Clair De Lune.

A Gundam Wing Fic By Missie

Quatre struggled with the controls, trying to pull Sandrock’s leg out of the 

marshy ground. His last mission, a solo one, was to destroy a Mobile Suit 

factory buried in the Everglades of Florida. It had burned to the ground 

without a trace, Quatre had made sure of that. No casualties, he’d made sure 

of that too. After dragging the Gundam deep into the humid environment, he 

was satisfied that they wouldn’t be traced and brought Sandrock to a halt on 

one of the tree-covered miniature islands and finally relaxed inside the 

cockpit. He reached over to the viewing screen and turned on the news to see 

how the other’s mission had gone.

Apparently, the mission itself was successful, but Oz troops had 

accidentally brought down a skyscraper while firing at the Gundams. Many 

people were killed, thousands of casualties, and there were still others 

trapped in the rubble. Waves of intense shame rose and fell over Quatre, he 

wondered how the others were feeling. Probably, they accepted the tragedy as 

a necessary evil, but felt terrible inside. And when he got back, Quatre 

would have to do the same, dig in his heels and get on with his life.

On the screen, he stared at a picture of the rubble that was once a huge 

building. Taken out with one hit and thousands of lives would never be the 

same. Maybe the real crime here was building something that could destroy 

that many lives if it were ever to collapse in the first place. And these 

buildings were just concrete, glass and steel. They were very vulnerable, 

and yet so many acted as though they were as invincible as the Gundams. 

Quatre’s mind wandered to the colonies. They were just like skyscrapers, 

impressive-looking but in the end just metal and mortar. And if anyone were 

to attack the colonies, no one would escape with their lives.

Quatre often wondered what he was fighting for. The others were certain, 

Heero fought because he was born a fighter and would die a fighter. Duo 

fought for revenge against the people who had killed his loved ones, however 

misdirected he got occasionally. Trowa fought to protect the colonies, one 

of the two people who had ever cared for him lived on L3. He didn’t know why 

he had fought before then. Wufei fought to protect the vulnerable. And 

nothing was as vulnerable as the colonies and the people that dwelled inside 

them. So why did Quatre fight?

Was it to protect his family? No, they didn’t really care what he fought 

for, his Father and the one sister that cared for him were both dead. Did he 

fight to protect Trowa? No, Trowa could take care of himself, he’d made that 

clear. Protecting the colonies was futile, they’d be brought down 

eventually. Thinking about this gave him a headache, so he stopped dwelling 

on it and opened the hatch of his Gundam for some fresh air.

The Everglades were humid, but cooler now that it was night. A full moon was 

out, casting a silvery glow into the tiny world of the swamp. The animals 

who had scuttled for cover at Sandrock’s infiltration into their world now 

welcomed this gigantic alien creature in their own, laid-back fashion. 

Minnows darted around the Gundam’s ankles, and a Terrapin was comfortably 

sleeping on one of its toes. A pair of moorhens were checking out the 

nesting capabilities of its hand. Even Quatre’s presence didn’t bother them, 

a loon waddled confidently into the cockpit and investigated the controls. 

Finding nothing to eat, it waddled out again and made itself comfortable on 

Sandrock’s shoulder. Alligators occasionally watched warily from the deeper 

waters, but went off to find something more interesting to do. Geckos ran up 

and down the Gundanium limbs in a constant hurry. One stopped to see if 

Quatre’s finger was edible. It wasn’t.

Quatre sat half in and half out of the Gundam, enjoying the tranquillity of 

the moment. Quietly he reached for one of his guilty little secrets, an 

orchestral version of Debussy’s Clair De Lune stashed in the audio controls 

of his Gundam. The volume was just loud enough for him to hear, but quiet 

enough not to disturb the various creatures living life in their own little 

universe. If Quatre hadn’t destroyed the base back there, this entire area 

would have been drained and bulldozed to make room for more factories. The 

animals would have lost their universe.

As far back as he could remember, Quatre had always had a soft spot for 

animals. He had stopped eating meat at the age of five when Irea had told 

him what it was made of. For a while, they had fed him fish, until he saw a 

cook throw a live lobster into the pot. As he recalled, he had tried to go 

in and save it and ended up with a badly scalded arm. And the poor lobster 

had been killed, so he didn’t really care that the cook had scalded her arm 

trying to pull his arm out of the pot. It was her fault for putting the 

lobster in the pot in the first place. Growing up, he’d had countless pets 

treated with the very best of care, cats, dogs, rabbits, mice, goldfish, 

turtles, canaries (until he let them out of their cages) hamsters, gerbils, 

rats, even a pig he’d rescued from a slaughter house once (he swore that at 

one point he had heard her laugh!) His intense love of animals had caused 

friction between him and Trowa once, regarding the animals at the circus. 

When he protested that it was cruel to capture and lock up a wild animal, 

Trowa had just made it worse by saying that they had been born and raised in 

captivity. Quatre stopped speaking to him for a week, and even now refused 

to visit the circus.

The breezy sounds of Clair De Lune fitted the atmosphere perfectly, the air 

in this little world was lazy and tranquil, running through an orbit of its 

own regardless of the rest of the world. A long-legged white heron walked 

slowly through a shallow lake, pulling up weeds and stones, nesting 

material. Her pure white feathers shone with the silvery light cast by the 

full moon. Her steps distorted the reflection of the moon, the ripples 

caused by her movement twinkled with the orb’s light. The heron watched the 

effect, and shifted on her feet, enjoying the movement she was making. More 

distortion made her look over to the other side of the lake, as did Quatre. 

Another heron, larger with darker feathers walked over to her carrying 

leaves and twigs, a sign that she was to get back to work. Quatre smiled, it 

reminded him of himself and Trowa. Trowa was all business most of the time, 

while like the female heron Quatre stopped to admire the beauty of a single 

moment. The way he was now.

Both herons flew over to an island across from him and settled into a 

half-built nest under a canopy of Weeping Willow. The male covered his 

mate’s body with his wing, and Quatre was reminded of the way Trowa wrapped 

his arms around him protectively, as if trying to shield him from the rest 

of the world. In Trowa’s arms Quatre was in his own little universe, just 

like these animals. Was the female heron in a universe of her own, under her 

mate’s wing? A universe inside a universe inside a universe.

The music ended and Quatre realised with a sigh that he’d have to return to 

the safehouse soon. Where Duo would bitch about the mission and Heero would 

attend to injuries while pointing out their faults and Wufei would rant 

about injustice and Trowa wouldn’t say anything until later on when they 

were in bed…

…he didn’t have to go back just yet.

Quatre wasn’t ready to face the real world just yet, he wanted to stay in 

this universe for a little while longer. This universe, where terrapins 

slept on the toes of machines that destroyed, where herons nestled under the 

wings of their mates without any signs of danger, where a teenager weary of 

war could find the only peace this world was ever likely to know.