"Master Quatre!" Rashid exclaimed, "I thought you were…I mean…so glad to see you back on your feet---"

"Where's Dorothy?" Quatre demanded quietly, ignoring all other peeves for the moment.

"Pardon?" Rashid pretended not to understand.

"Don't think the police never got back to me, Rashid. Mind you I don't know what's been happening around here, but I'm home now and I demand to know where Dorothy is."

"Quatre, did they let you out too early?" Rashid dared mock him.  Quatre unhooked his neck brace and held it in front of him.  He stepped inside.

"Where is she, Rashid?"

"I'm calling the hospital." Rashid turned his back to Quatre. Quatre took nearby floor lamp and smashed it over the nape of Rashid's neck. Rashid dropped the phone in the middle of the number to the hospital.  Quatre dropped the lamp and his neck and head pained horribly.  It was more intense than when he'd snuck out of the hospital.  The medicine he popped before he left's drowsy effects ate at him. He fought it and ran up the stairs as fast as he could without hurting himself. He reached the top of the stairs he told the officer he kept falling down.  He felt light headed.  He stepped into his and Dorothy's room.  Her stuff was gone and she wasn't there.  Quatre felt drowsier.  He gathered himself and yanked opened the closet. No sign of her things.  He pulled out the things in the closet, digging deep into he-didn't-know-what.  A vent. There was a vent at the bottom of this closet. It used to be an air conditioner, but it broke down and they replaced it—Quatre's father did, anyway, not Rashid.  Tears laced his eyes, but he held them back from pouring down.  He finally found it and stood up, lightheadedness almost knocking him over.  He hunched down again, mouth to the vent:

"Dorothy! Dorothy, can you hear me?" he called, not realizing how tired he sounded.  Sure enough, Dorothy heard him, but bound by sheets and having a pillow duct-taped to her face impaired her ability to call back.  She moaned into the pillow and squirmed hopelessly, tears making their way from her eyes to the cotton that separated her from her air.  Quatre couldn't hear anything.

"Dorothy!" he called once more.  Dorothy cried and cried.  Quatre heard that and listened carefully to the way it echoed.  To his horror, she was in the basement-shelter, underground.  He jumped up, and lightheadedness overcame him and he ran into the door panel.

"Ah," he groaned, his headache getting worse, much worse.  His neck was shaken, too.  He clenched his head and receded from the door.  The room spun violently, and he fell on the bed.  Everything kept going around and around. Rashid's face soon covered the middle of the whirlpool and grew slowly, bigger and bigger.  Quatre felt nauseous and felt a blackout coming on.  He sat up and threw up all over Rashid.

He turned out to be really there.   Quatre covered his mouth.  A disgusted Rashid drew away.  Quatre jumped up, shoved Rashid over a short chest and bolted out, slamming the door behind him.  He hurried down the steps, nearly making the story he told the officer truth.  He hit the bottom of the staircase and stopped for a second to stop the room from spinning and catch his breath.  He heard Rashid thundering to the stairs.  Quatre took a few quick, unsure steps, and then threw himself into a sprint.  Around the stairs and beside them, he went, down the hall and through the middle of the ballroom and then through the reception room.  Rashid caught a glimpse of Quatre as he flew through the entrance to the reception room.  Quatre took a sharp turn and shot out onto the veranda balcony and hurried down the steps.  He no longer listened for Rashid's oncoming footsteps.  He ignored his drowsiness.  He flew a few tenths of a mile around the side of the magnificent estate and finally hit the stables.  Disregarding the harnesses and such, Quatre mounted Dorothy's birthday present (he had yet to give her), an Arabian Stallion named Blaze he'd bought from a rancher.

"Get up!" Quatre held tight to Blaze's mane, and Blaze jumped over the door to his stall and galloped out of the stables and across a less visible piece of lawn into a forest.  He didn't ride deep into the unknown, but the sunlight was strained in the place he stopped.  In front of him appeared a door to nowhere.  It was in fact a door that led down to Instructor H's secret lab.  Since its abandon, Quatre used it as a place to get away from Rashid.  Quatre went for the handle, similar to the kind used on the doors of fast food restaurants.  The door didn't budge.  Quatre was very, very angry.  There is a fine line between discipline and offence.  Nobody knew where the getaway was except Quatre, so he left it unlocked, so when he needed to getaway, he could concentrate on his emotions, not on a lock.  Rashid crossed the line.  Anger made him lightheaded and he grasped his temples and breathed heavily, leaning against the rusty door.  He thought he hallucinated another horse coming his way.  He gasp and his head snapped around into Rashid's eyes.  Rashid's eyes burned and he savagely beat his horse to lessen the time getting to Quatre and expand the time he had to conceal his doom.  This is it, Rashid thought, readying himself, today is the day I show the rich little bastard what it's like to be neglected in a time of crisis and unappreciated.  Quatre seemed to feel his thoughts and yanked and yanked the door handle, his heart telling him he could do it, his mind pleading with him to stop and get help.  Dorothy, both were screaming at him, Dorothy you fool. Try harder.

"AHH!"  Quatre backed up a few feet, ran up and karate-kicked the door open, shattering the handle and led the horse quickly down a dark flight of steel steps.

One of Quatre's hands traveled just as quickly as the rest of him down the wall in search of a light switch, and the other held the horse steady.  Quatre felt his way around a corner, unsure of whether or not Rashid had seen him.  The texture of the ground went form rock to metal and Quatre ran his groin into a waist-high steel fence.  Wrong turn, he was over looking the opening the Instructor would use to fix his Gundam.  He felt back around to the other side of the corner.  Rashid entered the doorway and was making his way cautiously down the stairs.

"Hey!" he yelled at Quatre.  Quatre bounded past a room he used for his guests and into the one that he usually slept in, barley pulled the horse's rump in, then shut and locked it.

Dorothy was a pile of rumpled sheets that barely caught the corner of his eye as he bounded past the filthy guest room he never used.  She was passed out from not being able to breathe.  Rashid peeked in on her.  She was there, just as he'd expected, and still bound.  Quatre had gone right past her in his own panic.  Rashid waited patiently for Quatre to exit his room and enter Dorothy's, lurking in the shadows right in front of his door.

Behind his door, Quatre panted and heaved and tried to stop himself from hysterical crying. No you don't, his heart told him, there will be plenty of time for a mental breakdown after you save Dot.  He looked around his room.  His heart jumped in his throat and he covered his eyes and prayed the horribleness away, sliding down to the floor with his back on the door.

There was a huge picture of Rashid on top of Dorothy, who was chained to the bed, white, anguished face shedding tears that gathered under her ears and dripped into little pools of Rashid's sweat.  He was obviously forcing her.  All over Quatre's walls in alternating red and black spray paint were cryptic messages that chilled Quatre in the silent dimness of the room.  QUATRE RABABER WINNER IS A WHORE. EVIL LITTLE RICH BOY. HOW DARE HE CALL HIMSELF A MAN HE CAN'T EVEN TAKE A BEATING LIKE A MAN THE LITTLE PIE-FACE HEATHEN DOROTHY IS MINE DOROTHY IS MINE DOROTHY IS MINE DOROTHY IS MINE AND SHE WILL ALWAYS BE MINE AND NOT QUATRES ILOVEYOUDOROTHYILOVEYOUDOROTHYILOVEDORY                                   ILOVEDOROTHYILOVEDOROTHYILOVEDOROTHYILOVEDOROHTYILOVEDOROTHYILOVEDOROTHYILOVEDOROTHYILOVEDOROTHYILOVEDOROTHYILOVEDOROTHYILOVEDOROTHYILOVEDOROTHYILOVEDOROTHYILOVEDOROTHYILOVEDOROTHYILOVEDOROTHYILOVEDOROTHYILOVEDOROTHYSHE LOVES ME SHE LOVES MELOVEHERILOVEHERILOVEHERILOVHERILOVEHERILOVEHERILOVHER SHELOVESMESHELOVESMESHELOVESMESHELOVESMESHELOVESMESHELOVESMESHELOVESMESHELOVESMESHELOVESMESHELOVESMESHELOVESME……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Quatre's head overflowed and he had a breakdown.

So did Sir Isaac Newton and he turned out to be one of the most celebrated geniuses of all time.

So now a combination of grief, anger, physical pain, stress, and heartbreak was working Quatre in ways he didn't think possible.

Quatre wasn't crying. He stood up, completely emotionless, like Heero (more or less, we don't need two Heeros, right fans?) and opened his door, leading his horse out to the other room where Dorothy was bound.  Rats tried to chew through the sheets.  He ripped the pillow off her face with one jerk, pulling out a little bit of her hair.  She gasped for air, but didn't wake.  He untied the sheets from around her and her skinny, pale body relaxed in his arms.  He turned for the horse, to guide it to her bedside.  Rashid stood in the doorway, looking more insane than ever.

"She's mine, bitch." Rashid muttered, and slammed the door.  The mirror crashed down on Quatre.