Email: Devilkitty@speakeasy.net
Pairing: 1+2
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Heero accompanies Duo on vacation and they make some interesting discoveries.
1st person Heero's POV.

But for the Grace...
by Christine

Duo had quit fighting as soon as the war was over. He had channeled his energy into studying instead. I was surprised to find out that instead of engineering or physics, Duo had chosen to major in art history instead. Medieval art history to be exact. He had gotten his doctorate in record time and then started teaching.

I had joined the Preventers with Trowa. Wufei had disappeared again for the longest time, only to bump into Duo in Italy, about a decade after the war was over. I wasn't surprised that he was teaching gay literature. Wufei, even though he had been married, didn't seem to like women in that way. Hell, he didn't seem to like women at all, most of the time. I had been surprised that he and Duo had ended up teaching at the same small New England college soon after that. Quatre was still with his father's company and we didn't talk much anymore. I think that it was because Winner Industries wanted to try to forget that its President was ever involved in the war, never mind being a Gundam Pilot in it.

I had sort of lost touch with Duo while he had been in college. Just because we had fought a war on the same side, didn't mean that we had been fighting it together. Aside from the disaster with me killing the Doves and that time on the Moon Base, we never had been together during that year or afterwards. After a couple of years of silence, he had looked me up and we started to exchange emails. I had never known Duo the soldier. I knew Duo the man and scholar.

We stayed in touch over the years, but mainly though emails and cards at Christmas. Things that I knew that he did with Trowa and Quatre also. But I also knew that he hadn't invited either on them on vacation with him ever. Wufei was the only mystery in his life for me. He mentioned him a lot, but I never could figure out if he was a friend or more to him. Duo never mentioned that there was anyone in either of their lives. But I knew that Duo hadn't gone on a trip with him either.

"How is Wufei?" I asked him.

Duo had fallen into some sort of trance it seemed, staring at the side of the church we were at.

"He's up for tenure," Duo replied distantly, "and working on a book. He's letting me see the rough draft soon, to help him edit it."

I felt a faint twinge at that. Duo glanced over at me and he looked puzzled for a second before he went back to staring at the cathedral.

"He's going to do the same with this one."

I felt another twinge at that comment. I glanced down at the guidebook that I bought. Duo didn't need one, having spent a year in this section of France as an undergraduate and then more time in Paris writing his doctorate.

I've spent much of my time since the war in space. The Preventers had learned that it was much better to have me and Trowa out there for them. There was still a lot of resentment on Earth about Gundam Pilots. In Space, we were actually an asset for them. I checked to see where we were, because I felt like an idiot asking him. Innocents des Sacre was the name of the church. Now I just had to figure out what was so fascinating to him. From what little French that I understood, that was the same name of the town.

The place was small, not more then thirty meters. I knew from what little I had read before this trip, that cathedrals were supposed to be bigger. But this building did dominate the town square, so I guess that it was big enough. There was a lot of stained glass and flying buttresses, making the whole structure look fragile. I doubted that it was, not if it survived this long. The sides of the building were pieced with a big door on either side and three elaborately carved porches dominated the front. It looked like every medieval church that I had seen in my life.

I liked art and didn't mind that this wasn't a vacation, but more of a working trip for Duo's book. I didn't even know what the book was about, but then I didn't know what was so fascinating to Duo about this building.

"You're bored," he announced suddenly.

I shook my head. "Just confused. What are you looking at?"

Duo laughed. "You want the boring, technical explanation or the fast one?"

"I want the one that you are willing to give me," I told him.

"Innocents des Sacre or Holy Innocents has been rebuilt over the centuries," he told me. "Several times, in fact, even in the original structure looks untouched. But the part that I am looking at was carved in the late 1300s, before the colonies were built. I'm looking into the influence of secular learning on religious art. I know that it has been done to death over the years, but there hasn't really been a new book on it in a while. Also this is nice church, out of the way and deserves a book about it."

"All right."

Duo suddenly grinned at me. "I wanted you along because you're smart and you'd make me look at all this in a new light."

I'd rather have him think that I was sexy. I knew that he liked guys more then women, and he knew the same about me. I didn't know how he felt about Wufei though. Offering to edit each other's books sounded awfully serious to me. I had no idea about what he was talking about. Secular learning? Cathedral Building? What was a Holy Innocent anyway? Weren't churches named after saints?

"Is there any part of the building that you are more interested in then others?" I asked him.

He had been looking at the North Portal a lot. I couldn't figure out what was so interesting. To me it was just a deep porch with a lot of men carved on the sides, oddly elongated, looking like they were supporting the sides and arches of the portal. I had no idea who they were though. The name of the portal didn't help me either, Portal of the Silversmiths was the translation in the guidebook. Some of the men were missing their heads and all of them were weather worn.

Duo looked over at me and smiled. "Inside. The place is beautiful. You have to see what it looks like with the sunlight going through all that stained glass."

Duo led me inside and I wasn't surprised to see that he stopped to cross himself before he went in. He was still religious, even if he didn't attend mass regularly. I just trailed behind him, feeling awkward and out of place. The town wasn't that crowded, because this wasn't a popular religious or tourist spot.

Innocents des Sacre was a quiet town that was off the map in a lot of guidebooks, on the edge of the French side of the Pyrenees. Nowhere near something called the Pilgrim Routes, according to the book that I had. The one that I had mentioned it in passing a couple of times and there was a single paragraph devoted to the town and the cathedral here. The town had been described as quaint, with no redeeming features. If you wanted excitement, the book told you to go to Toulouse or Marseilles. How Duo found it, I didn't want to know. But Duo always had had the knack for finding the oddest places. He had mentioned them all in the emails to me.

Duo found the priest that was in charge of the place, a man that looked older then Dr. J and bent with arthritis. He asked him for permission to photograph the place, I think. I didn't know French and they were both speaking too fast for me to figure it out with one of the other languages that I knew.

Duo looked over at me with a smile and the priest laughed. I felt that I was the butt of a joke for some reason, but wasn't angry. I usually got angry with people whispering behind my back, because it happened too often. I was too well known as a 'hero' to pass unnoticed. Trowa managed to do it, but he hadn't had his face in the news after the Mariemeia incident. It was still remembered, even if it had been almost fifteen years ago.

Duo finished up his conversation and walked back to me. "What was that about?" I asked him.

Duo smiled at me again. "I told him that I was trying to convert you. He thought that was funny. But Father Martin said that I could take any pictures that I want, just don't disturb Mass later on."

"When is Mass?" I asked.

I figured that we were going to have to stay for it. I didn't mind, but if Duo didn't want t, I understood. He had told me once that the rebels had invaded the Maxwell Church during one of the holy day services. Duo had been jumpy in churches after that. I didn't blame him, since even I knew that these places were sanctuaries, even if they were also tourist sites in some places.

"A couple of hours," he told me. "You want to stay? It's in Latin. They're traditional like that around here, after Pope Urban XXX said that Latin was okay again."

I had no idea what he was talking about. What Catholics did during the their religious ceremonies was as mysterious to me as women and shopping. But Duo sounded like he wanted to stay.

"You are supposed to be converting me," I told him with a smile. "I think that it would be something nice."

Duo looked relieved and then pulled out his camera again. It looked like one of the ones that I used for long distance surveillance, professional and as expensive as all get out and probably something that Duo probably had gotten from his connections with Howard. Howard had been the only one that had been at Duo's doctorate ceremony, I discovered. Trowa and I had been undercover, Quatre hadn't been invited and Wufei had been missing again at the time. I kept the invitation, though, even if I hadn't seen it until a month after the ceremony had been held. I had been happy the Duo had wanted me there. And he had understood that I hadn't even been able to get in touch with him about saying no. It was nice to know someone that understood what you were doing, even if he wasn't part of that life. I had had too many boyfriends that couldn't understand it. Maybe that was the reason that they never lasted long.

"Ask any questions that you want to," he told me as he started to snap pictures.

I was content to watch him, not bored at all and very willing to follow where he led. Duo spent some time photographing the whole building, making comments and asking me questions. He seemed to have shaken off the funk that he had had outside.

We spent the time talking about nothing and everything. I found myself telling him about cases that I had been on for the Preventers, mostly long term assignments on the colonies. Nasty and dirty in the beginning, with a lot of undercover work, something that Trowa excelled at and had made me more disconnected from people then I had liked. I felt like Lady Une's weapon, like I had been with Dr. J. The psych told me that was normal with all undercover officers. Lately we had been doing something more normal. Investigations in which I got to go home at night after the day's work and kept my own name. It was this normality that got me thinking about Duo and friendship and maybe trying for something more.

Duo took pictures up until Mass started and then we took seats in the back. I had no idea what was going on, but followed what Duo was doing, when I was supposed to kneel or stand or sit. Studying Duo was good, and I felt tension that I didn't know that I had drain out of me.

"That was nice," I told Duo after the mass was over. Duo had lingered to give his thanks to Father Martin again.

"You don't mind hanging around here for another day?" Duo asked. "I want a chance to reshoot whatever I missed today and the good Father said that I can go through the church records."

I pictured a day in a dark, musty room, going through ancient paper records. I involuntarily wrinkled my nose. "All right."

Duo laughed. "This is AC 213, the records are all electronic, even if they are still in Latin. Thank God it's Medieval Latin, not classical. I had the hardest time in that class."

I looked at him, "So it's like trying to make sense of OZ's records when we hacked into them?"

Duo laughed. "Not that bad. I always got stuck with the base that had there records in some bastardized version of the local language, in a weird alphabet. This is going to be easy. It seemed like the last priest organized the archives back until this place was built. Not that there was much, there was a lot of loss over the centuries of their records."

Duo looked angry and sad at the same time. "Why?" I asked him.

Duo sighed. "People. While this place is out of the way, it still got caught up in some nasty stuff. The Revolution, the Great War, the pre-colony population revolts even. Mobs took over this place a couple of times and artillery don't ask questions about what it is landing on."

I knew that and Duo saw something on my eyes. "Oh shit. I didn't mean to..."

I had been part of a few operations that had had those same results. I had nightmares about them still. I go to the Preventer's psychiatrist for them and other problems that I had have. It helped, even though it felt odd to tell these things to someone that had been on the other side. Stupid thing was that I was more worried about Duo's feelings about this. While I had caused them, Duo had been part of one. The Maxwell Church attack had been the incident that I thought had been one of the main reasons that he was a Gundam Pilot.

"Why don't we go for an early dinner and see what else is in town?" I asked him.

Duo smiled and I felt that this was going to be a very good vacation.

After we had left here, I had found a small café and we spent a couple of hours eating and watching the world go by, not that there was much of that in this town. Duo and I talked, filling each other in on the small details in our life, things that rarely made it into emails to one another.

Duo heard more about the gunfights and the weirdness of undercover work. The time that Trowa and I had to pretend to be lovers, which was awkward, but good because it showed us that neither one of us was interested in the other that way, even if we were both gay. Trowa had all the sexual attraction for me as a brother and after he put me back together after my self destruct, he didn't find me all that interesting. Trowa basically was a romantic and I couldn't feel that way. I don't know if I was telling Duo all this because I wanted him to know that Trowa and I weren't a couple or what.

On the other hand, I found about how normal his life was. Duo's eyes glowed when he told me about his freshman art history courses and the kids that made up his life, the volunteer work that he did with inner city kids during the summer. The peace that he had found in that small town, the acceptance that he was gay and that he had been part of the war. The changing of the seasons, something that he still found fascinating, how snow or rain were good when you weren't stuck out it, when you had a home to go to. Duo had a small apartment on the campus, not wanting to buy a house until he got tenure. He was up for review in a couple of months and was nervous about it, even though everyone in his department liked him and he had an article out every six months or so. Academia was publish or perish. Not as dangerous as my line of work, but it seemed that the politics were the same.

I found it was interesting that Duo was the one that had settled down and was living a normal life. I hadn't known him very well, but from our time at the Moon Base, I knew that he had been a very angry person then. Now it seemed like I was the angry one.

"You seem so settled," I blurted out after my fourth glass of wine. It didn't matter because the hotel that we were at was within walking distance, It was a small place, with tiny, hard beds, which didn't encourage any romantic thoughts for me. I didn't know what Duo thought, which was confusing me.

Duo looked at me with a smile and I knew that he was drunker then I was. I liked the fact that he trusted me enough to let go like that. That he trusted me not to do something stupid with him because we were drinking heavily. "And you are out saving the universe. I feel like a sell out because I like being a small town college professor."

"But you are building the future, even if you feel that you aren't," I told him.

"But it doesn't seem enough," he told me. "Am I fascinated with the past, since I don't really have one?"

"You've been talking to a shrink," I said. "I would have thought that you wasted your life if you had become one of them."

Duo laughed and the topic was dropped. We went back to the hotel soon after that, because Duo wanted to get an early start on the archives.

We spent most of the next day taking more pictures and doing research in the church's archives. At least Duo was doing the research and pictures, as I ended up helping Father Martin doing maintenance and having the old man practice his English with me. I didn't know Latin or French or Spanish, which was what the records were in. My language training had been in the Slavic and Oriental language groups. Dr, J didn't think that I needed to know anything more then English after that, since most of OZ spoke English at least.

I didn't mind the work. There was something soothing about pulling weeds, even if Trowa would be laughing at me when I told him that. It was turning out to be a nice time for me, even if Duo was working. I wanted a house someday so that I could do home projects like a garden and a lawn. Normal things.

I didn't know if he was dating Wufei, but he knew that I wasn't involved with anyone, so I was going to let him do the next move. I wasn't too sure where I stood here, even after I had made the decision that I wanted him more involved in my life.

Duo and I ate a quick lunch with Father Martin, before he disappeared into the archives again. He had chatted with the Father, intent on his research. He was planning his book as thoroughly as he would have had an attack on OZ. I wondered if he even realized that he was doing that. Or was it just a habit? I bet that both him and Wufei were the best prepared professors at college.

Father Martin occasionally looked over at me when he thought that I was being left out of the conversation. I didn't mind, it let me think and I started cleaning up when we were all done eating. The Father looked embarrassed that a guest was doing this, but he had been the one that cooked lunch.

Duo was dragging Father Martin back to the archives, when I stopped them. "Ask Father Martin what else needs to be done around here."

Duo blushed and I fought not to laugh. I think that he had forgotten that I was here. "Oh shi...oot, I forgot that you don't speak French. I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to be that much of an ass. Can you forgive me?"

"Only if you let me buy supper for you and Father Martin," I told him. "You warned me that this was research for this part of the trip. We can have fun later. This is a vacation for me, I'm on Earth."

Duo looked relieved, even if he didn't believe me. He asked Father Martin a few questions and the man looked embarrassed. I think that he was uncomfortable with using me as unpaid labor. He mentioned something to Duo that caused him to laugh.

"The good Father wanted to know if you had a head for heights," Duo told me in English.

I laughed, we had been Gundam Pilots and we had jumped out of a fifty story building together when he broke me out of that hospital. Duo talked to him for a few minutes, assuring him probably that I was all right with heights and what did he need done? I had notices that the church needed a lot work done. I guess that Father Martin was the only priest that was assigned here. At his age, I knew that he couldn't keep up with everything.

"If you don't mind, could you check up on the gutters on the upper levels?" Duo asked me. "He..."

"I'll check and I think that I'll bring your camera with me, see what I can get for photographs from up there."

Duo smiled and my stomach flipped. "That would be great. You have a cell on you if you get into trouble?"

"Tell Father Martin that I like doing these things," I said. "I think that he's embarrassed that I am doing chores for him."

"You'd be great to have around when I finally get a house," Duo said.

I laughed and Duo translated the father's instructions and thanks to me. Trowa was going to laugh his ass off when I told him that I had spent part of my vacation doing maintenance work at an out of a way church.

We were in Paris before Duo had gotten a chance to really look at the photos that he had taken, aside to check that they were in focus and of what he wanted. Duo had filled up a memory chip with the amount of photographs that he had taken. I had gotten a couple spectacular shots from the roof, which had come out great. I had learned to take excellent photographs in the Preventers because of all the surveillance work that I did. I knew that basics before that, thanks to Dr. J, but when you needed photos to make a case, then it paid to have them look as professional and accurate as possible.

I looked at the photos on Duo's laptop. I knew that he had just downloaded them now. There hadn't been any kind of manipulation involved. But what I saw disturbed me.

Duo had been taking pictures of the whole church and I hadn't been paying attention to what he was doing. I looked at the photos and wondered why no one had ever noticed this before. But then, no one had been looking for it. Duo hadn't been, even if he had been there before.

"You see it too?" Duo asked me.

I nodded. "It's strange. I don't understand what I am looking at, but I can see why it's upsetting you."

Duo laughed. His laugh sounded strained. "You want a drink and people around us when I start to tell you why it's so freaky to me?"

I looked up at him. Duo looked pale. I nodded. "I'm buying."

Duo had brought the camera with us and was staring at it as if it was the enemy. I didn't blame him. What I had seen had disturbed me too and Dr. J had made sure that I didn't indulge in superstitions or other flights of fancy when I was growing up. We walked a while, before settling on a bar overlooking the Seine. I didn't know where we were, but figured that we could find our way back to the hotel somehow. We had walked all over the city it seemed, since Duo too restless to talk about what was bothering him. While I had seen the same thing that he had in the photographs, I didn't have the training to see what was bothering him. Some people would say that I didn't have the imagination.

I got us a bottle of red wine and a couple of glasses, while Duo stared into the river. I sat there and sipped at my wine, while Duo's sat there untouched. I figured that the owner would let us sit here and drink, I'd buy another bottle of wine if I had to or wave my Preventers badge in his face. Whatever I had to do to get Duo through this.

"The church was built at least ten centuries before we were born," Duo finally said.

"Probably," I told him.

"I was taking pictures of everything, because I might change my topic and I wanted to have pictures for the basic course, as well as a couple of the upper level special topics I am going to teach over the next couple of years and I am babbling, aren't I?"

"You are," I told him calmly.

"Aren't you freaked?" he asked me.

"I don't know enough," I told him. "While I know that you think that I'm smart, I'm not someone that knows art."

"You're much more practical," he told me.

"You fucking earned the right not to be 'practical'," I told him heatedly. He shouldn't feel guilty for not saving the world all the time and wanting to have a life. I made my choices and didn't think that everyone else had to make the same ones. "Or to feel that you're jumping at shadows. But I think that I am seeing the same thing that you are. Or do you want me to contact Wufei or Trowa on this?"

Duo looked at me. "Wufei? The man doesn't have a clue about Western art. He's a lit guy, books all over his apartment. Besides, me calling him while I'm on vacation to talk shop will definitely piss off his present boyfriend who thinks that we're too close."

Duo made the gesture for quotation marks with his fingers for the last two words. Part of me was ecstatic that Wufei was dating someone, but I was also angry that it was someone that wasn't mature enough to accept that Wufei and Duo were close, for a number of reasons. They had almost died on the Moon Base together and had both seen their homes destroyed by OZ, messily and having to standby helplessly watching it happen. They had a lot in common besides fighting a war together.

"Then I'll call him," I snapped, "and tell the idiot boyfriend to go screw himself."

Duo laughed and then took a sip of his wine. "This isn't bad," he commented.

"The house brand," I told him. "I'm more of a beer person."

"Cider myself," Duo admitted, "but in Paris, you drink wine. And does Trowa want you to interrupt whatever he's doing? Isn't he on some sort of camera safari in Southern Kenya?"

I nodded, surprised that Duo knew that. I did because we actually had worked on scheduling are vacations at the same time, so that we didn't have to deal with another Preventer agent in the field. Not that we didn't like our fellow peacekeepers, it was better for all of us if we kept our distance. The rookies were into hero worship and the old timers usually didn't trust us because they were ex-OZ or White Fang supporters. Lady Une just let us deal with it in our own manner, because her interference had never helped us.

"Don't you find it eerie that over a millennia before we were born, someone was carving our faces in a chapel in an obscure church?" Duo demanded.

He was clutching at the wine glass now, his hand shaking a little. I can see why he was disturbed. It wasn't only us, as in him and me, but all of the Gundam Pilots and those that we had interacted with during the war.

"What's a holy innocent?" I asked him.

Duo frowned, wondering why I was asking this. He put his glass down. "Holy Innocents are the boys that were massacred by Herod in an attempt to kill Jesus. He ordered all male children under the age of two to be killed. It's in Matthew. Some scholars don't believe that it happened, but that is an argument that I am leaving to the biblical scholars."

I nodded. I hadn't been raised religious. I think that was because I had been with men that thought nothing about killing large number of people for their ideals and getting me to do so for them too. Religion would have just gotten in their way, making me ask awkward questions at the least, rebellion as a worst case scenario and having to start over with another subject.

"Are there a lot of churches, but it was more popular to name your church after the Virgin Mary or one of the local or powerful saints when that place was built," Duo started. "Then there is whether the church is Orthodox or Catholic persuasion, because they have different saints. But Innocents des Sacre is isolated. I don't think that anyone has done any serious articles on it since before the colonies were built."

"You can ignore it," I told him.

"I wasn't a Gundam Pilot because I ignored things," Duo snarled at me.

The wine had disappeared from his glass and he poured himself another drink and topped my glass off. "The bitch is how accurate that all those statues are. It showed me who I truly am."

"Since I don't know anything about the topic, tell me," I said. I pitched my voice so that it was low and friendly, a trick that I used during questioning suspects.

Duo glared at me. "You don't have to pull that shit with me."

I flushed, feeling embarrassed that I had pulled such a cheap trick with him. Duo sat back and stared into his glass of wine. He was silent for several minutes before he started talking again. His voice was a bit rough and I was glad that he wanted to talk still after my screw up,

"The Catholic Church loves organizing things," he told me. "They have centuries of experience, which is why their PR is so good. But in the beginning, they needed something to make them special out of all the other cultish religions that were out there at the time. They had a lot of smart guys that believed and they wrote a lot of stuff. One of the guys, called Gregory the Great because he did a lot for the early Christian Church and part of this was writing a lot of letters and essays and lists, getting the Church organized. One of the lists that he made was about the sins that mankind made and what they could be forgiven for. A basic list of the really bad ones and those that were minor."

"So what these sins are basically, are guidelines of what the rules are, written a long time ago," I said,

"A long time ago," Duo echoed. "But this list, for a lack of a better term, didn't become popular until the fourteenth century, for a lot of reasons. I am not going to give you the lecture on the changes in art and religion in Europe due to social and political changes brought on by the Black Death."

I thought that it might be interesting, but I could see why Duo didn't want to cram into me several years worth of lectures on art, history and medieval politics to explain why he was so upset. I settled for asking the simple question, because I've found out that those are the best. "What happened?"

"The list of sins and their counterparts, the Seven Holy Virtues, became popular in art due to a poem by Dante Aligheiri, an Italian poet during the Black Death called The Divine Comedy. They were in a lot of paintings and they also started being carved as statues and other things in churches, as well as literature. They started showing up about the same time that the seven Liberal Arts did."

"It seems that seven is a very popular number," I said dryly.

Duo grimaced. "I never understood the numerology involved."

"That is also probably another lecture and a half," I told him. "Let's just cover the basics. What are the sins? What are the Virtues?"

Duo leaned back and sipped at his wine. "The sins, in order of their importance are Pride, from which all other sins are born. Envy, Greed, Lust, Gluttony, Sloth and Wrath are the other sins. Lust is always a woman. The virtues are Humility, Kindness, Charity, Chastity, Temperance, Diligence and Forgiveness. They are usually paired together."

"That doesn't sound too bad," I told him.

Duo shrugged. "They meant different things back then. Greed wasn't just money, but possessions. Sloth was more like the sin of being acted upon then acting. Gluttony was mainly thoughtless excess. Chastity was more about self control then being sexually active."

"Can you tell me which one is which?" I asked him.

Duo turned the camera around so that I was looking at the view screen. The picture was a bit distorted, since it was so small, but I could see it clearly enough. Duo searched through the pictures, until he found the ones that he was looking for. "These are from that side chapel, next to the nave. I thought that it was an odd arrangement, given the era that the place was built. The chapel looked like it didn't get used a lot."

"How can you tell?" I asked him.

Duo shrugged, "People leave traces of their passage in the places that they live and worship in. No matter how well it's taken care of, you still have wear in a building. Steps that have groves in them because of the people walking up and down them. Parts of a statue that are worn away because of the faithful rubbing it for luck or a blessing. You saw that all over the other parts of the church. Repairs that had been made over the centuries, discoloration because of time, the marks of war. You saw that everywhere in the Sacre des Innocents, except for that chapel."

I didn't know what to say about that. I really didn't know enough about the topic to give him the answers that he wanted to hear. Was it just coincidence or some weird sign from the Almighty?

Duo sighed and gestured at the first picture. "Pride. The sin that all others are supposed to be caused by. I don't know about that. Humility is the virtue that it's paired with. In that chapel, there are pillars that are devoted to the vices and virtues. They face each other, across the alter that is that chapel. The chapel isn't dedicated to anyone, which is another odd thing. One of the local nobles gave money to have it built and told the priest at the time what he wanted. The records for that chapel are almost nonexistent, including the name of the donor. I didn't think anything of it then, but now..."

I looked at the picture. I was surprised that no one else could see Treize Khushrenada in the image of Pride that was there. The eyebrows to me were the first clue, then his hair and the way that he stood. Pride was Khushrenada all right. I still hated the man for what he had done, for tricking me into killing that Doves, thinking that his way was the only one that was possible.

I wasn't surprised to see that Humility was Lady Une. She had humbled herself to the man, even after his death. Too bad she hadn't been able temper his vision. He might be alive right now. The hairstyle of looped braids and her fanatical stare was what made Humility the image of Lady Une, since even now she was living only for Treize Khushrenada, his vision of peace.

Duo shifted to the other picture, "This one is Sloth and Diligence."

I wasn't surprised to see that Noin was Diligence, the woman never stopped thinking or planning for her troops, unless Zechs was involved. That man had a tendency to cloud her judgment. Sloth was a twin for Zechs's angelic face, his long hair falling around his body.

I didn't hate the man, but he would be nothing without Noin or his sister. The man seemed to be chronically unable to act unless he had been acted upon first, his whole life until the end of the war seemed to be like that. He was still only able to react to the situations that he found himself in. I had grown beyond that and wondered why he couldn't. The only time I had ever known the man to show any kind of initiative was in our dual down in the South Pole.

Both of them were still at the Mars Colony. Noin was the governor of the place and Zechs just seemed to be there. I was certain that Noin was the only reason the man hadn't self destructed with drinking or drugs. I didn't know what her relationship with the man was, but it seemed that she was still making him look good, like she had done in the Academy.

I didn't say anything. Duo poured his third glass of wine and forwarded to the next picture. "This is supposed to be Envy and Kindness."

Envy was Wufei, which confused me. I never thought that he had been envious of anyone. He had been his clan's prized child, treasured and allowed almost an indulgence. But Wufei's slanted eyes and slicked back hair, the way that he had worn it during the war, was on that statue. I didn't think that there had been contact with China at the time that this was made.

"I don't understand," I muttered, stunned.

Duo sighed. "He never thinks that he's good enough. That there is something lacking in himself, so he searches for it in others and hates the fact that he can't find it. It's basically the reason that he keeps dating assholes."

I choked at that and studied Kindness. Kindness had Sally Po's twisted braids and the unique cast of her face, a mixture of Chinese and something else. She had been kind to all of us on the Peacemillion. I had also heard stories of her work in the resistance, that she had been someone that you could count on. She had been admired by everyone that she had worked with during the war, on both sides, and as a Preventer. She was Lady Une's right hand person now. She got a lot of things done because of that reputation. Duo forwarded the pictures again. "Lust and Chastity."

From what he had told me earlier, I wasn't surprised to see that Lust was a woman or even that it as Dorothy Catalonia. She wasn't lustful in a sexual way, but she hadn't lost her taste for causing trouble to gain power, even after all this time. Troublemaking was like lovemaking for her. I had just heard the rumors about that, because thankfully, she kept her troublemaking on Earth.

It took me a couple of minutes to recognize Hilde. Duo and Hilde had been friendly ever since they had met, but war had caused some stranger relationships.

"Chastity meant something different then," Duo repeated. "Purity of thoughts and courage. Something that Hilde always had, even if it was for the wrong side."

"You still keep in touch with her?" I asked him.

Duo smiled, it was sad and I knew that I had asked him the wrong thing again. "She was killed on L2 about ten years ago. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up getting shot in a robbery."

"I'm sorry," I said.

He had been friends with her and a lot of people thought that they had been more involved then that. Duo hadn't said anything one way or another, but I had seen the look in his eyes when he dragged her back to the PeaceMillion, injured in the battle before the last one. He had loved her, but I didn't think that it was more then as a sister.

Duo shrugged and I didn't say anymore. He'd tell me when he wanted to. The picture in the viewfinder changed. "Greed and Charity."

It took me a second to recognize Quatre as Greed. He was still an angelic figure, but there was a hardness to his smile that I recognized. Something about the statue screamed Quatre, but it was also wrong and twisted. I shuddered; this was a Quatre that I didn't want to know. We had drifted apart after the war, but unlike Duo, he hadn't tried to mend the rift, for many reasons. The small glimpses that I had gotten of him over the years in person made him seem more like this statue then the boy that I had fought with during the war.

Charity was Relena Darlian, looking like she was fifteen again. The hairstyle was the same, the smile was hers and I remembered the last time that I had seen her. Gone was the passionate girl that screamed for me to kill her. She had been replaced by a woman that was slightly more cynical, but just as giving. She was heavily involved in the rebuilding of the colonies. We also kept in touch through email and cards, but I hadn't had the urge to visit her. I know that her husband was glad about that, because of her crush on me.

Duo didn't say anything but clicked the picture forward. "Gluttony and Temperance."

Cathy Bloom and Trowa stared back at me. I frowned. Statue Cathy's hair was a mass of wild curls, but she stared at Trowa the same way that Cathy did. She wanted to own him, wrap him up and keep Trowa safe in the circus, devour his life in a manner of speaking. She had never forgiven me for being his partner, thinking that if I had just walked out of his life after the war, Trowa wouldn't be a Preventer. She was wrong, but it was a belief that she clung to. It made for rather awkward meetings when she came to visit.

Trowa stared back at me, his face hidden in shadows and leaves rather than his bang. The statue, even though this picture gave off the same calm assurances that he had. I liked it. But young, why did all these statues seem to be the same age as we had been during the war? That was part of the eeriness that Duo was feeling, I think.

"He looks more lifelike," Duo mumbled.

I laughed. "You've never seen Trowa going after the last brownie on tray during a meeting."

Duo laughed at that and put down the camera. "I'm not crazy."

I think that he meant it as a question, but it came out as a statement. "You aren't crazy," I told him.

I forwarded to the next picture. I didn't know what vice and virtue was supposed to be displayed here, but Duo and I had been immortalized in stone, permanently fifteen it seemed. We stared at each other and I was amazed at the braid that I saw carved into the statue, since it looked so intricate, draped over his chest. I saw the longing in eyes as well as the anger and hurt. I wondered why Duo couldn't see it too.

I stared at my idealized, too pretty younger self and wondered if I had ever looked that peaceful. Maybe when I had blown myself up, but I doubted if I had ever looked like that at other time. I remember being tired more then anything. I think that I had that peace now, but it had been a long, hard battle to gain it.

"Wrath and Forgiveness," Duo whispered, his voice distant. "You're Forgiveness. A Virtue."

"You aren't him anymore," I blurted out. "If you had looked at me like that during the war..."

Duo stared at me. "I don't understand."

"You see the anger and the hurt, I see the love," I told him. "He's angry because he's hurt. But there's love there too. And how can I be Forgiveness after what I had done?"

I was thinking of the Doves and all the other mistakes that I had made when I was fighting.

Duo shook his head. "Mariemeia. You forgave her for what she did. For what she almost made us do again. I couldn't for the longest time."

I stared at the camera. The doppelganger I saw there was looking at Duo the way that I wanted to. I wondered if Duo saw that. "I see love here too. In both statues"

Duo looked at me with an odd smile. "I see love here too. But we can touch. Do you want to?"

That was a year ago. Duo published his book and while it wasn't a best seller, it had been well received in academic circles. No one else saw the resemblance we had seen outside Wufei and Trowa. I don't know what effect that it had on Trowa, but it seems that Wufei wasn't dating assholes anymore, according to Duo.

Duo got his tenure. We're shopping for a house right now. I'm not ready to give up being a Preventer, but I am thinking about settling down on Earth. Or at least when I retire, settling down with Duo. Retirement isn't that far away for me. Duo's going to buy a house with a garden for me to putter in, a place that I can make into a home even if I'm not there. Because I've decided that wherever Duo is, is my home. And I know that he feels the same about me.