doctors had said that he had had an amazing immune system, too. Most common poisons, toxins, and chemicals wouldn't faze him, and here he had fallen victim to the common cold. But it was true, he had never seen Duo get sick, nor was he exhibiting symptoms now. "You're from L2?" Ms. Suzuhara declined to challenge his claims. "Yup. You didn't know?" "Hmm. My husband died on L2." Heero looked at her almost sharply, a look unnoticed by the others. His mind was still functioning, even if his body wasn't quite cooperating, and right now he was adding two and two together, hoping the answer wasn't four. "I always wanted to go there and see if I couldn't find out anything more about how he died." Duo shrugged, fairly unlike that 'little Heero way'. "You'd have to dig pretty hard, I'm afraid. L2's not a place known for its outstanding paperwork. Whole neighborhoods can fall through the bureaucratic gaps." Ms. Suzuhara nodded. "That's about what I expected." She sighed. "Well, I've got to pick Ami up from lessons, now. I'll see you around?" She stood, they walked her to the door, and then life went on. _________________________________________ 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 : 9/14/2001 01:07:28 PST