Part One: And To Her the Skies Served as a Coffin
Part Two: And In Vain Extended His Hand
Part Three: What Do They Do?
Part Four: Here the Beauty of Life
Part Five: The Life and Soul of the World

Un di all'azzurro spazio, Andrea Chénier's aria from Andrea Chénier

Part One: And To Her the Skies Served as a Coffin
 

 The day was dark, overcast, and most of all, incredibly lonely. The other Gundam pilots were gone from the small house they shared, leaving one lone figure sitting in the den hunched at the keys of an electric keyboard. Quatre Raberba Winner hated days that he was alone, away from the three other pilots who had come to travel together. He knew their ways must part again soon enough, and their companionship was sorely missed every moment they were gone. 

His mood was reflected in his choice of music, a bitter tenor aria from Andrea Chénier. He played it quietly, more from force of habit than anything, playing the vocal part on the small but excellent quality instrument, singing the part as well in a quarter voice as quiet as the music. He was fond of this particular aria, it was one he found easy to sing in his new found tenor voice. But he still longed for when he could have sung the soprano part of Madame Butterfly with equal ease as he now sung this. Those days were gone, though, gone with his pleasant childhood. 

He let his mind wander as he played and sang, loosing himself in the music and the rain on the glass. He missed his sisters, the sound of their laughter and playing, how the all doted on him, the family's only son and youngest. It was a selfish sort of attention, he knew, but he enjoyed it and missed it greatly. And his mind wandered again, in search of other thoughts. The dream he had two weeks ago that still troubled him, of his sisters playing in a park, and a melody he had tried so hard to remember but could never recall just right. And Duo suddenly standing under a tree in the park, far away in the distance. The dream disturbed him because it did not match with any of the other times he had dreamed that same dream. Never before had the American pilot been in the dream, and the change was troubling. He wished his eldest sister were with him; she could have told him what the dream had meant. He had always been the distant one, wandering off into the universe, while she had been practical, knowing things he doubted any of his sisters realized she knew. He missed her terribly.

His mind wandered further from the music once more, yet he continued to sing it softly, by rote more so than any want to continue, as his fingers played the same on the cold plastic keys. He let his mind reach out, let it drift of its own whim. Where were the others, he wondered, how faired their separate missions? He sought them, sought the familiar feelings of their thoughts and the familiar sights of their faces. He found Heero, intent in his extraction of vital supply line data from an OZ computer system somewhere in Europe. His intensity was unwavering, and it tended to grate more than just a bit on Quatre sometimes, but at this point the normalcy was comforting. Quatre, distant by thousands of miles, smiled and moved on. Trowa was sleeping in a small and very ratty hotel, somewhere in south Asia. The air was hot and humid, almost unbearably so in the small, dirty room. A moment of concern for Quatre's distant body, worried about the health of the Heavyarms pilot. Twice in the last week he had been woken by what had sounded like cries coming from Trowa's room at the end of the hall, but every time he had gotten up to investigate, Duo had stopped him. The concern passed, as all thoughts did, and his mind moved on. Where was Duo? He could not find the braided boy anywhere, no matter where he drifted. More concern, meaning a talk with the pilot of the black Gundam when he returned in 3 days. If he returned.

Quatre scolded himself for thinking such things. The American had survived much worse, and would survive this relatively simple mission as well. Quatre knew that in the same way he knew that the sky was blue and violets purple. It simply was the true state of things. He came back to the music to finish the aria, closing his blue eyes as the last note hung in the air like small birds in flight.

He opened his eyes to a very startling realization. There was someone seated, no more sprawled, on the den couch, watching him. She giggled, and blinked a pair of mismatched eyes, one green like the sea, one blue with swarms of silver specs. 

"That was pretty. I'm glad your back from where ever you went. Would you play some more?"

Part Two: And In Vain Extended His Hand
 

Faced with the sight of a teen age girl dressed in fish nets, an oversized leather jacket, and a small ragged pair of shorts with a wild spray of purple, orange, and green hair, and jarringly mismatched green and blue eyes who was suddenly on the den couch when no one, especially not her, had been there moments ago, Quatre Raberba Winner did what any boy of good breeding and manners would do: he fainted. 

With a resounding thump of dead weight the blond boy hit the floor followed shortly by the keyboard landing beside him with the solid sound of falling plastic hitting carpet. The girl giggled and rolled around on the couch so that her head was aimed down, her feet up in the air. It was her giggling that roused him from the faint. It was like thousands of silver bells ringing in unison, like the bell anklets his sisters had worn some times, beautiful and jangling and soothing. Light blue eyes opened slowly, and were met by the mismatched sea green and blue with silver eyes of the girl. It was all he could do not to swoon again. 

"I'm sorry." Her smile was golden, but her eyes were drifting. " I just wanted to see you, to listen to you play. And then you thudded and fell out of your chair and..." She rambled on trying to apologize. A rough voice interrupted her.

"My lady, perhaps it would be better if I explained it to the young man. I am a tad easier to understand." Quatre sat up and looked over to where the voice was coming from. A large, black and white dog sat beside the couch, its pink tongue lolling with a friendly smile. That faint tried very hard to come back again, but he managed to over come it once more. The dog had talked...

"I apologize for this, Master Quatre, " the dog began, "my mistress is a tad, well, compulsive. She tends not to think about the reaction mortals have to her appearing out of nowhere, with me in tow." Quatre only could gape, eyes wide to the point he felt they would soon fall out of his head. The dog rolled its eyes and tried again. "Let me try again, this time in a more civilized manner. I am Barnabas, companion and guardian of the Lady Delirium, the youngest of the Endless. She wished to hear you play and sing in person, so we came here, against my better judgement."

"Oh, Barnabas, you're so mean!" Delirium was sitting on the couch her head still where her feet should be; making strange blobs of color appear in the air around her. "Mean doggie." she said, giving a two toned glare at the dog, then to Quatre "You make pretty music. I like to listen. I wanted to hear you play in person and give you a gift or two, or something nice. That's only right, I mean, I didn't want to cause any trouble, and when I showed up things just went all wrong..." She trailed off, her lip quivering, on the verge of tears it seemed.

That snapped him out of the gaping, wide-eyed trance of shock, and he rose to his feet as steadily has he could. The blond boy walked over to the now curled up form on the couch and sat down beside her.

"I'm sorry. I've been incredibly and inexcusably rude. I reacted quite badly, though you did give me quite a turn." He managed to pry a hand from the curled ball of young girl, and took it in his to comfort. The nails were ragged, with chipped nail polish of a hue of green he had never thought naturally possible, her flesh the sallow colour of someone constantly sick. She looked up at him, smiled, and thousands of blue butterflies filled the room. Quatre did his absolute best not to run screaming. He was convinced he was either mad, or that the most wonderful thing in his life was happening to him. Right now, he was siding with the former. Ah well, when mad, one should always try to go with the delusions. 

"Could you, umm..." Quatre stared at the swirls of living, iridescent blue that filled the room and looked back at her. "Could you send those back to where ever they came from, please?" She nodded and they were gone as suddenly as they had been there, but her smile was still there. 

"I'm sorry." She said slowly, as though trying to force coherency. "Barnabas was right, I shouldn't have bothered you. But your music is so pretty..." 

In spite of himself, Quatre smiled. Pride was something he had never aspired to, but secretly he was quite proud of his musical talents. He tried very hard never to show them off to anyone, that was simply wrong, but he still secretly reveled in any complements he received. "Thank you, but I'm not really all that good." He blushed modestly. She giggled. "But you really like it?" She nodded again. 

Barnabas made a gruff, snorting sound that was the dog equivalent of exasperation. "She's been watching you play for years now. Yes, she really does like your music." The black and white dog got up, and stalked out of the room. The girl gave a small sigh. Quatre decided to try to at least be civil to his delusions if they couldn't be civil to one another. He took her hand again, and put on his warmest and most open smile.

"So is there anything you would like me to play for you?" he asked. 

She sprang at him and hugged him with the tenacity of a bear hugging a victim to death. Quatre gasped for breath and attempted to extract himself, but was caught.

"Oh thank you! Would you play that one you played before, and the thing before that with the pretty little dadum-de-de about half way through it and then the little trilly one that makes me think of butterflies..."

Quatre realized at that moment he had made the biggest mistake of his life.

Part Three: What Do They Do?
 

Given little choice, Quatre Raberba Winner picked up the electric keyboard from where it had fallen and returned to his chair. The girl who called herself Delirium, and whom he was sure was a figment of his insanity, watched him in two colored fascination. 

"You want me to play for you what I just played? Un di all'azzurro spazio?" His spoken Italian was rusty, the last syllable badly accented, but she didn't seem to notice. She nodded, and curled her knees up to her chest and hugged them in a girlish way. "Do you want me to sing it as well?" 

"Yes please! You have such a pretty voice." She giggled.

And so he began the aria again. He closed his eyes, and concentrated on the music, singing at the half voice he never dared when the other pilots were around. It was good not to be restricted in his volume, he thought. None of the others really appreciated his music, except perhaps Trowa. Heero barely tolerated his quite singing around the house, let alone his keyboard practice every few days. He gave the bitterness of the poet's words twinges as he sang them, chastising the girl asking for a love poem. He smelled stale perfume, the smell of a girl too enthralled with her appearance to have a true personality. It was the smell of decadence, of dead flowers and starched dresses. It smelled angry and aged, like an old woman rapped up in what she had once looked like. And it smelled of madness.

He shivered, not daring to open his eyes to see what his delusions were bringing to life beyond his mind's eye, and moved further into the aria. 

Green fields and forest, and blue skies and seas; the earth at its most beautiful. He felt the dampness of morning dew, the touch of wet grass, and then the smell of roses. The roses led him into memory, following their smell back to a private hospital room. As a small boy he had been sickly, was still not the strongest of the five pilots by far, and had spent most of a few years in and out of that room. Its antiseptic smell had been broken only rarely, and then it had been by a vase of roses from his eldest sister's rose garden. Not just any rose, either, but the fire orange and red tipped San Francisco she grew with pride, the first rose that had taken readily to the strange soil and weather of the colonies. Its smell was sweet and as fiery as its petals. And he remembered that same smell from somewhere distant, a memory of before there was memory. A church or masque somewhere, and hundreds of red and orange roses filling the room. 

"Varcai d'una chiesa la soglia..." He sang, dropping his volume.

I passed through a door at a church, he thought. And he smelled the sent of votive candles, and of incense. But there were other smells, different smells. He smelled the clean smell of flowing water, of fresh bamboo, and the smell he so associated with the strange and distant Chang Wufei: the smell of clean silk. But the smell soured, overpowered by unwashed bodies and cheap rice wine spilled into the cloth and left to dry. And there was the unmistakable smell of hunger, the sour smell of bodies eating themselves for food enough to keep breathing. And the smell of anger, and desperation overpowered it all. 

The bitterness of the old man begging in the church, and the workman swearing against God, against his children's tears, against the whole of mankind. A familiar smell found him again, and he flinched as he sang, the smell of battle, of gunpowder and steel, and the hot ozone of beam swords and laser weapons. And there always, the caring earth, green and beautiful, caring for her own. If only that were true, he thought wistfully, then this war wouldn't have happened. He would still be with his father, far from earth, with his sisters and their roses and their laughter. He wanted to be home. He didn't want to kill any more. The poet turned once more, told her to not profane a word she knew nothing of. What did he know of sorrow? There were others far worse than he, who had grown up the pampered only son of a widowed man with a house full of daughters. He had food, he had clothing, he had shelter, and he had family. Duo had had none of those growing up, nor had Trowa or Heero as far as he knew. He was not one to have cause to be sad, and yet he still was. He ended it, opening his eyes slowly, and found her looking at him with a sadness and longing that lacked words painful enough to describe. Quatre looked at the strange girl with questioning blue eyes.

"They ask a lot of children, don't they?" She asked quietly. Quatre wasn't quite sure how to answer, so waited. She said more. "They ask a lot of me too, and I'm just a child too."

"Who asks a lot of you?" He wondered out loud.

"My family, all the other Endless. They are all so much older than I am, and they never had to change like I did. I use to be together... but now I'm not sure if I ever am." And if to prove her words, an ear turned into a butterfly and floated about the room slowly on orange and blue wings. Quatre was extremely disturbed by this, not sure what to make of this. "I had to grow up, to stop being the – oh what's the word my sister uses all the time – the personification of Delight. Humans learned how to be happy on their own, and quit enjoying the world about them spontaneously. You didn't need me any more. But then you needed me for something else, so I changed. Mortals went mad, and I went mad with you."

Quatre felt miniscule. He was in the presence of what he guessed approximated a goddess, and while he was never a religious soul, he knew there was something ordering the cosmos. It did speak to him after all. But a goddess that went mad? Why not? It seemed a very stressful job for one who looked so young. He stood up and put the keyboard aside, and walked back over to the couch. He sat down beside her, and hugged her balled up form. 

"Shh." He tried to quiet what he knew were tears on the verge of happening. What did one say to a goddess about to cry? He reached and touched her cheek with his fingertips, and she looked up at him with those two colored eyes, one green one blue with silver. "Change is hard. But we all have to change." She blinked and nodded questioningly. "I had to leave my home, and all my sisters and my father, to come fight this war. I had to, because if I don't, someone else will have to. It has to be done, and its better I do it than someone else suffer because I was a coward. I'm only a child, but I had to grow up. We all have to grow up eventually, I guess. Even goddesses."

She giggled suddenly. "Silly blue eyed boy." She said. "I'm not a goddess. I'm an anth- anthro – anthrap –" she looked cross, and tried again. " I'm a personification of an idea." She giggled once more and smiled.

Quatre wasn't quite sure what she meant by that, or how it differed from being a goddess, but he pressed no more.  "If I had a violin," he said, "I would play something pretty for you." From thin air she produced a beautiful old instrument with matching bow. 
"Will this do?" He tested its tune, and found it the most beautiful he had ever heard. The instrument was a treasure.

"This is beautiful, the best I have ever seen." And to prove it and his thanks he played something he rarely played, an old Irish tune called The Black Eyed Susan. It was sad and sweet, and meant for a fiddle, but it came out true on the strings of the dark finished violin. 

As he played, he saw the room slowly melt away and fill with thousands of the yellow flower with its single black eye, looking darkly at the world, and their scent all but overpowered his mind. And the butterfly that had been an ear flitted happily among the blossoms.

Part Four: Here the Beauty of Life
 

 The afternoon passed itself with a strange, dream like slowness. Quatre Raberba Winner found himself swiftly recovering from the shocks of first the appearance and then full understanding of his guest's identity. The young woman with wild, multi colored hair, and equally clashing eyes was an excellent audience. She never tired of his music, and never seemed to notice any of his faltering with pieces he had not practiced in months. Nor did she notice the strange variety in his knowledge of music, everything from old European fiddle airs to adapted pieces as old as his family name and the sands of their old terrestrial home lands. It was once of these, a piece from the strangely hypnotic tradition of the camel drivers called taghrud, that he sang for her now, standing in the center of the den as though performing for a room full of people.

But there was no room; it had melted away with the rhythm of the song, into the shifting sands of the desert. Only he was there, and Delirium and the strangely in place purple couch that had been in the house when the four pilots had arrived a few short months ago. Strange mirages danced around him in the sands, ghostly camels and trees and lakes, moving with the slow drone of the song. He ended the song slowly, letting the last notes hang in the dry air. Quatre turned blue eyes to his audience of one, and bowed to her applause. No matter how strange, he was enjoying this.

With the song over, they were back in the small den of the house. Rain still beat a frantic tattoo on the glass of the sliding door, the storm still having lost none of its force. Quatre sat down on the couch beside Delirium, determined to have a bit of a rest. 

"Would you like something to drink?" Quatre offered, smiling at her. "We don't have much in the house, but there should be something."

Delirium smiled. "That would be nice, if its not too much trouble." She was holding an orange and blue butterfly on one hand, letting it walk up and down her fingers. Quatre wondered if it was the same butterfly that had been her left ear, though the ear was now back where it should be. 

He got up and walked into the adjacent kitchen, whistling softly to himself. From the cabinet above the sink, which was pilled with dirty dishes, he pulled the last two clean glasses in the house. Duo was supposed to be doing dishes, should have done them before he left on the mission, and Quatre had yet to get around to doing them. He would have to soon or have nothing civil to eat dinner off of. He set the glasses on the circular table in the center of the kitchen floor. It was an ugly old Formica and chrome table, but when it was his turn to cook in the house he insisted on the four housemates sharing meals at it. Many jibe insults and strained conversations had been had across its yellowed surface. A thin hand trailed across its surface, and the platinum haired boy smiled at the memories. Turning to the refrigerator he opened the door and found it all but empty. He would be eating frozen dinners again, apparently, since no one had thought to go for supplies in town before they had left. But there was a lone bottle of ginger ale in the back corner, with enough left in it for two glasses, and some left for his dinner. He turned and poured the golden liquid into the small glasses, it fizzed warmly. Quatre picked them up in hands that were still slender and uncaloused despite the strength it took to operate the controls of his Gundam. 

He returned to the den with the two glasses to find it replaced by the interior of a plush Bedouin tent. Pillows were strewn into plush shapes that resembled couches, except for one that really was a couch, the same purple monstrosity that continued to exist no matter what shape the room took. Oriental carpets covered a sand floor, and the sweet and familiar smell of several mixed perfumes and spices filled the air. But what caught his attention most of all were the plates of food. Cheeses, meats, and – Quatre found himself drooling and almost dropping the glasses – mensaf. It had been years since he had been served such a meal. 

"I though since you were being so nice to me, I could offer you something back." She said from the purple couch. "I didn't really know what you liked, so I guessed. Here." She offered him a bowl of the hot stew like meal, which he exchanged for the second glass of ginger ale. She took it happily, and began eating goat cheeses with a delicate air. Quatre found a seat among the cushions, and began to eat his way through the rice and – was it really – lamb of the mensaf. I have died and entered paradise, he thought. So much better than burnt frozen dinners could ever be. After the first bowl, he decided to make dinner conversation.

"This is a wonderful meal. I haven't eaten like this in years." Delirium was making shapes out of the soft goat cheese and floating them around her head, plucking them from the air with her mouth as she chose. 

"I am ever so glad you like it. I don't have company nearly often enough. And you've been such a wonderful host it was the least I could do. And such pretty music..." She grabbed a shape that looked suspiciously like a shuttle out of the air and munched happily. "It's lonely being me. No one to talk to but Barnabas. And he can be such a grouch!"

"I did notice something to that effect."

"He was a gift from my brother, when he left." She looked sad, and nabbed a goat cheese sword out of the air with nimble teeth. Quatre quickly changed the subject.

"So how much longer will you stay?"

She sighed. "I have to leave at sundown. One of those rules we have to obey." She frowned. "After we eat, would you play one more song for me? And then I'll give you the gift I brought for you."

Curiosity peaked, the Arabian boy nodded. "Gladly, what would you like me to play, dear lady?"

She giggled at this. "There's an old gypsy air, one that I hear a lot. It goes sort of like...." She hummed a little bit of a tune Quatre knew well. An old Romani air he had learned from his father's people. 

"Of course!" He smiled happily. "But first, let us finish our meal. And then we shall have music for you once more." He raised his glass of ginger ale in a toast, which she met. They smiled, and they both laughed.

Part Five: The Life and Soul of the World
 

Gone now was the Bedouin tent and cushions, and the sand that had formed the floor beneath thick oriental rugs. In its place was dew kissed green grass, and the dusk air of some eastern European field. A circle of brightly painted wagons, empty and dark, was the only visible thing for miles, resting on the crest of a hill. There was only one unusual thing in this pastoral scene: a large, overstuffed and very purple couch pulled close to the steps of one of the wagons. 

Quatre Raberba Winner was still not sure if his divine visitor, the personification of madness its self was aware of the changes in scenery, or if she simply did not realize such things were not normal. He had stopped being shocked by them, and simply ignored them. But the setting for this piece of music was too perfect, even for a mind use to blocking out any number of unsettling sights, to ignore. Sighing in the night damp air, he turned to where Delirium sat on the purple couch. 

"Should I play the air for you now?" he asked.

She shook her head, shocking him. "I told you, I wanted to give you some gifts for playing for me. You've been such a good person, and so ever nice to me, and always been polite. Now let me see," she scrunched up her face in thought, "what was it I wanted to give you?" Minutes past, and suddenly she began rummaging through the pockets of her overlarge leather jacket, its many zippers jangling. From a small interior pocket, she produced a crumpled envelope with several lines written on it. "Ah! Here it is. I always try to write things down, but I always seem to loose what I write them down on. But I found this one!" Quatre sat down on the back steps of one of the closest wagon, and watched her, wondering what she had in mind.

"Ok here we go. The violin is one of my gifts. I know you always wanted an old instrument like it. Some old German man made it, but he's dead now. So I guess its ok for me to give it to you." 

The blond haired boy was stunned. The violin was a remarkable piece of work, an instrument he was far from deserving of. He began to protest, but all she did was smile back at him with those miss-matched eyes. She looked back at the envelope and scrutinized it for a moment.

"Hmm. I guess this one is next, because its next on the list. Now what did I mean by this?" She looked back down at the envelope and starred at it as though it would somehow telepathically communicate with her the meaning of what she had scrawled on its surface. The Sandrock's pilot watched her with curiosity, his mind still not quite use to the concept that the beautiful, age darkened instrument that sat in his lap now was his. Somewhere in the hallucinatory distance, a cricket burst into ecstatic chirping. Quatre smiled, and Delirium looked up at him from the crumpled white surface, beaming.

"I figured it out. I wrote beasty, and it took me a minute to understand what it meant. My older sister gave your friend with the pretty braid this gift, and it seems to have helped him, so maybe you'll like it too." Quatre wasn't following her beyond that she was talking about the household's perpetual smile, Duo Maxwell. With the suddenness of a blink, he realized that there had been a definite change in the field. Where once there had been the empty space between the purple couch and the opposite side of the wagon circle, the Sandrock Gundam now stood stoically. Quatre's first thought was that he seriously hopped it was not now standing in what little was left of the den if it was.

Delirium knelt on the couch facing the Gundam behind the overstuffed purple monstrosity and somehow seemed to simultaneously look up at and look the sixteen meter tall Gundam in the eyes. "Now how does this go." Delirium puzzled and then shrugged. "Thing living in there, I want to talk to you!" She shouted. A voice like the desert wind answered, and Quatre found himself confronted with a creature from nightmares.

/Yes, Youngest of the Universe?/ A shape of dust and earth and stone in perpetual motion as though bound and animated by hurricane force winds was extended from the top of his mobile suit into the sky by another twenty meters or more, obscuring the dark slate clouds. What could be called eyes glowed like sapphires from the center of the cloud shape, twenty or more, in constant swirling motion. It seemed to suck the light from the sky, and the air smelled of sulfur and dust, like a sandstorm.

"W-what is it?" He managed. He felt the distinct urge to back away from the creature, but his curiosity was too overwhelming.

Delirium was unflinching, smiling happily, and oblivious to the terror the form inspired in the blond pilot. "It's an Old one. Haeypabbyissealis has been a friend of mine for a long time, haven't you, Haey?"

/Yess, Youngest. You are a good friend of this one./ Quatre watched in utter fascination.

"Anyway, Haey took up residence in your big metal suit when it got built, and he's sort of stuck there. So he's been helping you. But you didn't know he was there, and he couldn't talk to you, because you couldn't hear his voice. Now you can. You can also talk to all the other Old ones that live in the other metal suits. Though I don't know the others very well, the Dark One is a good friend of my big sister." She stopped, realizing she was rambling. "Why don't you say something to him?"

"Hello, Haeypabbyissealis." Quatre stammered and badly mangled the name.

/Hello, good Master. There is no need to speak this one's true name. As you have called this one before is enough. I am the earth, it is my flesh, I am sand and rock, movable and defendable./

"Thank you, my Sandrock. Its good to be able to know you understand me when I talk to you."

/This one has always understood you, Master./ The creature swirled in laughter, its may rough gem eyes glittering brightly. /But now this one may speak to you as well. May I have leave, Youngest?/

Delirium nodded. "Yes, you may go now." The form retreated into the metal shell, sand and earth seeping between plates of armor like water. As soon as it vanished, the Gundam did as well. Quatre sat on the back steps of the wagon in shock, the violin forgotten in his lap. Delirium was back to glassily starring at her envelope, leaving him to the crickets and the dusk dew. Somewhere beyond the slate gray blue clouds that obscured the sky, the sun was nearing the pine-lined horizon. His guest would be leaving soon, and he would be alone again until the others returned from their missions, with little to do but read and practice with his new instrument, and perhaps talk to his Gundam; a new found conversational partner is never to be scoffed at, he thought. 

Delirium at last looked up. "Ok one more gift, but it comes after you play for me. I want to hear you play this last time." She smiled sadly. "This has been ever so fun, and I'm so sorry I have to go."

"It has been fun. I hope you can come visit me some other time. I have really enjoyed your company." He smiled back at her, and brushed back his bangs with a hand.

"Oh, I will see you again, some time not too long from now, but you wont know it. Anyway, my final gift is something you would like to do for someone else, but normally couldn't. Your choice. Tell me, and I will do it when I leave." Quatre thought for a moment, and then told her. She smiled brightly. "Are you sure?" He nodded. "Play for me now, please?"

The young pilot picked up the violin and bow from where they lay in his lap and began to play softly. It was a soft sad air, old and ever changing with every playing, to be filled with the hopes and sorrows of the musician. It had a central theme, and little more, the rest was pure improvisation. Quatre closed his eyes, and bent into the instrument, and began to pour out the emotions inside him into the instrument, as though he were some great spring and the music a river flowing from him. The joy of the day spent playing and singing for the young Endless found itself into playful trills and spiraling scales, the sadness at parting into sorrowful melodies that filled between the scales, and the gratitude into the careful rhythm of the air. It rose and fell from simple streams, found rapids and waterfalls, still deep waters of broad rivers in the low lands, and then found the great ocean beyond. Yet even there it didn't end. The ocean is calm on bright days, rough during a storm, and beneath its surface the currents churn and life teams. He played dolphins dancing in the wakes of ships, great whales in their endless migrations, the creatures of the deep water in their cold dark lives, and the schools of silver fish in open water. At last he rose, bringing trills higher and higher into the clouds that moved back over the lands, into the mountains, and there began the cycle anew, in a careful pitsacato rain. 

Quatre opened his eyes, and found himself seated in the corner chair in the den, alone. Two empty glasses sat on the coffee table, and the storm's at last abated furry tapped out on the sliding glass door. Quatre smiled, sat the violin down on the coffee table, and took the glasses into the kitchen, intent on the sink full of dishes.

On the other side of the world, in a small and equally sleazy and dirty hotel room, Trowa Barton slept fitfully on top of the sheets in the oppressive Asian heat. He had abandoned his turtleneck for bare skin, the green garment resting beside him on the bed. His torso was slicked in sweat, but it was a cold, clammy perspiration. From his sleep, he suddenly bolted upright with a short cry, startled into wakefulness by the image from his dreams. 

It had been the same for weeks now. The same dream, horrible and soul shaking, had woken him from sleep every night. Most nights he found sleep again after calming himself. But here in the heat of the Bangkok night he knew he would never get back to sleep. He reached over and turned on the lamp, and his hand brushed a cool, damp surface.

It was a glass of ice water, perspiring in the heat as much as he was. Where had it come from, he wondered. He brushed his hair, limp from the humidity, from his forehead, and saw the note beside it. It was a white envelope, with a girlish hand writing he did not recognize. It said simply, Thinking of you. But he knew somehow whom it was from. Trowa smiled, and lifted the glass of water to his lips and drank. He brushed the cool glass across his head before returning it to the stand beside the bed. He would have to find a way to thank Quatre, someday.