peace is nothing but the result of war

“You said you were raised by a priest,” Quatre says carefully, and Duo can’t help but look away, already regretting his invitation. Already knowing what Quatre found. “Church of the Sacred Heart…the Maxwell Church…is that where you got your name?”

He looks down at his feet. “Yea,” he says flatly, trying to keep his voice flat even as that familiar longing, that grief wells up within him.

“Oh, Duo,” Quatre whispers, reverently, like he can feel his sorrow. It must show on his face. “I’m sor-”

“Look,” 04 says, as if sensing his hesitation. “I just want to help you, okay? You don’t have to go through this alone.”

“C’mon kid. No one wants to live through this hellscape alone. Lemme help you.”

It’s so strikingly similar to Solo’s words that it catches him off guard. “Help me how?” he says cautiously, as his hand shifts up to feel for the small braids. What would Solo tell me to do?, he asks himself. What would Heero tell me to do?

“We’ve had a good life together,” Trowa muses one afternoon, as they’re sitting on their balcony watching the day wind down.

Quatre frowns and casts a sidelong glance at him. “Had?”

“Had, will have. Are having,” he elaborates, reaching over and covering Quatre’s hand with his own, reassuring him from the fear he’d inadvertently spiked.

“You made it sound like you were dying,” the blond says with a sigh, turning his hand to wrap his fingers between Trowa’s.

At that he laughs, softly. “Wasn’t planning on it. Not anymore, anyway.”

Slim fingers squeeze around his palm, memories of a previous life, one that seems still so near and yet incredibly far away flitting through both of their minds. Of times when ‘tomorrow’ seemed like an impossibility. When a future spent together felt like nothing more than a dream.

“I’m glad to spend it with you. For however long I have,” Trowa says softly, as the Sun dips lower, painting the clouds in brilliant purples and oranges.

Sometimes he wonders about the call he’d felt as a child. Toward outer space.

At the time, he’d assumed it had materialized out of his desperation. Earth had been cruel to him; it was reasonable for him to want to flee. He had lost everything, twice over, before he was barely ten years old. Space had to be better. It had to be better than his life on Earth.

And so he did everything he could to get himself to space, to L3, to X-18999 and the Bartons. To Heavyarms.

But ever since Quatre mentioned the string of fate, he wonders. Wonders if it was less of a call to escape and more of a pull. If the thread that connected their hearts had pulled him to Quatre, even then.

It’s quiet, when the cockpit closes around him. Quiet all the way into his heart.

It’s almost blissful, if he were capable of feeling that anymore. It’s a relief.

It was all too much for him. Losing his father. His sister. Not knowing where Trowa or any of the others were. If they’d even made it to the colonies. If they were safe. Not having any way to contact them. Was Trowa already dead? Had the colonies killed him, too?

It was loud in his heart, with his worry, his grief and his fear compounded with the hatred and joy from the colonists celebrating his father’s murder. His family’s downfall. And while he maybe didn’t understand his place in his family before, now he’ll never have the chance to. It’s been taken from him. It’s been taken from him, and the very people he’d sworn to protect were dancing in the streets.

Didn’t they care at all?

It’s quiet in the cockpit. So quiet that when ZERO whispers he thinks the thought is his own. It grows louder, this singular thought in his mind. Louder, until it drowns out everything else.

The colonies are his enemy. They must be destroyed.

“You want to go back to the colonies?”

“I don’t know,” Quatre replies, wringing his hands. “I feel like I have to.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I don’t know!” he half-shouts, frustrated.

He’s only ever this abrasive with Trowa when he’s overwhelmed, and Trowa has long since learned to not take it personally. In a weird way he sees it as a privilege, to be one of the few people the blond could open up to and allow himself to be vulnerable. If Quatre wasn’t venting to anyone, it meant he was bottling it up inside, and that rarely led to anything good.

He places his hands on Quatre’s shoulders and squeezes. The blond turns watery eyes up at him, seconds away from breaking down entirely, and he feels a pang of sympathy in his chest.

“Then let’s figure it out,” he says, and Quatre’s tears break free.

He can only watch the vid screen as Sandrock explodes. He’s too far away. He’s helpless. It’s hopeless.

A scream starts to build in his throat, but it never escapes, and a once-familiar sense of detachment comes over him, like it’s a bucket of water that’s been thrown onto him. He feels it start in his head, then lets it trickle down. Lets it flood his nervous system, to keep him from panicking. Like he’s been taught. Like he’s been trained.

Breathe slow. Steady. Is it time to fight or run? Think. Run. It’s time to run. To the colonies. To Cathy.

Quatre is like the others now. Gone. A memory.

He repeats it, over and over again. Focuses on the controls, on escaping to space. Ignores the comm message that he’s positive is from Heero. Ignores the tears he feels building behind his eyes. Leans into the detachment, reminds himself that if he doesn’t feel it, it can’t hurt.

But there’s a void in his chest, one that grows even as he tries to flee from it.

It grows, and swallows the hope he’d held for a life after the war.

Quatre wasn’t a fan of the snow.

He tried, of course, because he knew that Trowa was fond of it, so he dutifully bundled up and headed outside with the lot of them. Watched as Duo and Wufei lobbed snowballs at each other with a bit more force than necessary, while Heero and Trowa preferred to ambush and hit their targets with deadly precision. All of them wisely avoided Quatre, who stood to the side and observed, keeping score and laughing at their antics with gloved hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets.

At the end of their latest round, Trowa makes his way over to Quatre, pulls down the scarf wrapped up to his nose and kisses him.

Quatre wrinkles his nose as they pull apart. “Too cold!” he laments, but he’s laughing.

Trowa’s smile is boyish and beautiful as he pecks him quickly on the nose before pulling his scarf back up. “Warm me up later?”

“Do you ever think it was fate that we met each other?”

Trowa looks up from his tablet, to where Quatre is sitting in the window seat, eyes fixed on something outside, with his elbows propped on his knees, a mug of coffee cradled in his hands.

“I suppose I’ve never really thought about it,” he answers.

“Wufei was telling me something. About the red string of fate. It’s an invisible, unbreakable thread that ties two people together,” Quatre murmurs, taking a sip from his coffee. “Linking soulmates together. To make sure they meet.”

Trowa considers this, noticing how the early morning sunlight is reflecting off of Quatre’s hair, making him glow. Considers all the things that had to happen for them to meet, big and small. All of the hurt, the loss, the longing that brought them to where they were now - sitting in their kitchen on a Thursday morning, sipping coffee and catching up on the news.

The notion of fate doesn’t seem so improbable.

“Maybe it was.”