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Long Lost
Disclaimer: I still don't own GW or any of its characters. I tried, but Evilnmalice outbid me. (Fortunately it didn't pay up, so it doesn't own them either.)
Warnings: None
Pairings: so far, only 3x4, we'll see how things develop
Archive: Desolation Angels.
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Chapter Nine: Distraction
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A small sound of frustration escaped Heero's throat as he fixed his computer screen with a withering glare.
Unfazed, it continued to blink brazenly at him:
NO MATCH FOUND.
"Still nothing?" a soft soprano inquired wearily from where Catherine curled with a small stack of old magazines on the couch. Despite a brief afternoon stint in Relena's basement, their headquarters was a suite Quatre had rented for them all in a hotel—it would have been impossible to keep their search discreet if all give of them had stayed with Relena, who lived with her brother, Peygan, and Miss Noin.
Besides, neither Quatre nor Heero had ever really become comfortable with Preventer Wind, the peacetime Zechs Merquise.
So now, with Trowa, Quatre and Relena off searching the Peacecraft mansion and Duo still scouring libraries, Heero and Catherine conducted their research in relative quiet and with dauntingly little result.
"Still nothing," Heero confirmed. "It shouldn't be that difficult, all I want is a genealogy record to get Katrina's brother's name."
"Romafeller wiped a lot of Sanq records," Catherine explained, and Heero looked up at her in surprise. He hadn't realised she paid that much attention to the politics that surrounded the war. She caught the look and let out an irritated sigh. "I repeat, I'm not completely ignorant."
"I know you're not. I'm sorry." Heero scowled into his screen at having been so readily caught. "But I didn't know about that."
Catherine shrugged. "Dorothy Catalonia mentioned it once." Her grey eyes narrowed in thought, and she paused, her fingers frozen in mid-turn of a crinkled page. "You know, she said something else the same night...Heero, why not run Catalonia and Khushrenada, if you can't get Peacecraft?"
"Huh? Oh, why not?" Heero's fingers flew, and words began scrolling down his screen again. "Any idea what I should be looking for?"
Catherine had her head bent over her pile again, flipping frantically through pages. "I will in a minute—just narrow it to those in the right age bracket...."
Heero, more than a little impressed—though he would never have admitted it—stole a glance at her past the computer screen as his fingers, long-since accustomed to typing without input from his eyes or conscious mind, processed the search requirements. He wondered, however idly, if the secret to the circus siblings' bond was really no more than the ability to move gracefully in impossibly tight jeans. On either one, it was distracting. Tousled auburn hair fell haphazardly around her face as she bent to the stack of magazines, brushing against her shoulders and the soft green sweater that draped her frame. A few loose strands clung there, glistening golden-red in the light that filtered through the window.
Heero, normally trained to notice such detail only out of tactical necessity, wondered where these observations were coming from, and how long he'd been having them without noticing.
Quite a while, his subconscious informed him. You just weren't paying attention.
"Louis," Catherine said abruptly, sliding off the couch with a satisfied sigh. "Louis Catalonia. Look for something about him in a duel with Philip Cressida."
There /was/ something vaguely familiar in that, and Heero's furious typing was rewarded when colour blossomed on his screen and took the form of a photo-capture of a dashing, handsome, smiling young man with white-blonde hair and pale blue eyes.
"I think we're onto something," he said, suddenly quite conscious of Catherine's proximity as she leaned across his shoulder to better see.
"Now we work backward," she suggested, sounding pleased. "That's Katrina's brother...now we look for his connection to Quatre's father."
"It might take a while," Heero cautioned, noting that while there was more information on this lead than any they'd yet found, he had to expect that not all of it had escaped Romafeller's purging.
Catherine shrugged. "So I'll put coffee on." Heero's eyes continued to follow her as she padded to the kitchenette, berating himself all the while.
Life with Duo and Hilde had been making him soft. This was a /mission/. It was no time to let himself get distracted!
But really...after years of soldiering, one failed attempt at a relationship, and Duo's constant badgering about how abnormal he was, it felt kind of nice to be distracted.