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Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or any of its characters or references.
Notes: I'm baaaack! Doodododoododoo! My most sincere apologies for getting this out so late I have no excuse I was just procrastinating after new years, but this chapter is nice and long. Wow, I've only had a week of free time and I'm already bored to vegetable state. : ( I WANT SCHOOL TO START… AND I WANT THE STUPID PIDGEON LIVERED REGISTRATION SYSTEM TO START WORKING. Oh, wait, I have to learn to drive before next semester… okay the month should be nice and long. (starts biting nails.)
Chapter Seventeen
Old Friends
Gerry's hands were pressed flat on the desk, his official, badged bulk leaned over them on straight arms. He was reminded of the saying; you learn something new every day. Tonight, he squinted over his shoulder at the rising sun through Anna's office window, well today, he had proven the rule. Today he had learned that it pays to hold suspicions close to the heart, that stress really is bad for your health, and that there are times when his magic "make you talk just by the sight of me" police badge and an impatient glare were well nigh useless. This last was an unsettling discovery that he'd known for some time but never had actually occur. Gerry was known as one of the best interrogators on the force. He could be intimidating, cajoling, reasoning or what ever need be to get the suspect to talk. If anyone needed a second hand they requested Gerry, and here he was after eight hours of fishing with a kid that just wouldn't bite, hell he hadn't even opened his mouth.
Odin sat across the desk from him staring at a point of air, in the same position he'd been in for the last eight hours. Gerry couldn't help wondering how sore his but was for sitting that long. He'd dragged Odin to Anna's office and thrown that same but into that same chair after they had cleaned up the blood from the kitchen and halls. He had reluctantly helped. He didn't want all the kids to wake up and find blood everywhere, but it was also evidence. He had conceded, planning on taking Odin's clothes in, but they had mysteriously disappeared along with Caltha's, and any trace blood. So here he was, bone tired and baggy eyed after trying since midnight to get a word out of Odin. So far he had succeeded in getting his attention once when he'd pulled the chair out from under him. Anna had come in several times during the night to try her luck, but she got nothing. Gerry didn't know if he was purposefully ignoring them or if he was unable to hear them. If the latter was true it doubled his worry. Something was very wrong, somebody had died and judging by the great amount of blood that had been evident, not neatly.
But what really worried him was the lack of any reaction towards his badge, which he'd purposefully laid on the table in plain view before they started, and it wasn't just a bruise to his ego. Even the hardened criminals gave it a passing glance. The badge was a symbol that they had been caught, that things were serious now, that part of the vast machine of judicial power ranging from the lowliest desk clerk to the highest preventor office and court room of judge, jury and executioner had turned it's almighty eye on you. Of course the truth was far less glamorous. In reality the whole thing was one big bureaucracy with red tape by the bundles. The police dealt with the local, small time criminals, as the more important people liked to call them. Never mind that that these small time criminals had entire black markets and drug rings to their name and held enough economic influence to start a less official war on the very streets below your doorstep, they were still small time. Anything big was to be handed from secretary to secretary until it was lost to the lawyers and politicians. Odin's lack of response to the badge implied he was either very stupid (something Gerry could not believe), very out of it and not all there (something that was possible). Or that he usually dealt with someone of greater importance, say a preventor, (which was also possible, and Gerry was beginning to think, even likely). If the last were so then Gerry had the uneasy feeling that his small fish was a shark. Gerry slammed a fist into the desktop.
"This is damn serious, Odin, if that is your name. You show up swimming in blood and leave a god-dammed trail through the city that a blind man could follow. I called the station and a team has already been sent to the scene. I can't believe that no one is dead and if you killed them in self defense you were awfully enthusiastic about it, now you can either talk to me or talk to someone a lot less nice. The only place you'll go with your mouth shut will be the penitentiary, or worse…" while he stood railing at the youth, who still had yet to bat an eye, he was reminded of when he first met him. Gerry'd had his suspicions then, the way Odin held himself, the smoothness in his actions, the intensity, the eyes, the silence, the youth, something had been out of place. Finally he brought his hands up and rubbed his eyes, he needed a break, and a coffee. "I'll be back," he grumped and stamped out the door, slamming it behind him.
The Asian kid he'd brought with him stood leaning against the opposite wall. The black haired boy strode towards the office when he saw Gerry emerge. Gerry stretched his arm across the doorframe, halting his progress. "Whoa, wait a minute," he grouched, "I'm gonna have questions for you too after some coffee." He still didn't know the Chinese boy's name, the kid had never introduced himself just demanded he be taken to Odin, a fact that made Gerry wonder how much of the current situation he'd anticipated. "Like how do you know this kid, how much do you know about him, were you expecting something like this and if so how did you think to handle it, and I want all the details… after my coffee." The Asian youth eyed him with a doubtful air, and nodded. Gerry withdrew his arm from the doorway and waved him in. the boy looked at him for a minute more,
"Even if you knew, you could do nothing," he said, and walked into the office. Gerry paused, not entirely disagreeing with the young man. He was a cop, and he was good at his job, but something was out of place. Something had been out of place since he'd met these boys and he was afraid it might be him, that this was their world and he only lived in it. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes again. Anna walked up to him and handed him a mug of coffee. She wrapped her chili pepper bathrobe tighter about herself and asked,
"Anything?" Gerry shook his head and sipped his coffee.
"No, did you find his clothes?" he questioned. Anna shook her head.
"I looked through every trash can and dumpster around the whole orphanage and I can't find a trace of them, it's as if they never were," she said.
"How's Caltha?"
"Still asleep, I thought she might wake up but I expect her internal clock snuck up on her. She's not usually up that late," Anna said. Gerry took a long swig of coffee and cracked his neck.
"Well, we're just lucky she didn't get a concussion, baby that age, she's very lucky," he said. Anna picked a bit of fuzz off her elbow and mumbled,
"Maybe it wasn't luck." Gerry creased his eyebrows at her,
"Care to let me in?" he asked. Anna stole his coffee and took a sip, then sighed,
"I don't know what to let you in on, dad. Odin's never been one to start fights, in fact he'll usually avoid confrontation like rotting fruit, but… there was so much blood… he might have been protecting her." Anna stopped a look of dismay forming on her face. "Dad, what if she saw." Gerry nodded and reached behind her to rub her back.
"I know honey," he whispered. He turned his head to look over his shoulder into the office, half expecting to see the Asian boy snapping his fingers in front of Odin's eyes, what he did see made his eyes grow wide. "Oh no," he mumbled. The room was empty; the only sign that it had been occupied a moment before was a gently spinning chair.
~~~~~
There was a cool nip in the air that made you want to open your nostrils as wide as possible. The two comrades walked side by side with no words, no mumbles, just the quiet pad of footfalls on cement. It was a comfort, such silence. There was no awkward air to it, no need to ask 'how have you been,' 'how did you find me,' 'want to get some breakfast?' No need to inject meaningless chatter, as if the silence was something empty that needed to be filled. A friendly quiet could say more than a hundred heart-felt conversations. When there was no need for words, and you could sit on a bench watching the ants crawl across your boot two by two without a thought of talking, that was when you could say the most. Odin sighed and leaned back, letting his head hang off the back of the bench and stared up at the sky.
"It's all gone wrong," he whispered, his voice so low he nearly didn't hear himself. I was supposed to recover from the war, I was supposed to pull my self up and learn to walk like a human. I was supposed to learn to act my age… I was supposed to have a chance. He felt his mouth fall open and his lips form words and listened to himself ask, "Wufei, do you believe in fate?" He waited for an answer, listened to his fellow pilot cross his ankles and lean his head back mimicking his position.
"I believe in potential," Wufei whispered back. The sound was respectful, anything louder than a whisper would have scared away the silence, which was something they both needed. Odin traced the shape of a petal with his eyes while it dropped from the tree above their heads and floated down to rest on his lap.
"Doesn't it ever come to you, the feeling of inevitability? That no matter how many times you stand up you will only fall back down again, farther then before."
"An infant falls many times before it learns to walk."
"Don't dodge," Odin said. Wufei smirked and closed his eyes,
"What do you want to hear?" he asked
"The truth, always," Odin whispered. There was a pause, then
"You're dangerous," Wufei said. Odin reached up to touch the silver stud in his ear, his pinky finger turning the thorns around and around. It represented one of the few impulsive things he had done in his life.
"Even to you?" he asked, am I a hazard even to my fellows of war?
"Yes," Wufei whispered and Odin closed his eyes. He had seen him; the first time he met up with any one he'd known from before and Wufei saw him covered in blood, then there was that aftermath in the mirror. "What did they do?" Wufei asked.
"They hurt her," he answered.
"The girl?" Odin nodded in response. Wufei cracked an eye open and peaked sideways at his fellow pilot. He well remembered him in battle, calculating, and deadly precise at first, but slowly the detachment would unravel and he would become savage. Sometimes they could hear him laughing over the COM, and when the zero system took hold of him the carnage was magnified threefold. Nothing remained of the enemy but space junk. "Is there anything left," he asked.
"No." Odin felt something velvet soft brush his nose and opened his eyes. The tree limbs above were sprinkling petals onto their faces. A small gust of wind blew through the wood with a rustle, pulling another shower of pink petals off their branches. The petals swirled down, turning leaps and pirouettes in the air. Odin reached up and caught one between thumb and forefinger. He contemplated the petal in his hand, holding it aloft before his eyes, and slowly tore it apart. There was no sound to accompany the act, but as he rent it in three, the petal looked like ripping flesh. He held the three fragments overhead, that was him, split and ripped. He whispered "three for three," and let them fall, like the pieces of his mind. "One for the stranger, one for me, one for the ravager."
He licked his lips, trying to push the taste of blood out of his mouth. The taste never really went away, no matter how much he brushed and flossed and gargled, his mouth still held that rusty flavor. He watched the tattered segments of petal blow away. I can't tell him, I can't tell him…
"They're serious when they say you can't go back," Odin murmured "you can never unlearn life. I thought that…" A small family passed before them, laughing, grumbling, chatting and whining. One mother, one father, two teenage sons and a young daughter. The boys were mock fighting, and tossing a basketball, and their sister was complaining about her dribbling ice cream. The family passed the two boys on the rickety bench without a glance.
"You thought you could learn to be your age?" Wufei asked. His voice held no contempt, only a somber understanding. Odin nodded and watched another petal fall from the branches overhead. "A difficult task, once on the tigers back it is hard to alight. You can't be a child when you've grown up an adult."
"I tried."
"You tried and failed."
"First I thought I was unable to be around people." Odin's voice took on a musing quality, as if he was alone and whispering to himself, as if he were the only person in all the world. "Then I thought I could, I could even learn to be like them. Then… " He stopped short of mentioning the slaughter. He had to keep his mind from going back there, he was not ready to be sick again. "Lies within lies within lies." Wufei snorted,
"Welcome to the world," he said. Odin smirked and answered,
"Thank you, I've been gone for awhile." The smirk slipped from his face and he brushed his fingers against the side of his mouth where it had been. He wondered if he were really here at all. Was this him, or was it one of the two that fought against him and for him, or another false image of what he'd like to be? He just didn't know anymore, wasn't sure he would ever know, or if he did, if he would be able to stand himself. He sat up and looked down at Wufei, who still had his head leaning off the back of the bench, eyes closed. "What are you doing here Wufei?" he asked, the familiar chill returning to his voice. Wufei opened his eyes and stared back at him with out moving his head. They regarded each other without speaking, letting the silence say what they could not. Finally Wufei sighed, pulled himself up and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
"Misery loves company…" He stopped and stared ahead, then, "I consider you an equal, I could not stand less than that." He turned his head and looked at Odin. "You may be a mess, but you are not weak."
"That's your only reason?" Odin asked.
"No."
~~~~~
Scead lounged against a metal packing crate, puffing on a joint. A single bulb hanging from the ceiling lit up the area around the crates and then faded into the shadows before the light ever reached the walls. The only other sources of light in this warehouse came from the glowing hand print locks on the crates and the tiny red flare of Scead's cigarette. Scead blew two columns of smoke through his nose and stamped out the end of the cigarette. He waited until someone came and opened up a crate for him, then filled his pockets with a week's load. He ignored the suspicious glare the other man was giving him and swaggered towards the exit, flipping the frowning drone the finger.
Scead hid the stash in his usual place under the 69-transit bridge, keeping a few packets with him for the day's work. The ground rumbled and the graffiti covered walls shook as the tram passed overhead. Very little light made it down into this cranny, under a bridge and between the foundations of towering skyscrapers. Before he left his crevice, Scead looked about for any sign of company and pulled a long needle out of his coat. He loaded the needle from his stash, with only a slight trembling of the hand and shot it into his vein.
"Bombs away," he said. The eight seconds before the drug hit was enough time to pull the needle from his arm and hide it. A sudden feeling of euphoria struck him and he stumbled back into the curving wall of the bridge. The rush was intense, he felt warm and giddy all over. His muscles relaxed and he sunk down the wall to the ground, grinning like an idiot. His mouth was dry, his hands felt heavy and his breath slowed down to a dangerous level while he enjoyed the initial surge. "God save Capital H," he whispered. Scead lay there on the ground, going from wakeful to drowsy, and feeling much happier for it. In one of his more alert periods he pulled himself up onto his feet, brushed the dirt from his coat and crawled out of his cranny up to the bridge. He walked the few blocks to his personal turf singing, "the candy man can. The candy man can cause he mixes it with love and makes the world go round…"
He stopped on his street corner and leaned against a crooked lamppost. The sun was bright and warm, and the midday heat blanketing his back made him feel extra drowsy. Scead took out another cigarette and lit it. He breathed in the smoke and blew it out, feeling his eyes growing heavy and falling half-asleep at his post. A light tap on the shoulder brought him around and he turned to find Borg looking down at him.
"Hey balloon," Borg said. Scead nodded in greeting and flicked some ash onto the sidewalk. Borg took his own joint out of his mouth and looked suspiciously at Scead's contented smile and half-closed lids. "How much you haulin' today," he asked in a casual tone, watching his friend closely.
"A quarter bag," Scead mumbled, rubbing the place beneath his sleeve where he'd injected the drug and letting his eyes fall shut completely. Borg cursed and spit on the ground. He grabbed Scead and shook the smaller man awake, even going so far as to box his ears.
"Damn your ass!" he hissed "you've been getting snotty on the job again. Tell me it wasn't the stash you're selling!" Scead shook his hands off and puffed on his cigarette with a smile on his face, like an unrepentant child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
"Relax…" he started, but Borg cut him off with an angry snap.
"Relax? Shit, I'll relax when, ah fuck!" he grunted and hauled Scead around the end of a corner alley and down into an abandoned basement, where he could bellow without the fear of being overheard. "I'm gonna kick your ass when you wake up!" he shouted, "do you know how damned, hell fucking stupid you're being! Shit, you know as well as I do that the dealers who dope on their sale stash get picked off like that!" he snapped his fingers in front of Scead's nose. Scead sneered and pushed the hand away.
"It's nothing, I'm still doin' my job, and it's not like they don't have enough to spare," he scoffed. Borg looked ready to slug him in the mouth, but instead took a long puff on his cigarette and backed away a couple purposeful steps. He blew out a shuddering breath and glowered at Scead, who just smiled. Borg snorted, normally he would wait to reason with his bro until after the drug effects wore off, but today there wasn't time. Word got around fast on the streets, and if they didn't have a plan of action by the time the Big Men heard of this mess they'd be in even deeper shit. He just hoped Scead wasn't to far gone to appreciate the seriousness of the situation.
"Look, Scead, bro, the King Pins not happy, the big man says you're losein' it," he whispered. "Sales from your corner are down and keep on falling, they're calling you a burnout, and since last night there've been rumors goin' 'round about some monster that's feedin' on people, a monster you set loose."
"A burnout?! Fuck them and their…" Scead stopped his outburst and frowned. His thinking was clouded but he was sure Borg had just said, "monster?" Borg nodded and puffed on his joint, relieved to have gotten his friends attention.
"Yeah, it's what I came to tell you bro, those six guys ya sent out after the kid the other night were just found."
"And," Scead asked, blowing more smoke through his nose and watching it billow around the dingy ceiling like white capped surf.
"They're dead, fucking limbs were torn off, the only damn body I could recognize was Cane and that was only his fucking head. They know you were the one who commissioned the guys for some beating job, people are saying it's your fault, that you're bad luck."
"Shit," Scead whispered. He turned the joint over and over in his fingers, the only thing making it through his foggy thoughts being fury. He crushed the cigarette in his hand and burned his skin before throwing it to the floor. "It's him," he slurred, "it's that damn kid I know it!"
"You don't know for sure, they could've run across anybody," Borg started, but Scead cut him off.
"No, it was him. That's who I sent 'em after, it was the same god damned brown haired fucker. We'll get him, oh yeah, I want even, I want him to pay in screams! Debts need to be paid; he can't just kill our men and walk! It'll show all 'em 'kingpins' who think I've gone soft and lazy I can still do the job. Burnout? Dream on mother-fuckers, Scead never loses the touch. I want to get the little dipshit!"
"Yo, easy bro, you're wigging out." Borg said, holding up his hands in a piece gesture. Scead paused in his tirade to wipe spittle from his mouth with his sleeve. He took several deep breaths and tried to not grind his teeth.
"Tonight, if you want anything done you've got to do it yourself," he slammed his fist into his palm and grinned. "We'll get him tonight, you know the place he is. We need to give the cocksucker a taste of somethin' he won't forget." Above the two heads bent in whispered schemes, one blurred and eager, one heavy and reluctant, the smoke swirled around the moldy ceiling shaping into deformed pictures of twisted corpses and crying faces.
~~~~~
It was dusk when the two companions turned their feet back, retracing their meandering steps to the orphanage gates. The sun was drooping low in the sky, sending golden rays of light bouncing off the mirrored windows of the city and into crisscrossing patterns around their feet. Wufei listened while his fellow quietly told him the relevant facts that had led to the current situation. He did not pour his heart out, or go into frivolous detail. He softly recounted what was important, and that was all, it was a trait that Wufei had always respected in him. Wufei looked at Odin while they walked, his head tilted slightly as he studied the other pilot.
There are many different kinds of silence, and not many people who understand them. There is the thick silence of tension, malice, words left unsaid, and words not aloud to be said. There is the gentle silence of camaraderie, drowsiness and words not needed. There are those who use silence as a tool of power and those who wear it like protective suit, slowly choking on their own defensiveness. His comrade had dark, easy silence about him. There was an impression of intensity and complexity beneath his reticence, the sense that there were shaded secrets inside that no one, not even his fellow himself, fully understood. His silence radiated out from him and hushed the babble of the world. This, Wufei realized was what he had been seeking.
Some part of him remembered this stillness his old fellow carried and he'd sought it out. For just as it hushed peoples chatter to whispers, it quieted his own violent thoughts, the urge to scream and scream and scream, and never stop until he tore his own throat out. A selfish reason yes, especially now, confronted with his comrade's own troubles, any help he could render would be well deserved. Perhaps they both needed the other. They stopped at the gates to the orphanage, and Wufei watched the other pilot stop before the iron bars and look back at him. He knew many things had been left unmentioned, left missing from the tale. His old ally seemed unusually skittish, jumping at shadows, and he'd noticed the other boy avidly avoided any eye contact with reflective surfaces, but Wufei didn't press. If it was a concern he would let him know, until then it would stay buried with the rest of his comrade's secrets.
"You've come at a bad time," his fellow pilot whispered.
"Or the best time," Wufei answered, the other boy smirked and reached for one of the gate handles. "You've changed your name," Wufei noted. The hand stopped mid motion, an inch from the handle bar and the other boy said,
"I returned to an old one," he shrugged "it's what these people know me by, it's just a sound."
"I will abide by it," Wufei said. The other pilot raised an eyebrow at him over his shoulder, then shook his head,
"Call me what you will, it's just a name." Wufei frowned; names were very important things and should be treated with respect. Names could not be thrown away when you felt you were done with them.
"As you wish, Heero Yuy," he said. Odin stiffened at the name, but made no comment. He pushed against the iron gate, and blinked when it slid open easily with a squeak. His narrowed eyes twitched about, taking the details he'd failed to notice earlier. The gate had been forced open and was hanging on one upper hinge, swinging back and forth on it's axis with a rusty creaking. The buildings ahead were still and dark. The priest door, set inside the bigger double doors, was open a crack and through the gap wisps of smoke rolled out the entry and down the steps.
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