Warnings: Hm, where do I begin? Aw, just be warned in general. I ain't giving away any hints this time. >=D Well...except one: For God's sake, don't try this at home. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
Disclaimer: ...what? You think I have time to write a new disclaimer every week? Do you have any idea how busy I am!? =P Fuggedaboudit.
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Episode Sixty-One: Asleep, Eyes Open "Curiosity is only vanity. Most frequently we wish not to know, but to talk. We would not take a sea voyage for the sole pleasure of seeing without hope of ever telling." ~Blaise Pascal, "Pensées"September 30th, 1902 Shadow sat quietly on the puffy, quilted, royal blue lounger, a completely round piece of furniture in the den which had no back or arms, was far too short across for a person to lie down on, and really had no practical purpose other than being a kitty pedestal. Shadow was enjoying it. Her pet humans had taken her there and placed her on the puffy pedestal, apparently wanting her to wait there for a moment, so to humour them, she did. Very shortly, her acute hearing picked out the tittering sounds of many more humans, but she couldn't see them. She licked her paws patiently. "Okay, ready?" someone whispered, and a hand reached around the doorframe to click off the lights. There were more hushed whispers, and a big glob of humans marched through the door, starting with the long-tailed one. Suddenly, they all began to make the same noise at once. "For she's a jolly good kitty, for she's a jolly good kitty..." Her long-tailed pet human was carrying a plate with something on it that looked like food, but there was a kind of peg sticking out of it with a flame on top. Shadow wondered why they were trying to burn her food, but knew she could always go to the cold-floored food place and fetch something herself if it was ruined. "...for she's a jolly good kitty, and so say all of us!" They pulled a coffee table up to the pedestal and set the plate down on it, and her two pet humans crouched on either side of her, leaning over and blowing out the tiny flame together. After all the humans started squealing and slapping their hands together, it finally got good, as they all crowded around and petted her. She quickly rolled over to have her belly rubbed, and purred loudly. "Wow...can you believe she used to be just that big?" Duo said, holding his hands up a scant few inches apart. "And look 'ow long 'er fur is now!" Bethany chimed in, to everyone's agreement. Every staff member, except Otto, had gathered in the den with presents for Shadow, and they collectively admired the fine feline form she had grown into. Her shiny gray coat had lengthened substantially and required daily brushing, but it gave her a softer, fluffier shape, with great tufts on her hind legs and tail that flew out behind her when she ran around the house. While everyone else tickled and scratched her, and let her bat their fingers around with her paws, Hilde took the candle out of the mystery food and tapped her fingernail against the dish to catch Shadow's attention. "Here you go, sweetie, eat up!" Shadow rolled over and sniffed at the dish. It was a big slice of tasty chicken loaf! She dove right in, to the 'awww's of everyone around her. Some pulled up chairs, some sat right on the rug, and Pegan made up a fire to make the den nice and comfy for them all. "Do you think she knows what day it is?" Quatre wondered out loud. "Nah, probably not," said Hilde. "Animals can't tell one day from another." "Oh, you'd be surprised," Trowa suggested, watching the chicken loaf rapidly disappear. "I hope she does know that today's special, or she'll be expecting this kind of attention all the time!" Duo said, scratching her behind the ear as she licked the last of the meal off her longest teeth. "Who wants to go first?" Everyone moved at once, and Shadow backed up a few steps to the middle of the puffy pedestal, out of surprise. Doris was given the first opportunity to make her presentation, and she unrolled something soft and bulky from her sewing bag. "I've made you a nice new cushion for your little basket," she told the cat, setting a hand-sewn pillow of purple paisley cotton in front of her. Shadow sniffed it, pawed it, then curled up on it comfortably. "An' I've bought you a nice new catnip mouse, see?" said Elsie, presenting a cloth toy with black button eyes. Shadow took to it right away and began chewing on its tail to a chorus of laughter. "When I was a boy on the farm," Pegan said, taking the cream-coloured armchair opposite the fireplace, "we had a cat who loved to look at herself in the mirror, so I'm hoping you'll enjoy this." He reached right over the cat, her eyes following his arm all the way, and propped a little folding mirror up on its side on the coffee table. The feline was quickly enthralled with her dupli-cat, and stuck her nose up against the glass. Bethany was next, holding up a wooden stick, from which dangled a fluffy, wiggly cluster of brightly-coloured sewing scraps at the end of a heavy-duty string. "An' I made this for ya! Up! Up! Lookit!" The pom-pom of fabric brushed against Shadow's ear, and she eagerly sat up and batted at it while Bethany danced it around on the end of the string. The cuteness level went through the roof. Trowa puffed up proudly and took something off the floor where he sat, something covered by a handkerchief. "Alright, Miss Kitty, prepare to be amazed." He put the object on the table, whipped off the cloth, and the room fell silent. Arthur tipped his cap up to scratch at his forehead. "What the flamin' heck's that?" "My new invention," Trowa said matter-of-factly. It was a small arch made of three disused croquet hoops stuck into a wooden board. Attached to the hoops were dozens of wooden toothpicks pointing inward, like the maw of a miniature sea monster. Nobody could figure out what it was for, and Trowa wasn't telling, but Shadow seemed to know after only a few moments' consideration. She walked up to the contraption and slowly walked through the arch, pushing her head and back against the toothpicks. Quatre's eyes widened, along with everyone else's. "An automatic cat scratcher!?" "Whenever she's got an itch, I see her trying to scratch it against the woodwork, and it's not sharp enough. This is better." They all had to applaud Trowa's ingenuity, while Shadow showed her appreciation by padding through the arch three or four times until she was satisfied with its effectiveness. The gifts didn't end there. Arthur had whittled her a hollow wooden ball with a jingly bell inside that she played excitedly with right away, and Hilde found a pretty silver-tone hairbrush in a specialty shop with a filigree pattern engraved on the handle, the perfect thing to straighten out Shadow's luxurious fur. Quatre presented her with a scratching post to spare the furniture, and Duo had popped for a finely-carved combination food and water dish, highly varnished and decoratively burned with her name and little fish designs. Shadow spent a lot of time purring and licking hands to thank the two-leggers for their generosity. The last gift came from Heero, who had been lounging rather quietly next to the pedestal. All the time he had wistfully watched Shadow receive her other birthday presents, he held a kind of wide, squatty jewellery box, and finally, under many pairs of anxious eyes, he opened it. Shadow poked her muzzle up to the box curiously. Inside was a jet black collar with turquoise edging almost the exact same shade as the cat's glistening eyes, and with a shining tag of purest silver, engraved simply, 'Shadow.' On the reverse side of the tag was etched Duo's name alongside Heero's, with Bridlewood's address and the phrase 'Reward if found,' just in case, God forbid, she should become lost or separated from her loving owners. While the others exhaled in awe of the beautiful thing, Heero took off Shadow's old, tattered satin ribbon and replaced it with the exquisite new collar, buckling it comfortably around her neck. Once it was fastened, she looked straight at the mirror, and although it seemed impossible, she appeared to be admiring her new trinket. "Absolutely stunning," Doris breathed, and the rest of the room quickly agreed. They only had a few moments each to give the birthday girl a cuddle before Pegan stood, clasped his hands behind his back, and glanced at the clock on the wall. "Now then, ladies and gentlemen, the hour afforded to us by the family has ended," he declared, to many moans and protests. "None of that, now. We've had our fun, so let's all get back to our work, shall we?" Reluctantly, the servants gave Shadow a final pat on the head and filed out, the party officially over. Duo took the first of two armloads of presents upstairs to the bedroom, and Heero stayed behind. When he came back down for the second load, he stopped in the doorway and peeked into the den without entering right away. Heero was still there; he had picked Shadow up as soon as everyone else left, and was walking languidly around the room, cuddling her close. Duo smiled and hid just far enough outside the door that he could watch the sweet scene undetected. It struck Duo again just how much Heero had really changed. The same thought must have struck Heero as well, for he seemed to be discussing it with his kitty companion. "You probably don't remember the day you met me, do you?" he asked the cat. Shadow was too relaxed to answer one way or the other, snugly seated in the crook of Heero's arm and resting her head on his shoulder, her eyes drifting blissfully closed as he stroked her back and scratched her neck. Her paws found themselves lying flat on the breast of his jacket, but instead of using her claws on the fine fabric to steady herself, she relied on him not to drop her. She could never raise a claw to one of her favourite two-leggers, except in a dire emergency. "I was very upset with your mother," Heero continued, speaking softly in her ear, "but I suppose I should thank her. If she hadn't kicked me out of my bed...well, who's to say? I might never have realized that I have a soul mate." Obscured by the doorway, Duo smiled and barely blushed. "You're old enough to have had kittens of your own by now, did you know that? And yet, I've never seen you out looking for another cat friend to start a family with. Don't you want kittens?" Shadow merely purred. "...or maybe you're perfectly happy staying here with me, hm? Odd...Duo's the same way." The chef's ears pricked up at the mention of his name. "You both could have families of your own very easily, but you both picked me instead." Heero paused to contemplate that. Duo and Shadow had great potential to follow all the natural processes of life, but Heero wouldn't know where to begin, and would probably fall into a rut with someone like Relena, vainly trying to duplicate the joy and completeness that everyone else seemed to stumble across so readily. He realized then that without Duo and Shadow, he would be spiritually alone no matter how many breathing bodies surrounded him. "You're both giving up so much for me...can't fathom why I should inspire such procreative lethargy in people." Shadow lifted her head, twitched her ears, and glanced around the room. Heero smirked slightly. "If any of these words are too big for you, I can dumb it down," he whispered. Shadow wasn't bothered, and put her head back down. Heero then found a comfy armchair at the far end of the room and lowered himself into it. His voice was so low that Duo had terrible time hearing what was said, but he didn't want to disturb them for the world. "Well...I'm certainly not going to encourage either one of you to leave...hope you don't think that's selfish of me. I've just recently decided.....I've chosen a philosophy of life that I think I could be quite comfortable with. I've decided that I'm an Epicurean." Heero tilted his head to the side to look into Shadows bright, inquisitive eyes. "Do you know what that means?" Shadow wiggled her whiskers, but said nothing, continuing to purr contentedly. "It means I'm not going to deny myself anything. I want to expand my consciousness by experiencing everything in life to the absolute fullest. Probably retroactive compensation for years of radical deprivation." Shadow gazed quizzically at Heero again, and he smiled sympathetically. "I know, more big words. I had a bad childhood, that's all...and now I want to make up for it." Shadow gave the impression of understanding him after all, and twisted around on his arm so she could rub the top of her head against his neck, adding some loving meows to her purrs. She definitely noticed a change in his demeanour over the months as he gradually became less uptight and more catlike, appreciative of a good meal to eat and a warm sunbeam to lie in. On a whim, he lifted her up with both hands and touched their noses together, letting the rest of her dangle. Duo pocketed his hands, leaned against the doorframe, and smiled. He really loves her...he doesn't say it, but he shows it. Kinda like him and me, I suppose. Unable to stay away from such an adorable picture any longer, he sauntered over to the comfy chair just as Heero pulled Shadow down on her back and cradled her like a baby in one arm while rubbing her belly with the other. She loved that. "Don't you two look cute," Duo observed. "This was definitely one of your better ideas," Heero said, giving the chef full credit for the party. "Yeah...but duty calls, y'know. It was fun while it lasted." Sadly, Heero kissed Shadow on the neck and put her down on the floor, then pushed himself out of the chair with a sigh. Acting on previous instructions, Duo pulled up the hem of his white buttoned smock and removed something tucked into his the waistband of his matching trousers, a glossy silver pistol. He handed it over to Heero, who looked at it with despair before putting it back in his hidden shoulder holster. "A lot of things were nice while they lasted." The gun had changed hands just while Heero spent some quality time with Shadow, lest she accidentally paw it while the two of them were snuggling, but other than that brief interval, Heero had been forced to carry it with him at all times, having no other secure place to keep it now that Relena had a master key, and apparently was willing to use it. "Well, never mind," said the chef. "It's not always going to be like this. Something's gotta break eventually." That was as much as could be said about their present situation, and there was no telling how long they would be looking over their shoulders. Duo found it interesting that Heero had Bridlewood's address engraved on Shadow's tag, as if he didn't expect to leave anytime soon, but as they walked out of the den with the cat following close behind, he concluded that a new tag was a small expense, and that someday they would have the distinct happiness of choosing a new one with their own address on it. They couldn't be stuck there forever. **********Relena sat curled up on her bed for a long time, contemplating her invitation to Une and Treize's engagement party. Since it arrived in the mail several days ago, she still hadn't decided what to do about it. Every time she read the list of activities, something tickled and poked at the back of her brain, like fate was trying to tell her something. There was to be food, drink, dancing, parlour games, and fireworks. ...fireworks... The word echoed endlessly in her head, but she couldn't understand why. It had nothing to do with the things she needed, such as the truth, and the upper hand. ...fireworks... The echo persisted. She couldn't make sense of it, and spent so long puzzling over it that she missed lunch, even when three different servants and her brother came knocking at her door to call her to the table. It was extremely frustrating that no one would tell her what she wanted to know, and infuriating to think that it could merely be because of her age and gender. She strongly felt she deserved to know why her entire household seemed to be wrapped up in mysteries she couldn't fathom, and why every question led to Treize in one way or another. The pressure inside her brain increased so much in such a short time that she thought she might scream, and was only prevented from doing so by a fifth, and final, knock at her bedchamber door. "Miss?" said the hollow, wooden voice of Otto. "Young Mr. Wyndham is downstairs, ready to take you to the engagement party." Relena sank her head down onto her knees. Marcus had received an invitation at the same time she did. Lady Une was clearly playing them both for fools, but when Marcus approached her and offered to make it a less than nauseating evening, she panicked and said yes. Now she didn't want to go, at least not officially. "I'm not going!" She could hear Otto huff out a terse breath. "It's not very ladylike to disappoint a gentleman at the last minute!" "I don't care! Tell him I'm sick!" Relena waited awhile, but no further sounds came from the other side of the door. She felt terrible, treating Marcus so shabbily, but if she was going to get the answers she needed, she had to concentrate on a plan, not on making polite dinner conversation. She also hated Treize and Une for keeping her from a perfectly good party with dancing and champagne and... ...and fireworks! Of course! A thunderbolt hit her right between the eyes, and inspiration rained down. Suddenly, she knew how to work the party to her advantage, and she could start right at her own front doorstep. Hugging her pink ruffled pillow, she immediately let the gears in her head spin wildly, formulating a work of art, a plan of action. **********The house became unusually quiet around dinnertime. While Relena had pointedly decided that she wasn't going anywhere, she begged the rest of the family to go out somewhere and enjoy themselves. Dorothy didn't seem all that interested in the engagement party, so she made up a foursome with Otto, Lucrezia, and Milliardo at a randomly-chosen fancy restaurant. Wufei and Hilde had disappeared hours earlier, and Relena had given the rest of the staff the night off, so the manor was virtually empty. Only the butler and the chef remained. The pair were engaged in idle chatter when a low-pitched bell sounded. They flipped a coin, and Heero lost. He made his way upstairs to the parlour, favourite haunt of young Lady Peacecraft, and entered with a brief and purely formal knock. Relena was curled up on the sofa facing away from the door, and barely turned her head as Heero stood at attention and awaited his orders. "Shut the door, please." The butler obeyed exactly, shutting the door and standing close before it. Soon, Relena looked over her shoulder with an aura of tremendous innocence, fiddling with a bit of ribbon on her dress, and made doe eyes at him. "Come and talk to me?" Heero forcibly exhaled just below the girl's threshold of hearing, and walked over to the sofa. Relena tucked her legs up closer to her chest, making room, and Heero slowly sat down, facing forward but keeping a careful eye on her at all times. "I didn't know what to do with myself," the girl said, looking down. "There was no possibility of going to that wretched party, but I didn't want to be alone all night either. You understand, don't you?" "I suppose." "Then you won't mind sitting with me? Just for a little while?" No matter how hard he tried, Heero couldn't think of a valid reason to refuse. She seemed so genuine, so pitifully sincere that it would have been cruel to deny her some simple companionship for a short time. "Alright." Relena smiled ever so sweetly as he appeared to relax a bit. "It's awfully good of you...I know we haven't gotten along perfectly in recent days, but I always hoped we'd stay friends. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?" "Nothing whatsoever." "Good." She swung her stocking feet back down to the floor and sat up straight, reaching over to the end table on her left. "Can I pour you a drink?" Heero blinked and noticed the small collection of crystal just within her grasp, honestly seeing it for the first time. There was a decanter of whiskey that, at one time, would have been a source of terrible temptation, but now he no longer felt its pull. "No, thank you." "Oh, go on, spoil yourself," Relena insisted, already pouring a half-glass. "I'm having one, so you might as well join me. I can't let an occasion like my uncle's engagement party pass without some gesture of revulsion, can I?" Before she even finished her sentence, a second glass was poured, and she held it out to Heero with a fresh, beguiling smile. The butler raised an eyebrow. If she was attempting to ply him with alcohol, she was in for a difficult time, for it took a great deal to get him drunk. Still, at the moment it was only one glass, and he had plenty of time to make a graceful exit before things got out of hand. He took the glass and swirled the amber fluid within, planning his next six strategic moves. "What shall we drink to?" Momentarily unbalanced by his rapid agreement, Relena took all the bits and pieces balled up in the growing analytical part of her brain, and summarized it, her glass raised. "To higher thinking." ...interesting. Heero clinked his glass against hers, and then, being the gentleman that he was, paused to allow her the first sip. Really, he just wanted to watch with shameful amusement as she took a single gulp and scrunched up her entire face in a bitter grimace as it slid painfully down, finishing with a pathetic little cough. He was sorely tempted to swallow his own helping in one gulp to show her how it was supposed to be done, but while he was thinking about it, she added another thought. "Aren't you cold?" she said with a shiver, rubbing her arm with her free hand. "I'm freezing and I can't think why. Would you make up a fire for me?" "Some more of that should warm you up quick enough," Heero said, pointing to her glass with his. "All the same, I'd really like a fire. I love watching the sparks jump around, especially when I'm sad...things never seem so bleak in front of a warm fire.....please?" That officially qualified as fighting dirty, but it was an easy enough wish to grant. Sighing on the inside, Heero put his whiskey glass down on the coffee table and went to the fireplace. He took a single match out of the container on the mantle and crouched down in front of the stone hearth, lighting a scrap of newspaper from the tinderbox to the right and tossing it into the fire pit. Oddly, the surrounding twigs and logs weren't picking up any of the new flames. Relena watched him carefully, and took careful note of the exact moment when he appeared to be having difficulty. With both hands, she slowly reached into a well-hidden pocket sewn into the folds of her skirt, grasping a small object, a bottle. "Anything wrong?" she asked, using her voice to mask the sound of unscrewing the tiny bottle cap. Without turning around, Heero gave his best assessment of the problem, scooping up a pinchful of soggy wood chips with a groan. "Someone didn't close the damper when it rained this morning. I'll have to sweep this out and start all over with fresh wood." "I can wait as long as it takes," said Relena. Heero took that to mean, 'I don't care what's wrong, just fix it,' so he took two of the polished copper utensils from the accessory rack and began gathering up the rain-soaked bits to be adequately disposed of in the decorative coal scuttle, for the time being. While his back was busily turned, Relena used miniscule, almost imperceptible movements to take something out of her hidden bottle without making any suspicious sounds. Using her longest fingernail on her skinniest finger, she snagged a tiny white pill and tried to drag it out into her hand. During the process of cleaning out the hearth, Heero's elbow knocked against the accessory stand and rattled it. The shockwave also rattled Relena, and she dropped the pill. It slid down her dress, hit the rug, and rolled under the sofa, stuck in one of the crevices comprising the floral design. She nearly gasped, but held it in, and then realized she couldn't lean over far enough to look directly underneath her to see if the pill was visible. Heero still looked busy, but already had fresh kindling in the hearth and a second match. Acting fast, Relena reached back into the bottle, dug out more pills--she couldn't tell how many, but it was definitely more than one--and dropped them into his glass. Just then, a sustainable flame was successfully achieved, and Heero stood to set the burnt match on the mantlepiece. When he turned back, Relena had tucked her feet back up on the sofa, and had one arm wrapped tightly around her, the other nursing her glass. She was staring at him very strangely, when she wasn't trying overly hard not to stare at all. The look she gave him made him think he'd done something wrong. "Is the fire to Madam's liking?" he asked. Relena hastily nodded. Seconds passed. "Madam wouldn't like a long stick with a marshmallow on it, perhaps?" She shook her head. More seconds passed. "Shall I go, then?" "No!" Relena gasped. She smiled semi-convincingly. "Don't go, you...you haven't finished your drink!" The thought of the untouched drink made her look directly at it. She couldn't see the pills. Maybe she couldn't see them because of the facets of the crystal. Maybe they dissolved as they were supposed to. Maybe she only thought she dropped them in when, in fact, she missed and they all rolled off the coffee table and onto the carpet to join their departed brother. She couldn't tell. It was making her very nervous. Hesitantly, Heero re-took his position on the sofa and picked up his glass, not really looking at it. "There's nothing wrong, is there?" "Wrong? ...no..." She watched, zombie-like, as Heero raised the glass, tipped the whole thing back, and downed the shot in the blink of an eye. "I was just...thinking about my uncle...thinking about all his lies...thinking about...about what truths he was hiding..." Just as Heero put the empty glass down, he noticed the fire was waning already, and he got up automatically to stir the embers. Relena's eyes followed him closely as she gnawed on her thumbnail. As Heero neared the mantlepiece, it blurred slightly, and he blinked and rubbed his eyes thinking it was nothing, since a slight increase in concentration cleared the problem. When he leaned a bit to the side to extract the fireplace poker from the accessory stand, it blurred as well, and as he gripped the handle with one hand, a spurt of dizziness overtook him, and he had to grip the mantlepiece with his other hand. He turned his back to the fire and looked desperately up at the electric light, which was turning all sorts of funny colours and looked like six lights instead of one. By the time he realized that he had been fiendishly duped, it was all over. He took one reflexive step forward and crumpled to the carpet face first, out for the count. The fireplace poker flew a few inches from his limp hand and rolled to a gentle stop, bringing about total silence. Relena stood and looked over the scene, wide-eyed. Her own glass dropped from her hand, spilling its remaining contents on the rug, but she ignored it, standing over Heero with a blank look. His head was turned to the right, and both arms were splayed out slightly like he'd been smacked with a giant flyswatter. Gingerly, she stepped around him to his left side and crouched down, scowling. He had fallen at a very bad angle for her purposes, but no matter. She had gone this far, and wasn't about to be stopped by something as trivial as that. With both hands, she grasped the left corner of his jacket and tugged it out from underneath him, searching for the ultimate prize. **********Lady Une had spared no expense in transforming her spacious back yard into a garden of earthly delights that was unparalleled in living memory. A scandalous amount of money had been playfully squandered on enormous bouquets of creamy white flowers, cages full of cooing doves, a twenty-piece orchestra, and tables of food as far as the eye could see. As the solo harpist plucked out a lilting melody, the happy couple-to-be strolled around, greeting their huge mob of guests one by one. It was only mid-afternoon, and the party was slated to run well into the night, yet Une already noticed one or two conspicuous absences. "Your charming niece opted to stay home, I see," she said cattily, clinging to Treize's arm. "Mmmm, yes, poor darling," Treize laughed without remorse. "Oh look! There's her little man, Marcus!" Une pointed the youngster out and laughed craftily. He was trying to socialize and be generally friendly towards the other guests, but in the end, he stood alone, not finding any other young ladies who could take the place of his Lena Lilywhite. "Imagine, standing him up like that. Shows that I have a greater influence on her after all." "You're sure it's you keeping her away and not me?" Treize chuckled. Une giggled, a peculiar sound indeed. "Whatever makes you happy, darling!" As far as either of them thought, they had a perfect right to be complacent, for their future was just as rosy as could be. They couldn't imagine anything ruining such a perfect day, and expected even more perfect days ahead. It was perhaps because of this overconfidence that fate decided Treize, at least, was due to be taken down a peg. **********After awhile, Duo got to wondering what had happened to Heero, and the short stack of dishes that needed washing didn't keep him occupied for long. Eventually, he had scrubbed the whole kitchen down to a sparkling shine, and Heero still wasn't back yet. Darn that snivelling little wench, keeping him occupied all this time, he thought spitefully. Duo sat, and waited, and sat, and waited, and began thinking worse things about Relena, things that would require several 'Hail Mary's to make up for. Suddenly, he heard a sharp yip from upstairs. Frederick, he concluded. Must've seen another dog out the window...although it's already pretty dark outside... Frederick barked again, and several times more. He sounded insistent about something, perhaps more than a dog on the other side of the street. Undoing the collar button on his chef's uniform, he cautiously climbed the stairs, following the sound of the desperate yapping. He made it to the first floor, then towards the front of the house, and finally to the door of the parlour, which was slightly ajar. He pushed it open without any concept of what lay inside. What Frederick was barking so frantically at was Heero, sprawled out face-down on the fringed carpet. Shadow was there too, licking his jaw in an attempt to rouse him, after several obvious red scratch marks to the back of his right hand had failed. A fireplace poker and a whiskey glass co-mingled on the floor, apparently completing the scene. At first, Duo sighed with disappointment. Drunk! he shouted in his head. And he promised he'd never get drunk without me there again! He crouched down and swatted Frederick away, and the canine hopped up on the forbidden sofa, his job done. "C'mon you, on your feet," Duo said, giving the boy a shake. No reaction. He tried it again, only a bit harder. "Man...I've heard of being 'dead drunk,' but this is silly! Heero! ...Heero?" Something didn't seem quite right. The presence of the animals was eerie in itself, and Duo began to worry. He flipped Heero over, shook him, slapped him, but no one could have gotten that drunk off the meagre amount of booze missing from the only visible decanter. Something was very wrong. He sprinted out into the hall, to telephone Sally. **********Over at Lady Une's estate, the food that had been such a big success was nearly gone, and the sun had set, casting the blue pallor of dusk over everything in sight. The stone patio was still filled with couples dancing the night away to the merry tunes provided by the band, and in other areas of the vast lawn, small groups of guests were abandoning their games to sit closer to the warmth of the newly-lit torches. They were getting ready for the grand finale, the fireworks display. Treize graciously allowed Une to spend most of her time gossiping with equally vapid females from around the neighbourhood, and found himself a quiet corner to enjoy his imported cigar in peace. He couldn't be left alone for long, though, before one of the waiters approached him with an empty tray. That could only have meant that he had a message to deliver. "Beggin' your pardon, sir," the waiter addressed him humbly. "Yes?" "There's a young lady askin' after you." Treize arched one of his forked eyebrows and shook out the match that lit his cigar, tossing it in the grass. "Well, who is it?" "Don't know, sir, but she says to meet you out by the coach house." "What did she look like?" the Count said mistrustfully. If it was an old flame resurfacing, his engagement party was hardly the time to reminisce. Besides, he couldn't think of any past courtesans who were currently visiting England anyway. "Don't know, sir. She 'ad a cloak covering 'er face." Despite the danger, Treize couldn't help but be intrigued. Without bothering to thank the lowly waiter for the relayed information, he strutted away and glanced over his shoulder at the crowd gathering near the house to watch the fireworks. The coach house was quite near the square of gravel and sand where the professional team of explosives technicians were making their final preparations. As he passed by them, he remembered stories told to him by his oldest relations of the days when fireworks only came in plain white, and felt naturally deserving to have been born into an age of such advanced chemical technologies as red, green, orange, and blue firecrackers. When Treize reached the coach house, he couldn't see anyone right away, and wondered if it had all been a clever hoax, to what end, he couldn't guess. Bored, he wandered all the way around to the back of the building, away from the prying eyes of the technicians, who really couldn't care less, and he puffed away at his cigar waiting for the mystery woman to reveal herself. At the absolute farthest point from the rest of the party, he got his wish. "Lovely to see you again...dear uncle." As a slim, shiny barrel poked out of the darkness, carried by a delicate white glove, Treize wondered if there might still be room for him at the buffet table, if he hurried. **********"...and I tried over and over again to wake him up but he just wouldn't budge, and Shadow and Freddie tried too and he's still not moving, an--" "I get the picture, just take me to him," Sally said hurriedly, and she moved quickly out of the way so Duo could close the front door and run back to the parlour. When they got there, the scene was much the same, only Frederick had tired of the game and wandered off, while Shadow had curled up into a snug ball nestled between Heero's arm and side. Sally crouched right down in her hastily-donned tailored cream trousers and rolled up the sleeves of her pale blue blouse to check the boy's vitals. "Did he eat anything unusual today?" "Not that I know of," Duo said, sitting down cross-legged as close as he could without getting in the way. "I know it looks like he was drinking, but not nearly enough to--" "No, not nearly," Sally confirmed after leaning down to sniff Heero's shallow breath. "Two glasses...he wasn't drinking alone. Who else was here?" "Well...Relena was the only other person in the house." Sally's eyebrows flew up. "And she drinks at her age?" Duo shrugged helplessly. Shadow sensed his distress and padded over to him, rubbing her head on his knee. He petted her gratefully and chewed his lip. Sally found that Heero's vital signs were all a bit off. His blood pressure, heart rate, temperature and respiration were all diminished, but at least they were reasonably stable. Before deciding on a treatment, however, she needed a cause, and began a detailed search of the crime scene for clues, accompanied by the sounds of Duo's self-doubt. "Maybe he's got some weird food allergy I don't know about! I've heard a lot of oriental people can't handle dairy products, and I keep letting him put milk in his tea! Why wasn't I paying attention!?" Sally finished her first circle of the room on foot, and began a second sweep on her hands and knees, shaking her head. "If he was allergic to milk, you both would have known it by now, and it wouldn't have necessarily had this effect anyway. No..." She crawled all the way around the sofa, near the fallen whiskey glass, and eventually paused, plucking something up off the carpet. "...no, this kind of deep anaesthesia doesn't happen without help." At the doctor's tone of discovery, Duo looked up, and saw that she was up on her knees, arms slung over the back of the sofa, and pinching something small and round and white between her fingers. Her whole expression spelled 'Eureka!' "What's that?" "I'll tell you for certain in a minute," she said, walking quickly back to her black bag and extracting some powders and glassware from it. Duo swallowed. "What can you tell me for less-than-certain now?" Sally shushed him while she dropped the pill into a glass tube and added a dribble of whiskey from the decanter, watching the speed at which the pill dissolved. Closing her thumb over the tube, she inverted it, then turned it upright again and licked a tiny bit of the liquid off her finger, detecting no change in taste or smell. "The simplest solution is often the correct one, and since I don't have time to waste on complicated solutions, I'm going to blame this on chloral hydrate." She received only a blank look from Duo. "Sleeping pills. One or two pills gives you a good night sleep. One or two pills combined with alcohol gives you a coma. It's not generally lethal, unless you really overdo it, but even so, the side effects can be nasty." Duo knew for an iron-clad fact that Heero wouldn't try to kill himself, nor was he having difficulty sleeping, which left Relena as the only possibility, but at the moment, he was too blinded by abject fear to be angry at her. That would come later. "Well, if that's all it is, you can fix it, right?" "If that's all it is, theoretically...it should clear his system in a few hours," she deduced. "But on the other hand, I have no way of knowing how much he's had. It could have been an overdose, and I don't like his temperature at the moment." That scared Duo most of all. He had just learned the subtle difference between 'stable' and 'serious' when it came to a patient's health. Suddenly, he shook all over, and rushed behind Heero to prop up his shoulders and head, wanting to be able to heal him with a single touch. He squeezed his eyes shut and hung his head. "I left them up here for more than an hour! If I'd only come up sooner, he'd--" "You don't know that." Always the calmer set of gray cells, Sally was busy sorting out some herbs and powders from her red satin pouch with the embroidered dragon. "This stuff gets into your blood almost as fast as you can swallow it. What we have to concentrate on now is overpowering it, because if we can wake him up, we have a better chance of purging his system before any permanent damage takes place." Duo paled. "W-what kind of permanent damage?" Sally didn't answer, focusing more on her work, but she had said just enough to terrify the already shaken chef. "Tell me! What could it do to him!?" "I'm not even considering that option until this doesn't work," the doctor said, getting up to open the liquor cabinet along the west wall. Inside, she found a bottle of seltzer water, which was quicker than running downstairs to the kitchen and the brass taps, and carefully spritzed some of it into a glass. Next, she dumped a small assortment of powders into the seltzer and swirled it around. "Here, give me a hand..." With Duo's help, she propped Heero up far enough to tilt his pale head back and literally pour the mixture down his throat. "You gonna tell me what that is?" Sally sealed up the container the powder came from, held it up to her face, and shook it with a smile. "Caffeine ain't got nothing on me." She wasn't kidding. Within moments of ingesting the pungent potpourri, Heero began to gag and cough violently, the spell momentarily broken. Duo went straight to work slapping him on the back, and Sally poured more seltzer to start thinning down his bloodstream with. As soon as he had enough muscular control to hold a glass, they shoved one after another into his hand, telling him to drink. Eventually, his eyes stopped watering, and he managed to look up and see Sally's face, utterly perplexed. He tried to choke out the word 'what' to begin a question he didn't know how to finish, but couldn't quite form the letters properly. Sally was already putting her vials and potions away, satisfied with the result. "Mickey Finn called while you were out. I told him to leave a message." "...who?" Heero coughed. Duo ran a hand through his bangs, wiping away a thin layer of sweat. "Knockout drops, Heero. Relena nailed you good." "Now all we need to know is why," Sally said, buckling up her black bag and yawning once from the effects of her own diagnostics. "...Relena..." Heero knew something unpleasant had been recently attached to that name in his mind, and as his head slowly cleared, he remembered. It worried Duo, seeing the paralytic look on Heero's face as he felt along his side under his jacket, and finally he slapped the hand over his eyes and curled over in defeat. "Ikkene..." "What?" "...she took my gun." None of them wanted to believe it, but there was no simpler explanation for the empty shoulder holster, amid all the other evidence of treachery. "...hello? Anyone home?" Distant voices dragged them from their morbid thoughts. "Tro an' Quat," Duo breathed. "If they're back already, the family can't be far behind." Heero grabbed Duo roughly by the front of his shirt, fighting the urge to give in to the remnants of the sleep drug. "You have to tell them...to go find her. She's out there...running around with a loaded weapon..." Even doped up, Heero's brain was quicker than Duo's at figuring out why that particular combination on this particular night was dangerous. "Oh my gosh...the engagement party is tonight. But you don't think she'd--" "What wouldn't she do, after doing this much!? Find her!" Yelling wasn't the best use of Heero's limited resources, and after issuing his instructions, he flopped back down on the rug and wheezed with exhaustion. Duo and Sally got up together, but she stopped him from leaving the room, pulling him aside for an important whisper session. "I'll go tell them what's happening. I want you to stay here with him." "But I should be out there looking with them! You're the doctor, you should stay here! Heero needs you!" Sally yawned again, and her reckless behaviour with the chloral hydrate was starting to catch up with her. "I'm not going to be any use to anyone in an hour or less. I've got just enough time to fill the boys in and send them on their treasure hunt. In the meantime...I know you'd rather stay with Heero anyway. Am I right?" Duo looked at his shoes. "...yeah..." "Then keep him awake," she said, patting his arm. "Walk him around. Make him drink some more water, even if it keeps him up for the rest of the night. Then you can let him sleep without worrying about whether or not he'll wake up." She looked to the side and saw that the patient was already forcing himself to sit up and take some deep breaths. "I don't know, though...he's a lot tougher than he looks sometimes." She left the boys to pick up themselves, pick up the room, and get out of sight before Milliardo and the others came home. There would probably be hell to pay no matter what happened in the next few hours; how much or how little depended on Relena, the one factor they could never hope to control. **********Treize couldn't help but find the whole situation criminally amusing, and when Relena stepped out of the shadows levelling a gun at his head, he wanted to laugh out loud. "And what's this? Out playing cowgirls and Indians? Now there's one thing I actually thought you were too old for." Relena's eyes were cold steel. "I'm not too young, I'm not too old, I'm not too anything." Treize smirked with his whole face, like the very idea of his niece being assertive was laughable. "If you insist," he scoffed. "Now, why don't you tell me what this is all about? If you're still bitter over that little misunderstanding about the gold, then--" "You'll talk when I tell you what to say, not before!!" The count actually flinched, though still smiling. She almost sounded like she meant it. "Fine. What do you want?" Relena swallowed, adjusting her grip on the weapon. She was too far away to disarm quickly, but definitely close enough to shoot straight, if she knew how to shoot at all. "I want the truth. I want to know everything that's going on that nobody wants to tell me because I'm just little Relena and I can't understand anything!" Treize shrugged. "What makes you think there's anything to tell?" Relena reached up with her thumb and pulled down the gun's hammer with a click. She'd seen it done before, in moving pictures, so she knew it would work. "Bluffery doesn't suit you, dear. That toy isn't even loaded, is it?" "It's loaded." Treize snorted and paced around, chuckling and paying more attention to his cigar than anything else. "You came all this way to shoot me within earshot of five hundred party guests? You'd never get away with it, even if you found some tiny scrap of courage, or hysteria, that could make you pull the trigger." "Oh, I'd get away with it," Relena promised him. Just then, high above the coach house, the fireworks display began, showering the sky with bright sparkles and piercing the air with loud cracks. The girl had to raise her voice a little to explain her reasoning, what with the thundering explosions and the cheering crowd as competition, but it was a thrilling necessity. "You see, everyone's expecting loud noises, like firecrackers and gunshots! I could put six bullets in you right now, and they'd all think it was part of the entertainment!" The Count's smile vanished. "You're not serious." Relena fired a shot a hand's breadth from his ear to prove how serious she was. Treize ducked and went deathly pale as he realized he was actually in mortal danger, but he wasn't done talking until his corpse hit the ground. "If you kill me, you'll never get the answers you want!" he shouted overtop of the fireworks. "So there is something to tell!" "Yes, and you'll have to treat me a little better than this to hear it!" "I don't have to kill you, Uncle." Relena suddenly put both hands on the gun and pointed it a good deal lower than before. Treize visibly cringed. "I could just render you useless to your future bride, that should be enough!" Faced with the threat of an excruciating appendagectomy, the Count regained his composure surprisingly fast, taking another long drag of his cigar. "You drive a hard bargain. It's possible that I underestimated you." "I'm not interested in compliments," the girl spat, still pointing the gun somewhere below the Count's bellybutton. "Alright...I'll tell you the truth," Treize bargained with a brave smirk, "but you have to agree to something. You have to agree to listen to the entire truth, meaning you can't pick and choose. If what I say frightens you, you can't turn away! Take it if you want it so badly, but don't cry about it once it's yours!" He was so confident that it made Relena doubt for a moment if she really wanted to know. It only lasted a moment, though. "Fine." "Fine." And Treize proceeded to tell her everything. Absolutely everything. **********Trowa found a map of the city and plotted out the most direct route between Bridlewood and Lady Une's, while Quatre sat tensely and meditated, trying to centre himself for an important task. After Sally came stumbling downstairs, gave them the abbreviated version of the night's events and hailed a cab home, they didn't know what to think, but they knew what to do. Quatre was the best possible person she could have asked to go looking for Relena, and only the two of them knew why. They struck out into the darkest night already fatigued and ready for bed, but they shook off their doziness for the sake of their leader's orders. The fog was rolling in, and it was increasingly difficult to see the farther they strayed from home, but Quatre didn't need to see with his eyes. He knew exactly what Relena's soul felt like, and if she was in distress, she would be even easier to pick out when most people were getting ready for bed. It was more than a half-hour's walk spent before Quatre suddenly veered off in a new direction, with Trowa close on his heels. They wouldn't know for a minute or two how close they were to finding the girl, for at that moment, she was huddled in a corner between two tall spruce trees in a public park only a few hundred yards away, shivering from shock much more than the cold, despite the thin cloak wrapped tightly around her. Her hands were tucked in tightly somewhere between her knees and her waist, and she stared at the ground in front of her feet, shaking and whimpering. She never expected to hear the things Treize told her. She thought it was just a case of attempted larceny for personal gain, or a bid to discredit her family somehow, but this! This terrible truth, this horrid reality that she never knew existed was crushing her, twisting and bending her into a shape she couldn't hold without cracking. When she woke up that morning, the world was ruled by honest people who believed in justice and goodness and loving their neighbours, but now she saw that was an illusion. She had stopped crying only a little while ago, but tears continued to stain her cheeks. She could no longer think in complete sentences. It was all a garble of shapeless threats and broken dreams, and she was sure her uncle was laughing at her, somewhere. He was hoping this would happen. He was counting on her weak spirit to crumble when he overloaded her with horrors born in the underworld, and as she sat there in a sobbing heap, he was winning. "...here she is!" A soft, lilting voice appeared to her left, and soon there was someone crouching next to her, but that was all she was aware of in her state. Her fair-haired visitor put an arm around her and felt her forehead. "Relena? Are you alright? Talk to me, please..." A second person, this one with cinnamon hair, crouched on her right-hand side and gently pried her arm out of her bunched-up skirt. Heero's pistol dangled precariously from her half-open hand, and the boy carefully pulled it away, watching her face for any sort of reaction. He raised the muzzle of the gun to his nose and inhaled in short spurts. "It's been fired," he said quietly. "Let's just get her home and worry about that later," the other boy said, and he slung the girl's arm around his own shoulders. The cinnamon-haired boy did the same, and together they stood her back on her feet. Though she still wasn't coherent enough to recognize either of them, she allowed them to gradually lead her away from the park and back to her home. All the way, she could neither see nor hear her surroundings, experiencing instead a kind of shock-induced sensory deprivation. Her vacant blue eyes watered of their own accord, but an eerie calm slowly spread over the rest of her face. Already, a tiny speck of her soul, one that was barely strong enough to endure the revelations of the evening, was trying to be a stabilizing influence, singing pleasant songs from her childhood, and telling her to rebuild. If she made it through this firestorm, she had a faint hope of ending up stronger for it, but it would take time. **********The rest of the household was home by the time Relena was brought back. She was practically comatose, though she could walk and follow directions easily enough. Unfortunately, once Heero was well enough to walk and talk on his own, Sally went home, so there was no one to diagnose Relena's strange affliction, and she silently resisted the family's best attempts to find out what was wrong. Frustrated and very worried, Milliardo finally gave up and sent her to bed, asking Lucrezia to watch her carefully for the rest of the night. The best they could hope for was that she would be able to verbalize what had happened to her by the morning. Duo and Heero stayed well out of their way as soon as the front door opened, announcing Her Ladyship's fateful return. Just in case questions started flying in all directions, they didn't want to be hit with anything they couldn't reasonably answer, given the circumstances. Besides, Heero hadn't fully recovered from his chemical attack, and just needed to heal himself with natural sleep. Trowa made a secret trip up to their room to deliver the gun and describe Relena's condition, then flew back downstairs to hide from the family. Duo and Heero hid in their bedroom as well, pretending to be asleep already, and listened through the heating vents to what little they could before shaking their heads at it all and preparing for bed. "Feeling better?" "Some." "Want more water?" "...ungh...no, thank you." "If you don't mind my saying so," Duo ventured, "it's kinda weird that a secret agent with so much training could get levelled by a 95-pound bunny rabbit in a pink dress." Heero glared, but Duo didn't back down. "I'm just sayin', is all..." Heero dropped his head and sighed. "I don't know what's what anymore." They were both changing out of their work clothes by then, but were too engrossed with the mystery at hand to be concerned with Victorian modesty, and disrobed in the same room while they talked. "How could she manage to drug you anyway? I thought you were supposed to have all these conditioned resistances and stuff." "I have a moderate resistance to more than a dozen lethal poisons," Heero said with a hurt tone of slighted pride. "But not liquor and pills." "Not...liquor and pills." It was a stinging admission, to say the least. Duo thought it best to change the subject slightly, but couldn't find any subject that was better or worse than the current one. "I can't figure it out," he said for the third time at least, pulling his black pajama top over his head. "She's never showed any interest in guns before. Why would she want it? What did she do with it?" Heero shook his head, drowsily bewildered as he tried to change clothes with hands and fingers that just wouldn't work. "I only know this much...mine is the only firearm in the house small enough to be concealed in a woman's dress." Duo was surprised that Heero would know such a thing. "Really?" Heero made it as far as getting his black pajama bottoms over his shorts before having to stop and regain his bearings. The dizzy spells were less frequent now, but they weren't completely gone. "Everything else is hunting rifles. I know because I've already looked in every corner for an inventory of deadly weapons. It was one of the first things I did when I arrived here." "...yeah, that does make sense, actually." Duo wandered into the bathroom and unravelled his braid as he mulled it over. "She might've killed somebody, and we'd never know about it. What if she wore gloves when she did it? Then the only prints on the gun would yours, mine, and Trowa's! What would we do?" Too exhausted to contemplate it, Heero slumped forward a bit and shook his head with his eyes closed. "Damn...we'd better hope she didn't do anything stupid, or we'll all catch hell for it, and I've already seen enough of jail in my short life. You make sure you scrub that thing clean if the police ever--" Duo stopped in mid-thought when he came out of the bathroom and looked at the bed. Heero was slumped over on his right side, fast asleep and deeply entangled with his pillow, still wearing his uniform shirt. Duo looked pitifully at him. Aw. Poor guy's worn out... He brushed a few more long strokes through his hair as he walked back to the bed, then crawled up behind Heero and set the brush on the bedside table. "Rough day, I know...the kind that won't go away quick enough." He pulled Heero back up into a sitting position, but the butler was soundly asleep, and this time was staying that way. His green pajama top was lying rumpled on the bed just a few inches away, and it seemed a shame to put unnecessary wrinkles into such a nice dress shirt by letting Heero sleep in it, so Duo began wriggling the boy's arms out of it, peeling the shirt off and tossing it in the corner. Heero's dozing form continually wanted to flop over on its side, so Duo had to clutch him close with one arm while snagging the green fabric with the other. It was only then, after sharing close quarters with Heero for an entire year, that he noticed something unusual. The two of them had rarely been very close without at least one layer of clothing between them, and never had Duo seen Heero's bare back, but now he could see something wasn't quite right about it. There were dozens of fine lines cris-crossing his thin body, some lighter than others, and some only barely visible in the dim lamplight. Duo hesitantly ran a hand over the skin and found it was rough and deeply scarred. It wasn't at all difficult for Duo to imagine what implement of torture could have caused that sort of damage. He wrapped both arms tightly around Heero from behind and hugged him, sighing as his loosened strands of chestnut hair draped over the boy's shoulders. The strange way Heero spoke earlier about not wanting to deprive himself began to make sense. He had suffered enough. "You really scared me today," Duo whimpered softly. Heero was still unresponsive, and would likely be that way until breakfast. Duo collected himself long enough to wrangle Heero into his green pajama top and tuck him into bed, then got up and locked the door, propping a chair in front of it, as was his paranoid custom now. He shut off the bedroom light, and blew out the lamp on the bedside table, then checked on Shadow, fast asleep in her basket with the new purple paisley cushion, all while re-braiding his hair into a brown blob that was less tidy that the frizzy rope that preceded it. An uneasy feeling overcame him, the feeling that not one of them involved with the sleeping pills incident could be one hundred percent certain whether or not they would have a home by the morning. What would Relena have to say once she came to her senses? What would she confess to? Who would she blame? Would Scotland Yard come knocking at their door? It hurt just to breathe, thinking about it all. Duo crawled under the covers, coiled his arms around Heero's waist, resting his head in the middle of his green pajama top, and thought hard about bluebirds and boxed chocolates until he couldn't think anymore. |
~~~~~~~~~~
| Next, in Episode Sixty-Two: A delegation approaches Heero with a formal proposition regarding his newly-formed cabal, while Marcus laments over Relena's sudden withdrawal from the world. Duo receives a long-awaited mail-order package. |
My gosh, that was tiring. =o_o'= Did you like it? =D A lot of this was written while listening to U2's "Electrical Storm," and I wonder if it had any influence... *shruggle* Wow. Rachel and I have a jam-packed couple of weeks ahead of us. Birthdays, relatives, exams, Canadian Thanksgiving...we don't want to impose on anyone, but we need a little time off. *sweatdroppy* So, I'd like to set the next installment for October 16th. *ducks hurled objects* Aw, please? It'd just be too rough on us, to make it any sooner, and we need to back up and sort out the next couple of months' worth of the plot. *flutters eyelids* Anyway, this is a lot to take in all at once, I figure...you all need time to, er, digest it. Yeah. =9_9'= And in the end, it'll drive your curiosity wild. =^_~= ...I hope.