The Greatest of These

All previous disclaimers apply.


“Wu Fei, what are you doing here?” Quatre Reberba Winner-Barton leaned against the doorframe to one of the many guest rooms in the home he shared with his husband, the home that had once belonged to his father, and fixed his large, soft eyes in a glare on the man he considered one of his best friends. Wu Fei was currently sitting on the bed trying to comfort his very fussy daughter as she refused the spoonful of cereal he was trying to feed her.

“I should think it would be obvious,” Wu Fei replied, a little bit of the disgust he was feeling at himself for not being able to feed his daughter showing through in his voice, “I am trying to get my daughter to eat.”

“Don’t act dense, Wu Fei,” Quatre warned, not bothering to shield the anger in his voice, “What are you really doing here? Here in the colonies? Here in my house? Why aren’t you with Duo on Earth? You were both so happy. I just… I don’t understand. I thought that…”

“You thought what?” Wu Fei stood, giving up trying to feed Sheira and closing his eyes against the way she was looking at him, accusing him. He walked to the window and stared out at the colony beneath them, “You thought that I would stay with him? You thought I would marry him? Raise kids with him? You’ve all decided all of this for us!”

“Us?” Quatre knew that he was shouting now, and he never shouted, but he couldn’t work up the energy to care, “Can you even hear yourself, Wu Fei? You think of yourself in a unit with him! You’ve spent the past months at his side! He loves your daughter! He loves you! What could be so wrong about it? Is it because he’s a man?”

“Don’t you dare, Winner!” Wu Fei growled back at the fuming blond man across the room from him, “Would I have slept with him if…”

“I don’t know, Wu Fei!” Quatre didn’t even let him finish, “Would you have? How can I not think so when you slept with him and left him? Maybe the only reason you ever slept with him was to get yourself off!”

“Winner, I don’t want to hit you, but if you don’t leave right now I will. I should kill you for even suggesting such a thing. Never mind the insult to my honor. He is worth so much more than that. To suggest otherwise…”

Quatre finally felt the emotion from Wu Fei that he had been trying to drag up the entire conversation. The pain, the love. The anger left his small body as quickly as it had come and he walked into the room and set a hand to Wu Fei’s shoulder, “Wu Fei, you’re just as in love with him as he is with you. Why won’t you just give into it? You’ve been falling since that night so many years ago. You fell completely when you saw him dancing barefoot with Sheira. I love you both so much, I’m so in tune with you, I felt it all. Why won’t you just give in to it?”

“Quatre,” Wu Fei’s voice was steady, “I can’t. I spent so many years running away from him, hurting him. How could I be worthy of him now? If I was truly an honorable man I would have left Sheira with him and let them both be happy. But, I can’t. She’s mine and I promised that I would always take care of her the moment she was born. It will be better this way. If I leave him now it will hurt for a time and then he will find someone better.”

“Wu Fei, he’s been waiting for you for years. How can you think that? If he loves you, who are you to decide if you’re worthy of him or not? If he wants you and you want him… If he loves you and you love him… It should be the easiest thing in the world.”

“But, what if something happens to him?” Wu Fei asked quietly and Quatre was finally aware of just what it was that had Wu Fei running. He wanted to slam his hand against his forehead for not seeing it before, but didn’t for fear of shaking Wu Fei out of his sharing state, “I’ve only loved like this once before. She was beautiful and strong, everything I wasn’t. So I became everything she was to remember her. But, if something were to happen to him… I wouldn’t be able to survive it. This love… it overwhelms me. If it was taken away... If he was taken away… he would take my heart with him. I’d be afraid that I wouldn’t have anything left for Sheira and she’d be left alone completely.”

“Wu Fei,” Quatre wrapped his arms around his friend’s shoulders, surprised when Wu Fei didn’t push him away and just listened, “I can’t tell you what to do. I was never able to tell anyone of you what to do. But, I can tell you that loss is what we risk when we love. But, a life without that love is not a life worth living. Don’t make it harder than it has to be, my friend. Love without fear or you’ll regret it. I think everyday since Briseis was kidnapped, what if something were to happen to Trowa, to one of my babies? I ask myself if I could survive that. But the more I think about it, the more I know that I would rather know that I loved them as much as I could while I had them than not love them at all. It all sounds cliché, I know, but can something be cliché when it’s true?”

“Yes,” Wu Fei smiled, “It can,” Then he turned around and picked Sheira up, cuddling her, setting his chin to the top of her downy head, “Let’s go home, little girl.”


“Duo? Duo, open the door! Come on, Duo! Now!” Heero couldn’t help the panic that was rising in his throat as he pounded on the door to his best friend’s house. It felt like it had been days, but it had really only been hours since Quatre had called him and told him that Wu Fei and Sheira had just arrived at the Winner-Barton home and it had only taken a little bit of talk to discern that Wu Fei had left without telling Duo he was going. They both understood what that had meant. Quatre had been keeping close tabs on both of the men and had informed Heero as soon as it had begun to be more than dependence and friendship once again. As soon as his conversation with Quatre had ended Heero had called Relena at work, told her where he was going and gotten on a shuttle.

It was only a few hours later now, but he felt as if he had been traveling for days. The panic that started as a low fist in his chest was coming to a head as he prepared to kick down the door. He wouldn’t admit it, even to himself, but he was afraid of what he would find behind the door. Duo was his best friend and he understood how deeply and quickly Duo loved. It had been hard enough when Duo had thought himself in love with Heero. It had been early on in the war when Heero hadn’t yet allowed Relena to transform him and he had pushed Duo away with a disgust he hadn’t truly felt. He had feared for the next weeks that he would either find Duo dead or hear of the bright-eyed American’s demise because of the despair that had filled Duo’s eyes as he had turned away. At the time Heero had told himself that he felt nothing, but he had dealt with the guilt of hurting someone so badly ever since. He was more worried now than he had ever been. Duo had gotten over him very quickly. He had never gotten over Wu Fei. They had all watched for years and years as he fell more and more in love with the Chinese man until he would never love another.

Heero was afraid he would walk into Duo’s bathroom and find him cold and lifeless on the floor. It was something he knew he would survive, but that he didn’t want to have to. He took a deep breath and prepared himself to kick down the door. Just as his foot came up a voice behind him surprised him so thoroughly that he stumbled and had to catch himself, a distinctly ungraceful move that normally would have had him flushing if he hadn’t been so damn surprised.

“Heero? What the hell are you doing trying to break into my house?”

“Duo?” he spun around to see his friend, looking tired, but still put together and calm.

“Yeah, me. What are you doing here?”

“Why didn’t you answer the door?” The natural reaction seemed to be anger and he couldn’t stop it from coming through in his voice.

“I do have a job,” Duo lifted an eyebrow, “It is Monday.”

“A job?” Heero felt his knees go a little weak with relief, and a corner of his mind recognized how ridiculous he was being, but couldn’t bring himself to care, “You went to work today?”

“Sure,” Duo scoffed as he unlocked the door, “Did you expect anything different?”

“I…”

“You did,” Duo swept into his house, dropped his coat on the hook, and toed out of his shoes, “You really expected me to fall apart because Wu Fei just dumped me like so much trash after I took care of him and Sheira for weeks, fell in love with them both, and he even went as far as to make love to me and leave without a word?”

“Duo…” Heero tried to place a hand to his friend’s shoulder.

“No!” Duo pulled away and pulled a pan out of a cupboard before setting it on the stove, “I don’t want to talk about it! I don’t want your sympathy. Yes, it hurts like hell. Yes, it is going to hurt like hell for a long time. No, I will never be able to be in the same room with him again. At least not for a long, long time. But, you know what I’m going to do? I’m not going to fall apart. I fell apart once. I’m stronger than that now. I’m going to pick myself up, dust myself off, and start paperwork for adoption. You want to know why? Because I have always known that I should be a father. For a time I was one. Losing Sheira hurts just as much as losing Wu Fei. Maybe more. But, nothing is ever going to break me. Ever. Got it?”

“Yeah, Duo. I got it,” Heero murmured.

“Good. Now, what I want us to do is have dinner, and then I want you to tell me everything about what you and Relena and the kids have been up to for the last little while. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll get a little drunk. But not too drunk because I have to work tomorrow. Okay?”

Duo turned to him and smiled and Heero found that he could at least pretend to smile back, “Okay.”