Disclaimer: Same as Chapter 1!
Chapter Sixteen
"The Truth Hurts"
By Magic
"Kash noo flive be qua hash thith ish?"
Samantha and Trinity's eyes bulged out of their heads; there was a very large fake pine tree standing in the middle of the living room doorway. It was not the fact that it was very large, fake, greenish and piney that really got to the two. No, it was more a matter of the fact that the pine tree was conversing with them. The two girls blinked, glanced at each other in amazement, and then looked back over to the tree.
"It almost sounded like Duo," Samantha informed her brunette accomplice.
Trinity's eyes widened even more, and she gasped. "What if the tree ATE HIM?!"
Samantha gasped mock horror. "No! Whatever shall we do?!"
"We can't have a hungry pine tree on the loose in the house!"
"No, we ca - Trin, hun, it probably wouldn't be very hungry after eating Duo," Samantha pointed out as she grabbed her hot cider from the kitchen counter where the two girls were seated.
It was at this time that Duo's head poked out from behind the tree and glared at the two. "Would the two of you knock it off and give me a hand?" He growled, finally comprehendible now that his mouth wasn't full of fake pine needles.
"Ah! It didn't eat his head though. That means that it didn't get a full meal, which I do believe means, that it could still be hungry," Trinity deduced.
Samantha tutted her as if that answer was obvious. "It didn't eat Duo's head because the tree was already FULL from eating the rest of him. Mr. Tree is saving Duo's head for a snack before bedtime."
"Oh," Trinity pondered that for a second, "but what if it didn't eat Duo's head because there was too much hair for it to gage down?"
"Well, I hadn't thought of tha-"
"Never mind then!" Duo exclaimed as he burst through the door, scuttled as fast as possible to the corner of the living room near the window, and tossed the tree onto the ground. Miraculously, the hungry/full tree didn't fall over in the process (or eat anybody on the way).
"Duo!" The two girls ran over to him and patted him on the back.
"We thought you were done for," Trinity informed him with a forced worried look upon her face.
"If only he was," Wufei drawled as he meandered into the room. He was immediately ignored by the trio over in the corner.
Samantha nodded and explained, "We believed it all over after you were cruelly sent down by the slave driver Tina to find her Christmas tree. How ever did you escape from the tree's clutches in one piece?"
"Maybe the tree is bulimic," Tina put in as she waltzed through the same doorway with a large cardboard box in hand. Looks of understanding replaced those of relief on the faces of Samantha and Trinity as the two girls realized that the case must have been that.
"Of course."
"Why didn't we think of that?"
"I'll tell you why," Wufei began, but the other two didn't stop to acknowledge his presence.
"I was going to go with the fact that Duo probably doesn't taste the best."
"Me too."
"Are you two sure that the cider hasn't been spiked?" Quatre asked with a smile as he followed Heero and Trowa through the door, all three of them covered in Christmas decor odds and ends. The three and Trina approached the tree and set their burdens onto the floor by it.
"No," Trina informed them all as she walked over to look into the girls' glasses and confirmed that they had been drinking the cider," the cider doesn't have anything in it, but, in accordance with the traditional version, the eggnog has something, well, a little stronger than...uh..."
"Egg?" Samantha suggested.
"Nog?" Trinity put in and received a Stupid Thwap across the back of the head from Sam for it.
Duo's eyes seemed to have brightened at the idea of having something a little stronger than 'egg' or 'nog' to drink and was the first person to poor himself a glass full of the thick substance. Samantha winced at the vision and promptly explained to the group how drinking something that was as thick as snot wasn't exactly her ideal holiday beverage.
"Who would have thought that Christmas is just a day away?" Tina said to the general public as she began to open up the boxes and boxes of decoration they had scavenged from the basement. "I've been so busy with finals that I hadn't even noticed that tomorrow is Christmas Eve...I'm so dead!" She screamed to finish off her sentence.
"Don't worry about it," Quatre ordered her kindly as he hung up a few balls over the kitchen table on the pots and pans that were suspended there. "We'll help you decorate everything before your family gets here tomorrow."
Tina smiled gratefully at the blonde. "But I feel bad for having to kick you all out for Christmas Eve and, most of all, Christmas day..."
"Again, don't worry about it," Trinity quipped from where her and Heero were now engaged in an epic battle with the Christmas lights; the lights were winning. The harder they attempted to unknot the long strand of colorful bulbs, the more tangled they themselves became in the cords. Heero had even begun mumbling about killing off the lights and how he should never have left his gun up in his room.
"Yeah, it really wouldn't do any good to have your family see Trinity Renada and her posse hanging out at your house," Hannah put in from over where she was trying (and failing) at pulling the egg nog out of Duo's hands for he was already working on his second glass and had been attempting to fill it up before anyone noticed two-thirds of it were gone. The blonde had come unprepared for battle and could not find the pilot's soft spot for her nails to dig into, so eventually after a lot of swearing and promises of pain later, she relinquished the bottle to Duo and sat down defiantly. "That's just what we need. You to get drunk."
"I'm a very responsible drinker," Duo informed her with a rouge like grin as he took another gulp and filled his empty glass to the brink once again.
"Yes," Heero said, "'responsible' in meaning that he always succeeds in getting drunk without problem every time he gets his hands on liquor."
"Thank you, Heeeeeeeero," Duo called to his friend Relena-esque as he walked over to the group, glass in hand, and slung his arm around pilot 01's shoulders. "You could never find a better friend in all of colony L10 than those that -" Heero shot Duo a glare and flicked his arm off his shoulders "- will always kill you when you're down. I salute thee!" He gestured his glass in Heero's direction as a toast and downed another mouthful.
"You know, he's rather amusing when he's drunk," Sam whispered into Trinity's ear as they slung the lights around the tree.
Trinity smirked and shook her head. "You remember how I told you about the time most of us got drunk in the guy's dorms?" She glanced over at Duo who was now hanging decorations from Trowa's magical bangs. "Amusing is not even close to describing how hilarious he gets. Not that he isn't hilarious without anything to drink, it's just that it steps it up another level of...erm..."
"Captian Obviousness?"
"Exactly. Thank you." The two girls finished hanging the lights, and so the rest of the group could begin putting the ornaments onto the tree. The actual decorating of the room wouldn't have taken so long if mini-battles hadn't broken out between the eight throughout the time (one with ended with Wufei's pants being stuffed with tinsel by Sam and Trinity), but when the room and rest of the house had been geared up for some holiday cheer some few hours later, there was a definite lightening of the spirits for the whole group. Or perhaps it was the fact that most of them had taken a few glasses of eggnog. Either way, it had rounded on two o'clock in the morning, and everyone was still up by the newly glittery living room, sipping eggnog. There were only a few last bulbs to be put in random places around the room, and Sam and Trinity had been assigned the task of finding the 'perfect' places to put the last two.
Trinity held up her blue one. "Where in the world should be put these? I don't think there is any place left," she said with a glance around the room.
"Don't give up so easily," Sam ordered her as she twirled the breakable glass bulb around her fingers and shook her head a Trowa at the same time. He had once again attempted to remove the little star decoration which was dangling from his hair, but the blonde had caught him mid-grab. Everyone had decided that it was rather becoming of the ex-clown and were all making him keep it in as long as they possibly could. For their amusement and his suffering of course.
"On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me, a paaaaaaartridge in a pear tree!" Duo belted out from where he lay on the back of the couch, braid swinging nonchalantly over the edge. He turned unstably to Trinity who was standing next to him and inquired, "Why in all hell would someone want a pear tree?" His words were slightly slurred as he had been the one to finish off most of the eggnog. "And why would the partridge be there? Do those poor birds even like pear trees or do people just stuff 'em in there when they've got a lover who wants a bunch of really crappy Christmas presents?"
The brunette slowly turned to the youth and shook her head. "Silence is a virtue."
"I thought that was 'patience'?" Duo asked, his face screwing up into what was supposed to be a confused face, but in his drunken state, it looked more as if his brain had become constipated.
"There are exceptions."
"Ooooo! Exceptions are there?" Duo gave out a loud burp as he shifted his weight slightly on the couch. "An' I suppose that this just HAPPENS to be one of those times, aye?"
"It would appear to be," Trinity informed him with a very plastered straight face; Sam found this very amusing as she had never seen Trinity be able to keep anything remotely like a straight face before. Her friend would never had made it as a model. The photographer would shout "Okay now, one without a smile", and Trinity would have burst into laughter; a carrier as a professional mime wasn't looking too hot for her either. As if she had predicted it, a fit of laughter erupted from Trinity as she apparently couldn't win at a stare off with the drunken Duo.
Samantha's stomach growled fitfully from where she sat on the floor next to the Christmas tree. "Hey, Trinity!"
"Yes, ma'am?" Trinity shouted from over where she was hanging her last Christmas ball from the milk carton in the fridge.
"Do you think you could make me a piece of toast? With sugar and cinnamon?" Sam placed her decoration on the carpet in the middle of the room and called it good. "And don't burn it!"
Trinity looked over her shoulder at her friend as she poured herself a glass of hot chocolate. "Hey now. What do you think I am? Your wife?" She took a sip of the chocolate and gasped as the scolding liquid reached her tongue; she had forgotten that hot chocolate was, indeed, quite warmish. "Not that I would be one to question the godliness of cinnamon-sugar toast in the early hours of the day, but until you start pitching in with raising the kids, I'm no longer doing the chores around here."
"Listen my bitch, you are my slave," Sam cleared up for her, "not my wife. There is no way that I would marry into a crack head family like yours. That and," she decided that it was probably safer to make herself her toast anyway, so she got up and started walking towards the open kitchen (no one wants to trust Trinity with anything remotely sharp, pointy, and shiny - even if it is a butter knife), "we're a lil too young to be talking about this sort of commitment. I mean, we just met."
"Oh," Trinity sniffed and wiped away a false tear, "first rejected by Wufei, and now you."
Samantha stopped short, and Quatre, Trowa, and Heero all smirked as they realized what was coming next. "You asked WUFEI first?"
"Yeah. Sorry, Samantha. You were just the guy I'd fall back on if I was rejected."
"So...I'm second to Wufei." Her eyebrow twitched dangerously.
"Yep. That about sums it up," Trinity's declared as she gloated at her comeback. 'I got her good this time,' Trinity thought to herself, ' I just hope that she doesn't do anything too drastic when she beats me.' Her eyes swept the room for any signs of the change sock.
"Ooooh, you're gunna-" Samantha began before Duo interrupted from the couch with, "Well, no wonder he rejected you, Trin. Wufei's already been married."
The three girls in the room had been shocked into silence. It was as if someone had sucked out their brains through their ears with straws; they didn't move; they didn't speak. Trinity and Samantha didn't even take a bite of their toast which they each held in one hand. The five guys on the other hand remained about the same, with the exception of Wufei who had turned a deeper shade of tomato and had crossed his arms over his chest as if daring anyone to comment on the fact.
"It's true then," Sam finally said after she took a long, hard look at Wufei's face; there were no lines of a smile anywhere there, not that he had ever been one to play along with their jokes, but she didn't think that there was any sign of his denying the fact. If it wasn't true, then she was almost certain that he would have already said something. 'He doesn't exactly appear the be the happiest about this subject,' Samantha pondered as she took at slow bite of her toast and her mouth exploded with cinnamon-sugary goodness.
Whether it was the eggnog, lack of sleep, or just sheer stupidity, Trinity would never really know why, but she didn't notice the glint in Wufei's eyes at the mention of his significant other that night. She would later wish she had noticed and would pray for a few more brain cells in her head and a sock that she could slam in her mouth when need be, but that night, without a second thought, she shot her mouth off. "What happened, Wu-wu? Mommy pick out a bride for you?"
"You're generally correct."
Trinity's blank stare was more than humorous for all.
"It's a tradition. You're ignorance on different cultures is amusing." Pilot 05's eyes narrowed dangerously. The room's air became tense, and Duo was beginning to think that he shouldn't have had the last drink. He figured that his mouth had ran away with him again; that and he was feeling a bit on the woozy side as the room seemed to be tilting to the left about thirty or so degrees.
Trinity had planned to slam down her hot chocolate mug on the table for effect, but realized only too late that she was in fact holding her piece of toast in that hand. Butter dampened cinnamon and sugar stuck to her hand as she slid the flat piece of bread off the table stealthily, hoping that no one had seen that. "'You're ignorance blah, blah, blah'. Come on, Wufei, tell us about her? Where is this so called girl that you've got?" Trinity crossed her arms across her chest as well and stared straight ahead at her adversary.
"As if this is any of your business," Wufei scoffed at her as he turned from her to fix one of the small, suicidal Santa's that had taken a plunge off of the fireplace.
"She probably left you, didn't she?"
Wufei's body gave a small twitch with the anger that he was keeping within. There was no reason for them to be conversing about her. 'If that damn Maxwell had just kept his mouth shut...' Wufei cursed under his breath.
"Oh! So she did! Probably couldn't stand your arrogant attitude, not that anyone can anyway." Wufei whipped around to stare into Trinity's mocking face; the brunette hadn't yet realized how sore the subject was or how deeply she was cutting him. The others in the room just watched mutely from the sidelines, either too afraid to step in between the two for fear of losing a limb or, in Heero and Trowa's case, too bored with the normality of the two's bickering to care either way.
Trinity's slightly tipsy mind was looking for other daggers to throw at him as a tiny voice in the back of her mind (some may call it woman's intuition, others may call it a little leprechaun -either way...) ordered her to shut up, that she was going to far, and that she was going to pay for it later. Better to live to fight another day (woman intuition); if she died now, she would never be able to burn things again (leprechaun). But, scream as the voice did, it didn't make its way through the brunette's hard head before her mouth said, "Or maybe you were so weak that she couldn't stand to be around you anymore and went looking for a real man."Her heart skipped a beat; the look in his eyes at that gave her chills.
She'd gone too far.
'Thank you, Captain Obvious,' the little voice growled at her as it released a long sigh.
Wufei clenched and unclenched his fist as he fought against his raging anger. There was no way that he was going to hit her right now. It wasn't that it was above his moral code, but rather that he knew that he wasn't going to have to. This come back had been stored in the back of his mind for a long time and had been slowly growing tastier with age (much like wine, or perhaps even cheese. To a point that is) as it waited for the perfect time to be opened. He hadn't even ever planned to unleash it at her, but she had taken three steps over the line and her strikes had run out.
"Don't talk to me about being unwanted," Wufei's black eyes glowed with hatred. "I wasn't the one reluctantly taken in."
Trinity's mouth tried to grasp enough words to put into a sentence; she wasn't going to let him get her this time, but she had a feeling she was fighting a losing battle. "Well, if I was so 'reluctantly taken in', why did the reluctantly taking-iners even bother? Why didn't they just leave me out on my own, since, as they have said, they knew exactly who I was all along? Hmm?" Thinking she had pulled herself off thin ice, she placed her hands on her hips as if daring him to come up with something.
Heero and Trowa's minds suddenly snapped back from where they had been wondering as they realized how hostile the battle of the sexes (as the two had secretly named it) had become. "Wufei," Quatre began as the blonde sensed what was coming next.
Wufei's eyes glittered with the aspect of revenge. "That's the reason exactly." Trinity blinked in confusion. "Why would 5 rebels take in the step-sister of a deranged war general? They ran the risk of being sold out by the sister to the brother! There could only be one reason why these five men would take in the enemy's own flesh and blood. Perhaps they understood that Nadir Renada had an obsession with killing his step-sister and would go to any lengths to find her and finish the job he had failed at. Realizing this, they had all decided that, even though there would be a tremendous amount of babysitting involved in the tedious job, that Trinity Renada would be the only fire sure way to get at Nadir."
He paused momentarily for effect; no one spoke before he continued, "So the five took her in against their will and kept a close watch on the troublesome girl as she blundered around, always watching her for a chance when a stay bullet would catch her off guard. Or perhaps when some stranger would bump into her in the street and take her off to her brother. Either way, though everything didn't go as smoothly as planned, the five guys did find Nadir Renada. The bait had worked." He took a few steps forward in front of the couch so only she could see his face. "But now what are the five supposed to do as they have been stuck with babysitting the bait?"
Trinity had become sheet white as she stared into his black eyes. So, she had been right in feeling that she was now a burden. They didn't need her anymore; they were stuck watching her. They hadn't taken her in out of kindness. Bait. She was just the worm on the end of a hook. 'Do I mean anything to them?' She wanted to run from the room, no, from the house. Her mind screamed for her to flee, but her feet had become lead and sat there like rocks.
"And the girl didn't even know what role she was to play in the plot. She's completely ignorant even of the hate that one of the five holds for the whole Renada family. The naive girl doesn't know a thing, does she?" Wufei was standing feet in front of her now. "She doesn't even know who her brother killed! Who's friend Nadir mur-"
Duo's white knuckled fist connected squarely with Wufei's left cheek, instantly shutting the pilot up and sending him staggering to the side. The braided one gingerly rubbed his right hand as he spat, "You keep Hilde out of your little cat fights, Wufei. How dare you bring her into your petty argument!" He lunged at Wufei once more, but in his tipsy state, the black-haired youth caught him off guard and rammed a fist into Duo's stomach.
"You're the one who damned the Renada family to hell! Right after Nadir shot her, you would've given anything to kill every last member of Trinity's family, including her!" Wufei let Duo drop to one of his knees on the tiled kitchen floor. The others in the room eyed the two as if they were a program on TV that they were watching and not two people fighting in the kitchen. Trinity's mind was whirling with thoughts that didn't make any sense; she couldn't figure out what she should feel. The world was ending, and she was without a life jacket.
"Before I met her! Times have changed, Wufei," Duo informed through clenched teeth. "Speak for yourself! That was then, this is now!!" He flung himself at Wufei and the two went sprawling into the kitchen table and chairs.
"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Samantha muttered out of pure habit. Her comment went unnoticed by everyone in the room.
It was at this time when Heero and Trowa had swiftly leapt to their feet and wrenched the two apart. Trowa held Duo's arms behind his back as he pulled him, squirming and thrashing, off to near the fridge by Trinity, where as Heero yanked Wufei off the floor and pinned him against the wall.
"This is pointless," Trowa said as Duo finally stopped trying to escape his grip. Quatre had also gotten to his feet and was now eyeing Duo and Wufei with tired eyes.
"You'd think you two would get enough fighting during the war." Quatre closed his eyes, and then opened them, shining with resistance, as he glanced towards them all. "This is no time to be fighting amongst ourselves. Wufei, you know Trinity didn't mean what she was saying. You went too far this time." Wufei looked away defiantly and out the window. "And you, Duo. There is no excuse for starting a fight with one of your comrades."
"Yes, mother," Duo quipped as Trowa released his arms.
Quatre sent him a glared before turning to Trinity, worry shining in his eyes. "Trinity, I'm -"
"It's true, isn't it?" Trinity asked, her voice quiet and almost childlike.
Quatre seemed at a loss for words; Heero nodded for the blonde. Samantha felt as if the room was going to start suffocating her. And she thought that the Partridge family had problems! 1950's sitcoms would have had a heyday with everything that her new found friends went through on a daily basis.
"Then don't apologize. Thanks for telling me, Wufei." She turned to face her adversary. "Had to find out someday. Can't stay ignorant forever, can I?" She forced a very fake smile onto her lips as she felt her eyes start to glisten. 'Gotta get out of this room,' she thought desperately. 'There's no way I'm going to let them see me cry. No way. I'd rather eat asparagus.' She shuddered involuntarily at the thought.
'Duo needs to tell Trinity about Hilde. She needs to know why he hated her,' Quatre plotted in his head. 'Somehow...I hope he does...he's slightly drunk now. It might just work.' The blonde looked at the girl. 'And she needs an excuse to leave.' "Trinity, will you take Duo up to his bed? He's a bit unstable at the moment."
"Hey! Who're ya callin' unstable, Quat?" Duo demanded as he took a step towards him and ended up falling flat on his face with a dull flopping noise much like that of a diseased waffle; Trowa had shot his leg out in front of Duo. Quatre nodded a thanks to his magic haired friend.
'Escape!' Trinity realized as she knelt next to Duo and pulled him up to a standing position. "Sure thing. Uh, goodnight everyone. I think I'm going to, uh, hit the sack now." She flung Duo's arm over her shoulder as he protested loudly and started out the door. "You coming, Sam?" She asked over her shoulder.
"Not just yet," Samantha told her friend. She was going to beat Wufei with her change sock until there were little coin marks all over his entire body, then skin him, and see what sort of sorbet she could make using him as the secret ingredient. By the faces of the others in the room, their thoughts were along the same line as hers.
Trinity nodded and continued dragging Duo out of the room and into the hallway. When they reached the stairs, Trinity had finally gotten control of her eyes and the threat of crying had been submerged, but she still felt as if she had been hit by a mobile suit. It also felt very awkward with Duo on her shoulder as she now knew that he hated her. Or did hate her, or...oh, it was much to confusing for her mind to grasp at that hour. She didn't know what Nadir had done, but by the sound of it, it couldn't have been good.
'There's no way that I'm going to ask him about it though, no sir. I've said enough for my whole life time,' she scolded herself. 'And I had just informed Duo minutes before that 'silence is a virtue'.'
As if the braided one had read her thoughts, he spoke. "You know, I don't understand why I'm an exception to the 'silence is a virtue' thing, and you're not. And Wufei definitely doesn't have the virtue at the moment."
Trinity smirked slightly as the two of them reached the landing. She steered the wobbly Duo into his bed room and dropped him down on the bed which was much harder than it would have been for any normal person as Trinity seemed to have a magnetic attraction to pointy corners. Because of this, they ended up ramming themselves at every turn, and both had bruised shoulders before they reached their destination.
"You know, with the way you walk, I'm surprised that I'M the drunk one," Duo told her.
Trinity shook her head. "That's only because you're drunk that you're thinking that way."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Oh." That was when Trinity dropped him onto his bed. Duo pulled his blue pillow up behind his head and stretched out his body before glancing up at her with a stupid gleam in his eyes. "Can you tuck me in?"
"Oo! Wittle Duo-dums wants to be tucky-wuckied iny-poo?" She pulled the pillow out from under his head and beat him across the head with it a few times before throwing it at his mid section. She turned on her heels, grumbled a 'goodnight' over her shoulder, and was almost out the door before the pillow hit her square on the back of her head. Duo had excellent aim.
"Hey!" She chucked the pillow back at him and hit the window to his far left; her aim need a bit of work, but Samantha/Hannah would work on that later.
"Nice aim. You can't leave yet."
Trinity was so taken back by the complete lack of connection between the two sentences that she actually stopped mid step and turned back to face him. A few seconds more of recovery and then she asked, "And why is that? I'm a bit tired and emotionally distraught, and if you ask me to tuck you in again I will shave your legs and super glue a tutu around your stomach, so don't even think about it."
"I don't hate you."
Trinity felt as if she could faint with relief, but she kept her emotions in check. She took a timid step back into the dark room and inquired quietly, "And the others?"
"I don't even think Wufei hates you. He probably thinks you make life...interesting," Duo gave the tiniest of smirks before his face went serious again.
'He must be drunk,' Trinity mused as she walked up to his bedside and knelt next to him, 'I've never seen him so serious. It's a lot like seeing Trowa smile. Only without the goosebumps.' "What did Nadir do to you?"
"He killed her," Duo's voice dropped to just above a whisper. He no longer looked at Trinity but rather stared out of the window to the other side. The street lights lit up suburbia so that you could see the outlines of the other houses, but his blue eyes weren't focusing on them. He wasn't looking at anything.
Trinity swallowed her 'Captain Obvious comment' for another more appropriate time. "Who did he kill?"
"Hilde. I was living with her on L2. We had been together for a couple years before..." he didn't really stop talking but rather his voice just faded away into silence.
Trinity felt as if she was having to pluck the information and suddenly got the feeling that she had when she and Hannah had removed Dorothy's second eyebrows. The whole slow torture feeling, only this time with questions. "So, she was your girlfriend then?"
"We had never declared so officially..." he went silent again as if he was thinking. "It was more of an understood thing."
"You two must have been really close then."
"Yeah. Yeah, we were."
The feeling of plucking eyebrows subsided in Trinity and another took its place. What was it? Her eyes widened slightly as she put her finger on its name. No. That couldn't be it; there was no reason why she should feel jealous because of that. She must be hungry or something. Trinity shoved it out of her mind as Duo started talking again.
"He shot her. I was there, and I couldn't do anything. I just had to watch," he finally rolled his head over to face her and his cobalt eyes met hers. "I wanted to kill him. To make him the most unhappy person ever. To murder all of his family in front of him. I hated every last one of them."
Trinity felt the corners of her mouth rise a bit. 'Ironic that he ended up saving my life.'
"I don't hate you."
"You already said that."
"But," she could smell the slight bit of alcohol on his breath as he spoke, "I just wanted to make sure you understood that. It wasn't your fault at all." He yawned and his eyelids began to slide down over his blue eyes. "None of it is. Don't beat yourself up over it."
"Okay."
"I don't, " he yawned again, "believe you. You're always takin' all the blame for, " his eyes had shut completely by then, "everything. This was my fault. I killed Nadirs men. He killed Hilde. He almost killed you and the others. We're all one, big, happy family. Well, except when you and Hann' are together in the same room with Wufei...cuz then we know what happens...but I jus' wan'ed you to know," he gave one last yawn, "I dun hate ya."
His body went limp as he finally passed out on the bed.
"Alright then." Trinity stood up to leave, but in the movement, she got tangled up in something big and fluffy on the floor. With a curse, she unstuck herself to find it was Duo's blanket. "Stupid slob," she grumbled and without realizing what she was doing, she lightly draped it over his sleeping form.
The brunette knelt down next to him to pull the blanket up to his neck and instinctively reached to brush some stray bangs out of his face. She stopped herself short of actually doing so and felt her cheeks turn pink. "What the hell am I doing?"
"I haven't a clue, but it almost disturbs me, ya know?" Samantha's voice whispered to her from directly behind.
"Yi-!!!" Sam's hand slammed down over Trinity's mouth before she could scream out.
"Hush!" The blonde scolded as she pulled Trinity from the room. "We don't want to wake Sleeping Beauty do we?"
"Sleeping Beauty?" Trinity asked her friend as her eyebrows raised.
The two girls traversed the hallway and wandered into their bedroom as the lights of the kitchen and living room began to shut off. Obviously, everyone was getting the same idea as Duo and were going to hit the sack.
"Unless of course," Sam said with a sly smile, "you want to wake up Sleeping Beauty. Perhaps with a kiss from a handsome, uh, Trince."
"Trince? No more eggnog for you. Ever."
"Hey. I don't have much to work with here, I haven't had caffeine in hours, and it's really late. Give me a break!" The blonde commenced in putting on her pajamas. She figured that Trinity was also a wee-bit tired and hadn't picked up on the 'Trince', so she added, "You were all alone. It was the perfect opportunity if one didn't want any one else to know."
The unoiled gears in Trinity's brain pushed reluctantly into movement once more for the night. ''Trince'?' She thought. 'Oooooooh!' "What in all hell are you talking about?! Are you crazy! That was the last thing that I was thinking!"
"Hah! But you admitted it! Even if it was the last thing, you were still thinking of it!" Samantha flopped down victoriously on her bed and pulled the covers around her.
"I WASN'T THINKING OF THAT AT ALL!" Trinity screamed and was sure if 'Sleeping Beauty' wasn't awake before, he was now, kiss or no kiss. "I would rather marry Wufei than think that, let alone do that, thank you very much!"
"Stop right there. You know where this conversation went last time," Sam pointed out to her overly tired and stressed out friend.
"You're right." Trinity sighed deeply and hoped into her own bed. The two sat in silence for a couple seconds before Trinity had an epiphany. "That bastard! I ended up tucking him in anyway!"
It was Sam's turn to sigh. "You know what, I'm not even going to bother with Captain Obvious comments anymore. I'll save a lot more oxygen that way. Wont have to breath half as much."