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-Six: The Acorn and the Hollow Tree

"God gives us relatives; thank God, we can choose our friends." ~Addison Mizner, "The Cynic's Calendar"

May 7th, 1902

Very early in the morning, someone got off the boat from America and took a long look at the port city of Bristol for only the second time. After collecting a few pieces of matching crocodile luggage, someone took a carriage to the train station and booked passage on the first train to London. Before most people had even woken up, someone was planning very carefully what to say and how to act when they reached their destination.

**********

While Duo was racing up the stairs to the little nook off the dining room with a pitcher or freshly-squeezed orange juice, he passed Heero who was on his way down. "I've got it!" he said excitedly. "Just wait for me at the kitchen table and I'll be right back!"

Heero watched the chef speed the rest of the way up the stairs to supplement the family's breakfast, then smiled faintly, shook his head, and continued back down to the kitchen. They had issued a joint challenge to one another, to find each other a birthday that they could celebrate until their true birthdays were found out, if ever. The only stipulation was that the dates had to have some significance to the world and importance to their owners, and they had to be a surprise. Heero had taken less than a day in the manor's library to find an appropriate date for Duo's surrogate birthday, but Duo, not being well-versed in research and other intellectual skills, needed some extra time. Now finally, on the morning of the eighth day, he appeared ready to make his presentation, and Heero waited dutifully at the kitchen table to make the long-awaited exchange.

Having set the pitcher of orange juice before her Ladyship and the rest of the family, Duo charged back down the stairs and nearly knocked over the chair adjacent to Heero's when he sat down. With a grin five miles wide, he took a crumpled paper out of his pocket and smoothed it out in front of him. "Who goes first?"

Heero, who needed no paperwork to remember the date he chose, pushed aside his cup of coffee, sat back and folded his arms. "You'd better, before you explode."

"Ha! Okay..." Duo sat up and squared his shoulders several times, brushing his bangs away from his face and clearing his throat, for this was a momentous occasion that deserved the perfect delivery. "Now, I know you're very political-minded, and you're really in tune with world events, so I picked out something that I think you'll appreciate." He cleared his throat a fourth time, just for effect. "The date I chose for you is January 30th."

"January 30th," Heero repeated, committing it to memory. "And what does it mean?"

"January 30th of this year was the signing of an alliance treaty between England and Japan," Duo said proudly. "This means there should be a lot more communication between here and there, more trade routes, more travel, more of everything...so if you ever want to see your home...it'll probably be a lot easier in the future."

Heero looked genuinely impressed. "That's exceptional."

"You like it?"

"Very much."

Duo beamed. "I worked really hard on that," he said. "Now, how 'bout mine?"

Heero straightened up and folded his hands on the table in a dignified way. "I know how much you enjoy summer, and how proud you are of your heritage, and that led me to choose...August the 5th."

"August the 5th," Duo repeated, testing the way it felt on his tongue. "Okay, and?"

"On August 5th, 1884, the cornerstone was laid for the Statue of Liberty."

Duo's eyes bulged. "Aw, cool!!"

"And I felt that you laid the cornerstone for a better life when you decided to stay here instead of running away," Heero concluded solemnly. "You like it?"

"I love it! Thank you!" He reached over and hugged his friend tightly, and Heero eagerly returned the embrace. "This is so great! That means my birthday's coming up soon! We'll have to do something special, don't you think? Hey, we have to decide how old we are, too! How old do I look to you?"

Heero let go and shrank away from the flood of questions. He carefully judged Duo's appearance, as well as his own, and gauged them both against those of the people he'd met since arriving at the manor. "I'd say about...sixteen."

"Perfect! So we'll say we're sixteen..."

"Except that I've had my birthday already..."

"Which means you're..." Duo narrowed his eyes at his companion. "Wait a minute...how did you end up a year older than me? We've only been up for two hours this morning and you're seventeen already! No fair!"

Heero raised both eyebrows in a laughingly superior way and sipped his coffee to hide the beginnings of a smirk. The only thing that saved him from a playful punch in the arm was the sudden emergence of Trowa from the north wing of the basement. He was walking slowly and a little off-balance, and went straight past them both to the back door leading outside. Duo and Heero could clearly see that it was pouring with rain, as it had been since they got up that morning, but Trowa didn't seem to notice, and shuffled outside without even putting his coat on.

The pair at the table looked at each other, then out the window at Trowa. Heero put down his coffee quietly. "Three...two...one."

"Augh!" Trowa ran back inside, right on cue, and shook the rain off, shivering and hopping around on the kitchen floor. If he wasn't fully awake before, he certainly was now. He scattered raindrops all over the room with a vigorous shake of his head, then unleashed his ire upon the two do-nothings at the table. "Why didn't you stop me if you knew it was raining!?"

Heero blinked, wondering where this nasty mood was coming from. "You seemed to know what you were doing. Who are we to question?"

"Yeah, lighten up!" Duo said. "It's not our fault you didn't look out the window first!"

Trowa let that sink in, then heaved a sigh and sat down opposite the boys. "I'm sorry I snapped, I just.....I haven't been getting much sleep lately." He propped his head up on one arm and made no effort to brush aside his bangs, now that they were sopping wet and plastered to the side of his face. "Must be making me edgy."

"Not to mention dozy," the chef added. "You didn't look all that swift just now."

"I'm not." Finally, Trowa swished his hair back so he could see the two of them clearly. "If I tell you something, will you both promise not to tell Quatre? Only I don't want to hurt his feelings."

The pair looked at each other, then pulled their chairs closer and leaned forward.

Again, Trowa sighed. "Okay, well...I knew a short time after we met that Quatre was a highly religious person, and I didn't mind that. He gets up very early every day for his morning prayers, and I've gotten so used to it now that I sleep right through it, and he tries to be quiet since we're always sharing a room." He heaved out another heavy breath and ran a hand through his hair, shaking loose a few more droplets of rain. "But now there's seven of them! Seven people all getting up at four in the morning, laying out mats all over the floor and chanting in Arabic! It's not that I object to what they're doing, it's just that once I'm up, I'm up for good! I can't get back to sleep for a long time, and sometimes I'm up until midnight working, so I need every hour I can get! Without enough sleep...I don't know, I just feel spaced-out, and I'm probably cranky too."

"No kidding," Duo said dryly.

Trowa shrugged, halfway admitting that he wasn't his usual charming self. "I was on my way out to the stables to try and get some sleep there. I'm falling to pieces, but I can't let Quatre know, because he'll just blame himself, and I really don't want that."

Heero got up from the table, walked over to a tall upturned metal canister in the corner, took an umbrella out of it, and gave it to Trowa. "We won't say anything about it."

"Yeah, go on, have a snooze," Duo said. "If he asks where you are, we'll stall him until you get back."

Trowa took the umbrella and looked tired, but grateful. "Thanks, guys. If there's an emergency, though, I'll be in the...the...y'know, that..." He sleepily mimed a structure high off the ground and filled with crinkly straw-like stuff.

"Hayloft," Duo and Heero said in unison.

"Yeah." With his last ounce of wakefulness, he went back out the door, opened the umbrella on the third try, and disappeared into the distance. The unforgiving rain continued to pelt down upon him like the proverbial bathwater of all the saints and apostles, but he kept going. Heero and Duo promised each other that very minute that if either one did something to annoy the other, they should get it out in the open as quickly as possible, before one of them was marching out to the stables in the rain.

**********

Sometime around mid-morning, someone with matching crocodile luggage stepped off the train in Victoria Station and took a bit of time to look around and see how the place had changed, if at all. On that very platform, the troubles ended and the troubles began in the same day, many years ago...but today, new opportunities awaited. After a moment's reflection, someone with matching crocodile luggage took a piece of thin gray paper out of their bag and showed it to a carriage driver for hire, and soon, that someone was on their way to a very prestigious London address.

**********

The past several days had been most difficult for Relena, not just because of her loss, but also because of the way her whole routine was disrupted. She somehow felt out of sync with the rest of the world, even when she went out into town on a day trip or invited a few of her girlfriends over for tea, and longed for something more useful to do. It was for that reason that she struck out from the security of her bedroom suite and went looking for Otto. She found him, poring over a book of accounts in the library, and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Otto, there's no writing paper left in my desk. Do we have more?"

The house steward look up hopefully, as writing letters might have been construed as a move towards normalcy. "Plenty, m'lady. May one ask who you intend to write to?"

Relena clasped her hands daintily and followed him around as he traced the route to the storeroom where the embossed Bridlewood stationery was kept. "I'm a bit bored, and Dorothy's out for the day, so I thought it's about time I held a dinner party, to get me out of these terrible doldrums. I need to get back to doing what I'm good at, or I'm never going to feel quite right again. Maybe if I just had a few couples over for an evening, I'd feel as if I were doing something useful instead of wallowing in self-pity."

"I agree in principle, m'lady, but don't you think a dinner party right now would be a bit ambitious? Not to mention inappropriate...if we take what Mr. Marlowe says at face value, we ought to be in mourning, still."

They stopped at the storeroom, and Relena continued to think out loud while Otto fetched the paper. "I've decided that as long as no one has recovered Milliardo's body, the possibility remains that he might still be alive, and even if he were truly gone, he wouldn't want me to stop living."

Otto felt uncomfortable listening to his delicate charge speak about death in such unsweetened terms, but didn't object. He gave her a small stack of writing paper and some matching envelopes, and shut the storeroom up again. "All the same, why don't you start a little smaller than a full dinner party, say...one or two people?"

"How can I choose just one or two people from my entire address book?" Relena scoffed. "It's difficult enough just choosing enough to fill the dining room and no more! There's nobody I can invite alone that won't make someone else jealous because they weren't invited, except a very few people I promised myself I'd never invite back unless I had to! And I don't just want to do this for the sake of entertaining people, I need something to organize! I'm at my absolute best when I'm organizing something, and one person's worth of organization isn't going to fill the void..." As her speech wound down, her eyes lowered, and she seemed less exuberant than before. "Actually...I don't know how many people I can invite that haven't already called in the last two weeks to express their condolences. I'd just love to be with people who have something else to talk about besides the war."

Otto looked sombre as well. "I'm afraid there's not many of those left, m'lady...the ideal dinner guest simply isn't going to drop onto your front doorstep as easy as that."

No sooner had he uttered the words than the doorbell rang, and being desperate for any kind of human contact, Relena quickly scampered out to the front hall to see who it was. Otto followed out of general interest, and they both found Hilde opening the door and stepping aside so her Ladyship could greet the mid-morning guest. Relena very nearly stopped breathing when she beheld the magnificent figure that had come to visit her. It was a tall, tanned, glamourous woman with deep reddish-brown shoulder length hair, fetching angular features, and a rusty red brocade travelling dress that simply screamed wealth and good taste. From the top of her wide-brimmed hat to the soles of her high-heeled leather boots, she looked like a million dollars. Relena had never seen her before, not at a single one of London's society parties. "Are you Lady Peacecraft?" the woman said in a low, rich voice. She didn't sound British at all.

Trembling with anticipation, Relena stepped forward and smiled. "Yes, I am. May I be of assistance?"

"I certainly hope so," the stranger answered. "I happen to be looking for my son, and I was told I could find him in your house.....my name is Fiona Maxwell."

**********

"...but it's something to think about, right?" Duo was saying as he sliced cucumber for that afternoon's sandwich supply. "It's probably the same distance to Japan whichever direction we head out in, so we could start in New York and hit every major city all the way out to the west coast, and then there's gotta be a boat from there..."

"We'd have to be sure of that before we travel three thousand miles in the wrong direction," Heero mused. "Of course, at this point, it's all academic."

"Sure nice to dream, though...and it's really nice to know where you come from. That's why I kind of envy you," Duo admitted.

Heero looked up from his forks, knives, spoons, and silver polish with mild surprise. "We both know what country we came from."

"Yeah, but your country's a lot smaller! You've got less square footage to search!"

They both indulged in a quiet chuckle and went back to their work. It was just a little bit of harmless daydreaming, after all; without a massive salary from Lord Jeffrhyss, it would take them years to save up enough money to travel to the lands of their birth. Still, it was something they both wanted to do, deep down, and in a way, everything they did in the name of justice, a clean house, and a well-fed family was just to pass the time until their real lives began.

They were doing a pretty good job of passing time, too, until Hilde came shooting down the stairs, screaming at the top of her lungs. "Duo!! DUO! Drop what you're doing right now!"

Duo obediently dropped the paring knife and frowned. "Don't tell me. They've changed their minds, and now they want smoked salmon. I knew this was going to happen if I skipped over the fishmonger's to go to the candy store!"

Hilde didn't stop for explanations, but tore across the kitchen and grabbed Duo by the arm, tugging fiercely. "Get upstairs, will you!?"

"What's wrong?" he squeaked out.

"Nothing, just move!!"

She sounded more than serious, enough to coax Heero away from his polishing and follow them up the main stairs, though amazingly, he couldn't match Hilde's speed. She forced Duo to gallop up the steps two at a time and then shoved him down the hall, past the dining room and towards the front door with such force that he nearly tripped twice. There were three voices coming from the foyer, only two of which Duo recognized. When he sped out of the hall and skidded to halt just in front of the grand staircase, everyone stopped talking and looked at him tensely. Standing next to Relena and Otto...was a stranger.

The stranger looked directly at Duo with her white-gloved hands folded at waist level, and nobody moved while they sized each other up. Hilde pulled Heero off to the side, out of the way of what she expected would be one of those moments that never repeats itself. Even Otto and Relena seemed to shy away from the scene, and Duo couldn't figure out why, until he really, really looked at the stranger. She was a tall, strong woman with an austere, angular face, and she was forty if she was a day, but something about her looks and general manner made Duo curious to know more. He leaned forward an inch, feet still glued to their respective spots, and studied her from head to foot, ending with her eyes and lingering on them. The woman smiled, seeing the child she once knew in his grown-up face, and took a step towards him, her high heels clomping on the hardwood floor with a distinctive echo. Duo knew that sound. He inhaled sharply, eyes wide.

Unafraid of breaking the trance that engulfed the room, the woman spoke softly but confidently in a clear American voice. "Hello, darling."

Duo shuddered and felt his throat tighten to unconsciously reproduce the voice of a small child, lost and alone in a train station with the entire world stepping over him to get where they were going, never stopping, never helping, just walking away. ".....Mom?"

Mrs. Maxwell opened her arms and reached out to her baby boy, and he flew into her embrace, throwing his own arms around her, though she was still much taller than he. Duo had envisioned this moment over and over again as he went to sleep in a rickety apple crate, but it didn't feel the way he imagined it would. He felt cold all over, and he didn't cry. Instead of relief, he felt a vague, undefinable fear, but his good sense told him that he was being given a valuable second chance at having a family, and he should be happy.

Standing off to the side, Heero didn't know what to think, but felt slightly uncomfortable watching. This woman was threatening to replace him on Duo's list of priorities, so Heero's subconscious was anxiously waiting for her to make a mistake or say something inappropriate, as if he was looking for a legitimate reason to dislike her. Everyone else in the room thought it was lovely to see mother and son reunited at last, and were perfectly quiet as the two pulled apart and gazed at each other across a chasm of eleven wasted years.

With a relieved smile, Mrs. Maxwell squeezed Duo's thin hands and exhaled sharply. "I wasn't sure if you'd recognize me, so I brought these just in case." She let go and dipped one hand into the dainty jewelled handbag hanging off her shoulder by a thin black strap, pulling out a small book with a brightly-embroidered cover. "I've been saving these for a long time. They're yours now."

She held the book out, and Duo carefully took it, flipping it open to the first page with a look of wonder. It was a pocket-sized photo album, filled with sepia tone renditions of Mrs. Maxwell, her husband, and a small boy. Duo's lips curled into a smile as he peered at the child's gleeful face and impish grin. The photos seemed to be irrefutable proof of the woman's identify, and thus, of his own.

"...I remember those clothes!" Duo gasped, pointing to the little knit sweater and short pants ensemble he was wearing in the first photo. "I grew out of them in the orphanage, and they had to give me something bigger out of the charity bin." He studied the man standing next to them, but he really only knew him from the knees down. "Is that my Dad? Did he come with you? Am I gonna get to see him?"

Mrs. Maxwell fought hard to disguise a distasteful frown. "Yes, that's your father, but he couldn't be bothered showing up. Just forget about him, darling." There was an edge to her voice that both Duo and Heero noted and filed away, but Mrs. Maxwell quickly took control of the conversation again, before either of them could ask her about it. "It's his loss anyway, if he didn't want to see how handsome you've grown," she said, tilting Duo's face up with a finger tucked under his chin.

For just a little while, Duo was content to be a sucker for flattery, and he smiled. "How long are you staying? You've gotta meet everyone here! You're not leaving until you do! Promise?"

The woman peeled off her white gloves and looked coyly around the lavish front hall of the manor, appreciating every piece of fabulous decoration that met her eyes. "Well...I suppose I'll have to find a hotel, first...and the more inexpensive it is, the longer I'll be able to stay..."

Only a month ago, Relena would not have believed the audacity of the words about pop out of her own mouth, but regardless of what she thought of Duo as a person, here was a well-presented, giftwrapped guest whom she could entertain and talk to about anything in the world except the war. It was just what she wanted. "You simply must stay here, Mrs. Maxwell, I won't have you wasting away in a hotel while we have the most exquisite guest rooms in London."

"Oh, please, call me Fiona," the woman purred at Relena. "That's most kind of you, my dear. And what a lovely house this is! Did you decorate it yourself?"

"Oh, no, most of it was done years ago. Do you really like it?"

"It's simply scrumptious!"

"Thank you! And may I say, I just adore your dress!"

"How sweet! And yours is absolutely charming!"

Duo was too busy looking at all the old photos to notice what was happening between Fiona and Relena, but Heero was mortified to discover that Duo's mother was both Dorothy and Lady Une put together, not to mention twice their combined ages. Not really wanting to see any more, he turned to Hilde and whispered in her ear, dragging her out of the dreamy-eyed state of bliss in which she was firmly ensnared. "Go round up the rest of the housemaids for introductions. I'll get the other two."

Hilde sighed happily at the scene, then whirled around and skipped up the stairs to carry out her instructions. Heero disappeared down the hall, and down the stairs to the basement, where he gave a quick summary of events to Quatre, then went out back to the stables to fetch Trowa. Within ten minutes, the staff was gathered into a tidy horizontal line across the foot of the grand staircase. Relena and Fiona were still chatting it up, while Duo and Otto were strangely omitted from the conversation. The chef had exhausted his supply of photos and now was just waiting for a little bit of acknowledgement from his mother, but she was having too much fun with her Ladyship.

"...and the plaster sconces on either side of the doors were added in 1886. That's real twenty-four karat gilding on those!" Relena bragged.

"Lovely!" Just as Mrs. Maxwell was admiring the architecture, Treize came prancing down the stairs wearing a red smoking jacket, wondering what all the noise was about. He pushed his way through the line of servants to get a closer look and hopefully introduce himself to the stranger, but when she looked over her shoulder and saw a tall, youngish man in what looked like a red uniform to her very casual glance, she pointed him to her luggage. "Porter, take my bags up to my room, if you please." She turned straight back to Relena while Treize fumed. "Now, I do like those curtains, are they imported?"

Treize cleared his throat in as dignified a manner as he could muster after such an insult. "Madam, I am not the porter. I am a Count."

Fiona turned around and looked him curiously in the eye. All the servants were shocked to realized that she was just as tall as he was. "Oh really? And what do you count, young man?"

Before Treize had a chance to explode, Relena rushed over and clamped lovingly onto his arm. "This is my uncle, Count Khushrenada!" she said through a golden smile. "He's one of the most powerful and influential men in Europe!"

Fiona gave him an icy smile and patted his cheek. "Well, isn't that special." She brushed elegantly past him and went to the end of the receiving line in front of the staircase. "Now, who are all these nice young people?" She began with the housemaids and exchanged curtseys with them as Relena introduced them one by one. Treize scowled and retreated to the drawing room. Duo and Heero looked at each other with worried glares. This wasn't at all what they had in mind when they traded daydreams about what their mothers were like.

Further down the line, Fiona was introduced to Quatre, then Trowa. They both shook her hand cordially, and Quatre used the opportunity while they were in physical contact to send a spiritual probe shooting through her system. He came up with a peculiar blank. After she had passed them by and was talking to Otto and Heero, Trowa leaned over and whispered carefully. "Is she telling the truth?"

Quatre stared straight ahead, strangely disturbed. "If she isn't, I can't tell."

"Why don't we pick out a guest room for you, Fiona?" Relena said, once the introductions were finished. She clapped her hands twice and addressed the housemaids with great formality. "Girls, take Mrs. Maxwell's luggage up to the second floor, would you?" Relena and the maids whisked all traces of Fiona away up the stairs, and Otto followed, leaving Duo in a corner clutching his photo album, and a trio of boys at the foot of the stairs, comparing notes.

"What do you think of her?" Trowa asked quietly.

"I'm not sure," Quatre replied, "but there's something terribly cold about her."

Heero's observations were much more objective. "When I shook her hand, I saw a pale circle around her wrist, the size of a watchband. It's as if she's been wearing a wristwatch for years and suddenly stopped."

"Those watches are expensive," Quatre gasped. "Why wouldn't she be wearing it if the rest of her clothes are brand new?"

"And why show up now if she's had the money to travel all along?" Trowa wondered.

"Did you see the way she levelled Treize?"

"Yeah, wasn't that weird? She's so--"

Heero hushed them both with a raised hand, as he noticed Duo standing alone in the middle of the floor, looking forlornly up at the stairs. He was feeling a lot of strong emotions, but the one that made the clearest impression on Quatre's sixth sense was disappointment. Duo and his mother were nothing like each other. Concerned at the way he stood and stared, Heero went over to him. "Are you alright?"

Duo woke up from his wide-eyed sleep and smirked at Heero, trying to laugh it off with false bravado. "Yeah, sure...'course I am. Mom's back. Everything's terriff." His voice faded to a whisper towards the end, then he shrugged and held his photo album a little tighter. "Still, never mind...I'd better get up there and make sure she's comfy." Tossing a final smile to the others, he trudged up the grand staircase and vanished from sight, but they could easily tell that he wasn't alright, and that he would put on a happy face for as long as he could while he came to terms with what sort of woman he'd been born to.

**********

Not too far away, Lady Une was entertaining Dorothy at her sprawling estate and listening to the girl's latest status report on the Winner family. On the Persian rug in the middle of the parlour, Anna Maria got reacquainted with one of her kittens, which had been sold to Lady Une at a significant discount, while their owners hobnobbed over fancy imported coffee and biscuits.

"How many do you think there are?" Une asked in between sips of premium Columbian blend.

"At least two," Dorothy replied. "Probably three or more, but I can't imagine very many girls living in that little bedchamber, especially with Quatre and the stable lad bunking there too."

"Are you absolutely positive they're his sisters and not some trollops he scraped out of the gutter?"

Dorothy wrinkled her nose at the idea, not because it would be immoral, but because it would mean she was no closer to finding a clue to unlocking the Winner family wallet. "No, they must be his relations. You didn't see the clothes they were wearing. Definitely foreign."

Une put down her coffee as her fluffy little cat climbed up on the table beside her to have her belly scratched. She transferred the cat to her lap and obliged it, considering her role in Dorothy's adventure. "Well, you seem to have a fine grasp of the facts, so I'm not sure what you hope to get from me."

"Oh, your advice, of course, m'lady," Dorothy crooned. "I'm ever so fortunate to have you as a mentor, and since you do plan on taking a cut of the money at the end, perhaps you could see your way to developing a plan to get it...because you're so must more clever than I am."

Une smiled appreciatively at her blonde bootlick and cuddled her cat a bit closer. "It's very simple. Each and every member of Quatre's family that lives is a stumbling block between you and the money. If they are all living in your Relena's basement in total peace, they must not want to cause each other harm, and that's what you'll have to change."

"How?"

"Any number of ways, my dear. Turn them against each other, reveal their location to the rest of the family...or if you run out of ideas, eliminate them yourself."

Dorothy shrank a bit in her chair. "Um...could...could you clarify that a bit...please?"

Une sighed in annoyance, put down the cat, and picked up her coffee. "If you still intend to back Quatre through this contest of wills, then all of his remaining sisters must die, and if they won't do it themselves..." She raised an eyebrow at Dorothy's reaction while she sipped, then grinned with venom. "They say most fatal accidents occur in the home..."

Suddenly feeling a tightness in her throat, Dorothy sat back and began some deep breathing to quell the attack of nausea that was threatening to ruin her afternoon. If she had to stick to her original plan, bumping off Quatre was something she could handle quite easily. He was only a man, and men had a terrible tendency to do the most ridiculous things, risking life and limb just for the sake of a pretty face. Arranging for his accidental death was nothing compared to deliberately murdering several members of his immediate family. That would constitute a pre-meditated killing spree. If she charmed the judge, she'd get fifty years in Holloway. If she didn't charm the judge, she'd be hanged. It was beginning to seem like an awfully one-sided partnership. "M'lady...I hate to sound like a snivelling kvetch, but...if I'm going to have to stick my neck out to murder some of these girls, couldn't you take a few of them on yourself? You claim to want a cut of the money, and yet I'm the one who's going to be doing all the work!"

"Dorothy, darling, if you want to kill them, kill them. Keep the money for yourself, it matters less to me than it does to you. I can survive well enough without it...it's your own survival I'm thinking of now." Ever the polite hostess, she lifted the coffee pot and held it towards Dorothy's empty cup. "Refill?"

Dorothy winced in deep thought. "Y-yes, please."

"If you can think of a non-lethal way to get what you want, naturally I'll be right there beside you, bearing my share of the burden," Une purred as she poured out second helpings, "but do you really expect me to jeopardize all this? My home, my name, my prestigious lifestyle? I'm not that desperate yet, but if you are, then I won't stand in your way. Biscuit?" She put the coffee pot down and held out the plate of biscuits gracefully.

"...thank you..." Dorothy took a chocolate-coated digestive with her left hand and held the coffee cup in her right, but her arms were frozen. The shrewdness of her companion was so strong that it blocked all commands sent between her limbs and her brain, meaning that all she could do was sit there and marvel at the infinitely devious strategical mind that was Lady Une. For some strange reason, Dorothy felt her appetite slip away for her rather quickly after that.

**********

For that evening's dinner, Duo had prepared partridge pie and Crosshaven dumplings, with a vegetable casserole and freshly-baked rolls, but he was having a difficult time enjoying his own creation. The chef sat next to his mother at the formal dining room table, across from Relena and Treize, with an unusually quiet Dorothy and Otto to their left. All during the tour of the house, and all during dinner, the conversation was dominated by Fiona and Relena, who chattered and gabbed more in a few hours than most people did in a week, and Duo was beginning to feel left out.

"...and then we invested in a coal company that went belly-up, which wasn't one of my husband's brightest moves, let me tell you," Mrs. Maxwell was saying as she described her life in detail to Relena. "We took what was left of the profits, scraped together a portfolio on Wall Street, and thanks to my brilliant economic sense, we ended up buying a very successful hotel chain a year later. It's a pity that my husband didn't have a clue about how to actually run a hotel, or we might not have gone into receivership two years after that."

"Oh, how awful," Relena cooed in sympathy. Actually, she was quite enjoying hearing a bit of gossip that her friends would never catch wind of. In a way, she felt privileged to be privy to the economic dealings of a very prominent American family such as the Maxwells. "Is that why your husband didn't come along with you? Because he was busy looking after the businesses?"

Fiona cackled bitterly. "No, no, Mister Maxwell and I are no longer living communally."

Duo looked up from his mostly-intact partridge dish with a terribly sad face. "You mean you're divorced?"

Moving straight into motherly mode, Fiona patted Duo's head sweetly and smiled. "No, darling, we've just had some disagreements over the years. It has absolutely nothing to do with you, so don't worry your handsome head about it." She turned to Relena just as quickly, as if Duo wasn't even there. "He begged me for a divorce so he could marry his cheap floozy from Indiana, but I wasn't about to give up fifty percent of our assets just so he could treat his bit of stuff to a trip around the world!"

Staring back down at his plate, Duo thought about how much he disliked the way Mrs. Maxwell spoke so disparagingly about his father while he wasn't there to defend himself, then decided he shouldn't be ungrateful of his mother's presence just because of a few misplaced comments. He did notice, however, that she was still wearing her wedding band. It looked like real gold too.

"Still, what are our lives worth if we don't carry on, right? Some men are just a waste of space. Not worth getting upset over 'em." With a graceful swooping motion, Fiona picked up the nearest bottle of white wine and poured herself another glass. Only Duo and Otto were keeping count by now, and they looked worriedly at each other from opposite corners of the table; that was her fourth, and they hadn't even finished the entrée yet.

"That's so true," Relena chimed in. "They won't change no matter how hard we try to change them, so we might as well trade up."

"Hear, hear." Fiona and Relena raised their glasses and clinked them together to salute the fine old tradition of discarding any man who couldn't toe the line. Duo just kept his head down for the rest of the meal. Fiona never addressed him anyway, except to call him 'darling' or 'sweetheart' or some other sugary affectation, and to ask him something totally benign like how much he enjoyed living in a big fancy house with such pretty wallpaper. It was a mercy when dessert was served, because it theoretically meant that Duo could retreat to the kitchen and confer with his associates about the turn his day was taking, but Relena swiftly took even that small comfort away by suggesting that Duo finish showing his mother around the rest of the estate, to which he could hardly say no and appear to be a loving son.

To complete the tour, Duo showed his mother the conservatory, the back gardens, the stables, and then when it began to get chilly out, brought her back inside and showed her around the second floor, where her guest room was just a few doors down from his. "...and this is my room," he said, opening the door wide enough to have a look. He didn't intend to bring her all the way in, for she might have seen Heero's clothes hanging in the wardrobe and thought the worst of them both, but she barged right in anyway, eager to see how her baby lived.

"Why, it's charming," she said with a voice that betrayed her true thoughts. It was small, old, not very brightly decorated, and too close to the stairs. "You seem to have done splendidly for yourself. You really didn't need your father and myself at all, did you?"

Duo gritted his teeth angrily, then searched the room frantically for a distraction to keep him from saying something regrettable. Exactly on cue, Shadow poked her head out from under the bed and meowed, wondering what was going on. Duo scooped her up and sat on the wooden chest at the foot of the bed. "And this is Shadow, my cat." A pet was just more 'evidence' that his life wasn't that terrible after all, but he couldn't afford to picky about his distractions.

Mrs. Maxwell sat down on the chest as well and smiled. "Oh, what an adorable little face, and such perky little ears! I love cats..." She reached out a hand to pat Shadow's head, but the cat shrank away from her, flattening her perky little ears against her head and grumbling.

Duo sat her down on the chest between them and stroked her back to calm her down. "C'mon, now, this is my Mom. She's alright, so be nice." Again, Mrs. Maxwell tried to touch Shadow, but she hissed violently, bared her fangs and scratched the woman across the back of her hand. Mrs. Maxwell yelped in pain and clutched her injured flesh, and Shadow bounded off the bed and raced out the door before Duo could stop her. "Shadow!" he yelled after her, but she wasn't coming anywhere near the strange woman ever again. "Geez, I'm sorry," Duo told his mother, head down. "I dunno what's gotten into her. Usually she's so friendly!"

Mrs. Maxwell rubbed the back of her hand and glared at the empty doorway. "It's alright, sweetheart...she'll have plenty of time to get used to me."

Around the corner from the bedroom door, where Heero had been quietly following and listening, Shadow came tearing out of the room like a furry gray bullet and leapt up into the butler's arms as soon as she saw him. He cradled her close and rubbed her neck, breathing very calmly into her ear to settle her down. Even with his underused imagination, he could guess what happened, and he had to agree with Duo--it was highly unusual. On the other hand, Trowa had once told him that intelligent animals never do anything so dramatic without good reason, and Shadow was one of the most intelligent four-legged creatures Heero had ever met, so she must have felt justified in her actions. It made one wonder.

Back in the bedroom, Duo tried once again to have a personal conversation that was uninterrupted by money talk and girlish gossip. "Mom?"

"Yes, angel?"

"I've been waiting all afternoon to talk to you..."

"Well, you can talk to me now, darling. Go ahead."

For hours, Duo had been rehearsing what to say, and now the words were gone. It took several moments to get even a fraction of them back, but it was enough to start a dialogue. "I really wanna know what happened when I was little.....you know...that little vacation we took that turned into a permanent change of residence?"

Mrs. Maxwell looked immediately uncomfortable, and stood. "Mummy would love to talk about that right now, dearest, but she's very tired and needs her beauty sleep." She bent down and kissed him quickly on the forehead. He winced as her unnecessarily strong perfume assaulted his elven nose, and watched her leave. Out in the hall, Heero ducked into the nearest available doorway with Shadow, and stayed there until he heard the woman clomp past along the hardwood floor to her own room where her matching crocodile luggage awaited. He crept back over to the bedroom door and entered on tip toe, scanning the room from right to left. Duo was sitting at the bureau, looking at himself in the mirror; he looked weak, and haunted.

Heero shut the door quietly and put Shadow down so she could roam around as normal. He stood behind Duo's chair and put both hands on the boy's shoulders. "Feeling any better?"

Duo shut his eyes for a moment, felt dizzy, then opened them again. "You remember that big tube tunnel mounted on its side at the Fun House on Coney Island with the pink and orange spiral stripes? The one that kept spinning while you had to walk through it?"

"Vividly."

"I feel like I'm in one of those." Duo swung a tired elbow up on the bureau and propped his chin up in his hand. "I don't know where I am or what's happening to me. She's my Mom, and I'm supposed to love her...and I guess I sorta do.....but I'm just not sure that I like her."

Heero's gaze lowered. "I know."

"She's a drinker, she's snobby, she's not very nice..."

"And she doesn't resemble you in any way," Heero finished for him, opening the photo album with one hand and laying it flat in front of the mirror. "Inside or outside."

Duo made a closer examination of the first picture, with both his parents in it. Heero had a point; Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell were both tall and broad-shouldered, with sharp, linear faces and dark eyes, a marked contrast to Duo's heart-shaped face, shimmering violet eyes and smaller stature. Nevertheless, they were definitely the couple who brought him to England; the first photo was taken on the Staten Island ferry, and the last one was taken in front of Buckingham Palace. Duo had a lot of pent-up anger over his abandonment that wasn't getting an outlet, but part of him was relieved to know that he hadn't been forgotten. He had something today that he didn't have before, and how long he kept it now was up to him.

"I'm going to work hard to get to know her," Duo stated firmly to his reflection. "We might've left things badly years ago, and granted, they haven't improved a whole lot today, but I'm not going to let that discourage me. I'm being given a second chance, and I'm going to make the most of it."

Heero wanted to say something reassuring, but couldn't think of anything, and absentmindedly began stroking Duo's hair instead, staring at the mirror in a similar fashion. Duo relaxed and leaned back, smiling with closed eyes and a lighter heart for having Heero there to comfort him, but Heero was already in another world and barely paying attention. If this woman does anything...anything to hurt you...I just don't know what I'll do. In any case, a certain degree of violence would be expected.

**********

Several doors down the hall, Mrs. Maxwell made the rounds inspecting her guest suite, and found it to be more than satisfactory. The furnishings were exceptional, and the décor was quaint in an old Georgian sort of way. She found that she liked it, and flopped on the four-poster bed after unlacing her high-heeled boots.

Propping herself up on a stack of lacy pillows, she twirled the wedding band around on her finger and smirked to herself. Sorry, Clayborne, darling...looks like I got here first.


~~~~~~~~~~

Next, in Episode Forty-Seven: Things change between Duo and his mother as a second surprise visitor is thrown into the mix, leading to a high-speed dash around London that leaves a trail of feverishly strong emotions in its wake.

This is almost soap opera material, isn't it? =^_~= And it's not over yet! Be sure to pop a big bag of popcorn on May 15th, when the saga continues!