I don't own GS/GSD, if not, I would have made Shiho's hairstyle less like Yzak's so people wouldn't think that something was queer about both of them. R&R please.

Prologue

The children were playing in the courtyard which belonged to the Joule's extensive estate. And for a minute, Ezalia Joule saw a flash of silver and knew that her son was with them.

The trees weren't shedding their leaves yet, so it wasn't so cold and he could still run and play in simple clothes, but his mother had forced him to take a scarf. She was always protective of him after his father had died, but he wasn't sure if the man in the photo his mother looked at sometimes was really his father either, because Yzak knew he didn't really have a father at all.

Yzak Joule was the result of a sperm his mother had used to conceive him.

Once, he had heard some servants gossiping about it, the mistress of the house had a boyfriend she was going to get married to, and then she'd lost him in the battle right after the Naturals engaged the Coordinators in some clash near the PLANTs, and then she had agreed to conceive his child using what he'd left behind in case he died. So now she was a saddled with a child who had a temper nobody had seen or wanted to see before.

The six year old Yzak had heard it and snarled behind the pillar concealing him. They said that about him and his mother didn't they? Well, he'd prove they were correct; he had a temper nobody really wanted to rouse.

So he had leapt out screaming like a mad person and biting any hands he could see and his jaw had been sore after that even while he tried to kick himself free when the butler grabbed the screaming boy from behind and hauled him off the terrified servants.

His mother had slapped him for that but he didn't tell her he did that because he didn't want anyone to talk about her that way. He just stood there and scowled after her hand left a stinging mark across his pale cheek.

Yzak Joule had inherited her silver hair and pale skin, so sometimes he wondered what his father looked like, but she didn't say anything even when he had the cheek to ask her about it. She never said anything about his father. She was always busy at work, but he didn't mind because he didn't really like talking to her anyway.

His mother never really understood him, so he didn't want to try and talk to her to make her understand, but then he liked to sit some place where he wouldn't be disturbed and see her staring into space, looking into the distance at something he couldn't see, because she looked like she was at peace when there were moments liked that for her to enjoy, and he enjoyed those moments as a young boy too.

The six-year old adored his mother although she wondered if he hated her at times when he became a little monster, snarling and spitting at everyone. But he never did that to her, so that was a form of encouragement in some respect.

And when she was in a good mood, Ezalia Joule would take him into her arms and stroke Yzak's hair silently, thinking that she would have to spend more time with him so that he'd understand her too. But she couldn't keep the promise to herself, the war was going to start if they didn't do anything to prevent it, and sometimes, she wondered if she really was on Siegel Clyne's side and working for peace to prevent a war with the same people who had murdered her beloved in cold blood while she waited desperately for him to come home to her.

And when she had been twenty-four and heard the news that he'd been killed along with the rest just because he had been a coordinator, they didn't even care that he had been a gentle person who always cared about others, she'd gone and cut her long, beautiful silver hair into a neat bob. And then she had entered the government to serve the people, and there was a man whose words appealed to her more than Siegel Clyne's, although she knew that Patrick Zala was a threat if he wasn't kept under control properly.

Ezalia Joule had met her colleagues' children, Patrick Zala's son and Siegel Clyne's daughter before, they were a year younger than Yzak, so they must be about five now since she had seen them a year ago. The girl had been motherless since Clyne's wife had died in childbirth, but she was very well brought up and had impeccable manners although she was always smiling and never said anything much.

Siegel Clyne's daughter had pink hair, that was the thing that stood out the most about the girl, and Ezalia suddenly wished she had a daughter like the girl too, she was so pretty and angelic, obviously her father treated her like the apple of his eye, but then from what she had seen, and his child wasn't spoilt at all, quite the opposite actually. What was her name again, Ezalia tried to recall it, but then she gave up eventually and her thoughts ran to her own son.

But unlike the well-behaved girl, Yzak had bitten all the servants at least twice each, with a few bonus kicks around the shins and then he'd snuck into a particular maid's room and thrown all her things around. She asked him why bit he refused to say anything, so she had gave him a thrashing he'd remember so he'd never try and do it again.

'Was he being mischievous or being anything boy were supposed to be like?" she wondered forlornly, then she remembered Patrick Zala and Lenora Zala's son, what was his name?

Oh Athrun Zala, that boy was an angel, he adored his parents, always trotted after them like a puppy, his green eyes like Lenora's, very beautiful and sparkling. And that boy was never rude, he always greeted her when he saw her, he'd even tried to make friends with Yzak but Yzak had bit him because he said he didn't like Athrun's hairstyle or something silly like that.

She didn't know Yzak had seen her looking at the other two children with something like affection in her blue eyes, and he had been insane with jealousy. She didn't know he wanted to be cuddled the way she cuddled the other two children and she was terribly ignorant of the fact that he loved her more than anything in the world.

So she sat at the window thinking of Yzak and feeling awfully helpless about the five-year old boy with startling blue eyes and silver hair and pale skin. He didn't look like his father much, if you could say that her beloved was a father at all, but then the details didn't count, he'd been born with his father's feelings for her and that was enough for Ezalia Joule.

She'd been disappointed though, when she had seen the child and known that he would inherit very little of his father's face and features, even worse, few of his father's traits, and she knew she was being selfish, but then she had took the baby in her arms and something as hard as steel in her heart had melted instantly.

Why couldn't he be more normal like other children? Yzak didn't have to be as well-behaved as Siegel Clyne and Patrick Zala's children, he just needed to be saner in general, Ezalia Joule thought with a heavy sigh.

And his playmates were quite terrified of him although they did like him in general, he was a very loyal child who always stuck up for them, but he never told them he liked them, in fact, he yelled at them when he was in a bad mood.

They didn't mind much though, because they knew he was fond of them like they were fond of him although he didn't say it, that was the magic of children and their playmates, they always seemed to forget that he had wanted to bite them the day before. The children all knew he would fight for them if they were threatened, and that made them loyal to Yzak too.

And she gazed out of the window she had stood at when Yzak's father had told her that he loved her very much, trying to ignore the pain that shifted across her chest and threatened to make her weep. Yzak was playing outside, he'd meet the Hahenfuss' child soon, and Ezalia desperately prayed he wouldn't try to bite the child and that he'd like the child enough to get along.

Then a servant knocked hesitantly on the door, and she was forced to stop gazing at her five-year old son playing outside and look at the maid Yzak disliked terribly. She didn't know why actually, the maid was quite pretty and pleasing to look at even though some had told her the maid like to gossip. But as long as she did her work, Ezalia didn't care what she said, so she wondered briefly why her son had made life so difficult for the maid.

"Yes?" she said softly as the wind blew some short silver strands across her cheek.

"The Hahenfuss family is here," the maid said quickly, and then she bobbed a curtsey and opened the door and promptly stood aside for Ezalia to walk down the stairs to receive the important guests.

When she descended regally, a man with very dark brown hair, almost black really, looked up and smiled, and she offered a hand and he shook it firmly.

Steiner Hahenfuss wasn't the sort ZAFT or the PLANT Supreme Council wanted to mess with, he was a child prodigy, perhaps because he had been a first generation Coordinator like her and he was terribly intelligent.

Ezalia heard he had solved a supposedly impossible linear equation with a single solution by the time he was eight, and then he had gone on to work for PLANT and develop systems that could allow PLANT to grow its own agricultural produce even though they were in deep space.

The plans so far were that the system would be tested and pilot-ran in Junius Seven although nothing was confirmed yet. It would be a long time before it was put into action because of the secrecy of everything. The existing chairman was sitting on the fence, listening to both Siegel Clyne and Patrick Zala at the same time, and of course, with their radically right-wing and left-wing political styles, they were all stuck in a rut.

But she had to discuss the plans themselves with Steiner Hahenfuss since she was gong to enter the supreme council soon, it was her job to work through his proposal for the launch and see if it could be improved.

And although she really wasn't keen to play host to anyone, Ezalia had to smile and bear it, so she had invited him for dinner with his child, or son, she heard, but nobody really knew. His wife had died two years ago, but then he'd been so grieved by it that he had thrown himself whole-heartedly into his work that he'd produced some of his best works yet. Tragic, really, she thought wistfully, but then, weren't all Coordinators?

"Pleased to meet you," she said pleasantly and scowled inside just because she felt like being rebellious for the day.

"Same here," he said with a slight but distinctive accent, and she realised that he probably came very directly from German lineage; his name also said the same thing about him. Then she realised she had been staring too long at him for what seemed polite, and she quickly shook of all thoughts and continued, looking straight into his dark eyes and noting that he must have been quite handsome when he was younger.

"While we discuss the plans and proposal you've drawn up," she began quickly, "Why don't you allow your son to play with mine? He's outside messing around with the leaves."

Then she realised that he was alone and peered behind Steiner Hahenfuss to see if his child was shy and hiding behind his tall father, but then Steiner laughed, and she was again, amazed by how lovely and warm his laugh was.

Not what you'd expect from someone who sank into manic or chronic depression at some point, she thought dryly. He must have an angel for a son if he could have gotten a grip so quickly after that. The son was probably nothing like Yzak, she thought with an inward sigh.

"Ah, you're mistaken, my child's a girl, I don't have a son, just a daughter," he explained briefly, his eyes twinkling mischievously as he looked at her dumbstruck face. Not many could catch the famously cool, unruffled Ezalia like that, but then the lady was obviously quite formidable, she looked at him and winked to cover up her little slip and said, "So the rumors were wrong then."

"Yes," he said cheerfully enough, "I don't really bring Shiho around the place like the others do, she's the homely sort who likes to stay in some corner and fiddle with machines and toys and that sort of thing."

"Chip off the old block then," Ezalia commented charmingly, and then she smiled and led him to the room she used as an office in her house.

"So she's at home now?" she said casually, thinking how problematic Hahenfuss' reclusive child was. Maybe the child had driven him to depression too; maybe the child wasn't quite an angel if she was as queer as her father described her to be.

"Good heavens, no," he said hurriedly as he sat down and opened up his briefcase, slipping some papers out, "She's playing with your son in the yard like you said he was."

Then Ezalia dug out the sight of some children playing with her son in the yard from the abysses of memory and counted the number mentally. Two boys were the neighbors' children, the other her assistant's son who regularly came over to play, and with her son, that would make the usual five, but then the last one…

"Ah," she said mildly, trying to hide her panic when she thought of the way Yzak had bit Athrun Zala when the younger boy hadn't done so much as to try and make friends with her son, "So Yzak must have met Shiho Hahenfuss already."

Out in the yard, Yzak had been perfectly happy playing with the other boys, and then he had seen something moving behind the bushes and thought it was a maid trying to take revenge for the mess he'd created in her room after he caught her telling the others bad things about his mother.

So Yzak had continued to play noisily and shout to the others while moving very sneakily backwards towards the bushes so the maid behind wouldn't notice he had discovered her, and then with a terrible snarl, he had pounced onto the person behind the bushes and hauled her out.

But it wasn't the maid he disliked intensely; it was a girl much shorter than him with long dark brown hair sticking out at queer angles, giving her a very bedraggled look. He was so horrified at having pulled out the wrong person that he continued to stare stupidly at her, and he noticed that she was very slight and tiny like a fairy-child, so she must be much younger than him.

The girl looked terribly startled that he had hauled her out so roughly although she had allowed herself to be pulled out without much resistance at all, perhaps she had been too surprised to react, and she blinked at the sunlight that suddenly rushed at her pale face. He stared in horror and tried to take his hands away from her shoulder where he had yanked terribly at her and she had shrieked a little in surprise, but then his hand lay discriminately by his side now, and his playmates began to giggle and point.

"You've treated a girl unkindly!" one of the boys chuckled as they hurried to where he was standing, his silver hair contrasting magnificently with her dark hair.

'I-I didn't," he growled, trying to recover his lost dignity, "I wanted to haul out the person who I thought was eavesdropping, so it's not my fault."

"We'll tell your mother," another teased, not quite meaning it but just wanting to irritate Yzak.

"You'll do what?" he screeched as he rushed madly towards his playmate, but the playmate laughed and ran around the swing while he gave chase, and the hapless playmates started laughing until they all had to clutch at their sides while the girl looked bewildered.

And Yzak remembered while he chased the boy silly enough to provoke him that the girl he had never seen before in his life was staring at him, and he tripped over and landed neatly on his face.

He was glad it was facedown so the sand would hide the glorious blush he had on his pale cheeks, and then he was afraid that all of them would laugh at him, but then they were already rushing over, concerned and helping him to stand and brushing off the sand from his clothes and apologizing meekly for taking it too far.

He would have yelled at them some more, but he was far too interested in the girl who had been hiding in the bushes, so he trotted swiftly to her where she was staring at a patch of grass near her feet and blithely ignoring all of them.

"Where do you come from?" he said curiously.

"From PLANT," she answered readily enough, and he wanted to blow up and screech, "Idiot!" but he stopped himself in time although his friends were suddenly looking edgy. They knew that he was near his explosion point, and if the girl wasn't careful, she'd go under straight fire.

"I know that," he interrupted impatiently, and then he gave up and asked instead, "What's your name?"

"Shiho," she said after a pause, and then she stopped looking at the grass and lifted her eyes to meet his, and he was startled by how vivid the purple of her eyes were. They reminded him of the violets he had trampled on when he was in a rage actually.

"I don't like your fringe," she continued on in a very emotionless voice, and he bristled and screeched, "Yours is the same as mine!"

His friends were now around them and pressing their palms up and down in the air as if to stop her from continuing, but she was either very silly or she was very, very brave.

She looked at him with wistful eyes and said quite fearlessly, "I used to like my fringe. But now that you have my fringe, I don't like it anymore."

Then quite suddenly before he could scream and bite her in his rage, she turned to one of the others and said fearlessly, "I got him mad."

He stood there gaping with his arms flailing about madly while his friends all stared and goggled blindly at the girl who they had met entirely by accident and had managed to rile him up which admittedly wasn't very difficult to do.

But Yzak heard her whisper, "Sorry."

Then she resumed staring at the grass patch on the ground, and the five-year old boys all thought that she had to be mentally retarded or insane or something like that, but Yzak, suddenly fair-tempered again, heard a bell ring from the distance and turned around regretfully to them and said sulkily, "I've got to go back for tea now. Tomorrow, will you all be here?"

They looked at each other grinning and turned to him.

"Need you ask, Yzak?" one replied.

And then the four boys who regularly met up to play laughed and turned around and ran back to where they'd come from, and he was quite sorry to see them go.

But when he turned around, the girl was looking at him, and for the first time, he noticed that she was wearing a very fine dress with white socks and pretty shoes, so she couldn't have been the cooks' daughter or any servant's daughter for that matter.

And he saw that although her hair was messy, it was long and lustrous with sheen to it, and he suddenly recalled that his mother had warned him that another boy might be joining him to play that day, so he'd better keep his teeth to himself.

But this girl wasn't a boy, he though confusedly, in fact, she looked like a lost princess although she wasn't remotely pretty like Lacus Clyne who had seen once and thought that she was the prettiest girl he had seen, but Athrun Zala might have been prettier than her of course. That boy was pretty enough to be considered a girl, he thought with a snort, an insult to all boys indeed. But this girl, what was her name again? Ah yes, Shiho, she had very piercing eyes, and he wondered what his mother would say if she saw the girl herself.

Shiho was really like a lost princess because she had a lost look about her but then he could feel she wasn't the wishy-washy sort that he absolutely abhorred.

"Are you lost?" he said abruptly while she stared unflinchingly at him.

"No," she said without hesitation, "I just need to find my way to the Joule Mansion."

"So you are lost then," he cried triumphantly, "Because if you have to even find your way to something so obvious, then you must be bad with directions."

"I'm not," she cried angrily, looking indignant as her eyes widened and she shook her head furiously, "I just needed to find the last thing my father asked me to find before I go back to the Joule Mansion."

"What's that?" he said, forgetting to insist that she was lost because of his curiosity.

She had resumed staring at the grass again and he had even tried to see what she was looking at because it seemed interesting enough, but then she suddenly looked up at him, tilted her head so the fringe swept out of her eyes making them stand out to him more than ever, and Shiho said confidently, "You."

So Yzak stood like a statue, quite frozen and dumbstruck, but then he heard footsteps coming their way and turned in time to see his mother heading their way with a tall man behind her.

She looked quite urgent when she called hurriedly, "Yzak!", and he noticed that the man behind her was looking fondly at him. Fondly? He'd show him a thing or two after he got a chance to bite him, but then Shiho was running past him and standing next to the man now, and he stared at his mother in surprise and demanded a bit rudely, "Who's that?"

Ezalia didn't notice his tone because she was so ruffled, something she wasn't used to being at all, so she led him by his shoulders until he was face to face with Shiho who had been led to face him by the tall man, her father, he assumed with a scowl.

"Yzak," she said sweetly, although there was something like a warning in her voice, "Meet Steiner and Shiho Hahenfuss."

"Shiho," the man said indulgently as he kept his hands on the girl's shoulders while she peered up at him, "This is Ezalia Joule and her son Yzak Joule."

He felt his mother's hands pressing heavily on his shoulders, so he sighed and permitted himself a bow, but then his head crashed terribly into something hard, and he cried angrily, "Oww!"

Shiho had bowed too at the same instant when he had, and their heads had neatly collided and struck each other's painfully.

He looked up, rubbing his head furiously to ease the pain and saw her wincing slightly.

Quite forgetting that he was supposed to be polite, he yelled, "You're supposed to curtsey not bow, dumbass!"

His mother was gasping, no doubt shocked that he could use the word he had heard her use while on the phone one day, but Shiho Hahenfuss looked his straight in the eye and said defiantly, "I don't want to. I'm going to bow if I want to; you can't make me curtsey for shit."

The meek girl he had met was gone in a trace; Yzak knew that she was probably stranger than what she already seemed there and there. Maybe she was bipolar or something, he wondered briefly, quite forgetting that his mother wondered that about him sometimes too. He hadn't know what bipolar meant when he had heard it once, so he had gone home and asked his mother what it meant.

Her father looked horrified that his daughter was using foul language he'd been suing when the machine had crashed on him, but then the bell rang again and they were ushered off quickly to the table and their parents tried to pretend their children were not capable of using such language at six and five respectively. Both grown ups cursed themselves in private for ever using foul language in front of the children and hence giving them an opportunity to learn it for themselves.

And throughout tea while the grown-ups talked, Shiho Hahenfuss and Yzak Joule glared at each other, hating each other terribly.

So that was their first encounter, and when they left, Yzak declared he never wanted to see the dumbass again. His mother had threatened to smack him after that, but he didn't care.

Such a queer, beautiful child she was, Ezalia felt something stir in her as she saw the girl sit quietly in her chair and look silently at everything around her. It was a pity that Yzak didn't like her very much, although one could never tell whether he liked someone or not.

And Ezalia sighed and looked at her son who was outside trampling on some violets.

He had screamed after her guests left that he didn't want to see Shiho Hahenfuss come near even by a ten-foot radius.

But neither Ezalia nor Yzak Joule knew that Shiho and Yzak's first encounter wasn't going to be the last one, and Yzak didn't know that in time, he would grow to hope that he would meet Shiho Hahenfuss and be with her for every day of the rest of his life.