Trick or Treat

"Wow! Lady Une! Nice costume!" Sally called from the entrance. The
lower lobby of the Starlight Plaza Hotel had been decorated for the
Preventors Halloween Party and it was filled with costumed
Preventors, ex-generals, politicians and other dignitaries important
to the peace of the Earth Sphere. A mingling of business and
pleasure as it were.

Lady Une had dressed as the Rose Bride from Revolutionary Girl
Utena. Her beloved Treize still held that much sway over her life.
Him and his unnatural fascination with roses.

"Thank-you Sally, yours is... very..." Une sought desperately for
something diplomatic to say. Sally had dressed in uniform,
Preventors Uniform.

"You did read that this was a masquerade on the card?" Une inquired.
Sally grinned and said

"I already have it taken care of." And she held aloft with all the
triumph of a great victory a cheap plastic children’s mask of a cat
and snapped the elastic band around her head.

"See? I brought a mask."

"I suppose it does meet the minimum requirements," Une said with a
shrug.

"Besides, the real fun in a masquerade is identifying everyone
else!" Sally said. "My jaw nearly hit the floor when I saw the ever-
serious Heero Yuy dressed as a court jester."

"You think that's amazing, look over there..." Lady Une said,
pointing. Sally did so. Her eyes widened.

"I see it, but I don't believe it. Wufei? Wufei is wearing a
costume? Wufei is wearing a cowboy costume? Someone get me to
Medlab, I think I'm going into cardiac arrest."

"That makes three of us," called a new voice over from the side.

It was Midii Une, no relation to the costumed Rose Bride of that
evening. She had been the newest addition to the Preventors growing
intelligence gathering section about a year ago and had immediately
stood out from the other recruits by virtue of knowledge,
capability, and the unerring knack for above-par mission completion
on each and every assignment she'd been given. It wasn't so much
that she put herself forward (quite the opposite, the young woman
was really quite shy) but her standards of excellence spoke for her.

"I usually hate these kinds of social gathering where a whole bunch
of strangers are all packed into a single room, but since the
invitation specified that it was a masquerade and that I could wear a
mask, I decided to come," she said quietly.

"Well, that's a very pretty costume," Sally complimented. "Neo-Queen
Serenity?"

"Yes, only I borrowed her husbands mask," Midii said. Thin white
material and floating filmy gauze of white and silver gave her an
even more angelic-looking appearance than her already cherubic face.
And the hair styled up into two odangos with long streaming tails was
all her own (it only went down to her waist however).

Not one of the Preventors had been more surprised than she to
discover her sudden promotion after only two months of fieldwork.
She had been reassigned to one of the Preventors Elites, a
specialist in espionage and covert intelligence gathering. At the
time Midii had been recieving her promotion, Une had confided to the
young recruit that her (then) new partner had met Commander Une
while he had been undercover spying on the movements of OZ. She'd
been surprised and dismayed to meet and recognise her new partner as
her friend (and unfortunately her enemy and victim) Nanashi.

"Did you make it yourself?" Une inquired.

"Yes, money's still tight so I sewed my own costume. I had to make
costumes for my brothers anyway so one more wasn't a whole lot of
work. I just basically adapted a nightgown, only please don't spread
that around. There IS an extra layer I added under it, although in
the manga the dress was quite transparent at times I really didn't
want to spend the night in a semi-transparent dress, seeing as I
have to work with most of these people on a day to day basis and I
get enough of those speculative looks that I don't want to give them
anything further to speculate about."

"If anyone's said or done anything-" Sally said in alarm.

"Nono! It's not that, it's just that appraising looks like that are
a natural reaction to an attractive person. Women do it with men and
men do it with women. It never goes any farther than that first
look; you know where you're trying to figure out if a guy is
deceptively well-built or if he's just scrawny and wiry." Midii
protested immediately. "I don't think anyone would dare to try to
take it any farther given who my current partner is."

Just between Midii and her current partner, there was what felt to
her like a small miracle between them. She loved him, that much was
clear to a girl who always knew the status of her heart. She'd loved
him in a childish way for years, pinning all of her childish hopes
and fancies on a young boy who perhaps would not grow to be the man
she envisioned in her mind; but that didn't really matter since the
vision was what counted. The dream of Nanashi was the secret dream
she held in her heart of a friend and companion she could always
rely on in a life and a world where only person she really had to
rely on was herself. In her heart he had always been with her,
beside her encouraging her through a particularly dangerous maneuver
for her employers, protecting her from loneliness, from regret, from
betrayal. Perhaps it hadn't been the real Nanashi, but her young
heart had needed something to pin it's hopes on and someplace to
focus and gather its strength from so Nanashi became her guardian
angel.

"Speaking of whom," Lady Une said while inclining her head
gracefully in acknowledgement of a silent greeting by and ex member
of the Romafeller Foundation. "Is he going to be here tonight do you
think?"

"Who knows," said Sally. "We both know that aside of possibly Wufei
and/or Heero, Trowa isn't the most social person."

"He mentioned something about his sister dragging him away from Lion-
san for the evening," Midii murmured quietly. "I can only assume
that she meant to bring him here."

"Well that's good," Une said absently as she smiled benignly at a
new arrival, some prominent businessman or other who had dressed in
a giant chicken suit.

"I took my brothers out trick or treating earlier," Midii said with
a small smile. "You should have seen my second youngest's James Bond
costume. I think Trowa's been a bad influence on the boy. My
youngest heard that he does spy work on occasion and he
automatically thinks that it's just like in the movies."

"Trowa's been over to your house?" Sally questioned with the
interest of something that was news to her.

"Once or twice, there were mission reports that had to be written
during a time block where I needed to be at home watching over my
family, cleaning and preparing dinner so he was kind enough to bring
the work to me and stay to see the task was done," Midii said. "He
really is very kind."

She would never have dared to believe that she'd meet him again or
that her quiet lonely boy would have turned out to be an equally
quiet man who, despite having found good friends and a wonderful
family in the form of his sister Cathy, was still lonely deep down.
At first, Midii had just concentrated on trying to prove herself to
him (technically he was her superior for their first few missions);
prove herself trustworthy and loyal, capable and utterly without a
thought to her mind of betrayal. She wanted to reassure him that
this time was for real, this time she really was there to help him
and even be his friend.

Then it had occured to her that perhaps she seemed even more
suspicious by being too friendly and too eager to please so she'd
made a complete one-eighty and barely spoke to him for the next
mission. Midii was self-contained by nature, she prefered a few
close attatchments to having a lot of general acquaintances and she'd
come to consider him a ver close friend to her and it was difficult
not being able to speak what was on her mind. In fact it had
reminded her all-to-strongly of the time she'd been beside him as a
child, never being able to say what was truly in her heart until it
was all over with, and even then... even then she'd let him walk
away thinking she didn't like him because she couldn't bear to hear
a rejection of her true feelings for him. To her surprise a few days
later he'd approached her in her (new) office after the mission
wanting to know if he had offended her somehow. It had amazed her,
HE had wanted to know if SHE was upset with HIM! She'd been forced
into a confession and had found to her surprise and secret joy that
he had forgiven her long ago. Her heart had felt like it had been on
wings when he told her that he was willing to start fresh with her.

At that point she'd truly become his friend and he hers. Their bond
had deepened over time as they each quietly, almost shyly opened up
lines of communication between them, sharing memories and stories of
their lives that had happened after they'd parted ways. Midii also
shared about a lot of what her life had been like before they'd met.
Trowa said he hadn't had much of a life in the rebel company and
she'd believed them, but it had surprised them both when on occasion
a memory she shared with him had jogged loose a memory of his own
that he'd forgotten in the overwhelming majority that was battle
after endless battle. It had warmed her then that he'd told her the
memory freely, often without being (delicately) asked about it. He'd
trusted her, he'd felt sure enough of her to confide in her!

The thought alone, that he had faith in her to trust her with his
rare confidences and treat her as a friend, had made her so happy at
the time that she hadn't dare wanted to ask for more of him than
that. She'd forced herself to be content with the knowledge that
even if he could never love someone like her, he could at least like
her on the level of a trusted friend. Her greedy heart had wanted
more, but she had reigned it in and told it to hold its peace;
surely just the oportunity to be by his side, to know more and more
about the man she loved would be enough for her. Every day for her
had been a mixture of joy and secret sorrow; joy that she would
spend more time at his side, sorrow that she had to keep her true
feelings for him a secret. She had been philosophical about it,
after all... half a loaf was better than none. Especially when she'd
never really allowed herself to entertain the hope of getting the
half-loaf. So she'd forced herself to be content and ordered her
hungry heart to subside in silence, and the weeks of missions
together flew by. She was made his full partner and their bond to
each other strengthened.

"Hey look there's Duo," Midii said, pointing at a very authentic and
creepy-looking Grim Reaper, complete with Scythe.

"Oh, my, how terribly predictable," Sally comented (on the
appropriateness of one who called themselves the God of Death
dressing as the god of death). "It's a very good costume however.
Who's the girl next to him?"

"Hilde, that's the ex- OZ recruit he lives with," Midii said. "It
looks like she's dressed up as Lady Death, from the old American
comic book."

"How is it you can guess everyone with just one glance, you've been
doing it all evening. I heard you earlier."

"You forget my profession. It's the fruit of years of careful
training. I've been trained to look beneath exterior and cosmetic
changes that can be made quickly and easily and notice the things
about them that are harder to change; unconscious posture,
mannerisms, height, weight, build, and the tell-tale voice are all
things that I assess without thinking about it," she said softly.

"Ah," was all Sally said. "You know, I wish Noin were here for the
fun. I wonder if she's having fun on Mars right now."

"I'm sure she is, although as you know, initial colonization is
never easy. Still, she's with the one she loves so I have no doubt
she's enjoying herself," Une said, with just s trifle bit of
wistfulness in her own voice.

"It certainly looks like Mariemaia is having fun," Sally said as she
glanced over at the now-exuberant young redhead clustered into a
knot of children her own age and expounding enthusiastically about
some kind of plan she'd come up with. They looked like they were
being convinced, the child was a natural leader.

"I'd better go over and see what's up before she gets herself and
them into unintended mischief," said Lady Une with a small
smile. "She's a thoughtful child really, with such good
intentions and I'm glad to see her interacting well with children
her own age for once in her life, but I'm not sure if she's quite
clear about the bounds of what's acceptable as a thoughtful gesture
just yet. Turning the punch bowl into a goldfish bowl with koi fish
from the gardens as a new party centerpiece is thoughtful, but..."

"Oh my," said Midii, stifling a chuckle. "I don't know who would be
more upset about the situation, the guests or the fish."

Sally chuckled and walked off with Lady Une to go tease her young
partner on his cute little costume (one of her cheif joys in life
was verbally fencing with young Wufei) and Midii went to go and
guard the punch bowl as well as investigate the treats in the offing
at the sideboard. All she'd had to eat for the past several hours
had been some of her brothers halloween candy. She kinda wished she
had brought her younger brothers to the party with her, but she
hadn't thought that anyone else would be bringing children to an
adult masquerade (and they had been much more interested in the mugs
of hot spiced apple cider, fried cakes and halloween candy in front
of a good horror movie over at their friends' house anyway).

When she had a small plate filled with tidbits from the table and a
small glass of non-fish fruit punch she found an unoccupied seat in
a small niche and sat back to watch the crowd. She loved crowd
watching, since Midii really wasn't the gregarious type she found
her fun in watching the playful antics of others. Now the decorated
room before her was filled with a wild mixture of bright flashy
colors, pale pastels, and dark grim shades all mixing and mingling,
ebbing and flowing in a manner that made her feel a little dizzy
trying to keep watch of them all. Some of the costumes were very
simple while others were outrageous, the air seemed to swirl with
the mixtures of fluttery silk and heavy velvet with jewelry or
accessories catching the light. Yes, she could be perfectly happy
just watching them all night. The young watcher was not aware that
she herself was being watched.
*
Trowa had had his invitation accepted on his behalf by his sister.
After Catherine had been through passing out halloween candy to the
children who had come to the circus' special halloween show she had
marched him with his half-mask still on to this party and insisted
that he mingle with the guests there. He'd talked for a few minutes
to his comrades and they'd drifted off, Heero was stalking...
er "protecting" Relena Darlian for this evening, just as he did
every evening. It would have been worth the march here just to see
his sombre ally dressed as a jester. Who said they didn't have a
sense of humor? Heero's humor was really more understated and
dry... "dying hurts like hell."

"... isn't it really great to have a penis? Isn't it really nice to
have a dong, dong..."

Ah, and what party would be complete without a few drunken soldiers
caroling the old Monty Python song about the virtues of having a
penis? The classics never died.

He'd stuck mainly to the shadows, despite all of his sister's
attempts to make him more outgoing as a person he still didn't
really like interacting with people in this kind of a situation. He
was alone in a crowded room and he liked it that way, he liked his
air of solitude and silence because it was what he was comfortable
with. He and Midii truly were the same. He had seen her interact
with a few of her acquaintances among the Preventors but the few
times she'd been approached by a stranger hoping to make her
acquaintance she'd shied away. Despite her ease in dealing with
people on a surface level... she didn't let people in very easily.
He was like that too, except that he didn't even have much ease in
dealing with people on a surface level.

He had to admit that he'd spent the better part of the evening
watching her. The room was so crowded and busy, and Midii had her
guard down this evening, so he could watch to his hearts content
undetected by her. It was rare when he would get the opportunity to
observe her without her knowing he was there. A life on the edge in
a warzone had honed her instincts as sharply as his own were honed so
usually she could pick up on even his presence in the room. SHe was
guarded, just like he was. But tonight there was so much movement
and color and shifting changing shadows that he could move abut and
blend in with ease despite his height.

He thought she looked beautiful, like an angel all dressed in white.
The pure color made her skin seem to glow with an alabaster
luminence when the light touched it. When she was on-duty for the
Preventors she wore her hair tightly bound into a french twist but
tonight it was styled into two little balls on the top of her head
with the rest left to stream down to her waist. Seeing all of that
lovely golden hair of hers that he loved so much left relatively
free... it made him want to touch it! He had checked himself several
times during the evening from reaching out to slide his fingers
through the long silky stuff.

Normally, he wouln't have had quite this much trouble in controlling
his reactions toward her; up until about two weeks ago he had
thought of her as a childhood playmate, a trusted new friend and a
comrade in arms. But that was then. He had simply thought of her as
the girl who had proven herself trustworthy to be his confidant and
his partner. That was before he'd had it pointed out to him that she
wasn't a child anymore.

Two weeks ago he saw her through the eyes of the little rebel
fighter boy; when he had been a child he'd seen Midii as another
child and in childhood there was rarely a big difference between boy
and girl. Now he saw her through the eyes of a grown man, and it had
put a whole new complexion on things. What had once been very simple
had now become very complex. She was his old friend, but she was
also suddenly an entirely new and very interesting creature to him.
He noticed things about her that had seemed irrelevant to him before
became somehow very important to him now. The way she tilted her
head forward to hide her face behind her bangs when she was nervous,
the way her full lips caressed each syllable when she spoke, she way
her Preventors suit beneath the jacket emphasized the curve of her
hips, the way she was always scented of something light and sweet.

He noticed all of these things and so many more and he worried about
his newly discovered feelings. He worried that they wouldn't be
returned, he worried that they were out of line considering the fact
that they worked together, he worried that they might somehow cause
her damage... he didn't want anyone to think that her promotion
which was made purely on the result of her own skills and efforts
was the result of having a liason with him. That would be wrong. It
was also quite clear to him that whatever her other faults were she
was a loyal and true friend to him now, now that she had free reign
to follow her heart freely. If he asked her a question she answered
him honestly and to the best of her abilities even if it reflected
poorly on her; she trusted him that much. If he gave in to these
newly surfaced desires would it not be considered a betrayal of that
trust? Because he had already passed the point of just noticing
things about her. Part of him wished that he was still at that
relatively innocent phase. No, now that he had committed to memory
every new facet of her this strange new creature inside of him had
decided it was time to move past the noticing phase and on to the
desiring phase.

He wanted precisely what he shouldn't be allowed to have. Perhaps it
was the old adage of forbidden fruit, but he was pretty sure it went
far beyond a momentary thing. The more time her spent with her the
more time he wanted to spend with her. For heavens sakes he was
becoming jealous of her little brothers who were the ones she went
home to! He was even jealous of her cat...her cat! Because it got to
curl up on her lap while she was working on her report and be petted
and stroked and cooed at and made much of. Lion-san could eat dear
Jupey-jupe (short for Jupiter) in one bite... well, maybe not,
Jupiter was well named; the kitty was quite large enough to be a
little plantetoid herself. Thirteen pounds of kitty flesh taking up
all of Midii's lap leaving no room for him if he should decide he
was suddenly tired and wanted a soft cushion for his head, and if
she turned her attention away from petting the kitty for a moment,
Jupe made her dissatisfaction well known with a loud yowl! ((A.N.
sorry people, my cat Jupiter snuck in there for a cameo role... you
know how cats are. Gotta be the center of attention. All thirteen
pounds of her.))

He shook himself out of his contemplations on an effective strategy
to get his partner all to himself when he suddenly realized that he
had all evening with her all to himself so to speak. An entire
evening with her in which she looked like an angel fallen to earth.
His mouth had suddenly gone dry again but he was going to do it, he
was going to walk up to her and ask her to dance. There were many
couples already swaying to the slow music one more wouldn't be
noticed.
* * *
The evening had passed too quickly. He'd held her in his arms for
most of it and she'd kept up a mostly one-sided conversation about
this or that, work, her family, his sister's adorable costume... the
usual. He discovered that he spent most of the time staring at her
lips. Those strange stirrings within him were making him feel
restless, making him want to hold her tightly and have her all to
himself with no one around. So when she mentioned that she wouldn't
mind having someone to walk her home (she lived about three blocks
down from the Starlight Plaza Hotel) he had offered naturally.

That Halloween Evening was chill, the leaves rustled restlessly on
the cement borne about in twists and eddies by the ceaseless movement
of the late October breeze. Winter was not far away. Her white dress
shone like moonlight wrapped around her slender form. She'd shivered
in the cool wind and he'd taken off his jacket and offered it to her
now she walked with her arm tucked through his, smiling up at him.

They paused just outside her house.

"What?" he asked when he caught the impish quality of her smile.

"Hey Trowa, trick or treat?" she asked.

"Hm?" he inquired, his face a blank mask of confusion.

"That's what kids say when they walk up to a house on Halloween to
get candy. Trick or Treat," she replied.

"Oh," he said. He hadn't done regular kids stuff when he'd been a
small boy, too busy fighting and all of that. "Well, I'll say treat,
but out of curiousity what would you do if I said trick?"

Midii pulled a red hard-candy from out of somewhere and held it out
to him. So there was no trick then, an empty bluff. He reached out
for the candy and she pulled her hand away teasingly and popped the
candy in her mouth.

"Trick. Ha ha," she taunted, sucking on the candy. Trowa felt his
heart palpitate just watching her. He didn't know what demon
momentarily possesed him when he suddenly said

"But I distinctly said 'treat'."

Then he bent down and pulled her to him and covered her mouth with
his. It was sweet like candy and warm like sunshine despite the cool
autumn air. She leaned against him, bringing her tiny hands up
around his neck as she kissed him back. When her mouth opened before
him he went in after the little cherry-flavored candy. She broke off
the kiss, her face flushed and glowing like the moon, her deep
sapphire eyes shimmering a little as she leaned against him and held
him to her. She looked short of breath but so was he. She stood up
on tip-toe to kiss him again and this time, with a small suckle on
her full lips, he got his candy. She looked a little dizzy and her
mouth was pulling into a very sensual smile that he'd never seen
before, but he knew instantly he wanted to see more of it.

<I suppose this changes the dynamics of things betwen the two of
us,> he thought over the rush of his heartbeat as he couldn't tear
his eyes away from her. <Life is change. This is one I think I could
definately get used to.>

With a final chaste kiss on his cheek and a long lingering gaze
Midii turned to go up to her apartment. She paused at the threshold
to say

"Happy Halloween Trowa."

And then disappeared. He suckled on the candy that tasted like their
first kiss and reflected that he was never going to look at cherry
jolly ranchers the same way after this. He smiled ever so faintly in
the dark and continued on his way home.

THE END
* * *
Disclaimer: I don't own 'em.