Voices : The End
*Extra Important Note: This is dedicated to Tina [real name] and someday if ff.net does die I hope we'll be able to start our own website. ;)*
Author's Note: I should be doing my biology homework or studying for the test that it coming up. Or I could be catching up on my math project that is due in a week. I could even be cleaning my room. But no, I am here typing the 4th chapter of Voices, be thankful. Or at least review.
Disclaimers : Despite my vast wealth of 50 cents I do not own Gundam Wing or Sailor Moon. I got beaten out by some dork on E-Bay. :grumble grumble:
Key
Thoughts-//yadda yadda yadda//
Change in person-+++
Hotaru's bashing to herself in voice of father- 'yadda yadda yadda'
+++
Hotaru sat cross legged on her bed staring at the jacket that she had hung carefully on the back of her chair. //Everyone has used me.// She hadn't told Trowa but she could now pin point when her father's kind moods had only been a ploy on her emotions to get her to do something.
She thought back on all the simple things he had asked her to do when he visited like adding up some numbers which he claimed was for his taxes or way to send someone a virus without them being able to trace it back to the sender. At the time they had all seemed like little tests to Hotaru and she only wanted to prove herself capable. There was also the game they had played together a few months ago...
Hotaru sucked in a breath, causing herself to cough when she realized she had planned the attack of the Treasury of the Sanq Kingdom. Her father had approached her as usual, saying that they never taught her anything important in school and that she would never have enough common sense to survive in the real world. She had wanted to prove that she would survive, that she would make him proud.
"I bet I could," was all she had said before he had laid out papers and told her to figure out the best way to steal something from a high-tech bank and get away scotch free. Hotaru had spent many nights on it and finally came up with a plan.
"Run home," she said out loud, remembering step 10 of the plan. "Run home and pretend that it never happened." Speaking brought Hotaru back into her body and her eyes fell on Trowa's coat once more. "You used me too though. My father isn't the only bad guy in this story."
'Or maybe he didn't think you were good enough for him to spend the time to spare you the pain,' her "father" suggested.
"Maybe so," Hotaru whispered sadly. She touched her mouth and the warmness of Trowa's lips seemed to singe it. "He didn't have to kiss me though. I was already attached to him, he didn't have to play with me like that."
She glared at the jacket and stalked over to it. She wanted to rip it up, burn it or something. Anything to get rid of the pain of the fact that she had lost him. //But I can't. Or I don't want to.// The confusion of her heart only brought a dull pain and she leaned on the chair, tears spreading across her cheeks.
++Time has passed++
Trowa stared at the checker board with detachment. He finally moved one of his black pieces and wasn't surprised when Wufei made four jumps, finally ending the embarrassing game.
"That's the third game you've lost, Barton," Wufei commented, sweeping the checkers back into the box then folding the board neatly on top.
"I know," Trowa growled, sounding tired as usual. He saw in the reflection of the television that Heero was giving him a concerned look, or at least as close to a concerned look as Heero could get.
Trowa could feel the uncomfortable silence and stood up. "I'm going to take a nap or something," he announced. The two other gundam pilots nodded and Trowa walked out but not before catching Wufei commenting that it was his eighth nap.
//Thanks for counting,// he thought sardonically as he entered his plain room which lacked the color coordination of Hotaru's. At the thought of the girl Trowa gave a low groan and fell onto his bed in a heap. It had been a week and the strange girl still plagued or blessed his mind, Trowa was never sure which. The image of her crying, the feeling of her tongue in his mouth and...everything.
//Did I really fall in love with her or am I infatuated with the new feeling of actually having someone to care about, to protect,// he wondered. //Isn't that what Heero feels. When Releana comes for dinner I never see them share any secret glances or public displays of affection. It's only Heero standing close to her, as if at any moment she could be taking away from him.//
He flipped himself up onto his back and began a staring contest with the boring ceiling paint. "With Hotaru there were secret meetings in-between classes and shy glances, was that love or am I trapped just like Heero?" he spoke to the ceiling which, of course, didn't answer.
"And if I loved her than I wouldn't have left her, no matter what she had said. Not with her father who will eventually figure out who I am and take it out on her...." His streaming of sentences and self therapy broke off until he came to a conclusion. "And if she dies by the hands of her father, it will be my fault for leaving her. If I loved her I wouldn't have left her."
"I thought you said you were taking a nap?" Heero wondered accusingly, looking at Trowa who was draped over his bed.
"Sorry," Trowa muttered and swung himself into a more conversational position. "I was coming to terms with my feelings," he confessed mockingly.
"I do that," Heero admitted and sat down next to Trowa.
"You don't have feelings," Trowa teased.
Heero looked around the room, "I wish that were true." They were both silent and Trowa was pretty sure Heero had begun to think of his relationship with Releana.
"Do you love her?" Trowa inquired.
"Probably not," Heero answered truthfully, "but I think she's the only thing I have left from the war and I know I loved the war."
"Without her you're nothing," Trowa whispered.
"I'm nothing but a freakishly quiet 17 year old boy with no home or family. With her...in her eyes....I'm some great hero that managed to save the world when everything was against me," Heero said with distance as if he had just thought of it.
"Hmmm," Trowa answered.
"Hnnnn," Heero answered back and they sat there staring at the wall, thinking about life. (1)
+++
Hotaru walked into her house with a well worn look of bitterness and self pity. For the first few days after Trowa had left she had kept her hope alive by watching all the corny chick flicks she could and focusing on the fact that whenever the guy ran off he always came back.
Now it had been a week. There was no chance that Trowa would come back unless it was to arrest her and her father. All Hotaru had now was a nice leather jacket that she dare not wash because the smell was the only thing that could comfort her at night when she could hear her father beating her mother. Despite the fact that Hotaru wasn't as attached to her father as she had been, her mother and she were still trapped. Her father would spend an hour physically and mentally abusing each of them each night, making sure that they knew if they went to the police once he got out he would find a way to kill them.
"So now we hide in the corner like little children, lying about our bruises and scars to our friends, avoiding home until the last moment," she muttered to herself. She carried her bags up the stairs and into her room, closing the door carefully. Sometimes her father would forget that she existed and never come but it was not often enough.
The teenager threw off her jacket, revealing her molted back and shoulders. She slumped into her computer chair and let her mind wander to how things would be different if Trowa were here. //NO!// she objected in her mind. //If he had any real feelings for me he would have come back. He wouldn't have left me in this pit of death.//
"HOTARU!" her father bellowed, causing Hotaru to cringe. She had been hoping it would be a little longer before it was her turn. "Where are you..you little bitch, where did you go?"
//I'm always in my room idiot,// she thought spitefully and opened the door. She had picked up the fact that the meeker and more weak she acted, the shorter it would be so she never showed the fact that she no longer really feared him.
"I'm here Daddy," Hotaru called out, making her voice a little squeakier like a catholic school girl. She saw the lanky man turn the corner and gave a slight start when she saw he was carrying a bat.
"You remember that man you bought home a week ago, Hotaru, baby," Rider's voice slurred and he ran his finger along the edge of her face.
"Yes," Hotaru answered unsteadily. //If he's really found out who Trowa was....//
"Did you know that he was an undercover assassin who was sent to arrest your dear old dad?"
"No," Hotaru answered then added in her mind, //Not at first anyway.//
"LIAR!!" Rider screamed and launched his body into Hotaru's, throwing her halfway across the room so she hit the corner of her bed. She gave a yelp of actually pain and scampered backwards, clutching her stinging shoulder blade. "HE'S GOING TO SEND ME TO JAIL, HOTARU! JAIL FOR LIFE!"
"I didn't know, I didn't know," Hotaru cried, using the tears of her pain to support her lie.
"YOU KNEW AND YOU USED HIM JUST TO GET RID OF ME!" Rider said, pointing a finger at her accusingly. He bounding to her in two paces and picked her up by the back of her neck, then quickly changed his position and slammed the girl into the wall.
"I love you Daddy, I love you too much to do that to you," Hotaru sobbed but in her mind was objecting, //I don't use people, I would never use Trowa.//
A sick smile slid across Hotaru's father's face and he dropped her to the ground. "Well it doesn't matter, the damage has been done and I'm sure that the police will be here soon enough."
Hotaru shuddered. She had never heard her father be calm while in one of his out raged moods, it just made him all the more dangerous. "Wha....what...." she couldn't complete a sentence and just stared up at the man.
"It won't matter if they come though, no one is going to be alive for them to find and arrest," he announced, pulling out a silver handgun. "But no one will think of me. I have a diary here of a crazy teenage girl who couldn't stand her parents so she decided to kill them."
Hotaru began to shake her head in denial, "Mommy, where's Mommy?" she wondered with a screeching voice.
"Oh don't worry, I didn't shoot her, I just hit over the head with a frying pan a few times," her father said, "but I'm pretty sure the job is done." Hotaru gave a ear piercing scream and Rider crouched down and slapped her across the face into silence. "Wouldn't want the neighbors to wonder," he murmured and pressed the barrel of the gun to her head.
Hotaru's eyes widened and she waited for the bullet to penetrate her skull. Then she focused her sight and saw her father looking her over, like he was having second thoughts. That was all the time she needed. All at the same time she ducked, clawed her father's face and pushed out her legged, using her well developed pointed toe to stab him in the groin.
The gun fired and left a neat and tidy hole in Hotaru's wall. The girl stared at it for a second then got up and ran to her computer, looking for scissors or something heavy she could use to knock the homicidal man out with until the police came.
"Should have don't that you rat bitch," Rider groaned and swung the gun in her direction. The gun sounded and the bullet flew, hitting Hotaru in the calf. She screaming in pain and stumbled back, crashing into the computer chair where Trowa's coat had been placed every night.
There was a clunck and Hotaru looked at the ground in disbelief. Sitting the middle of her carpet that was already stained with her blood was Trowa's own gun. Rider stared at it and began to move to get it before Hotaru but the girl was closer and reached it first.
"Hotaru, you don't know how to handle one of those," her father objected. "Put it down."
Hotaru stood up, unsteady on her leg that was gushing with blood. "Goodbye Father, I loved you once," she said quietly and pressed the trigger. In a split second after the gun gave off a bang that made Hotaru stumble to the ground, Rider Tomoe was lying on the ground with a hole in his heart.
+++
Trowa was staring at the TV dinner in the microwave when the phone rang and Wufei picked it up nochantly. "Who are you?" he inquired with the same politeness that he gave everyone else. There was a pause when the other person answered. Trowa saw Wufei look up at him and knew the call was probably for him.
"Who is it?" Trowa asked quietly.
"Police from the town with the girl," Wufei said, covering the mouth part of the receiver.
"Tell 'em I'm busy," Trowa said, gesturing to the microwave.
Wufei nodded and told the policeman a more elaborate lie. "Really?" Wufei questioned in authentic surprise which made Trowa look at him once more. "He'll will be down there as soon as possible," Wufei said and hung up the phone.
"What is it now?" Trowa inquired. He had finally begun to let go of Hotaru, he didn't want to go back.
"The police said that the neighbors of that girl from the Rider mission just heard gunshots coming from the house," Wufei informed his friend.
Once Trowa heard gunshot he bolted out the door. He jumped into the Saturn which he had yet to return and revved the engine then cursed for not getting something faster as he speeded down the back road that would lead him to the highway.
//Gunshotgunshotgunshotgunshotgunshotgunshotgunshotgunshot,// was all he could think. Rider must have found out who Trowa was and finally gotten rid of Hotaru and her mom, his only liability.
"And it's all my fault. It's all my fault for leaving her in that danger," Trowa reprimanded himself and felt something grab his heart. He wanted to cry, felt like he should be bawling like a baby but the tears wouldn't come and he hated himself even more.
+++
"We need to ask you some questions, dear," a kind voiced police woman requested of a drenched and half fainting teenage girl.
"Could it wait?" the girl inquired quietly, pulling the thin fleece blanket around her tighter to shut out the cold while the paramedic rapped a bandage tightly around her leg which had only been clipped by the bullet.
The officer sighed and nodded, "Yes of course." She walked away and Hotaru continued to stare in shock at the muddy, grassy, ground.
She had killed her father. He was dead and lifeless and cold, never to speak or torment her again. Her mother was dead, beaten to an unidentifiable creature by a iron frying pan. Hotaru was alone. She was an orphan.
Tears rimmed her eyes but she felt like this sadness was too great for some petty show of water works. Or maybe she didn't want her father to see her cry, to see that he had been right about how weak she was. Nevermind the fact that her father was gone, that she had seen the police drag out his body bag an hour or so ago.
"Would someone get control of that boy!" the had officer ordered.
"He's beaten up all the people we send at him sir," a younger deputy explained.
"Threaten him with a gun you idiot."
"He's Trowa Barton sir, we can't without some trouble from the whole gundam squad," the deputy said.
"Well what the Hell is he looking for?" the officer demanded.
//Probably my father,// Hotaru thought sourly. //Won't he be disappointed that I already finished up his job.//
"The girl, Hotaru Tome."
For a moment Hotaru's skin warmed at the thought that Trowa had come back because he was concerned but then her realism got the hold of her. //He came to yell at me for killing the only person who knows where the money is. Except that I know where Father put the money, after all I planned the whole thing.//
"She's over here Mr.Barton," some policeman said and Hotaru's muscles tightened as she sensed her ex-boyfriend/protector approach her.
"Hotaru," he said softly and put his hand on her shoulder.
She ducked from his touch and turned to face him with a fierce glare. "I finished your job. I killed him."
"Did he hurt you much?" Trowa inquired as if he hadn't even heard Hotaru's announcement. He tried to touch the deep scratch that ran down her cheek but she stood up and again stepped back much to the protest of her ingury.
"I-KILLED-MY-FATHER! I killed him because you made me believe he was bad. He's dead and it's all your fault. I'm an orphan and it's all your fault. If you hadn't come to my house then he wouldn't have known you were hear and he wouldn't have beaten my mother and he wouldn't be dead. We would still be happy or at least I would still be happy!" Hotaru cried and punched at Trowa's chest senselessly.
He never moved and when Hotaru stopped he held her wrists and looked down at her. "Hotaru I'm sorry. I know it's my fault that your parents are dead, but I swear I never meant to cause you any real pain."
"But you did, you did and now I'm all alone. Alone and cold. My father was right, I'm not strong enough for the real world, I can't survive without him," she cried. Trowa carefully wrapped his arms around her shaking body and held her to him.
"You're not alone. I'm here, I promise I'll always be here from now on," Trowa whispered.
"I want my mother back. I just want to say I'm sorry for all the pain I caused her," Hotaru whimpered.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I took her away from you," Trowa apologized and felt himself wanting to cry for hurting Hotaru. "I can't bring her back and I'm sorry."
"Just don't leave me. I don't want to be alone," she said and Trowa kissed her gently on the brow before guiding her to his car to take her to his home.
++Miny Epilogue++
Trowa watched Hotaru play Monopoly with Heero and Duo, winning as usual. The diamond ring on her finger twinkled brightly, reminding Trowa of their early engagement. It had been a year since the incident where Hotaru had lost both her parents and she still needed more time before she was ready for that type of commitment, not too mention she wanted to finish high school and college.
Trowa had brought her to the safe house the night of the shooting and so far she had adapted very nicely to the life style of moving from place to place and the other gundam members. Duo and Heero had a particular soft spot for her. Trowa still couldn't't leave on a mission more than a few days long or without swearing that he wouldn't do anything stupid. //Yeah she's doing pretty well.//
Or at least it seemed that way during the day when she was around people but it was different at night when they were in bed. It was routine now, Trowa almost missed it when he went away from home. Hotaru would climb in to bed, kiss him on the cheek then turn over and turn off the lights. Trowa would change his breathing, almost drifting into sleep only to woken by a familiar soft crying. His heart would break once more in guilt and he would gather her closer to him, re-enforcing the fact that he would never leave. Only then would Hotaru stop crying and fell asleep.
"Heero, you're out of money," Hotaru stated.
"I'll borrow some from Duo," Heero answered easily.
"You already owe me $500 dollars, buddy," Duo said.
"I'll pay you back later," Heero promised.
"You don't have any spaces Heero, admit it, you lost," Hotaru gestured to the board and Trowa gave a small chuckle. Maybe she wouldn't cry tonight, maybe everything would be okay tonight.
+++
1-When my friend and I can't thnk of anything to say I say hmm and as not to copy me because he loates being any sort of clone, he says hnn.
Author's Note: It wasn't long, only like 9 pages. I actually thought I could have made the very ending a little bit better but this was like my 5th time re-writing it and I really want to move on with my next story. I hope you all enjoyed it. Please review.
