Ties to the Past

“Like I said before, I’m sorry for all the poking and prodding, but it really is procedure: we need to have as much medical information as possible on all of our agents.  We may call you all in again if there’s anything interesting to share about your lab results,” Sally told the young men sitting in the room with her and she paused for a moment. 

She’d talked to Wufei earlier that day about how he thought the others would react to the next proposal, but he’d confessed that he really didn’t know.  It hadn’t pertained directly to him when he entered the ranks, after all.  He’d told her to use her own judgment about it now, but looking around the room, she wasn’t sure.  The pilots – or former pilots, rather – were as hard to gauge as ever.

“There’s a few other extra tests that can be run by request.  We already have everything we need from your blood work, so no more needles—” she noticed the tense set of Heero’s shoulders relax a bit.  Duo seemed to be the only other one who caught it, and his eyes flicked to the side, but he said nothing.  “—but if you would rather it not be done, we won’t perform it.”

“What’s the procedure?”

Sally glanced back at Trowa, who was watching her with a steady, almost calculating, gaze.  “It’s a genealogical test.  Are you all familiar with the colonial database of DNA and genetics?”

“Tagging?” the green-eyed man asked her, struggling to hide a smirk.

She repressed the sigh at the slang and nodded.  “Yes, ‘tagging.’  Originally it was created to help keep track of the colonists, mainly to prevent illegal immigration, kidnappings, solve murders and missing persons cases…”

“But it’s not anymore.”

“It wasn’t, anymore.  There’s talk now of getting rid of the database altogether, but until then, only the Preventers have access to it.”  She paused and let her eyes travel over the young men in the room.  “If you agree to go along with the procedure…we can run your blood work and a few physical attributes through the database to see if there are any matches.”

“Matches?” Duo piped up.

Sally met his eyes and found them…frightened?  No, not quite.  Uncertain for sure, though.  “Parents,” she clarified.

There was a pause, and then Quatre turned to the other three.  “What’s there to lose?”

Trowa seemed to consider that and then, “Good point.  Why not?”

Heero nodded and Duo, whose gaze had turned inward, only whispered, “Yeah.”

*****

Quatre looked up when Trowa reentered the lounge.  “Well?” he asked.

The taller man shrugged.  “Nothing.  I simply popped into existence.”

The blonde’s face fell, “Oh, Trowa, I’m so sorry…”

“Don’t be,” the other reassured, taking a seat on the couch.  Taking Quatre’s hand, he pulled him down to sit beside him.  “It was worth a shot.”

Quatre bit his lip, trying to stifle his curiosity, but finally had to ask, “What’s it mean?”

“Not having any matches?” Trowa asked, quirking an eyebrow at the shorter man, who nodded.  He shrugged again.  “Could mean any number of things: I could’ve been born under the radar, or just happened to have parents who weren’t too keen on the entire ‘tagging’ of colonists…”

“God, I wish you’d all stop calling it that.  ‘Tagged.’  I’m ‘tagged,’ damn it.  It was a good idea with good intentions behind it at the time.  It’s just that the Alliance came around and attached a Big Brother complex to it.”

Trowa chuckled.  “I’ll give you that.” 

After a moment Quatre murmured, “I am really sorry Trowa.  I’d hoped we’d be able to find something…”

“I never had a family growing up.  It was just me and whoever else happened to be around at the time,” Trowa said.  “Besides,” he continued, ducking his head to kiss his lover, “I’m not alone anymore.  I have a family now.  That’s what matters.”

They lapsed into silence again.  Quatre leaned his head down to rest against his lover’s shoulder and watched the hands on the wall clock tick away.  “What about the others?”

“Heero’s like me.  Not even a blip on the radar.”

“…and Duo?”

A shadow passed over Trowa’s face.  “They did find a match for Duo…”

*****

Closing the folder and setting it aside, Duo pushed his chair away from the table, stood, and moved to the window, his back to the room to watch the falling rain.

Sally must have caught something in the air, because she shot Heero a quick but sympathetic glance, and stood to excuse herself from the room, leaving the two young men alone.  Heero watched Duo’s back for some time, but when the latter said nothing even after Sally had left the room, he lifted the folder of Duo’s results and flipped through it.

The picture on the stat page was striking to say the least.  A woman stared up at him from under the paperclip, her expression was calm and composed in the typical ID photo way, but her lips curled upwards in the barest of half-smiles, her violet eyes held a spark of life which Heero realized he’d seen elsewhere.  That nearly reckless confidence.  He felt like she wanted to wink up at him and he smirked down at her.  Running a finger over her face, he whispered, “She looks like you.”

Shifting his eyes down to her stats, he read over her profile and her history.

Erikka Melbourne

Age at time of death: 28.

Parents: mother – deceased (cancer); father – unknown.

Children: One son, registered ‘Alexander (Alex)’ – unknown (presumed deceased).

Alex.  Heero read the name over and over again, letting it echo against itself in his head.  Turning the page, he set the folder back on the table and skimmed through the contents.

She’d been in one of the colonies’ first rebel groups.  She’d died in a raid. 

Heero clenched his teeth and turned the page, glancing only briefly down at the file photo of a burnt out building, the blackened skeleton of had been a factory.

After the fires had died down, what the Alliance had paraded as successful defeat of another attempted rebellion became one of the many blemishes on their early record.  The factory hadn’t just been a cover for the group; it’d been a safe-haven for the families.  The bodies of seventeen children had been found among the adults.

“I used to dream about her.”

Heero started at the whispered confession, lost in his own thoughts.  Duo stood with his arms wrapped tightly around himself.  Defensive, Heero’s mind supplied.  Duo ducked his head and brought a hand up to touch his face before dropping it almost angrily back in place around his ribs.  Crying?  Heero shook his head at the thought.  Duo never cried.  Or at least…he’d never seen him cry.  Not yet.

“Solo would tell me to forget her, that it would be easier for me if I did.  That she’d probably abandoned me and that’s why I ended up on the street…” he shook his head and leaned against the wall by the window.  “He was probably right about forgetting her – it was a lot harder the ones who knew who their parents were, knowing that they’d had a family…a home, once. 

“And I tried,” he continued, “I really did.  Tried to forget her, to stop dreaming about her.  But I never believed him – I never believed she’d abandoned me, not when all the dreams I had of her were good dreams.”  He sniffed then and turned away from the window to lean fully against the wall.  Heero stiffened when he saw the tear tracks on the other’s face.

He repressed the urge to gather the other man up in his arms and leave.  Just up and leave.  But they couldn’t.  They’d come for a reason.  They’d come because the Preventers offered them a goal, an objective, a…as loath as he was to say it, a mission.  If it helped Duo to talk through this, then he’d let him talk.

“She was always happy in my dreams.  She had a nice smile…and pretty eyes.  Like mine,” Duo looked at him and smiled wanly.  His jaw clenched as his gaze fell to the folder that lay open on the table.  “I just never thought I’d actually get to see her…” he whispered, his voice tight, words dying on his tongue.

After a moment, he sniffed a bitter laugh and blinked up at Heero through his bangs.  “Would you think less of me if I said I had hoped that they wouldn’t find anything…?” Duo asked, lowering his eyes to the floor again.

Heero stood finally and crossed the distance to the other young man.  Duo wouldn’t meet his eyes and continued to swipe at the tears that slid down his face.  “Don’t,” Heero told him, catching one of the offending hands with his own and shaking his head.  The other glanced up at him before his eyes darted away, ducking his head to hide from the other’s gaze. 

Pressing closer, Heero took Duo into his arms.  When he felt him go rigid against him, he whispered, “What did you tell me before?  When I wanted to leave and disappear because I couldn’t take what was in my head anymore.  That it’s okay to break sometimes…?”

There was a breathless moment before Duo closed what little distance lay between them and wrapped his arms around Heero, returning the embrace, collapsing into it.  “I told myself not to get my hopes up, I told myself that they wouldn’t find anything, that there was no one, that I really was on my own,” he said, muffled against Heero’s shoulder.  “But damn it if I didn’t when she said they found a match.  I thought maybe…maybe she was…”

“I know,” Heero assured, because he did.  Running his fingers through the brown hair that brushed at his cheek, he turned to press a silent kiss to the other’s youth’s head.

“She told me not to go home, that it wasn’t safe, that I had to run somewhere else where she’d find me later.  She told me to run.  Run and hide,” Duo whispered, taking a shuddering breath as fresh tears slid down his face, “run and hide…”

The stood in silence for a time.  Heero continued his caresses until he felt the shaking in Duo’s body subside.

“Don’t leave me alone, okay?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

Heero tightened his hold on the man in his arms.  “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Promise?”

Pulling away, Heero took Duo’s face in his hands and looked down at him, stared down into haunted violet eyes.  The same eyes that stared back at them from the folder on the table.  “I swear to you,” he whispered, “that I will never leave you alone.  I will be here, beside you.  For as long as you’ll have me.”  He ran his thumbs over the high cheekbones and added, “Though, this isn’t like we’re married or anything.”

It got the desired effect and Duo laughed, scrubbing away the last of the stubborn tears.  He leaned forward and pressed their heads together.  “Thank you.”