That's how long it took Quatre to completely refinance L2. I think he did so thinking it would bring Duo back, catch his attention. Him and Trowa live together now. Happy and wealthy and without a care in the world. You see them on magazine covers all throughout the colonies, glossy films adding shine to their smiles and hair. Hair -- five years is how long it took Trowa to cut his. He shows off his face now, his bangs simply stylish tufts, side-swiping his forehead and curling delicately around an ear. He's still in the circus business, but it's much more publicized. Trowa's quite the star, almost like an actor. In his interviews his voice is thick and caught in his throat, held down by cockiness. He's not so much shy, now, as he is quiet. He doesn't like saying unnecessary things.

It took five years for Wufei to graduate from University. He worked as a Preventer part-time while going to school. Not taking long assignments, mostly training new agents and doing paperwork. He's engaged to Sally Po and they say we're all waiting for spring because they want to have it on the beach. I know they're just waiting for Duo.

I was waiting for Duo. I didn't want to work for Preventers, couldn't go back on the field without him, so I opted for school instead. I'm currently still attending, studying architecture. It's fascinating, the mechanics of it, the way the materials feel in your hands or the way the paper crinkles when you sketch. It's a mathematicians' puzzle, a storybook in lines and shapes and numbers. I'd get lost in it and forget that I missed him. But during the night when it was so cold my teeth would keep me awake with their chattering, or so hot that I'd boil like an egg in my own sweat, I'd think of him. I'd think of his smile and his hair. I'd wonder where he was or what he was doing. I'd imagine what I'd be doing if he'd never left. My chest would hurt and I'd rub it until it was red and sore.

I was driving through the city. It was seven o'clock at night and the teenagers were just beginning to appear from the insides of their cars, their eyes red with drugs and their breath sour from alcohol. Women with clown faces and spider legs crawled on their hands and knees from the alleyways, their hair nests of tangles and their lips red and swollen. The lights were bright enough to paint the windows pretty colors and illuminate the black tar of the streets in neon. I don't know how I pulled him from the mess, though, but I suppose it was just our desire for each other. Whatever it was, my eyes found his.

He was leaning against a gas station, smoking a cigarette. The gray smoke created a film around him, protecting him from perverse eyes, eyes that wanted to devour his every detail. Eyes like mine. I pulled my car up right in front of him and rolled the window down.

"Five years and I thought you'd be taller," I called to him. At first, he looked surprised, then skeptical, as if he didn't believe I was really there. As if he'd seen me like this a thousand times before, only to have those images be ghosts of memories. Then he stomped out his cigarette and leaned into the car with a smile on his face.

"Five years and I thought you'd have gotten some manners," he replied. His voice was deeper. I wanted to put it on tape.

"Get in the car," I demanded.

"Sure, I got nowhere else to go," he said.

And he got in.

I asked him where he was staying and he told me, his feet up on my dashboard and his hands beneath his braid, "the Holiday Inn."

So we went there, first.

He'd only been staying there three days. Three days and the room didn't even look lived in. There were no bags on the floor, no coats in the closet, no books on the table. The bathroom sink was clear of toothpaste marks and the counter spacious and vacant. The way my heart had been for five years. I put a "no" before the vacancy sign, now.

"Planning on leaving, soon?" I asked him.

"I was. I was supposed to leave tonight," he said. "I only paid for three days."

"Was?"

He looked up at me from his seat on the bed and smiled a radiant lie, "I have a reason to stay, now."

We talked about where to go for the night. I told him I wanted to take him out, he told me he didn't want to go to sleep. So we planned on staying out late.

In the car we played our music loud and sped past the sidewalks so fast our bodies shook with the force of the engine. Duo laughed at my half-assed stories and fumigated my car with cigarette smoke. We were still so young, having lived only twenty-one years, yet our lives were filled to the brim with memories and hardships. We had so many stories to tell, so many topics to talk about. We only spoke of the good ones, though, not wanting to dirty the waters of the well we were just beginning to drink from once more. Young people could get drunk on adrenaline and hold bottles of alcohol without getting sick. Young people could speed through stop signs and over speed bumps without being afraid of getting caught. We could live in the moment so easily, now, without worrying about the consequences of our actions.

These were things we hadn't realized before. Things we hadn't had the time to contemplate or even consider during the wars. There were certain rules, certain codes we locked our heart with. That night we left them in the skid marks under our tires.

The club was crowded and the music loud. It was thick with smoke like heavy accents, foreign and alluring. People danced under the bright lights like one big mass of bodies, a single living organism, moving and flowing and breathing to the rhythm. The congregation around the bar flirted and chirped their laughter like a flock of brightly colored birds, or maybe hawks, waiting for a small field mouse. I sat at the bar while Duo danced and made love to the crowd, baptizing them with the beads of sweat that flew from his braid and arms. I watched him in the reflection of my beer bottle, a warped green figure. It was like looking into a Fun House mirror. It was as if he wasn't real.

When he came back we sat and talked and munched on fries. He asked me what the guys had been up to and I told him the truth. I asked him what he'd been up to and he lied. Towards daylight he began to talk himself in circles as if I hadn't noticed. I played along and I think he knew that I knew he was lying, committing the sin that he once hated more than anything, but the both of us were so content just to be together and talking and listening that we didn't want to stop for fear of the conversation dying. And if it did die, what if it took another five years to bring it back again? What if we woke up from this hallucinogenic trip to realize that it was never real? That we hadn't been brought back together?

The people came and the people went. The music varied tempo and beats and lyrics. The sky began to purple with the rising sun. I yawned, Duo rubbed his eyes tiredly. Yet we continued to talk and drink and eat. Perhaps we didn't want to say goodnight. The idea of going home to cold sheets and an empty house was not at all appealing.

Eventually we went back and sat in the car. The beers were beginning to filter through our systems and the heavy haze in my mind was fading away. I didn't want to lose it. Quickly, frantically, as if in a panic, I turned to Duo. His face was large and white, his two blue eyes morphing into one. A Cyclops. A monster. I opened my lips and asked him, "Where?" and he whispered, "France."

And then we kissed.

I could taste France on him and see it in my mind. See him spending the past five years in cafes and gay bars and vineyards. I saw him with his camera taking pictures of everything and then turning them into words at night. I wanted to ask him if he did it, if he found what he was looking for, if he knows now what he wants in life. But he closed his lips around the words and forced them back down my throat with his tongue and his hands were playing musical notes on my body.

There are little things about him that are different. There's a scar on the inside of his thumb that wasn't there before. He'd gotten a tattoo of the L2 colony over his heart. Little things, small things, things that don't matter. They separate the then from now and make it impossible to forget that he's not the same person he was five years ago. I placed my palm over them. Out of sight, out of mind. We kissed some more.

Later, after we'd made love under the navy blue sheets in my apartment and were counting the stains on my ceiling, I asked him.

"What did you find in France?"

"Nothing," he said, "That's when I knew that I had to come back home. Because here, there's something."

His hand was warm and moist on my chest and my heartbeat tapped Morse code into his palm.

I want you. Stop. It said. I need you. Stop.

"I love you."

"Don't stop."