A companion story/second part to Don't Need the Sunshine that follows Trowa and Dorothy's mission following Endless Waltz.
(Disclaimer: For my own pleasure (yup, no one's financially supporting me!), I decided to write a companion story to Don't Need the Sunshine. This takes place after Trowa and Dorothy have decided to follow Zechs and Noin as coordinators of the Terra Project--to bring human life to planet Eunoe. Hmm. People always confuse Noin's hair with Trowa's rather stylish mop. Then Dorothy is just as blond as Zechs and--well, aren't they just mirror opposites? No, don't think about that. Enjoy the story. It's largely speculative and somewhat alternate post-Endless Waltz. So there were Gundams once, but the boys all ended up in different places. Expect unconventional coupling. Quatre went off to medical school, Duo's running an intergalactic radio station, etc. The craziness brought about by post- graduation. Here is the musing--)

Don't Need The Sunshine by Jillian

Part Two: Shoot The Messenger

Bring back the moment when everything seemed as if it might still be reprimanded. Might be corrected. Might be cured. But since when has separation been a disease? Isn't the moment when the cancer is cut away, divided from the body--isn't that the cure? I swat at the insect which has been hitting the metal lampshade with almost musical *tings*--each one considerably more persistent in pitch and duration. I wonder why I've agreed. Agreed to try this again. And here we are.

He sits with his forehead pressed against his folded hands, breathing on his food. He never orders anything different. Each place has the specific meal that he considers, considers, considers again and then orders. As the waitress waits, he pauses so that his mouth stands open a moment, showing only bottom teeth. Then his grey-green eyes appear to deliberate the decision one last time, before he predictably orders, once again, with no surprises, exactly what he had ordered the last time. And the time before that. Today has been no different.

"Why does it always start over food?" He asks. The last steam from the just-arrived food fogging his glasses for a moment as he glances up and at me. His mouth, slightly parted, bottom teeth. They sit rather straight, tall soldiers.

Rigid like his personality. Slightly tainted by a morning coffee ritual.

"Food?" I ask, dumbly. I haven't tried to decipher something he's said for quite a while. It used to amuse me.

I can hardly remember why since it's been much simpler to repeat the last word he says and let him continue. "When ever we discuss something, it's over a meal." He passes his fork over the noodles, displaying the evidence. Clearly, we are at a meal. "Not that controversial conversations are good for digestion. We must skip the subject matter that can't be cured by the Alkeseltzer."

"You need an Alkeseltzer? You haven't touched your food." See. It's much easier to simply repeat what ever word he says at the end, then I don't have to really listen too closely. Coming tonight was his idea. Above his ears, I see evidence of his age. A scattering of dust colored hair between the reddish-brown mop. He always needed a haircut, his hair hanging in his eyes, over the wire rim glasses. Only his incredibly infiltration and invisibility skills saved him from any reprimands regarding his outward appearance. Not that there was anything to complain about beyond the "no-eye-contact" problem.

It's hard to believe that this man was the person who convinced me to enter the greatest era of my life. Showed me how to progress and accept my past. To become whole. Hard to believe that I had changed so much, and so little. And that Trowa Barton was still, always, trying to disappear behind his scruffy hair.

Trowa pokes at one noodle with his silverwear. Lets it dangle above the others. His eyes cross over his nose as he examines the specific object. Then turning both eyes full on me, he tastes it. "Just like this, Dorothy."

I pause when he says my name. This disrupts my pattern conversation.

"What brings us both back here?" He stabs another noodle. He eats it, chewing with a cow-like deliberation. His expressive eyes, behind the glasses, are always thoughtful. One more noodle. Chews.

I ask, "Here?"

When he doesn't say anything, that's when he's most like himself. Listening and thoughtful. Cow-like. My lips pull back at the thought of Trowa being anything like a bovine. Working with him, I always found him more like a barn swallow--capable of both incredible acrobatics as well as hovering on a breeze without moving. Spontaneously chatty, then intolerably silent.

"I suppose here is where everything happened." I guess. Poke at my own food.

It wasn't terribly hard to admit as we watched the ribbon being cut in front of the first, to-be-inhabited city of Eunoe.

When the colonizing preparation of earth two was completed and ready. I was ready for love. Or in love with the idea of love. And, as surprising as it was, I was in love with Trowa Barton. They say that years of isolation and hardship can bring couples together. Whoever "they" are, in this case, it *was* happening to me.

After the wars ended, I had officially met him at the Lake Victoria Base Library, while investigating my definitive book on warfare. One provocative conversation, then Trowa had convinced me that I needed to put my muted but still powerful confrontational skills to good use. And I followed him to space. In my softer moments, I might have said that I followed my heart.

Things had changed that much. I had chopped off all of my childish hair earlier, convinced that I was liberating myself from a long cycle of idolization. Admiration. Basically stalking Zechs and Treize. I was past that. So I followed Trowa Barton on his project, thinking that this would be the next step toward something different.

And, as much as I would have denied it, I fell in love. I couldn't say that I was charmed by anything except his quietness. But he had such a witty way of being quiet. I couldn't say that I was smitten with only his dashing good looks. But he had such a way of going cross-eyed in the evening when he was tired, dirty--and tired--from a long day inspecting the fields. Nonetheless, I was charmed and smitten.

Unfortunately, I'm not very discrete--or at my best--when I'm charmed, smitten and interested. With an initial pioneering crew of twenty, it wasn't hard to get Trowa to myself.

I remember it all beginning at one dinner, the vegetables were particularly dry and tasteless since we'd been experimenting with our own first produce from Eunoe fields- -watching him spear each bean and study it intently before taking his bite. And chewing.

"How is it?" I watched as I stirred another boiling pot from the nearby kitchen area. We, the first pioneers, had five different shelters to share. Trowa and I each had a room in the central building designated HQ, the other eighteen were spread between the remaining four shelters.

"Keep making them just like this, Dorothy." He stopped commenting to chew another deliberately selected bean. I figured that he meant they tasted best that way and beamed with pride. I liked making him happy, making his life a little easier. He'd worked so hard to salvage the last crop after unexpected floods. Half of the fields became swampland and the waters were not receding. We feared the following insect infestation in the new wetlands, but Trowa had insisted on staying the extra week needed to revive and retrieve the last of our crop--mostly beans and a little corn. We weren't sure if we could survive another change of the seasons without salvaging some of that crop. "You like them, huh?" I was still glowing as I finished my chore and joined him at the table. It was an inconveniently low table-top for him, and Trowa had his chair back from the table so he could spare his knees. Whereby, he had to lean over his plate with some awkwardness to eat.

He continued to shovel the beans, individually, into his mouth. Barely opening his lips to close them again. I often wondered what it would be like to reach over and taste his lips for myself. They'd become rather appealing after seven months of eagerly waiting, anticipating, willing for them to speak, speak to me. I took the seat next to him. Uncomfortably close--for him. I was admiring his jaw-line. Watching it chew.

"Dorothy?" He asked, twisting his shoulders so that he was leaning away. Opening his body language, but keeping his face forward to look at the opposite wall. I didn't turn to see the front door he was watching so intently. I wondered how his glasses could stay perfectly balanced on his narrow nose and how the wire rims circled around his ears--which didn't stick out nearly as much now that he was older, and certainly not as much when viewed in profile. 'What are... " he continued.

I could feel my face flush, but I'm rather unashamed. Morality hadn't cured me of frankness.

"What are we... "

I leaned forward. *What are we doing, my dear?* Why, I think I'm absolutely adoring your lower lip. But before I could suggest that idea, Trowa finished his own thought.

"What ever are we going to do about these insects?" He popped another bean past his lips and finally leaned back into his seat, intently studying the wall.

I gave up and looked myself, to see a steady path of about a hundred, large, ant-like critters crawling across the wall and looping around themselves as more entered the shelter through the floors. Ant-beetles, we called them with great unoriginality. Disgusted, I hurried to the kitchen to see what might have caught their attention. "I think this falls under"

"*your* job description." I protested.

"Pest control?" Trowa asked, indifference in his tone, somehow, even as a nest of bugs entered our home. "Yes, we do learn how to tolerate the most extreme situations here."

I wouldn't have cared to hear his second comment. Except that Trowa never really says more than he needs to, unless he means to. Unless he really means what he's saying. He isn't the sort to drop insulting comments without expecting to be heard and understood. Of course, I thought he meant me. Everything was about myself.

"So," I started bravely, then choked quietly on what I wanted to say. So you have to tolerate me do you? Extreme situations made you find me and recruit me for this crappy job. Not that you wanted to. Not that you ever got to like me. Figure me out. Just like...

"So?" Trowa had speared another individual bean and it hovered between his plate and the lower lip I'd liked so much just a second before. I tried to imagine him piercing that lip with his fork and the instant bead of blood and... no, that wasn't what I wanted. He continued, "So the weather is a bit awful, but we saved the crop and now we can move before the seasons change. With the water standing the way it is, it was only a matter of time before the ant- beetles worked their way into our shelters."

I continued to wipe down the kitchen, but inwardly slumped. Why did I make myself so vulnerable again? That was too close. Too much like the devotion I put into Zechs, into Treize. There was nothing particularly interesting about Trowa Barton at all. Nothing to make him anything like the others.

"What's this?" Trowa said aloud, obviously to draw my attention even as he crossed from the table to the communications corner. We had a rather antique communications system since we were always on the move to learn more about the seasons and habitat of different regions on Eunoe. But, since we thought we would farm our current location--that was before it flooded--Trowa had used his technical know-how to make a more permanent audio and visual system between the shelters and the field outposts. Someone was trying to get our attention.

"Uh... hello?... *schnert*... "

I could just begin to make out the words accompanying the hesitant voice barely coming through the system.

"Identify yourself." Trowa spoke quickly into the microphone. His voice was pitched just a bit lower than normal. I wondered why he felt the need to disguise his tone. Only the other pioneers knew...

*Um, yes... *schnert*... I'm calling from... *schnert*... "

The voice was cut off, then replaced with another. "Hello, it is you! This is everyone's favorite intergalactic DJ making a routine call to make sure that *YOU* are getting the best service that a station can provide... *schnert* ...how's it going out there?"

Trowa's eyes widened and he glanced up at me. "Duo." He whispered. "But no one knows that we're here."

"Obviously I wasn't the only person concerned when you turned up missing." I reasoned. Trowa continued to look incredibly perplexed. "Talk to him. He's your friend. It's not like one conversation will betray your invisibility."

He seemed to doubt me, but accepted my decision for him. He leaned toward the microphone when Duo's voice came back.

" ...*schnert*... I've got myself an Arabian Prince here who's been worried sick about his missing chum... *schnert*... and you should hear the rumors flying about you leaving with a chick... *schnert*... "

"I... " Trowa tried to get a word in. I wondered what rumors were flying around. What chick?

The voice of the Arabian Prince, who could be none other than Quatre burst back into the conversation. " ...It *is* you... oh my gosh, I'm so glad to know you're alive and okay... when my graduation invitation came back to me "return-to-sender" I was so worried and your circus partner was no help... "

Trowa took the initiative and interrupted. "How is she?" He paused, his voice was still thick and low. "How's the ba...?"

" ...*schnert*... healthy, olive skin and dark eyes like her daddy... "

Trowa's mouth dropped open and he spun out of his seat to grab me around the waist spinning me around the room.

"It's a girl." He put me down and took a step back. "I'm an uncle." Then he let go of me, sitting down again, taking the microphone but unable to form words with his soundless lips.

Quatre kept chatting away, " ...*schnert*... terrible brown hair is always in her eyes... kind of like her... *schnert*... "

The connection was bad, but between the two of them Quatre and Duo continued to give us more news about Earth and Trowa's friends. In fact, besides acknowledging his identity, Trowa didn't have to say much besides reassuring them--and only once--that he was fine. They must have believed him, or wanted to believe him, and didn't ask him anything else--risking to compromise his secrecy. Keeping things comfortable and not causing problems for the clandestine operation we were supposed to be enforcing. Trowa frowned as they began to complete the message of greetings, "How did you find...?" He started, but was interrupted again.

" ...*schnert*... goodness, and here I thought we were just making a memorial tape for our lost friend if he ever came back. Y'know, to let him know he should come back, when he's finished doing whatever... *schnert*... but, somehow, we've been broadcasting it into deep space... *schnert*... wonder how that happened? Well, sayonara!"

" ...*schnert*... " Then Quatre's voice, "... dear friend... "

Trowa turned off the microphone and said softly, "Goodbye." I decided to break the sad silence. "Heero's having another kid? Good grief. And to think that Wufei has been visiting that one Preventer's woman. Whatever was her name? She was the troublesome doctor during the wars. I wonder how they met. Odd pair." Trowa sat still, silent. I spoke trying to comfort my isolated self as much as his. "Well, you certainly didn't achieve total invisibleness," He glanced up at me and his eyes were shining, happy and sad behind the shining glass. I choked, "um, they certainly care about you... "

And then he had stood and wrapped me in a hug all at once.

"I guess I'm losing the talent for invisibility." Trowa said over my head. I patted his back in a friendly way, then wondered if that was wrong. Either way, I decided that I did adore him when he added, "And I'm certainly glad that you're here with me."

"Me too." I added dumbly. Confident we had the better part of two years to figure out what that meant.

Now we're sitting in a restaurant not far from the swamp land--which has already been declared a forest preserve and home to six different endangered species--none of those being the ant-beetles. Trowa's finished his meal, one noodle at a time. It is taxing to watch him eat sometimes. Who knows why he has to do it like that. We've hardly spoken.

After the ribbon snapped and Relena came to survey the good work and the press was thrilled with anything new to report, after the people came to Eunoe--Trowa somehow withdrew. He wanted to go back to Earth--to see Catherine. So see Catherine's daughter, almost four without having seen her uncle. He was going through the colonies so that he could stop by Heero's kennel of kids and puppies and by Duo's satellite to confiscate any evidence that Eunoe was not a completely secret operation. That one conversation was the only time we'd heard from the outside world until Trowa sent the "ready" broadcast to Relena herself. And when that world was far away, and we were only two of twenty, Trowa made my universe. He didn't seem to mind. He needed me as well. But it's different admitting you aren't invisible in a small familiar group. Rejoin the entire populated universe, and well... when I asked Trowa when he was coming back--to me--he didn't answer.

Of course, I wasn't brave enough to ask him until the shuttle was taking off. Funny, as soon as Relena came officially--an entire city appeared on the surface of Eunoe--on a well-scouted site.

He turned, the spaceport wasn't as busy as one's on earth, but there were enough people to make him speak softly. "I don't know Dorothy. I've been close to very few people, and none of those friendships asked of me what your asking... "

I left him. I wasn't going to watch him turn, watch his back as he walked the entire way to the shuttle entrance. He was going to have to watch me.

All I had wanted was his love. Something he *had* been able to give to those "very few people"...

..."Catherine. Quatre." Now, I speak, initiating the overdue conversation. "How are they?"

His lips form the softest smile before he speaks. They are his special people. He hadn't seen them in so long.

"Quatre's a doctor. He's been offered incredible positions everywhere, but he's insisting on working his way up to them and is trying to find someplace that will simply take him at an entry-level position."

"Isn't that a waste of talents?" I ask, listening.

"It's how he wants to do things now. He's interested in coming to Eunoe actually, and there will be no small players in medicine here. We have an entire world of new medical adventures. Remember how excited Rich was every time he found new bacteria or every time one of us came down with a new virus?"

"Should you use the word 'excited'?" I wonder, half-aloud.

"Catherine's great. She's expecting again, and little Carlotta is taking good care of her mother." Trowa's lips made that small smile again as he pauses. Thinking back on his visit.

"Why did you come back if Catherine's expecting again? I thought you'd want to be with her for your next god-child... "

Trowa breathes a laugh. "She has Pietro. I'm a welcome diversion, but he's the father of these children. It's best I only visit. These years have really improved their relationship."

"Like the guy any better?" I ask nosily.

"A bit. I guess I wouldn't really have liked anyone who could take Catherine away from the circus, away from me. He's good with Carlotta." Trowa seems content.

"I'm sure you were good with Carlotta as well." I say starting to fall back on my routine conversation habits. Disinterested since this isn't exactly what I wanted to talk about.

"Yeah, she... " Trowa's voice became small as he trailed off and his eyes crossed over his nose with some happy thought. "She made me want to have kids." Then his eyes uncross. "Someday." He adds almost sheepishly.

"Trowa... " I start, uncertain but tired. "Dorothy," he interrupts. "I guess I was lacking imagination when I had you to myself those years. I should have... "

Trowa looks away. "Well, Eunoe certainly is a lot different than I expected. She's changed so much in the past years. I remember how wild she was at first. Truly untamed. To see her so docile." He stumbles over his own doubled thoughts.

"I took public transportation here."

"And take me out to eat." I want something, but I can't quite focus on what it was as I become uncomfortable on Trowa's behalf. "Some imagination. This didn't really work last time either."

He looks hurt, then his lower lip curls in a half-hearted smile. "I wanted to do something differently this time."

After the ribbon cutting ceremony, a silly tradition but a lasting one, I hovered near Trowa as much as I could. We had an official press conference that morning which had tired both of us. But my devotion was brimming with enthusiasm. I had watched Trowa systematically catalogue this planet, affectionately bond our team-members, and effortlessly win over my heart. I simply wasn't aware how effortless his part had been.

"Let's celebrate, quietly?" I had suggested, looping Trowa's arm with my own. He had grown accustomed to my desire to cuddle him every once and a while. His only comment had been that it made him feel supported. I had assumed that supported meant the same thing as it meant to me--that the other women on our team understood that *I* supported Trowa.

Glancing down puzzled, Trowa said, "Sure, but Relena and a few of the other diplomats here were going to feed us. I think she even brought us appropriate clothing."

I glanced down at the dress that Relena had let me borrow for the opening ceremonies. "Another dress."

"Yeah," Trowa said more comfortably, teasing. "You look great, perfect, in *that* dress too. I told her you wouldn't really need another attempt."

"Well, let's do something more together, now." I hinted.

"We did do this together. Let's make it official together."

For all of my persuading, Trowa merely shrugged. "Good idea."

We went to the outskirts of town where things looked more familiar. Less taken over by the new settlement. Everything there was stale and still foreign to us. I pulled off the heels that Relena had also let me borrow as we walked up to the top of a hill we'd both crossed several times before. I ran my fingers through my hair, still short, but longer than when I first had come to this planet. Eunoe's sun was warm against my freckling skin. I had learned that I wouldn't tan while I was on this planet. "Feels good." I murmured, then spreading out my skirt sat on the grass. Trowa stood a moment longer, uncertain. Then he sat down next to me, his back to the sun and to the new city. We could survey the still wild portion of the country.

"When we first came here, Trowa Barton," I started, feeling sentimental, "I wondered if this was where I'd find something to make myself feel forgiven. Like you had mentioned. Something good might happen to me, I expected grace."

He nodded. Listening. I had to admire his knack, his devotion to listen to me trying to understand myself for the past years. The evenings when I tearfully confessed that I had no idea who I was let alone where I was and why.

"And when I found myself here. I found myself with you." I continued. Wondering what kept me from confessing such love to him before this changing started. "You had offered this to me."

"Dorothy, I... " Trowa started, then stopped. I waited a moment. Letting the breeze tangle my hair. I felt very courageous.

"I want to stay with you, Trowa." I turned to lean, look, at him. "I don't know what else I could do. I don't know what we might find now, now that we are no longer invisible, but I want it to be with you. Then I could do anything."

"I'm going back to earth." Trowa started.

"Fine." I sprawled back on the hill, feeling the grass tickling my neck, my cheeks, my ears. "We haven't seen earth since Eunoe. Perhaps she'll look grandly different, our mother world. Or maybe she'll look just the same as Eunoe... "

"I'm going to see Catherine and then Quatre." Trowa added.

"I would like to see them again, knowing how dear they are to you. Trying to understand them the way that you do. How I've learned to... love... I, Trowa... " I panicked, unable to finish my sentence without thinking it.

I loved Trowa. I couldn't imagine not being near him. And being near him now, like this, thinking this. "I love you." I felt my heart stop when he leaned down, leaned over me. Traced my cheek with his hand. He spoke with a breath too close that I had to breath it into myself. "Dorothy."

Somehow when he said my name, I took it in and understood it differently. I understood myself because of him.

I watched his eyes, shielded behind those glasses he still wore. They were resolved and my heart turned cold.

"I can't."

"I don't... understand... "

"Neither do I." Trowa pulled back into himself and stood up. Dusted off his clothes. Putting the remnants of Eunoe back where they belonged.

He offered me his hand, and I wanted to cry. But I couldn't.

"I want to do something differently this time." Trowa captures my hand across the table and lets his fingers pull slightly on mine. "Dorothy, I... I didn't know that I could... love... someone in the way that meant--I was responsible to love. I lost Catherine, because--somehow--she was taken away from me. So, I didn't know that I might... again. Love again, like that, completely." He let go of my hand, nervously. "I don't deserve you."

It's my turn to listen. And I agree all too quickly, he hasn't really deserved me. Not since he left.

"Are you going back to Earth now that your work is done, Trowa Barton?" One of Relena's companions asked him. He was wearing a suit much finer than I had seen in some time, and I had been an aristocrat. Relena had chosen well. He had declined my offer on the hill, but he still held me captive to his every movement. He seemed so handsome to me, even as he sat across the table talking to another woman.

"I will." Trowa nodded, balancing his single bean on the fork a moment to answer her.

"A special getaway." The woman flirted shamelessly.

"No." Trowa had the decency to look flustered.

"Not a honeymoon?" She whispered. I was pretending not to listen, but still I froze. The woman added, "Everyone's been talking about how cuddly *she* is with you. Although, I suppose you've already explored those feeling for each other."

"No." Trowa retorted, a chill slipping into his tone. "I'm going to visit Catherine and my god-child."

"I thought... " the woman had no limit.

"You thought Dorothy and I were in a relationship?" Trowa's voice rose with intensity, but he checked it before gathering the attention of others. I seemed intent on my own reflection in the soup bowl. "No. We have had no conversations beyond the professional. Nothing inappropriate happened between us."

"Well, I never... I apologize" the woman disapproved of Trowa's reaction. "I see no need to become defensive."

Trowa's breathing was deep even as he chewed his vegetable. He had not only declined my offer, but the thought of it obviously was inconvenient for him. Still, I had followed him to the shuttle until he left, still hoping.

"I don't deserve you."

He folds his napkin on the table. Then folds it again. Ruffling the corners. "Then again, Pietro doesn't deserve Catherine."

I catch his gaze. "You just want to give Carlotta 'cousins'."

"Eventually," Trowa says cautiously, uncertain if I wanted to hear that truth. "But, I learned from Carlotta what a truly innocent love looks like. I remember having that for Catherine and for Quatre, even during the war. It was something pure for me to hold onto regardless. Now I have them less."

He continues, "It was when I saw them again that I realized that I had missed them. But not nearly as much, because I had... I had found you."

I frown. Why was he saying these things? I wanted to believe him, but why now that I had given up?

"I wish I had used my imagination earlier, so that I could have seen you as you are rather than the person who I thought

I was hearing. I thought that you were still captive to your old ways since you spoke about them so much.

"You were simply putting that behind you. I... I hadn't put my past behind me. I was the one who hadn't accepted the grace I was looking for."

When I do not answer, he stands. "I can count you among the people I have loved and lost."

He turns and walks away. And I watch with warm tears pooling in my eyes. I wonder if he realized he loved me when I left him at the shuttle. I hadn't turned to look that last time I had given up my weary pursuit. I wonder because now, as he's blurring beyond the closed door, I remember how I feel.

How I feel about him. How I accept grace. I will change Trowa's tally. I will be the one he loves.

The End

(:./jillian/sunshine2)