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 Seventy-Two: Two Minutes A Day
"Know thyself." ~PlatoJanuary 27th, 1903
Since getting off the streets, Duo rarely felt that there could be anything but a positive start to any given day, but an unexpected arrival in the mail broke his streak of consecutive cheery mornings. It was only minutes before the gang was heading to the pub for a meeting when he got another letter from Helen. Part of him wanted to leave it in a drawer until he got back, but morbid curiosity forced him to open it, and he was flatly depressed by the message it contained. Helen was even more insistent that Duo turn around his life of sin and flee to Ireland. The language she used was clearer than in the first letter, but it was never harsh. She refused to judge him, and filled the letter with references to how worried she was, and how much she cared for him. Still, the request was the same, and Duo couldn't bear to think of it. He tucked the letter inside a cookbook and went on with his day.
At the pub, in their perpetually reserved meeting room, things were quiet. Quatre was keeping quiet about how he botched things with Dorothy, Trowa was keeping quiet about his confusion about Quatre, Duo was keeping quiet because of his personal problems, and Heero was keeping quiet because he couldn't understand why everyone else was keeping quiet. Within the first half hour, the meeting had deteriorated into a discussion of the subtle variations in the leading brands of hand cream, being carried on by the girls far at the other end of the table.
Just when it looked like the group couldn't be less productive, Wufei appeared at the meeting room door, having made a quick foray to his room at the other end of the building for something. "Here it is," he said, holding up a leather-bound book small enough to fit in a pocket. He brought it over to Heero's end of the table and tossed it to him nonchalantly. "Giorgenson's address book. I've already checked it over for viable leads, so...I don't know what you expect to find." He sauntered over to the middle of the table and leaned back into a chair, apart from the others.
Heero dove immediately into the book, with Duo looking closely, very closely, over his shoulder. Nobody seemed particularly interested in what they were looking for, so they felt safe in whispering about it. "What are we looking for?"
"I won't know it until I see it, but we've tried everywhere else," Duo said, referring to their search for the story behind Heero's stuffed tiger. "We've been to toy stores, antique dealers, seamstresses...there isn't a single person in town that's got anything useful to say about Mister Stripey, so we've gotta expand our thinking. In all his years playing the game with Jeffrhyss, the guy must've known somebody who's been to the far east."
"But even if we find a person like that, what are the odds that they've seen a tiger exactly like mine? It's absolutely astronomical..."
"Never mind that, just keep flipping pages." The premise Duo was working from was reasonably sound. People involved in 'the big game' generally had a wealth of contacts in every field, because one never knew when such people would come in handy. Heero slowly turned page after page of names and addresses, however, without seeing anyone remotely helpful. Duo had much less knowledge of what was useful and what wasn't, but something caught his eye that just begged for an explanation. "Whoa, stop...what's that?"
"Where?"
"Right there! What's that word?" The chef was pointing to a label given to a gentleman named Professor Forbes. He squinted and sounded out the syllables, one at a time. "Or-ni-tho-lo-gy."
"The study of birds," Heero said.
"And what about that one...sees-mol--"
"No, seismology," the butler corrected. "That's the study of earthquakes."
"Okay..." The third strange word, Duo wasn't even going to attempt; it was far easier to point.
"...eschatology," Heero said carefully.
"In English?"
"Um..." The all-knowing agent was finally stumped, and scowled at the word for being such an etymological pain.
"The study of judgement in the afterlife," someone said. Several heads turned, wanting to know who had piped up with the morbid answer, and they were all surprised to see that it was Quatre. He was leaning all the way forward with his head resting on his folded arms, and woke from his semi-sleep just long enough to deliver the information.
Heero turned halfway around and squinted at Duo. "What are you getting at?"
"Just look at all those scientific-type guys!" Duo chirped with enthusiasm. "They've all got room numbers next to their names, so I'll bet they're from the university. All those 'ologies are probably what department they teach in. Giorgenson knew what he was doing, hanging out at Oxford, 'cause it's full of smart people!"
Heero looked at another name on the page, read its corresponding department, and shook his head. "Paleozoologists don't study soft toys from other countries."
"Yeah, but even if they don't know, they might know other people who don't know, y'know?" Duo stopped and frowned; he was starting to confuse himself. Shaking it off, he pointed to another name. "It's gotta be worth a try, and we're plum running out of ideas here. Look at what he's got written down at the bottom there...'Professor Wickstrand, way too smart, knows too much,' and he's got a little smiley-face with a sticky-out tongue. If that's not a ringing endorsement, I don't know what is."
This 'Wickstrand' came under the dual category of anthropology and ethnology, but Heero was still doubtful; after all, Oxford was a long way to go on such a flimsy lead, but they had already scoured the city looking for answers and come up empty-handed. He shrugged and tucked the address book into his pocket. "I guess it couldn't hurt."
Duo cheered and slapped him on the back, and they began making plans to leave as soon as the meeting was over. It was the most interesting thing going on at the table, and that had Wufei extremely perturbed. With a roll of his eyes and a soft snort, he leapt out of his chair and gruffly exited the meeting room. He was frequently in a bad mood lately, so few were surprised at the abruptness of his departure, but Hilde was concerned. Excusing herself from her own conversation with Sally and Lucrezia, she crept out into the hall and caught up with him as he was about to push through the swinging door that led to the main pub area. "Wufei! Wait!"
The boy turned around with a tired expression. "What is it?"
"You're not ditching us already, are you?" the maid asked worriedly. "The meeting hasn't been officially adjourned yet."
"As if there's any point in staying," Wufei scoffed. "If I have to waste one more day listening to his nonsensical drivel--"
"Whose?"
"Heero's!" he spat. "The whole world may soon be crashing in on us, and all he can be bothered with is tracking down some stupid toymaker!"
Hilde approached him carefully, hanging onto the top edge of her white apron with one hand. "I know things seem a bit slow right now, but it's our duty to support Heero in whatever he does. He's our leader."
Wufei's chocolate brown eyes turned icy cold all at once, and he glared right through the girl. "He's not much of a leader." Expecting no reply, he pushed through the swinging door and disappeared. Hilde was overcome by a brief but violent chill that left her trembling lightly for about a minute. As shocking as those few words were, she sensed that there could be even more harsh statements boiling beneath Wufei's skin, and before she went back into the meeting room, pretending that all was well, she vowed to discover them, no matter how much it hurt.
**********The stuffed tiger, the scrap of cloth, the rice paper message, and the contract of sale that supposedly sealed Lord Jeffrhyss and Heero's parents together by law, all went with him and Duo on the train to Oxford. They arrived in mid-morning and diligently searched the campus until they located Professor Wickstrand's office, which looked at least as spacious as Giorgenson's, possibly larger. He even had his own secretary, a matronly woman who took the boys' names, after several tries, and found it difficult to believe that they hadn't come to dispute a grade on their term papers.
Professor Wickstrand actually had three other appointments, for which he was already late, and the students trickled in and took their seats next to the outsiders in the modestly-decorated waiting room, knowing the Professor's reputation for tardiness better than anyone. After a brief and amiable introduction, the other boys told Heero and Duo that they'd be better off going for lunch while they waited, and the suggestion was gratefully implemented. They left, spent more than an hour in the commissary, came back, and there was still time to wait before Wickstrand's door opened, and he ejected the last of the disgruntled students from his office.
"Now, I want you to rewrite your essay, and pay careful attention to the differences between the Bantus and the Hottentots," said the Professor, a balding, thickly-sideburned man with tiny round spectacles that perched delicately on the end of his nose. He exuded a tremendous energy and passion for his field of study, but it was the kind that was shoved upon others less than successfully, permanently welded to an overbearing personality. "Have it to me by the end of next week, and don't neglect your report on the Torres Strait Islanders either!" He shoved the boy out into the waiting room and called out, "Next!"
Silently, Duo and Heero were rethinking this expedition. Hesitantly, they stood and gazed almost fearfully at the man, and Duo scratched nervously at the back of his neck where he had tucked his braid down the back of his jacket. They glanced sideways at each other, wondering which of them was going to speak to the strange man first.
The decision was taken out of their hands the second Wickstrand laid eyes on Heero. His own eyes glazed over, his jaw dropped, and he let out a peculiar hoot of pure wonder. In a flash, he grabbed Heero by the arm, pulled him into his office, and positioned him in the centre of the room, while slamming the door on Duo, whom he seemed not to notice.
Duo stared at the closed door, his bangs slightly swaying in the momentary breeze. He blinked a few times, peeked innocently at the disinterested secretary, took a quick sniff under his arm, shrugged, then dared to step through the door uninvited. The rude professor seemed to be attacking Heero with a semi-circular metal instrument.
"Don't move, don't move!" Wickstrand shouted as he hovered around the boy, holding a pair of wide-jawed calipers to his head.
Heero tried to lean away from the unwelcome measuring device, but the Professor kept pulling him back. "But I only came to--"
"Sh sh shhh!" Wickstrand hushed, waving his arms frantically about. "Don't speak either! I can't take this measurement if you do!"
Duo shut the door beihnd him and walked just far enough into the room for Heero to shrug wide-eyed at him. The old Englishman kept holding the calipers up to Heero's face, and hastily writing down numbers in a notebook produced from his cherrywood desk, all the while making happy little noises that sounded like 'My word!' and 'Fascinating!' He studiously recorded the angle of Heero's jaw, the length of his nose, the distance between his eyes, and at least a dozen more spans stretching all around his head. Heero was afraid to duck during the barrage in case the swiftly-moving calipers poked him in the eye.
"...and nine sixteenths," Wickstrand muttered excitedly as he wrote down the last number, for the moment. Then he straightened up and fiddled with his pen, his old, crinkly eyes dancing. "Quite, quite astonishing! Tell me...which side of your family is Japanese?"
Heero gaped at the question. The man hadn't even heard his name yet, but somehow narrowed down his gene pool to a very specific area of the world. The 'which side of your family' bit was also disturbing. "How did you..." As quickly as Heero could haul up a small bucket of words, the well ran dry.
Wickstrand hushed him again anyway, then scampered behind the desk, where he produced another book, this one much larger than the first. "Tut tut, it's not magic, this is what I've done for decades, and I have an astonishing rate of accuracy! Now, if you would, sir, I would be most appreciative if you just jotted down your name on the next available line," he said, opening the book and twirling it around on the desk, at the same time producing a pot of ink and an antique quill pen. On the lined pages were the names of many other unfortunates who had stumbled into the man's office and been accosted with metal devices.
Heero slowly walked to the desk and reached out for the pen, but the rest of him had yet to catch up with the situation. He abruptly wondered why he was still there, if this man insisted on making absolutely no sense, and his efficient side was telling him to turn around, go home, and get some real work done. Nevertheless, he picked up the pen, and didn't know why. "I won't pretend to understand what this is about...but what we've come for is identification of a few artifacts, if possible."
"Please, please, your name," Wickstrand insisted rapidly, thumping the half-empty page with one finger. Heero scowled at being pushed around, but if it meant getting on with his inquiry, a signature was a minor sacrifice of time. He scrawled out his name, letting the English characters flow where they wanted to, instead of defaulting to his difficult-to-trace schoolteacher's handwriting. Once it was down on the paper, he replaced the old-fashioned pen and stood back as Wickstrand rotated the book around and watched with an almost carnal satisfaction as the ink dried. "Heero...Yuy," he read with perfect intonation. "I assume you reversed your given name and family name for my benefit?"
Again, Heero was lost, shaking his head in confusion. "I don't know what you mean."
The Professor squinted sympathetically at the boy. "Oh, no, of course you don't, poor little mite. You've been away from your people for far too long." He pointed elegantly to a nearby chair. "Do sit down."
Glancing to his left, Heero availed himself of the plain wooden chair as the old man seated himself in a big, brown leather monstrosity. Desperate curiosity was doing battle with very limited patience inside Heero's mind, and it was only the suspicion that the annoying fellow knew something important that kept him from walking straight out. Duo, slightly offended at being totally ignored, began wandering around the spacious office and looking at the paintings and photographs on the walls, though he kept one ear turned to the conversation at all times.
"I used to get a great deal of visitors like you in the past, you see," Wickstrand explained, flipping wistfully through page after gilt-edged page of names. "Orphans, most of them...lost souls, adrift in an uncaring world, without any corner of it to call their home. I was the leading anthropological expert in the whole of the Empire, so eventually all these people trickled in to see me, so that I could help them to know themselves. A lifetime of study into the minute physical variations among the 'races' of man, for lack of a better term, made my humble office a Mecca for these hundreds of lonely people."
"That...may be a slight exaggeration in my case," said Heero doubtfully.
"But not a total one," the Professor corrected him. He leaned forward on his elbows, laced his hands together, and rested his chin against them lightly. "You truly believe yourself to be Japanese, do you not?"
Duo saw, as he looked over, that Heero was mired even deeper in bewilderment. "Shouldn't I?" he asked in something approaching a frightened child's voice.
"Who told you this?" asked Wickstrand.
"No one," Heero answered after a long pause. That much was entirely true. Nobody in the organization had ever sat him down and told him 'You are Japanese,' it was just something he had always known, and seemed to confirm independantly once he was permitted contact with the outside world. The occasional magazine or newspaper article provided him with snippets of information about his supposed culture, but that was all he ever had.
"You should believe it, to an extent," Wickstrand said with a nod. "You show some very strong oriental characteristics, particularly in the lower facial bone structure," he added, pointing to areas of the boy's face, "but I would estimate your lineage to be only half Japanese, three-quarters at the very most."
Suddenly, Heero was intrigued. "You can tell...just by looking at me?"
"Well, I'll show you, and you can judge for yourself!" The Professor launched himself out of his chair and went to a tall wooden cabinet the same deep, rich colour as the desk, with Duo and Heero close behind. He began shuffling through the messy contents of the cabinet, starting at the first of five shelves and working his way down. "I've had the pleasure of many research trips to five continents, and my team and I always brought back extensive photographic records of the local faunae...rituals and whatnot...blasted woman's been in here 'cleaning' again. Where did she..."
Some mutterings and flutters of old, crumbling paper later, the Professor turned around with a great scrapbook in his hands, which he opened to a specific page and held up in front of the boys. The entire page was taken up by a single, huge photograph of typically unsmiling people. A younger Professor Wickstrand stood in the centre, dressed in a drab suit that wasn't any more stylish then than it was now, and surrounding him were an assortment of men, women, and children with bushy black hair, narrow eyes, and angular faces. The caption at the bottom read: 'The Peoples of Japan -- City Dwellers.'
Duo looked fluidly back and forth between the people in the photograph and Heero's worried face. "He's right, you know," the chef said quietly. "You don't...really...look like them. I mean, you sorta do, but...you sorta don't."
"I might also add that, while a simple photograph cannot possibly do the subjects proper justice," said the Professor, "in my experience it is most extraordinary for a full-blooded Japanese to have brown hair and blue eyes. Therefore it is easy to conclude that you are likely some sort of a mixed breed." The old man was so proud of his conclusion, and his rare find, that he had no concept of how rude and insulting that conclusion was.
Heero still didn't know what he thought of the facts themselves, whether to be happy, sad, indifferent, or otherwise. "Then...what else could I be?"
Wickstrand pointed at him and smiled. "I've already formulated a theory about that." He went flipping through the scrapbook again, stopping a few pages further in, at another large photograph. "In my travels, I came across an aboriginal tribe that had very little written about it in the typical journals and textbooks. They inhabit a relatively small area including groups of islands north of mainland Japan, and have quite the peaceful existence..." As he turned the book around to display the new page, the boys leaned in together, with identical knots in their stomachs.
There was the Professor in the middle again, but the scenery and the people surrounding him had changed. They were stocky, burly people, with wavy hair and, in the case of the men, long beards, and they were dressed in hand-woven fabrics bearing swirling geometric designs. Each of them held some sort of craft, like an painted earthenware jug or a basket of dried fish, and they stood closely together, like a family. Underneath the photo was printed: 'Native People of Kuril, Sakhalin, and Hokkaido -- The Ainu.'
At the height of the boys' transfixion with the image, there was a knock at the Professor's door. He had a sudden flash of mental scheduling and looked at the grandfather clock in the corner. "Oh dear...I'm late for another appointment...a truancy case, if I recall. This won't take a moment," he blurted, and he all but shoved the scrapbook into Heero's hands on his way out of the office.
The door slammed. The people in the picture stared up at Heero, invitingly, and he couldn't stop staring back, entreating even one of them to make a move, breathe a syllable, do anything to indicate that he belonged with them. He wanted to know what belonging felt like, in the good sense, rather than being an asset of an underground conglomerate. Reason suggested that the two feelings were different, but he just wanted to be sure.
"Well?" Duo was looking at him now, curious and concerned. "What do you think?"
Heero found that he couldn't answer right away; something buried in his brain was getting in the way between the words and his mouth. Slowly, he strode over to the desk and laid the scrapbook down flat on top of the book of orphans' names, and then reached trancelike into his inside jacket pocket, taking out the little toy tiger. He loosened the blue ribbon at the back of the animal's neck, turned him over, and pulled out the two items that had originally been found inside, the piece of rice paper and the scrap of cloth. The cloth of white, gold, and navy blue had a very distinct pattern embroidered into it, and when Heero held the fabric up to the photograph, a striking similarity jumped out at him. Many of the people in the picture were wearing embroidered tunics, and they each had their own pattern. They were precise yet organic, rigid in some places and fluid in others. The scrap of cloth the toy tiger carried looked as though it could have been freshly plucked out of the photo that very moment. It was the pinnacle of uncanny.
Then, next to the scrap of cloth, Heero placed the strip of rice paper with the slightly frayed edges, bearing the Japanese characters for 'Remember always.' He straightened up and stared at the tableau strangely. Is this what you wanted me to remember? If it was so important to you that I know who I am, why did you get rid of me in the first place? Why didn't you want me? He waited a long time for the answer, but the people in the picture remained silent, as though they didn't know to whom he was referring.
There was a hand on Heero's shoulder that he hadn't noticed before. He snapped out of his peculiar reverie to meet Duo's eyes at last, and the chef raised both eyebrows at the collage. "It's still kinda hard to see the resemblance..."
"True," Heero said firmly, out of a need to hear some kind of confidence. "It's still more believable than the bulk of my life put together," he said as he took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeve, and compared his smooth, tanned forearm to the big, hairy meathooks dangling from the tunics in the photo. "You could package it up into chapters and sell it to a magazine."
Duo smirked a bit. "Somehow I can't visualize your face on the cover of a penny dreadful."
As Heero stepped back from the items on the desk and rearranged his clothing, he grabbed the alien feeling of abandonment, put it in a choke hold, and threw it to the floor. It felt like a shameful moment of weakness, standing there and pining after whatever it was tying together these people he would never know. After all, the ideal of self-sufficiency had been drilled into him ever since forever. Doing up the button on his cuff, he turned away and walked aimlessly from the desk. "I'm not sure I care, now...it shouldn't matter anyway...what's running through my veins and what isn't..."
"Of course it..." Duo glanced quickly at the door, ran up to Heero's side, and lowered his voice to a whisper. "Of course it matters! What have we been talking about all last week? Remember how you agreed, over a pan of my triple-chocolate brownies which I only make for very special occasions and are therefore considered sacred, I might add, that finding the real you is important?"
"I agreed that it's important, I said nothing about letting it replace the mission." Without looking, he knew that Duo's face had fallen a bit, so he half-turned back to him with a bit of a softer expression. "But you're right. I agreed."
"Well, good," Duo said with a smirk. "I'd hate to think your memory was going, at your age." With the chair in front of the desk now vacant, Duo swung a leg over it from behind and squatted down, studying the photo a bit more. "Seriously, it never once occurred to you that you might not be exactly what you thought you were? Didn't you ever meet another Japanese person and think to yourself, 'Something's not right here?'"
Heero continued to wander around the room, subconsciously avoiding the material on the desk. "No, I didn't. There were only the Geisha girls at the Exhibition, and they were a little too heavily made-up to tell anything from."
"But even when you were a kid, Jeffrhyss must have found someone that spoke your language, or they never would've gotten through to you. Didn't you look like them?"
"I never saw the faces of any of my instructors. It was forbidden. Anyway, how do you know you're really an American? What do Americans look like?"
Duo flipped up his eyebrows and nodded to himself. "Point taken." He thought for a bit, then got up and walked over to where Heero was standing, staring at the walls. "You could always go there and find out, couldn't you? You've got your parents' names, assuming they're not fake...you know where they might be, and you've probably got enough money to get there."
It was a thought. Once a few minor loose ends like Treize and Cinq had been tied up, Heero would be truly free to do what he wanted for the first time, ever. While he thought about being free occasionally, it was the idea of not knowing what to do with himself that made him the most apprehensive about it. "Maybe, someday. I've got too much to do right now...but when the time comes, I could sure use a travelling companion." He gave Duo another one of his secret smiles, though he kept both hands safely in his pockets. "Long voyages can get lonely, or so I hear."
"It's a date," Duo said, smiling and inching closer. "Until then, I'll just have to meet the real you two minutes at a time."
Heero blinked. "What do you mean?"
Duo shot another protective glance at the door, but there was no sound beyond it, and therefore little danger of being discovered. He scooted even closer and let a hand crawl lightly up the buttons of Heero's waistcoat. "I know the real you is in there somewhere," he whispered. "I know because I get to see it two minutes a day. First thing when you wake up, you're all groggy and it takes about that long for you to remember that it's not your job to be happy. I don't wake up early just to make breakfast...I wake up early for that two minutes, when you roll over, and make that relaxed little humming noise, and squish your pillow in half, and do that cute thing with your hair..."
Picking up easily on Duo's change in mood, Heero leaned in closer as well, enough that their bangs got into a small tangle in mid-air between them. "It must be pretty valuable to you, if you're willing to give up sleep for it."
"Two minutes," Duo said through a smile, leaning closer and sliding the hand flat against Heero's chest. "Most days, that's all I get."
A deliciously tense silence pervaded, until Heero slipped one hand out of his pocket and reached behind Duo's back and under his coat, searching for the end of his braid. "We can work on that," he purred, and without thinking, they inched dangerously close to one another, consumed by a pleasantly numbing fog.
The door flew open and crashed against the wall with a thunderous bang, causing the boys to jump about six inches and dash frantically away from each other. Wickstrand had returned. "Dreadfully sorry! Not only was I late for another appointment, my secretary kindly reminded me of three others that I'd forgotten about altogether. I'm afraid we'll have to dispense with the ethnic investigation for now, but if you'd care to drop in some other time--"
Heero quickly gathered up everything that was his off the surface of the scrapbook and walked swiftly towards the man. "We don't pass by this way very often. There's still some things we wanted to--"
"No, no, no, I haven't the time for that now," Wickstrand insisted with one hand flapping in the breeze.
"Well, what about this thing?" Duo asked, flipping through the scrapbook. It wasn't just photographs; there were pages and pages of field notes that could have yielded a hundred thousand clues, if only they had the time to examine them. "Couldn't we borrow this for awhile?"
The Professor was mortified. His face grew impossibly longer, stretching out his sideburns like giant caterpillars. "My...my notes? Leave this office? But..."
"You can trust us!" Duo crowed, and he smiled his widest smile as he walked up and clamped an overly-friendly hand on Wickstrand's lofty shoulder. "After all, we're close personal friends of a buddy of yours."
"Who?" Wickstrand hooted, paralysed from the jaw down.
"Professor Giorgenson. He spoke really highly of you, you know that?"
"Really?" The Professor gazed off into the distance, out his second-floor window. "Have you...heard from him lately? He missed our annual faculty snooker tournament, and it's highly unusual for him."
Duo glanced at the floor, removed himself from Wickstrand's person, and took a step back, suddenly depressed. He fought for hope that Jeffrhyss hadn't done away with his erstwhile mentor, but it was becoming harder and harder to hold on to. "No. We were, uh...kinda hoping you might've heard from him."
Softened by the way Duo hung his head in despair, and sharing somewhat in his cloud of worry, Wickstrand walked to the desk, picked up the scrapbook, and placed it in Heero's hands. "Take it. I'm sure that wherever old Giorgi is, he'd want me to help you two out as much as I was able."
The boys thanked the strange man earnestly for the valuable loan, and promised to bring it back in an identical condition. Saying brief goodbyes, they left the campus and headed for home, taking preliminary peeks at the rest of the great book while they were on the train. It all looked so mysterious and enchanting, like a storybook from another age, and Heero could hardly wait to dissect it, looking for himself amongst the yellowing pages.
**********Hilde's relationship with Wufei was less than ideal, by the standards of the average romantic post-Victorian girl. He didn't dote on her, didn't write her poems or bring her flowers, didn't call her loving little pet names or show her off like a trophy to every eligible male he came in contact with. He did, however, treat her with a reasonable amount of respect, so long as she didn't make unreasonable demands on him. Thus, she settled for a little less in the romance department to get more of a friend, and more of an equal.
Since she was getting a friend and confidant out of the deal, she expected a certain level of honesty that, today at least, she didn't feel was coming across. She followed Wufei up to his room at the pub that afternoon, not just for some stimulating conversation, but to crack open the shell he had placed around his thoughts. His off-hand remark earlier that morning had stuck in her mind, and it was disturbing to the point of disrupting her entire rhythm of thought; she had to know what it meant.
Wufei let Hilde into his room with the same indifference that he might have displayed towards a lost puppy, and immediately flopped on the sofa with a book, continuing on from the page where he left off. Hilde looked around the room, taking in the changes that had occurred over the weeks of Wufei's residence. The walls, previously plain, were now something of a showcase of the items he had collected during his world-wide journey, with one entire wall dedicated to swords and knives, hanging on specially-made racks. Instead of having a proper wardrobe to keep clothes in, all of his fine exotic suits from mainland China hung on the other walls, creating splashes of colour while keeping them wrinkle-free; Hilde felt a little plain standing next to them in her black and white maid's uniform, with the bottom edge of her skirt dirty and frayed from constantly dragging on the ground.
Wufei didn't seem to be concerned with advancing the conversation, so with her hands clasped casually behind her, Hilde strolled around the room, getting right to the point. "So...what did you mean earlier?" she asked, pausing near the collection of swords and gazing into one particularly shiny surface. "About Heero and...all that stuff?"
Wufei shrugged disinterestedly. "Mm...nothing, really."
"Oh, come on, I can tell when you really feel like talking about something," the girl pressed sweetly, turning on her heel. "And face it, who else can you talk to if not me?"
"You don't need to know everything I think."
Hilde frowned. The sugary tone of voice wasn't working; a slight change in tactics was necessary. She slunk up behind the sofa and purred in his ear as she started on one of her deluxe shoulder massages. "I'm more worried about you venting your frustrations," she sighed, "and you have so much to be frustrated about. I don't know how you handle it, day in, day out...you're just too amazing, that's all."
For all his training in the deadly arts, a little flattery and babying was usually all it took. Working right according to plan, Wufei shut his eyes, dropped the book into his lap, and let his head loll forward as Hilde kneaded the flesh on either side of his neck. "It's this whole business with Treize," he let slip after a short while. "I agreed not to deal with him in the manner I saw fit for the good of the mission, and I thought I could be satisfied with that as long as the outcome was positive for everyone."
Hilde bit her lip. "...and now you're not sure?"
"Now I want what's mine," the boy growled, raising his head just high enough to glare wickedly at a random spot across the room. "Vengeance. Justifiable retribution. I owe it to Meiran's memory to ruin Treize in every way possible, and whether it fits with Heero's plans or not, that's exactly what I intend to do."
"Yeah, but...the group asked you to set aside your grudge because we're all focused on the big picture, not because Treize doesn't deserve a smack in the head and then some. It's not about giving up something you want, it's choosing something better."
"You mean choosing what Heero thinks is better!" Wufei shoved himself off the sofa, out of Hilde's grasp, and stalked over to the wall of swords, suddenly fuming. "He and his little cabal will make sure Treize doesn't make it as far as the Cinq Association, and then the Count is mine!" Wufei plucked a fine steel blade engraved with dragons off its rack and ran a finger lightly along the edge, one eyebrow twitching under the force of a grand and glorious fantasy. "I'm going to drag him someplace where he'll never be found...and pay him back double for every ounce of pain he's caused me. I can't move on in life until this is done, and I can't let anyone stop me from doing it."
The more Hilde watched him fawning over the sword, the more agitated the butterflies in her stomach became. She knew Wufei had a tendency to exaggerate when he got riled, but somehow this didn't seem like an ordinary flight of fancy. Heero should know about this, she thought, mangling her fingernails nervously, but if I squeal about this, Wufei will never trust me with another secret as long as I live, and I don't want that. I like him...I don't want him to hate me back. Actually, it might not conflict with the mission at all if... She swallowed, not liking where her thoughts were taking her. "I think I'll...go grab myself a drink," she blurted, tiptoeing to the door. Wufei was still gazing at his reflection in the sword when she left, unnoticed.
**********The second Heero set foot back in the manor, he took his new treasure into the library and sealed himself off from the world. Only Duo was allowed through the gates of doom, but truthfully, nobody else even tried. To disturb him in the middle of his critical research could have meant instant death.
Like just about everything Heero did, Duo thought it was adorable, and happily brought him tea, then dinner, then a light snack in the library. Every time he appeared with a new tray, he would receive a new anecdote from the annals of Wickstrand's Odyssey about Ainu culture. On his last trip to collect empty dishes around ten o'clock, Heero reached out and grabbed him by the sleeve without taking his eyes off the paper. "Did you see this?"
"When?" Duo laughed sarcastically. "You've been monopolizing it all night."
As Duo reached for the tray and stacked the dishes one on top of the other, Heero paraphrased. "They believe that when a person dies, their soul goes underground to a world that's the complete reverse of this one, where left is right and up is down, and they continue floating back and forth between the two worlds until they displease their ancestors."
Duo smirked. "No comment." He started towards the door, and somehow expected Heero to follow, as it was getting fairly late. "You're coming up eventually, aren't you?"
"In a little while..." Heero flipped a page and was on to the next tale almost immediately.
That's okay...it's nice to see you enjoying a little light reading. Well...non-explicit light reading, that is. Duo eased his way out of the library, balancing the tray on one arm, and left his friend alone for a little while longer. Sometime around eleven, he checked on him again, just peeking in the door far enough to see that he was still reading. He went away, played with Shadow for awhile, but when it got to be past midnight, he started to wonder, and headed back to the library yet again. Being quiet as a mouse, a task he was better at than anyone, he nudged open the door and peered inside.
The lantern Heero had been reading with was burning down to its last few drops of oil, and its flame was dim orange like some of the potted flowers in the conservatory. The scrapbook was open to a page somewhere in the middle, and Heero was splayed out on top of it, fast asleep. Duo crept up next to him, making an adoring face at the cuteness of it all. Oh, wow...I could look at that forever. The way his hair fell onto the book and feathered out was simply too sweet, but Duo knew he couldn't leave him like that all night. "Hey...wakey wakey....." He reluctantly gave him a little shake and couldn't help pressing their cheeks together for just a moment. Heero stirred with a tiny groan, and was groggily unaware that he was being pulled to his feet.
With one of Heero's arms slung over the back of his neck, Duo carefully walked him out of the library, after turning out the dying lantern. After the first few steps, Heero began rubbing at his eyes and mumbling in Japanese, and Duo did his best to reply with the same, until they made it to their room, and he was able to lower his load onto the bed. He slipped off Heero's shoes, loosened as many buttons as he dared, covered him up, and went to lock the door. Having somehow achieved horizontality, Heero's subconscious sent him swiftly back to sleep, and he was gone before Duo slipped into bed beside him. Taking one moment more to drool over how innocent Heero looked when he was resting, Duo snuggled up behind him and draped an arm around his waist, sighing and smiling into his pillow. I got four minutes today. Bonus.
And even in sleep, Heero's hand curled around Duo's and gave it a little squeeze.
~~~~~~~~~~
Next, in Episode Seventy-Three: Something strange is in the air on Valentine's Day as the whole world seems to be pairing off like animals trailing into the Ark. In the midst of torrential troubles, one couple will change their relationship forever, but who will it be?
*kicks the Net in general* So sorry about the delay...I seem to be having a lot of them lately. *blushie* Well, if that's the last Internet worm we see for awhile, it'll be a good thing. Now then! From reading the preview, you've already guessed that the next episode won't be until Valentine's Day! This is for many good reasons, all of which you'll appreciate in the fullness of time. =^_~= While we wait to see who gets what (and who gets who!) for Valentine's, there will be some major modifications to the Gallery, especially stuff that I've been meaning to add for the last month. *blushie again* We've got fanart, we've got regular art, we've got a fic translated into Italian (=O_O=!!) and we've got more recipes on the way! And...Rachel and I are looking into the possibility of moving the site to new digs where we'll have more flexibility with CGI and whatnot. But that's only a theory. =^_~= Thanks for your supportive emails during our trials with non-working webness, and we'll talk to you in a day or so!