Previously in MOUNTEBANK
"Re-Relena?" I whispered. A wave of confusion washed over me. I looked over to Trowa and Duo, who couldn't see what I was seeing from the other side of the room. Trowa flourished his hands. "Keep her talking" he mouthed.
"Paging... Doctor Lowe." She said as she lifted her head to look at me.
Chapter 11, part two.
Trigger warning: child loss
I had graduated engineering school with a Ph.D in my early 20s. Not a small feat for the regular guy, but I was a little different. I skipped high school entirely and entered university before my 17th birthday. I had blazed through my undergrad and masters in just a few years, and the doctorate had been the natural step. No one questioned my background or my falsified papers. No one knew Odin Lowe Jr. from a hole in the wall.
Enrolling at the University in Brussels was easier than hopping from school to school as I had done when I was a teenager. Life was so easy when you had your documentation. The students around me had likely taken that for granted their entire lives. College itself was a lot easier than I had hoped it would be. I got by on little sleep, caffeine and microwavable food. Oh... and sex.
Relena had been the only one. Always would have been. Our relationship was casual and convenient, but it was something we both needed. We were useful to each other. I remembered being 19 years old, and her calling me in the middle of the night for the first time. She was bored.
She was much too busy for a regular attachment, so I catered to her every whim whenever she called me. I was up at all hours anyway.
"Are you awake?" I remembered her voice sounded breathy through my cell. My hair stood on end whenever I heard her voice, but I'd never admit that to anyone. "Come over." She said, with all the surety in the world. I did what I was told, and then some.
I was whatever she wanted me to be from then on. Casual hookup. Dick appointment. Booty call. Boyfriend? Never.
After a few years of this, not long after I had received my doctorate, she shattered my reality with a single phone call in the middle of the night. Winter was close, but the leaves still hung on for dear life. Just like I did during that phone call.
"Are you coming home anytime soon?" I asked her. Even though we both lived in Brussels, home was wherever we both happened to be, at the same time. She could have told me to hop on a plane to Antarctica for all I cared, and I would have done it. But I tried to keep my cool, as usual. She didn't like it when I was too eager.
"Heero. I've been home for a few months." She had whispered, unsure. She had been hiding something from me, dodging me. How could she dodge me? We lived in the same city. It was like I could smell her from across town. What happened? What had changed?
"Please, I'm in the hospital. I need to talk to you."
A team of doctors and security guards met me at the door that night. I submitted readily to their search of my person, as I had left my gun and security clearances at home. I walked to the hospital that night with nothing but the clothes on my back. I hadn't even grabbed my coat.
The group escorted me silently to a secluded wing. And then they let me see her.
All alone, in a dimly-lit hospital room. Clutching a bundle in her arms. A Preventer medic had one of her arms wrapped in a blood pressure cuff. I watched as he entered her vital numbers onto a small tablet in his hands. The entire scene was so mundane, and yet I couldn't help the pit of dread that began to form in my stomach.
My eyes honed in on the bundle. Silent and still.
What is that? I remember thinking to myself. And then I felt the squeeze on my shoulder. Preventer Brigadier General, Dr. Sally Po, personal physician to all of the politicians and heads of state residing in Brussels.
"Heero. Did you know?" She whispered through a watery smile.
"Did I know? What? Did I know what?" I shrugged off her hand. I stared at Relena, who looked pale, so pale. She was so silent. So... wrong. She seemed like a stranger.
I knew that the hospital building was warm... hot even. But at that moment, the entire world went cold.
"He was just a little too young. Heero, I'm sorry. You have a son. But we couldn't do anything, he came before the obstetrician could even get here. Relena's body just couldn't keep him." Sally said through soft tears, her voice broken. My blood turned to ice as I put the pieces together.
"C-can I... can I hold him?" Was all I could say. I saw Relena's head nod, and she deflated as Sally took the bundle from her. Relena laid back into her bed as if a thousand pounds had lifted from her shoulders.
As Sally handed him to me, a million questions flooded my mouth like bile. I dared not ask a single one.
I thought she was away on a trip to the colonies for work? Wasn't it an extended assignment? She had been dodging my calls. She never responded to my last email. She didn't seem right the last time I saw her. She was so apathetic on our last phone call. When did she know? What just happened?
I saw him, smaller than he should have been. Wrapped in a soft, white blanket from the hospital nursery. Familiar, and yet unfamiliar. A ghost I had never known. I felt a tear run down my frozen skin, the first in a long time.
I wanted to run to her, to hold her, ask her why and what and how.
I held him close to me as I sat down in a plush chair next to her bed, but kept my eyes on Relena. I looked her up and down, pale skin, sunken eyes. Her normally-pristine bangs clung to her forehead from sweat.
I said nothing to her. Absolutely nothing.
I remembered the way she stared at me: cerulean eyes, normally warm like the sea in the summer, now iced over and lifeless. Her pupils dilated to the point of overshadowing her irises completely.
As I finally let the flashback wane, I exhaled sharply.
The woman I was locking eyes with now, she was not Relena.
"Sylvia? Sylvia Noventa?" I whispered.
"Who?" Duo whispered from the other side of the room. Trowa didn't answer him.
The girl on the screen was not the same girl I had met as a teenager. But there was no mistaking who she was— the granddaughter of the man whose death pulled my conscience out of limbo. The man who died at my hands. He who reminded me that I was a sinner.
She smiled and removed her hat. A set of honey bangs fell gracefully against her forehead. Soon, I started to piece things together.
She definitely looked more like Relena than I was comfortable with. She probably could be mistaken for her if you had seen her from a distance. You'd have to do more than a double take to notice in passing. She was practically her doppelgänger, a body double.
But it was all so sinister... she was a charlatan. A mountebank.
"Where is she?" I growled.
Time seemed to slow down as I watched the corner of Sylvia's mouth quirk upward. Then the screen went black.
"Shit!" Duo hissed. The two of them joined me on the couch. Duo held his head in his hands, as if he'd tear it from his own body.
"She's still alive, Heero. Sylvia wouldn't be playing with us if she didn't have a few cards up her sleeve. Relena is one of them." Trowa said. His voice was even, calm and confident. Somehow, I believed him.
"Who is Sylvia?" Duo growled, head still in his hands.
"Sylvia Noventa. I killed her grandfather back when we were just kids." I said, still staring at the black tablet screen. "I offered her a gun. So she could kill me to avenge his death. She declined."
Trowa hummed. I knew he would remember her. My friendship with Trowa began with my search for the Noventa family. A search to quell my own selfish guilt.
"That was right after the first time you tried to blow yourself up..." Trowa mused, smiling.
"Not the first time." I relented. "The first time was when I met Relena."
Trowa laughed.
"You're a fucking psychopath Heero." Duo seethed. "We can't sit like this. Who knows what they've done to Relena now."
Duo was right. Relena was likely alive, but her safety was now threatened as the enemy had revealed itself to us. The motivation though... could it be a long game of revenge?
"It's not just Sylvia, Heero. Her grandfather was a pacifist. There's no way she's doing this just to fuck with you. There's gotta be more to it." Trowa assured me, as if he could read my mind.
"Right." I said. "Duo, were you able to figure out where she called from?"
Duo got up from the couch to retrieve his laptop. "You're not going to like this." He grumbled, placing the machine in my lap. I already knew she was calling from Brussels, but in the meantime, Duo had honed in on her exact location.
Preventer Headquarters.
"You're fucking kidding." I said out loud. Was she with Relena? In the same building I had been imprisoned in?
"Une told you right, that they had a mole?" Trowa said, eyes shining. This must have gone deeper than I thought.
I stood up. My legs were stronger. I was stronger. My muscles twitched, itching to be used. I could feel the strength return to my arms and fingers. I was ready to go.
"What're you thinking Heero?" Duo asked.
"We have to go back. We have to break back in." My mind flooded with the images of Relena's body, bloodied and beaten. The backgrounds were always simple, sterile. She could have been anywhere. But I knew where they were keeping her. It was all a fucking joke.
"They have to have Relena holed up in the prison. Those mother fuckers probably had her right under me."
"But why use Sylvia Noventa or whatever her name is?" Duo asked, staring up at me with fear in his eyes. He knew better not to question me now, but it was valid. My brain was working overtime, putting everything together. Immediately I remembered the footage of "Relena" Zechs and Noin had shown me when I was first interrogated.
"Sylvia's not the mastermind, she's just the body double. Whoever her boss is, that's who wants the Zero system." I heard myself say. Shit. They had the upper hand indeed. "They probably want to use Relena as the bargaining chip."
"Norse God." Trowa whispered. "Norse God."
I couldn't come up with an answer to that. If anything, I was Norse God. I became Odin Lowe, once I took the name of the assassin that raised me. The man who was named after the Norse all-father god. The man I suspected could have been my biological father.
"I'm Norse God." I whispered. "They're just making sure that I know the messages are for me."
We will have both been inside her.
"Heero..." Her voice rang, clear as a bell... in my head. I knew no one else heard it. I knew it was just my brain trying to soothe me in some blessed, delusional way.
My eyes grew hot as I held back tears of frustration. This entire mess was starting to drive me insane.
a.n: oh hey look at me using the title of the fic directly in the plot :) That was a fun moment for me.
Thank you for sticking with me! I'm also now on Ao3, but have not transferred my fics over yet. Look for me soon!
Thanks for the support!
~murshmallow