Disclaimer: The Mobile Suit: Gundam Wing characters used
within this story are © Bandai, Sotsu Agency, Sunrise, etc. This work of
fiction is intended for free entertainment purposes only. It is not suitable
for readers under the age of 18.
Title: Undone, part 1/2
Author: Alleyprowler
Rating: R
Pairings: 3x2, 3x4, 1x2, 5+4
Warnings: Shounen-ai, angst, adult themes, Wufei POV.
Location: Earth, northern hemisphere.
=======================================================
I don't know how I got into this. I certainly didn't ask to be where I was at the time, nor to be privy to the kinds of things I was privy to. I am exactly the last person who should have been standing there in the short hallway between my bedroom in the safehouse and the room Trowa used to share with Quatre. I did not need to know that Trowa was in that room doing…unspeakable things with Duo. I didn't need to see Quatre, looking pale and exhausted and nearly dead on his feet after a mission, slowly push open that door, and then just as slowly close it again before turning in my direction.
But I did. His eyes, bright with unshed tears, met mine. "Did you know?" He whispered to me.
Nataku forgive me, I knew. I couldn't bring myself to say the words to Quatre, but he saw the answer on my face and read it in my heart. I hung my head in shame.
He took a step or two toward the staircase that would take him to the main floor of the house, but then he faltered and would have collapsed to the floor if I hadn't caught him. As it was, we made no more noise than mice while Duo and Trowa grunted and gasped out their passion a short distance away.
==========================================================I took him to my own room to recover. I know very little about matters of the heart, but I imagine it must be shocking to come home to see your lover in the arms of your best friend. Also, Quatre's mission hadn't gone all that well, as I found out later. Some time in the past six weeks, OZ had finally gotten it through their thick skulls that their security ranged from pathetic to non-existent on most of their bases, and they had proceeded to rectify the situation right in the middle of Quatre's job. He had spent three hungry, thirsty days crawling around in ventilation ducts, elevator shafts, and even sewage pipes before he'd found a way to get off the base undetected.
I didn't know that then, of course. All I knew was he was unconscious, unhealthily pale, and he smelled bad. I didn't know what to do with him. I couldn't make him go back to his original room, to sleep on the defiled bed and breathe in the tainted air, but then again, I didn't know if I could let him stay with me. Perhaps the sofa?
He started to make 'coming around' noises. I just sat and watched him, letting him wake at his own pace. "Wufei? Did I just have a nightmare?" He asked me when he was fully aware of his surroundings.
I knew what he was really asking me—did he actually see what he thought he'd seen? "No, Winner. That wasn't a nightmare. I'm sorry."
He pushed himself upright and stared at me with eyes that had gone from a vibrant blue-green to a flat, dead grey. "Then could I get you to do me a favor?" His voice had lost its cheerful lilt. Like his eyes, it was flat and dead.
"That depends on what it is." I said. If he was going to ask me for a weapon, I was going to refuse and perhaps tie him up and throw him in a closet.
"Would you please bring me my duffle? It's in that room." He pointed to indicate the room he used to share with Trowa—not "my" room, or"our" room, but "that" room.
I was suspicious. "What do you need out of it?"
"Clothes, and my shower kit. I need to get cleaned up." He paused. "I think I'll sleep in Sandrock tonight."
I sighed. What an unholy mess! "I'll bring you your duffle, but I'm going to go through it while you shower and I am going to remove anything dangerous from it."
He didn't argue, which frightened me. "That's probably a good idea," he said in a low voice.
==========================================================If I hadn't been so angry I doubt I would have been able to summon the courage to knock on that door of "that" room. As it was, however, I was almost ready to kick it down regardless of what depraved things those two were doing behind it.
"Just a second!" Came Trowa's voice, sounding uncharacteristically flustered. There was some scuffling, and then he opened the door a little and peered out at me from behind that waterfall of hair. "Yes, Wufei?"
The door was only open about five centimeters, so I couldn't see much of anything but half of Trowa's face, but I swear I could smell sex in the air. "Give me Quatre's duffle."
His one visible green eye widened in surprise. "His duffle? What for?"
"He asked me to get it for him."
Trowa went chalk white. I almost hoped he would collapse from shock so that I could watch him slam painfully to the floor. I certainly wasn't going to catch him. "I didn't know he was back," he said in a weak voice.
I crossed my arms over my chest. "Well, obviously. Are you going to give it to me or am I going to have to barge in there and retrieve it myself?"
Trowa had the grace to blush at that. "I'll get it—one second." He closed the door. Good, at least that meant he was ashamed of himself.
When the door opened again, Trowa refused to meet my eyes. He simply held the dull green bag out to me and let me snatch it out of his hand before pulling the door back closed. Honorless bastard.
Back in my room, I let Quatre remove his bathing things from the bag—all except the razor. "No, not that," I said simply, and he let me take it out of his hands without protest. At 15 years of age, shaving can wait. He collected up his towel, washcloth, soap, shampoo, toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush and a fresh change of clothing, and then headed for the shower while I dumped the rest of his things on the floor.
I was thorough. I went through the pockets of all of his clothes, flipped through the dozen or so books he had, took apart his portable CD player, and looked through all his discs. In the end, I confiscated one pair of lockpicks, two oddly ornamental curved daggers, his sidearm, the razor blades from his medkit, a couple of blasting caps, Sandrock's self-detonation device and a tube of sexual lubricant. He wouldn't be needing that in the near future, and I didn't want him to come across it unexpectedly and have it trigger memories.
When he came back into my room after he had showered and dressed, I displayed the things I had taken from him, and he nodded his approval. "Those daggers aren't useful for anything but opening envelopes, and I doubt they're sharp enough for that. They're reproductions for display." He said in his new, flat voice. "But thank you for taking them out anyway."
"Are they gifts?" I asked. Although useless for combat, the silver blades in their black leather and worked silver sheaths were beautiful.
He nodded. "For my nephews, Rafiq and Numair. They are Iria's sons. I thought they might like a memento of Earth."
Iria was one of Quatre's sisters, the one who had died protecting him when OZ had attacked the Winner estate on L4. He had lost his father in the same attack. Those boys would be very special to him, then. "You must love them very much."
He looked down at the ornate weapons with his empty, soulless eyes. "Love? What is that?" He asked. He picked up the green duffle bag from the floor, slung it over his shoulder, and walked away.
==========================================================Dinner that evening was a tense affair. None of us had any appetite, but we were all forcing the food down as if we hadn't a care in the world in spite of Duo's red, tear-swollen eyes, Trowa's defeated posture, or my rigid indignation. There was no conversation, which I normally approve of, but things needed to be said.
"Heero is due back tomorrow." I said shortly.
Duo sniffled.
"We know." Trowa said softly.
"Is there going to be another scene like this afternoon when he comes back?" I asked.
Duo shook his head.
"No, Wufei." Trowa whispered.
This wasn't going anywhere. "Are you going to tell him?" I demanded.
Duo finally spoke up. "No!" He shouted. Never one to make a point lightly, he grabbed his fork and brought it tines-down into the table as hard as he could. "No!" He can't know about this!"
At that outburst, we all stopped even pretending to eat. I leaned back in my chair and stared at them both "And why is that? Are you ashamed?" I challenged. "Was this just a casual fling?"
Duo shoved his half-filled plate to the floor and collapsed on the table with his head in his arms, sobbing loudly. I wasn't moved. He was going to clean that up later.
Trowa put his hands passively into his lap. "Is Quatre all right?"
"No." I said. I did not elaborate. Let him draw his own conclusions.
Trowa's head dropped slowly to his chest, and I heard him begin to sniffle softly.
"Pathetic!" I spat. "Both of you are just pathetic! Why in the nine hells are you two crying? You both got what you wanted! Quatre and Heero were out risking their lives while you two were screwing like rabid ferrets, only Quatre happened to come by at an inconvenient moment. Well, isn't that a shame? Now your little tryst is broken up. Let me be the first to congratulate you on pulling your heads out of your asses. Trowa, don't you realize Quatre loves you more than he loves life itself? Duo, don't you know that he respects you and looks up to you as a brother? You are the most important two people in his life, and you've torn him apart! He's dead inside, and you two killed him!"
By this point they were both weeping in a completely undignified manner, but once I begin to rant, it's very hard for me to stop.
"You should see his eyes. You know Quatre's eyes, how bright and alive they were? Well, they're cold and grey and dead now, thanks to you. His voice, do you remember that voice? That voice that could cheer up an entire funeral? It's gone. It's empty and hollow and *dead*. He's given up on life. I had to go through that duffle bag, Trowa, because I wanted to make sure he didn't have anything in there he could hurt himself with. Yes, you heard me correctly. I even took out the harmless souvenir daggers he bought for his nephews, but he gave me instructions on where to deliver them." He hadn't, really, but the look of pain on Trowa's face was worth the lie. "And he agreed to it. I wouldn't even let him shave because I thought he could hurt himself with the razor, and he agreed to that, too! He couldn't even trust himself with a fucking safety razor!"
Normally I don't use coarse language, but this was an emergency.
"You know what? You two can keep fucking each other silly for all I care. Just don't let Heero find out, all right? You should be satisfied with breaking Quatre, who at least has the wealth to be placed in a nice lunatic asylum for the rest of his life. Do not inflict that on Heero. For once in his life, he believed he's found someone to love him and three other people to be his true friends. If you fuck that up, Duo, so help me…" I let the threat hang.
"I'm s-s-sorry!" Duo sobbed.
Trowa wiped his eyes, which were red. His whole face was red, actually. "Is Quatre going to be okay?"
I glared at him.
"No. Neither am I. Neither is Duo, or you. None of us are going to be all right." I got up and stomped off to my room.
==========================================================I admit my tactics with Trowa and Duo were a bit…theatrical, especially that last part. Maxwell must be rubbing off on me. I further admit that I felt much better for it, though. The injustice of it all had been seething in my chest and stomach ever since I saw Quatre closing the door to "that" room, and somehow the verbal battering had relieved some of the pressure.
I was tired. As usual after I vent some of my anger, I was ready to lie down and sleep for a solid week, war be damned. I honestly don't know how Duo and Quatre can live in a constant state of emotional flux as they do—it's terribly wearing. But then, that was probably why Quatre had shut himself down like he did. The human mind and body, amazingly resilient as they are, can only take so much.
I didn't bother with my evening stretching exercises or meditation; I just threw myself on the bed and sank into sleep like a child.
==========================================================The atmosphere inside the house could only be described as stormy. Duo was sulking, Trowa was depressed, I was still bristling, and none of us could bring ourselves to meet each other's eyes. I had to get out. I had to see how Quatre was doing.
First, though, I cooked a meal of rice and vegetables and chicken, put it into two thermal containers, and shoved it into my backpack along with a couple of bottles of fruit juice. Quatre likes my cooking and tells me so. Duo bemoans the lack of excess fats and salts and other things that he seems to thrive on while remaining whip-thin, and claims I'm trying to give him malnutrition. Trowa and Heero pretty much eat whatever you put in front of them without comment, whether it's pizza or rat poison on toast. I sometimes wonder if they have any sense of taste at all.
Well, they both lusted after Duo, so maybe they didn't.
I shouldered my backpack and left the house without a word to Trowa or Duo. You know, I didn't really hate them, although my words may lead you to believe otherwise. I was disappointed with them, and disgusted, and furious, but I didn't hate them. I was taught not to hate weakness, but to pity it. But I could not feel pity. I was irritated with Duo's need to be in the spotlight, with his emotional neediness, his attention-seeking behavior. And Trowa…well, I just expected better from him. I sincerely thought he had more self-control than that. What had that braided slut done to make him betray the person who loved him?
I stopped walking. I was giving in to my rage again. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Better.
After a bit of stumbling around in the woods, I found Sandrock in its usual hiding place. Quatre was crouched down by its left ankle, tinkering with something inside a panel. I guessed it was the controller for the lift cable, since that's more or less where it is on Nataku. I stopped some distance away, not wishing to startle him.
"Quatre?"
He leaned back, sitting on his heels to look at me. Gods, he looked awful. His eyes were still that flat grey, and his skin seemed to have a greyish cast to it. Even his hair seemed to have lost its color. He looked like a ghost. "Hi, Wufei," he greeted tonelessly, and went back to whatever he was doing on Sandrock.
I sat down on the Gundam's foot. "Something wrong with the lift cable?"
He shrugged. "Not really, it's just a bit slow and it has a little hitch about halfway up. I sanded off some rust off the cable itself and that seemed to help. I'm just tinkering." He admitted.
I snorted. "Maxwell says that idle hands do the devil's work."
His shoulders stiffened at the mention of Maxwell, and I mentally kicked myself.
"I brought some lunch," I said quickly, trying to cover my faux pas. "Would you like to eat? It must have been a while since you've had a hot meal."
He shrugged, but he closed the panel and came to sit next to me. I distributed the food and drinks and began to eat. I was hungry. It had been impossible to eat breakfast that morning. Quatre ate slowly, either out of lack of appetite or due to the fact that he's still a bit clumsy with chopsticks. Probably both.
"What have you been eating, if anything?" I asked. He was wearing an oversized mechanic's coverall that hid the shape of his body, but his wrists looked matchstick-thin and his cheeks were hollow.
"I have lots of ration bars in Sandrock." He said. He very carefully didn't mention whether he'd been eating them or not.
"Did you sleep all right?"
He nodded. "It got a little cold, but yes, I slept."
I bit back a sigh. Quatre was capable of giving non-answers to even the most straightforward of questions. It's a tactic that comes in handy a lot of times, but it drives me crazy when he uses it on me.
"I just want to know if you're taking care of yourself." I said. I could hear the edge of frustration in my voice.
He gave me the ghost of a smile. "Thank you, but you don't need to worry about me, Wufei." He closed the lid of his thermal bento box. "And thank you for lunch, too. It was very good, as always."
I took the box and opened it. "Then why didn't you eat any of it?" I said with a scowl. I held out the barely-touched meal accusingly. "Quatre, I know you are having a very difficult time right now, but I cannot allow you to make yourself ill over it. You have responsibilities bigger than your interpersonal relationships. Don't forget there's a war going on. Now eat!"
One thing about Quatre, he's very easy to bully. All you have to do is appeal to his sense of responsibility, or guilt, and he crumbles. It used to make me furious whenever I saw Maxwell using it to talk Quatre into doing something that he didn't want to do, but I felt no remorse in using it myself. After all, I was only trying to help him, right?
I saw a flicker of…something…in his eyes. Surprise? Fear? He slowly took the box and the chopsticks and began to eat. I watched him like a hawk. When he slowed down, I nudged him and urged him to continue. He got about halfway through the box before his leaden complexion went pale green and he bolted up to go vomit in the bushes.
Oh, Ancestors. I am an insensitive bully.
"Quatre, I'm so sorry." I put one hand on his heaving back and supported his head with the other one.
"No…I should have…said something." He choked out. He finished emptying his stomach, then got up and kicked leaves and dirt over the mess. "When I'm upset, my stomach sometimes rebels on me." He said apologetically. I held on to him as he walked back to Sandrock and sat down on its foot. He was shaking. "It'll calm down eventually." He rinsed his mouth out with apple juice and spat it out.
I felt horrible. "Quatre, won't you come back to the safehouse? You can stay with me in my room."
"Thank you, Wufei, but I'd rather be alone right now. I need to focus on something." He waved his hand to indicate Sandrock.
"All right. I'll bring you some more food and some blankets later."
He gave me another one of those spectral smiles. "Thanks, Wufei." He picked up his screwdriver and went back to whatever he was doing to his mecha, and I went back to the hell that was our safehouse.
==========================================================By the time I was ready to go back to see Quatre that evening, I was beginning to think he had the right idea by staying in his Gundam. Duo and Trowa felt they were back on speaking terms with me—or meaningful-look terms, in Trowa's case—and Duo was, of course, still trying to appease his guilt over Quatre.
"He's doing okay, isn't he?" He asked, begging me with his eyes to say yes.
I glared at him. "He's not 'doing okay', Maxwell. He's exiled himself to his Gundam, he looks like hell, and he cannot even eat." I snapped.
Trowa actually spoke up at that. "What do you mean, he can't eat?"
"I mean exactly that. I brought him some food this afternoon and he couldn't eat it. He tried, but he was sick immediately afterwards." I left out the part about me practically force-feeding him. I don't think that would have gone over very well.
Trowa let his hair fall over his eyes and Duo's lower lip began to quiver. They were both the very picture of misery. Good.
"However, I will be dining with him tonight," I said, "so if either of you have any idea what he might be able to eat, I suggest you cook it. Excuse me, I need to practice my katas." I turned on my heel and began to do exactly that.
The exercise was precisely what I needed. I hadn't really done any for the last two days, and my body was practically quivering with pent-up energy. It felt glorious to move myself and my katana through the ancient patterns in the crisp autumn air, and it left my mind free to analyze things.
Obviously Duo and Trowa were going to have to work things out between themselves, if they hadn't already. After that, Duo was going to have to decide whether to let Heero in on things or not, and Trowa was going to have to decide what to do about Quatre. My role, if I had one, was to see that justice was carried out. And to do that, I had to protect Quatre. He was slowly killing himself with grief—even I could see that. I had to keep him safe long enough for this to be resolved.
And when Heero came back…well, I'd cross that hurdle when I came to it.
==========================================================It was dark when I went to go take our evening meal to Sandrock's hiding place, and I had to use a flashlight. Flashlights make me nervous. They draw attention to you at night. I walked faster and faster until I was almost running, and I was quite out of breath when I finally got to Sandrock.
Quatre had built a fire between the Gundam's feet, and he was sitting with his knees against his chest and his arms wrapped around his legs, staring at the flames. He looked very small in his oversized parka.
"Quatre, it's me," I panted when I stepped into the circle of light. You just don't sneak up on a Gundam pilot, even an unarmed and deeply depressed one. It isn't good for your health.
"I heard you coming a long way away." He said, not looking up. "Why were you running?"
I simply held up the flashlight, and he nodded. He understood. I sat down across the fire from him and began to rummage through my backpack. "I brought you a couple of blankets…some food…tea…oh, and some books I thought you might like." I laid the items in a neat pile beside him.
He gave me a curious look. "Books?"
"Novels. Tang Zhoun is very popular in China these days, and I thought you might enjoy his writing." For some reason I felt embarrassed as I said this. Was I being too presumptuous? I quickly handed him the box that Trowa had packed for him, and opened mine. "Let's eat."
He blinked at me. "Wufei, you don't have to eat with me…"
I snorted and swallowed the mouthful of spaghetti I'd been chewing on. "Quatre, do you have any idea what it's like back at the safehouse? It's hell. I can't eat there; the food goes sour in my stomach."
He poked at his food. "I hadn't really thought about it. It must be a bit tense."
"Tense! That must be the understatement of an age!"
He wound a single strand of pasta around his fork and nibbled it experimentally. "Trowa made this." It wasn't a question.
"Yes. I told them about your nervous stomach, so he made something bland."
"He never did put enough garlic in. Pasta needs lots of garlic and basil and pepper, not just tomato sauce."
The rest of the meal passed like that. We talked about nothing in particular, ate our food and sipped our tea and tended the fire. It was pleasant. I hadn't realized how tense I'd been all day until then.
Eventually it began to get too cold to sit outside, so I said my goodnights, sent Quatre up to Sandrock's cockpit with his books and blankets, and I jogged back to the safehouse.
I almost crashed into the motorcycle parked outside. Heero was back.
==========================================================I found the three of them in the kitchen. Heero, shirtless and weary-looking, was sitting on the kitchen table having a nasty gash on his arm attended to by a fussing Duo, and Trowa was silently assisting him.
"Looks painful," I remarked. It looked like a gunshot wound.
"I've had worse." Heero said in typical Heero fashion.
"Is OZ still ramping up security?"
He gave a frustrated sigh. "Yes, but they haven't got the personnel for it. They're using raw recruits, and from the look of things, they aren't even bothering to train them."
That was bad. Untrained recruits did not make good guards. They tended to get bored and distracted easily, or they tended to get nervous and trigger-happy. I doubted that any of them were crack marksmen, either. "How many were there?"
"Forty on the perimeter alone."
Duo whistled, impressed. "Man, that's a little bit of overkill."
Heero snorted contemptuously. "They weren't the problem, it was the guards inside the compound who got me. They were dressed identically to the technicians, so I didn't know who to target." He flinched a bit as Duo tied off a stitch. "It didn't help that the techs were as heavily armed as the guards, either. Not to mention they were better shots." He looked down at his injured arm.
I bit down a curse and left the room.
~~END UNDONE 1~~