Bleh...Dreamwater's having one of its "Cannot create directory" fits, as those of you familiar with their otherwise fine service should be used to by now. =~_~= But anyway, that's the inherent value of having two upload sites! =^_~=
Disclaimer: In a town called Perfect where there's a Walgreen's on every street corner, every author and authoress has their own set of Gundam pilots to love and to squeeze and to show off to all their friends. But we don't live anywhere near Perfect. *realizes she just ripped off a commercial to explain that she's not ripping off a tv show* Dangit.
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Episode Forty-Three: O Brother, Where Art Thou? "Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment." ~Napoleon IApril 12th, 1902 Theoretically, there was a city bylaw on the books in London prohibiting people from sleeping in public places, such as alleyways, promenades, and parklands. This of course applied to Regents Park, which touched the back property line of every stately home on Whittington Place, including Bridlewood, but there were a few souls desperate enough to risk arrest and camp out in the open air overnight. Sleeping on poor straw mats but covered by upmarket gabardine coats, a small delegation of foreign girls slowly woke as the sun's first rays streaked the sky. Tired and travel-worn, they were greatly tempted to leave their chosen spot, right behind the six-foot stone wall enclosing Bridlewood, just opposite the stables, but even though they could have afforded the finest hotel in London, nothing would move them. They agreed that no force on Earth would tear them away until they had spoken to their brother. **********Sally and Noin hit it off right away and were fast becoming best friends. Being the same age and about the same temperament, sharing the doctor's townhouse was practical and pleasant, and Sally's spare room, however humble, was easily the finest accommodation Noin had been afforded in more than a year. Very shortly, she felt comfortable enough to tell Sally all about her flight from Greece, including her real name and the name of her preferred beau. When Sally heard the name 'Peacecraft', and started making assumptions about Noin's involvement with Heero's mission, confusion ensued. It didn't take Noin long to realize, with a mixture of highly-charged emotions that all required yelling to express, that she had been interacting with, fighting for, and obsessing over a boy whose job it was to cling to the sister of the man she loved, and never knew it. By the time Noin finished explaining the irony of it all, both their heads were spinning wildly. Passionately seeking a remedy, Noin insisted on accompanying Sally to Bridlewood, as she was going there anyway to check on Arthur's rate of recovery. The carriage ride there was...interesting. "I could throttle that kid," Noin said angrily, limbs crossed sternly and one finger twitching in frustration. "All this time I've been sneaking off letters to Milliardo in secret, creeping all over the countryside hoping not to get caught, and if he'd mentioned just one time that his whole purpose in life was to weld himself to Relena, I might've avoided a lot of torment!" Sally nodded placatively. "Mm. Thoughtless, just thoughtless." "And Giorgenson, too! He's been smuggling my letters to the post office for me! He knew who they were for, and he knew how much it would have helped if I could have spoken to Relena! Why didn't he say something!? My family never would have thought to look for me in Hampshire! I could have been hiding there in total comfort since January!" "Mmmm. Terrible, just terrible." "I don't expect them to be mind-readers, but you'd think at least one of them might have thought to tip me off before now! I mean, what's wrong with them!? Why don't they think!?" Sally nodded yet again. "Mm-hm. That's men for you." Their carriage pulled up in front of Bridlewood, and Noin took a long look out the window at the imposing brick structure. "Milliardo brought me here once, years ago...to meet his father. He was a nice man, and he seemed to like the idea of having me for a daughter-in-law. Pity my family wasn't as flexible..." The two women marched boldly up the front walk, onto the porch, and rang the bell. Noin stood with her hands clasped behind her in a military fashion, and when Heero opened the door and performed the cutest double-take she'd ever seen as he displayed obvious shock at seeing her there, it was hard not to smile. "You might have told me," she said before striding easily past him and into the foyer, before Heero had a chance to regain the power of speech. The stunned butler watched Noin stroll away down the hall, then looked back at Sally for an explanation. "Told her wha--why is she even here?" Sally clucked her tongue at the boy. "You men...maybe if you paid more attention to us womenfolk, you wouldn't all be perpetually in the dark, now would you?" She followed Noin's path, and Heero stood at the door, staring at the empty porch and thinking for a full ten seconds before shaking his head and closing it. Noin walked right through the house, peeking in open doorways until she reached the main parlour, where she found who she was looking for. Relena was lounging daintily on the sofa, thumbing through magazines with colour plates of the latest spring fashions, and looked up at the gentle knocking on the doorframe to her left. At first, she didn't recognize the dark-haired woman, but a vague familiarity came to her as she rose to greet her guest. Noin smiled and stepped forward, replaced unobtrusively in the doorway by Heero and Sally. "Hello, Relena," she said. "You probably don't remember me, do you? You were only that high, last time I saw you." She held her hand less than five feet off the floor to illustrate. Soon, Relena smiled broadly and skipped up to the tall brunette, grasping both her hands and squeezing them. "Lucrezia!" she gasped. "Of course I remember you! My brother told me he hoped to marry you when he came home from the war! How are you?" She gave her butler a very minor glance. "Tea, Heero." Noin was hustled away into a brightly energetic catch-up-on-life chat, and Heero was quickly forgotten. He raised an eyebrow at Sally, who apparently knew more about Noin than he did, judging by the smugly amused feminist look on her face. Shaking his head again, he left to fetch the tea, while Sally crept outside to check on Arthur. **********Spring cleanup at Bridlewood, as Trowa discovered, was no small task. All throughout winter, and during the windy month of March, the trees on the property had been dropping twigs, and there were a few that even lost whole branches one blustery day. They all had to be picked up, dried out, and bundled up in the cellar to be used as kindling, and Trowa volunteered for this task in order to give Quatre more time to clean out the conservatory. He gave his lower back a huge workout, bending down every two feet to collect the twigs and toss them end-first into a long, cylindrical basket slung over his shoulder. That morning, he worked his way along a four-foot swath of back lawn all the way to the rear property line without incident, but as he picked up a fallen pine bough and worked on breaking it into smaller pieces, a strange sound came floating over the wall. Someone sneezed. Trowa put the sprigs of pine down silently and eyed the wall with suspicion. "Who's there?" he demanded, crouching defensively. There were some quiet rustling noises, but nobody claimed responsibility for the sneeze. Hoping to catch whoever it was in the act of sneaking up on the house, Trowa threw down the basket of twigs, ran to the stable a short distance away, grabbed a wooden ladder off its wall pegs, and ran back to the same spot along the wall. He propped the ladder up against the high mountain of red brick, and climbed up to catch a glimpse of the would-be intruder. As he reached the top of the wall, a strange thing happened. A wisp of golden yellow fabric appeared, followed by a lightly-tanned face with big brown eyes frozen in a fearful stare. It was a girl, one who stirred a vague sense of recognition in Trowa as they locked gazes, peering curiously at each other from the exact same elevation above the wall, their four hands steadying themselves against the concrete capstones. In a moment of horror, Trowa realized it was Nashida, whom Quatre spotted outside the bank more than a week ago, but in the very next moment, he almost couldn't believe that anyone with such soulful, feminine eyes could ever harm her own flesh and blood, let alone a stranger like him. The girl swallowed nervously. "Please," she whispered with a light and exotic accent, "may I speak with him?" Trowa slouched. Obviously, their cover had been blown, but at least the girl had approached him politely and without pretense. Unless she's only being kind and honest because I caught her, Trowa thought grimly. "I can't let you inside. It's not my house, or my right." The girl looked to either side and thought. "Could you bring him here to talk?" Trowa tried to act aloof, while carefully watching for hidden daggers to come flying over the wall at him. "Well, I don't know...he's pretty busy...and even if I ask him, he might say no." "Yes, I understand," the girl said. Suddenly, she dropped down about two inches and grabbed at the capstone, glancing at her feet. "Could you...hurry, please?" Before Trowa could answer, the girl in the golden scarf dropped completely down behind the wall, and he heard some light thuds. Unfortunately, the ladder was too short for him to get high enough to see closely over the wall, but soon he had something new to focus on anyway. The same tanned face with the big brown eyes emerged back from below the capstone, only this time, it was wrapped in a scarf of emerald green. It was then that Trowa remembered that Nashida had a twin, according to Quatre. If his memory served, her name was Asalah. She looked tired. "We'll wait right here while you ask him," the green-veiled girl said, "but say whatever you have to, to convince him.....you must, it's very important!" Trowa wished he had Quatre's gift for sniffing out a lie, but eventually agreed, guessing that if the two sisters had so much trouble just peeking over the wall, they probably wouldn't be able to cross it. Reluctantly, he nodded and climbed down, not just to fetch Quatre, but a sword as well. **********After Heero poured tea for Relena and Noin, and brought up a tray of Duo's three-minute express finger sandwiches, he met Sally in the kitchen, on her way back from Arthur's cottage. He had originally refused all medical attention out of pride, but quickly warmed up to the idea of being tended to by a 'bonnie lass' such as Sally. When she came back in through the servants' entrance, in one of her more traditional dresses of pale slate blue, she found Heero alone in the kitchen with his own cup of tea, as Duo was off reorganizing the pantry. "How is he?" Heero asked, pouring out some of the second batch of brew for her. "Pretty good, actually," Sally said, sitting next to him. "About the only thing left on him that's still gravely injured is his dignity, but he'll recover." She took a sip of tea, then gave Hero a whimsical smile. "You should've seen the look on your face." Heero half-grunted and stared straight ahead. Missing the link between Noin and the Peacecraft family after so many hours spent in the woman's company wasn't sitting well with him. "How was I to know?" "Easy. Ask." "I already knew all that I needed to about Lucrezia for the sake of the mission. There was no purpose in prying." Sally quickly finished off her tea and smirked. "Maybe she would have appreciated the effort anyway." The doctor was met by a blank stare. "What I mean is, finding out one another's unimportant details is how people become close, mentally. It's called conversation...but then, I suppose that was programmed out of you a long time ago, to make sure you didn't accidentally endear yourself to anybody." "...hn." "But if you could talk, what would you say?" Sally quipped. Heero would have come back at her with something acrid and biting to the effect that he and Duo had a dozen conversations a day, but closed his mouth when he stopped to think, and discovered that he really didn't know many 'unimportant details' about his closest friend. Most of what they discussed involved the outside world; very little was about themselves. He would have pondered the matter further, but the front doorbell rang, and thinking time was officially over. "Will you be staying for dinner?" he asked on his way out of the kitchen. Sally stood and shook her head, snatching a chocolate-coated tea cake and biting it in half. "I'll see myself out. Lucrezia warned me that she might be here awhile." Heero raised an eyebrow at her one last time, then thought some more about the value of prying as he headed upstairs to answer the door. **********As soon as Trowa found Quatre and told him who was hiding on the other side of the wall, the first thing they did was find Hilde and tell her too. She went straight to Arthur's cottage for reinforcements, and Trowa retrieved one of the swords hidden around the house, preparing for the worst. On the way back to the wall, they took a longer ladder from the coachhouse, for a little bit of a tactical advantage. "You go up the short ladder," Trowa instructed quietly, "and I'll creep up the tall one so I can catch them if they try to leap over the wall." "They're only a year older than me, and I don't think I could leap over anything that tall if I tried." "Well, just in case then." They approached the wall and gingerly propped their ladders against it. Even the very slight noise the ladders made alerted the girls to their presence, and no sooner had Quatre stepped up high enough to put both trembling hands up on the concrete capstone than the golden-veiled Nashida appeared. The reality sank in just then that the last time Quatre was this close to one of his sisters, several people died. Nevertheless, he wasn't getting any threatening vibes from her, so there was a small chance that everything would be alright. "Nashida," he breathed timidly. The girl smiled. "Brother! Are you well?" Quatre nodded. "Quite well, thank you." "And thank you for coming. We weren't sure if you'd be willing to see us...considering..." Down below, on Nashida's side of the wall, there was a sudden clink of metal on metal, and Trowa sprang into action, vaulting off his ladder and clear over the wall, sword in hand. The boys' assumption that it was just two girls on the other side of the wall was shattered, as six young women yelped in fear and scattered in all directions. Asalah, who was holding Nashida up to the wall on one bare foot, dropped her, and they both tried to follow the other four away from their hiding place. Up ahead, a nimble Chinese boy leapt down from the branches of a tree with a sword of his own and blocked their path. To the left, a tall, pudgy groundskeeper in a cap emerged from behind another tree, brandishing a pitchfork. To the right, a petite brunette in a maid's uniform sprang at them with a slingshot at the ready. The six petrified girls were caught in a well-designed pincer movement. Quatre climbed on top of the wall and stood towering over his sisters, trying to see the faces of the other four; they wore dark hooded cloaks, and were highly reluctant to reveal their identities. "We don't want any trouble," he reassured them, "just stay where you are for a moment." The moment was long and deathly quiet as both sides evaluated the danger they were in. Ready to make the first move, one of the cloaked women, the tallest of the group, raised her hands in surrender and turned around, gracefully lowering her hood. It was a woman about Sally's age, with sea green eyes the same shade as her brother's, full red lips slightly parted with a tenuously held breath, and dark brown shoulder-length hair that billowed around her face in soft, shiny waves. She looked up at Quatre in the spirit of deference and negotiation, for she knew her sisters were at the mercy of her brother's fine English guard, and raised her hands up to him in a plea for all their lives. "Help us." The deep, sultry voice, spiced with a hint of the east and all its mysteries, shot like a flaming arrow through Quatre's heart, and he clutched a hand to his throat with a gasp. "...Yasmeen!" Before Trowa could warn him not to, he hopped down off the wall and approached her, as she lowered her arms, palms facing upward in gentle submission. Quatre pored over the face, the eyes, and the ethereally visible parts of her soul, searching for even the tiniest signs of malice, and finding none. "I'm listening." Yasmeen looked over each of her shoulders at the three girls still hidden by their cloaks, and all at once, they removed their hoods. Quatre knew them all, and despite the potential danger that still remained, he was glad to see them. "We've been running," Yasmeen said, "ever since the rest of our family went mad and began hunting us down with their private armies. We earned your Rashid's trust by helping defend our ancestral home and its treasure vaults from our own blood, and in return, he told us where we could find you. For days, we've been searching this city, because we came and found the house empty, but when Nashida saw you and your friend, we had hope again. We all condemned the tontine because we have no wish to see our family exterminated from the inside, but there are too many others who still want to fight. If there was any other place for us to go, to hide ourselves without endangering anyone else, we would, but we have been chased out of more places than we count." Yasmeen dropped her hands and lowered her head; the others all did the same. "We have no one else to turn to, brother. If you do not hide us, we are all dead." Trowa was unconvinced. "I distinctly heard the sound of metal a moment ago. How can we take you at your word if you've smuggled weapons into the country?" "I swear to you, we came here unarmed," Yasmeen vowed, staring at the ground before Trowa's feet. "Don't panic, Trowa," Quatre said. "I think I can explain what you heard." With an impish grin, the gardener folded his arms and walked past Yasmeen to another of the cloaked girls, who ducked her head guiltily as he approached. "Adeela...do you have something to show us?" Adeela, another brunette, halfway between Quatre and Yasmeen, age-wise, with hazel eyes and straight hair tied back at the sides with colourful jewelled baubles, unwrapped her cloak and showed the others what she was wearing. She had on a dazzling blue and fuchsia dancer's garment, with intricate designs of gold woven into the skirt and row upon row of little gold charms sewn all over it, and she wore many bracelets, anklets and necklaces of different metals that clinked and tinkled every time she drew breath. The cloak was the only thing muffling the arsenal of metallic trinkets from her homeland. Yasmeen gurgled in frustration and scowled at Adeela. "I thought I told you to take those off and throw them away!" "Oh, but I couldn't, Yasmeen, I just couldn't!" Adeela whined. "It's my best dress, and I can't just ruin it! I only got to pick one dress when we left home, and if I chop off all the charms, where am I going to get a new one!? How could I earn anything dancing in a mangled dress if we have to stay in England for years and years until our money runs out!? I tried to be quiet, honest I did!" Adeela stroked the shining garment lovingly and gave her older sister a timid smile. "Besides...it's my favourite..." Yasmeen rolled her eyes and sneered. "I can't believe we're related." "Could we please come to a consensus here?" Hilde pleaded from the far right tree trunk, still holding up a primed and ready slingshot. "My arms are getting tired!" Arthur and his pitchfork, and Wufei and his sword, didn't disagree, but didn't add to the complaint for fear of appearing weak, but they both would have preferred to either use their weapons soon or put them down altogether. Quatre retreated to where Trowa was standing, and could tell by the look on his face that he didn't approve. "Before you say anything," Quatre whispered, "I believe them. If they were trying to trick me, I would have realized it by now." "So you're all prepared to let them hide here, without Relena's permission? Without her knowledge, even?" "Well, we can't tell her! As soon as she finds out she has six wealthy heiresses for lodgers, it'll be all over London! I won't hear a word against Relena, but you know she can't keep her mouth shut!" Quatre rubbed his chin and sighed as they mulled everything over. "We could squeeze them into the basement, at least for tonight, until we can think of an excuse to tell her..." Trowa still didn't like it. He frowned, then winced, then squinted, then took one look at Quatre's turquoise puppy dog eyes and caved like a matchstick bridge carrying a truckload of anvils. He sighed. "Are you sure about this?" "Yasmeen's right. If we don't hide them, they could all be in terrible danger." "But Shareefa found you easily enough, and so did Intisaar," Trowa reminded him needlessly. "Who's to say the next batch won't find our 'guests' with even less effort?" Quatre shrugged. "Then that's the chance we take, but we'd be no worse off than we are now, and we'll all be able to protect each other. Safety in numbers. What do you think?" Trowa looked over Quatre's shoulder and nodded in the direction of the group behind them. "I think it's been decided for us." At that, Quatre turned around and gawked. The twins had Wufei by an arm each and were shamelessly flattering him on his sword-handling technique, and he didn't look entirely displeased with the attention. Arthur was leaning on his pitchfork and chatting amiably with the two sisters who hadn't been formally introduced yet, and every few words, he pointed to the top of a different tree visible over the wall and told them what the weather was like on the day he planted it, and also what year. To top it off, Adeela was already showing Hilde how to use her finger cymbals as part of her very first belly dancing lesson. Yasmeen rolled her eyes at the lot of them. Trowa slapped Quatre lightly in the shoulder. "You really think you can keep that bunch a secret?" Quatre gnawed on a random fingernail and looked them over. "Maybe...maybe we can look into soundproofing the laundry room." **********"...not that I'm worried, of course, but the last time I heard from him was when he made captain," Relena was saying. "We haven't heard a thing from him since, but I'm sure he's alright." Some minutes ago, the doorbell rang, but the two ladies in the parlour were still waiting for word on who their visitor was, and filled the gap with more conversation about the elder Peacecraft sibling. "That was about the time when I heard from him last, too," Lucrezia agreed, "although...it hasn't been the best time for me to write letters lately..." Relena looked instantly concerned at Noin's sad tone of voice. "Really? What happened?" Noin flinched and swallowed, realizing she had said just a hair too much. She swiftly tried to think her way out of the corner she was in, but was mercifully saved any embarrassment by the parlour doors opening, revealing Heero, ready to make his announcement. "Mr. Marlowe at the door, m'lady," he said. Seeing an opportunity to retreat and reflect, Noin stood quickly. "If I'm getting in the way of scheduled company, I can step out for a minute." "Oh no, it's just our family solicitor. Stay! It'll probably be a bit of boring legal business to do with father's estate, and then I can introduce you. He's ever so nice!" "No, really," Noin insisted, "I'll just powder my nose and be right back, honestly." With Relena's eventual blessing, Noin left the parlour to maintain as low a profile as possible, and Relena asked Heero to kindly show Mr. Marlowe in. The butler disappeared momentarily, and on the way back to the parlour with the solicitor in tow, he managed to spot Treize peeking at them from around the corner, down the hall from the conservatory. Marlowe didn't seem to notice at all, and Heero decided to follow suit and ignore him just long enough to complete his immediate duty. He showed the strangely sombre gentleman into the parlour, reversed direction towards the front hall stairs, and ducked into a small niche in the wall to watch Treize's next move. Within seconds, Noin came wandering past, and Heero quickly waved her over to the niche as well; confused, she obeyed and stood next to him, wordlessly agreeing to be silent when Heero raised a finger to his lips. Sure enough, Treize sailed over and stood just outside the parlour door, listening to the goings-on within. The voices of Relena and Mr. Marlowe carried just far enough for the Count alone to hear. "Can I offer you a cup of tea, Mr. Marlowe? Or would you like to stay for dinner? Our chef's preparing roast duck, and there looks to be much more than enough to go around!" Mr. Marlowe, in his darkest possible suit and tie, was hardly in an eating mood. His atttaché case dangled limply from his right hand, and his face was drawn. "No, thank you...I've actually came to talk to you about your brother." "Oh, how lovely!" Relena cheered. "I was just chatting with a good friend of his and we..." The girl trailed off as she noticed that her guest was a little bit off himself. The look in his eyes, crushed under a tremendous burden, chilled her straight to the core, and she found herself struggling to inhale. "What?" Marlowe hesitated for as long as he could stand to. "It's.....it's bad news, I'm afraid." He waited hopefully for Relena to insist that she didn't want to hear any bad news that day, but underneath, he knew it was futile. "Something was hand-delivered to my office today," he said grimly as he set his attaché case on the coffee table, opened it, and took out a single piece of paper, shielding it from Relena's eyes until he felt sure she was ready to see it. "The courier said...that a senior officer would be sent 'round to speak with you...but I thought it better if you heard this from someone closer to the family." Relena's eyes grew incrementally in mounting fear. "Hear what? A senior officer from where??" Marlowe kept the piece of paper lowered, but walked up to the trembling girl and placed his other hand on her shoulder. "M'lady.....Relena...there was a fierce battle in South Africa a few days ago, near a place called Boschbult. Both sides took heavy casualties..." Tears instantly clouded Relena's eyes, and she shook her head weakly. "N-no..." "Milliardo went missing behind enemy lines. It was too dangerous to risk sending a rescue party, and a fortnight's gone by since, and...and the army felt strongly that the odds of his survival were..." Without waiting for him to finish his morbid phrase, Relena snatched the paper out of his hand and read it. It was a death certificate, verified in the field by a Dr. A. Doyle, telegraphed to England, and authenticated by the signatures of two high-ranking officers residing in London, enough for the late captain's name to be added to the national casualty list. Milliardo Peacecraft, faithful servant in His Majesty's army...missing, presumed dead. Relena fell against Marlowe and sobbed, crumpling the paper between them. Outside in the hall, Treize smiled to himself. From their vantage point around the corner, Heero and Noin watched in confusion. They had heard a high, sharp sound very much like a young woman crying, but they had no idea what she was crying about, or why something so sad would make her uncle smile. After counting off a few seconds and re-forming his face into a mask of chagrin, Treize burst through the double doors and pulled them shut. Heero and Noin quickly skittered over to take his place, listening carefully as the tragic scene was played out behind an inch and a half of carved wood. "Relena, darling!" Treize exclaimed. "Whatever's the matter?" Ear pressed to the door, the knot in Noin's stomach grew tighter as the dreadful silence grew longer. Finally, she heard the tiny, birdlike sound of Relena choking out the terrible news. "...my brother.......he's dead." Noin recoiled from the door and scooted backwards with one hand over her mouth and the other grabbing her stomach, until she bumped up against the opposite wall. Grief-stricken, she doubled over into a crouch with both hands flying up to cover her face as she struggled not to cry out and alert those inside to their presence. Heero left the door also and followed, drawing on some sort of recently-awakened instincts to put a hand on her back. "...I'm sorry." She nodded, then tucked herself up a little tighter on the floor, lowering her hands so she could clutch her own shoulders in a white-knuckled grip. Displaying a rare amount of human concern, probably something that he learned from Duo, Heero slowly dropped to one knee and put an arm around the pitiful woman. Though she wasn't audibly weeping like Relena, the loss of her beloved hit her like a freight train, and it was a long time before she could stand up again...but she did stand, by her own effort. "He warned me that this might happen one day," she said softly, staring at the closed parlour doors. "I've tried to prepare myself for it..." Now was a time to be strong for Relena's sake. She corralled her hair back into place, smoothed out her dress, and opened the door for herself. Two heads turned to look at the steel-faced woman. The third belonged to Relena, and was firmly buried in the front of her uncle's shirt as she wept. Treize squinted at Noin for a moment, but didn't recognize her, and simply assumed that she was one of his niece's shallow, simpering little friends from around town. He let go of Relena, who turned and soon fled into Noin's arms; the taller woman deliberately avoided Treize's eyes, remembering the many warnings about the man's devious nature. She just stroked the top of Relena's head in a motherly way and whispered, "I know.....I know." Having given his niece sufficient false comfort for one afternoon, Treize turned his attention to Heero, who stood just outside the open door and was only visible from the Count's perspective. Heero glared his most vicious glare ever, for somehow he knew. You did this, he thought menacingly in Treize's direction. Heero's conclusion must have shown on his face, because one of the Count's forked eyebrows leapt gleefully upwards and seemed to say, 'So?' Taking the final blow for himself, he strode to the double doors and took one in each hand, a testament to his massive frame. "If you don't mind, this is a private family matter," he huffed before shutting them in Heero's face. There was really nothing Heero could have accomplished there anyway; as far as he was concerned, the damage was done. Otto and Dorothy needed to be told, while the news was still fresh, so he went to find them both and deliver Marlowe's fatal message, thus saving anyone else the trouble. Soon after that duty was completed, he saw Quatre literally appear out of nowhere and bolt into the parlour, then heard him joining in the effort to console Relena. For just a second, Heero thought that was strange, because he was quite sure no one had left the parlour to tell Quatre what had happened, but he couldn't muster the brainpower to figure out how the gardener knew. It had been a most taxing afternoon. A chilly, uncomfortable feeling kept Heero in the vicinity of the parlour for a long time, instead of letting him flee to the kitchen, where his conscious mind knew he'd rather be. He spent nearly an hour dusting anything and everything capable of collecting dust in the front hall, and after a while, Relena came out of the parlour, head held high, finally ready to accept the awful truth that she was the last remaining Peacecraft at Bridlewood. Her entourage, having done all they could for her, left her alone as she walked towards the massive staircase on her way to her room. She stopped at the foot of the stairs and turned slightly, realizing that she was alone in the foyer with Heero, who had slowed his dusting on the other side of the room and was watching her as casually as he could. She looked at him quietly. For once, Heero had no idea what she was thinking, because her face was totally blank. She twisted a small section of her powder pink skirt in both hands as she stared at him, trying to find the spark of affection still locked in the back of her head; it could have been a symptom of shock, but she felt nothing, not even fear that she might never feel anything again. Restoring what she could of her dignifed airs, she let go of her dress and straightened up, tall and proud. "I was expecting a gentleman by the name of Marcus Wyndham this evening. When he arrives, please show him into the drawing room, and then inform me right away." Numbly, Heero nodded, and watched her sail up the stairs and disappear across the landing, only thinking of what a perfect opportunity it would be to give Marcus back his misplaced engagement ring. Somehow, seeing that she was at least able to conduct her daily business without bursting into tears quelled the chilly feeling that kept Heero in the front hall, and he went straight to the kitchen to spread the news to the rest of the staff. **********After what would normally have been dinnertime, Duo and Heero had the kitchen to themselves. It was unusual, for that time of day; generally, the whole kitchen area was abuzz from five to seven, either with servants rushing about to fulfill the needs of the family, or settling down to eat their own dinner, but neither the family nor the staff had much of an appetite...except for Quatre, it seemed. Out of the four small ducks that Duo had prepared for dinner, Quatre took three and smuggled them straight into his and Trowa's room, saying offhandedly that there was a good reason for needing so much food, but that it wasn't the proper time to discuss it, considering the problems of others ahead of his own. That left Duo and Heero, and one duck, huddled around a small side table in the kitchen, away from the cooler space around the windows and closer to the heated interior of the house. They had a quiet dinner during which Heero wasn't very talkative, as his mind swirled with a squawking flock of speculations that were pecking at him and demanding resolution, though all he really wanted to do was put the problems of the household out of his thoughts for the night. Duo leaned back and looked out the window. The days were getting noticeably longer, and the sun was just leaving the sky, casting a pretty scarlet glow over parts of the kitchen. "Wow...six-thirty, and the birds are still chirping. I can't wait for summer. I wanna be able to go lie around in the hedge maze 'till nine, and take my time coming back. I don't think it's so much about being outside at night while it's still light out, it's more the novelty of having someplace to go afterwards that's got a roof over it." Heero didn't respond, staring down at the remnants of his roast duck and nudging the bits around on the plate with his fork. Duo's attempt to lighten the mood had failed miserably. "You feel like a heel, don't you?" Heero looked up. "A what?" "...I mean, you feel rotten that you couldn't do anything to help Relena this time. Don't get me wrong, I'm not currently that pleased with her, on the whole, but nobody deserves that." Heero stared at the table and shook his head, zombie-like. "I didn't understand what bothered me until I had a chance to sit back and think about it. No matter what you or I think of her personally, I swore to protect her, and I couldn't. Nothing I could have done would have protected her from something like this. I suppose I shouldn't have made a promise I had no way of keeping." "Aw, c'mon, you didn't know," Duo tried to reassure him. "If you really think Treize had something to do with this, it just proves that he's way too slick for us, and we oughta just cut our losses and stay out of his way. It's not like you have to send back reconnaissance anymore, and I can't believe he'd actually do anything to Relena herself...and then there's the other side of it, the possibility that her brother really was a casualty of war, and Treize had nothing to do with it." "Something's still bothering me about the way Captain Peacecraft's death was announced," Heero mused, folding his arms thoughtfully. "I spoke to Marlowe and got a good look at the death certificate. He said it was delivered to his office long before the army was supposed to send an officer here to talk to Relena personally. It just seems...backwards to me." Duo shrugged. "Maybe that's just the way the military operates." "Even so, why would the death certificate be sent to the family solicitor? Marlowe has no connection whatsoever to the military, and he told me himself that Captain Peacecraft never arranged his own will." They thought it over, staring at the same spot on the table, occupied by a tiny glass vase with a flower in it. "Unless he needed to know because of something to do with Lord Peacecraft's will," Duo suggested. "If you think about it, he probably left at least something to his son, and if Relena's next in line, Marlowe needs proof that his son is dead." Heero's eyes tensed up, and he looked to the side with an awful thought that he regretted having immediately. "If she's next in line..." Duo looked up and met his eyes with horror, and he continued the thought. "She's under-aged. She might not be able to inherit anything until she's eighteen..." "...in which case the estate might revert to the next closest blood relative..." "...and if that's Treize, I'm going to be extremely angry at myself for not figuring it out sooner," Heero finished with a self-depreciating scowl. "If I hadn't been struggling so much against Jeffrhyss lately, I might have realized what he was up to long before now." Duo leaned both elbows on the table and ran his hands through his bangs, sighing. He was beginning to see that once Heero made a promise, he couldn't be persuaded by anyone to walk away from it. In a way, that was a good trait to have, but it also meant that he'd be tied to Relena's proverbial apron strings for all eternity, Jeffrhyss or no Jeffrhyss. "So...what do you wanna do about this?" To the chef's surprise, Heero sulked and looked very weary of the whole issue. "I can't think about that now.....I'll think about it tomorrow." He set his fork down and honestly asked himself what he would rather think about, and got a lightning-fast answer. "Do you have any family that you know of?" Duo's surprise meter went off the scale. "Well...no, not really. I mean, I keep showing up at Victoria Station once a year thinking I might see Mom and Dad, but I've pretty much given up on ever seeing them again. Why?" Heero shrugged. "I was just thinking that I could be making more of an effort to get to know you, that's all." Duo smiled, not even bothering to detect Sally's influence all over Heero's new interest. "No kidding? Wow...I didn't think you were into that kind of thing. Gee, I finally get you in a mood to talk about something other than karate and spy games, and I've got nothing to give you!" He gnawed on his lower lip and searched his memory for something of the family persuasion to offer his friend. "I could tell you about the orphanage, if that wouldn't bore you to pieces." Heero's eyes brightened, and he leaned forward, nodding. "Go ahead." Somewhere between worrying about the house and worrying about Quatre and worrying about Relena, the pair of them found a dream springing to life in the dankest corner of the poorly-lit kitchen. Heero had so exhausted himself on teaching Duo to read and write, improving his math and demonstrating how to deflect a roundhouse kick to the back of the head without getting a scratch, that he was finally ready to listen. For the rest of the night, he absorbed countless stories from Duo's younger days that brought them closer together than mere booklearning ever could. Sally was right--unimportant details did have value. |
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Next, in Episode Forty-Four: Duo and Heero get a late-coming smack in the face from Quatre for not paying enough attention to the goings-on in the household, but even then, Quatre's problems can't command Heero's full attention. The butler becomes obsessed with a strange feeling about Milliardo's death certificate, and won't rest until he finds the cause.
The extraordinarily alert among you may have seen a continuity error in this episode. If you didn't see it, I won't tell you what it is because...it's not a continuity error. =^_~= All will be revealed in the fullness of time...or at least some of it will be revealed on *looks at calendar* April 20th. Bai-bai!