Trowa stood still and silent at the edge of the battlefield. Everything before him was equally still and silent-- wrecked vehicles, wrecked men, even a couple of wrecked Mobile Suits. He sniffed the air. There was the lingering scent of gunpowder and burnt things, but no bad smell. This must be the battle he'd seen last night, explosions rocking the darkness into sudden light, the kind of thunder and lightning that brought no rain. Somewhere far away, a church bell began to ring out the time. He listened and counted. It was eight o'clock. He didn't know many real numbers, but since counting was so useful, he had invented his own. A breeze picked up. It ruffled the hair at the nape of his neck and, as he turned his head to make sure he was alone, it tugged at the rough thatch of brown hair that was starting to fall over one eye. Urged on by the wind against his back and the twisting knot of hunger in his stomach, he made his way among the remains of the fight.

A man wearing a backpack lay face down on the ground. A lot of the back of his head was missing. Trowa kicked at him anyway. No sense in taking any chances. He had been terrified once when an apparently dead man had reached out a bloody hand and grabbed his wrist. This man did not move, so he knelt down beside him. Trowa's little fingers struggled with the buckles that held the backpack shut. No luck. He lay down and used his teeth on it. Now it came undone. Eagerly, he pulled out the contents and tossed away all the useless and incomprehensible items. Then he found the ration pack. His fingers recognized the shape of it before he even brought it out, and his mouth filled with saliva in anticipation. He scrabbled at the pack. There were little tubes of that squishy brown stuff, one, two, three, four, and some rectangular packets that undoubtedly held crackers with some paste spread between them, and a couple of those little tins of meat that were so hard to open.

Trowa tore the end off a tube and sucked down the contents greedily. It was salty, and lumpy, but good. He had seen, from spying on soldiers who weren't dead, that it was meant to be mixed with boiling water and turned into soup, but he didn't know anything about boiling water. It sounded too complicated. He used his teeth on the tube, getting out every bit of the contents. Now he was feeling much better. He looked at the dead man. He was pretty small for a grown-up. Maybe Trowa could use his jacket?

It took him awhile to get the jacket off the man, and when he put it on, there were a couple of blood-soaked bullet holes in the front, and the jacket came down to his knees, the sleeves hanging way down over his hands. Trowa decided that the sleeves were a problem after he tried picking up the food and couldn't find his fingers. He took off the jacket, laid it out carefully on the ground, and gazed at it, thinking.

Trowa was often troubled by how small he was. Most other people were so much bigger. Even when he saw people his own size, they were accompanied by grown-ups, or else there were a lot of them, and he prudently kept his distance. Either way, he couldn't approach them to talk. Would he ever get bigger, or was he stuck like this? Well, there was nothing he could do about his size, but he could do something about the size of the jacket. Trowa pulled a lighter out of his pocket, knelt down, and set fire to one sleeve. It didn't burn well, but he was patient, because it was interesting to watch, as the barely visible flames ate their gradual way up the sleeve. When half of it was gone, he stomped on it. Pleased, he did the same to the other sleeve. Then he put it on. Much better. This was much warmer than his thin sleeveless shirt and tattered shorts. He stuffed the food into the voluminous pockets. Better explore some more before any big people showed up.

Another soldier had a fancy canteen, which Trowa unscrewed and poured into his mouth. But it tasted bad and burned his throat, so he spit it out. Was it poison? He hoped not. Well, he hadn't swallowed it, so maybe he was okay. He would rest for a few minutes and wait to see if he died. He lay down on his back with his knees up and stared at the sky. A few fluffy clouds drifted by in the blue expanse.

After about a minute of this he got bored, and forgot his worry. Might as well do something interesting while he waited to die. He turned his head and a nice, shiny gun caught his eye. He sat up, pried it gently out of the hand that was clenched around it, and held it out experimentally at arms length. It was heavy. Both hands, then. He looked around for a target. A truck lay half-crushed, with a circle and a zigzag painted on the door. Trowa recognized this mark. Sometimes people with this mark were dead, but usually it was other people who were dead. The people with the circle and the zigzag had killed them. He pointed the gun at the white design, squinted one eye, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. There was some tricky way to operate it, then. He pushed a red button on the side. The cartridge in the top sprang loose. When Trowa turned the gun upside-down, it fell out. He carefully pushed it back in again, and heard a click. Pulling the trigger still didn't work. Well, he had just put it back to the way it was. He frowned and checked the gun over. Then he spied a lever, set back in a depression so it wouldn't be hit by accident. He flipped it. Now he took aim and carefully pulled the trigger again.

There was a deafening explosion, and the recoil knocked him over backwards. I've shot myself, he thought in panic, ripping off the jacket and his shirt. He looked himself over, felt his arms and chest. There was no bullet hole in him. He pulled off his pants, a little calmer now, since he didn't feel any of the pain that would presumably accompany being shot. Nothing seemed wrong with his legs, either. He put his clothes back on, reassured. His pounding heart slowed to normal. He went over to examine the broken truck. In almost the very center of the circle was a dent. Had he done that? Trowa went back to his previous position and aimed the gun at the truck again. This time he was braced for the recoil and the noise. There was also the rewarding sound of breaking glass. He smiled to himself and shot out all the windows of the truck. This was fun. You didn't need to be big to shoot a gun. Eventually, however, he pulled the trigger and nothing happened. The gun was used up. He threw it away. There were plenty more guns, anyway. He selected a new one.

Really, he'd better get out of here, people would be coming soon. Soldier people or not-soldier people, he didn't want to meet either kind. He'd like to meet a little kid, but not big people. He would check one last backpack, and then leave. Wandering around, Trowa found one that bulged too temptingly to ignore. He discovered something that smelled good in a brown wrapper. He opened it. Under the brown wrapper was a shiny foil wrapper. He pulled that one off, too. It was a bar of some brown stuff, with grooves where it could be broken off. He snapped off a piece and licked at it tentatively. It was sweet, and melted on his tongue. While he was still deciding how much of it to save for later, he finished the whole thing. Trowa had never tasted anything so good in his life. He shoved the foil wrapper in his mouth and sucked on it. Then he dumped out the backpack hopefully. Through some miracle, another, identical bar fell out. He put it in his pocket with the gun, before he could be tempted to eat it.

Anything else? Cigarettes... he had tried to eat them once before, but they were nasty and had made him throw up. He wouldn't make that mistake again. A letter, sealed and stamped. Was it a letter to this soldier? There were some opened envelopes, too. He studied them. The sealed envelope didn't have lines over the stamp like the opened ones did. So it probably hadn't been sent yet. He would mail it then, as a fair trade for the wonderful thing he had eaten from the soldier's backpack. He pocketed the letter and turned his back on the carnage, walking down the hill and along a dusty country road.

Trowa was used to walking; he could do it indefinitely. He sucked on another tube of food while he walked. This was a good day. The sun was shining, and he was warm and full. He eventually came to the outskirts of a town, and then the town itself. He spied a mailbox, and stood on tiptoe to mail his letter, now decorated with chocolate fingerprints. A lady looked at him strangely from across the street, but he ignored her and completed his business with the mailbox.

It was a small town, and didn't seem promising, so Trowa kept walking down the main road until it led out onto a highway. He walked along the edge of it, so he wouldn't get run down by the cars and trucks that occasionally zoomed past. Trowa wished he could drive a truck, or better yet, a Mobile Suit. But he had tried driving cars, and had to give up because he was too little to step on the pedals and see out the front window at the same time. He wondered again if he would grow bigger, or just always be small like this. He hoped he'd grow at least a little bigger, so he could drive.

The highway crossed a river, and there was a guardrail to keep cars from driving off the edge. Trowa hopped up onto the narrow metal railing and walked along it, one foot in front of the other. It used to be that he had to hold his arms out to balance on such things, but now he could walk across it with his hands in his pockets. He smiled. Even if he wasn't getting bigger, he was getting better. He stopped, turned around carefully on one foot, and walked backwards on the railing, looking down at the river far below. A car drove by, and a man yelled out the window, "Get down from there, kid!" but the car didn't slow down or stop. Soon he was across the river, and there was no more guardrail. He sighed and walked along the shoulder of the highway again.

Without warning, tires screeched right behind him. He scrambled off the road. It was a jeep, with two soldiers in it.

"Hey, kid, what are you doing out here? There's going to be a battle around here soon," said the one who was driving. Trowa just stared at him.

"What are you, stupid, kid?" asked the one in the passenger seat.

"He's probably a homeless kid. A war orphan," shrugged the driver. "Put him in the back."

Trowa thought of running, but he knew the man could run faster and catch him. He let the man pick him up under the arms and haul him into the jeep. They drove on.

"What's your name, kid?" asked the driver in a friendly voice.

Trowa had a vague suspicion that the first part started with a "t" and the other part with a "b." He just waited, hoping the soldier would ask an easier question next.

"Where do you live?"

Another hard one. Trowa didn't even understand the concept of living in one place. Again, he didn't say anything.

"Told you he's stupid," laughed the passenger. "Doesn't even know his own name!"

"Maybe he's been on his own for a long time," argued the driver.

"Yeah, right. How long do you think a little kid like that could survive on his own in the middle of this war?" demanded the passenger.

The driver shrugged and dropped the subject.

"What do you plan to do with him?" asked the passenger, turning around to make a hideous face at Trowa. Trying to scare him. His breath smelled of that burning poison Trowa had almost drunk by mistake earlier today.

"To that civilian hospital, I guess," said the driver. "There are always tons of kids running around there, some one must feed them at least. And they have a big bomb shelter."

"Hey, stupid kid," said the passenger, "we're going to take you into the city, and you'll be chopped up into pieces and served to the officers for dinner!"

Trowa was more than a little alarmed to hear this. He suddenly wanted very badly to get out of the jeep. He looked down at the asphalt flying by in a blur.

"Oh, shut up, Dart," said the driver, "what do you want to scare him for?"

"He doesn't look too scared yet," grumbled the passenger. "Hey, stupid, we're going to put you in a big pot and put a lid on it so you can't get out, and boil you! Ha ha ha." He laughed to see that Trowa was now really afraid.

Trowa gripped the side of the jeep. He could jump out easily, before the soldier could catch him, but he would probably be killed when he hit the pavement. He let go of the side of the jeep, and slid his hand into the big pocket of his new jacket. Trowa felt in his pocket. His fingers touched the foil wrapped bar, which didn't seem important or comforting at all now that he was facing the prospect of being boiled and eaten. Then he found the gun. He flipped the little lever and pulled the gun out of his pocket, pointing it at the soldier in the passenger seat.

"Let me out," he demanded in a quiet voice. The man blinked to see the little boy holding a gun in both hands.

"Uh, Jack..." he said urgently. "Jack!"

"What?" demanded the driver impatiently, keeping his eyes on the road.

"The kid has a fucking GUN. Hey, kid, I was just joking, don't shoot me, okay? Ha ha, just having some fun."

"Shit!" said the driver, swerving to the shoulder of the road and stopping. "Kid, hey, we're really taking you to a nice place, okay? Where there's ice cream and cake and stuff!"

Trowa, being unfamiliar with ice cream and cake, was unimpressed. He figured they were lying, anyway. He continued to hold out the gun, two fingers on the trigger. It was getting heavy.

"You can get out if you want," the driver assured him. Trowa didn't know how to manage that, though, without putting the gun down.

Suddenly the passenger's hand became a blur, going down out of sight, and coming up again holding a gun of his own.

"What the hell are you doing?!" shouted the driver to his companion.

Trowa squeezed the trigger.

The soldier screamed, clutching his shoulder. It wasn't satisfying like the sound of shattering glass. The sound made him feel funny inside, and not very good. He jumped down out of the jeep and ran as fast as he could, away from the road.

He was not pursued. Maybe the driver was busy taking care the injured man. Trowa kept running, trying to outrun the memory of the man's scream. After awhile, he was too tired to run, and he just walked.

He came to a farmhouse.

It was small and shabby, so at first he thought it was abandoned and he could spend the night here, but then he smelled smoke and saw it coming out of the chimney. A child ran out of the house, and stared at him. He stared back. It was a girl, about his size or just a little bigger. She wore a faded T- shirt and patched jeans. Her face was bruised, and her yellow curly hair tangled.

"Angela, get back in here before I give you a beating you won't forget!" called a shrill female voice from inside the house.

Maybe this girl would know.

"Uh..." he began uncertainly. Conversation was not something he had much experience in.

She came closer, and reached up curiously to touch the shock of hair that fell over one of his eyes.

"Angela!! I mean it! Get down in the bomb shelter this instant!" came the voice from the house again.

"Hi," said the girl. "You have funny hair."

"Uh... will I get big?" he asked abruptly.

The girl laughed at him, but it was a friendly sound.

"Of course! We'll grow up and be big. Unless we get killed." She smiled, pleased at having been able to share this information.

Trowa thought of the cars and trucks and Mobile Suits that he could drive if he really got big, like she said. He smiled a little himself.

"Did grown-ups used to be little kids?"

She nodded.

"Even soldiers?"

The girl pondered for a moment and then nodded. "I guess so!"

"Then I'm going to be a soldier," he told her.

"What will you fight for?" she asked him, eyes widening.

He thought a moment, then reached in his pocket and pulled out the foil wrapped bar. Her eyes grew even larger as she recognized it. She had obviously encountered this wonderful thing before. Trowa unwrapped it and carefully snapped it in half. She gazed at it hopefully, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. He handed half to the girl, and watched her cram it in her mouth.

"That's what I'll fight for," he told her. "So that everyone can have that."

"Chocolate?" she asked, licking her fingers.

He nodded, feeling full of purpose.

A large figure appeared in the doorway.

"Angela, I'm telling you for the last time!"

Trowa backed out of sight and watched as the girl ran up the rickety steps to the house, the woman smacking her backside as she darted in the door.

He walked on some more. But he was getting tired, and the sun was seeping red all over the western sky. It would be night soon. It wasn't likely to rain, so he simply curled up in a patch of weeds that hid him from sight. Maybe when he woke up, he'd be big enough to pilot a Mobile Suit.

Trowa woke up in a large, comfortable bed with clean, white sheets. He felt the solid warmth of Quatre against his chest, and carefully untangled his arms and legs from Quatre's.

"Mmm?" asked the blond boy sleepily, clutching at Trowa's pajama leg.

"Nothing. I didn't mean to wake you," apologized Trowa, kissing him on the forehead. He sat up and pulled Quatre tight against him. The boy murmured contentedly and went back to sleep.

Trowa thought back on the dream he'd had. A dream from when he'd been very small. Had it been a real memory? It seemed that way. Funny, he'd forgotten all of that until now. He picked up the phone beside the bed.

"Yes, Master Quatre?" said a servant promptly.

"This is Trowa," he said.

"Ah, yes sir, how may I help you? Shall I send up breakfast?"

"Yes, please," said Trowa.

"Tea for Master Quatre and coffee for you, sir?" confirmed the servant.

"We'll both have cocoa," Trowa told him.

Quatre blinked at the steaming mugs of cocoa, topped with whipped cream and little curls of shaved chocolate.

"I didn't know you liked sweet stuff like this," he said, sipping from his mug contentedly and looking up fondly at the other boy.

Trowa scooped some whipped cream on his finger and held it out for Quatre to lick off.

"I don't, really," he shrugged. "I was just remembering something..."

"Something good?" asked Quatre, returning the favor by offering Trowa some whipped cream on his own finger. When Trowa was too preoccupied to notice, Quatre daubed it on his nose. That got his attention. He leaned over the breakfast tray and kissed Quatre, smearing the whipped cream onto Quatre's face as well. There was a wet washcloth on the tray. Quatre cleaned up both their faces. Trowa took an experimental sip of the cocoa. Yes, somehow this taste made the memories seem more real.

"Good and bad," he said.

"So why did you ask for cocoa?" inquired Quatre.

"This is what we're fighting for, isn't it?" asked Trowa with a little smile, stroking the other boy's touseled yellow hair.

"For chocolate?"

"We're fighting so that people can enjoy simple pleasures without fear. At least, that's what I thought when I was little. It seemed so straightforward, then."

Quatre popped the rest of his croissant in his mouth and took Trowa's face in his hands, gazing at him with his large, gentle eyes.

Trowa waited patiently for him to swallow his food.

"What?"

"I'm trying to picture you as a little boy," said Quatre.

"Don't you like me big?" asked Trowa in his quiet voice, finishing off his cocoa.

"Yes, very much," nodded Quatre happily.

A fine, antique clock on the wall chimed eight times.

"Eight o'clock?!" said Quatre in surprise.

Trowa nodded at him and climbed out of bed.

"I should be on the battlefield by now," he said.

"I'm coming with you!"

"It's my mission," said Trowa, shoving Quatre back down into the pillows.

"I'm coming with you anyway."

He gazed down at the blond boy, then leaned down and kissed him. His lips tasted of chocolate.

"Alright," Trowa agreed.