I have returned from the ether! *laughs manically* I just realised something, I've cut this fic off at a cliffhanger for… three chapters in a row! *snigger* *gets hit in the head with a flying box of pocky* Owwie… So, I guess that means that I shouldn't do it again this chapter?
Audience: *beans other inanimate objects at her, including motorcycle helmets, chairs and a great deal of rotten fruit*
Wahhh….
Tara Nepion: No need to set your friends on me! ^__^
Scarlettrose: Continuing!
Devylzangyl: Yes indeed, poor tinsy Quat-kun… I can't believe I'm being so mean to him sometimes…
Vic: Yes, they will get to Quat's dad!
Avalan: Or what's left of him…
*starts garrotting muse with walkman cord* heh… He didn't just say that…
Reha: Author's aren't evil… they were just very deprived as children.
Avalan: *rubbing neck* That's gonna leave a mark, man!
-_-… Oh no. Although I'm sure Avvie wants to meet another muse… I don't know if it's a good idea. Entirely too much critisism and sarcasm in one room… but if you want to be a guest-host, or if anyone else does, then tell me, and I'll try to get in contact with you (if you leave your email)!
Avalan: Nooooooooooo….
ShadowEyedCat: Dun' worry, Soul has her own supply of popcorn. *points to popcorn maker in the corner* ^__^
Disclaimer: The characters in this have been filched from Gundam Wing, and I worship them. Be that as it may, I can not claim to own them, as they are owned by Sunrise and other such officious companies. Nyah.
A black Mercedes screeched through the night and slid ponderously around the corner to the crash site, running over the curb slightly and parking in a way that in any other situation would have gotten a ticket. Almost instantly, all the doors opened, and about five burly men piled out of the car, and surrounded the seemingly frail young blonde that practically tripped over as he tried to escape the car. Almost like a phalanx of warriors, they formed up and ran as one towards the ambulance.
Quatre burst through the ranks of the maguanaucs that were acting as his bodyguards and over to the stretcher that had a body on it covered from head to foot in white cloth.
"You can't be here!" One of the attendants told him, trying to gently push him back to a respectful distance.
"My father… I was on the phone with him at the time… is he okay?!"
"The man in the back?"
Quatre was escorted quickly over to another stretcher in the back of an ambulance getting ready to leave, and slid in as the door slammed shut behind him.
The man lying in the bunk hardly resembled his father any more. His face and half his body were horrifyingly burnt, his beard and eyebrows melted to his face, leaving angry red marks, and there appeared to be shards of metal and glass imbedded in the arm that he could see.
Quatre stared dumbly, his eye glassy and blank as they injected his father's arm with a clear fluid, and hooked him up to a bag filled with blood.
The trip to the hospital seemed like an eternity passing in an instant, and before he knew it, but at the same time, entirely too late he was running along side his father's stretcher into the emergency room, and filling out forms on an uncomfortable little brown couch in the waiting room.
He didn't know how he knew, frankly he didn't care, but Quatre had a sinking feeling that his father wouldn't last the night.
Quatre stared at his pale hands, is pale hair shadowing his face and not letting anyone else see that his eyes were dry. He couldn't cry. It seemed his feeling were so deep that he couldn't get close enough to the surface to be able to cry.
Drowning.
The night inched on.
*~*~*~*
Trowa stared with mild interest as a shiny black car pulled up outside his suburban house. His math homework was boring anyway, so he decided to answer the door for his sister, who was in the shower.
He pushed away from his desk and trudged down the stairs and answered the door as almost exactly after the doorbell rang.
An imposing tall man was standing, his hand suspended over the buzzer. He smiled dryly, in an almost gentle way that compromised his stocky body, then held out his hand for Trowa to shake.
"Mr. Barton?"
"Yes," Trowa replied, slightly suspicious of the many men in black suits that were standing in strategic points in his front yard.
"I'm Rashid. My men and I work for Winner Enterprises, and we've come on behalf of Master Quatre."
The serious look in Rashid's eyes made his heart start instantly sinking. Something had happened.
Trowa leant out and gripped Rashid's arms with surprising strength, compared to his thin, almost waiflike stature.
"Tell me."
*~*~*~*
"You IDIOT!"
Treize slammed his fist down on the small drinks table beside him in his private opera booth, drawing some filthy and curious looks from the surrounding groups. Treize glowered up at the weaselly little man, and waited for an explanation.
"Well, he-a- well, that is; he might not be as dead as we'd like him to be, but… he's fairly close…?" The shorter man stuttered, pulling on the collar of his denim jacket as he faced a death-glare from the normally composed man that had hired him.
"How close is fairly close?" Treize asked barely reigning in his temper, but still biting off the ends of each of his words.
"Well, he had a 25 percent chance of surviving tonight… fairly close?" Jamie whimpered, taking a step back.
Treize closed his eyes, then sat swiftly back down in his seat, delicately perching his miniture binoculars on his nose and staring through them at the scene on the stage below.
"I sincerely hope, for your sake, that he does not live to see tomorrow dawn." Treize stated, suddenly the cool, calm and collected gentleman again.
Jamie M. Myers, expert car-bomber dipped his head in acknowledgement of Treize's well-dressed back, then hurried out of the booth, closing the red velvet curtains behind him.
*~*~*~*
Duo watched with an ache forming in his chest as Quatre stood demurely at one end of the grave site.
Ironically, Quatre had finally gotten his wish to be able to wear black. Repressing that thought, Duo turned back to the eulogy that was being given by Treize and practically snarled. How a man like that could even bother lying through his teeth that he loved the Winner family and was devastated by Mr Winner's abrupt death, when he himself had arranged it was beyond him. What he despised even more was Ms. Une standing to one side of the raised platform. She was dressed in an outfit not unlike she was usually wear to the office, but in sober shades of ash grey and black. It was not her outfit that offended the braided teen so badly, but it was the fact that she was nodding her head sagely to everything that he said like she understood and believed it. Her eyes told the truth of her louder than any words could though. Her brown eyes shined with repressed mirth, and a great deal of smugness. Duo longed to wipe that smug look off her face.
His violet eyes traced lazily around the ring of mourners, compromised mostly of the many daughters and maguanaucs, all wearing various shades of mourning on their bodies and faces. Duo's gaze skipped those he didn't know, and then focused on every detail of the people he did. Stark and alone, stood Wufei. Although he stood near the back of the herd, his plain white formal robes made him seem pure and emotionless as he stood, his arms crossed staring at the ground. Trowa stood closer than necessary to the new head of Winner Enterprises, a hand on the smaller boy's shoulder. Over the past day Duo could tell that the two had become closer, mostly because Trowa was the first one called upon to support his distraught friend, taking an over-night bag with him so he could stay constantly near Quatre as he mourned. Going by Quatre's usual reaction to sad things, Trowa had had enough hugs to last him a lifetime over the past few days, as he followed loyally as Quatre picked out a coffin and arranged the funeral. It had obviously been a trial by the dark circles under both of the normally pale teens eyes, but everything had gone off without a hitch. It had been the most sincere and sad funeral that Duo had ever been to, save Treize's little 'speech'.
When the depressing occasion finally reached it's end, Duo wasn't too surprised to see Trowa getting into Quatre's limousine with him. Duo met up with Wufei, then quietly joined Heero as they walked back towards the taxi that would take them to wherever it was that Heero wanted to show them. The boy in question was wearing a tweed suit that somehow made him look smaller, and his usual scowl look more like a pout. Duo eye flickered to Wufei's downcast face, and the two exchanged a confused look as they walked side-by-side, either arms brushing.
Trowa and Quatre weren't the only ones that had grown closer. Duo and Wufei now found themselves, despite the odd pair that they made, almost constantly together in class, and meeting a lot after school. They had formed a firm friendship, and the two could now exchange what could translate as basic conversation by merely suing facial expressions. Duo raised an eyebrow, then glanced at Heero's back.
Wufei raised both of his eyebrows in a quizzical look that explained that he knew as little as Duo did.
The trio trudged on.
*~*~*~*
Heero paused a moment, the door slightly ajar, glaring at the two in a way that displayed that no one could tough anything. Anything.
He opened the door, and motioned the two inside.
"What in hell's creation is that thing?!"
Hee hee, this makes it four cliffies! Ooh, she's on a roll!