Warning: Deep, dark, personal secrets from someone's past, laced with sexual innuendo. =o.o=

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-Three: La Belle Odalisque

"No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden." ~Elizabeth E. Bowen, "Orion III"

July 12th, 1902

Deep underground in the secret compound on the Isle of Wight, life hadn't slowed down one bit during the lazy summer days. The caverns and catwalks were constantly buzzing with workers, scurrying around like little bees in a most unusual hive. It seemed that the only one who didn't have a task to complete was Wufei, and he was fairly sure why.

Like Heero, he had ignored his duties for a prolonged stretch of time, choosing to hide in Arthur's cottage and not contact Lord Jeffrhyss in any way. He still wasn't completely sure why he did this, but now he knew he was in trouble. Day after day passed with him lolling around in his temporarily-assigned living quarters, a cubicle with a grand total of one piece of furniture, and each morning he anxiously anticipated the arrival of a handful of guards at his door, to take him away for his rightful punishment.

As time wore on, nobody came, and Wufei was beginning to lose his appetite worrying about what Jeffrhyss had planned for him. It wasn't that he wanted to know right away, he just wanted to get it over with, and after eavesdropping on enough high-level conversations to know just how terrible His Lordship's punishments could be, the sooner the better. When he was finally sick to death of waiting, he crept into the large circular chamber that was at the centre of every one of Jeffrhyss' secret compounds, the one he reserved for himself and his collection of curiosities, and found him. He was in a typical position, hunched over a table peering at papers through his dark spectacles with a glaring white lamp shining over his left shoulder. With all the deference he could muster, Wufei walked carefully up to the table and stopped just out of reach of the man's cane.

"Master, may I speak?"

Jeffrhyss grumbled in a bored sort of way. "If you must." At the very least, he was mildly satisfied that the boy had retained his humility, unlike others he could mention.

Wufei kept his eyes to the floor and his hands where they could be safely seen. "How long am I to remain here?"

"Until I find you another task."

The semi-direct approach had apparently failed. "I was referring to my punishment," Wufei said, looking up slightly.

Jeffrhyss grunted almost imperceptibly. "I don't recall ordering anything for you. Go back to your area and await further instructions."

Reflexively obedient, Wufei bowed curtly at the waist and turned to go, but didn't make it all the way to the chamber door. He could have let it drop, and probably should have let it drop, but something just didn't seem right about the ease at which he was dismissed. He turned and walked back up to Jeffrhyss, still not daring to look directly at him, but bolder than before. "Forgive me, but I don't understand. Why am I not being punished for such a serious offence?"

"Mm?" Jeffrhyss continued to stare at his map, acting strangely disinterested. "What have you done?"

At this point, Wufei really should have had the good sense to confirm his master's temporary amnesia and walk away, but his anger was growing. "I broke communication. All operatives are required to check in regularly, and I have failed to do so for weeks."

Jeffrhyss slowly looked up, stared at the boy with a tiny twitch of his moustache, and looked back down. "Go back to your area."

"No," Wufei spat dangerously. "If Heero was standing here accused of the same offence, you'd punish him. I've heard you discussing it with three different controllers! He's all you ever talk about! My rank is nearly equal to his, so why should he merit so much more attention!?" As soon as he said it, he regretted it, but on a deeper level, he really wanted to know why Heero was always so heavily favoured in their master's eyes.

The old man's reaction was quizzical to say the least. He snorted out a peculiar laugh and turned the map over to look at the other side. "You only think your rank comes anywhere near his."

Wufei bristled. "What do you mean?"

"I'm not going to punish you because you are simply not worth the effort," Jeffrhyss said plainly. "You're not an operative in the official books...you're a tattler. I only let you believe that you'd actually moved into an agent's position so I could get twice as much work out of you for the same amount of food."

"That's...just not possible!" Wufei shouted. "My first master promised me a transfer with full honours!"

"There are no 'transfers' here, boy," Jeffrhyss said with obvious disgust placed on the effectual word. "After the way you bungled that gold shipment years ago, there was no way you'd ever be trusted with essential duties again, but rather than waste your talents for snivelling, crawling, and general nosiness, I purchased you from him at a bargain price. There was never any likelihood of making you an agent due to your uncontrollable emotional reactions and thirst for vengeance."

Wufei very nearly staggered backwards from being hit in the centre of the chest with such stinging words. There was a surreal quality to the entire conversation, which was the first real two-way talk the pair of them had ever had. "Why are you telling me all this now?"

"You initiated the exchange, you live with the consequences."

"You can't...I'm not just...this is no way to..." The angry stutters grew into a full-strength growl complete with balled fists and a reddening around the cheekbones. "I'll quit! I'll leave the service if you don't take that back! I'll walk out of here right now!!"

Jeffrhyss opened another map and laid it on top of the first, studying it. "Go, then."

Wufei's eyes bugged out. This was the ultimate insult. He stormed to the door and turned back, giving the vicious old curmudgeon one last chance to recant. "I mean it! You'll never see me again!" By now, he was actually hoping to be dragged off in chains and beaten for his insolence, because then, he wouldn't have invested so many years, so much energy, and perhaps his entire future in the wrong system.

His hopes were soon thwarted. Jeffrhyss rose from his chair, hobbled over to another large map on his chamber wall, and turned his back on the boy. "Tattlers are easily replaced."

Shunned and rejected, Wufei's blood pressure skyrocketed. Aged fool! You're bluffing and I'll prove it! If I try to leave, I won't make it ten feet past the front door! Determined to prove his self-worth, Wufei ran out through the cement-lined hallways strung with barred electric lights and burrowed deeper into the compound, to the living quarters of personnel in transition. Smashing open the door to his cell, he flung both arms under his bunk and dragged out everything he had brought with him from the manor, bundling it all up with twine scavenged from a crate of bean sprouts. Once all his worldly possessions were safely in hand, he struck out towards the surface, hoping for heavy resistance.

He found...no resistance at all. No bells sounded. No lights flashed. No guards appeared with weapons drawn, ready to cut him down like any other deserter. He made it all the way to the camouflaged portal that opened outwards into the picturesque countryside, and two men were attending to it. Wufei walked right up to them and snarled.

"I'm leaving! I've had enough of this place, and I'm getting out! Now, step aside!"

To his horror, they stepped aside. Further infuriated, he grabbed one of them by the lapels of his black uniform and shook him. "What's the matter, too cowardly to put up a decent fight!? Come on! Just try and stop me!!"

The guard shook him off, glanced at his companion, and together they released the wall clamps holding the portal in place. In effect, they were showing him the door. Wufei stared at the thin line of blue sky that appeared, watched it grow into a rectangle large enough to walk through, and felt like sinking right into his shoes. It was true; he was no more valuable to the organization than a common grunt, for tattlers were only a miniscule step above grunts in the official hierarchy. Stinging from the terrible slap in the face, Wufei couldn't stand to turn around and go back inside knowing how little he was worth there, and slowly walked out the door.

He stopped a few feet from the entrance to the compound, standing on dewy green grass and listening to chirping birds circling overhead, flapping merrily and wondering what strange insect had just crawled out from beneath the hill, and just stood there. The guards pulled the camouflaged platform back up behind him and secured it in place, locking him out. By now the message was pretty clear; he wasn't needed. He walked away under a thick black cloud of emptiness the likes of which he hadn't felt since the train robbery that claimed the life of his beloved.

**********

For some eccentric reason, suddenly and with no explanation, nothing could enthral Relena and tie up her attention for hours on end like the daily newspaper. The housemaids and Dorothy had no idea what was so fascinating about non-social news, but obeyed her explicitly when she asked to be left alone each day in the parlour with her paper. It was no longer even circulated around the house for anyone who wanted a peek at the almanac weather forecast or the latest cricket results. Anyone stuck in that position would have to buy their own.

Since she realized how out of touch her simpering little friends were with reality, Relena threw herself into current events with a zeal she never knew she had. Even she didn't understand why, but it was something she needed to do. That morning, like the last half-dozen or more, she sat in her parlour with mid-morning sunlight streaming in through the windows, surrounded by tea and biscuits and everything else she could possibly ask for, and forced herself to learn about the world.

The front page announced a change of leadership in the Conservative party. Arthur James Balfour was replacing his uncle, Lord Salisbury, as Prime Minister. No surprise there...our future king must have thought him an excellent choice. I should find out what Balfour believes in...then I'll know whether to believe in him or not. The second page detailed a celebration to be held for a champion of the Boer War, a soldier of Irish origin who would be given a true hero's welcome in London later that day. Why should I call this man, this...'Horatio Kitchener'...a hero, when I don't even know if we really won the war? He travelled there to do battle, and probably killed more people than he saved...why should I call him a hero for that? Were we even invited to Africa in the first place, or did we barge in and expect to be welcomed just because we're British? There's so much I don't know...

Each new page brought new curiosity, and a desire to fill the growing void that was left by her gradual disabsorption with trivial, girlish things. She learned that it was the second anniversary of the Battle of Silkaatsnek, touted as a being important to the war effort, though she wondered who the true victor was; she felt doubt. Then she saw a distressing piece concerning a mine explosion in America, one hundred and twelve fatalities in Johnstown, Pennsylvania; she felt sorrow for them, and for their families. In another small corner, she found an editorial mentioning someone named Mahatma Gandhi, discussing his policies towards emigration in India, and she was instantly intrigued.

How could I have missed so much all these years? I'm still awfully young, of course, but...that shouldn't be an excuse for being ill-informed. Heero and Marcus aren't that much older than I am, and they seem to know entire encyclopedias worth, but I can't believe it's only because they're men.

Puzzling and puzzling over the problem, she folded the newspaper back up and set it beside her, substituting for it a sip of tea and a bite of a freshly-baked muffin with a light glaze of marmalade. If it's not age, and it's not gender...then what is it that makes a person worldly and intelligent?

An hour later, she hadn't moved, nor had she discovered the answer, but one thing was clear: She wanted very badly to be one of the worldly instead of the vacuous, self-centred puffball that society seemed to prefer her as. Now that she was very likely to be the sole caretaker of Bridlewood, it was time to grow up.

**********

Somewhere south of the Thames, in what any sane person would have called a very rough neighbourhood, sat a broken-down old warehouse. From the outside, it looked as though it should have been condemned years earlier. It was a six-storey brownstone situated on a squatty, weed-stricken piece of land, surrounded by a rickety iron fence that was covered with various warnings to keep the general public out. All but a few windows were boarded up with rotting wood planks, adding greatly to the forbidding image of the building, which, at one time, was a vibrant centre of business, packed with crates of goods bound for export. Its glory days were clearly gone.

Inside, the cavernous darkness echoed a curious selection of clicking noises as someone outside picked the rusted padlock on one of the smaller exterior doors. With the last decisive clink, the lock fell to the stony ground, and two intruders gained entrance. The first carried a lantern to combat the black depths, and the second took one whiff of the stale, musty air and wrinkled his nose. "Whew! ...they haven't done their spring cleaning yet, have they?"

"There is no spring here," the other replied, "no seasons of any kind."

Duo shut the door behind them and squirreled his lockpicks back into his braid, looking around with disdain. "Yeah, I see what you mean." It was about as bad as disused warehouses could ever be. Where there weren't cobwebs and piles of sawdust, there was just ugly, blank space, divided by mould-encrusted timbers into rough square shapes, still marked into categories of merchandise by little painted signs that hung from the rafters. The ground floor alone used to be a twelve thousand-square foot hub of transport for dozens of local businesses, but no more. For a number of years it laid vacant, before being bought up and retrofitted by an 'entrepreneur' by the name of Jeffrhyss.

"I never saw much of this floor," Heero said, angling the lantern towards the centre of the complex, where four thick vertical support beams encased a massive spiral staircase wide enough for three across. Finding nothing of interest there, he walked up to the black metal stairs and took a few tentative steps up. The entire structure creaked and moaned, but didn't move much, and settled down quickly. He beckoned Duo to follow, but it took the chef a good thirty seconds of prayer before he would trust the semi-sound structure himself.

"How old were you when they brought you here?" Duo asked uneasily, concentrating more on staggering his steps from Heero's so they didn't stress the staircase too much at once.

"Not sure. Thirteen...maybe fourteen. We'd just spent several months in another facility somewhere in Europe, as far as I know. I rarely knew where I was being kept, and they made sure I was well hidden during travel from one base to another, but I remember a long boat ride that was probably when we crossed the Channel."

"Or they could've sailed out in a big circle and ended up where they began, just to confuse you."

Heero reached the second floor and paused thoughtfully before stepping out of the stairwell. "Also a possibility."

The second floor was in an even more dilapidated condition than the first. Duo frowned. "Do you even know what you're looking for here? It all looks the same..."

Reaching back into his memory, Heero extracted a feeling of climbing a long spiral staircase blindfolded, and compared it in length to the portion he had just traversed. "Much farther up," he said, resuming his ascent. Officially, he was looking for the place where he had learned the details of his mission, and spent months on specialized training for a specific purpose, but unofficially, he was looking for something more, something he wasn't sure he wanted to find, and something he definitely wanted to keep hidden from Duo. He had been so insistent on accompanying Heero on his quest, however, that he would not be left behind for anything.

As they climbed, they stopped briefly on each floor to observe the state of decay. The third floor was much more well developed than the previous two, to Duo's surprise. Interior walls had been added, and there were large, rectangular patches on the floor where the dust was considerably thinner, suggesting furniture such as desks, shelves, tables and chairs that had been recently removed. Scraps of electrical wire littered the floor and ceiling where costly electric lights had been ripped out and taken along when the warehouse was evacuated. It all gave the impression that the occupants were used to picking up and moving at very short notice. Following a dust-induced sneeze, Duo wondered just how long the building had been empty. "When did everyone leave?"

"Probably right after I was released, early February of last year," Heero replied as they hiked gingerly up to the fourth floor. "It was earlier than they expected, so they were relying heavily on my ability to adapt quickly. I never saw this building again, but I memorized the location the day I left, in case I ever needed a bolt hole. I just assumed they would clean it out and move on as soon as I was gone."

"You appear to have assumed correctly," Duo said mechanically.

When they got to the fourth floor, the look on Heero's face changed from stoic to intimidated as he detected something different in the atmosphere. He kept his face carefully turned away from Duo's so the other boy wouldn't notice, but it was a difficult thing to do while being bombarded with two years' worth of memories. Insisting that they not linger for very long on any floor until they reached the top, he dragged Duo along with little explanation. The fifth floor was a blur as a result, but Duo craned his neck and could see the remnants of what appeared to be living quarters, with some very tacky furniture that must have been too much bother to cart down five flights of stairs. Logically, if Jeffrhyss' organization had to leave in a hurry, they would have only taken the most valuable items.

Finally, they made it to the sixth floor, which was as far as they could go. The stairs ended with capped-off iron pipe for a handrail, and were nearly lost in the total darkness that engulfed the expanse. Every possible crack or crevice through which daylight might have leaked in was tightly sealed, locking the entire sixth floor into an eerie state of perpetual night. Heero sighed, almost sadly. "Home."

"...ugh...surely you jest." Duo crept away from the stairwell and squinted at the walls, curiously drawn to their dully reflective surface. The light from the lantern was only partly swallowed up, and if he stretched out a hand to the wall, he could see a very faint peach blob of luminescence reflected off his hand. "What's the matter with these walls?"

"Metal plating," Heero said. "By that time, I could have kicked my way right through conventional materials if I'd gotten out of control." He then led Duo in a broad circle around the stairwell, indicating various chamber doors left partially ajar and identifying the rooms within. "That was the gym...and this one was for book lessons.....this was the infirmary, although it was just a chair and a cabinet full of bandages and peroxide...I wasn't in there much.....and that was the common area, for meetings with Jeffrhyss."

"What about that one over there?" Duo asked, pointing to a small closed door with a little barred window that Heero seemed to have skipped over.

Heero paused, studied the door, and shrugged. "I don't know," he lied. There were still things he didn't want Duo to be burdened with, and one of them was the tiny cell reserved for beatings and other forms of corporal punishment. Trying to draw the boy's attention away from the sinister-looking door, he continued on to a little cubicle in the north corner with a heavy wooden door that swung outwards, and opened it. "This was my room."

Duo stepped inside and was instantly horrified. It was less than half the size of their old room in the attic, barely large enough for the flat, shabby bunk positioned against the longest wall. There was no door handle on the inside, and a little slot in the door with a sliding panel allowed a fairly tall person to look in on the subject from time to time. The walls were gray plaster that was chipped and peeling in several places, mostly around the ceiling, which bore small circular soot stains from candles that must have been carried in by his various keepers when they came to check on him, rather than leave him alone with an open flame. At the top of the longest wall was a single, long air vent covered by a metal grate, wide enough to let fresh, slightly salty air into the room, but with down-sloping slats that prevented the captive from peering outside at the real world. In one of the other walls, there appeared to have once been a window, but it had a massive metal plate bolted over it. Only a tiny amount of ambient light seeped in through the air vent, but even in the middle of the day, the room was depressingly dark.

The total despair of the place overwhelmed Duo suddenly, and he doubled over, choking on the taste of bile creeping up his throat. Heero quickly put both arms around the ailing boy and set the lantern on the floor before it was dropped. Steadying Duo while he gagged and coughed, he sat him down on his old bunk and cuddled him close while he recovered.

"This isn't a bedroom, it's a jail cell!" Duo spat finally. "Convicted murderers in Dartmoor have it better than this! I had it better than this when I was living out of a cauliflower crate! It's inhuman!"

This was a mistake, Heero thought guiltily as he slowly massaged Duo's arm to comfort him. "I suppose it was...I just...never could have known it until now."

"H-how many of these hell holes have you lived in?"

"...a dozen, maybe more. It was hard to tell when I was younger. They all looked the same."

Duo glanced away to his left and tried to concentrate on something else, but only ended up looking at the bed they were sitting on. It was only a bed in the vaguest academic sense, if a three-inch-thick slab of compressed rags wrapped in threadbare cotton could be called a mattress. The frame was wrought iron fashioned into ugly, stark bars, and not quite hidden from view was something shiny and metallic dangling down to the floor--a length of well-worn chain, used on a nightly basis to shackle Heero's hands to the bed. Duo recoiled slightly, and Heero gripped his shoulders a little tighter, wondering if he should allow the boy's exploration to continue.

Collecting himself with a deep breath, Duo shifted a little where he sat and thought he might be okay, until his leg brushed up against something thin and rigid under the bed. Not wanting to look right away, he reached underneath the iron frame between his knees, about where one's chest would be if one were lying down, and pulled something up. It was the loose end of a thick leather strap with a shiny brass buckle. "That's it. Get me out of here."

Duo scooped up the lantern and bolted out of the cell with Heero not far behind. "You wanted to come with me," he reminded him gently.

"I know! I know!" Duo shouted, stopping wearily at the top of the stairwell. "I just...I wasn't prepared for it. For some wacky reason, I thought you would be needing my emotional support. When you said you wanted to go back to your old barracks and training facility, I at least pictured a certain minimum of respect for human life! And this has been going on for twelve years!? How do they get away with it!? Why don't the police do something!? They can't treat little kids like animals!!"

Heero leaned casually against one of the dull metal interior walls. "That's a strange thing to hear in a country famous for sending ten-year-olds down coal mines."

Duo sighed and leaned against the handrail, the lantern hanging limply in his weakened grip as he swayed his head from side to side in disbelief. "How could you live like this?"

That was an even stranger thing to hear, but at least Heero had more insight to devote to it than he would have the year before. "It was normal," he said simply and innocently. "There was a routine. I woke up every morning to the sound of my instructors' footsteps on the stairs. The meals were all the same, and came at the same time every day. Combat practice was always in the morning, language classes were always at night. All the lessons in between were on a strict schedule, and every day was the same." He glanced down at the floor and thought better of that last remark. "Most days were the same. The point is, I never knew any different."

Duo shook his head again and then pushed himself off the handrail, walking numbly to the middle of the hallway. Realizing how downtrodden his friend felt, Heero met him halfway and they hugged for a bit, just long enough to stop Duo's stomach from churning. Deciding that it would have been cruel to keep Duo there any longer, Heero chose to cut his search short and take him home again, but as they made their way back down the stairs, an unwanted memory took over Heero's conscious mind, re-enabling another old routine that he never wanted to experience again.

While he had both hands on Duo's shoulders, guiding him safely down the spiral staircase, he felt the ghostly presence of two instructors behind him, a stocky male and a less than voluptuous female, boring four holes into the back of his head with their eyes and marching him along the same path over and over. The length of the march was firmly ingrained into his memory, and when they all reached the fourth floor together, he stopped, finally knowing where to look for his mysterious treasure. At that point, the march typically made a right-hand turn and went down the hall a fair distance; Heero looked to the right and felt the return of the strange, familiar atmosphere that he had tried to ignore on the way up. This was definitely the place.

Duo walked on a few steps before noticing that Heero had halted his descent. He looked back up and found him staring hypnotically down a hallway. "Hey...you coming or what?"

"In a minute." Heero stepped out of the stairwell and gestured for Duo to follow, which he did. Then he slowly swept his eyes around the fourth floor and let them land on a large door in the opposite direction from the targeted hallway. "That was the war room. If we're lucky, they might have left some papers behind that could be of some use to us.

"I don't see how, they've taken everything else of value," Duo said doubtfully.

"Still...why don't you have a look? While you're at it, I'll go through the storerooms." He gave Duo the lantern, turned towards the darkened hallway and considered the matter closed.

"What should I look for?" Duo called out.

"Anything!"

The chef worried for awhile as Heero walked away, that perhaps seeing his old living quarters had shook him up worse than he let on, but went anyway to the war room door with the intent of carrying out his instructions. In reality, Heero knew the war room would be empty like the rest, but wanted some time to investigate the hallway to the right without Duo poking his nose in. In a way, he felt bad for deceiving him after everything they'd been through, but a little voice told him it was for the best. Heero walked quickly to the end of the hall, not realizing that a third pair of uninvited eyes was watching him from the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce.

The last door in the dark hallway was the same heavy block of wood that was on Heero's cubicle, with the same thick metal deadbolt. He gripped the stout handle and slid the bolt back with a peculiar kind of reverence, and once the squeaky door was opened just wide enough to step through, he went straight to the windows and shoved aside their shutters, letting the blue-red glow of early evening flood the room. He turned, recognized the room he was in, and felt his own stomach fluttering unpleasantly.

Nanni mo arimasen...it's all gone...everything...

It was a truly beautiful space, and had been even more lovely with its old furnishings, which had been removed with everything else. The floor was finely polished cherrywood, the walls a mixture of decadent paper coverings and warm wood trim, and yet another clump of cut wires stuck out from the middle of the ceiling where the electric chandelier used to be. The bed, the couch, the vanity dresser with the gilded mirror, the bookcases, and even the music box that played an assortment of romantic tunes were all gone, and the built-in wardrobe was empty of the exquisite clothes that used to hang there. On top of it all, the claw-footed sink and matching bathtub had been taken from the ensuite bath, but the black and white checkerboard tiles were in perfect condition. It looked almost ready for another unfortunate to move in and be subject to another's will.

Gone...to be used over and over again...I should have done something to stop it...but I never realized then how valuable--

It was right then that he heard the voice. "Terrible! It's nothing like what it said in the ad! 'Charming fixer-upper', my foot!"

Within milliseconds of the first syllable, Heero had his trusty six-shooter trained on the direction of the voice. The owner of the third pair of eyes watching craftily from the darkness slowly stepped out of the shadows and into the beautiful room, revealing himself to be a tall, mushroom-haired man with small round spectacles and a smouldering pipe. There was a small degree of familiarity about him, but most of all, Heero knew his voice. He felt sure that he'd heard that voice on and off in a dreamlike state throughout his childhood, but at no time could he remember seeing the man's face...

"Hey!" Duo yelled as he ran back from the opposite end of the fourth floor. He knew the tall, funny man well enough from behind that he already had a friendly smile plastered across his heavy-hearted features. "What're you do--" He only made it halfway through asking the man what his business was in the building, and then froze when he saw Heero's revolver pointed in their mutual direction. "Put that down, okay?" he said, grinning nervously and holding up a trembling hand.

Heero stepped a bit to his right to ensure a clean shot that would not endanger Duo. "This isn't a good time for surprises," he answered. The effects of a sudden confusion injection were making it difficult to distinguish who was what in that room.

"Heero, you know Professor Giorgenson," Duo said pointedly. "He dropped in on us in Hampshire, while you were sick...remember?"

The butler wasn't sure if he really did remember, because much of the time he spent in that cottage he was either doped up or crashing down, but he couldn't deny trusting Duo's judgement. "Vaguely." He lowered his weapon, but did not put it away.

"I assume you're the two young owners the estate agent told me about," the Professor said in a glowing sing-song voice, totally unaffected by having a pistol shoved in his face. He kept one hand in the pocket of what looked like a white lab coat and used the other hand to tap his pipe out on the cruddy old floorboards outside the beautiful room. "Now, I might be willing to take this place off your hands after all, but I'm not paying more than twenty dollars a month for it, and I want the windows replaced, a fireplace in the master bedroom, ceramic tile on the patio, an island in the kitchen, and a little man to come 'round once a week to mow the lawn. And don't try giving me that nonsense about having another buyer willing to pay full price, I'm wise to that trick."

Duo saw the doubtful look on Heero's face and squeezed past the Professor to stand next to him. "Don't worry, he's not crazy," he whispered, "Lucrezia says he's always like this."

Giorgenson grinned, stretching his bushy moustache out to its full horizontal limits. Heero still looked doubtful, but the semi-stranger hadn't done anything threatening yet. "How did you get all the way up here without being heard?"

"Humblest apologies, m'boy," Giorgenson said, "I sneaked in through one of the fire exits. I know you're thinking 'What fire exits?', but believe me, they're around. You'd have found out about them if there was ever a fire."

Heero found the man's entire set of mannerisms unsettling; he seemed to be strongly advantaged by secret knowledge, and though Duo had told him all about their past dealings, he just couldn't trust him that easily. "How long have you been watching me?"

Giorgenson habitually relit his pipe and puffed away at it while he composed a sufficiently cryptic answer. "Since you were about that high," he said, holding his hand three feet off the ground, "but if you just mean today, since Drummond Road. Nasty neighbourhood you've got here, had to keep both hands on my wallet the whole time."

"But what are you doing here?" Duo asked, not at all displeased. "You must've been following us for a reason..."

"When I saw the direction you were headed in, I knew what you were probably after," the Professor said directly to Heero. "When I saw you stop on the fourth floor, it was definite. There's...not a lot I can tell you other than...well, you won't find her here. She left about the same time you did, son."

Heero winced sharply and dropped his head an inch or two. This was exactly what he didn't want Duo to hear.

Duo looked deceptively blank and turned slowly and calmly towards Heero. "She? She who?"

Heero glared at the mushroom-haired man and holstered his gun before he did any serious damage. "Thanks a lot."

Giorgenson's face grew long, and he took the hand out of his pocket to tug the round spectacles halfway down his nose so he could look directly over the wire rims, his gray and green-flecked eyes expanded by the weighty guilt of a major faux-pas. "...oh boy..."

"Is someone going to tell me what this is all about?" Duo demanded after stuttering solidly for ten seconds. He tried to take hold of Heero's arm, but the suddenly gloomy boy slipped out of his grip and straight out the door, staring at the floor the entire time. "Heero!"

"Let him go, son," the Professor sighed. "It's my fault. He hasn't told you everything about this place, and I should've guessed that he wouldn't. That's always been my trouble. Some days I only open my mouth to change feet."

Duo hung off the door frame and watched with forlorn eyes as Heero walked away and sat down on the spiral staircase, angled away from the beautiful room, and sank his head into one hand. "Whuh...what's going on? Why is he--"

"C'mere a minute, let's leave him in peace while I clue you in," Giorgenson said, pulling Duo away from the door and closer to the bright windows. "I wouldn't judge him too harshly for keeping secrets like this, kiddo. I suspect he's had a lot on his mind lately, and it's not all good."

After what he had already seen, Duo couldn't imagine a part of Heero's past that could be much worse, but he couldn't help him until he had all the facts. "I'm listening."

The Professor paced for a bit, searching for an appropriate beginning at which to begin, then made his choice and faced the boy. "You've known for a long time that Heero was sent specifically to sweet-talk young Miss Peacecraft into letting him stay in her house so he could fulfill the kernel of his mission, correct?"

"Yeah, to watch Treize," Duo affirmed with a single nod. "But even Heero doesn't know what he's watching him for."

"Let's leave Treize for a moment, this has more to do with Relena than anyone else. It all boils down to one of Lord Jeffrhyss' 'brilliant philosophies' about manufacturing the perfect spy. Imagine yourself in Heero's position: You're on a mission to collect reconnaissance for your master, and you have to do it quietly. Suppose a high-ranking yet terminally dull government official has the information you want...how do you get it? Take it from his desk drawer while he's not looking? Probably won't work more than once. Hold the man hostage until your demands are met? Puts you in the public eye, and that's the last thing an agent wants. Kill him in his office and help yourself to whatever you need? Nah, don't rock the boat unless you absolutely have to." He puffed twice on the old briar pipe, demanding ultimate attentiveness. "But...seduce the man's wife...and you'll have an indefinite supply of inside information, that's what Jeffrhyss decided. All he needed was a truly mesmerizing boy who could mercilessly charm his way into the bedroom of any head of state, and the rest would take care of itself."

Duo drew back towards the window, feeling his throat closing up from revulsion. "He hasn't...done anything like that!" he whispered harshly.

"Not yet," Giorgenson pointed out, "but that was the purpose Jeffrhyss set aside for him when he began to change from a boy into a young man. As soon as His Lordship and his council of advisors saw that well-shaped frame and those big blue eyes, his path was set. They were sure that he'd grow up into a real ladykiller, and they started looking for places to exploit him right away. Relena wasn't their first choice, but she came about as a sort of a test case. The organization has known for years that Treize needed to be watched, but there was no one female in his life that held all of his secrets, and that led them to look at his immediate family, which led to Relena. They knew he'd be coming to England, but didn't know exactly when, so they had to act fast.

"Jeffrhyss collected information on her when she was about ten or eleven. His advisors all came to the same conclusion about her...blonde hair, blue eyes, quite pretty. They calculated what she'd look like when she turned sixteen and sent scouts all over Europe with photos and ink drawings, looking for someone cheap and available. The scouts returned with a fourteen-year-old French orphan girl who was working in a terrible factory for wages that bordered on slavery. She was brought before Jeffrhyss and his council, who, again, came to a consensus...blonde hair, blue eyes, quite pretty. They brought her here."

Finally able to blink, Duo looked around the room they were standing in, and decided that the decor was rather feminine. He tried to ignore the fact that his fingers were going numb and choked out another supposition. "This...was her bedroom?"

The Professor nodded. "Since Heero had spent very little time with anyone except instructors with cold voices and hidden faces, they needed to acclimatize him to Relena's general looks and manner...plus, for lack of a more delicate way of saying it...they needed someone for him to practice on." He didn't see the glimmer of understanding in Duo's eyes that he was hoping for, and had to get more specific. "Heero could walk up to ten women and charm nine of them into doing whatever he wanted right away. Did you think it was some sort of instinct? That he was born knowing how to manipulate the average feminine mind? No...like anything else, he had to be taught, and that pretty little French girl was the teaching tool. For the last two years leading up to his release, on top of his regular studies, he was educated in seduction."

Duo inhaled painfully. No...no, he wouldn't go through with that and not tell me...not now, not after we've been... A blend of anger, revulsion, and disgust flooded him, and he didn't know whether to scream or cry. He simply grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands and scrunched the white cotton into two tight knots while he fought not to start hyperventilating.

Always secretly sensitive, Professor Giorgenson harrumphed and paced quietly towards the door. "I can tell when I've opened that one can of worms too many...and now I think it's time for someone else to continue the story." As he strode out to the stairwell, Duo stumbled after him, and they both looked at Heero, sitting in a pitiful little curled-up ball with his face still turned away. "Isn't that right?"

When Heero finally looked up, he had the strangest look on his face, something in between self-loathing and total bewilderment, as if he couldn't understand this new feeling that had suddenly consumed him. Duo found that easy to believe. He peered at the boy from the side, for he hadn't yet turned enough to make eye contact, and if he used his imagination, Duo could see a trace of shame. He couldn't stand to tell me...couldn't stand thinking that I'd hate him for it.

"I'm going to leave you to it, and I expect you to clear things up, understand?" Giorgenson told Heero firmly. "And if it helps to know this...my connections with Jeffrhyss run pretty deep. After you left, I convinced him that there was no longer any specific need to keep her here, and he sold her to me. I set her free that very day. She's living in Paris with her grandfather now."

Indescribably grateful for that bit of knowledge, Heero sighed deeply with relief, then scowled at the Professor. "You might have told me that earlier instead of letting me sit here and worry all this time!"

"Well, that's what you get for not trusting your friends with the truth!" Giorgenson scolded. "Now, tell this boy what he needs to know and get yourself home." He marched halfway down the metal steps to the third floor, then paused and looked up at the pair. "Oh, and, um...I'll be wanting to talk with you...all of you...before the coronation. The new date is less than a month away, and while I still have the official capacity to do so, there's some more history I want to share with you, and anyone else who's stuck their neck out for you, especially where Treize is concerned. Everyone deserves the truth." With that, he was gone, and the boys had nothing left to fill the void but each other.

Heero was still looking away in disgrace. Duo calmed down a great deal when he saw how distressed he was, even though for someone like Heero, it was barely visible, like most other emotional reactions. Aw. Poor guy didn't know what to think. It must feel weird, the whole prospect of being unfaithful to someone before you ever meet them. He tilted his head lovingly to the side and smiled. And he's cute when he's pitiful. "Hey...c'mon, forget about it," he said, plunking himself down on the stairs next to Heero and throwing an arm around him. "We're still best friends, nothing's different, I promise. I'm not upset."

At that heartfelt admission, Heero relaxed significantly and leaned into the hug. "It wasn't until recently that I started thinking about what must have happened to her after I was gone. Neither of us chose to be here, and I certainly wouldn't condone what happened between us now, but...at least she knew me...or was just used to me. I think I must have learned how to worry about people by watching you, and then I realized that even though I was gone, there was no guarantee that she wouldn't be..." Heero swallowed and windmilled both hands in a visual search for just the wrong word. "...given to another man, about to learn the same things I learned. I had to find out if she was still here, or maybe find some clue..."

"Hey, you don't have to explain, it all kinda makes weird sense now," Duo said quietly. "And I'm sorta proud of you for being so worried...shows that you're not a drone anymore." He stared down at the next few steps below them and swallowed. Trying to be honest when he said he wasn't upset was a bit of a challenge. "So...what were these...'lessons' like?"

Heero shrugged, and grew slightly more sheepish the longer he spoke. "They brought me to her room every two or three days, and two instructors would stand right next to the bed, watching us. They told me exactly what to do and studied the girl's reactions to see how comfortable I was making her. They said that everything I learned, I'd be using in my mission...how to entice...how to stimulate the senses...small talk, compliments, massage...actually, there was quite a lot of...touching...involved..."

"Well...what if she didn't want to? They couldn't very well force you to force her...to..."

Heero looked at him with dark, depraved eyes, silently pleading with him not to ask that question ever, ever again.

"Okay...it's okay, forget about it," Duo insisted, squeezing harder. That was more than I wanted to know, but hey, my fault for asking, I guess. Edgy, he started babbling. "The fact that you were so worried about telling me is actually kinda nice...but I'm not that fragile, alright? I'm smart enough to know the difference between what you do with your body and what you do with your heart. Whatever happened is all in the past, and it doesn't have anything to do with us right now. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't count anyway, not if they made you do it, and...if you're ever really concerned about what it's done to the state of your soul, I'm always willing to take you to your first confession and you can get it all out in the open, I mean, who knows, you might feel better after that, and you won't think of yourself as this hideous womanizer or worry that this poor girl's going to be branded with a scarlet letter for the rest of her life, 'cause I think God understands the difference between a sin you commit with a gun to your head and one where you're really enjoyi--"

"Duo..."

"...yeah?"

"When I was released, all of my training ended early. What happened in that room was only from the waist up."

Duo blushed crimson and grinned. "...oh. Heh.....I knew that." He cleared his throat, took his arm back and tucked both knees up to his chest, hugging them instead. It was the only way he could stop himself from giggling. "But you still know a lot about...that sort of thing, right?"

"Would you mind terribly if I did?" Heero asked craftily, finally slipping into something of a good mood.

"Heck no," Duo said in a half-laugh. "Granted, I think their methods sucked, but for you to just...know things...I don't think that's wrong by itself."

Heero smirked slightly. "I didn't think you'd have any cause to object, seeing as how you're the only one currently in a position to benefit from that knowledge." Just when Duo thought the back of his neck couldn't get any hotter, Heero snaked an arm around his shoulders and tugged himself closer, planting a short, light kiss on the little corner between Duo's ear and jawline. Immediately afterward, he got up and started back down the stairs. "Move along, nothing to see here."

After the resultant surge of adrenaline and other euphoria-related chemicals, Duo was almost afraid to stand up, but managed to haul himself to his feet and follow only two steps behind Heero. "Hey...I understand now that it was a long shot coming here at all, but what would you have done if she'd actually been here?"

Heero thought about it for half a dozen steps. "Probably apologize." Another four steps, and the thought expanded itself. "Though I wouldn't expect her to forgive me."

Duo jogged down quickly and caught up to him, linking his lantern-free arm around Heero's. "Anyone who knows you now would forgive you in a heartbeat. I know I would." Their eyes met briefly in a shared smile, then tilted back down to the metal staircase so they wouldn't trip in the darkness. In a roundabout way, Heero got the answers he was hoping to find, and found a comforting truth that he hadn't expected. Duo didn't care about what he used to be, only what he finally was.


~~~~~~~~~~

Next, in Episode Fifty-Four: Wufei laments over five wasted years as a lonely, purposeless drudge, and Yasmeen laments over her inability to find her sisters another hiding place, until she follows members of the household around for a day and gets an idea.

*sits back and lets the keyboard cool off* =^o^= Hee...I told you some time ago that Heero's training methods were a LOT different in this story, and now you know I wasn't bluffing! The highly astute among you may know who the poor little French girl is...or maybe you just think you know...or maybe I'm just letting you think that you think I'm letting you know...or maybe...uh, I'm gonna stop now before I give myself a headache. Will we ever meet this girl? Maybe, maybe not. =^_~= Either way, next installment is due on July 22nd. Hope to see ya then!