Slight angst, balanced with some great giggles. =^_~= Hope you like it.

Disclaimer: The only characters in this episode who belong to me are Doris, Arthur, and a little grey cat, and even she gets shared credit with another authoress, so 'dere ain't nuttin' to sue me fer. Okeley-dokely? And even if you did, I'd be too jazzed to notice after that awesome halftime show with U2. Are we talkin' goosebumps or WHAT! *goes starry-eyed* Bono, I love you more than ever. Peace out.

Suggested Font: Times New Roman
~~~~~~~~~~

Episode Thirty-Six: Are You Lonesome Tonight?

"Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged." ~Dr. Samuel Johnson

February 5th, 1902

From midnight on, every night for the past week, there was a serious shovel party going on at Arthur's cottage. He had planned out his little corner of Bridlewood very well when he decided to live apart from the manor so many years ago. A portion of his food came from a vegetable garden at the side of his cottage, squarely in the north-west corner of the property, and it was well-protected from the elements by a thick line of cedar trees that not only kept out the snow, but kept out snoopers. This was a great boon when Duo and Wufei decided to dig it up.

After explaining about the gold to Arthur, the three of them vowed that they would never allow it to reach Treize's greedy hands, and it took less than an hour of speculating to determine that Arthur's vegetable garden would be the optimal hiding place. Duo at first suggested taking it to the pub, but Wufei pointed out that it was much too far away for such a heavy load, and besides, if they took the gold off the property, they'd be stealing from Relena, whom he had nothing against.

And so began many long nights of chipping away at the frozen ground. They could only safely work when Treize's goons were out of the house for the night, but they had to hurry nonetheless, for the blue-clad workmen were already banging on the walls looking for hollow spaces, and would stumble upon the gold by chance sooner or later.

"Nnghh.....how much farther?" Duo whined from the bottom of the pit it took them all week to chisel out.

Wufei was just returning from emptying two buckets of dirt into Arthur's potato bin and quickly produced a notebook from his coat pocket. "I've worked it all out based on what we found in my hiding place. Given the surface area of each bar and the square footage of the secret passage, less six inches on each side, and assuming they're stacked three deep all the way across, there could be a minimum of a hundred and eight bars in that one area. If there are even nine more niches in the house of that size or larger, that's over a thousand bars. Now, if we stack a minimum of ten bars per layer down there, that's almost forty inches right away."

Arthur nodded, passing the buckets back down to Duo for refilling. "Aye, and ye'll need a good, stout layer o' packed gravel, plus a layer o' brick, that's another...ten inches at least."

"Okay..." Duo stood up straight to gauge the depth of the hole. "I'm five foot something, and I can just barely see over the top if I stand on tip-toe..." He demonstrated as such, poking his nose up to ground level.

"So that leaves...about a foot of dirt to cover it," Wufei concluded. It was a pity that they couldn't spread the gold out under the entire garden, but they had to leave most of it untouched in case of a surprise inspection; so much recently-tilled ground would have looked awfully suspicious. "Just even out the bottom and that should be enough."

While the Chinese boy stood scratching out more calculations in his notebook, Duo slowly looked up and folded his arms, staring at him. "I hope you're not overtaxing yourself with all that scribbling, Wu. I'd hate for you to pull a muscle writing all those dollar signs."

Wufei glared down at his unlikely ally. "I haven't worked out the grand total yet. And don't forget those fourteen inches I damn near dug by myself while you were icing down your shoulder. Would you have gotten back out here any quicker if there hadn't been a tin of peanut brittle in Arthur's kitchen?"

"There's no peanut brittle in Arthur's kitchen," Duo drawled defensively.

"Not anymore, there's not," Wufei shot back.

"Lads! Lads!" Arthur stepped in. "We've no time fer all this! You, go to the carriage 'ouse and fetch back a wheelbarrow full o' gravel, and you, level off the bottom o' that pit, an' no more squabblin', the pair of ye!" With that, he toddled off to find some bricks.

The two teens took a moment to exchange a righteously whipped glare, then went back to their work. They had an hour at best before sunrise, and the workmen would arrive soon after. Every bit of work they did had to be done under the cover of darkness, and every delay cost them in immeasurable ways. Soon, Wufei returned with the gravel, Arthur had a neat stack of bricks perched by the side of the pit, and Duo had dug a reasonably level floor on which to construct a foundation for the gold. There was no more petty bickering that morning, just hard work; keeping an argument at bay was probably the hardest work of all.

**********

One significant benefit from living in a huge country mansion, it was decided, turned out to be the ease at which a person or small group of people could hide themselves, for it could literally take hours to be located. This sat prominently at the front of Quatre's mind as he stood before her Ladyship, thinking up a reason to drag Heero away from her side for awhile. Relena was surprised at the very suggestion that her beloved knew anything about fixing broken woodstoves; she probably didn't even know there was anything on them to break.

The second he had Heero safely separated from his keeper, Quatre led him strongly by the arm in the opposite direction from the kitchen with the supposedly broken woodstove in it, chattering away about rehabilitation and life being too short as it is. When they reached their true destination, the conservatory that lay far at the other end of the house, Trowa and Hilde were waiting for them with a card table, four chairs and a new deck of cards. They explained that they were kidnapping Heero until lunchtime, for his own good.

"Sure is peaceful out here in the country," Trowa observed as he dealt the third hand of bridge.

Quatre glanced to his right, where Heero sat morosely, and agreed in an obvious tone. "Boy, I'll say! No traffic, no noise, nice clean air...it's practically paradise!" He paused and looked at Trowa. "I call diamonds."

Hilde looked at both of them, and smiled widely. "Yeah, and there's no work to be done, since the locals practically run the place! It's like being on vacation!"

They all looked down at their cards, then up at Heero. The Japanese boy was slouched back in his chair, slackly rearranging his cards and not particularly taking in what the others were ever so subtlely trying to tell him, that he still had a lot to be grateful for. His eyes were glazed, his face drawn, and the people around him who cared enough to notice could clearly see that something was wrong. On top of that, their latest effort to cheer him up was bombing out big time.

Trowa cleared his throat. "And I'll bet it's a lot easier on you, Heero, not having to serve drinks, or set the table, or make tea..." Again, no response, especially tricky because Heero was sitting on the dealer's left and was therefore required to lead the hand. "Um.....Heero?"

"Hn?"

"It's your lead."

Heero twitched back to reality and played the first card he happened across. Quatre laid his cards down face up for Trowa's perusal, and smiled to his right. "I hear you've got a pretty nice room now...well-decorated, no drafts...frankly, I'm surprised you didn't catch your death of cold sleeping in that attic..." Heero twitched again, and Quatre shrank away, looking down.

Hilde played the rescuer, as well as the seven of clubs, and drew the attention away from Quatre. "I went into the village with Bethany the other day," she ventured hesitantly. "There's a nice pub there, and the proprietor holds a county-wide darts tournament every February. You've got good aim, Heero, maybe you should enter...y'know...take your mind off..."

Silence followed. Heero continued to mechanically rearrange his cards, trancelike, while the others watched him intently, straining to detect any glimmer of life in his ghostly eyes. Quatre took the trick and laid down the queen of hearts to start the next trick, avoiding everyone's gaze. Play resumed as normal, but when it came to be Heero's turn, he chose a card, hesitated, looked at the three cards on the table, started to put his card back into his hand, hesitated again, and looked up with confusion. "What are trumps again?"

They all sighed with their eyes. "Diamonds," Hilde reminded him. "It's been diamonds for ten whole minutes."

Glancing at his cards with distant resignation, Heero tossed down the card he had picked out originally, the four of spades. The trio exchanged looks of despair, soon after which Hilde came up with a new, last-ditch distraction. "You know what I could go for right now? Some of those lemon jumbles that lady brought up from the cottages the other day! Weren't they delicious?"

"Yeah!" Trowa agreed, nodding so emphatically that his bangs couldn't keep up. "I don't know where they are, though, do you?" They looked at each other and shook their heads, slowly allowing their gazes to land on Heero, who took several seconds to mentally register the hint.

"Allow me," he muttered, shoving himself out of his chair and dragging his feet out of the conservatory to fetch the lemon jumbles.

They watched and waited until he was well out of earshot, after which Trowa slapped the tabletop in frustration and glared at Quatre. "Whad'ya have to go mentioning the attic for!?"

"I know! I'm sorry!" Quatre whimpered, burying his face in his hands. "I didn't think! I was trying to think of something that wouldn't remind him of Duo, but it's not that easy!"

"This is a disaster," Hilde groaned. "He's been a mess all week, and we've probably made him worse now."

Trowa shook his head sadly. "I used to be afraid of him...but now I just feel so sorry for the guy, moping around like he doesn't have a thing left in the world."

"He's lost his best friend," Quatre said solemnly. "I know I'd be that way if I lost my best friend." Sensing the blond boy's distress, Trowa reached across the table and clasped his hand gingerly, hoping to refuel his battered heart with some positive emotions.

"They used to tie up the phone for hours at a time," Hilde added, "but Duo hasn't called or written or anything for days! Man, if he doesn't have a good excuse for that, I'm gonna give him such a wallop!"

Quatre sighed again at the barrage of negativity coming from his left. "I just hope he's alright. He's my friend too, you know, and if anything's.....happened......to.........." Trowa and Hilde looked curiously at the boy as his speech slowed and his eyes widened. "Someone's coming."

The trio tensed up immediately, eyes darting in all directions. It was generally quite relaxing in the country, but that didn't mean that they weren't on 24-hour sister alert for Quatre's protection. Nobody seemed to be coming down the hall towards the conservatory, so they plastered themselves against the wall of windows, brushing aside house plants and tendrils of ivy to get a good look at the countryside spread out before them. They were on the south side of the house, facing a broad expanse of rolling hills dotted with trees and hedgerows, and sure enough, one dark dot, neither a tree nor a hedge, was moving.

As the dot grew larger and became more distinguishable in shape, their fears seemed somewhat justified; it was a woman, approaching fast. "Battlestations!" Trowa shouted, taking immediate command. Following their pre-established plan of action, Quatre ducked 'down below', which for the time being was under the table, leaving him mostly obscured by the table cloth, but still close enough to identify one of his sisters by voice, if it was one of his sisters at all. Hilde, in her capacity as acting first mate in Duo's absence, stood at the glass panel door to the patio outside the conservatory, smiling and waving the woman forward, while Trowa, the self-appointed ship's captain, grabbed a previously-concealed fencing foil and hid behind a ficus plant.

As the strange woman tramped through the snow, she saw a girl at the door in a housemaid's uniform, smiling and beckoning, and felt very relieved. The snow had stopped falling days ago, but it was still bitterly cold outside. She tugged her shawl closer about her neck and shoulders as she hurried to the door, looking forward to being warm again. The door was opened for her, and the housemaid moved back and smiled again as she stepped inside.

"Do come in!" Hilde squealed. "You must be chilled to the bone!"

"Thank you," the dark-haired stranger breathed with relief. While she brushed the snow from the hem of her gray cotton skirt and removed her shawl, Hilde slowly crept behind her and shut the door, blocking her exit. The woman was totally unaware that anything was amiss until she tried to take a step forward, and suddenly felt a piece of thin, cold steel nudge itself against her throat. She froze.

"That's far enough," Trowa said, guiding her to stand up straight by gently pushing the sword up under her chin. "Hands in the air, if you please."

The woman looked around shiftily and slowly obeyed, raising her gloved hands to ear level. To her left was a tall, slender lad who would have ordinarily looked very friendly if not for the evil stare and the sword he had pressed to her jugular. "Um..."

"Don't you start with us, lady!" Hilde shouted, leaping out from the woman's right and hoisting up a chair to defend herself with, like a circus trainer in a cage with the head lion. She leaned over to Trowa with a sinister glint in her eye. "Want me to frisk her, boss?"

Trowa flinched. "Not...just yet. First, this nice lady is going to tell us who she is and what she's doing here, and we'll give her ample time to do so before we even think about getting invasive, okay?" He angled the sword and tilted the woman's head up even further. "Start singing."

The dark-haired stranger looked shocked and confused, wondering what she'd done wrong, and licked her lips, trying to think of an appropriate cover story. She was just debating whether she could faint convincingly without cutting herself when Heero walked in, carrying a round tin full of sugary lemon jumbles. He stopped just inside the door, and all eyes were quickly upon him.

Heero looked at the boy with the sword, the girl with the chair, the woman with her arms raised in submission, and then located Quatre under the table after a brief search. He bent down slightly, lifted up a corner of the tablecloth, blinked, passed the tin of biscuits to Quatre who mouthed 'thank you' back at him, let go of the cloth, and stood up straight. The rest of the scene, he didn't even want to bother thinking about. "Hello, Lucille."

The teens on either side of her gaped as she sighed into a smile. "Good morning, Heero."

There was a clunk and a yelp of pain as the card table jumped about half an inch, and Quatre quickly emerged, holding the tin of treats in one hand and holding the back of his head with the other. He took one look at the woman and shook his head at Trowa, swallowing part of the cookie he was chewing. "Fee's mot mun of my fifters," he mumbled through the lemony crumbs.

"Oh." Trowa ducked his head and cleared his throat, lowering the sword and tugging shamefully at his collar. "At ease." Hilde also lowered her weapon and backed away. The three of them collected themselves far away from Heero and the woman he called 'Lucille', and with sheepish pouts all around, they scurried out of the conservatory under little muffled apologies.

Noin clasped her hands behind her back and shrugged her shoulders. "They say there's nothing like a good old-fashioned country welcome," she quipped.

Heero smirked for the first time in ages. "They like you. I can tell." While the woman grinned back, he stepped aside and gestured out to the hall, where the others had just disappeared. "Shall we take a walk?"

She nodded, and they went for a stroll down one of the country estate's many empty corridors. "Do they keep you pretty busy here?" Noin asked hesitantly.

"Not with anything terribly important," Heero conceded.

"So...there's nothing to keep you here if you've been called away...even for a few hours?"

Heero slowed down and crinkled his brow. "What do you mean?"

Noin looked uncomfortably in all directions, and the silent decision was made between them to duck into the nearest available room, which happened to be the round-fronted lounge that housed the estate's non-working telephone. Heero shut the door and stood at the window with Noin, looking at the angry rainclouds forming on the horizon. "This isn't a social call, is it?" he guessed.

"I was sent to find out what happened to you," she said. "Lord Jeffrhyss thought maybe you'd switched sides without telling him when you didn't answer his summons."

Heero squinted. "What summons?"

"Didn't you get it" Noin asked worriedly. "He sent for you by post two days ago and you never showed up."

"No, I haven't heard from him since I arrived here," he said with a shake of his head. "It's already Wednesday. I'll see him tomorrow."

"He wants you there today."

".....today," Heero repeated, "or he'll probably punish you for not bringing me back as instructed."

Noin looked away. "That's pretty much the idea."

Heero stared out the window some more. It was turning deliciously stormy outside, set to bucket down at any moment and wash away all traces of the pleasant side of winter. Gray and bleak and miserable. "I'll get my coat."

"Thanks," Noin said quietly, staring out the same pane of glass. She barely knew him, but could somehow sense that he was only doing this for her benefit. She hoped that, by the time they arrived at the new secret base, she'd know exactly how guilty she should feel.

**********

In the back room of Arthur's cottage, with the lights off, the blinds drawn, and nothing but the chirping of birds in Regent's Park peeping through the woodwork, Duo and Wufei tried semi-successfully to sleep in the middle of the day. It hadn't worked well for either of them the last six days in a row, and today was running true to form.

"...Wu? ...you awake?" Duo whispered. Silence. A little more volume was needed. "Hey, Wu-man, are you awake!?"

Wufei groaned in his native tongue and stuffed his head further under his pillow. "Mmrn...jichunzhiren.....bejuay..."

Duo sat up and looked over at the other sofa in the room where Arthur had let them bunk for the last several days while they worked on the hole in the vegetable garden. "Uh, what?"

"I said, shut...up.....Maxwell!!" the lump on the second sofa snapped. "I have been awake for the last twenty-nine hours. I've been slaving away at digging a gigantic tiger trap for half of that time, and listening to you prattle on about everything under the sun for the other half. There's less than twelve hours before we have to start smuggling the gold out of the house, and I...need.....sleep!!"

Duo threw off the blanket and swung his feet over the side of sofa #1, scowling at the darkness. "Well, why don't you just gut Treize like a fish and take off, if this is such a horrible experience for you!? Go if you want! Why the hell not!?" A frustrated mumble was all Duo got in return. "What was that?"

"I said because I can't! ...idiot..."

The chef was actually startled by the tone Wufei used, mostly because he'd heard it coming out of his own mouth in his weaker moments as a disenfranchised orphan. He recognized the combination of loneliness, anger, and guilt all too well, and couldn't stop himself from wanting to know more. "What's the deal, Wu?" he asked softly. "Why can't you forget about this gold?"

Wufei cringed and emerged from under his pillow, sighing. I must not have done a good job all week of pretending I didn't care. He swallowed. "Alright...I'll tell you...but only because it's relevant to our current situation, not because I need to 'unload' in order to feel better. I'm not that weak."

Duo nodded in the dark. "Fair enough."

Wufei laced his fingers together behind his head, sinking into the pillow as far as he could while he asked himself again and again why he felt compelled to trust Duo. "Is this Heero's first assignment?"

"I,uh...I'm not sure. I guess so."

"Mm," the Chinese boy grunted noncommittally. "My first was almost four years ago, during the last gold rush."

Duo's eyes bulged in jealousy and admiration. "In the Yukon?"

"I was sent there for some on-site training by my master at the time. I won't tell you his name, but it wasn't Lord Jeffrhyss." Duo's lack of any confused blathering confirmed Wufei's suspicion that Heero had already divulged some key details about his employment. "My job was to accompany the trains carrying ore from the mines in the north down to Sacremento, mostly as an observer. I was too young and too valuable for my master to let me waste away in the mines themselves, so I was put to work painting misleading labels on the crates of ore, like 'lead' or 'iron', just to momentarily bluff the authorities in case the train was stopped and searched.

"I was also a translator. There were thousands of Chinese who had been taken to America as cheap labourers, mostly to do the jobs that were too strenuous or too dangerous for the westerners...loading and unloading dangerously heavy cargo, laying track in the burning hot sun, blasting through rough terrain with dynamite and nitro glycerine. It's been that way for my people for generations...and some still say that for every mile of railroad track, one Chinese man lost his life to build it." There was another uncomfortable silence as Duo felt the bitterness in Wufei's voice and contemplated the possible abusive relationship that may have existed between their ancestors. "That was when it started, while I was acting as a liaison for those of my people who spoke no English.....I met a girl.

"Her name was Meiran. We took to each other so easily, like we were two halves of the same soul. We'd hardly known each other, as far as the rest of the world cared...but we were going to be married one day, when we were older...we promised each other..." He uncoiled his arms and drew them tightly around himself, forcibly exhaling.

"The westerners thought we all looked alike at that age, so when she volunteered for transport duty to be near me, they just thought she was another boy, and so there were no objections. We went to the mines and assisted as best we could as a new load of gold ore was put aboard in crates, and then the train left on its way back to California. It was just like any other run...we had no indication that anything was wrong."

Duo pulled his feet back underneath him and sat cross-legged on his sofa, fiddling nervously with the end of his braid. "What happened?"

"The train was made up mostly of boxcars," Wufei explained, illustrating with his hands. "The ones in the back were full of ore, and the last two before the engine were the sleeper cars. All the workers slept there, Chinese in one car, Americans in the other. It was nighttime as we were approaching the border...I'd ridden that route enough times to know exactly what to expect, but out of nowhere, we felt this jolt, like a bump on the track, though we knew that was impossible. Then came the explosion.

"Something happened to the engine, we didn't know what, but all at once there was a ball of orange fire that swept past us, and I realized that the engine had been destroyed, and that the sleeper cars were hurtling through the debris field. Meiran was right next to me the whole time...she woke up and took my hand...and I told her not to be frightened.

"The next thing we felt was the whole car lurching to the side and flipping over. Both sleeper cars were derailed and came crashing off the track. I must have hit my head because I couldn't see or move or even speak, but I heard everyone around me screaming.....screaming for their lives as the metal that was supposed to protect them...shredded..." Wufei's voice crackled, and he swallowed twice to compose himself. "When I came to, I was bleeding from too many gashes to count, but I couldn't stop to tend to my own wounds. I started fumbling around in the dark, crawling through the rubble looking for the others...looking for Meiran by the light of smoldering fires all around me. Only a handful of workers survived."

Duo forced his gaze down, eyes stinging. He didn't even need to ask if Meiran was among them, and crossed himself respectfully.

"There was no time to grieve before the reason for the disaster became clear. The boxcars full of raw gold were all unharmed and sitting on the track a long way behind us. The first jolt I felt must have been someone unhooking them from the sleeper cars. I heard rattling wheels in the distance, and something rolled up behind the boxcars. It bumped into them, and I heard footsteps, men's voices, and clanking metal. When I heard the roar of a second engine, I knew exactly what was going on...someone had hooked a new engine up to the gold shipment and started towing it in the opposite direction. The whole thing was a heist."

On the other side of the room, Duo was trying to distract himself from the many unpleasant revelations by playing with his hair elastic. "Couldn't the police do anything?"

"Police!" Wufei snorted contemptuously. "The entire mining operation was owned by my master! There were no permits, no official recognition, it wasn't even on the map! What we were doing was illegal to start with! How could we tell the police!?" He actually felt better for shouting; it took his mind off the fact that he was just about to cry. "Anyway...our organization paid the civilian survivors not to say anything, and I was the only agent who got out alive, so I was simply ordered to forget about it. I couldn't though...I had to demand justice for the dead.

"I managed to use my training and influence to gather scraps of information on the train robbers. My master instructed me not to tell anyone about the mine, but he never said I couldn't ask questions--the Mounties were very helpful. It took months of searching and miles of travel, but I finally found the name of the man behind the robbery, the man responsible for Meiran's death, and the deaths of dozens of innocent workers."

Wordlessly, Duo pointed a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the manor, grimly raising both eyebrows. Wufei nodded. The chef let out a terse breath through gritted teeth. "God all freakin' mighty."

Wufei folded his arms and shut his eyes. "So now you see why I can't allow him to get away with it a second time. Treize will swap blood for gold without a moment's consideration, and I suppose I feel it's my duty to see that it never happens again. Meiran would have wanted that."

"Yeah, but...you want him stopped, and you want him dead," Duo observed. "Doesn't one solution solve both problems? I mean, why wait? He's probably in there right now, smoking those fancy cigars with his feet up in front of the fire. Go get him!" It was more of an empty dare than a genuine suggestion; he knew darn well that if Wufei was both willing and able to kill Treize, he would have done it by now.

The other boy glanced away in guilty shame. "That was just talk. I can't kill him unless I'm ordered to, or unless I can find a way to pin it on someone else or make it look like an accident. If I killed him without authorization and got caught, Jeffrhyss' agents would be all over me." He falsely imagined Duo smirking at his strategical impotence, and twisted angrily around to look him in the eye. "But I will do grievous bodily harm to you if you go blabbing this all over town! I still have to hold my head up in the espionage community, thank you..."

Finally, Duo smirked for real. I knew you were just a lot of hot air. "How 'bout if I keep it to myself in exchange for you going a little easier on Heero? None of what happened to you and her is his fault, you know."

"That's different," Wufei shot back. "Heero's in the way. I obtained a transfer to Lord Jeffrhyss' service in plenty of time to qualify for this assignment, and if I'd gotten it, I could have killed Treize in 'self defence' and no one would have disputed me. I was even ready to take the inevitable punishment for it, but as long as Heero's officially in the power seat, my hands are tied." He fluffed up his pillow and settled back down into it. "Talk him into early retirement, and I might be tempted to act a bit more civil towards him."

Unexpectedly, Duo laughed--a real laugh, not a scoff or a sneer, making them both think that perhaps he was starting to enjoy Wufei's company. Considering what the guy's been through...maybe he's not so bad. Just a rough start in life. Of all people, I should know how that feels. "Okay, how about just being nice to me?"

"Don't press your luck, Maxwell. Just go to sleep."

Duo fell back on his own sofa and retrieved his blanket, laughing all the more. Maybe it was the humanizing effect of hearing the boy's sad tale, followed so quickly by the usual pithy barbs and sarcastic tone of voice, but Duo was actually starting to feel comfortable with his presence...perhaps even starting to like him...just a little. At the very least, he was someone to talk to, someone to pull his wayward thoughts away from the person he was really missing, if only for a short while. In the past week, Duo had sent Heero two more telegrams and a long letter, but Heero hadn't sent back any sort of reply. It was more than a little worrisome.

I've had just about enough, too. I swear, if I don't hear from him soon, I'm marching down there and finding him myself, gold or no gold. Still, there weren't any other easy opportunities to contact each other just then, and self-righteous or not, Wufei was right about them needing plenty of sleep. They both curled up on their separate couches, trying to waste a bit more time before nightfall.

**********

Noin and Heero walked together to the village and hired a carriage the rest of the way to the shoreline. Jeffrhyss had sent her with exactly the right amount of money for the ferry to the Isle of Wight, so finances, as usual, weren't a problem. As soon as they disembarked onto the tiny island, there was a private coach waiting for them, but Heero insisted on stopping at the closest eating establishment first; he didn't approve of their master sending her to Hampshire and back on an empty stomach.

When they finally reached their destination, Heero was hard-pressed to determine exactly where Lord Jeffrhyss' new compound was. They had stopped at an expanse of rolling green hills, a dingy brownish green but green nonetheless, with no buildings in sight. The vacant-eyed driver of the coach led them behind one of the hills where Heero saw a faint squarish outline traced into the grassy south face. It was quickly shown to be a concealed door opening inward, revealing a staircase leading straight down into the belly of the island. Unlike the basement of the farmhouse outside Cloverderry Glen, this was a more permanent hiding place, decades old and proven to be secure.

Once inside, Noin threw a last, hopeful look at Heero and vanished down a corridor, leaving him to the care of the coach driver. This underground complex was a much more daunting structure, with cement floors and whitewashed ceilings, strung end-to-end with new electric lights. It was a stark and ludicrously efficient place until they got to the nerve center, Lord Jeffrhyss' work chamber, which was just as much of a mess as it always had been. In fact, it looked identical to the basement of the farmhouse, down to the last piece of clutter.

The vacant-eyed fellow herded Heero into the main chamber and left without uttering a syllable. Quiet as a mouse, once the man had left, Noin tiptoed up to the door and stood there, listening. If it was anyone else visiting his Lordship, she might not have cared...but somehow, Heero was different.

"Well now," Lord Jeffrhyss boomed as he hobbled into the room from the opposite door on his cane and peg legs. He strode slowly around his puppet, indulging in a rhetorical question. "Is this your subtle way of telling me you're striking out as an independent?" He paused, then delivered the real question. "You didn't feel it was necessary to answer my summons?"

Heero stood quietly in the center of the room, his eyes lowered. "I respectfully contend that I never received your summons."

"Indeed!" Jeffrhyss scoffed. "Did you send me the correct address upon your arrival?"

"Yes."

"And do you doubt my secretary's ability to write out an envelope?"

"No..."

"Did you check the validity of the local post office? The routes to and from your location? Background checks on the postman?"

"Yes, I did all of that."

Jeffrhyss stopped in front of the boy and twitched his moustache back and forth. "And are you still the first one in the house to lay hands on the morning mail?"

Heero held his breath and looked up by an inch. Because of his disturbed sleep, his whole schedule had been severely disrupted. He hadn't been awake early enough to even see the postman for the last two weeks. "...no."

Jeffrhyss grunted in disapproval. "Sloppy. Very, very sloppy. I despair of you sometimes." The grip he kept on his cane adjusted itself, about as pleasantly as a tarantula repositioning its legs over the carcass of its latest kill. "I shall expect you here twice a week from now on."

The boy looked up in horror. "That wasn't our agreement!"

"If you can't be relied upon to come when I call, what else would you have me do?" Jeffrhyss spat in an insulting tone. He hobbled over to an oak table with an assortment of glassware on it, with gas burners, round flasks and retort stands, looking altogether like an overgrown child's chemistry set. "I have also altered the mixture of your treatments," he said, reaching for the usual mortar and pestle containing strange-smelling powders.

Heero's throat tightened up as he was struck with the concept of polluting his lungs and his blood with even more unidentified chemicals, and twice as often to boot. He took a step back, feebly. "You're...you're in breach of...our contract..."

Jeffrhyss seemed to ignore him, keeping his back turned as he tinkered with test tubes and scales. "Where is your friend right now?"

"...he's in London."

"Wrong," the old man said. "He's in London with Wufei, the difference being that with Wufei there, I can have the boy eliminated with a single word." The rather oblique threat against Duo's safety had precisely the right effect on Heero; his Lordship was a lot of things, but never a liar, and if he said that he was a first-class stamp away from killing somebody, he generally meant it. Forced to accept the new terms of their arrangement, Heero walked numbly forward, ready to receive what was due to him.

At that point, Noin slunk away from the door and crept back to her room, cataloguing everything she had just heard. She didn't need to see what happened next; she'd been witnessing it quietly for several weeks, as Heero was summoned and subjected to a noxious-smelling smoke over and over again. The odd thing was, some of the smoke always drifted into her room, but it never affected her the way it did him, and that made it all but impossible for her to discover what it actually was.

Noin curled up on her bunk and thought about it some more, while she waited for her instructions.

**********

"Are you sure you looked everywhere?" Relena asked in a timidly frightened voice.

"Quite sure, Miss," Doris said solemnly. "We've swept through the house twice, from top to bottom. He's not here."

Her Ladyship sat down gingerly in the green leather wing chair that was the focal point of the round-fronted lounge, with a double-handed deathgrip on her lace handkerchief. She stared at the wall with lifeless eyes, coping rather badly with the realization that Heero had just broken his first promise to her, ever. He was supposed to join her for tea with a few of their country neighbours, and he told her most faithfully that he would be there. Not only did he miss afternoon tea, but dinner as well, and was nowhere to be found on the estate. "Thank you, Doris. You may go now."

The elderly housemaid turned and left, and the lounge was terribly quiet. Relena hated quiet rooms, hated the loneliness that silence represented, and hated the thought that Heero was falling off the rails already. She rose and went to the world globe in the corner, and unlocked it. Swinging the top half open revealed a brandy snifter, empty since 1899, and Relena had no intention of filling it either, not while she suspected that Heero was slowly turning into a drunk.

He must know by now that there's a pub in the village, and he's always been around liquor in an official capacity...I should have seen it coming. He's shiftless, he's secretive, and I have a feeling he's not totally honest with me all the time. Lifting the brandy snifter out of its velvet-lined casing, she reached underneath and took out the small stack of envelopes she had hidden there over the past week. Two telegrams and two letters, all addressed to Heero. Maybe his drinking is a reaction to being cut off from...from that boy...which I suppose is my fault, in a way, but it's got to be part of the road to recovery. Once he gets through this, he'll be fine. He has to be.

She thumbed through the envelopes and mentally weighed what the damage might be if she offered him just one of the letters in exchange for him curbing his erratic behaviour. Somehow she knew that the young man was falling apart, with his strange sleeping patterns, sour moods, and short attention span, but putting him back in contact with Duo was too much of a risk. She put the letters back, replaced the crystal jug, closed the globe up again, and locked it, choosing to stand by her original plan.

A clomping sound approached from the hall, irregular and clumsy. Relena narrowed her eyes, folded her arms and turned to the lounge door, ready to confront her visitor. Sure as God made little green apples, in stumbled her beloved, jacket slung over his shoulder and sweating like a fur coat model in a Swedish sauna. He leaned heavily against the door frame and tried to focus his blurred vision on Relena. She was not amused.

"Heero, I'm going to ask you a question, and I want an honest answer, yes or no." She inhaled sharply through her nose and set her jaw. "Have you been drinking?"

Heero held up his non-jacket hand in protest and let it sway in mid-air for a moment while he searched his memory banks for the required English lexicon. "No." He thought about that. He honestly hadn't touched a drop for days, but how else could he explain his condition? Flushed crimson and half-dressed despite the near freezing temperatures he'd just travelled through, woozy and feverish from his Lordship's 'new mixture'? What was he supposed to tell her, the truth? He dropped his hand and closed his eyes. "Yes."

"I thought so." She walked around the chair, the table, and the non-working telephone to stand a few feet away from him, not really wanting to smell whatever bitter liquid he'd been soaking his back teeth in for the last several hours. "I think you should go to bed early and sleep it off, and tomorrow I'd like to have a talk with you about your general health and conduct in this house."

He didn't seem to hear or even see her, as it was taking what little remained of his powers of concentration just to stand up straight, and he wasn't doing too swift a job of that, either. It was also just occurring to him that he may have left his overcoat on the ferry. Relena sighed. "Go on...get some sleep," she said, and she quickly kissed his cheek to say goodnight. Heero turned unsteadily around and plodded off down the hall, dragging his jacket along the floor. Relena went back to the green leather wing chair and sank into it, despondent but filled with a new resolve to see Heero rehabilitated, no matter how long it took.

Heero was experiencing a similar resolve to make it all the way upstairs unscathed, and had few problems until he reached the top and failed to see that the steps had run out. Only a quick grab of the banister prevented him from toppling over forwards into the thin layer of carpet on the landing. Looking around once to see if there were any witnesses, he staggered to his room.

The one comforting thought on his mind was that he would gradually get used to the new combination of chemicals, and next time he might actually make it home before eight-thirty. He walked into the room with the purple velvet bed curtains, shut the door behind him, took a step and a half more, and promptly passed out. His knees buckled first, and the rest of him soon followed, until he lay unconscious on the floor. Shadow jumped down from the window seat, padded over, and nuzzled the side of his face, but he wouldn't move.

In the hazy dream that followed, Heero faintly heard meowing, then voices, two boys and a girl, slightly familiar but shrouded in mist. Someone lifted him up off the floor, took off his shoes and his waistcoat, and put him to bed. The next morning he would wake up tucked in snugly and hugging a pillow, with a massive headache and no memory of the previous eighteen hours, but until he heard Duo's voice again and felt justification for his suffering, it would have to be enough.


~~~~~~~~~~

Next, in Episode Thirty-Seven: Treize's men make a discovery within the walls of the manor, but is it what Treize expected? Heero has a rendez-vous with Marcus who has a whale of a tale to tell him, and Duo smuggles himself into Hampshire, looking for his long-lost friend.

=@_@= Oy oy oy! That was confusing while I was jotting it down, and it seemed to get more convoluted the more I typed! I hope it came across sensibly! =^_~= I've set the next part for February 14th, and I'd watch my inbox if I were you...you might find a little surprise there, if you've reviewed my work or written to me in the past. *winky winky* Cyaz!