"You don't have to answer that, Julia," Sally told her quickly, then turned back to the idiot Preventer to yell at him some more. She'd been going for twenty minutes strong and showed no signs of stopping. Julia lifted both of her feet onto her chair and wrapped her arms around her knees, wishing that a hole would open up in the ground and swallow her.
Not because of Sally - Sally was doing her best, and without the older woman defending her, Julia probably would have given in to the urge to have a screaming fit a long time ago. It was just the entire situation. Julia couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so profoundly miserable, and this Preventer, on top of all of it...
It had been several hours since... since she'd... :Say it!: she commanded herself. She wasn't going to let herself avoid this one. It had been several hours since she'd killed a man. She still wasn't sure how long she'd just sat on the ground in Daddy's arms, crying. Then the Preventers had come running through the still-open secret door, and Julia had made herself feel even worse by automatically reaching for the gun, which was still on the floor where she'd dropped it. All she could think of was that one of the thugs had managed to get past the Preventers, and were coming after them.
Of course, as soon as she'd seen who it actually was, she'd arrested the movement, but the fact that she'd gone for it in the first place...
Duo-daddy had seen (or felt) the abortive movement, she just knew it, but he hadn't said anything about it. When the Preventers burst in, he simply gathered her up in his arms, like she was a little kid again, and carried her past them without saying a word. They hadn't been particularly happy about that - and since Tousan had followed them, glaring up a storm at anyone who tried to question them, they were left with a hanger and a dead body and no explanations.
It turned out that she'd been held in the basement level of an office building. The building itself housed a perfectly legitimate publishing corporation that had moved in years after the terrorists, and had no idea what the company in the basement had been up to. Needless to say, they were more than a little surprised when a fully armed squad of Preventers showed up, bursting through the door with guns drawn. There had been more stares then Julia wanted to think about when Daddy had carried her out of the elevator, but Tousan's glare had driven off all but the most bold office-workers, and then Daddy found them a small office and had shut the door behind them.
Julia didn't remember much about the next couple of hours, which was probably a good thing. It was still there, the way everything was, but it was slightly distant, removed, like a very old memory, not something that had happened so recently. That was good. She didn't want to think about it.
After a couple of hours, Tousan had had to leave to go deal with some of the Preventers, and a while after that, Wufei had come looking for them. Sally had arrived, and he'd appointed her head doctor on site, over many loud protests by the Preventer doctors who were taking care of the injured Preventers and terrorists. The arguments basically boiled down to the fact that (like most of the rest of the adults she knew) Sally was a reserve member of the Preventers, but not an active member, which meant that all of the doctors thought they should have authority over her. Somehow he'd managed to make it stick, which was why she and Daddy had had as much time alone as they had.
But eventually Wufei had to interrupt them. He said, more kindly than she would have thought possibly, that he was sorry, but she had to be examined by a doctor, it was Preventer policy, especially after a kidnapping.
Julia had never been so grateful to anyone than she was to Sally when she arrived to give her an examination. She didn't know if she could have gotten through this without breaking down if it hadn't been someone she knew. Sally had performed a few preliminary checks on her eyes (to make sure that she wasn't suffering from a concussion), and temperature (to make sure she wasn't in shock). That came as a surprise. That she wasn't, not that Sally was checking.
Then Sally gently told Daddy that it would probably be best if he went outside for the rest of the examination. He hadn't looked happy, but when Sally had also pointed out that he had to be debriefed, and that he might as well get it over with while she was with Julia, he started to get convinced. Sally then promised that she wouldn't leave Julia under any circumstances until he got back. Only then did he glance at Julia. "Is that OK, sweetie?"
Julia didn't really want him to leave, but she understood that he had to be debriefed, and that Sally had to give her an examination. She'd prefer if he wasn't there for that, and she didn't want him to feel guilty for leaving her, so she managed a small smile and a nod. He gave her an encouraging grin that seemed more than a shade off of his usual one, kissed her on the cheek, and then departed.
Sally had asked her to take off her shirt and gave her a quick but thorough examination, determining that she wasn't injured. The scrape on her chin and hands from when she'd been thrown to the floor were already healed, of course, and she hadn't managed to pick up any more injuries since then. As she was putting her shirt back on, Sally asked her first question.
"Julia, I'm very sorry, but I have to ask you this. Did they... try to touch you?"
Julia froze. She could have gone a very long time without thinking of that possibility. Even now her mind was conjuring up possible scenarios where that man... the one who'd hated her so much for breaking his arm... where he'd come up with other ways to hurt her... The thought made her want to throw up all over again.
"Julia?" Sally's voice held more than a bit of alarm in it.
Swallowing, she shook her head. "He... they didn't touch me. I mean, they... I mean, they didn't try... not that," she finished, hanging her head. Immediately she felt an arm around her shoulder, and Sally's hands gently pulled at her until she was leaning against the older woman, resting her head against her shoulder. Some part of her mind wondered if Sally thought she was going to start crying again. Maybe she should, maybe it would make her feel better, but she just couldn't get up the energy to do that. She just felt dead inside, more than anything else. Was this what killing did to people? When you killed, you died inside? How could her parents have stood it? How had they managed to go on, if they felt like this?
"Do you want to talk about it?" Sally asked quietly, stroking her head.
"I... I don't know," Julia said, her voice trembling. She pressed her face harder against Sally's shoulder, ashamed about her lack of control.
"Julia... it's all right to be upset about this," Sally said, as if she'd read her mind. Julia stiffened slightly and sat up straight, wondering how Sally had known.
Sally observed the look on her face and sighed. "Did you know that I was once a doctor for the Alliance?"
Julia had known it, but she'd forgotten. She nodded slightly, trying to recall everything she remembered about Sally during the war. She'd been an Alliance doctor right up until Oz struck and the Alliance basically ceased to exist. Then she'd been a rebel for a while, eventually joining the pilots to fight against White Fang at the end of the war. But she didn't see what that had to do with anything here.
"A lot of the time, I saw kids... young men and women... who were brought in with injuries right after they saw their first combat... A good half of them were in shock from the injuries, but... after a while, I could tell when they actually were in shock from the injuries, and when the reality of what war was had just hit them too hard. It's... a very difficult thing to deal with, killing a person. If you weren't upset right now, I'd be more concerned," she added, an odd note in her voice. "If you want to talk about it, I can listen. Sometimes it helped, a little," Sally said, sounding vaguely guilty that she hadn't been able to help more. "But only if you want."
"What do you want to hear?" Julia asked in a very little voice. "When I..." she trailed off.
"Whatever you want to tell," Sally replied. "If it's easier, start at the beginning."
"You mean when I woke up?"
"That's fine."
"When I woke up..." Julia suddenly trailed off, remembering something. "Scott! Is he all right! They shot him with a dart, too! Is he..."
"He's fine," Sally told her. "It took him quite a few hours to wake up, the drugs they used were very potent, but he'll be fine. He's still a little woozy, but he'll be fine in a few days. He feels awful about not being able to protect you, by the way."
Julia nodded slightly. "It wasn't his fault," she said slowly. She knew that intellectually, but emotionally, it was a little difficult not to be a little angry. After all, he was supposed to be there to prevent exactly what had happened. On the other hand, what could he have done? The dart had hit him and he'd probably been unconscious before he hit the ground, and... :Wait a minute. He's *still* woozy?: There was something very wrong with that. He'd been shot and been instantly unconscious. They'd shot her, and she'd still been awake enough to consider running. In the end, it had taken *three* darts to knock her out, and she didn't feel the least bit woozy now. Granted, she wasn't exactly at her best, and her judgment might be flawed right now, but at least she didn't *feel* woozy.
"So what happened?" Sally's voice pulled her out of her thoughts.
"Oh. When I woke up, I was in this little room..." Julia started talking, explaining as simply as she could what had happened when the man came after her. She cut that part short when she saw the anger in Sally's eyes, and decided to leave out the fact that Stevens had held a gun to her head during the discussion that followed. When she mentioned remembering how to pick locks, that Daddy had taught her when she was little, Sally raised and eyebrow and smiled with amusement, but didn't dispute her statement that she'd remembered something she'd been taught when she was still an infant.
Julia hesitated once again when she got to the part of the story where she had managed to bash through the door, thinking that Sally would think she was exaggerating or outright lying. But when she did, Sally's eyes just opened a little wider, and she asked if Julia's shoulder was really all right. Her heartbeat sped up, and she looked worried. Julia stared at her for several seconds before continuing. Something about Sally's reaction just didn't strike her as right, but she wasn't quite sure what it was.
By the time she got to the end of the story, there were tears in her eyes again, but she swallowed them down, not wanting to break down in front of Sally. Sally didn't say much, she just sat there, stroking Julia's hair and murmuring to her. After a while, she started talking, so that it sounded like she was talking to herself, but after a few minutes, Julia was listening carefully. Sally apparently noticed this, and switched from vague pleasantries to an actual story. She started talking about how she and Wufei had first met. This was another story that Julia had never heard, because like the story of her parents' first meeting, it was so tied up in the war that there was no way to tell it without giving away that at the age of fifteen, Wufei had been intimately involved in the fight.
It turned out that even after Sally couldn't be an Alliance doctor anymore (because there was no Alliance), she couldn't stand not helping people, so she'd joined up with some guerillas who represented what was left of the Alliance. Wufei had saved her and her squad from a bunch of OZ mobile suits, and somehow Sally had convinced him to come back to camp. That came after he'd scolded her and her entire group about how weaklings shouldn't fight.
Julia had had to smile at that, it sounded so typically Wufei. By the end of the story, she was almost feeling semi-normal.
Then the Preventer had arrived. He'd never bothered to introduce himself, and Julia couldn't bring herself to care. He was waving a sheaf of papers at her and demanding to question her from the moment he came in the door, and Sally had immediately jumped between the two of them, telling the man that he had no right to question her without one of her parents present. He replied that she could act as a guardian, and they'd been at it since then.
:Where are Daddy and Tousan?: she wondered, flinching as the Preventer let out an especially loud squawk at something Sally had said about him that was highly uncomplimentary. She'd be extremely surprised if everyone within a mile radius hadn't heard the shouting by now. Certainly they'd be here any minute now, to make him go away...
"What is the meaning of this!" a third voice demanded, not particularly loudly, but somehow carrying over both Sally and the Preventer's shouts. Julia's head snapped up at the unexpected intrusion, because it wasn't either of her parents or Wufei.
Standing in the doorway was a rather tall, incredibly handsome man with very light hair and ice-blue eyes. He looked to be around her parents' age, and was wearing a Preventer uniform, along with a distinctly unamused expression. His sharp eyes flickered from the Preventer, to Sally, to Julia herself, and then back to the Preventer. Julia noticed that Sally had suddenly gone very still, and wondered at it. She found her attention drawn back to the tall man. He seemed familiar, but she couldn't think why. She knew that she'd never met him before...
"Now..." he said quietly, when they both fell silent. "What is going on here?" He had a very soft voice, almost like he was whispering, or growling, and as soon as he spoke she knew who he was.
Despite herself, she let out a little squeak and pressed herself back into the chair, trying to put as much distance between them as possible. "You're Zechs Marquise!"
Now he turned to stare at her, eyes widening in surprise. "Who are you?" he demanded sharply, and Julia flinched. This man had been both of her parents' enemy during the war, tried to kill them numerous times, and then tried to wipe out all life on Earth. She had a feeling that he wouldn't have been a Preventer if he hadn't changed since then, but still...
Sally stepped partially between them, offering Julia some protection and support. "This is Julia Maxwell-Yuy," she announced, placing a hand on Julia's shoulder.
If it was possible, his eyes got even wider. "You mean she's their..." he trailed off, staring at Julia as if she'd grown two heads when Sally nodded affirmatively.
"It's all right," Sally murmured to her, moving closer and putting an arm around her shoulder to give her a slight hug.
Zechs seemed to realize how much he was frightening her, and actually took a step back to give her some space. He turned to face the Preventer. "What is going on here?" he asked softly.
"I need to ask the girl some questions. We have some things that are absolutely inexplicable, and she's the only one who has the answers. But that... that woman refuses to let me speak with her!" he finally exploded, gesturing at Sally, who smiled grimly.
"Inexplicable things," Zechs repeated dryly.
The Preventer seemed to sense that he did not have Zechs' support, and gestured wildly towards the door. "The room she was kept in had a door of solid steal six inches thick! It was dented in the middle and practically ripped off it's hinges. Do you know of anything that can do that?"
"Not off-hand," Zechs replied in exactly the same tone, glancing once again at Julia. Then he transferred his gaze to Sally, who suddenly stiffened. Julia could feel the tension vibrating through her body, because of the way Sally was holding her, and she actually tore her eyes away from Zechs to glance up at Sally. Her jaw was clenched tightly shut, and she looked... scared? Very nervous, at least. Why was she so nervous?
Zechs was staring at Sally now, and Julia was certain that she saw something pass between the two adults, although she wasn't sure what. Apparently Zechs didn't know either, because his brows furrowed in confusion. Then Sally swallowed and nodded her head slightly towards Julia. Zechs' eyes opened wide, and he stared at her for another moment before turning back to the Preventer.
Julia glanced from Sally to Zechs and back again, now confused herself. She knew that Sally had just somehow told Zechs that she was responsible for the ruined door. But what was confusing was why - it seemed like she was desperately afraid that the Preventer would find out what Julia had done. Why? It wasn't...
:Wait a second, did he say six inches of solid steel?: Julia's mind suddenly caught up with what the Preventer had said. She felt all the blood drain from her face. :It couldn't be... it can't have been... there's no way that I could have broken a door like that, it's physically impossible...:
"Preventer O'Ryan," Zechs announced after a glance at the name tag on his uniform. "I will be taking care of this situation. You are dismissed."
Preventer O'Ryan turned a rather odd shade of red that clashed badly with his uniform. "Who the hell do you think you are?" he demanded hoarsely.
"I'm Preventer Wind," Zechs replied smoothly, and Julia saw O'Ryan's eyes widen with recognition. She hadn't heard of Preventer Wind, but apparently Zechs was pretty high up in the Preventer hierarchy. "Any complaints about my handling of the case may be referred to Lady Une. Is that acceptable?" his tone implied that if it wasn't, that was too bad, because he was taking over the case anyway.
"Uh... yes sir!" the Preventer stuttered, giving Zechs a hasty salute. He gave Sally and Julia one last look, then scampered out the door, shutting it behind him.
"Mind explaining what that was about?" Zechs said to Sally after a few seconds.
Sally stiffened again and gave a minute shake of her head, flicking her eyes towards Julia. Alarms immediately went off in Julia's head. :She knows something that she doesn't want me to know. And it has to do with what happened to the door.: That thought led to another, even less pleasant. :She knows something about me that she doesn't want me to know.: A quiet rage began to build in Julia. She still wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but if it involved her, she had a right to know!
Suddenly the door opened again and both of her parents burst through. Daddy immediately moved to give her another hug, but Tousan froze at the sight of Zechs. "What's he doing here?" he snarled, looking at Sally.
"I don't know," she said, shaking her head.
"Mrs. Chang did not call me here," Zechs said mildly. "I heard the shouting and came to investigate."
"And what the hell are you doing on Earth?" Daddy demanded, putting himself partially between Julia and Zechs, as if he wasn't sure whether he'd have to protect her from attack. "Last I heard you were still stationed on Mars."
Zechs frowned slightly. "By my own choice," he pointed out sharply. "And I got an urgent communiqué ten hours ago, ordering me to Earth to deal with a serious problem. I was instructed to come here directly from the spaceport, and I just arrived. I was not aware that you were involved in any way whatsoever. In fact, I wasn't even aware that you had a daughter until just a few minutes ago," he said, giving Julia a curious glance.
"Yeah, well, since you said that you didn't plan on coming back to Earth or the colonies anytime in the near future, we didn't think it would be an issue," Daddy said. "It has been over fifteen years."
Zechs managed to look rueful, guilty, amused, and irritated all at the same time as he nodded. "Fair enough."
There was a long moment of awkward silence, then Daddy asked, "How's Noin?"
"Well enough. She'll be disappointed that she missed seeing you. She was talking about taking some time off to come here to visit, if my work didn't keep me too busy."
"Let us know if she does, I'd like to see her again," Daddy said, sounding for all the world as if this was a normal conversation and like he hadn't been ready to tear Zechs apart limb-from-limb a few seconds earlier.
Julia unconsciously reached for Duo-daddy, pulling him closer. He squeezed her quickly, then turned so that she was facing Zechs directly. "Zechs, this is our daughter, Julia. Julia, this is Zechs Marquise."
"Yeah, I know," Julia said softly, holding out her hand and shaking Zechs'.
"I go by Preventer Wind now," he said in mild reproach.
"Sorry," Daddy said with a slight grimace. "So what happened?" he asked, directing his question at Sally.
"A Preventer had some questions for Julia about what happened to her when she was captured," Sally said, and Julia noticed that Sally appeared tense again. But why? It wasn't as if Julia wasn't going to tell her parents, and it seemed like they trusted (sort of) Zechs. Besides, he had already protected her.
"About what?" Tousan asked calmly, but Julia saw him take in Sally's nervousness with a flicker of his eyes.
"He mentioned something about a door," Zechs said when neither Sally nor Julia said anything. "A solid steel door that had been... mangled," he continued, looking sharply at Julia.
She, however, was looking was watching both of her parents, and saw both of them stiffen with ill-concealed alarm. Then they both glanced guiltily at her, as if to see if she'd noticed their reaction. She stared straight back at them. After a long awkward moment that seemed to stretch out into infinity, Tousan made an indecipherable grunt and said, "Arigato, Zechs. I will speak to you later. We must get our daughter home."
"Completely understandable," Zechs replied smoothly without bothering to correct him on the issue of names again. He stared at her closely, though, as he spoke, as if trying to decipher some puzzle. Then his eyes widened slightly, as if in recognition, and his eyes traveled from her to her parents and back again rapidly. He opened his mouth slightly, and Daddy stiffened even more, while Tousan gave a very slight shake of his head. Only a person who'd lived with him for as long as she had would have caught it, but Zechs' mouth snapped shut, and he raised an eyebrow questioningly, glancing briefly towards her. Tousan's lips thinned slightly, and Zechs blinked.
"I'd better report in," he murmured, then excused himself, glancing once more at her as he left.
Julia, who had been extremely frustrated that she couldn't decode whatever it was her parents and Zechs were talking about, suddenly realized something. :They're all talking about me!: she thought with a growing sense of outrage. :They all know something about me, even Zechs! And they're trying to hide it from me!: She wasn't sure what made her angrier, that they would do such a thing, or that they thought they could hide it from her and have a conversation about it right over her head at the same time!
She was dimly aware of Daddy's hands on her shoulders, guiding her out the door and through the mass of Preventers, local police, and newspeople that were crowded around the outside of the building and to a waiting car.
It had something to do with that door. Every time anyone mentioned it in her presence, they all got very tense. The Preventer had said that it had been six inches of solid steel, but he must have been mistaken, it couldn't have been that, she never would have been able to break through something like that. Adrenaline could help, but it could only account for so much.
Julia suddenly had a horrible thought - :What if he wasn't wrong?:
The thought made her heart begin to race, but she controlled herself. :All right, let's think this through. If he wasn't wrong, if it was that thick...: Julia shook her head slightly. That was impossible. She couldn't have broken through something like that. *Tousan* might have been able to do that, but he'd been fairly heavily modified by the doctor that controlled him during the war. So had Daddy, for that matter. If she'd been their actual daughter(impossible as that was), there might have been some chance that she would have inherited their genetic modifications, but they'd adopted her. And if she'd actually been their daughter, they would have told her...
Well, they might not have wanted to. If they had, they would have had to explain why they had genetic modifications, and that would have involved telling her about the Gundams. But if they hadn't told her because of that, then wouldn't they have told her right after she found out about the Gundams? So it wasn't that.
But how could she have broken through the wall?
Suddenly a completely random thought popped into her head. :I've never been sick.: At first she thought that she had to be wrong, that she must have been sick at some time, but she couldn't think of one time she'd ever been sick. She'd had those horrible headaches when she was little, but that wasn't so much a sickness, as a lack of control on her part...
:A lack of control...: She'd never met anyone else who had ever mentioned having to learn the same sorts of exercises that were so ingrained that she didn't even think about it when she performed them any more. She'd always assumed that no one mentioned them because they were as ingrained for them as they were for her, but if they didn't mention them because they didn't need them...
She thought back to the first time she'd walked into the dojo, and known that Sensei wasn't there because she couldn't hear his footsteps or his heartbeat. Now whenever she did that, John joked with her, and asked her how she knew. But the first time he hadn't joked. He'd just stood there, looked confused, and asked her how she knew. She'd told him the truth, that she couldn't hear his breathing or heartbeat, and then he'd laughed. He'd thought that was the joke, and she'd been young, so she hadn't corrected him. She'd forgotten - or made herself forget - that. She tried to remember if she'd ever heard of someone being able to hear heartbeats the way she could, and couldn't think of any instances.
Julia was strong, too. She'd known that, but she'd never really thought about it. It was always just the way things were, but she'd battered down a solid metal door without so much as a bruise to show for it. That wasn't normal. Not human. What the hell was she?
And her parents had known. There was no way that they couldn't have. They were the ones who'd taught her those control exercises, and they were the ones who were hiding something from her now.
The anger building in her gut upped a notch.
Julia sat in silence the rest of the ride home, not wanting the Preventer who was driving them to overhear the conversation coming. When they got home, she climbed out of the car and walked inside the house without saying a word to anyone. She heard Daddy thanking the driver, then they followed her inside, closing the door. There were still some signs that there had been a lot of people in the living room, although some effort had been made in cleaning it up.
"Julia?" Daddy asked softly, knowing her well enough to realize that her silence in the car ride hadn't been because of shock.
Julia clenched her hands in a fist and looked down at them, then to the wall in front of her, then back down to her fists. Her logical mind knew that she couldn't punch through the wall, knew that she'd just injure herself. Teenage girls didn't do things like that. She took a deep breath and refused to believe what she 'knew'. She put an image of the door after she'd finished with it in the front of her mind, and concentrated on it. :If I can do that, I can do this.: She drew back her fist and punched. Her hand went into the wall, and she felt it emerge on the other side. She stood there and stared at it for a second, then glanced at both of her parents, noticing with satisfaction that they'd both gone pale. Carefully she pulled her hand back through the hole she'd made and examined it for signs of damage. Not so much as a scrape, and when she wiggled her fingers experimentally, she didn't feel any pain.
She turned to look at her parents and raised her dust-covered hand. "What. The. Hell. Am. I."
They glanced at each other, but before either of them could say anything she spoke again. "No. Don't give me files, or tapes, or books. I want you to tell me yourselves what I am, and why you lied to me all this time!" Her voice rose into something close to a shriek on her last words, and she fought for control. Lately her senses always went out of control when she got excited, and she wasn't going to let them go crazy now when she was about to find out why.
For a second it looked like Daddy was about to protest the lying comment, but after a second his head just dropped, as if all the fight had gone out of him. "Before the war, the five of us underwent some genetic manipulation to allow us to fly the Gundams. They were too powerful for normal humans to control, the rapid changes in acceleration, the response-time necessary, the amount of knowledge we had to absorb... when we started out all of us were tough, quick, and brilliant. By the time they finished..." he shook his head slightly. "We were..."
"Adequate for the task," Tousan finished the thought.
Duo-daddy closed his eyes for a second, looking pained, then continued. "During the war they were controlling us. J - Heero's controller - died in the final battle, and the rest of them disappeared. We never knew what happened to them. After the war... well, we were all trying to adjust to the idea of peace. Then Mariemeaia came, and things were so crazy. And then we were trying to adjust, again... somehow it just kept getting pushed back, and we never got around to checking up on what they were doing...
"Then Une called us to Preventer headquarters. We were all active members of the Preventers back then, although only Wufei lived on Earth. The rest of us they called in for the big stuff. Heero and I had just bought a salvage yard on L2." His eyes glazed slightly, as if he was lost in the memory. After a moment he shook his head slightly and continued.
"Anyway, the Preventers finally had gotten around to looking up the doctors. And they..." he trailed off again, closing his eyes. For a second it seemed like he couldn't continue, then he did. "They were arrested for breaking most of the bans on genetic experimentation. Once the war was over, we weren't taking orders from them anymore... but they couldn't stop. So they took our DNA, our changed DNA from after they finished with the modifications, and they picked and chose from all of us, trying to create the perfect soldier again. Upgrades on the originals," he said, gesturing to himself and Heero.
He swallowed again and looked straight at her. "Most of their... experiments... didn't survive more than a few weeks. It was better that way. But two of the... experiments... did not die, were, for all intents and purposes, normal human babies. Babies created from our DNA. Une wanted to know..." he trailed off.
"You're saying... you're saying that... I was one of those experiments?" Julia asked slowly, feeling all of the blood drain from her face. Daddy nodded. "Who was the other?" she asked sharply, then the answer came to her. "It's Katie, isn't it?" Another nod.
"So... I... you..." Julia just couldn't seem to get her brain to operate.
"We adopted you, dropped out of the Preventers, and all of the files on what the doctors had done were sealed," Tousan told her, finally picking up the narrative. "We were going to tell you, especially after you found out about us," he told her. "We were just waiting for you to graduate."
That snapped her out of her daze. "You were going to tell me?!" she said angrily. "Do you have any idea... I thought I was going crazy!" she yelled. "I keep losing control of everything, and I thought that it was my fault! I thought that one day I'd lose it completely and go blind and deaf and crazy!" She felt her eyes start to become sensitive, and immediately reigned back on her emotions, fighting to bring her treacherous senses back under her control. Surprisingly, it worked, better than it ever had before.
Both of her parents were staring at her with nearly identical expressions of horror and guilt. "God, honey, I'm sorry! We didn't know..." Daddy started to say, but she cut him off.
"What did they do to me?" she asked in a flat voice. "You said that they used your changed DNA, and that they were trying to make a perfect soldier. What did they... how did they make me?" It was difficult to keep her voice flat for that last part, but she managed.
"You have all the same enhancements that we received, although to a greater degree," Tousan told her. "You're strong, how strong, we don't know, but you're stronger than either of us."
"You don't know?"
"There was no way to test you without making you suspicious."
"Fine. Keep going," she said shortly.
"All of your senses are also enhanced, as is your ability to heal. You already know you're a genius, we don't know how much of that they're responsible for, and how much is because of us," Tousan admitted. "You were born with immunity to every disease they could think of, including a few that have been eliminated for several hundred years, and you have an immune system that will ensure you never get sick," he told her. "The same as us."
"And what about the headaches?" she asked sharply. "Where are they from?"
"The human mind is only designed to process so much information. Your senses can give you too much to deal with, and the result is a sort of overload," Daddy told her. "We had to deal with it too, when we were first changed. You have to learn to shut out extraneous information. But it wasn't as bad for us, because we were older, and we understood what was going on, and the changes weren't as great. That was what we taught you when you were little, the concentration exercises are designed to train your mind to filter out extraneous information."
"And when I get emotional, or over-excited, I lose control of one or more, which leads to the bright flashes, which makes it worse," Julia worked it out on her own. "Is that it?"
"Yes," Daddy said, at the same time as Tousan said, "As far as we know."
"I see," Julia replied, inwardly amazed at how calm she sounded. "I'm going to my room now," she announced. "And then I'm leaving." She stared walking towards the stairs.
"Julia..." Daddy started to reach out towards her as she passed, and she snatched her hand out of his grasp.
"Don't touch me!" she hissed, letting her control slip for a second. "Don't you dare! You had no right to conceal this from me, not after the headaches started, and not now! This isn't about your past, it's mine. It's my life! It is me! You had no right to hide that from me! Stay the hell away from me!" She turned and fled up the stairs to her room before she lost control of herself and either started crying or physically attacked one of them.
Once there she busied herself shoving a couple of changes of clothes in a bag. She then found all of the money she had stored in her room and shoved it into her pants. As long as she kept moving, she didn't have to think about her parents' betrayal, didn't have to think about how hurt she was, didn't have to think at all.
Her parents. All her life she'd wondered what her birth parents were like, all the time not knowing that she was actually living with them. Well, with two of them. Technically, all five of the Gundam pilots were her birth parents. Actually, none of them were, because she had never been born, she'd been grown in some test tube. An experiment.
The thought was almost enough to start her crying again, and she'd done enough of that already. :Don't think about that. Don't think at all,: she told herself, pulling off the clothes she'd been wearing since she'd been kidnapped. She never wanted to see them again. With that thought in mind, she grasped the fabric of her shirt in both hands and pulled. It tore as easily as paper.
She spent the next few minutes reducing her clothes into a pile of fist-sized rags, then got dressed again. She pulled on a jacket, picked up her bag, and walked out into the hall.
Both of her parents were still standing in the living room, and she had to walk past them to get to the front door. She took a moment to steel herself, then walked into the living room. She could tell from their racing heartbeats that she had them very upset. Well, good.
"Julia..." Daddy trailed off as she ignored him completely, walking past him towards the door. Tousan actually stepped in front of her, blocking the way, but she glared at him without speaking until he stepped out of the way, a hurt look on his face. She got to the front door, opened it, stepped outside, and closed the door on her parents.
---------
Julia dropped her bag on the floor, keeping hold of the strap with one hand, and stared dully into space. :If he says no...: Julia closed her eyes and swallowed. :Then I'll just have to sleep on the streets.: She'd survive. It wouldn't be pleasant, but she'd survive. The thought made a bit of hysterical laughter bubble up in her throat, but she forced it back down. Of course she'd survive. She was a genetically engineered freak. She could stay out all night in a blizzard and not have to worry about catching a cold. And God help anyone who tried to attack her.
It had been six hours since she'd walked out of her house, and three hours since it had started raining. It was still early enough in the spring that it still got cold sometimes, and someone had decided that today would be a good day for that. Julia had been so caught up in her thoughts that she hadn't even noticed the rain until she was already mostly soaked. After that, it didn't seem worth trying to get in under cover, which had lead to her wandering around by herself with the rain pounding down on her for a little over three hours. She hadn't minded much at the time, but now she was soaked to the bone and freezing, and even if it wouldn't kill her, she was beginning to look at that as good option.
"Julia?" Her head snapped up as her name was called. She saw Richard slowly making his way down the hall towards her.
"Richard," she said, and was horrified to hear her own voice crack. She swallowed again and took several deep breaths, trying to get control of herself. "Hello." This time her voice did not crack.
Richard seemed unimpressed by her attempt at sounding normal, and more concerned with her voice of a few seconds earlier, as well as her presence. "Julia! Are you all right? I called your home and there was a Preventer there! He said there was a situation but he wouldn't tell me anything..." he finally reached her and touched her shoulder. He froze when his hand encountered the damp, soggy mess that was her shirt. "God, Julia! You're freezing! What happened..."
"I'm all right," she told him, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. That wasn't going to help her convince him that she was 'all right'. Even if she wasn't sure if she was 'all right', or if she'd ever be 'all right' again. "I... I was kidnapped, but they rescued me. I was just outside when it started raining..." she trailed off, not quite sure how to explain her presence here and acutely aware of the evening receptionist watching the discussion.
"Julia, I'm going to call a taxi, I'll take you home," Richard said, starting to turn towards the receptionist, obviously assuming that she didn't want to walk home in the rain and had forgotten to bring money, or something like that.
"No!" she exclaimed, seizing Richard's arm and turning him back to face her. "I... I came... I wanted to know if I could spend the night here. Sleep on the floor or something. Please."
Richard's expression became more suspicious. "Julia, what's going on?"
"I... I can't go back there. I just can't. Please, can I stay here for the night? I promise I'll be gone in the morning."
Richard sighed, not looking at all happy. "Julia, are you in some kind of trouble?"
Julia shook her head, forgetting for a second that he couldn't see the motion. "I... I'm not in trouble," she said hesitantly, not wanting to lie to Richard but not wanting to explain the situation, either. "I just can't go home right now."
Richard stood there silently for a minute, then sighed again and nodded. "All right, but only because I don't think you'd go home, even if I sent you there."
"Thank you!"
"First thing we have to do is get you warmed up, you're going to get sick."
Julia didn't quite know how to respond to that, so she just remained silent, picking up her bag. He led her through the halls, finally coming to one specific room, and then pushed it open. It was almost completely dark inside, and it took a couple of seconds for her eyes to adjust enough so that she could move at all without bumping into things. She stepped inside, and he closed the door behind them, making it even darker. Richard hurried off somewhere, and she could hear him opening and closing a door. He quickly returned and handed her a big blanket. "Here, wrap this around you."
"Um... Richard?"
"Yes?"
"Do you have lights in here?"
"Oh. Sorry." He moved over to the wall and after a little bit of fumbling, found the light switch. A dim overhead light and two wall-lamps immediately turned on. "I don't usually bother," he explained somewhat sheepishly.
"It's ok. Thanks again," she said, pulling the blanket a little tighter around her shoulders.
"It's no problem," he assured her. "I'm going to call your parents now, let them know..."
"No! I..." Julia swallowed, still surprised at the anger that came up every time she thought about her parents. "Don't call them. Please."
Richard just stood there, and she had the feeling that if he'd been able to see, he would have been staring at her. "Julia, what happened?"
"I... I don't want to talk to them. I don't want to have anything to do with them," she said falteringly. That sounded horrible.
"Did you have a fight?"
"Sort of. Please, I... I don't want to talk about it." Here she faltered again. What if he pressed? She wouldn't lie to him, but what could she tell him?
He seemed to come to some sort of decision. "All right, I won't call them, and you can stay as long as you need." He walked over to her and put a hand on her shoulder, frowning as he did so. "You're still far too cold. You need to get warmed up. I have a bath in the other room," he said, giving her a little push in the right direction. "Get in the tub and stay there until you stop shivering. Just go now, I'll bring you something to wear tonight. You can't put that stuff back on."
"I have this..." she started, lifting the bag she'd packed, before she realized that it was as soaked as everything else she had.
"Don't worry, I'll take care of it. And I promise I won't peek," he said with a slight smile.
Julia stared at him for a second before realizing that he was making a joke. She forced out a weak joke, and then obediently went into his bathroom. There was a rather large tub there, and she was beginning to forget what it felt like to be warm. With a sigh of relief she started pulling off her sodden clothes. Maybe she could relax, if only for a few minutes.
As long as she didn't have to think about what she was.
Or her parents.
----------
Duo was pacing back and forth, his braid whipping around behind him every time he turned to retrace his steps. He glanced at the clock for the fourth time in less than two minutes, then finally sagged down in a chair as his energy left him. His eyes sought out Heero's.
"Where is she?" he asked, although he knew that his husband didn't have the answer. He got back to his feet and walked over to the window, peering out through the water running down the glass. It was pouring out there, cats and dogs, as native Earthlings liked to say. When he'd first come to Earth, Duo had been fascinated by the rain. There was none on the colonies, at least, not where he lived. When he'd come to Earth, he used to stand out on the porch and just watch it for hours. The idea of that much water just falling from the sky was almost mind-boggling. When it was warm enough, he still liked to go outside and stand in the rain, just to feel the water running down his face.
Now, however, all he could think of was that his little girl was out there in this rain, alone.
When she'd stormed out several hours earlier, Heero had expressed the opinion that she'd come back before nightfall. Duo hadn't been so sure, and now he was miserable about being proven right. Julia had a lot more in common with him than he liked to admit - she took a very long time to get angry, but once she did...
He knew that she felt they'd betrayed her, and maybe they had, but they'd just been trying to protect her. And as a result, she was now out there, alone and completely unprotected.
"Found anything?" he asked Heero, who was at his laptop, of course, searching through hotel records to see if she'd gotten a room somewhere. It was the best they could do under the circumstances - Duo knew that if they went out to look for her, they probably wouldn't find her, and even if they did, she probably wouldn't come home with them, anyway. They'd already called all of their friends to keep an eye out for her, and a few of her friends from school and aikido, but no one had seen her.
Heero grunted negatively, and Duo closed his eyes, fighting off a panic. "She's out there by herself, Heero. On the streets. I've been there..." he trailed off with a shudder. He knew intellectually that the town they lived in was a far cry from the slums of L2, and that Julia was far from being the helpless kid he'd been, but that didn't make him feel any better. Heero knew this and stood up to wrap an arm around his shoulders. Duo shrugged him off, not in the mood to be comforted.
The computer beeped, indicating that they had an e-mail message. Heero clicked on it, quickly scanning the message, and some of the tension drained out of his shoulders.
"She's all right."
"What?"
"She's with Richard."
"The blind guy?" Duo had known that Julia had gotten much closer to Richard while she was doing her research project, and from what he'd been told, Richard seemed like a nice enough guy, but Duo had been avoiding meeting him since Julia first mentioned him. He'd done a lot of things he didn't like during the war, but to be confronted with some of the results so plainly was unpleasant, to say the least. "How's she doing? Let's call him..." he trailed off when Heero shook his head.
"Look," he said, turning the laptop to face Duo.
Duo looked. On the screen were just a few short sentences. [[Julia is safe, she's spending the night with me. Please don't try to contact me, she doesn't know I'm writing, and doesn't want you to know where she is, but I didn't want you to worry about her. -Richard Louis]]
Duo swallowed. If Julia was angry enough that she wouldn't even send a message on her own to let them know she was all right...
"At least she's got someplace to stay," he said softly, staring out the window again.
Well, there's one more section out. Sorry about the delay for this one, but real life's been just a tad busy, and this section didn't particularly want to be written. Not fun stuff happening here. Julia is not happy right now. I don't think there are words to describe how angry she is, and this is not something that's going to just disappear. Next section should be busy. You think that she was driven when she was investigating the Gundam pilots? She's about to blow that out of the water. She'll probably piss off a bunch of people too, but she's a little too far gone to care.
We have rain like that in Maine. It pours, and if you do have something to cover you, it bounces up off the ground and soaks you anyway. It's cold and it's miserable and generally no one goes anywhere if they can avoid it. It just seemed to fit.
Thank you Von, for giving me the information on how Sally and Wufei met, and thanks to Teep for reminding me a while back that Zechs does exist, and asking where the hell he was. I tend to forget about him, because I have a hard time writing him, so he disappears a lot in my stories. Anyway, there's his cameo, although I may bring him back for more action later.
Hope everyone's still enjoying this, I know I'm having a ball writing it!
Marika 3/15/02
Not because of Sally - Sally was doing her best, and without the older woman defending her, Julia probably would have given in to the urge to have a screaming fit a long time ago. It was just the entire situation. Julia couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so profoundly miserable, and this Preventer, on top of all of it...
It had been several hours since... since she'd... :Say it!: she commanded herself. She wasn't going to let herself avoid this one. It had been several hours since she'd killed a man. She still wasn't sure how long she'd just sat on the ground in Daddy's arms, crying. Then the Preventers had come running through the still-open secret door, and Julia had made herself feel even worse by automatically reaching for the gun, which was still on the floor where she'd dropped it. All she could think of was that one of the thugs had managed to get past the Preventers, and were coming after them.
Of course, as soon as she'd seen who it actually was, she'd arrested the movement, but the fact that she'd gone for it in the first place...
Duo-daddy had seen (or felt) the abortive movement, she just knew it, but he hadn't said anything about it. When the Preventers burst in, he simply gathered her up in his arms, like she was a little kid again, and carried her past them without saying a word. They hadn't been particularly happy about that - and since Tousan had followed them, glaring up a storm at anyone who tried to question them, they were left with a hanger and a dead body and no explanations.
It turned out that she'd been held in the basement level of an office building. The building itself housed a perfectly legitimate publishing corporation that had moved in years after the terrorists, and had no idea what the company in the basement had been up to. Needless to say, they were more than a little surprised when a fully armed squad of Preventers showed up, bursting through the door with guns drawn. There had been more stares then Julia wanted to think about when Daddy had carried her out of the elevator, but Tousan's glare had driven off all but the most bold office-workers, and then Daddy found them a small office and had shut the door behind them.
Julia didn't remember much about the next couple of hours, which was probably a good thing. It was still there, the way everything was, but it was slightly distant, removed, like a very old memory, not something that had happened so recently. That was good. She didn't want to think about it.
After a couple of hours, Tousan had had to leave to go deal with some of the Preventers, and a while after that, Wufei had come looking for them. Sally had arrived, and he'd appointed her head doctor on site, over many loud protests by the Preventer doctors who were taking care of the injured Preventers and terrorists. The arguments basically boiled down to the fact that (like most of the rest of the adults she knew) Sally was a reserve member of the Preventers, but not an active member, which meant that all of the doctors thought they should have authority over her. Somehow he'd managed to make it stick, which was why she and Daddy had had as much time alone as they had.
But eventually Wufei had to interrupt them. He said, more kindly than she would have thought possibly, that he was sorry, but she had to be examined by a doctor, it was Preventer policy, especially after a kidnapping.
Julia had never been so grateful to anyone than she was to Sally when she arrived to give her an examination. She didn't know if she could have gotten through this without breaking down if it hadn't been someone she knew. Sally had performed a few preliminary checks on her eyes (to make sure that she wasn't suffering from a concussion), and temperature (to make sure she wasn't in shock). That came as a surprise. That she wasn't, not that Sally was checking.
Then Sally gently told Daddy that it would probably be best if he went outside for the rest of the examination. He hadn't looked happy, but when Sally had also pointed out that he had to be debriefed, and that he might as well get it over with while she was with Julia, he started to get convinced. Sally then promised that she wouldn't leave Julia under any circumstances until he got back. Only then did he glance at Julia. "Is that OK, sweetie?"
Julia didn't really want him to leave, but she understood that he had to be debriefed, and that Sally had to give her an examination. She'd prefer if he wasn't there for that, and she didn't want him to feel guilty for leaving her, so she managed a small smile and a nod. He gave her an encouraging grin that seemed more than a shade off of his usual one, kissed her on the cheek, and then departed.
Sally had asked her to take off her shirt and gave her a quick but thorough examination, determining that she wasn't injured. The scrape on her chin and hands from when she'd been thrown to the floor were already healed, of course, and she hadn't managed to pick up any more injuries since then. As she was putting her shirt back on, Sally asked her first question.
"Julia, I'm very sorry, but I have to ask you this. Did they... try to touch you?"
Julia froze. She could have gone a very long time without thinking of that possibility. Even now her mind was conjuring up possible scenarios where that man... the one who'd hated her so much for breaking his arm... where he'd come up with other ways to hurt her... The thought made her want to throw up all over again.
"Julia?" Sally's voice held more than a bit of alarm in it.
Swallowing, she shook her head. "He... they didn't touch me. I mean, they... I mean, they didn't try... not that," she finished, hanging her head. Immediately she felt an arm around her shoulder, and Sally's hands gently pulled at her until she was leaning against the older woman, resting her head against her shoulder. Some part of her mind wondered if Sally thought she was going to start crying again. Maybe she should, maybe it would make her feel better, but she just couldn't get up the energy to do that. She just felt dead inside, more than anything else. Was this what killing did to people? When you killed, you died inside? How could her parents have stood it? How had they managed to go on, if they felt like this?
"Do you want to talk about it?" Sally asked quietly, stroking her head.
"I... I don't know," Julia said, her voice trembling. She pressed her face harder against Sally's shoulder, ashamed about her lack of control.
"Julia... it's all right to be upset about this," Sally said, as if she'd read her mind. Julia stiffened slightly and sat up straight, wondering how Sally had known.
Sally observed the look on her face and sighed. "Did you know that I was once a doctor for the Alliance?"
Julia had known it, but she'd forgotten. She nodded slightly, trying to recall everything she remembered about Sally during the war. She'd been an Alliance doctor right up until Oz struck and the Alliance basically ceased to exist. Then she'd been a rebel for a while, eventually joining the pilots to fight against White Fang at the end of the war. But she didn't see what that had to do with anything here.
"A lot of the time, I saw kids... young men and women... who were brought in with injuries right after they saw their first combat... A good half of them were in shock from the injuries, but... after a while, I could tell when they actually were in shock from the injuries, and when the reality of what war was had just hit them too hard. It's... a very difficult thing to deal with, killing a person. If you weren't upset right now, I'd be more concerned," she added, an odd note in her voice. "If you want to talk about it, I can listen. Sometimes it helped, a little," Sally said, sounding vaguely guilty that she hadn't been able to help more. "But only if you want."
"What do you want to hear?" Julia asked in a very little voice. "When I..." she trailed off.
"Whatever you want to tell," Sally replied. "If it's easier, start at the beginning."
"You mean when I woke up?"
"That's fine."
"When I woke up..." Julia suddenly trailed off, remembering something. "Scott! Is he all right! They shot him with a dart, too! Is he..."
"He's fine," Sally told her. "It took him quite a few hours to wake up, the drugs they used were very potent, but he'll be fine. He's still a little woozy, but he'll be fine in a few days. He feels awful about not being able to protect you, by the way."
Julia nodded slightly. "It wasn't his fault," she said slowly. She knew that intellectually, but emotionally, it was a little difficult not to be a little angry. After all, he was supposed to be there to prevent exactly what had happened. On the other hand, what could he have done? The dart had hit him and he'd probably been unconscious before he hit the ground, and... :Wait a minute. He's *still* woozy?: There was something very wrong with that. He'd been shot and been instantly unconscious. They'd shot her, and she'd still been awake enough to consider running. In the end, it had taken *three* darts to knock her out, and she didn't feel the least bit woozy now. Granted, she wasn't exactly at her best, and her judgment might be flawed right now, but at least she didn't *feel* woozy.
"So what happened?" Sally's voice pulled her out of her thoughts.
"Oh. When I woke up, I was in this little room..." Julia started talking, explaining as simply as she could what had happened when the man came after her. She cut that part short when she saw the anger in Sally's eyes, and decided to leave out the fact that Stevens had held a gun to her head during the discussion that followed. When she mentioned remembering how to pick locks, that Daddy had taught her when she was little, Sally raised and eyebrow and smiled with amusement, but didn't dispute her statement that she'd remembered something she'd been taught when she was still an infant.
Julia hesitated once again when she got to the part of the story where she had managed to bash through the door, thinking that Sally would think she was exaggerating or outright lying. But when she did, Sally's eyes just opened a little wider, and she asked if Julia's shoulder was really all right. Her heartbeat sped up, and she looked worried. Julia stared at her for several seconds before continuing. Something about Sally's reaction just didn't strike her as right, but she wasn't quite sure what it was.
By the time she got to the end of the story, there were tears in her eyes again, but she swallowed them down, not wanting to break down in front of Sally. Sally didn't say much, she just sat there, stroking Julia's hair and murmuring to her. After a while, she started talking, so that it sounded like she was talking to herself, but after a few minutes, Julia was listening carefully. Sally apparently noticed this, and switched from vague pleasantries to an actual story. She started talking about how she and Wufei had first met. This was another story that Julia had never heard, because like the story of her parents' first meeting, it was so tied up in the war that there was no way to tell it without giving away that at the age of fifteen, Wufei had been intimately involved in the fight.
It turned out that even after Sally couldn't be an Alliance doctor anymore (because there was no Alliance), she couldn't stand not helping people, so she'd joined up with some guerillas who represented what was left of the Alliance. Wufei had saved her and her squad from a bunch of OZ mobile suits, and somehow Sally had convinced him to come back to camp. That came after he'd scolded her and her entire group about how weaklings shouldn't fight.
Julia had had to smile at that, it sounded so typically Wufei. By the end of the story, she was almost feeling semi-normal.
Then the Preventer had arrived. He'd never bothered to introduce himself, and Julia couldn't bring herself to care. He was waving a sheaf of papers at her and demanding to question her from the moment he came in the door, and Sally had immediately jumped between the two of them, telling the man that he had no right to question her without one of her parents present. He replied that she could act as a guardian, and they'd been at it since then.
:Where are Daddy and Tousan?: she wondered, flinching as the Preventer let out an especially loud squawk at something Sally had said about him that was highly uncomplimentary. She'd be extremely surprised if everyone within a mile radius hadn't heard the shouting by now. Certainly they'd be here any minute now, to make him go away...
"What is the meaning of this!" a third voice demanded, not particularly loudly, but somehow carrying over both Sally and the Preventer's shouts. Julia's head snapped up at the unexpected intrusion, because it wasn't either of her parents or Wufei.
Standing in the doorway was a rather tall, incredibly handsome man with very light hair and ice-blue eyes. He looked to be around her parents' age, and was wearing a Preventer uniform, along with a distinctly unamused expression. His sharp eyes flickered from the Preventer, to Sally, to Julia herself, and then back to the Preventer. Julia noticed that Sally had suddenly gone very still, and wondered at it. She found her attention drawn back to the tall man. He seemed familiar, but she couldn't think why. She knew that she'd never met him before...
"Now..." he said quietly, when they both fell silent. "What is going on here?" He had a very soft voice, almost like he was whispering, or growling, and as soon as he spoke she knew who he was.
Despite herself, she let out a little squeak and pressed herself back into the chair, trying to put as much distance between them as possible. "You're Zechs Marquise!"
Now he turned to stare at her, eyes widening in surprise. "Who are you?" he demanded sharply, and Julia flinched. This man had been both of her parents' enemy during the war, tried to kill them numerous times, and then tried to wipe out all life on Earth. She had a feeling that he wouldn't have been a Preventer if he hadn't changed since then, but still...
Sally stepped partially between them, offering Julia some protection and support. "This is Julia Maxwell-Yuy," she announced, placing a hand on Julia's shoulder.
If it was possible, his eyes got even wider. "You mean she's their..." he trailed off, staring at Julia as if she'd grown two heads when Sally nodded affirmatively.
"It's all right," Sally murmured to her, moving closer and putting an arm around her shoulder to give her a slight hug.
Zechs seemed to realize how much he was frightening her, and actually took a step back to give her some space. He turned to face the Preventer. "What is going on here?" he asked softly.
"I need to ask the girl some questions. We have some things that are absolutely inexplicable, and she's the only one who has the answers. But that... that woman refuses to let me speak with her!" he finally exploded, gesturing at Sally, who smiled grimly.
"Inexplicable things," Zechs repeated dryly.
The Preventer seemed to sense that he did not have Zechs' support, and gestured wildly towards the door. "The room she was kept in had a door of solid steal six inches thick! It was dented in the middle and practically ripped off it's hinges. Do you know of anything that can do that?"
"Not off-hand," Zechs replied in exactly the same tone, glancing once again at Julia. Then he transferred his gaze to Sally, who suddenly stiffened. Julia could feel the tension vibrating through her body, because of the way Sally was holding her, and she actually tore her eyes away from Zechs to glance up at Sally. Her jaw was clenched tightly shut, and she looked... scared? Very nervous, at least. Why was she so nervous?
Zechs was staring at Sally now, and Julia was certain that she saw something pass between the two adults, although she wasn't sure what. Apparently Zechs didn't know either, because his brows furrowed in confusion. Then Sally swallowed and nodded her head slightly towards Julia. Zechs' eyes opened wide, and he stared at her for another moment before turning back to the Preventer.
Julia glanced from Sally to Zechs and back again, now confused herself. She knew that Sally had just somehow told Zechs that she was responsible for the ruined door. But what was confusing was why - it seemed like she was desperately afraid that the Preventer would find out what Julia had done. Why? It wasn't...
:Wait a second, did he say six inches of solid steel?: Julia's mind suddenly caught up with what the Preventer had said. She felt all the blood drain from her face. :It couldn't be... it can't have been... there's no way that I could have broken a door like that, it's physically impossible...:
"Preventer O'Ryan," Zechs announced after a glance at the name tag on his uniform. "I will be taking care of this situation. You are dismissed."
Preventer O'Ryan turned a rather odd shade of red that clashed badly with his uniform. "Who the hell do you think you are?" he demanded hoarsely.
"I'm Preventer Wind," Zechs replied smoothly, and Julia saw O'Ryan's eyes widen with recognition. She hadn't heard of Preventer Wind, but apparently Zechs was pretty high up in the Preventer hierarchy. "Any complaints about my handling of the case may be referred to Lady Une. Is that acceptable?" his tone implied that if it wasn't, that was too bad, because he was taking over the case anyway.
"Uh... yes sir!" the Preventer stuttered, giving Zechs a hasty salute. He gave Sally and Julia one last look, then scampered out the door, shutting it behind him.
"Mind explaining what that was about?" Zechs said to Sally after a few seconds.
Sally stiffened again and gave a minute shake of her head, flicking her eyes towards Julia. Alarms immediately went off in Julia's head. :She knows something that she doesn't want me to know. And it has to do with what happened to the door.: That thought led to another, even less pleasant. :She knows something about me that she doesn't want me to know.: A quiet rage began to build in Julia. She still wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but if it involved her, she had a right to know!
Suddenly the door opened again and both of her parents burst through. Daddy immediately moved to give her another hug, but Tousan froze at the sight of Zechs. "What's he doing here?" he snarled, looking at Sally.
"I don't know," she said, shaking her head.
"Mrs. Chang did not call me here," Zechs said mildly. "I heard the shouting and came to investigate."
"And what the hell are you doing on Earth?" Daddy demanded, putting himself partially between Julia and Zechs, as if he wasn't sure whether he'd have to protect her from attack. "Last I heard you were still stationed on Mars."
Zechs frowned slightly. "By my own choice," he pointed out sharply. "And I got an urgent communiqué ten hours ago, ordering me to Earth to deal with a serious problem. I was instructed to come here directly from the spaceport, and I just arrived. I was not aware that you were involved in any way whatsoever. In fact, I wasn't even aware that you had a daughter until just a few minutes ago," he said, giving Julia a curious glance.
"Yeah, well, since you said that you didn't plan on coming back to Earth or the colonies anytime in the near future, we didn't think it would be an issue," Daddy said. "It has been over fifteen years."
Zechs managed to look rueful, guilty, amused, and irritated all at the same time as he nodded. "Fair enough."
There was a long moment of awkward silence, then Daddy asked, "How's Noin?"
"Well enough. She'll be disappointed that she missed seeing you. She was talking about taking some time off to come here to visit, if my work didn't keep me too busy."
"Let us know if she does, I'd like to see her again," Daddy said, sounding for all the world as if this was a normal conversation and like he hadn't been ready to tear Zechs apart limb-from-limb a few seconds earlier.
Julia unconsciously reached for Duo-daddy, pulling him closer. He squeezed her quickly, then turned so that she was facing Zechs directly. "Zechs, this is our daughter, Julia. Julia, this is Zechs Marquise."
"Yeah, I know," Julia said softly, holding out her hand and shaking Zechs'.
"I go by Preventer Wind now," he said in mild reproach.
"Sorry," Daddy said with a slight grimace. "So what happened?" he asked, directing his question at Sally.
"A Preventer had some questions for Julia about what happened to her when she was captured," Sally said, and Julia noticed that Sally appeared tense again. But why? It wasn't as if Julia wasn't going to tell her parents, and it seemed like they trusted (sort of) Zechs. Besides, he had already protected her.
"About what?" Tousan asked calmly, but Julia saw him take in Sally's nervousness with a flicker of his eyes.
"He mentioned something about a door," Zechs said when neither Sally nor Julia said anything. "A solid steel door that had been... mangled," he continued, looking sharply at Julia.
She, however, was looking was watching both of her parents, and saw both of them stiffen with ill-concealed alarm. Then they both glanced guiltily at her, as if to see if she'd noticed their reaction. She stared straight back at them. After a long awkward moment that seemed to stretch out into infinity, Tousan made an indecipherable grunt and said, "Arigato, Zechs. I will speak to you later. We must get our daughter home."
"Completely understandable," Zechs replied smoothly without bothering to correct him on the issue of names again. He stared at her closely, though, as he spoke, as if trying to decipher some puzzle. Then his eyes widened slightly, as if in recognition, and his eyes traveled from her to her parents and back again rapidly. He opened his mouth slightly, and Daddy stiffened even more, while Tousan gave a very slight shake of his head. Only a person who'd lived with him for as long as she had would have caught it, but Zechs' mouth snapped shut, and he raised an eyebrow questioningly, glancing briefly towards her. Tousan's lips thinned slightly, and Zechs blinked.
"I'd better report in," he murmured, then excused himself, glancing once more at her as he left.
Julia, who had been extremely frustrated that she couldn't decode whatever it was her parents and Zechs were talking about, suddenly realized something. :They're all talking about me!: she thought with a growing sense of outrage. :They all know something about me, even Zechs! And they're trying to hide it from me!: She wasn't sure what made her angrier, that they would do such a thing, or that they thought they could hide it from her and have a conversation about it right over her head at the same time!
She was dimly aware of Daddy's hands on her shoulders, guiding her out the door and through the mass of Preventers, local police, and newspeople that were crowded around the outside of the building and to a waiting car.
It had something to do with that door. Every time anyone mentioned it in her presence, they all got very tense. The Preventer had said that it had been six inches of solid steel, but he must have been mistaken, it couldn't have been that, she never would have been able to break through something like that. Adrenaline could help, but it could only account for so much.
Julia suddenly had a horrible thought - :What if he wasn't wrong?:
The thought made her heart begin to race, but she controlled herself. :All right, let's think this through. If he wasn't wrong, if it was that thick...: Julia shook her head slightly. That was impossible. She couldn't have broken through something like that. *Tousan* might have been able to do that, but he'd been fairly heavily modified by the doctor that controlled him during the war. So had Daddy, for that matter. If she'd been their actual daughter(impossible as that was), there might have been some chance that she would have inherited their genetic modifications, but they'd adopted her. And if she'd actually been their daughter, they would have told her...
Well, they might not have wanted to. If they had, they would have had to explain why they had genetic modifications, and that would have involved telling her about the Gundams. But if they hadn't told her because of that, then wouldn't they have told her right after she found out about the Gundams? So it wasn't that.
But how could she have broken through the wall?
Suddenly a completely random thought popped into her head. :I've never been sick.: At first she thought that she had to be wrong, that she must have been sick at some time, but she couldn't think of one time she'd ever been sick. She'd had those horrible headaches when she was little, but that wasn't so much a sickness, as a lack of control on her part...
:A lack of control...: She'd never met anyone else who had ever mentioned having to learn the same sorts of exercises that were so ingrained that she didn't even think about it when she performed them any more. She'd always assumed that no one mentioned them because they were as ingrained for them as they were for her, but if they didn't mention them because they didn't need them...
She thought back to the first time she'd walked into the dojo, and known that Sensei wasn't there because she couldn't hear his footsteps or his heartbeat. Now whenever she did that, John joked with her, and asked her how she knew. But the first time he hadn't joked. He'd just stood there, looked confused, and asked her how she knew. She'd told him the truth, that she couldn't hear his breathing or heartbeat, and then he'd laughed. He'd thought that was the joke, and she'd been young, so she hadn't corrected him. She'd forgotten - or made herself forget - that. She tried to remember if she'd ever heard of someone being able to hear heartbeats the way she could, and couldn't think of any instances.
Julia was strong, too. She'd known that, but she'd never really thought about it. It was always just the way things were, but she'd battered down a solid metal door without so much as a bruise to show for it. That wasn't normal. Not human. What the hell was she?
And her parents had known. There was no way that they couldn't have. They were the ones who'd taught her those control exercises, and they were the ones who were hiding something from her now.
The anger building in her gut upped a notch.
Julia sat in silence the rest of the ride home, not wanting the Preventer who was driving them to overhear the conversation coming. When they got home, she climbed out of the car and walked inside the house without saying a word to anyone. She heard Daddy thanking the driver, then they followed her inside, closing the door. There were still some signs that there had been a lot of people in the living room, although some effort had been made in cleaning it up.
"Julia?" Daddy asked softly, knowing her well enough to realize that her silence in the car ride hadn't been because of shock.
Julia clenched her hands in a fist and looked down at them, then to the wall in front of her, then back down to her fists. Her logical mind knew that she couldn't punch through the wall, knew that she'd just injure herself. Teenage girls didn't do things like that. She took a deep breath and refused to believe what she 'knew'. She put an image of the door after she'd finished with it in the front of her mind, and concentrated on it. :If I can do that, I can do this.: She drew back her fist and punched. Her hand went into the wall, and she felt it emerge on the other side. She stood there and stared at it for a second, then glanced at both of her parents, noticing with satisfaction that they'd both gone pale. Carefully she pulled her hand back through the hole she'd made and examined it for signs of damage. Not so much as a scrape, and when she wiggled her fingers experimentally, she didn't feel any pain.
She turned to look at her parents and raised her dust-covered hand. "What. The. Hell. Am. I."
They glanced at each other, but before either of them could say anything she spoke again. "No. Don't give me files, or tapes, or books. I want you to tell me yourselves what I am, and why you lied to me all this time!" Her voice rose into something close to a shriek on her last words, and she fought for control. Lately her senses always went out of control when she got excited, and she wasn't going to let them go crazy now when she was about to find out why.
For a second it looked like Daddy was about to protest the lying comment, but after a second his head just dropped, as if all the fight had gone out of him. "Before the war, the five of us underwent some genetic manipulation to allow us to fly the Gundams. They were too powerful for normal humans to control, the rapid changes in acceleration, the response-time necessary, the amount of knowledge we had to absorb... when we started out all of us were tough, quick, and brilliant. By the time they finished..." he shook his head slightly. "We were..."
"Adequate for the task," Tousan finished the thought.
Duo-daddy closed his eyes for a second, looking pained, then continued. "During the war they were controlling us. J - Heero's controller - died in the final battle, and the rest of them disappeared. We never knew what happened to them. After the war... well, we were all trying to adjust to the idea of peace. Then Mariemeaia came, and things were so crazy. And then we were trying to adjust, again... somehow it just kept getting pushed back, and we never got around to checking up on what they were doing...
"Then Une called us to Preventer headquarters. We were all active members of the Preventers back then, although only Wufei lived on Earth. The rest of us they called in for the big stuff. Heero and I had just bought a salvage yard on L2." His eyes glazed slightly, as if he was lost in the memory. After a moment he shook his head slightly and continued.
"Anyway, the Preventers finally had gotten around to looking up the doctors. And they..." he trailed off again, closing his eyes. For a second it seemed like he couldn't continue, then he did. "They were arrested for breaking most of the bans on genetic experimentation. Once the war was over, we weren't taking orders from them anymore... but they couldn't stop. So they took our DNA, our changed DNA from after they finished with the modifications, and they picked and chose from all of us, trying to create the perfect soldier again. Upgrades on the originals," he said, gesturing to himself and Heero.
He swallowed again and looked straight at her. "Most of their... experiments... didn't survive more than a few weeks. It was better that way. But two of the... experiments... did not die, were, for all intents and purposes, normal human babies. Babies created from our DNA. Une wanted to know..." he trailed off.
"You're saying... you're saying that... I was one of those experiments?" Julia asked slowly, feeling all of the blood drain from her face. Daddy nodded. "Who was the other?" she asked sharply, then the answer came to her. "It's Katie, isn't it?" Another nod.
"So... I... you..." Julia just couldn't seem to get her brain to operate.
"We adopted you, dropped out of the Preventers, and all of the files on what the doctors had done were sealed," Tousan told her, finally picking up the narrative. "We were going to tell you, especially after you found out about us," he told her. "We were just waiting for you to graduate."
That snapped her out of her daze. "You were going to tell me?!" she said angrily. "Do you have any idea... I thought I was going crazy!" she yelled. "I keep losing control of everything, and I thought that it was my fault! I thought that one day I'd lose it completely and go blind and deaf and crazy!" She felt her eyes start to become sensitive, and immediately reigned back on her emotions, fighting to bring her treacherous senses back under her control. Surprisingly, it worked, better than it ever had before.
Both of her parents were staring at her with nearly identical expressions of horror and guilt. "God, honey, I'm sorry! We didn't know..." Daddy started to say, but she cut him off.
"What did they do to me?" she asked in a flat voice. "You said that they used your changed DNA, and that they were trying to make a perfect soldier. What did they... how did they make me?" It was difficult to keep her voice flat for that last part, but she managed.
"You have all the same enhancements that we received, although to a greater degree," Tousan told her. "You're strong, how strong, we don't know, but you're stronger than either of us."
"You don't know?"
"There was no way to test you without making you suspicious."
"Fine. Keep going," she said shortly.
"All of your senses are also enhanced, as is your ability to heal. You already know you're a genius, we don't know how much of that they're responsible for, and how much is because of us," Tousan admitted. "You were born with immunity to every disease they could think of, including a few that have been eliminated for several hundred years, and you have an immune system that will ensure you never get sick," he told her. "The same as us."
"And what about the headaches?" she asked sharply. "Where are they from?"
"The human mind is only designed to process so much information. Your senses can give you too much to deal with, and the result is a sort of overload," Daddy told her. "We had to deal with it too, when we were first changed. You have to learn to shut out extraneous information. But it wasn't as bad for us, because we were older, and we understood what was going on, and the changes weren't as great. That was what we taught you when you were little, the concentration exercises are designed to train your mind to filter out extraneous information."
"And when I get emotional, or over-excited, I lose control of one or more, which leads to the bright flashes, which makes it worse," Julia worked it out on her own. "Is that it?"
"Yes," Daddy said, at the same time as Tousan said, "As far as we know."
"I see," Julia replied, inwardly amazed at how calm she sounded. "I'm going to my room now," she announced. "And then I'm leaving." She stared walking towards the stairs.
"Julia..." Daddy started to reach out towards her as she passed, and she snatched her hand out of his grasp.
"Don't touch me!" she hissed, letting her control slip for a second. "Don't you dare! You had no right to conceal this from me, not after the headaches started, and not now! This isn't about your past, it's mine. It's my life! It is me! You had no right to hide that from me! Stay the hell away from me!" She turned and fled up the stairs to her room before she lost control of herself and either started crying or physically attacked one of them.
Once there she busied herself shoving a couple of changes of clothes in a bag. She then found all of the money she had stored in her room and shoved it into her pants. As long as she kept moving, she didn't have to think about her parents' betrayal, didn't have to think about how hurt she was, didn't have to think at all.
Her parents. All her life she'd wondered what her birth parents were like, all the time not knowing that she was actually living with them. Well, with two of them. Technically, all five of the Gundam pilots were her birth parents. Actually, none of them were, because she had never been born, she'd been grown in some test tube. An experiment.
The thought was almost enough to start her crying again, and she'd done enough of that already. :Don't think about that. Don't think at all,: she told herself, pulling off the clothes she'd been wearing since she'd been kidnapped. She never wanted to see them again. With that thought in mind, she grasped the fabric of her shirt in both hands and pulled. It tore as easily as paper.
She spent the next few minutes reducing her clothes into a pile of fist-sized rags, then got dressed again. She pulled on a jacket, picked up her bag, and walked out into the hall.
Both of her parents were still standing in the living room, and she had to walk past them to get to the front door. She took a moment to steel herself, then walked into the living room. She could tell from their racing heartbeats that she had them very upset. Well, good.
"Julia..." Daddy trailed off as she ignored him completely, walking past him towards the door. Tousan actually stepped in front of her, blocking the way, but she glared at him without speaking until he stepped out of the way, a hurt look on his face. She got to the front door, opened it, stepped outside, and closed the door on her parents.
---------
Julia dropped her bag on the floor, keeping hold of the strap with one hand, and stared dully into space. :If he says no...: Julia closed her eyes and swallowed. :Then I'll just have to sleep on the streets.: She'd survive. It wouldn't be pleasant, but she'd survive. The thought made a bit of hysterical laughter bubble up in her throat, but she forced it back down. Of course she'd survive. She was a genetically engineered freak. She could stay out all night in a blizzard and not have to worry about catching a cold. And God help anyone who tried to attack her.
It had been six hours since she'd walked out of her house, and three hours since it had started raining. It was still early enough in the spring that it still got cold sometimes, and someone had decided that today would be a good day for that. Julia had been so caught up in her thoughts that she hadn't even noticed the rain until she was already mostly soaked. After that, it didn't seem worth trying to get in under cover, which had lead to her wandering around by herself with the rain pounding down on her for a little over three hours. She hadn't minded much at the time, but now she was soaked to the bone and freezing, and even if it wouldn't kill her, she was beginning to look at that as good option.
"Julia?" Her head snapped up as her name was called. She saw Richard slowly making his way down the hall towards her.
"Richard," she said, and was horrified to hear her own voice crack. She swallowed again and took several deep breaths, trying to get control of herself. "Hello." This time her voice did not crack.
Richard seemed unimpressed by her attempt at sounding normal, and more concerned with her voice of a few seconds earlier, as well as her presence. "Julia! Are you all right? I called your home and there was a Preventer there! He said there was a situation but he wouldn't tell me anything..." he finally reached her and touched her shoulder. He froze when his hand encountered the damp, soggy mess that was her shirt. "God, Julia! You're freezing! What happened..."
"I'm all right," she told him, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. That wasn't going to help her convince him that she was 'all right'. Even if she wasn't sure if she was 'all right', or if she'd ever be 'all right' again. "I... I was kidnapped, but they rescued me. I was just outside when it started raining..." she trailed off, not quite sure how to explain her presence here and acutely aware of the evening receptionist watching the discussion.
"Julia, I'm going to call a taxi, I'll take you home," Richard said, starting to turn towards the receptionist, obviously assuming that she didn't want to walk home in the rain and had forgotten to bring money, or something like that.
"No!" she exclaimed, seizing Richard's arm and turning him back to face her. "I... I came... I wanted to know if I could spend the night here. Sleep on the floor or something. Please."
Richard's expression became more suspicious. "Julia, what's going on?"
"I... I can't go back there. I just can't. Please, can I stay here for the night? I promise I'll be gone in the morning."
Richard sighed, not looking at all happy. "Julia, are you in some kind of trouble?"
Julia shook her head, forgetting for a second that he couldn't see the motion. "I... I'm not in trouble," she said hesitantly, not wanting to lie to Richard but not wanting to explain the situation, either. "I just can't go home right now."
Richard stood there silently for a minute, then sighed again and nodded. "All right, but only because I don't think you'd go home, even if I sent you there."
"Thank you!"
"First thing we have to do is get you warmed up, you're going to get sick."
Julia didn't quite know how to respond to that, so she just remained silent, picking up her bag. He led her through the halls, finally coming to one specific room, and then pushed it open. It was almost completely dark inside, and it took a couple of seconds for her eyes to adjust enough so that she could move at all without bumping into things. She stepped inside, and he closed the door behind them, making it even darker. Richard hurried off somewhere, and she could hear him opening and closing a door. He quickly returned and handed her a big blanket. "Here, wrap this around you."
"Um... Richard?"
"Yes?"
"Do you have lights in here?"
"Oh. Sorry." He moved over to the wall and after a little bit of fumbling, found the light switch. A dim overhead light and two wall-lamps immediately turned on. "I don't usually bother," he explained somewhat sheepishly.
"It's ok. Thanks again," she said, pulling the blanket a little tighter around her shoulders.
"It's no problem," he assured her. "I'm going to call your parents now, let them know..."
"No! I..." Julia swallowed, still surprised at the anger that came up every time she thought about her parents. "Don't call them. Please."
Richard just stood there, and she had the feeling that if he'd been able to see, he would have been staring at her. "Julia, what happened?"
"I... I don't want to talk to them. I don't want to have anything to do with them," she said falteringly. That sounded horrible.
"Did you have a fight?"
"Sort of. Please, I... I don't want to talk about it." Here she faltered again. What if he pressed? She wouldn't lie to him, but what could she tell him?
He seemed to come to some sort of decision. "All right, I won't call them, and you can stay as long as you need." He walked over to her and put a hand on her shoulder, frowning as he did so. "You're still far too cold. You need to get warmed up. I have a bath in the other room," he said, giving her a little push in the right direction. "Get in the tub and stay there until you stop shivering. Just go now, I'll bring you something to wear tonight. You can't put that stuff back on."
"I have this..." she started, lifting the bag she'd packed, before she realized that it was as soaked as everything else she had.
"Don't worry, I'll take care of it. And I promise I won't peek," he said with a slight smile.
Julia stared at him for a second before realizing that he was making a joke. She forced out a weak joke, and then obediently went into his bathroom. There was a rather large tub there, and she was beginning to forget what it felt like to be warm. With a sigh of relief she started pulling off her sodden clothes. Maybe she could relax, if only for a few minutes.
As long as she didn't have to think about what she was.
Or her parents.
----------
Duo was pacing back and forth, his braid whipping around behind him every time he turned to retrace his steps. He glanced at the clock for the fourth time in less than two minutes, then finally sagged down in a chair as his energy left him. His eyes sought out Heero's.
"Where is she?" he asked, although he knew that his husband didn't have the answer. He got back to his feet and walked over to the window, peering out through the water running down the glass. It was pouring out there, cats and dogs, as native Earthlings liked to say. When he'd first come to Earth, Duo had been fascinated by the rain. There was none on the colonies, at least, not where he lived. When he'd come to Earth, he used to stand out on the porch and just watch it for hours. The idea of that much water just falling from the sky was almost mind-boggling. When it was warm enough, he still liked to go outside and stand in the rain, just to feel the water running down his face.
Now, however, all he could think of was that his little girl was out there in this rain, alone.
When she'd stormed out several hours earlier, Heero had expressed the opinion that she'd come back before nightfall. Duo hadn't been so sure, and now he was miserable about being proven right. Julia had a lot more in common with him than he liked to admit - she took a very long time to get angry, but once she did...
He knew that she felt they'd betrayed her, and maybe they had, but they'd just been trying to protect her. And as a result, she was now out there, alone and completely unprotected.
"Found anything?" he asked Heero, who was at his laptop, of course, searching through hotel records to see if she'd gotten a room somewhere. It was the best they could do under the circumstances - Duo knew that if they went out to look for her, they probably wouldn't find her, and even if they did, she probably wouldn't come home with them, anyway. They'd already called all of their friends to keep an eye out for her, and a few of her friends from school and aikido, but no one had seen her.
Heero grunted negatively, and Duo closed his eyes, fighting off a panic. "She's out there by herself, Heero. On the streets. I've been there..." he trailed off with a shudder. He knew intellectually that the town they lived in was a far cry from the slums of L2, and that Julia was far from being the helpless kid he'd been, but that didn't make him feel any better. Heero knew this and stood up to wrap an arm around his shoulders. Duo shrugged him off, not in the mood to be comforted.
The computer beeped, indicating that they had an e-mail message. Heero clicked on it, quickly scanning the message, and some of the tension drained out of his shoulders.
"She's all right."
"What?"
"She's with Richard."
"The blind guy?" Duo had known that Julia had gotten much closer to Richard while she was doing her research project, and from what he'd been told, Richard seemed like a nice enough guy, but Duo had been avoiding meeting him since Julia first mentioned him. He'd done a lot of things he didn't like during the war, but to be confronted with some of the results so plainly was unpleasant, to say the least. "How's she doing? Let's call him..." he trailed off when Heero shook his head.
"Look," he said, turning the laptop to face Duo.
Duo looked. On the screen were just a few short sentences. [[Julia is safe, she's spending the night with me. Please don't try to contact me, she doesn't know I'm writing, and doesn't want you to know where she is, but I didn't want you to worry about her. -Richard Louis]]
Duo swallowed. If Julia was angry enough that she wouldn't even send a message on her own to let them know she was all right...
"At least she's got someplace to stay," he said softly, staring out the window again.
Well, there's one more section out. Sorry about the delay for this one, but real life's been just a tad busy, and this section didn't particularly want to be written. Not fun stuff happening here. Julia is not happy right now. I don't think there are words to describe how angry she is, and this is not something that's going to just disappear. Next section should be busy. You think that she was driven when she was investigating the Gundam pilots? She's about to blow that out of the water. She'll probably piss off a bunch of people too, but she's a little too far gone to care.
We have rain like that in Maine. It pours, and if you do have something to cover you, it bounces up off the ground and soaks you anyway. It's cold and it's miserable and generally no one goes anywhere if they can avoid it. It just seemed to fit.
Thank you Von, for giving me the information on how Sally and Wufei met, and thanks to Teep for reminding me a while back that Zechs does exist, and asking where the hell he was. I tend to forget about him, because I have a hard time writing him, so he disappears a lot in my stories. Anyway, there's his cameo, although I may bring him back for more action later.
Hope everyone's still enjoying this, I know I'm having a ball writing it!
Marika 3/15/02