Quatre woke up before Hilde did. Dawn had already broken, and the gloom of the forest was beginning to lift slowly. Through the entrance to the cave, the wreck of the shuttle was wreathed in mist. The air smelled clean, cold and fresh.
He paused for a moment, wondering when the last time was that he'd been able to smell clean, fresh air like this, rather than the recycled stuff they pumped through the colonies. Instead of the faint tang of air cycled through metal, the world smelled of water and green, growing things. The birds, which had awoken long before he had, were already busily announcing their presence to anyone who would listen, and an occasional rustling of underbrush betrayed the presence of larger, ground-dwelling animals.
In fact, if it weren't for the fact that he had a headache, was in sore need of a hot bath, and his mouth felt as though he'd been eating dryer lint last night, this situation was not such a bad thing, after all.
Quatre glanced over at Hilde, who was still fast asleep. She had dark circles under her eyes, and he could see the faint edging of what looked to be a rather nasty bruise peeping out from underneath the fringe of dark hair brushing across her forehead. No wonder she keeps passing out, he though to himself darkly. She had taken a rather nasty bump to the head yesterday.
But her breathing was steady and even, and her facial features had smoothed out as she slept. The deep crease that had been between her brows last night during dinner was gone, and she looked the way Quatre remembered her from before...albeit a few years older, but otherwise, the same Hilde.
Quatre suddenly found himself having to cover his mouth to stifle ironic laughter. Come to think of it, he thought to himself, the last time I saw Hilde, she was badly injured! Must be some strange luck. He chuckled lightly, and propped his chin on his hand, bracing his elbow on his knee as he regarded her.
She really was very pretty, he thought to himself idly. Now that he had the time, he found himself tracing the soft curves of her face with his eyes. Her face had stretched out somewhat, and didn't have the round, babyish curves that she'd had at age 15. Her lips were full, and looked very soft, and were parted slightly. Her hair was only slightly longer than it had been the last time he'd seen her, the fall curling gently across her cheek in a soft, dark wave. She had a smudge of dirt on her left cheek, and pine needles in her hair, but she was still one of the most breathtakingly beautiful women Quatre had ever seen.
Quatre shook himself out of his reverie suddenly. What was he doing, staring at Hilde like that? She would probably be furious if she found out! She'd probably think he was some sort of pervert, who watches girls while they were sleeping. Or worse, think that he had a puerile interest in staring at her like that....
He shook himself out of that train of thought. "Now you're just being paranoid," he muttered quietly to himself, not allowing him to further damage his ego. Besides, you don't know that she'd be upset....
He stood up and walked out of the cave, glancing behind him at Hilde's sleeping figure. A part of him was glad that she hadn't been awake to witness that display...but another part of him was saddened that she'd missed it.
When Hilde finally woke up, the sun was high in the sky. She scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hands, and tried to figure out why she felt as though she'd been hit by a train. It took but a moment for her to recall her surroundings and how she had come to be there. She sighed, and fought back the urge to slip into panic at the idea that they were in the middle of nowhere, and no one knew where they were.
The first thing she did was look around for Quatre, who was obviously not in the cave. She stood up and walked outside, taking pause to yawn and stretch before looking around for her companion.
Quatre was seated on the ground not far away from the shuttle, pondering a jumble of what appeared to be junk on the ground in front of him. He didn't seem to notice that she had woken up. She started walking toward where he stood.
"What are you doing, Quatre?"
Quatre looked up. "Good morning!" he said cheerfully. For whatever reason, Hilde felt like blushing. She mumbled a greeting in reply before her eyes wandered to the junk on the ground. "What are you doing?"
Quatre lifted a piece of what appeared to be partially melted black plastic. "Well, I decided that I could at least try to see if there was anything I could do to get this radio working. If nothing else, we can set it up to put out a distress signal. I was thinking about it before I fell asleep last night."
Hilde sat down on the ground next to him, watching his progress. "You're going to make a functioning radio out of that?"
Quatre shrugged smoothly. "I told you yesterday that the radio looked like a bird had nested in it. But I'll see what I can do." He pulled a handful of tangled wires out of the box and scrutinized them closely. Hilde sat silently, watching him work.
After a while, her back began to ache. She glanced over at Quatre, who was hunched over the decrepit radio. On sudden impulse, and before she could think over her actions, she scuttled over and sat behind Quatre so that their backs were resting against each other. She felt the muscles in Quatre's back tense in surprise, then relax as he leaned against her. "Thanks," he murmured over his shoulder, relief evident in his voice.
They sat there in silence for a while, the only sounds coming from the forest creatures and Quatre's occasional muttered curses of frustration. Hilde finally grew bored.
"Why were you on that shuttle incognito, Quatre?"
Quatre was silent for a moment, then she felt him heave a sigh. "Hilde, do you know what it feels like to be watched every moment of your life? To never have any time to be alone, to explore and see and experience without a baby-sitter?" Hilde shook her head mutely. "That's why I did this, Hilde. There are always people around me. They think I'm some great, important figure to protect. And while I do have an important role to fill in my father's company, and it would be catastrophic if I left, I think the company would survive. As it is, I just wanted to be able to experience something on my own again. I haven't gotten to really do that since the Eve Wars, to be honest."
Hilde tried to imagine what that would be like. "But...you must have friends, don't you? People who are close to you that you can talk to?"
Quatre laughed slightly. "Oh, sure, I have friends...or rather I should say that my wealth and influence have friends. There are very few people who know the real me." He sighed. "Even people who have known the Winner family for generations expect me to be frivolous and careless with both money and human lives. Don't they know me; know what I lived through, what I've experienced? No one really understands that. There are some that even think of me as some sort of hero. But I'm no hero. Heroes don't kill people."
"What about the others?"
"The other pilots?" Quatre pondered this for a moment. "Hilde, imagine living through one of the most horrific experiences in your life. It's tough to want to talk about it, even with people who experienced the exact same thing, right there with you. Besides, you know how hard it is to keep in touch with some of those people. I haven't even seen Heero since the end of the Barton Uprising, and the others aren't exactly up on communications, either."
Hilde was silent for the most part, just letting Quatre talk. When he paused, she said softly, "Quatre, you did what needed to be done. You're not a bad person for that. You saved a lot more lives than were taken."
Quatre was silent for a moment, and at first Hilde feared she'd said something wrong. But then he leaned back against her slightly, and she could hear the warmth in his voice when he spoke. "Thanks, Hilde. You don't know how good it is to be able to just talk to someone."
Hilde reached back and tugged at his sleeve affectionately. "Any time, Quatre."
Silence descended upon the pair once more, but for some reason, Hilde didn't feel panic fighting to overtake her mind any more. In fact, she almost wanted to admit that this wasn't so bad, after all.
Hilde had gotten bored after a while, since Quatre wasn't the best conversationalist while working, and had wandered off to explore the area where they had crashed. Quatre can lean up against a tree if his back gets sore, she thought to herself, rubbing her own back ruefully.
She wandered through the forest, wondering where they were. She remembered what Quatre had said last night about it being likely that they were in Canada, and rubbed her arms ruefully. It was certainly cold enough here for that to be true. She glanced up at the trees, and wished for what wasn't the first time that she'd paid more attention in her geography classes.
She stopped near a small stream, and glanced around for a relatively dry area to kneel. On the colonies, or even in different areas of the earth, she would have never dared to drink from a stream like this, but she somehow doubted that she had anything to fear from drinking this water. She found a large, flat rock, and carefully kneeled upon it, bending over to drink from the stream.
As she was straightening up after drinking, she noticed something in the mud beside the stream. Wiping her mouth on her sleeve carefully, she bent over to examine it closer. It appeared to be some sort of track, and a rather large one, at that. She carefully spanned it with her hand. Her hand easily fit inside the track.
A vague sense of uneasiness washed over Hilde, followed by a sense of anger. "We're in the middle of a forest," she muttered to herself. "Why is it so surprising that there are big animals out here? You've certainly heard them crashing around all night last night."
Still, the fact that there were tracks near the stream, and that they were so close to the crash site made Hilde nervous. She stood up and walked back to the camp area.
When she got there, Quatre was just closing the back cover to the radio. He noticed her, and stood up. "I wasn't able to get it back to working perfectly," he admitted, a slightly sheepish tone in his voice, "but I think I've gotten it so that we can at least send out a distress signal." He pressed a button on the front of the radio, and a faint beeping noise could be heard.
Hilde eyed the radio skeptically. "That faint little beep is going to tell people where we are?! I can barely hear it!"
Quatre gave her a humoring look. "It only sounds quiet to us," he explained. "It beeps to let us know it's working. The signal going out is much stronger. Someone should be able to hear us, I hope." He turned away from the radio. "You look as though you saw something you didn't like."
This reminded Hilde of why she had sought out Quatre in the first place. "Come here...I want to show you something..." She led him to the stream, and showed him the tracks in the mud. "Any idea what made these?" she asked, slightly nervous.
Quatre eyed the tracks for a moment. "Hmmm...well, I'm no expert on tracks, obviously, but I think these might be cougar tracks," he said finally.
"Cougar tracks?"
Quatre nodded. "Mountain lion. Nasty beasts to mess around with. We're probably in his territory." He looked back down at the track. "I don't think we'll have anything to worry about, though. Usually cougars don't attack unless they're young and desperate for food. This one looks pretty big; it probably is well-fed from the game around here."
He stood up. "But there's no sense in tempting fate. I'll try to light a fire tonight, and keep it going. The fire may scare away any wild animals from getting too close." He turned and started back toward camp.
Hilde nodded, more to herself than to Quatre. She glanced nervously back at the tracks, then hurried after him.
It wasn't until well after dark that Hilde received another reminder that they were very much not alone in the woods. She awoke with a start, her ears straining to catch whatever sound it was that had woken her up. She knew that she had heard something.
The first thing she noticed was that the fire had gone out. She felt a momentary flash of irritation--Quatre had promised that he'd keep the fire going all night! Then she heard it again--the weird, creepy ululation of howling wolves. It sounded as though they were a good distance away from the cave, but that was little comfort to her.
She stood up, feeling her way along the cave. "Psst! Quatre!" she hissed, not certain how deeply her companion was sleeping.
He apparently had not been sleeping very deeply, for his reaction was almost instantaneous. "What is it, Hilde?" His voice wasn't even slightly fogged from sleep.
Hilde forgot her fear momentarily. "Good grief, do you ever sleep?" she said incredulously.
"Of course I sleep." Hilde could visualize Quatre running a hand through his hair like he did when he was nervous or thinking hard. "I had to condition myself to sleeping very lightly during the Eve Wars, and...well, I never really did lose that skill." She could hear him grinning. "Besides, I'm not exactly used to sleeping on stone floors, are you?"
Hilde was about to reply, when she heard the howl again. She flailed out blindly, and grabbed Quatre's arm. "Did you hear that?" she hissed. "It's closer this time!"
"They're only wolves, Hilde," Quatre replied. She heard him yawn deeply. "If so, we have nothing to worry about. Wolves are afraid of people. They won't come near here, if they can smell us. Besides," he said, his voice soothing, "if the wolves are nearby, there's a good chance that cougar whose tracks we saw today isn't around, either. I don't think the two sets of predators would put up with each other being stuck in the same area, at least not for very long."
Hilde relaxed her grip slightly, but was still nervous. "Well...if you think so..." she said hesitantly. "But maybe...I think we should try and start walking tomorrow, Quatre. I don't like this. These animals are making me nervous."
Quatre sighed slightly, good humor apparent in his voice. "I'll re- light the fire, if it'll help. And here, pull your bedroll over next to mine," he said, patting the stone floor next to him. "If it'll make you feel a little safer. And we'll make some plans tomorrow morning to leave the campsite and try to walk toward civilization."
Hilde started to glare at him, but realized he probably couldn't see her face in the darkness, anyway. She sighed slightly, and nodded. "Yes," she said, "I think that will help. Thank you, Quatre." She turned to start shuffling her things next to him.
"Don't mention it, Hilde," he replied, and Hilde spent the next few minutes in silence as she tried to decide if that had been a note of relieved pleasure in Quatre's voice, or just a trick of the night and the late hour.