Disclaimer: I know, from traipsing through every store, mall, and boutique in the Greater Toronto Area, that nobody has Gundam pilots for sale. I even offered to pay retail instead of the supposed sale price, but they still said no. Therefore, I cannot possibly own these magnificent examples of manhood, or the chicks they hang out with. Do not sue me. I have no money except that miniscule amount reserved for presents.

~~~~~~~~~~

Episode Sixty-Eight: The Time Capsule

"At night, when all the world's asleep, the questions run too deep...I know it sounds absurd but please tell me who I am." ~Supertramp, "The Logical Song"

December 14th, 1902

It was a legal necessity that certain members of Heero's team stay home while the others took the ferry to France, specifically, those without passports. That eliminated Trowa and Hilde right away, while Lucrezia didn't want her family picking up on her cross-border movements, and Sally was simply too busy with her patients. That left Heero, Duo, Quatre and Wufei to investigate the possibility of an archival base being only a long stone's throw away from Jeffrhyss' hideaway on the Isle of Wight.

From the docks of Portsmouth, on England's south coast, the ferry took them through the Channel Islands to St-Malo, in the province of Normandy, where the customs officials failed to spot that two of the four names on the groups' passports were false. The return address on Byron's envelope indicated general delivery at the post office in a small town called Londéac, so that was where they headed first. The journey was so long that by the time they got there, it was practically dusk, so the four of them booked themselves into a quaint country inn for dinner and a night's rest.

The inn had absolutely no double rooms, which was both a problem and a relief for Heero and Duo. Had there been any, the dilemma would have been whether or not to take advantage of them. As it was, all they had to worry about was sleeping alone, and they thought that, for one more night, they could manage. After all, they were supposed to be battle-hardened warriors who could adapt to adverse conditions, anywhere, anytime.

**********

1:17 am

Heero was lying down with his eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. There was no one else in the room to benefit from his deception, so he must have been trying to fool himself.

Relax...just relax...you'll be asleep before you know it.....except I told myself that an hour ago, and it still hasn't worked. Maybe there's a spring in my back or something. He sat up, shoved over a bit, and prodded the mattress, looking for lumps. There weren't any. He flopped back down and closed his eyes again. Just relax...relax and breathe...

The longer you keep talking to yourself, the longer it will take, so shut up. He rolled over on his side and scrunched up his pillow with a slight shiver. It's too cold in here...but there's nothing you can do about that, so just ignore it.

1:53 am

It's still too cold in here. Heero sat up again and tried folding the blanket in half to double up on its warmth, but then it wouldn't cover him properly from side to side. None of them had brought any luggage, so he was sleeping in his shirt and shorts; remembering the clothes he came in with, he crawled out of bed, yanked his overcoat off the peg in the wall, wrapped it fiercely around himself, flopped back into bed, and pulled the blanket back in place, scowling.

.....I never noticed this fabric was so scratchy. After only two minutes, he pulled off the overcoat, balled it up, and threw it angrily at the floor. ...and now I'm cold again. For what they're charging for these rooms, you'd think they could afford to heat them properly.

Again, he pressed the side of his face into the pillow and tried desperately to shut off the chattering inside his head.

2:25 am

...what's wrong with you? This shouldn't be happening. Agents don't get insomnia, and they certainly don't complain about their accommodations! If anyone from the organization saw me like this they'd say I was soft. Heero rolled back over on his back and wove his fingers together behind his head. There's no reason why I should be a model of efficiency when executing a mission with my team and then fall to pieces in the middle of the night. I can command myself to sleep. There's no reason why I should lie here awake indefinitely.

There are exactly eighty-four soot circles on the ceiling...

3:19 am

This is ridiculous. It'll be dawn in a few hours, and I'm going to be a wreck!

He tossed, he turned, he rearranged himself every which way he could, but sleep was impossible. It was fairly similar to what he went through while Duo was sick, when he spent a few nights in a different room, alone. He rolled over on his left side and stared at the tattered striped wallpaper, comprising part of the barricade between his own room and Duo's.

Would I be able to sleep if he was here with me?

Different parts of his brain had differing opinions on the subject. The left side thought it was preposterous; why would anyone who slept in total isolation for twelve years suddenly shut down in the absence of another person? It was improbable, illogical, and would make his former master cringe. The right side of his brain just wanted Duo back.

If he was here right now, he'd be the one complaining about the cold. Then he'd put an extra blanket around us both...and it wouldn't quite be enough, so he'd crawl closer to me, just a little bit at a time...until I got impatient and pulled him right up next to me.....and he's settle down and fall asleep in five minutes. And so would I.

3:50 am

Heero sighed with a tone he had never heard himself emit before, and reached out to place a hand flat against the wall right next to the bed. He might only be six inches away from me. I wonder if he's gotten any sleep.

He would never rationally wish a restless night on his best friend, but part of him secretly hoped that Duo was tossing and turning just as much. Wouldn't it be terrible if we were never able to sleep apart again? It would mean sharing a bed for the rest of our lives, or else risk slowly going insane from sleep deprivation. We'd have no choice. He smirked to himself, just a little bit. That's as good an excuse as any.

The painfully slow ticking of the clock made him strangely philosophical. He surmised that he needed Duo because Duo represented everything that he was missing in himself, like innocence, and a natural joy of living. That made him wonder if he had qualities that Duo needed, making them cosmically bound in a perfectly symbiotic pairing, like two halves of the same soul. It was a comforting thought, one that finally relaxed him to the edge of drowsiness.

Oyasumi, Duo-nezu, he thought, moments before drifting away from consciousness.

**********

Lately, Relena had become a demon for getting people up on time. The girl who once loved to snooze late and maybe saunter down to breakfast around 10:30 was now knocking on doors by 6:50, serving ultimatums to those within. As was the established routine, the four of them gathered in a corner of the library, a sort of inner sanctum of the country house that was far from the outside walls. On the dusty mahogany shelves that stretched twenty feet up to the cathedral ceiling, thousands of cloth and leather-bound volumes slowly disintegrated while they listened to the secret conversations invading their cloister.

"We need to sort this out before it gets to be unmanageable," Relena said to kick off the morning meeting. "We know where we have to be and when, we know what we have to accomplish, and to an extent, we know what we're up against." Seated at the great oak reading table with her back to the fireplace, she pushed her empty coffee cup away and laced her fingers together thoughtfully. "The problem is money."

Otto and Milliardo sat opposite each other, perpendicular to Relena, and picked away at their breakfasts while poking through a short stack of papers each. Periodically, Pegan would hover around the candle-lit room refilling teacups and supplying butter and jam for the toast. "I have the final figures from the appraisers," Otto said with a slightly groggy drawl, "and with them, I've been able to pull together a reasonably accurate figure representing our net worth." He took out a sheet of paper with all the calculations on it, including the estimated market values of Bridlewood, Sutherby House, the cache of gold, and all their earthly possessions, and slid it across the table to Relena.

She studied the numbers intently, and it was depressing to see the potential sale of all their precious heirlooms in print. "Would it be enough?"

Otto looked down at his plate briefly. "There's no way to tell."

"If Treize sold every one of his castles, we wouldn't have a chance," Milliardo said.

"But we won't be judged strictly by the size of our bank account, correct?" the girl asked.

"So it would seem," said Otto. "I'm sure personality comes into it somewhere, but if there does turn out to be a requirement for minimum net worth, and we're unable to meet it, we'll be out of luck until another member of Cinq abdicates."

"Or dies," Milliardo added, stone-faced.

Relena knew the tone her brother was using, and she shivered involuntarily. When they were children, he used that tone when he was plotting how to get his way around the house. "What do you mean?"

Milliardo traced a wavy line through his eggs with his fork, looking down slyly. "Seems to me that the quickest way out of the Cinq Association is death. Even on the off chance that someone else beats us to that empty place, all it might take to open up another is one well-placed bullet."

"If we cheated to reach our objectives, we'd be no better than the people we're trying to--"

"You'll have to check your morals at the door sooner or later," the young man snapped at his sibling. "There's too much at stake here!"

"Sir, please think on this a moment," Otto begged. "If the murder was somehow traced back to us, we'd be disqualified anyway, and if we succeeded in setting a precedent of ascension by assassination, who's to say we wouldn't be someone else's victim!?"

"Alright, alright," Relena sighed, massaging her temples. "We've been circling around these same questions for weeks, and we're no closer to a solution. The bottom line is still going to be money, I'm convinced of that...and after looking at these numbers, I'm not sure if we're going to make it."

The crackling fire seemed amplified in the sudden silence. Otto never liked uncomfortable pauses like that, and he dove back into his half-full place, driven by a defence mechanism that had contributed to his bear-like figure for the past thirty years. After scarfing down another two griddle cakes, he slid back into the conversation. "It's a pity we can't ask the rest of the family for contributions since most of them...passed on unexpectedly."

It was a pitiful but necessary reminder that Treize had decimated the extended Peacecraft family, eliminating all hope of financial aid. Certainly, all of the victims had remembered Relena and Milliardo in their wills, but it was hardly sufficient in the face of such a daunting requirement. Milliardo leaned back and crossed his arms, staring at the five-candle centrepiece. "It's a greater pity we don't have fifty friends with about a million pounds each."

Relena saw the way Otto and her brother slowly locked eyes across the table, as if silently hatching a new plan between them, and instantly grew livid. "Absolutely not! I would never go crawling to all our friends, begging for money!"

"You'd do well to swallow your pride for such a worthy cause," Milliardo chided softly.

"I can't help it. It just feels wrong. I know our task is important, but I never wanted it to come between us and the few people in the world we won't be alienating in the new year!"

Pegan had been quietly hovering the entire time, but found an idea in the back of his head as he came up beside Relena with a tray of empty dishes. "If I might be permitted to make a suggestion," he said in his pleasantly posh accent, "there is a way for one to accumulate funds if one is self-conscious about asking for them."

The three of them looked up at the butler curiously. It was highly unorthodox to seek advice from a domestic servant, but they had trusted him with everything else of importance lately, so it couldn't hurt to try. Relena nodded. "Go on."

Pegan readjusted the tray in his white-gloved hands and cleared his throat gently. "Well, when I was a young boy in the southlands, we never had much money, and it was an awful struggle if my brothers or I wanted some new shoes or even an empty book to write in. One day, I was walking past the local mercantile, and I saw a magnificent toy sailboat in the window. It was months before my birthday, but oh, I did dream of sailing it 'round the pond in our backyard that summer.

"I had no money of my own, of course, and we were strictly taught against begging or borrowing. I had nothing to sell, and there was nowhere to work, so what was I to do? Well, from our farmhouse to the town was a six-mile hike, and I was very good at walking back and forth without getting tired. Once I discovered my true talent, I looked for a way to make it work for me.

"So, I went to ten strangers, well-off chaps who didn't know me or my family, and asked them all if they would give me a farthing for walking twelve miles. They all laughed at first, thinking I was incapable, but eventually they promised to pay me a farthing to walk into town, deliver a message, and walk back with a reply to prove that I'd done it. A farthing wasn't much to these gentlemen compared to their curiosity, not to mention their confidence that they wouldn't have to pay at all, and by Jove, the looks on their faces when I returned to each one of them with my mission completed!"

"And did you get your sailboat?" Relena asked.

Pegan gave her a shy but self-satisfied smile. "Many years, we sailed around that pond together...many happy years." He reached down to collect some more dishes while he finished off the story. "Naturally, word spread amongst the other youngsters of my success, and they began approaching all the neighbours, collecting promises of pocket money for their simple labours. 'Pledges,' we called them."

The trio exchanged surprised looks, and Milliardo leaned forward on his elbows. "Fascinating concept," he mused. "If that could be made to work on a larger scale..."

Otto snapped his fingers in realization. "And if people were promising money towards something that would be done anyway, there would be no risk involved, and they wouldn't feel pressured to buy something."

"None of our friends could afford to buy real estate from us," Relena continued, gazing off into space, "but it they all contributed a small amount..."

"...we may be able to close the gap between ourselves and Treize, and still keep Bridlewood," Milliardo concluded.

It wasn't a clear-cut solution to their money problem. Even if all their friends could spare a few pounds here and there, the Peacecraft family still had to find something to offer, and mask it as some sort of charitable purpose without tipping off the authorities, but it was a start. At least it got the debate rolling in a different direction, which was something that hadn't happened in several weeks.

**********

At breakfast, in the restaurant portion of the inn, Wufei and Duo listened in awe as Heero and Quatre ordered all the food in flawless French. Nobody had even guessed that Quatre possessed such a talent, but there he sat, carrying on a friendly chat with the waitress. After the meal, they headed for the post office, where the planned to watch very carefully every person who came and went. Anyone who received their mail via general delivery had to pick it up in person, and the boys agreed to take turns following them back to their points of origin, hoping that one of them might be Jeffrhyss' archival base.

Thus far, it hadn't been a thrilling victory. Of the five people who came to collect their mail that morning, unaware that four nosy teenagers were guzzling coffee in the café across the street and watching their every move, three were reputable merchants, one was a farmer, and the last was a retired army officer. None appeared to be the least bit suspicious. Still, the hunt continued.

Wufei's turn came again, and he followed a twelve-year-old boy away from the post office while the others waited. During the off times, it gave them spare moments in which to really appreciate the foreign land they were rushing through. A humble French village was a lot like a humble English village, which they had all seen examples of before. The packed gravel roads were travelled by the occasional horse and cart, and the villagers in their drab clothes plodded from shop to shop, gathering the necessities of daily life. It was the same, and yet it was different. The plants in the hedgerows were slightly different varieties, the buildings were constructed along different architectural lines, even the air smelled a bit different. It was a mission first, but a learning experience a close second.

This was not to say that those left behind while Wufei followed his target were happy to be waiting. "I can't believe I'm stuck in this dumb little café while I'm in a country with so many great restaurants," Duo whined. He was sitting opposite Quatre at a round table with a red and white checkered tablecloth, playing one of Quatre's favourite card games, gin rummy. "Are we gonna get any time for sightseeing?"

Heero was perched one table closer to the window, watching the building across the street and waiting for his next turn as he leaned back casually in his round-backed chair with one leg slung over the other. "Maybe, if we find something useful today, but we shouldn't stray too far from the coast. We're needed back home as soon as possible."

Duo pouted a bit. "Couldn't we swing by Paris on the way home? It's only that far on the map," he said, holding up his forefinger and thumb with an inch between them.

Heero smirked and gave him a reassuring glance. "Another time, I promise."

That was good enough for Duo, because Heero always kept his promises, and he happily turned his attention back to the card game, at which Quatre was beating him soundly. The blond boy picked up a jack, laid down three sevens, discarded a two, and grinned a bit. "I'm just grateful for the chance to practice my French in a native environment."

"You're just full of surprises, aren't you?" Duo teased as he studied his selection of cards.

"That's the benefit of being surrounded by tutors throughout your childhood. I was even starting to learn Punjabi before father fell ill. Of course, I meant to keep up with it, like I meant to keep up with everything else, but for the last few years, there's always been something more pressing to do."

"I hear that," Duo said, setting down three sixes and discarding a nine.

"Here he comes," Heero interjected quietly, and the three of them slowly lumbered to attention, rather than snapping to it. The snapping had stopped nearly two hours before.

Exhausted from his long walk, Wufei trudged back into the café in a kind of tan canvas coat, and plunked himself down in a chair while Heero beckoned the waitress over and ordered him some tea. Wufei flopped forward on the tabletop in front of Heero, propping his head up on one arm, and when the tea arrived, he gradually perked up enough to deliver his report in a weak, travel-weary voice. "Another false alarm."

They all groaned and slumped backwards. Much more of this, and they'd be running back to the Channel ferry without so much as a look back. "What was it this time?" Heero demanded in frustration.

"A winery." As soon as Wufei said it, Quatre scowled in puzzlement and reached down into the pocket of his winter coat, but nobody noticed. "I'm having serious doubts about this whole concept," Wufei went on. "I mean, maybe we got it wrong about that envelope in Byron's trash. Maybe it was totally innocent correspondence after all."

Quatre was now flipping through his French phrasebook, searching for something, while Duo picked up the disappointed tone of the conversation. "What a total rip off! All that time and money down the drain!"

"He probably planted that envelope to throw us off the scent!"

"Man, if I ever meet Byron face to face, I'm gonna pound him!"

All the while that Duo and Wufei bantered back and forth, Quatre was poring over the pages in the back of his phrasebook, and as he suspected, he came across an intriguing fact. "There's shouldn't be any wineries in this part of France."

Three pairs of eyes latched onto Quatre. "What do you mean?" asked Heero.

"Normandy isn't a wine-producing region. It's all here in the back of the book, see?" Quatre held up the phrasebook, opened to a map of France that showed all the wine regions marked in gray and clearly labelled. Normandy wasn't near any of them. "There shouldn't be a commercially-grown grape crop within hundreds of miles, and certainly not enough to sustain a winery."

Heero's eyes narrowed and began to gleam with a ravenous glow. "We ought to pay this fine establishment a visit, maybe pick up a bottle or two to take home with us," he suggested with very subtle sarcasm.

"Sure thing," Duo agreed, mimicking the other boy's smirk. "And if they haven't got a drop to sell us, well, I'll bet they've got a perfectly good reason why."

The vote was unanimous. A winery suddenly seemed out of place and highly suspicious, and further investigation was needed. They paid their bill, which, after three and a half hours, was almost as long as the waitress' arm, got a few extra sandwiches to serve as lunch on the road, and followed Wufei. He led them southeast to a hilly area in the countryside which was still faintly green despite the cold. Up one gravel road and down the other, the groves of trees got larger and thicker, and even though they were bare of leaves, it ranged from difficult to impossible to see past them.

Tucked in front of such a grove of thick trees, a good three hundred feet back from the road, was a charming flagstone villa with, of all things, a wine cask propped up on wooden blocks on the front lawn. On the side of the great, hulking panel which faced the road was painted the name of the place in flaked Gothic lettering: 'Le Château Pignon'

Bold or foolish, Heero walked straight up to the building and opened the door. When Duo caught up to him in the foyer, he was none too pleased. "Slow down!" he whispered, grabbing Heero's arm. "If this place is what we think it is, we can afford to be more careful than that!" Quatre echoed the concern, but Wufei just folded his arms and wandered around the lobby, observing.

"The first level of any base is meant to deter suspicion," said Heero. "There won't be any guards here."

A look around the lobby seemed to support that theory. It was set up as a simple wine shop, presumably to sell the wares of the chateau itself. A closer look at the stock on the shelves told Wufei differently, however. "They must think they're pretty clever, sticking their own labels overtop of someone else's wine." To demonstrate, he plucked a bottle at random and actually peeled up a corner of the label, revealing another label underneath.

"Put that back!" Heero snapped.

Wufei bugged his eyes out flippantly at the order, stuck the label back down, and put the bottle in its place. While he did so, Quatre completed a full circle around the shop and paused in front of the dusty cash register. "Shouldn't there be someone at the counter if they're trying to make it look like a place of business?"

"When people get complacent, they get sloppy," Heero explaining, knowing that he had been guilty of the same offence, on and off. "There could be countless additional levels more important than this one, and the shop will likely always be low priority."

"I'll go along with that," Duo said, swiping a finger across one shelf and picking up a good pinchful of dust. "They sure don't care enough about it to clean it."

Heero took a sweeping glance around the room, nodding. "Nevertheless, I'm convinced this is what we're looking for. Let's get to work."

**********

Around lunchtime, someone rang the corroded, off-key bell on the counter of the wine shop, and in response, a twelve-year-old boy wearing a white apron over his poor, tattered clothes emerged from somewhere in the back of the shop. He found three customers there. Two appeared to be a young couple with their backs turned, studying the selection of wine bottles on the shelf. They looked fairly ordinary, a man with short hair and a woman with long hair, but the boy didn't think much of them, as he had another customer right up at the front counter, a grown-up boy with feathery blond hair.

"Bonjour!" the grown-up greeted him cheerily. The young boy returned the greeting timidly and was hit with a barrage of questions in French, about everything from the varying quality of grapes picked at different times of the year to what went better with poached fish, red or white.

While the boy in the apron struggled to come up with answers to the lengthy pop quiz, the young 'couple' with their backs turned started to organize themselves. Duo had unravelled his hair, tucked his trousers into his boots, and borrowed Heero's long overcoat to disguise himself as much as possible. Knowing how wonderfully ordinary they looked to a young lad who really couldn't tell the minute differences, they busied themselves with preparing a surprise for him. Moving as little and as slowly as possible, Heero folded his linen handkerchief in half and half again, while Duo took out the little bottle of chloroform Sally had procured for them on the quiet, and opened it.

Quatre kept the lad very busy, so he didn't notice the couple splitting up, with the man moving closer to the cash register and the woman wandering closer to the 'employees only' area behind the counter. Outside the building, Wufei gave Heero the 'all-clear' signal using only a subtle eye movement that could just barely be viewed through the front window. Heero passed the signal on to Duo, and Duo scooted right through the gap in the counter towards the back of the shop, where he clearly wasn't supposed to be. Naturally, the boy in the apron turned around to exercise his limited authority on the intruder, and as soon as he did, Heero pulled him back by his tiny shoulder and pressed the doctored handkerchief over his nose and mouth. He went out like a light.

Quatre dashed behind the counter to break the lad's fall. "He looks so young and helpless!" he whispered. "Are you sure we ought to leave him here with these people?"

"If we removed him, his punishment would be worse than simply for letting up get by him," Heero answered, "and on top of that, we'd have to shelter him practically until Cinq is disbanded. They send him into town every day, he has plenty of opportunity to defect if he wants to try."

Wufei came in from the cold, rubbing his hands together. "No one around outside."

"No one in the back, either," Duo said, already re-braiding his hair, "but there's a locked door."

Heero briefly searched the servant boy's person and came up with a small ring with two keys on it, presumably, one for the front door and one for the back. Quatre helped him deposit the lad someplace inconspicuous, after which Heero started doling out instructions. "These are your department," he said, handing the keys to Duo, "and you two, go through that miniature forest to the back of the building and look for an alternate way in."

"Right," Quatre and Wufei said in unison, and they went out the front door together.

Duo gave back the borrowed overcoat, freshly braided, and quickly unlocked the back door to the shop area. It led into a darkened room with miscellaneous storage space and not a lot to look at, except the cot where the servant boy slept. The floor was wooden and creaked slightly when they moved, so it was an exercise in balance as the pair scrunched up close together and stepped lightly in perfect time with each other, in case someone was listening. They reached an equally creaky set of stairs going down, and at the bottom, they eventually found a narrow landing and a door with a little sliding panel at eye level, all just barely discernable by the flame of Heero's lighter.

"You had a good, long listen to his voice?" he whispered.

"Yeah, I think I got it."

"Alright. When we tap on the door, you're going to tell whoever's on the other side that the people in the shop want to speak to the manager. Tell them these words exactly..." Heero extinguished his lighter and whispered a sentence in Duo ear, often enough that he could memorize it. Duo had previously displayed a remarkable talent for parroting voices and accents, particularly when quoting Helen, which was what earned him this assignment.

When Duo was sure he could repeat the phrase in something very close to the young boy's voice, he rapped on the door. Half a minute later, the little wooden panel opened, and a gravelly, beer-soaked voice snarled out at him. "Quoi?"

"Les gens veulent parler au gérant," Duo squeaked.

The gravelly voice grumbled, then slapped the window shut and slid a heavy-sounding deadbolt out of its housing. Following the plan, Duo stepped away from the door and Heero stepped forward, waiting for the door to open. When it did, the unshaven ball of brawn on the other side didn't even get a chance to blink before Heero dragged him out by the shirt collar and rendered him unconscious with two swift blows to the cranium. Two other men inside heard the scuffle and rushed over to join in, but the youngsters made short work of them.

No other assailants appeared, and by the light of a borrowed lantern, the rest of the basement floor was revealed to be empty. In a separate room, more bright lanterns illuminated a kind of gaming area, where the men were playing cards for money, and smoking like chimneys. Still, it wasn't terribly suspicious, and they almost called off the investigation, until a second stairwell was discovered in a dark corner, and another landing with a locked door.

After retrieving the mens' keys, Duo and Heero descended not one but three more levels, until they reached a door of solid metal. Unlocking that door revealed an eerie world of concrete walls, electric lights, and stern signage in French, carrying a translation of Lord Jeffrhyss' five-line poem about order and obedience. There was no question that they were in the right place, though it called into question Heero's assumption that archival bases moved frequently about the world. This was obviously a permanent establishment.

"What do we do now?" Duo whispered, standing slightly behind his team leader.

Heero's mind was abuzz with all the things they needed to know; reconnaissance on the other members of the Cinq Association, the location of their next major financial meeting, maybe even inside information of Jeffrhyss' next move. Every piece of valuable information was saved indefinitely, and as the boys could have been discovered at any moment, the first decision made was to start ducking into doors.

Or at least, that's what they would have done had there been any doors to duck into. The place seemed to be nothing but corridors, and they were almost caught twice when a pair of gray-clad guards walked past. Soon they were lost, since every corridor looked the same. Neither one was sure what to do, until another set of approaching footsteps sent them diving for cover once again...but the footsteps didn't sound the same. They weren't sharp and crisp like those of the guards, but soft and heavy, shuffling.

A thick shadow passed their hiding place. Duo and Heero leaned out from around the corner and saw an old, doddering man walking away with something tucked under his arm, a big brown envelope stuffed with papers. No one else was around, and the man seemed to know where he was going, so they crept along behind him, on tip-toe.

It was a slow journey, and several times the man stopped and leaned against the wall as if he was in pain. The boys were torn over whether or not to help him, but ended up following him all the way to a heavy wooden door, which the old man pushed through. The boys went through as well and shut the door with a clunk that the balding gentlemen didn't seem to hear as he plodded up to the most mind-boggling sight the boys had ever seen. A great warehouse stretched before them, with sky-high metal shelves full of identical steel-handled document boxes. Long strings of electric bulbs hung overhead, and a coal-fired generator hummed in the corner, supplying the electricity and pumping black smoke through a wide pipe to some unknown location. Most daunting of all was the sheer number of document boxes, which, if they were all full, must have contained millions of tantalizing pages.

Off to the left, the old man sat down to catch his breath, and even that seemed to be a chore. He had a bald spot, a moth-eaten burgundy cardigan, and a prominent belly, all combining to create a totally non-threatening and pitiful image. The boys were so puzzled and dazed that they didn't notice right away when the old man looked directly at them, and beckoned.

Numbly, they padded forward, and as they neared the old man in his chair, he pointed to an object on his wobbly wooden desk that was just out of reach. "Apportez-moi...la bouteille..." Each word was an effort that left him gasping slightly, although he seemed entirely at peace with it.

Heero obediently took the small glass bottle off the desk and handed it to him. The old man shook two small white pills out into his hand and swallowed them dry, tapping a fist against his chest to help them along. He looked up at Heero with gratitude, and something else, too. "Je vous connais..."

Duo looked back and forth between them, then slapped Heero in the arm. "Don't keep it to yourself!"

"He says...he knows me," Heero exhaled, his eyes latched onto the old man in surprise and confusion.

The gentleman opened a drawer just behind him and to his left, took out a wide, flat ledger book, opened it to a particular page, and held it up in front of Heero, pointing to a line. "Là...en haut," he said, pointing weakly to one of the tall metal shelving units.

Heero took the book and read the indicated line intensely, then walked briskly down the aisle between the shelves, looking up. He stopped to read the numbers on the document boxes, dim and receding though they were, and compared them to the numbers in the book. "Go grab me that ladder would you?"

Without asking questions, Duo jogged past Heero twenty yards or so to where a ladder on wheels was attached to the row of shelves. He pushed off and rode on the bottom step, rolling right up to Heero's side; Heero handed him the book and scrambled up the ladder, carefully retrieving the box the old man was directing him to. The boys quickly brought the box back to the desk and were about to open it, while the old man watched and nodded. "Il m'a dit...de brûler tous, mais..." He shrugged weakly.

The words sparked even more curiosity in Heero. ...told him to burn it all? Who told him? Jeffrhyss?

Suddenly, an alarm bell rang, making all three of them jump. Out in the hall, seeping in through the closed door, came a violent clanging, a clear indicator that something was very wrong. "They know we're here," Duo decided.

"We'll never get out the way we came in now."

"Even if we knew which way that was."

Heero looked again at the generator in the corner. The coal fumes and thick black smoke had to be venting somewhere outdoors, or else everyone in the base would suffocate. He turned back to the old man whom he had guessed was a records keeper. "Est-ce qu'il y'a une autre sortie?" he asked quickly.

Behind the old man's tired brown eyes, he seemed to understand that the boys were the cause of the alarm, but to him, it mattered little. He intended to do something noble with the time he had left. "...à gauche...à côté des plantes.....déplacez la bibliothèque."

Heero ran to the gentleman's left, and in the far corner was a little area he had set up to grow some potted plants. There were racks and racks of them, planted in buckets, boots, and anything else that was available, warmed by a battery of lamps. A bookcase next to the vertical garden held some gardening books written in French. There were rather suspicious scrape marks on the floor in front of the bookcase.

Back at the desk, Duo was becoming increasingly worried, about the continuing alarm bells, and about the state of the old records keeper. He kept pressing a hand to his chest, wincing, and he wasn't breathing very easily. Duo crouched next to him, and though he didn't speak a word of French, he tried nevertheless to be a comforting presence. "Hey...you're okay, aren't you? Just a little indigestion, right?" he said, putting a hand on his arm.

The old man looked down and smiled kindly, patting the hand in a grandfatherly way. He then sank his chin into his chest and almost looked like he was asleep. Feeling an awful chill, Duo slid his hand down to the man's wrist, encircling it and pressing lightly on the veins. There was a pulse, but it was weak, and erratic. The records keeper was not long for this world.

If that wasn't bad enough, Duo smelled smoke. A moment later, he saw smoke, billowing under the door at a slow and steady pace. Frantic shouting joined the persistent ringing of bells, and in a slight panic, Duo grabbed the document box and ran over to where Heero appeared to be moving a bookcase. "I hope you've got good news over here, 'cause there's a minor emergency happening out there!"

"Are the guards trying to get in?"

"Only if the guards are fire-breathing dragons!"

Heero saw the smoke and bristled, clenching and unclenching his hands rapidly as he shuffled his feet. "Alright." He turned around and showed Duo his discovery, a hole in the wall where the bookcase once stood. The old man had chipped through the concrete and dragged out clumps of dirt with a long-handled hoe, using the excess soil for his plants to cleverly disguise his years-long attempt to escape. It became obvious that the poor fellow was one more of Jeffrhyss' unwilling workers, just as Heero had been. Using longer and longer poles attached to the hoe, he had carved out a long, narrow tunnel, but years of sedentary living had expanded his waistline to the point where he could no longer fit through, causing him to give up. "It doesn't go all the way through to the outside, but it's our only chance."

"What about this stuff?" Duo asked, nodding at the box he still carried.

"Let's have a look at it."

The box landed on a worktable, and the lid was torn off. There was no way they could drag the entire box up the tunnel with him, but it at least deserved a quick look inside to see what the old man intended them to have. Stuffed neatly into the box were piles of paper stood up on their sides and packed tight, interspersed with books and file folders sticking up at different heights. Randomly, the boys started pulling out papers, and a shock struck them both at the same instant; Heero's name was everywhere. They were documents of his entire life history with Jeffrhyss, detailing every stage of his mental and physical development.

Heero was stunned. There was his whole existence, in black and white. Time was too short to sift through the morass, and yet he didn't want to leave even one scrap behind. He wanted to know who he was, and the answer might have been in that box.

"This is incredible," Duo gasped. "This whole page is nothing but your height and weight, taken at three-month intervals...and this one has the marks on all your math tests!"

"We can't take it all...but I don't know what to throw away!"

"Just start stuffing things in your clothes and we'll wear them out of here!"

The smoke was getting thicker at the other end of the warehouse, but the boys tried not to panic as they tucked their pant legs into their winter boots and hurriedly loaded themselves up with great handfuls of paper. As the box slowly emptied, many things had to be turned down, such as large textbooks on advanced chemistry and psychology that once made up Heero's lesson curriculum. Still, Duo had a quick flip through each one in case there was something tucked between the paper, and when he got to an inch-thick black book that was wider and taller than all the others, his eyes ballooned to double their size. There wasn't time to tell Heero what was in the big black book, and he wasn't sure if he could tell him without choking and blushing, but he'd be damned if he was going to leave it behind. He jammed it into his belt at the back and prayed that it wouldn't make a run for it.

When Duo finally looked up, Heero had stopped everything and was staring down into the back corner of the box. He looked pale, and Duo grasped his shoulder with concern. "What's wrong?"

Something in the box, some dim shadow from the past, had wrapped its icy hand around Heero's throat. A glint of orange paralysed every bit of him except one arm, which reached down into the box and pulled out a strange object made of cloth. As the object saw the light for the first time in years, it seemed to sigh with relief. It was a little stuffed tiger, orange and cream and black, made of baby-soft cloth with a little blue bow around his neck. His shiny obsidian eyes smiled up at Heero, though the cat-like muzzle remained serene and still. Heero turned the tiger over and over in his hands, feeling the lovingly hand-stitched fur and the long striped tail, and at last, a long-forgotten name sprang to his lips, little more than a whisper. ".....Shimamoyou-san..."

Duo leaned back and blinked. "Come again?"

As the memory became clearer, Heero squeezed the tiger tight, pawing it, stroking it, and inhaling its musty scent. Not caring how he looked at that moment, he pressed the animal to his mouth and sighed out a translation for Duo. "Mister Stripey."

Sweet and strange though the scene was, Duo felt it could wait. "Heero, there's no time for this! Wrap him up, and let's go!" He turned around to check on the old man, but the smoke had obscured him almost completely. He should have been coughing violently, but he didn't even move. "Oh God...I don't think he's breathing."

"We can't help him," Heero spat bitterly, coming to his senses and stuffing the tiger safely into his inside coat pocket. "Leave the rest!" He shoved the box aside, grabbed two small hand tools from the vertical garden, a trowel and a claw, let Duo take his pick, and helped him clamber into the tunnel first. The old man had wisely attached a strap to the back of the bookcase, which would have enabled him to pull it flush against the wall once he was in the tunnel, but sadly, Heero knew he would never use it now. He climbed in after Duo and pulled the bookcase back into his place, moments before the door burst open and gray-clad workers began securing the warehouse area against the fire.

It was pitch black in the tunnel, and the air was stale. The floor sloped gently upwards, but the circular walls were uneven, and jabbed the boys randomly as they crawled on their bellies, scraping up even more dirt and carrying it with them. The papers in their clothes crinkled with their movements, and the only other sound was the occasional cough brought on by thick organic particulate in the air. No one in the warehouse had detected the tunnel, or the strange scrape marks in front of the bookcase, so they were safe for the moment, but they couldn't go back, and there was no way to know how far they could go forward. If they weren't able to finish the tunnel, they would be buried alive.

After a crawl of at least fifty yards, Duo stopped. "End of the line," he gasped. Propping himself up on one elbow, he took out the gardening claw and began attacking the soil in front of him, periodically shoving the dirt clods down to Heero, who pushed them down even further while widening the tunnel with the trowel. In the space of what felt like an hour, they managed to whittle another three feet, at which point they needed some serious inspiration to keep going. Duo prayed hard, and almost immediately, his garden claw hit metal.

"What was that!?" Heero called up to him.

Duo was already frantically uncovering the object, which wasn't so much in front of him as it was slightly above him. "It feels like a pipe! ...it's warm, too!"

"That's the vent for the generator!" Heero shouted with the first real enthusiasm either one had heard for a long time. "Follow it! It has to end up outside!"

Renewed in faith, Duo kept digging around the pipe, and before long, he poked a hole into the daylight, which streamed in around his mud-caked face. "I got it!!" he hollered, scraping faster and faster until a six-inch wide patch of white clouds and sky blazed through. The digging accelerated until Duo was able to squeeze through, and as soon as he did, he disappeared with a little yelp.

Heero had stopped every inch to check his interior pocket, making sure the little tiger was still safely inside, and was right on Duo's heels as he squirmed through the hole next. The reason for Duo's yelp became apparent when Heero felt a sharp drop on the other side; the tunnel emptied out on the downslope of a steep but grassy hill, and both boys went tumbling over and over, scattering papers across the landscape, until landing in a collective heap at the bottom. They wheezed in the fresh air flat on their backs for a long time, but forced themselves to climb at least partway back up, to retrieve every last scrap they had dropped. Now there was more paper outside their clothes than inside, and after gathering up a hefty armload apiece, they went running around the base of the hill and up a longer, shallower slope through the trees until they were back where they started, in front of Le Château Pignon.

Not a moment later, Quatre came running out of the trees on the other side of the property, spied the very mucky pair at a distance, and yelled to his right, "I found them!" Wufei came jogging up after him, and they both approached Heero and Duo who looked too worn out to explain why they were covered in dirt from head to foot. The four of them began walking as quickly as they were able back to the village, where they didn't intend to stay one minute more. France hadn't been very good to them on their first visit, and they would be glad to see the back of it.

**********

"...so that was when they found us," Wufei explained on the ferry back to England. He and Quatre had each collected a pile of paper after finding a nice, clean ventilation shaft to crawl into the base through, and there wasn't so much as a scratch on them. "I'd taken one of those wine bottles with me, obviously you didn't notice...and when we were cornered by the guards, it came in quite handy."

"Came in handy?" Quatre griped at his erstwhile partner. "I thought you were just going to throw it at them! If I'd known you were going to turn it into a fire-bomb, I would never hav--"

"Oh, fire-bomb, minor diversion, what's the difference!?" Wufei squawked back. "I had to sacrifice one of the papers we picked up to suffice as a fuse, but it was worth it."

Heero glared his most blood-curdling glare at Wufei. "You started a fire in an enclosed space knowing the two of us were still somewhere in it?"

Wufei shrugged. "You two were taking forever, and we were cornered! It was better to use what weapons we had rather than be captured, and there was no real harm done, right?" He received no reply. "Right??"

"I oughta smack you," Duo snarled. "If there hadn't been a fire, we might've been able to get out through the front door instead of dragging my poor braid through half a mile of rocks, dirt, and sludge! Do you know how long it takes this stuff to dry once it's been washed? Pretty darn long, I can tell you that!" He picked a particularly large clump of dirt out of his hair and flicked it at Wufei, causing a cascade of forgiving laughter to overcome the group. They couldn't stay mad at each other for very long these days.

The rest of the way back to England, bathed in red light by the setting sun, they all shared details about their harrowing encounters inside the base, all except Heero, who stood apart from them on the deck. He leaned over the railing and took the little stuffed tiger out of his coat pocket. The animal seemed no worse for the journey, and appeared grateful to be out of that wretched box. Heero stared endlessly at it, struggling with feelings of familiarity and loss. In time, Duo came to stand next to him, and took a giant gulp of the salty air before prodding his friend for details. "So, what's with that thing?"

Heero shook his head slowly. "I'm trying to remember...it feels like...like I lost it a long time ago. That old man was told to burn something...probably everything I had with me when I fell into Jeffrhyss' hands. This would have been put in the incinerator years ago if he hadn't saved it for me..."

"You mean...that's one of your toys? From when you were a kid?"

"I think he must have been," Heero whispered, cradling the tiger in both hands. The gaps in his memory were evident in his eyes, but as he studied the stuffed toy more closely, he noticed a detail that triggered another vision of the past. He gently untied the blue ribbon around the tiger's throat, and a pocket opened at the back of its neck. There was something crammed inside. Heero pulled out first a scrap of cloth, midnight blue embroidered with swirling geometric patterns of white and gold, and a bit of rice paper, rolled up with some elegantly brushed characters on it. Duo leaned over to look, but couldn't make heads or tails of it, until Heero read the characters aloud in a trembling voice. "...'Remember always.'"

But that was exactly the point. He didn't remember, though he wanted to, very badly. There really was an identity hiding behind his firmly engrained mission directives, a history, a heritage...and perhaps even a family. The little stuffed tiger might have held the answers Heero needed to feel whole, but first he had to learn how to listen.


~~~~~~~~~~

Next, in Episode Sixty-Nine: Christmas time at the Manor just isn't the same as it was in years past, as the servants find out when the money supply runs low. Marcus thinks he knows why Relena ran away, after overhearing something he shouldn't have.

Oh gosh. I cannot apologize enough for this being late. Darnit, I never wanted to work overtime, I specifically told my boss I couldn't work overtime this weekend! =;_;= Oh well...hopefully, not too many people noticed. *shuffles feet* Aaaaanywho...hope it was worth the wait! =^_^= I've got December 24th marked down for the next eppy, and come hell or high water, it's gonna be out on time, but hey, if you've got family stuff to do, go on and spend time with them, ok? Bridlewood can always wait, but you never know how long your family's gonna be there.