How Deep Is Your Love A Gundam W musicfic by Nikholas "Katana" F. Toledo I'm back, I'm finally back, tadaima! Hello again, everyone! Anybody out there miss the "Kissing Author"? Well, here's my very first attempt at writing some seriously shonen ai-slash-yaoi fanfic. As you can see from the song lines' headings (domo arigato gozaimasu to the Bee Gees and Take That for the wonderful song!), this is a "Shin Kidousenki Gundam Wing" 3x4 story. Here's a big banzai to the cutest couple in that show! BTW, copyrights belong to their rightful owners... including the verses of "Seasons", which I made up for this tale. I need some encouragement, people... I'm thinking of doing a companion fic to this one, starring the other pair (no, not Zechs Merquise / Julian Peacecraft and Lucrezia Noin, at least not yet) from "Gundam Wing": 1x2, Heero Yuy and Duo Maxwell. I'm basing it on the song "Don't Know Much", but suggestions and violent reactions still to the same places, okay? Just don't flame me or anything. Enjoy! ~ end notes ~ TROWA: I know your eyes in the morning sun I'm always up at the crack of dawn - ever since I joined the circus and had to live on the move, and especially after I took on my mission to become a Gundam pilot, I've always awakened before the sun. No matter where I travel and wherever I go, daybreak finds me awake --- fully conscious, mind on overdrive, completely ready for anything. Today, though, I'm actually loath to leave the warm, soft bed and the silken sheets that wrap around my body. I keep on telling myself that the paradoxically bitter cold of desert nights is making me want to stay here and stay forever, but even as I think it, I know it's a lie. Only one person is capable of keeping me here, and now he lies fast asleep, huddled up against me for warmth as I am against him. He stirs within my arms, and I shiver as his hot breath tickles the skin at my throat. Quatre... Quatre Raberba-Winner, my innocent and beautiful angel, tightens his grip around my waist and burrows his head deeper into the junction of my neck and shoulder. My precious little Arabian jewel: how I won him, I will probably never find out... it might really be more accurate to say that he won me, and how he did it is something that I'm only beginning to understand now. The sunlight soon turns his fine, blonde hair into a blinding, silvery-white halo. Even after all of the times I've woken up in this way --- with him in my arms, his head tucked under my chin --- my eyes still hurt at the brilliance, and I have to close them convulsively to dispel the tears of pain. How can an angel, a beautiful and powerful angel like him, deal pain? It is a mystery that will never be solved. I've listened to Duo and Heero and Wufei talk about it, and our female friends, even my sister --- when they think I'm not really paying attention. Like me, they cannot understand this either. Angel of mercy, angel of death --- this double-ness is Quatre's very essence, his totality, his... I have no words to describe him. He, too, is Death, just as Duo is. A far more merciful Death than Duo, true, but Death nonetheless. He moves again, his lips sighing soundlessly open --- a wordless appeal, a silent invitation --- and I do not, can not, will not resist. I lean down to kiss his mouth closed. His eyelids flutter, blink, then open to reveal his eyes, timeless blue-green eyes that are deeper than any sea I've ever seen. I drowned in those eyes the very first time I looked into them, and I drown in them now. "Good morning, Trowa. Did you sleep well?" He is with me. I need not fear anything. ~ * ~ QUATRE: I feel you touch me in the pouring rain - and the moment that you wander far from me, I want to feel you in my arms again The morning's bright sun is really a false alarm. Already, the first raindrops are beginning to fall, with ripe splats, onto everything in sight --- from the small rake in my hand to the beautiful blood-red bloom beside me, from the date-palm that looms over my head to my hunched-over shoulders. Everywhere, that is, except for my impassive clown. Trowa Barton remains safe and dry in the shelter of the patio, looking bored, but something tells me I'm being watched anyway. I've gotten used to it. As a matter of fact, I like it when he watches me do something, when I feel his eyes following me everywhere. And I like it even more when he makes me stop doing things so that he could do them in my place. It's been a long time since anyone has ever taken the time to care for me. I've played the master of the house for far too long, he says whenever he takes my place, and I never resist him. Those apple-green eyes of his seem to see everything and nothing all at once. He does it all the time --- wherever, whenever. It's probably his hair that gives him that blank expression, hanging over his face as it does. But at least it doesn't hang low enough to cover his lips --- those lips that are always set in a firm and almost cruel line, yet become so pliant and soft when I kiss him. When he lets me kiss him. "You'll get sick standing out here in the rain. Is this your idea of death?" I look up and there he is, holding his hand out to me, heedless --- careless --- of his own health, as always. My self- sacrificing and imperturbable clown hauls me gently to my feet, leads me right into the house and back to the bedroom that we share. He sits me down on the bed and walks out of the room, and for some strange reason I begin to shiver. Rainstorms in the desert are rare enough, heaven knows, and when they come, they come with a vengeance. I should have remembered that, and now I'm really cold. I want him near me to take away my chills, and I get to my feet, calling his name. "Trowa, Trowa..." As if in answer, he reappears in the door. His hair drips in streams onto his shoulders, but I'm the one who's wrapped in his thick towel. His arms wrap around my shoulders, too, and all of a sudden I've got my wish, and I'm happy. I want nothing else but to stay here in his embrace forever and for always. ~ * ~ TROWA: And you come to me like a summer breeze, keep me warm in your love - The rain continues to fall outside where mere hours ago there was nothing but merciless, lethally hot sand. The fool who ventures out into that desert at high noon will die of thirst --- quickly and mercifully enough --- within the hour. But the greater fool who walks out into this sudden deluge will die of a strange and dreaded fever that will linger for days and take away not only his body's warmth but also his very sanity. Quatre told me the story one night, as we lay in each other's arms, and I, too, was in tears by the time he was finished. Against the wishes of everyone in this house, he had once taken it upon himself to nurse one of their fallen comrades, and he had had nightmares about his failure for a long time after the man died. The morning after I woke up caught in a death-grip --- suddenly strong hands clamped like vises around mine, suddenly sharp nails digging fire into my wrists --- with his anguished cries of entreaty ringing in my ears. "Please, for God's sake, don't leave me now! You can't die! I won't let you... I can't let you die!" I had had to fight him off, and both of us were black and blue for a week afterward: my hands were completely paralyzed, preventing me from piloting Heavyarms; his eyes were swollen shut, and he couldn't fly Sandrock either. His strangely musky scent trails behind him as he walks back into the music room, and suddenly the room is filled with life again --- he brought it all with him when he left, and now that he has returned to it, so has the spirit. The smile that he bestows upon me becomes another one of the things I will treasure the most, a smile that is full of the warmth and beauty --- and emotion --- in his life. Bow, resin, strings, violin: the sweet notes of a song he calls "Seasons" overpower the roaring thunder of the storm. I watch his lips move as he sings with it, his voice the second silvery thread that sways in the air with the quivering of his beloved instrument. "Stay with me for summer's warmth, and let your memory linger through winter's storm, touch me with the showers of spring, and kiss me with the leaves of fall..." I'm lost in the music. I can just barely hear him say that the song is from two hundred years ago, and then the haunting notes take me away to a place I've never been to before. There is peace all around, a perfect and absolute stillness. I can hear the grass around my feet hum with life, and the trees, and the sky above as well. I don't have a shadow, but the sun doesn't beat down on my shoulders, nor does it send shafts of pain into my eyes when I dare to look up. He appears from out of nowhere in this dreamscape, a tiny shape in the distance that gradually grows as he comes toward me on flying feet. His laughter takes on the notes of the song and he wraps his arms around my neck, singing into my ear in a lover's voice: "And I will love you through the changing seasons, I will cherish you through the flying years." And as I kiss him --- both within the dream and without, as the song ends --- I realize that the song speaks nothing but truth. This is destiny, this is fate. I can't stop myself from loving him any more than I can turn my back and walk away from the Space Colonial Stars that are my --- our --- true home. ~ * ~ QUATRE: Then you softly leave - and it's me you need to show - how deep is your love My world shatters around me as I wake up and realize Trowa is gone. Even before I throw off my covers and run out of our room, I know I won't be able to find him no matter where I look. But something keeps me going anyway, and soon I'm standing outside, near the pool, and all I can see is the sunlight glinting off Heavyarms' armor as it makes its way into the skies. The bed seems so empty without him there. I sit down on the crumpled sheets and the hot tears begin to burn my eyes and my cheeks. Now I know why he was so tender to me last night, why his kisses felt so good, why he held me so tight. I can't think of a reason why he should leave now --- none of us have received any mission orders for some time - -- but he's gone, and there I was, enjoying myself, last night when he was really saying goodbye with every touch of his hand. *Thump* goes the door and I bolt up, hoping against hope that it's him and he's come back to ask me to go with him --- anywhere is fine, as long as I'm with him. But when I open the door, the corridor is empty and it takes me a long moment to dash away my tears and spot the piece of paper at my feet, my name written across it in that familiar scrawl. My heart beats loudly in my ears as I unfold it, emotions waging war in my head. I anticipate what he's going to say but I dread learning that he has to go, I want to know he loves me but I can't take the pain of seeing the word "goodbye" at the bottom. I smile, and blink hard, and wipe away the tears with the back of my hand. He lives by the stars: living on the move, with the traveling act that he was once a part of, has taught him to make the stars that wink down from the heavens his guides. Even if "first star" can mean anywhere from dusk to midnight --- tomorrow evening, if it rains again tonight --- I am at least sure that he will come back, and that I will see him again. He doesn't have to say he loves me, either, because I know that he does, but he's written them down, right here and right now. The note goes into the pocket over my heart and it will never leave me, from now on until Death comes for me and even beyond... I will ask that my body be burned with it, and my ashes scattered into space. Then I can be one with the stars that are his guides and he only has to look up at night to see me, shining down upon him for all eternity. ~ * ~ TROWA: How deep is your love, I really need to know The great house is like a tomb as I vault down from my mobile suit. No welcoming light shows in any of the windows, no cheerful clatter or noise from within rises to my ears. The great doors swing open before my very eyes, but the same eerie, haunting silence shrouds everything in shadows. My footsteps echo forlornly as I make my way up to the room that I share with my angel. In another place and time, he would be here, walking beside me, already tugging my coat off if I was wearing one or, if not, he would just be reaching out for my hand. He would take a comb from his dresser and run it through my hair, whether or not I protested, just because he wanted to. I never realized how much I missed that simple "ceremony" of ours. I never realized I needed him so much. I almost don't want to step back into that room if I'm only going to find it empty, as empty as my heart now that my angel has flown away. Although my hands reach out of their own volition and grasp the doorknob, I don't dare look up --- I don't want to find the same emptiness here that I've seen throughout the house... The room blazes with the flames of a galaxy of candles, throbs with the haunting notes of a heartbreakingly familiar song, echoes with the broken voice that I almost don't recognize. My eyes were caught by surprise by the sudden blaze of light after the darkness of the rest of the house. I almost don't see Quatre standing there at the window, playing his violin and trying to sing "Seasons". He can't do it --- he's crying so hard he can barely scratch out the melody, and it's my fault. All my fault, and no way to make amends, unless... unless.... I take a deep breath and open my mouth. "Time will fly on and on and pass our short lives by, still I'll remain forever waiting by your side. My love will stay through the long and restless years, my heart will be yours, though we wander far and away. Forgive me, forgive me, my angel..." He gathers me into his arms and inexplicably I begin to cry, too, just as he had been minutes earlier. I can't stop myself, the tears are falling so hard, but my heart is emptying itself out to him and I have no way to stop it from doing so --- I do not want it to stop. Vaguely, I wonder if his Space Heart can allow him to read my mind --- I need to tell him that I need him more than anything in this world but somehow I just can't find the words... ~ * ~ QUATRE: Because we're living in a world of fools, breaking us down, when they all should let us be "Good mornin'! Here we are, Quatre-sama, how're things goin' with you?" Hearing Duo Maxwell's peculiarly accented voice makes me glad to have the other pilots around today --- it makes for such a refreshing change, having someone to share our home with. I can never tell what's going to happen when they're around... I smile as I remember the last time. We'd actually had ourselves a rouser of a pillow fight, just like a bunch of overgrown kids: Duo himself, Heero Yuy and Chang Wufei against Trowa and me, chasing each other all around the house. And I'd gotten the shock of my life to find Heero and Duo sleeping in each other's arms when it was all over. I had never noticed that Heero had begun to return our rambunctious American friend's affections. The loud splash that Duo makes as he dives into the pool jerks me out of my reverie. He cheers raucously as Heero does the same: backing up, running and then leaping high into the air, cleaving the surface with his toes as he goes in with his hands held high over his head. Wufei slides in like a seal, and there's more laughter, Duo's voice uppermost - -- as usual --- as he heaves himself out of the pool for another dive. Their laughter is contagious as they clown about in the cool water... and I turn away and head back for my room so I can change in peace. I don't know why I'm being so modest about this, we're all the same here, but I simply don't want to do anything like undressing in front of them --- only Trowa has the right to see me that way. It sounds strange, but then, when and where he and I are involved, it's bound to be anything but ordinary. I draw the curtains and close the door, but when I shrug out of my vest, large and somewhat callused hands come around my waist to tug at my shirt buttons, and hot breath tickles at my ear. I lean back into Trowa's heat, smell the sweat that lingers on the hard planes of his body, reach up to put my arms around his neck. My head falls back onto his shoulder and his mouth clamps down onto the pulse at my throat, and I know he can feel it --- no, *hear* it --- hammering right under his tongue. "Trowa...." "Time for a swim." As suddenly as he came, he breaks away and I almost fall onto the floor, my knees so weak I can hardly stand up straight. There must have been a very disappointed --- and embarrassing! --- expression on my face, because he smiles with his eyes closed as he sits down on the bed and pulls off his sweatpants. "Tonight, little greedy one," he chuckles, just before he bends down to kiss me, hard and demanding. I can just about hear Duo's voice now... he's going to crack another one of those off-color jokes of his when he sees how bruised and swollen my lips are, but all of a sudden I feel lightheaded enough not to care. Why should I? I belong to Trowa and nothing can change that. ~ * ~ TROWA: We belong to you and me Familiar, long-fingered hands curve around my forearms as I lean back into the cushions at the end of the day, and my angel's voice says quietly into my ear, "Trowa, tell me you're not tired yet... I've got something planned for us tonight." I help him get into his coat at the door, and he runs out into the evening breezes, the wind tossing at the hair that turns to molten gold in the moonlight. He turns back, his hand closes about mine, he pulls me toward the trees, and soon we're lost among the towering trunks that loom over us like forbidding shadows. It's easy to get lost in this type of forest, despite the moonlight that shafts down to the grassy floor. But for the first time in a long while, I let go of my instincts and instead concentrate on the warmth of the hand that wraps around mine. I need not fear anything, not while I'm with my angel. A clearing up ahead, and a fire fills the woods with its cheery crackling song.... "Happy birthday, Trowa," Quatre suddenly says as he walks up to stand in front of me, the cake in his hands ablaze with the glow of eighteen candles. "I hope you don't mind... I asked Heero and Duo to pull your file from their databases, and that's how I found out about your birthday. I baked the cake myself... your sister gave me the recipe... it's a strawberry shortcake, she said it was the kind of cake you liked...." I cannot help but blink a few tears away as he holds out the cake to me. No one else has ever bothered to remember my birthday... I thought receiving a few simple gifts was enough, a whole year ago when my sister Catherine gave me one of her daggers and the silver star from her hair, saying they were things that I could remember her by. I knew that I was seventeen on that day, but it was never marked like this, with a cake and candles and my angel smiling up at me.... "Come on, you're supposed to blow out the candles, or else you'll never get to eat the top layer. Unless you want to eat candle wax along with your cake, of course," he says with a chuckle as I continue to stare into the flaming candles. I purse my lips and get ready to blow, but as I inhale he suddenly says, "Close your eyes and make a wish first... that's what you do before you blow them out, so it'll be sure to come true." There is only one thing that I could ever ask for now. "That's one gift. Here's the other one, Trowa." He puts the cake down, his arms wind about my neck, he kisses me hungrily, and his lips taste sweet, like the soul that he has offered upon them. I hold him close to me and do the same, finally and irrevocably giving myself to him as he has to me. ~ * ~ QUATRE: And I believe in you - you are the door to my very soul, you're the light in my deepest darkest hour, you're my savior when I fall The abhorrent realization twists mercilessly inside my gut, like a sword, and it shatters my soul into a million pieces. I almost killed Trowa a year ago today, and the madness of that battle slashes through me once again... :The cockpit explodes, hot flames licking through metal and glass and space suit, ashes flying through the enclosed space to sting wide- open, exposed eyes. Through the gaping hole my cannons have blown in Vayeate, I can just barely make out a face that is looking up at me with disbelief and fear --- half a face, really. Trowa's face, his features distorted now by the unearthly glow of the fire that is slowly consuming the mobile suit. I can hear my own voice as it echoes hollowly through the void: "I asked you to keep your distance! Stay back, or I swear I'm going to kill you!" The cannons swivel up to bear on him one last time, and somewhere deep inside, somewhere the madness hasn't yet perverted, I can feel myself beginning to die as I stab at the red button on my joystick...: "How many times do I have to tell you this, Quatre? I forgave you long ago, even while I was still drifting in space, while I was fighting the madness inside me. I fought you inside, too... but I forgave you and I hurt for you... when you destroyed Vayeate, I knew then that you had just gone through something terrible, and I hated myself, because I had not been around to help you through it...." It's my turn for disbelief as Trowa stops to catch his breath. He doesn't say much, only when his emotions take over and carry him away on their raging tides. But it's no wonder that we all listen to him carefully when he does because, despite the emotions, he manages to make perfect sense. Right now, he is making sense to me. But, even as his hands reach out to grab my shoulders and pull me nearer to him, I shrink away from his touch, and the knowledge that my blind, insane anger almost led me to kill him sears its hateful brand into my soul. Instead of the bright sunlight that glistens off his flute as it lies across the table a long step away, I see the inescapable darkness that almost destroyed me that had led me to destroy both the Vayeate and the Space Colonial Star. A darkness that knows no bounds and until now fights to overpower both of my hearts. "Look at me." He places his hand under my chin and forces me to meet his eyes... my beautiful impassive emotional clown. "You are still my angel, Quatre, no matter how many times you tell me that you are not. I have always believed it... I know it is the truth, and I believe in it with all of my heart and soul. How can you not be my angel, you who are like the sun to me? You are my sun and moon and all the stars that shine in the skies... you are my light, Quatre, please believe what I am saying." I can't say it out loud, not yet, but I know these words are as true as what he's telling me now... I, too, believe in it with all of my heart and soul. ~ * ~ TROWA: And you may not think that I care for you, when you know down inside that I really do "Hey, Trowa, that you?" Duo's unmistakable voice finally filters through the static-filled line. "I got the goods! I'll be over in a few. And, oh man," he pauses and I hear him gasp for breath, "this is the best idea I ever heard of! Wonder if it'll work on Heero... in any case, I wish ya luck when you give this to the little guy... I'm sure he's going to love it!" I hurry to the door when the bell rings, calling to my angel to stay put, and I crack it open cautiously, before swinging it out all the way. Just as I had hoped, there's no one in sight, not even a shadow, and all I can hear of Deathscythe is the faintest roar on the wind as Duo flies off. And, just as I had wanted, the tiny box sits at my feet, so small that if I hadn't known and planned about it all along, I would have missed it. I step outside for a moment, close the door behind me, and undo the catch. The blue-green stone embedded in the silver band might be small, but it's enough to throw flashes of ocean-colored fire into my eyes. My fingers run over the inside of the ring, their tips tracing the words that I have always wanted to say to him: I put it back inside and close the box, and take a deep breath as I reach out to open the door. "Trowa? Trowa, where are you? Trowa!" The door flies open and there he is, the sunlight silvering his hair and lighting his eyes as it always does. "There you are! I was wondering where you'd gone off to again...." I could look at him like this forever, but I don't want to leave the words unsaid. As I open my mouth to speak, he takes my hand -- - my free hand --- and pulls me back inside with a laugh. "Come on, lunch is ready... we can't let it get cold!" "Quatre." He stops short and turns back to me in the foyer, and this time his face is in shadow, from the curtains that hang in the windows. This is the moment... I swallow down the sudden lump in my throat. All of a sudden, I'm afraid --- --- but I'm here and he's there and I may as well get on with the show. I get down on my knees and open both my other hand and the box that sits within it. "Quatre Raberba-Winner, will you marry me?" I watch as his eyes widen and then close, a strange unreadable expression crosses his face briefly, and then just as I feel my world crumble down around me he's on his knees beside me, his arms around my neck, laughing and crying at the same time. At first, I can't make the words out - but then he pulls away, sniffs hard once and then cries out happily, "Yes, yes I will!" He leans forward and whispers in my ear, "I've been waiting for you to say that for so long... I had almost given up on you..." I take another deep breath and say it out loud --- "I love you, little angel" --- and I hold him in my arms, happy to finally be his, happy to finally say it. I find myself praying to whatever or whoever has sent him to me, deep inside. ~ the end ~