A.N. Whoo! FFN's back! ...again! Well, better late than never, but here's the latest installment. Just a reminder to new readers, Bridlewood is being simultaneously released on my website for just such emergencies. :P

Warnings: Something is going to happen later in this episode that I absolutely DO NOT want ANY of you trying! =o_o= I accept no legal liability if you try this and get hurt doing it. Bad, bad, bad. (But for the purposes of fanfiction, good, good, good. =^_~= )

Disclaimer: My current defence against any corporate lawyers who might decide to beat down my door and present a "cease and desist" order from BanDai is that I've been working on this for a WHOLE YEAR now, and if they even tried to shut me down, they'd have hordes of angry fans swarming all over them and plucking out each and every one of their body hairs, one by one by one. Right guys? *looks expectantly at her readers* ... *crickets chirp* ... =o_o;= *gulp* Uh...right? =D

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Episode Fifty-One: Riddles, Rites, and Revelations

"A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting." ~The Doctor, "Doctor Who"

June 21st, 1902

Right after breakfast was served, there was an uninvited mouse creeping around in the study, rustling through a pile of papers on the massive dark wooden bureau. He was trying hard not to be heard by anyone who would think suspiciously of him, but inevitably, he was noticed. After hearing the odd shuffling noise from the hall, Heero slipped through the narrowly-opened door and crept up behind Duo with a curious smirk tugging at his mouth. Duo didn't notice the butler's presence at all until he leaned farther and farther over Duo's shoulder, looking down at the mass of disorganized papers. Finally, a lock of Heero's hair tickled Duo's neck, and he jumped up with a start, clutching some documents to him and gasping in surprise.

"For gosh sakes, don't sneak up on me like that!" he howled.

"Looking for something?" Heero asked, nonchalantly changing the subject.

"Yeah, I need a photo of Relena's brother. I've been all over the house looking and I don't know where they keep the family albums. There's only a few big photos hanging up, and I need something smaller," the chef explained, returning to his work.

Heero leaned back and weighed Duo's words carefully. "Why would you need that?"

Distracted, it took Duo a moment to look up. "Huh? ...oh, it's not for me, it's for Helen. She asked for a photo of him in her letter yesterday, see?" He fished a letter in delicate handwriting out of his pocket and held it up for Heero's perusal.

Heero took the letter and skimmed it lightly. "Yes, I do see. And why would she need that, or even need to know about it?"

Slowly, Duo realized he'd been caught badly off-guard, and straightened up with a smirk in defence against Heero's accusatory glare. "All right, I told her a few things...about the family...and the mission...and...well, let's just say I spilled my guts about everything, okay? Shoot me if you must, but just understand that I've hardly got anybody to talk to, and she wanted to know what I've been doing with myself, so we got talking about Bridlewood, and the Peacecrafts in general, and going to Buffalo last year, and Lord Jeffrhyss, and a few bits and pieces about Treize and the money scandal, and..." Heero sighed. "Well, what am I supposed to do with all this juicy gossip jostling around in my head with no means of escape!? It's not like she's gonna blab to the press about it, she promised me she wouldn't tell a soul!"

That changed things somewhat. Duo learned his valuable traits of honesty and truth-telling from Helen, so it was reasonable to assume that she was equally trustworthy, and that if she promised not to do a thing, it would not be done. "Fine, but don't tell anyone else."

Duo crossed his heart quickly with his right hand. "You got it, chief." He gratefully took his letter back, then went about shoving the pile of fruitless papers back into the bureau drawers. "So, d'you know where I can get a picture of this Milliardo guy? One the family isn't gonna miss?"

Heero went quiet, and the beginnings of a tricky little smile appeared and disappeared in a flash. This could be the perfect time to play my game, as long as I get there first... "Ask someone closer to the family, someone who was in charge of things while the brother was still here."

Duo nodded. "I didn't want to disturb anybody, but I guess I'll have to. I'll find somebody after lunch...I've got a couple of errands to run this morning."

"Do you have anything planned for this afternoon?" Heero asked abruptly.

"Uh...no, not really. Why?"

The tricky smile tried to return, and no matter how hard Heero tried to shove it back down, traces of it broke through his stoic facade. "I have a riddle for you."

Duo's eyes brightened with mousey curiosity. "Really? What?"

Heero shook his head once and lowered his voice. "Not now. Not here. Later." He left the study quickly after that, leaving Duo to stew and wonder at what he meant, and especially at where the tricky smile came from. He thought about it for a long time, and kept thinking about it on his way to run the errands he spoke of. The boy was up to something.

**********

The year's events had made Wufei think long and hard about the merits of his vocation, but as always, he kept his thoughts to himself. He used to think of Lord Jeffrhyss and his old master not just as two of The Five, but rather as springboards that could catapult him closer and closer to Treize, once he learned of their secret dealings. In that respect, he knew far more about the mysterious men than Heero did, but now, after seeing first-hand what sort of people these men really were, he envied the butler's ignorance. For too long, he had allowed himself to be blinded by his own anger and thirst for vengeance, and now the picture was becoming horribly clear.

All this could have been happily ignored for a little while longer, as he lounged around in Arthur's cottage, sharing stories and wisdom with the venerable old fellow, if not for the hand-delivered note that arrived by way of carrier ninja that morning. Wufei was innocently wandering around outside, near the six-foot brick wall at the back of the property, when a figure in black that was easily identifiable to him as one of Jeffrhyss' couriers sprang over the wall, handed an envelope to him, and sprang back the way he came in less than ten seconds.

Wufei wrinkled his nose at the ostentatious display. What's wrong with using the postal service like normal people all of a sudden? The answer came when he opened the envelope and read the contents with a frown. He had been recalled to the Isle of Wight, and was explicitly instructed not to tell Heero where he was going, or that he was leaving at all. Sending the notice through the post would have alerted the senior agent that something was amiss.

As soon as the reality of the message sank in, he felt rather depressed about it. He was rather enjoying spending some stress-free time not thinking about revenge or how to manipulate who to get what. Still, Wufei was painfully aware of what happened to agents who disobeyed orders, so he had no option but to accept his chosen lot, pack his things, and slip away quietly. In the next few minutes, he did so, gathering up his pack of weapons and mementos, and vaulting easily over the brick wall . He left no belongings, no trace, no clue as to where he might have gone, but knew that once he was missed, Heero would probably have it all figured out in a heartbeat.

**********

"Run that by me again, just to make sure I heard you right," Sally said, squinting and leaning back against the birch credenza in her study. "You want me to find a cure for tuberculosis, after generations of doctors, healers, shamans, old wives and hucksters selling snake oil have already failed?"

Duo held his head still and looked to either side from where he was sitting in the white satin channel back chair in front of her desk. "Uh...yeah. Monday would be good."

Sally sighed and folded her arms. "Duo, nobody can develop a magic bullet overnight, not for something like that. Tuberculosis is a serious disease that we've barely begun to understand. Modern medicine just isn't equipped for--"

"Forget modern medicine!" Duo shouted. "You've got ancient medicine! Stuff that's been around for thousands of years! What can modern medicine do that's better than what mothers have been giving their children since Biblical times!?"

"Herbal medications aren't something I can just sell to you in bulk so you can pop 'em in the mailbox. I'd have to be there with the patient, constantly fine-tuning the dosages until I find the right combination, and even then, there are no guarantees. Besides, I have a full load of bronchitis patients here in London, and I can't neglect them all to look after one woman in Ireland. I'm sorry."

Duo chewed his lower lip and looked down, thinking. "If you wrote down what each herb does, couldn't Helen figure out the dosages herself? She'd just cut back on one thing, or double up on another, right?"

Sally was shaking her head before he had even finished speaking. "There are hundreds of roots, herbs and minerals I could administer, in countless combinations. Unless she's a trained herbalist, I couldn't endorse something that reckless." She hated to disappoint the boy, and hated the despondent look on his face even more. "Look, maybe if you can bring her here..."

"No way," Duo sighed. "She's too sick to travel. You can tell me it's hopeless all you want, but I'm not buying it. This is the woman who saved me from life on the streets, even if it was just for a few years, and I'm not gonna sit on my hands while she coughs herself to death."

Sally crumpled under the tidal wave of guilt and slumped her way over to the built-in wooden armoire with the glass panel doors, right next to her desk. "Now, I don't like people putting the word 'hopeless' in my mouth..."

Duo smiled.

"...I don't know...maybe..." Mumbling, she started pulling vials and jars out and putting them down on the desk. "We know it's bacterial, so that'd narrow it down...we can alter acidity...add enzymes...vitamin D..." Among other things, she removed goldenseal, bee propolis, echinacea and aloe vera juice from the cabinet, but the one jar she was looking for let her down. She picked up an opaque canister labelled 'colloidal silver' and shook it, and just as she thought, it was empty. Putting the canister back, she sat down behind her desk and started writing out a shopping list. "Alright...maybe, maybe...if you can tell me absolutely everything that you know about her total health, her medical history, ancestors, environment, and symptoms, there's a vague possibility I could give you something to send to her through the mail, but I'm not promising anything."

"All I want is a chance," Duo insisted, with renewed enthusiasm. "If there's any way you can scrape something together by Monday, that'd be great, because I got a letter from her yesterday, and I wanna answer it as soon as I can."

After listening to the lengthy conversation full of medical gibber-jabber, Noin came indoors from the sundeck once she heard something she could actually form an opinion on. "You know...just hearing from you is probably going to make her feel ten times better than plain old medicine ever could," she said solemnly, as she wandered over to Sally's desk and perched on it elegantly. "You'd be surprised how much a few words of loving concern can help a person."

Duo nodded slowly, remembering that Noin was still suffering from the loss of a loved one, and a letter from Captain Peacecraft would have done her a world of good. "Yeah, I know. She really missed me...and that Jimmy Ferguson she's got working for her told me she's perked right up since she saw me in the newspaper over Christmas. She cared so much that she stopped cutting her hair years ago when I left, so she'd remember me for as long as..." Before he could say 'as long as she lived,' he swallowed and turned back to Sally. "Well...that doesn't matter, 'cause I just know that whatever you cook up is bound to work wonders. I mean, look at how you fixed Heero during his little psychotic episode! You're a miracle worker!"

Sally and Noin looked at each other with one of those knowing, smirky, female intuition-type looks, then looked back down at Duo. Duo looked back and forth between them timidly. "What?" This time they looked away from each other, one up, the other down. "Ladies, it is painfully obvious that you know something...now, can we do some dishing here, or do I have to tickle it out of you?"

Seriously in need of a good gossip, Sally got up and circled around to the front of her desk, leaning back on it as she did the credenza. "I really might not be the miracle worker you think I am," she offered.

One of Duo's eyebrows flew up, but because of his bangs, they couldn't tell which. "Go on..."

"See this?" Sally asked, reaching behind her and taking a small wooden carousel off the desk. It was something akin to a rotating spice rack, with many small glass jars positioned in a circle with a wooden collar that sat on the shoulders of the bottles to keep them from flying off. She gave it a gentle spin, displaying all sorts of different materials that had been sorted out into colour and texture groups. "Remember those herbal mixtures Heero was hooked on? This is what they look like when they're sorted out into their constituents. Both mixtures were essentially the same except for a couple of minor changes, so for simplicity's sake, I'm calling it one mixture for now."

Duo blinked. "...uh-huh..."

"It had a strong effect on Heero," Sally suggested.

"Right," Duo replied.

"It was addictive."

"Right."

"It altered his consciousness."

"Right."

"It induced a state of hypnosis through which irresistible instructions could be administered."

"Right."

"And it made him short-tempered and miserable, disrupted his sleep patterns, messed with his appetite, and left him a tired, churlish wreck who could barely crawl out of bed every morning."

Duo shrugged helplessly. "Right!"

Sally leaned forward, eyes smiling. "Wrong."

Duo fidgeted backwards and made a very Heero-like confused face. "Hn?"

"I've been over and over this mixture with a fine tooth comb, separating and identifying every single speck of material it was made of, and there is nothing in here that could have caused that last bit," Sally declared, giving the carousel another twirl. "Those sound more to me like symptoms of depression, and if it didn't come from inside these bottles, it must have come from somewhere else in his life."

"What're you tryin' to tell me, that he's...depressed?" Duo said in a low, unbelieving voice.

"Not is, was," Sally said. "Think about what your friends told you about the way he acted while he was in the country and you were stuck here. Wasn't there talk of him being cranky and out-of-sorts?"

"Well...I dunno, I guess so...but we all have bad days, right?"

"One long bad day that stretches over several weeks?" Noin interjected. "That little dark-haired housemaid, Hilde...she told me he was in a never-ending bad mood from the very day he got out there, and that he started drinking to dull his senses when he couldn't even stand being around himself."

Duo stared at Noin doubtfully. "Heck, even I have a nip of cooking sherry once in a while, it's what rebellious kids like us are supposed to do!"

"A nip is one thing," Sally pointed out, "but Quatre found him totally sloshed one morning, and that's very typical of a depressed person. They find something that warps their brain and then overindulge in it to the extreme, be it liquor, food, drugs..."

"...food," Duo mumbled with a shocked look. "Geez...I just remembered something. They told me Heero tried to polish off a whole cake by himself, but I thought they were joking."

Sally and Noin both leaned forward. "What kind of cake?" Noin asked. "Think hard, it could be important!"

"Uh...triple-chocolate something-or-other," Duo babbled.

The women looked at each other with magnified concern. "Worse than we thought," Sally said.

"Much worse," Noin said.

"Worse than what!?" Duo howled. "What are you two even talking about!?"

They both looked sympathetically at him as he struggled to comprehend forces of emotional health and brain chemistry with which he had no first-hand experience, for he was only a man. "This is a problem we've both dealt with at different points in our lives," Noin began, with Sally nodding in the background, "and we both feel very safe in telling you that all these things that suddenly went wrong in Heero's head were all caused by one thing."

Duo leaned forward. "Which was?"

Sally smiled. "He was missing something...something he needed badly, and cared for very much."

It took awhile to sink in, but when Duo finally got the message, his eyes widened, and he squeaked in his most mousey voice, ".....me?"

The women nodded.

"Whoa." Duo sat back, stunned, but with a trace of a grin.

Noin looked down at her left hand and picked at a seam on her dark teal dress. "When I heard that Milliardo was missing, I was in rough shape for a long time. It was a form of grieving, even though I still don't know for certain if he's dead or alive, but when I got past the grief and into the self-pity stage, I headed straight for the fudge bon-bons," she said, making a swooping motion with her right hand.

"And, um...I won't go into details, but I've been known to hit the chocolate truffles pretty hard in times of stress," Sally admitted guiltily.

"The worse you feel, the higher the cocoa content you need," Noin said. "A triple-chocolate cake...that's pretty serious business."

Duo felt an additional smidgen of guilt at having been away so long in Ireland. "Y'know...he's been acting kinda strange ever since I got back from my trip. I sure hope I didn't permanently damage him by not writing or calling or anything...and I really hope there's some chocolate macaroons left by the time I get home!"

Sally lowered her eyelids reverently and tilted her head towards the door. "Better hurry back, then." Duo took her very seriously, thanked them both, and left that very instant. As soon as he was out of earshot, Sally and Noin couldn't stop themselves from breaking down into a torrent of giggles. It was all too cute.

**********

Having been previously thwarted by a mere kitty cat during her attempt to sneak inside Quatre's bedroom, Dorothy's brain had been working feverishly ever since, trying to think of another way to achieve her goal. She spent even longer amounts of time trying to decide exactly what her goal was, ending with the decision that she would simply experiment with different ways of causing the uninvited houseguests enough distress to force them out into the open. It was with this in mind that she went to Otto with a severe complaint.

Otto was rarely in a mood to put up with Miss Catalonia's incessant whining. Either the room was too hot or the food was too cold or the day was too dull for her exquisite tastes. There was always something wrong. Still, when she came to him insisting that she had seen a snake slither into the kitchen from under Quatre's bedroom door, he had to take her seriously for health and safety reasons. Unsure of whether there would be anyone inside in the middle of the day, he went straight downstairs with the intention of knocking on the door. Fortuitously for them, Trowa and Quatre were both just inside the back kitchen door having a cool drink of water, and raced over in a panic to block Otto's path.

"Where are you going?" Trowa asked innocently.

"The Baroness claims that she saw a snake coming from the direction of your room," Otto said. "I'm going to have a look for myself."

The big bear of a man started forward again, but Quatre propped him up boldly with both hands. "You can't go in there!"

Otto glared. "...why not?"

"Uh...it's just...it's a terrible mess in there, and it'll be halfway to impossible to find the snake, if there is one."

"Yeah, and didn't she say it was slithering away from our room?" Trowa added. "If it was leaving, it probably didn't like it much. If I was a snake, I'd much prefer to be outdoors where I belong."

"That's right!" Quatre said, nodding quickly. "It's probably outside. Why don't you have a look around the gardens for it?"

"Because where there's one, there might be more," Otto said testily. "If it turns out there's a whole nest of them in there, we'll have to have the exterminators in." Again, Otto made for the door, but the two boys ran ahead of him and slammed into it, knowing it was still locked, just to make a big noise inside. "Now what!?"

"Why don't you give us a few minutes to clean up first?" Quatre suggested with a smile. "It'll cut down on how many places the snake might be, and you'll get back to your regular work a lot faster!"

"Or we could help you!" Trowa chimed in desperately.

"Out of the way!" Otto grumbled impatiently, and he pushed the boys aside. Upon trying the doorhandle and finding it locked, he pulled out his master key. Trowa and Quatre looked at each other with intense worry, but it was too late. The door was shoved open, and Otto barrelled inside. He was immediately aghast.

The room was a disaster. Most of the furniture had been clustered into two different corners, leaving most of the floor open, if only it was open. Straw mats littered the concrete foundation, shoes were strewn everywhere, dirty dishes and half-empty containers of food covered every horizontal surface that would accommodate them, and the airspace was criss-crossed with ropes from which hung dozens of brightly-coloured bits of fabric, drying after laundry day. The other freakishly obvious change to the room was that the boys had pushed their beds together in the south-east corner, making a suspicious king-size out of two twins. The back of Otto's neck grew uncomfortably hot looking at it all.

"What.....is this??"

Quatre swallowed and stepped in front of Otto, still displaying a pasted-on smile. "See? Told you it was messy..." While Otto let his eyes roam all around the room and blathered incomprehensible syllables of morbid disgust, the gardener took up a position on the west side of the room, near the bookcase, while Trowa sat on one of the beds defensively.

Otto couldn't stop looking at the drying washing hanging up all around the room. If he didn't know better, and he hoped to God above that he did, he would have sworn that they were very feminine fabrics. "You...haven't been taking in laundry from other houses on the block...have you?" he asked shakily, pointing to the flowered drapery with a limp hand.

"Uh..." They had dug a nice, deep hole for themselves, apparently. Out of desperation, Quatre let his imagination run wild. "They're mine!"

Otto's eyes bulged, and he backed away from the boy a step. "Yours!?"

"Yes...see..." Still thinking, Quatre snatched one of the flowery rectangles of fabric off the nearest suspended rope and fluffed it around in his twitchy hands. "The thing of it is.....Trowa and I just joined an amateur dramatic society, doing community theatre, and...if we want to be in this season's production of 'Julius Caesar,' we have to know how to tie our own togas, so...um...so I bought some fabric scraps to practice with." He grinned and looked brightly at Trowa for confirmation.

Trowa jumped up off the bed and stood next to Quatre, fidgeting about nervously as he grabbed another flat piece of fabric off the ropes, this one a pale yellow with pastel green leaves in contrast to Quatre's which was a bright pink silk with purple flowers. Following up on Quatre's story, they both hastily wrapped the fabric around themselves, draping them sloppily like oversized tablecloths on miniature dressmaker's dummies. In less than a minute, each was wearing a badly-tied toga, and they presented their garish selves to Otto with big phony grins.

Otto looked unconvinced. "Community theatre."

"Oh, absolutely!" Quatre sang. Looking hurriedly over the bookcase, he spotted his 'Treasury of Shakespeare' hardcover, grabbed it, and flung it at Trowa. The book hit him hard in the breadbasket, but he quickly flipped it open and searched frantically while Quatre struck a very senatorial pose and recited from memory with gusto and unparalleled dramatic flair. "'Now, in the names of all the gods at once, upon what meat does this our Caesar feed, that he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed! Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!'"

Quatre looked expectantly at Trowa, who had to stop at whatever page he had reached by that point. He sputtered, cleared his throat, and then read from it in a dull, flat voice, following along underneath the words with one finger. "'Come, wait upon him. Lead him to my bower. The moon methinks looks with a watery eye. And when she weeps, weeps every little flower. Lamenting some enforced...uh.....chastity. Tie up my love's tongue, bring him silently.'" Mysteriously, Trowa's ears turned a vibrant red. He stopped reading, looked up through his spiky bangs, and weakly raised a hand in a tiny salute. "H-hail Caesar."

Right about there, Quatre figured out that Trowa had mistakenly flipped open the book to 'A Midsummer Nights Dream,' but smiled and repeated the salute with a grin. "Hail Caesar."

Otto looked at them both. He didn't move for a moment or two, then slowly backed away from the pair as if quietly fleeing from some indescribable terror. Afraid of knowing any more than he thought he knew, he backed right out the door and closed it without uttering another sound.

The boys counted to ten in their heads to make sure he was really gone, then Quatre took two giant steps towards the door and leaned against it, and everyone in the room sighed as one. "Is everyone alright?" he whispered.

Six feminine groans of nervous exasperation floated out from under the beds, and Hessa was the first to crawl out from the last-second hiding place. Trowa and Quatre knelt down to help them, still covered in the tacky togas, and one by one, the girls clambered out into the open, brushing dust bunnies out of their hair and commenting on what a close call that was.

Nashida and Asalah laughed at Trowa in unison as he struggled out of the green and yellow dress, and Quatre cracked a bit of a smile too, but once he had gotten rid of his own poofy garment, he counted his sisters and realized that there was one missing. He knelt back down by the foot of the beds and lifted up the blanket, which was dangling just low enough to graze the floor and provide an ideal curtain. "Yasmeen?"

"...nnnrrgh..." The eldest sister crawled only partway out from under the bed and flopped back down on the floor with a groan, resting her tousled brunette head on her folded arms. "This has got to stop," she muttered.

Quatre helped her up and watched sadly as she worked a nasty crick out of her neck. "I wish I knew what else to do," he said.

"I can't believe I expected this to work," Yasmeen grunted. "We're cooped up like cattle, we haven't seen the sun for weeks...look at us! We're almost as pale as you! This wretched English weather of yours isn't ideal, but it's better than what we've got!" The other girls looked dreary and solemn as their sibling railed on and paced off her agitated energy. "Jumping at the slightest noise! Diving under the bed whenever anyone comes near! We came here to preserve our lives, but I'm sure none of us thought we'd stop living because of it!"

When she paused in her pacing, she noticed that everyone was looking at her, and the most intense glares came from her sisters, who must have been shocked at her lack of grace. She looked sympathetically at Quatre, then crossed the room and clutched both his hands. "I'm sorry...I don't mean to sound ungrateful. We are all very much in your debt for your kindness...but it's just not working."

Quatre looked down and nodded. "I know."

Momentarily overcome, Yasmeen hugged her brother tightly, then stepped back and collected herself with a smile. "I've been looking after these five tag-alongs for nearly a year now. It should be my responsibility to find them another place to stay until it's safe to go home. No arguments, I've made my decision. Wherever we go, I promise you we won't be far if you need us."

Sensible though it was, the very idea was bitter and harsh to Quatre's ears. Now that he knew this small portion of his family could be trusted, he didn't want to see any of them go, but even he had to admit that hiding them was a terrible strain, and they might have been better off somewhere else. "Whatever you think best," he managed after a long, arduous think.

Yasmeen offered him a comforting smile. "It'll be alright. You'll see."

**********

His errands completed, and his lunch dishes washed and put away, Duo followed Otto up the main staircase, staying close on his heels and trying to explain his position. "I wouldn't normally ask for something like this, but I've got this friend who really wants to see his face, and I wouldn't have a clue where to look for family photos, 'cause I don't spend much time outside the kitchen, right?"

"Mm," Otto grunted tiredly, pulling himself up the staircase by great handfuls of polished banister.

"I just want a little one, not the big ones hanging in the great hall," Duo went on. "Are you sure Relena wouldn't mind?"

"I suppose not," the house steward sighed. He led Duo all the way up to the attic, which Duo realized to his shock that he hadn't thought to search. Having a newer, nicer bedroom on the second floor meant that he practically forgot the attic existed, but it all came back to him as they shuffled into one of the dank storage rooms. "These two trunks here are full of family mementos," Otto said, pointing to his left after lighting a candle. "They're unsorted, so you'll have to find whatever you need by yourself. I have other things to attend to." He swept back out of the storeroom without another word, and almost forgot to leave the candle behind as he did so.

Duo shrugged. "You're too kind." Picking one of the trunks on the floor at random, he unlatched the lid and swung it back, revealing a mess of papers, clothing, trinkets, baubles, and some sepiatone photographs which looked very promising. Several were of an auburn-haired woman with a stately presence, whom Duo guessed must have been Relena's mother. There were many pictures of Relena and Milliardo posing together as children, in their stiff white-collared clothes and patent leather shoes, looking just as sweet as could be, but what Helen really wanted was the most recent image of the young man that Duo could find. Eventually, he came across a weathered envelope on which was printed 'Milliardo in uniform' in thin black ink. Oooh. Lemmie guess.

Inside were roughly a dozen different photos of the gentleman in question, all taken in the back yard of the manor just before he shipped out to join the war. He was wearing a crisp junior officer's uniform of the British Army, and was seen in several scenes shaking hands with important-looking people, as well as some of the neighbours who had come to wish him luck. In one pose, he was standing with his right side to the camera while speaking to another soldier, and Duo was shocked to see that he had long blond hair, almost to his waist. Whoa...I'd've thought the army would've made him chop all that off, he thought with a smirk. And I thought I was the only one. Huh.

Duo removed that photo from the envelope, as well as a close-up showing off what a strikingly handsome boy he was. He doesn't look much older than me in this picture...and he ended up halfway around the world fighting some dumb war. I really didn't have it that bad when you think about it. After making his selection, Duo was just about to close up the envelope and put it back when something caught his eye at the bottom of the stack of pictures, a much newer piece of clean white paper that couldn't possibly have been sitting in the trunk all that time. Duo took it out and looked at it. It read, 'Issho ni kite kudasai,' and there was a hand-drawn map leading away from Regents Park. Underneath the map was another phrase, 'Kono hana wa murasaki desu ka?'

Duo looked to either side of him, highly suspicious. Okaaay...that shouldn't be there. Then, he remembered his early-morning conversation in the study. Heero said he had a riddle for me! This must be it! But that means he must have known where these photos were and that I'd be...dang. He's good. Heero always used some form of anglicized Japanese as his primary teaching tool, and it seemed that in the first phrase, he was asking Duo to follow him.

He didn't know how long it would take to unravel the riddle, but it definitely required him to leave the house. Duo pocketed the photos and the note, closed the trunk, blew out the candle, and raced around each floor of the house looking for Heero. He didn't seem to be there, and so Duo went straight down to the kitchen next, to tell Hilde that she'd probably be on her own for dinner. After exchanging his white uniform for his brown tweed suit, he was off, following the precise map to its destination, Wood Lane Station.

Is he putting me on a train? Nah, he knows I'd rather be home before dark. Walking up to the station and dodging the usual daily traffic of businessmen and other assorted travellers, Duo studied the second phrase on the note, mouthing out the words to himself and trying to piece together its English meaning. Hana...flowers? Murasaki.....that's a colour, but I can't remember which one... As he looked up at the station house and its well-tended summertime surroundings, the answer came to him. On the sidewalk leading up to the main doors of the imposing brick building was a long planter filled with potting soil; it was brimming with dazzling orange and yellow pansies from one end to the other, except for one small spot towards the right-hand side.

Moving in for a closer look, Duo spotted a tiny cluster of violets that had been newly transplanted into the sea of gold. ...hana wa murasaki...purple flowers! He dug right into the soil around the violets with both hands and nearly leapt up with glee when he felt something buried just underneath the surface. He pulled out another piece of white paper, rolled up and tied with a bit of purple string. Aw, cool!! It's like a treasure hunt!

He quickly unrolled the paper, which was wrapped around a little pencil, sharpened to a point, and had written on it the names of five other train stations in London. His instructions continued in English, and he was told to cross off the station he would most like to visit, and the one he would least like to visit. Alright...let's see how well he really knows me. Duo sadly crossed off Baker Street Station, which was probably frequented by many other Sherlock Holmes fans and sightseers, then happily crossed off Victoria Station, which held too many bad memories. He then had to go to the nearest station left that was comprised of two words, which was Walham Green.

This is getting interesting! he thought with a grin. It was then that he tried putting the items he carried into his coat pocket, and discovered that someone had stuffed a five-pound note inside. He smirked. Heero thinks of everything. There was enough for several comfy cab rides, and he used one of them to get to Walham Green Station, where the second note told him to examine every brick wall at eye-level.

I'll assume he means my eye level, Duo thought after remembering that Heero now stood an inch and a half taller, thanks to his most recent growth spurt.

Several peoples' eyes were curiously upon him as he slowly meandered around the entire perimeter of the building, first outside then inside, looking only at one row of bricks. The search took more than half an hour, but he found something suspect on the wall between the ticketing area and the concession stands--a loose brick.

"Yes!" he hissed out loud, forgetting about the nosy bystanders as he pried the brick out little by little. Sure enough, there was another rolled-up note behind it, and this time, Duo really did jump up with excitement before snatching it out and replacing the mottled brown stone. The third note contained the names of another seven stations, which were to be added to the first, plus some additional instructions for determining where to go next. Duo sat right down on the ground and gnawed on the blunt end of the pencil while he figured it out.

Okay...'Cross off every station that has a name comprised of a number of letters equal or greater to two-thirds the number of letters in our combined full names'...yeesh! If I'd known this was coming, I would've paid more attention to my math lessons! After a minute or two of intense thought, Duo crossed off London Bridge, Westbourne Park, Goldhawk Road and Swiss Cottage, leaving Richmond, Blackfriars and New Cross on the list. Of the stations remaining, he was to go to the one starting with the letter closest to the middle of the alphabet.

Duo slumped back against the wall. ...New Cross is clear across town! This is gonna take all flaming day! It was hard work to do all by himself, but he had already solved enough clues to give him confidence, so he took another cab to New Cross Station.

There were several more notes spread all over the city, each with another list of stations and an increasingly complicated set of instructions for finding the next locale. Along the way, he reasoned that Heero could only be an hour ahead of him at most, since he had been present at lunch and the treasure hunt began shortly afterwards. He must've run straight out and started planting the trail of notes just before I asked Otto to help me find the photographs. The little sneak... Even though Duo was the one doing all the real work, he was immensely proud of Heero for concocting such a well-designed game of tag, and was also impressed that most clues had something to do with how much they knew about each other, and the lessons Heero had been giving him over the months. Even though Duo had nothing to compare it to, he felt as if it was final exam time.

It was well past four in the afternoon at Whitechapel Road when Duo found the twelfth and final note tucked into the knothole of a nearby tree. It was marked 'LAST' at the top in large black letters. Finally! From his dwindling list of stations, Duo was told to cross off everything beginning with an even-numbered letter. Out went Tottenham Court and Bishopsgate, scratched off were Farringdon Street and Holland Park, eliminated with a deft stroke of the nearly-dull pencil were Rotherhithe, Lancaster Gate, and Paddington, leaving one name left over, the final destination.

"Marlborough Road," Duo breathed, fatigued but excited. He had just enough money left to get there, another testament to how perfectly the whole escapade had been planned. Jumping out of the cab on the street corner just in front of Marlborough Road Station, he looked at the building as a whole, then at each individual brick arch, savouring the anticipation for as long as possible before reviewing his last set of instructions. Inside, down the steps, to the tracks, have a good long look around. The simplest directions yet.

Duo shivered all over as he ran through the arched doors, down through the station and past a mediocre-sized crowd to the tracks. The platform itself was one of the smaller ones he had seen, large enough for a dozen people at most, less if one counted their luggage. It was raised just a few feet from the level of the dingy sidewalk corralled on all sides by brick walls, and Duo scrambled in between the few people present to climb the narrow stairs and search all around the station for his next note. Unlike the other locations, however, the terrain was sparse and dull, with few prominent nooks and crannies that weren't already populated with spiders and mice. The arched roof also had a musty odour that trickled down through the underlying airspace and made the boy's nose itch. It was pretty low for a final destination.

Stumped for ideas, Duo turned his attention to the tracks themselves. There were two sets spaced widely apart, and at that particular moment, a train was sitting and steaming up the air on the opposite side of the station, servicing a different platform. The vehicle was stationary only to allow some passengers to disembark and others to file on board. The other track was empty.

As Duo looked down the tracks in one direction, he saw that they continued under a brick and concrete canopy, atop which everyday life carried on at street level. It was a tunnel that had either been carved out of the city, or around which a part of the city had been built, but he couldn't tell. It was just an ordinary train tunnel...until he looked closer. Several yards into the tunnel, obscured by deep charcoal shadows, was a faint figure of a boy, hanging around between the tracks with his hands in his pockets. The chef squinted in disbelief, and Heero came into focus, standing in what could logically be described as a hideously dangerous place.

Duo's jaw dropped. He scrambled down from the platform onto the grungy sidewalk and ran as far as he could towards the tunnel until he was pinned between the corner of the wall and the steel safety fence that reached up past his waist. "Whaddaya think you're doing?" he called out into the shadows. "Come out of there!"

Heero shrugged. "Make me."

Duo leaned forward on the fence, balancing on his belly, holding onto the metal structure with one arm and gesturing wildly with the other. "What kind of crummy treasure hunt prize is this!? Get over here now, before you get smucked by the 4:30 express!"

With a hint of a smile, only barely visible in the darkness, Heero looked around the inside of the tunnel and appeared to think it over, then shook his head. "I like it here."

"Rrrgh!" Duo growled in exasperation. "I mean it, Heero! A train could come along any second! I don't wanna see you get hurt!"

Heero raised an eyebrow. "This is new...since when have you been afraid of a little calculated risk?"

"Since..." Surprised at his own volume, Duo cut himself off and looked behind him, but the sparse passengers waiting for the next train weren't paying much attention to the crazy kids. He sighed deeply with his whole body, letting his braid spill in front of his shoulder. "Since I messed up and almost got us killed. I swore off this kind of thing for my own good, and for yours too, so...just get out of there, please?"

"I didn't know you as well then as I do now," Heero began, hands still casually in his trouser pockets, "but on some level, I trusted you. Can you look at me now and trust me even less?"

Duo squinted again, confused. "What are you talking about?"

"This is a challenge, and it's no different than the ones you used to badger me with until I had to go along with them just to show you up," Heero said pointedly, but not angrily. "Your objective is to retrieve me from this train tunnel without resorting to emotional blackmail. As you've already seen, it doesn't work. If you give up and walk away, you lose. If you stand there for the next hour shouting at me without actually moving from that spot, you lose." He turned and strolled a few paces deeper into the tunnel, only to pause and turn again, walking backwards as he gave Duo an innocently expectant look. "I wouldn't take too long, if I were you. British Rail have schedules to keep." He faced forward again and disappeared into the blackness, relying on his challenge to save him from destruction.

Back on the fence, Duo gaped. I can't believe he just...okay, this is about trust, right? I can handle that. Just run in and drag him out before...geez, I'm gonna smack him for this. What's he trying to prove, anyway? I thought he'd be glad that I've gotten more sensible since we met! Hm. Glad or not, he ain't bluffing, or he would've come out and said 'Ha ha!' by now...nah, he wouldn't say 'Ha ha!' even if I paid him. I'd better quit stalling and get in there. Just put one foot in front of the other...that's it.....geez, Heero...

Duo swung one leg bravely over the fence, and then the other, dropping down into the railway ditch. Tossing his braid back behind him, he quickly repositioned himself between the tracks, where Heero seemed to be walking. It looked reasonably safe, as his personal variety of challenges went. There appeared to be just enough room for a person to stand and jump onto one track if a train suddenly materialized on the other. It wasn't necessarily fatal. Duo squared his shoulders and followed Heero into the tunnel.

He was surprised at how fast the surrounding light was swallowed up by the blackness, but kept going. He had also lost sight of Heero, and it gave him an uncomfortable feeling, after which he had to ask himself what had happened to his famous Maxwell nerve. Naw, I know what happened. Nothing mattered a year ago. Death was no worse than life. Now it's all different. It's all...more valuable. By the time he had finished his brief moment of retrospection, he found Heero. He was standing quite calmly with his hands behind his back, appearing totally oblivious to the potential fact that they were both in mortal danger.

"Okay, found you, now let's scram," Duo blurted, making a grab for Heero's nearest arm.

Unexpectedly, Heero grabbed Duo's outstretched arm, and in the ensuing confusion, snatched the other one as well, spinning him around to face the exit, while Heero faced the darkness of the tunnel. Duo had to gasp at the strange, shadowed look that had veiled the butler's normally placid features, knowing that it would have been there even if there were a thousand electric lights in the tunnel, all turned on full blast. He was wearing that tricky little smile again, the one that was so rarely seen and so scarcely understood. Something was on his mind.

"Let's stay here," he said.

Right behind those muted words came the shrill whistle of a train, and Duo stiffened, twisting around as far as he could in Heero's grip to look down the length of the tunnel. The brick walls slathered with inch-thick black pitch were slightly illuminated, as a bright light off in the distance splashed golden highlights for several yards. Duo turned back to Heero and tried unsuccessfully to tug his arms free. "This is falling under the category of not a good idea, Heero!"

"You never used to be afraid," Heero replied.

"Well...I know I was being stupid, dragging you along while I risked my neck, and I'm sorry!"

"You feel guilty about what could have happened to us," Heero ventured, still not letting Duo move. "There's no need."

Back in the boarding area, the stationary train became less stationary, blowing its own whistle and chugging away from the platform, towards the tunnel. Duo strained to look over Heero's shoulder, and his eyes widened as he saw that they were rapidly becoming trapped. "Heero..."

Perfectly calm, Heero raised a hand and pulled Duo's face gently back to centre, letting the hand linger far longer than Victorian rules said he should have. "Don't look at them. Look at me."

Duo obeyed, helplessly drunk on exotic physical contact as Heero's arms slipped around his waist and pulled him close. Duo's own hands didn't know what to do with themselves, and found their way to rest on Heero's arms, just below his shoulders. The pair locked eyes on each other, and Duo felt some of Heero's calmness riding the waves across their gaze and into his belly, which stopped its terrified quivering. The trains were still closing fast, and as their engineers became aware of trespassers in the tunnel, they both blew their whistles more fiercely, but the youngsters would not be moved, except closer together.

"Do you trust me?" Heero asked, just below the noise of the trains.

Suddenly, Duo understood. There was nothing to fear there; it was a pure exercise in mutual understanding and trust. They had to truly know each other to meet, and completely trust each other to stay safe, not just there, but everywhere, and always. It was Heero's way of making a promise without using anything so trite as the actual words. Duo leaned in a little closer, relaxing as the wind whipped around them with increasing ferocity. "You know I do."

The whistles blared, the wheels clattered, and steam shot out from the braking mechanisms of both trains as they tried to slow down, but Heero had picked a spot far enough inside the tunnel that the effect would be minimized, and the wind force enjoyed to its full extent. It was perfectly calculated, a perfect mix of security and excitement, of serenity peppered with shots of adrenaline. Heero leaned forward, and at the exact point in time where each of the two trains shot past them on a different side, creating a miniature cyclone to which both boys were purposely oblivious, he pulled Duo even closer, and kissed him.

Duo shut his eyes and squeezed the arms holding him, half shocked and half exhilarated. His once-foolish daydreams about Heero being merely good with his hands were blown away by the reality that his lips were also extraordinarily talented. Who've you been practising on!? he thought jokingly. As if in silent response, Heero deepened the kiss, adding all sorts of delectable tidbits to Duo's mental catalogue of pleasant sensations. They remained in this blissful state until long after the outgoing train had sped up and passed them by, and only very slowly after that did they pull a hair's breadth apart, savouring their secret.

Neither one wanted to break the trance as they stood there with closed eyes, in a relaxed embrace, but now that the peak of joy had passed, there were practicalities to think of. "We should go," Heero said softly. "The transport police won't be very forgiving if they catch us here."

"Mmmm," Duo moaned pathetically, wincing and smiling at the same time. "I don't wanna leave now. If we stay in the tunnels, we can do this all the time and not worry about what people might think of us."

It was tempting only on a fantasy level. Heero inhaled deeply and leaned back, and they both opened their eyes to look at one another. "It'd be a shame to lock ourselves away on the longest day of the year. Besides...I think I've made my point." Next to them, the incoming train had come to a full stop, and two conductors had leapt off and were calling down into the tunnel, trying to find the reckless daredevils who had been standing an inch or two on the happy side of harm's way. Heero preferred not to let them worry themselves. "This way."

The two of them clasped hands and scurried alongside the train in the dark, knowing there were only a few precious seconds left before it decided to take off again. As soon as they saw daylight, they squished through the gap between two cars, jumped over the steel safety fence, and were off, running up the musty stairs together back up to street level, where they took off in another random direction, still riding the high of cheating death.

Once they were sure that they weren't being followed, they unclasped hands while in public view, and then Duo just had to ask. "So, that's what this whole treasure hunt was about? Getting me alone so you could 'make your point'? If you'd known there was a lock on our bedroom door, you could've saved us a lot of hard work."

"I knew," Heero whined in mock annoyance, "but when have you ever enjoyed doing something the easy way? Did you like my riddle?"

Duo smirked to himself. The puzzles were a pain in the rear, but for the reward he had received, he would have followed Heero ten times around the world. "Yeah!"

"Then it was worth it."

They walked on, in no particular direction. Duo kept looking over at Heero, who was looking straight ahead, and kept wanting to throw his arms around him, or snuggle up to him, or something. He wasn't worried that Heero didn't seem bothered by the same urges, because he just seemed to be more reserved by nature. Still...the world suddenly looked like a completely new place to Duo, and he couldn't hold that feeling in. "I feel so different..."

"We are different," Heero agreed, strolling along very casually with his hands in his pockets.

Duo walked the tiniest bit closer. "Different-good?"

Heero looked at his companion, and the tricky smile returned. "Different-very good." Pleased by the smile Duo shone back at him, he stretched both arms high above his head and yawned. "Day off tomorrow...don't know about you, but I plan on sleeping in late."

Duo groaned. "I wish I could take days off."

"What's stopping you?"

A delicious thought. They could continue their little kissing experiment to their hearts' content tomorrow morning. Duo smirked. "Y'know...I'm feeling a bit feverish after all that excitement. I think I might be coming down with something."

"I think you should be careful not to spread germs all over the kitchen."

"I think I shouldn't go to work at all tomorrow."

"I think you're right."

Duo found that the more he looked at it, the more he liked Heero's new smile. It was a secret smile, meant only for him, and it said that no matter how far apart society made them stand, it made no difference to how they felt. It was a smile that promised many new delights and a richer, deeper connection that was a large step beyond plain vanilla friendship, and yet on the outside, as far as the rest of the world knew, Heero was still his usual self--strong, masterful, and totally in control. Because of the secret smile, Duo knew he didn't have to hug Heero in the street or hang off his arm to get a reaction, because all reactions could wait until later, when they were behind closed doors.

I don't need to get overly physical with him, Duo thought impishly, but I think I will anyway. He threw an arm around Heero's shoulders, and Heero did the same, and to the whole world, they looked just like two old friends, and nothing more.


~~~~~~~~~~

Next, in Episode Fifty-Two: Lord Jeffrhyss insists upon a meeting with his wayward agent, the results of which could put Duo and Heero's new relationship to its first test. Relena frets over the health of Prince Edward and the postponement of his coronation.

*SMOOCH* =^_^= Hee hee. That one was for real. And I'll tell you what else is real, the train station is real. (I'll tell you all about it in the historical notes. It's still standing!) But DON'T any of you even THINK about playing chicken with a train!! =o_o= Got it? Good. Now, this may seem like a LONG way away, but I'm going have to set the next episode for July 2nd. I'm going to be out of town and away from the computer over the Canada Day holiday weekend, and I wouldn't have been able to pull it together in time for next Friday. But don't worry, I'll have plenty of site updates to tide you over until then! Promise! =^_^=

P.S. Oh yeah...this episode, like many others, contains anachronisms. I can think of at least one person who doesn't seem to agree with my use of anachronisms. Well, I happen to like my anachronisms. =^_^= They're fun. They're cute. They add splash. They add comic relief. It's called poetic license. So bite me. =P

P.P.S. Tanith! I wanted to wish you good luck and say thanks but it never lets me get through on your email! =O_O= I keep getting "delivery failures" so I must have the wrong addy. So I'll say it here. *pulls out megaphone* GOOD LUCK, AND THANK YOU! =D