Dossier Ch. 7

Heero stared at the young man in front of him with a disconnected, superficial interest. It was starting to feel like an out-of-body experience, or perhaps a lucid dream.

"Well I should be a bit more specific. Our mothers. They are the same. We share a mother." Siet pulled his empty coffee cup to his lips once more, savoring a fake sip with his eyes wide open.

Heero opened his lips to speak, but could not find the strength to move his tongue. He settled for moving his hand to his own coffee, but found that his entire arm shook with a slight nervous tremor.

"Hn. Odin I would cut back on the caffeine. You're jittery. Its not like you." Siet whispered through smiling teeth.

Heero let his palm fall back onto the table. Refraining from twisting his own neck in a soothing crack, he allowed for a brief ruffle of his own hair, his palm resting on his forehead. He was either burning up, or his palms were ice cold.

"So. Right. Well onto some brief business. I'm sure you'll want to know as much as possible. Well, I don't think its fair to speak it here. I'd rather e-mail it to you. Too many eyes on us now. The only stipulation here is that you promise me this one...thing." Siet was a true politician, the way he had rattled that off in one breath.

"Shoot." Was all Heero could manage to say.

"Don't involve the girl. Not in this. She should not know who we truly are to each other. That would only...complicate things." His mouth eased into a knowing smile. Siet brought his hand up to his hairless face, that seemed to be a bit younger than Heero's, and cracked his knuckles on his chin.

"What is 'this' then? Are you about to threaten me?" Heero all but jumped. Finally he felt his composure returning to him.

"I'm not sure that this would qualify as a threat. Only know that I know every little thing about you, about her, and about the information you've just now become privy to. In fact, I also know about what you aren't privy to." This guy was starting to push him. He sounded like he had nothing, and yet, Siet did seem to sit there with a quiet confidence. Was he bluffing?

"Play your cards right and I'll raise the stakes." His smile reached his eyes this time. The guy was truly unsettling to watch. So pleasantly normal and yet, conspiring.

"What does that mean for me."

Siet rose from the table, taking his empty cup and Heero's untouched newspaper with him.
"It was wonderful to finally meet you. I'll be in touch." He spoke, all traces of the unsettling nature left behind. He was back to being Siet Clark, democratically elected Minister of Agriculture.

-

Heero's fingers rested idly on the keyboard, alternating between a rhythmic, innocuous drumming to a feverish typing followed by repeated pressing of the delete key.

No matter how many times he searched the internet for the name Siet Clark, he was coming up with nothing.

Nothing outside of ordinary anyway.

This kid was clean, very clean.

A soft knock tried its chances at his heavy office door.

"Come in."

Trowa poked his head into the room. Heero nodded towards the empty chair in front of his desk. Trowa took the seat, and reached over to a nearby lamp and flicked it on.

"Well you must be on to something to sit in here in the dark like this. What've you got?" Trowa mused, crossing his leg over the other and leaning back into the seat.

"Just checking my e-mail." Heero grunted.

"You were pretty late to HQ this morning. That's not very like you at all." Trowa ventured, bringing his hand up to his chin.

"I was stuck in traffic."

"Yes if you're coming from Boom you're bound to hit that commuter traffic."

Heero stopped typing, eyes darting to meet Trowa's scrutinizing gaze.

"I came from Relena's." Trowa smiled at the answer, closing his eyes and bringing his palm to rest on his own knee.

Trowa was a human lie-detector, Preventer's prized undercover agent and interrogator. After the war, Trowa had attended university, obtaining a Psychology master's degree in record time. The government put it to good use as soon as they could. Coupling his smarts with military experience put Trowa on the fast track to a high rank in Preventer, rising in the ranks to a position just below Heero.

While Heero was Commander of Special Projects and Technology, which reported to Une, Commander of Operations, Trowa was the director of Intelligence, part of Heero's SPT department. It was Trowa's efforts that secured Heero's birth certificate in the first place.

Trowa ran a hand through his hair, and craned his neck, cracking it for relief.

"I'm here for my morning briefing, although its two hours late." Trowa's lips formed a thin line. Heero exhaled through his nose, and closed the laptop.

"There is nothing to brief you on. I have not given you any assignments this week, and there are no new developments on your last operation."

"Oh? There isn't? Well that is strange." Trowa brought his hand to his chin again, eyes narrowing, searching Heero.

It made him uncomfortable, how easy it was for Trowa to read him. They sat like that for a moment, in an impromptu staring contest, until Trowa stood.

"My mistake then." He smiled.

"Don't worry about it." Heero mumbled.

As Trowa rested his hand on the office door frame, he turned one last time.

"Do you want to grab coffee this afternoon? Around the corner? I wanted to talk to you a bit about everything. See what you thought."

Heero fidgeted slightly at his desk. If he said no, how would Trowa take it? Heero could deal with another coffee, sure. If he said no, would it look bad? Regular people could drink more than one cup of coffee a day right?

"Sure thing." He consented. Heero didn't need caffeine at all, but he liked the taste. Plus it made him look like a normal person, to have his hand around a paper cup. That's what coworkers did, grab coffee together.

-
/A.C. 197/

Sally Po handed him a cotton ball and directed him to apply pressure on his hand. She discarded the IV port into a nearby hazmat receptacle, and pulled a nearby stool over to his bedside.

"I'm taking you off IV."

"I can see that. Thanks."

"I'm not doing it as a favor. You just don't need it." She smiled, handing him a stack of papers. "These are your vital test findings. Despite taking such a beating when Zero exploded in the sky, your results are normal. I'm assuming you fainted in the presidential palace only due to exhaustion."

"I coulda' told you that Sally." He let out a nervous laugh. Truth be told, Heero had been terrified to hear his test results. He was scared that what he had been feeling over the past year had been some type of cancer or illness he picked up during the war. He had symptoms constantly, random bouts of adrenaline followed by immediate sleep. He could sleep anywhere, and did. It wasn't narcolepsy, and it wasn't cancer.

"Heero, if I may. This test was routine, we try to get as much information as possible after people survive a massive explosion like that. Normally, its not even possible. Normal people don't survive all that you have. Your test results are normal, but they're normal for someone like you."

Heero averted his gaze to the veins in his hand that had once been home to an IV port.

"I have a theory Heero, and to confirm it, I compared your test results to Wufei's initial Preventer physical. I had his blood tested too, and I saved his results, hoping I could get the chance to test my theory someday."

"Just tell me what you know then." Heero mumbled, raising his gaze to meet hers. She seemed too excited, too positive.

"You had safe cell counts, so no infections or sicknesses. But I found that you had excessively high levels of magnesium, and extremely low levels of potassium levels were also concerning. I found these odd, so while you were unconscious, I did a tox-screen, and I found nothing."

"Why would you do a tox-screen? I'm not on anything."

"Well Heero, those vitamin levels are something you don't see in a healthy person, usually they point to substance use, but you were clean. Your hair was clean also. It just didn't make sense. And then I took a look at Wufei's results."

"Get to the point."

"Your body, it must have had long exposure to some type of chemical before the Mariemaia Incident. Do you remember taking anything when you first landed on Earth? Before? I've been testing you twice a week since we recovered you. Your body is messing with these vitamin and hormone levels on its own. As if it was trained to do this."

Heero laid back. The threat of sleep was strong. Not again, he couldn't pass out here. He couldn't pass out now.

-

Present day

Trowa took his coffee black, in his own ceramic mug he brought from his office. It was ancient, and off white, with some type of brightly colored Russian folk design painted on it. It had to be older than fifty years old, anything Russian was worth a fortune these days, as it was a rare find. Most likely a gift from Catherine.

Heero settled on an iced green tea this time, perhaps a lighter drink would take the edge off what he had been feeling all day.

"You look like shit Heero. What's up." Trowa that bastard. Who cared what he looked like?

"Just tired is all. I...I did open my file last night. With Relena." Trowa's eyebrows disappeared under his bangs.

"That's more than I thought I'd get out of you today. Wow." He gestured towards a bar that faced a busy Brussels street, away from the rest of the large cafe. The two of them hopped onto the high stools, taking a moment to savor their afternoon pick-me-ups.

"So did you find anything of note?" Trowa hummed from his cup. Heero debated on what to tell him. It was highly likely Trowa had already seen the file, as he was in charge of the intelligence portion of the investigation anyway.

"...All of it." Heero said through gritted teeth. Trowa laughed heartily, Heero seemed to be quite the comedian these days.

"I will say Heero, I'm sure that you had a feeling who your father was. Even the fact that it seems as though Dr. J was the doctor that brought you into the world. But what really surprised me, were those witness names."

"Hn."

"Famous names, those." Trowa nodded to himself as he brought his mug up for another sip. "God this place makes it the best, don't they? I'd never tire of it. No matter how much coffee I drink, it only seems like water. Love this place." He closed his eyes and took a deep inhale of the miraculously scented steam emitted by the cup.

"Do you know anything? About those names?" Maybe if Heero made it seem like he knew nothing, Trowa wouldn't catch on to his contact with Clark.

"Only that you're the only one that seems to have obvious ties to Oz somehow. Possibly Romefeller. And that you're the only one of us five actually born on the Earth." Trowa said without putting down his cup. If Heero had known any better, he would think Trowa were trying to hide his lips. But that was a habit Trowa had picked up from the war. He was constantly playing spy.

"I wish I knew how or why. Makes me a little sick when I entertain the thought." Heero decided to play along, and tried not to move his lips, teeth clenched on his straw. Trowa's every move had been deliberate since the moment they met. Maybe there was a reason to mask their speech.

"Did you look into your mother at all? She sounds Japanese. You always knew you were Asian somehow right?" Trowa remarked, finally placing his mug on the bar.

"No...not yet. I haven't really come to terms with the idea of learning anything else. Its...a lot to process." There was no need to hide that from anyone. He couldn't imagine any of them wanted to dig any deeper than they already had.

"I think its interesting. We're all learning some amazing things. Like...for example...I was abandoned at an orphanage in a Russian neighborhood, and Catherine's mother is Russian, and from that same neighborhood in L3."

Heero drummed his fingers against the bar, his breath quickening.

"Quatre, has slight albinoism...somehow. And the only actual sibling born a live birth of his mother. Not a test tube baby at all...Could you believe that? I thought albinoism came with red eyes...his eye color has something to do with being born in space. Amazing..."

The ice shifted in Heero's plastic cup as the heat from his hands radiated passed the barrier.

"I haven't spoken to the others yet...Quatre just likes to talk. You know how he is. Every night, he speaks for the entire phone call. I don't get a word in..."

"Anything else Trowa?" Heero spoke in one breath. He stress was creeping up on him, like shadowy hands gripping onto his ankles.

"Nothing else. Nothing else you don't already know." Trowa deadpanned. He pushed himself away from the bar and hopped off the stool, carrying his mostly full mug in one hand. "I'll leave first, see you back upstairs."

Heero knew that tone. Trowa knew that Heero met with Siet Clark. Trowa was all knowing. He was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

The question now was, would Trowa keep the secret for him?

a/n hi all! sorry its been forever! I actually go to college while working full time, so I had finals to worry about. This is quite the bit of meaty filler chapter right here, but don't worry there is some juicy fluff action coming next in this 1xR sandwich! i just realized i'm starving...

thanks for your continued support!

~murshmallow