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-Four: Penance
"Suspicion follows close on mistrust." ~Gotthold LessingFebruary 23rd, 1903
At six-thirty in the morning, Quatre crept upstairs to the north hall, where the telephone sat on the little Chippendale table. Whenever he called Lady Une's estate, some snooty-sounding man told him in a clipped voice that Miss Dorothy was indisposed, so Quatre began varying the times of day at which he called, without success. Getting desperate, he risked making a severe nuisance of himself by picking extreme hours to call, and his next attempt was fast approaching. As he padded slowly across the creaky floorboards in his stocking feet, Shadow poked her furry head out from behind a corner, wondering what he was doing. The gardener put a finger to his lips and shushed her quietly, hoping she wouldn't rat him out.
With enormous care, Quatre slid the chair out from the hall table and sat down on the very edge of it, glancing around him one last time for intruders of the two-legged variety. Duo would be coming down to make breakfast any time, and he really didn't want word to get back to Heero that he was failing miserably in the Dorothy department. Picking up the ear piece, he scooted the whole telephone right up to his chin and whispered to the operator as Shadow jumped up on the table, hoping for a scratch behind the ears. Not long after that, the game began.
"Hello?" he breathed into the receiver. "Yes, it is me again, and would you stop sounding like it's a crime against nature? ...well, I'm very sorry if I woke you, but in my humble opinion, you should have been up with the sun and at your work anyway. Dust doesn't stop accumulating just becau-- ...alright, fine. Just...would you please check to see if Baroness Catalonia is available? As I told the butler before, it's very urgent."
One hand was wrapped tightly around the stalk of the telephone, and Shadow nuzzled it, purring. Quatre made a little exasperated noise, but unclenched his hand to pet the cat while he waited for the maid on the other end of the line to make her inquiries. Before long, Shadow flipped over to have her belly rubbed, but she would have to be disappointed.
"Hello? Yes? ...what?" Quatre's eyes bugged out angrily, and leaned heavily on the left-hand edge of the table, away from Shadow. This game was beginning to try his patience. "It is half-past six in the morning. How can she be busy? If she's either asleep or avoiding me, just say so." A tinny voice seemed to be yelling at him over the line. "I don't particularly care whether you like my tone or not! .....fine, you do that. And I'll be calling again, as many times as it takes until I get to speak to the Baroness." There was a savage click, and Quatre looked at the earpiece with mild offence as he realised he had been hung up on...again. He put the instrument back on its cradle and sighed, slumping backwards into the chair.
Shadow always seemed to know when her human pets were feeling down, and she jumped eagerly into Quatre's lap, kneading the front of his shirt with her front paws and offering mews of comfort. Eventually, he smiled and gave her a cuddle, and it really did make him feel better, though he knew it couldn't last. He was starting to feel like a royal failure, and he wouldn't be right again until he cracked the Dorothy problem wide open.
**********The doorbell rang at five past nine that morning, and Duo ran out of the kitchen like a bullet to get there before anyone else did. His braid trailed out behind him in mid-air, and he was making a peculiar 'ohboyohboyohboy' sound all the way to the front foyer, where he slammed right into the door to stop himself, then hopped back and flung it open gleefully. Two plainly-dressed delivery men were there, with matching tweed caps and matching moustaches, though one was a little shorter and stouter than the other. Their horse and cart was parked out on the street, and the taller of the two looked Duo up and down with a twitch before speaking. "You Maxwell?" he said in a lower-class drawl.
"Yeah, yeah! Bring it all in!" Duo stepped back from the open doorway, waving them into the foyer where they dumped their first armloads of brown-wrapped packages. Now that the good name and store credit of the Peacecraft family had been restored around town, it was back to shopping with a vengeance for Duo, who absolutely ravaged the mail-order catalogues looking for trinkets to stock his kitchen with.
By the time the rest of the household started to trickle in curiously, the delivery men had gone back to their cart to retrieve something very large that took two of them to lift. "What's all the fuss about?" Doris demanded, trotting down the hall as quickly as her plump legs could carry her.
"A revolutionary invention that's going to change the way you do housework!" Duo crowed. Almost instantaneously, the men brought in a huge wooden crate, three feet to a side and nearly twice as tall, and carefully put it down on the foyer carpet. That being the last of their load, they hung around and cleared their throats lightly, looking pointedly at the boy who had summoned them there. Duo's face lifted with a sudden realisation. "Oh! Hang on a second..." He had no cash on his person, and had to run off into the depths of the house to find the delivery men a tip.
Elsie looked very strangely at the giant wooden crate, then equally strangely at the shorter of the two men. "Wot's in it?"
"We don't open 'em, luv, we just deliver 'em," the stout man said gruffly and tiredly.
"Here you go!" Duo called out, running in from the back of the house a second time. Both workmen stretched out a hand, hoping for at least a few coins from such a fabulous household as Bridlewood, and were unexpectedly given a fairy cake each. "One for you...and one for you!" the chef chirped angelically, handing out the fresh-baked treats. "Those are apple cinnamon. Mmm boy! Well, thanks for all your hard work, I'm sure you've got a very busy schedule to keep." The boy rubbed his hands together briskly and smiled at the ever-so-subtle hint.
The two men looked at the fairy cakes, looked at each other, rolled their eyes, and left. They likely muttered something back and forth between them on their way back to their horse and cart, but it was just as well that the door was shut quickly and firmly behind them, so none of their miffed gutter language could waft into the manor. Back in the foyer, Duo was trying to crack open the large crate, and even though Trowa was a bit sick with a fever, something that had overtaken him without warning some days ago, he added his muscle power to the effort, and the top came flying off in a shower of sawdust and excelsior. Heero leaned against the bottom spindle of the banister with crossed arms and a whimsical squint as four pairs of hands dug into the box and pulled out a gargantuan machine of dubious purpose.
They set the bizarre thing on the bare floor next to the area rug and stood back to try and figure out what it was. It had two great wheels on either side, a tapered box-like object on the front that sat a fraction of an inch off the floor, a cylindrical canister with a locking lid, a motor underneath it all, and a series of hoses connecting everything to everything else. Whatever it was, Duo was pleased as punch to see it arrive safely, and quickly arranged his audience into a straight line in front of it. "Step right this way madam," he purred, pulling dear Doris aside like a midway barker, waving his arms about as he pontificated. "Tell me, madam, has the daily upkeep of your home turned you into a burned out wreck? Are you tired of using those other sweepers that just don't get the job done? Do you want freedom from dirt? The Sweep-O-Matic 500 has the answer! This is the world's first electrified vacuuming carpet sweeper, and it can be yours on an easy installment plan!"
"There's nothing wrong with our old sweeper," Doris protested. "We don't need this monstrosity!"
"Ah, you say that because you haven't seen the Sweep-O-Matic 500 in action!" Duo countered with a showman's smile. As part of his product demonstration, he opened up the locking lid to the giant cylinder and held it out like a dinner tray. "This chamber contains the industry's largest domestic particulate storage component ever released to the public!"
Skeptical, Elsie leaned forward and looked at the revolutionary technology inside. "It's a sponge."
Duo growled at her lack of innovative vision. "It's a wet sponge...or at least, it will be in a minute. Here, gimmie that...that..." He hung his other arm out towards a vase of half-dead flowers that the girls had been watering fruitlessly for days, and waggled his hand, pointing at it. Hilde took the hint and fetched it from its little table, taking the flower remnants out and handing him the vase. He dumped the murky water into the sponge, replaced the lid, locked it, and set the vase down on the floor, off to the side. "Now then! To activate the system, you simply plug this into the nearest wall outlet..." He grabbed hold of the bulky electric plug, but couldn't find anywhere to plug it in. "Hm. Okay...there's gotta be one here somewhere..." Crawling around on his hands and knees, he finally found an empty socket halfway to the parlour. "...and switch on the wall switch, that's got it..."
By now, they were all at least mildly anxious to see the machine in action. Once Duo had dusted himself off and was standing back behind the device with his hand on the 'start' button, the tension of anticipation had reached its peak. With a flamboyant swirl of his arm, Duo pressed the button and the vacuum whirred to life, emitting a high-pitched, rattling hum from the electric motor. Duo flung out his arms proudly, and received a little round of applause for his magic act, and it was precisely then that things went south. The motor sputtered, then choked, then sputtered again, and finally ground to a clanking halt with some bright yellow sparks thrown in for garnish, and a thin plume of greyish smoke rose up from the bottom of the machine. Everyone jumped back, and the girls squealed a bit, briefly, but then it was over. The sweeper was dead.
Duo wavered back and forth between folding his arms and scratching the back of his head, looking down at the piece of junk vacuum. "Well...um...I guess there's a money back guarantee for a reason, now, isn't there?" The others groaned, and some of them started to walk away.
Heero walked up, with his arms still folded. "I'm starting to think you'll buy anything that comes from a catalogue. I hear there's a nice bridge in Brooklyn, if you're interested..."
"Oh shut up." Duo kicked the contraption. "I should've known, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. But at least I've got plenty of other stuff here to cheer me up..." He smiled and sauntered over to the original pile of brown packages, in which sat his other, more productive purchases.
Bethany was also looking at the stack, which was nearly as tall as she was, and gaped in awe. "'Aven't you got enuff junk already?" she scolded in a friendly way.
"I won't have enough junk until they've come up with an electric toaster. Then my junk collection will be complete."
Shaking his head with a smirk, Heero wandered off and left them to it. They seemed to be the only ones interested in the catalogues' cornucopia, and they proceeded to open each and every package right there, instead of doing the sensible thing and taking them down to the kitchen first. During their rummagings, Bethany found a square, flat package, very rigid and not labelled in any way. She turned it over twice and still had no idea what it was. "This doesn't 'ave our address on it."
Duo paused in his unpacking to glance briefly at the flat object. He shrugged and shook his head. "I didn't order anything that size...maybe it was a gift-with-purchase or something."
Shrugging also, the maid opened it. There was a phonograph record inside, also unlabelled. She held it up and again asked if Duo knew anything about it, but he didn't, and suggested that she go give it a listen downstairs. Agreeing, Bethany abmled idly towards the kitchen, where the phonograph had found a semi-permanent home on a little-used patch of counter space. Duo liked to listen to his Sousa marches on occasion, and since he used the device more than anyone, nobody objected to it being kept there. She slipped the black disc out of its cardboard container, flipped it over twice to make sure it was right-side-up, and set it down on the circular bed of the phonograph. Cranking the lever on the side a few times caused the machine to rattle out of its slumber, and Bethany delicately lifted the needle arm over to the shellacked surface, walking away as she waited for the music to start.
It never did. The girl thought briefly that it was taking a long time, but being of a patient nature, she was content to open the back door and shake out her dustrag for a few moments more. Then, a young man's voice, tinny and irritating, wafted out of the fluted cone perched atop the Victor-made machine. As Bethany wandered back to the kitchen counter, she squinted in confusion.
"...skipping out early. Highly enlightening, though. I have decided to reward you, even though you never actually made it through my menagerie. On this record, you'll find the same information..."
Bethany couldn't make heads or tails of the peculiar monologue. It could have been a sales pitch. When Duo finally arrived with an armload of new kitchen gadgets, she pointed accusingly at the record. "Listen to that! What a load of gibberish!" Duo slowed down to listen to the tinny voice, and was just as perplexed as Beth was.
"...have been a brilliant insult! Ah well...too late now. I hate live recordings. Bottom line is, you're officially..."
The pair of them were still discussing it in confused tones when Quatre wandered in. Even above their idle chatter, he heard the snide, piercing voice coming from the phonograph, and it nearly froze the blood right in his veins. That's Byron's voice! he thought in a panic, and he ran to the machine and hastily switched it off. Duo and Bethany looked puzzled and amused as the voice grew deeper and more drunken-sounding, going from 78 revolutions per minute to zero in a short space of time. "Bethany...I've got a bit of a twinge in my back, would you please go up to the conservatory and water my plants for me? Now?"
As Bethany went obediently up the stairs, for she was never too busy to help a semi-sick friend, Duo walked swiftly to the gardener's side and noted that he still had a hand clamped firmly on the start/stop lever of the phonograph. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing, could...could you go get Trowa for me? Please?"
Duo got one of those tingly feelings on the back of his neck, the kind that happens when one knows one is being kept in the dark for a reason, but he went upstairs anyway, to fulfill the request. Quatre's mind started spinning with terrible fears, not the least of which was the possibility of the others finding out what happened to him in one of the uglier parts of London recently. He was momentarily relieved at hearing footsteps on the stairs, but then was paralysed when those footsteps multiplied. Right behind Trowa were Heero and Hilde, and then Duo, who must have related how jittery and suspicious Quatre was acting, something the others couldn't ignore. They made a semicircle around him and the phonograph, staring with very open concern and not an ounce of judgement. They knew something was wrong now. Sighing, Quatre cranked the phonograph back up, put the needle arm down on the edge of the record, and stepped back. Whatever they heard, if it criminalised him in any way, he could simply deny until his dying breath.
"Good morning, all! So you found my message in a bottle, did you? Good work, I have to say..."
Heero's eyes twitched right away. There was no mistaking Byron's self-important sneering.
"I should start by thanking you...some of you...for providing some quality entertainment the other night. It was...interesting, for awhile, at least...then it just got strange, and I had classes in the morning, and...well, I hope nobody minds me skipping out early. Highly enlightening, though."
Without being noticed by anyone, Trowa and Quatre exchanged guilty glances.
"I have decided to reward you, even though you never actually made it through my menagerie. On this record, you'll find the same information that was given to all other concerned parties earlier this year, about the fiscal meeting. Don't any of you be late, either...I'll expect to see you there, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed...and, no, that's not a smart remark about the other night, although now that I think of it, that would have been a brilliant insult! Ah well...too late now. I hate live recordings. Bottom line is, you're officially invited now, so even if you did weasel the location out of someone else, now you won't be shot for trespassing. I hope Heero's proud of his little soldiers...even if they are nutty as a fruitcake."
Heero was beginning to look slowly around the circle, looking for traces of understanding on the faces around him. While he was mulling it over, the voice on the record suddenly changed, from Byron to a much older man, with an indeterminable type of accent. He spoke hesitantly but calmly, as if he had dictated these same words dozens of times before, and as if he expected the listener to write them down and destroy the record immediately afterwards. "Begin at.....Marrakesh.....Morocco.....thirty-one hours...thirty-seven minutes...thirty-four seconds north.....seven hours...fifty-nine minutes...twenty-two seconds west.....obtain transport and proceed south-west to..."
Not intending for a minute to destroy this valuable piece of evidence, Heero reached out and switched the machine off, still glaring from face to face. "What was that all about?"
"Heero, who was that guy?" Duo asked, shifting his weight to one foot. "You know him, I can tell."
"Yeah, who is he?" Hilde echoed.
Trowa and Quatre said nothing, and avoided looking at Heero. That told him easily that they were the ones responsible for Byron's change of heart, if only he could discover how they did it. Since they weren't coming forward with the information, he could only assume that it was something they didn't want him to know. He fixed both eyes on Quatre, whom he assumed was the more pliable of the two. "It was Byron. But why the sudden willingness to help us?"
Quatre looked wide-eyed to either side, then shrugged wordlessly. It was the worst job of hiding responsibility that Heero had ever seen.
"I think we'd better have a discussion about this new information," the butler declared when it was clear that no further clues were forthcoming. "Everyone be ready to leave in ten minutes."
**********Soon, there was an emergency meeting happening at the pub, with all concerned parties huddled around the table while the latest information was passed out. Duo, Heero and Hilde stuck to one side of the table, Wufei sat at the end nearest the door, and Sally, Lucrezia, Trowa and Quatre made up the other side. On the way there that afternoon, the group stopped in at a travel consultant to collect some facts and figures about travelling abroad. This was the big break they had all been waiting for, the chance to get an inside look at the Cinq Association's dealings and possibly devise a strategy to take them all down, but first, they had to hammer out some financial realities.
Heero stood up, leaned lightly on the table, and addressed his staff. "We have a date...we have a place...now all we need to do is decide who's going to make the trip. Mr. Treasurer?"
"Hold on..." Quatre was working furiously on the numbers, scratching pencil against paper until, and well after, his hand started to cramp up. The group hadn't yet spared the money to buy an adding machine. After a few more minutes of pencil scratchings, he breathed out a long sigh and sat up, his eyes targeted down at the grim numbers. "Well...we already decided that we don't want to touch our investments, so if we want to send anyone to Morocco, we'll have to do it on dividends and savings alone. So, taking into account boat fare, accomodations, train tickets from the coast to the desert regions, food..."
The boy made a few more scritches and scratches, then stared at the final result long enough for Heero to grow impatient. "How many of us can go?"
"Three."
They all looked let down, for many different reasons, ranging from having inadequate manpower to spy on all the people they needed to spy on, all the way down to just wanting to get out of the miserable English weather and into the hot sun for awhile, and having a reduced chance of doing so. Lucrezia tried to shine a bright light on the situation, shrugging and putting forth in a mousey voice, "It's better than just one..."
Heero stood behind his chair and leaned down on the back of it, grimacing. "But still...I was hoping for as much backup as possible."
"So you've automatically elected yourself to go, have you?" Wufei sneered.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I just think we should all have an equal opportunity to go, since this is such an important event," the boy in white scoffed. "Our choice of what personnel to send could be critical to our success."
"Yeah, but, success at what?" Hilde interjected. "I think we all have a different idea of what we're supposed to be doing, and sending the wrong people could mess us up even worse!" While Hilde's observation was perfectly astute, it didn't have a very productive effect on the conversation. The debate soon swelled into an unruly argument, with everyong trying to make their case at once as to why they should be one of the three to go.
Always the civic-minded one, Trowa stood up, banged a hand flat on the table, and was able to raise his voice well above the others, despite his overall weakness from the strange fever. "Hold it! Hold it!" he hollered. Everyone stopped their bickering and looked at him, which was honestly more than he expected. He blushed a bit before continuing. "There's only one way to settle this, and that's democratically. I propose that we all draw straws to see who goes." The murmurings of the group turned suddenly positive, and they all seemed to think that this was a very promising idea. Trowa nodded. "I'll see what Cathy has that can help us."
The rest of them waited rather quietly for the boy's return, and after only a few minutes, he arrived with Catherine in tow, eager to help. Without telling her what it was for, Trowa told the barmaid exactly what they needed, and she came through for them yet again. In one hand, she carried a small handfull of long, narrow paper tubes with a spiralling red stripe travelling down each one.
"Those are drinking straws!" Duo protested.
"You expect me to have any other straw around here?" Catherine snapped back. "This is an eating establishment, not a barn! Now...how many winners do you need?"
"Three," said Trowa.
"Mm hm..." Taking a pair of scissors out of her apron, she took three straws out of the bunch and chopped two and a half inches off them, then mixed them back in with the others, leaving the stubby bits on the table. She then turned around, arranged the straws in some secret formation, taking up both of her hands, and turned back to face them with a brightly-drawn breath. "Alright, who's first?"
"I respectfully decline," said Sally, holding up a hand in amiable protest. She looked over at Heero and shrugged slightly. "I can't be away from my practice for that long."
Heero nodded. "Understood."
"I'll go," Hilde said, and she reached out to take the first straw. It was a long one, and she seemed a bit disappointed. A holiday in Tunisia would have gone down nice after that boring old meeting. She sat down with a pout. Next, Catherine moved over to Wufei, who seemed ultra-confident that he would select a short straw. He did not. Instead, he joined Hilde in pouting and slouching in chairs well off to the side.
Trowa was the next nearest after that, and to his surprise, he drew a short straw. He blinked at it, then looked around the ring of faces, almost apologetically. "But...I can't leave the country...I don't have any papers, or documents, or--"
"Don't worry about that," Sally said suddenly. "Anyone who needs a quick passport, I can get it for you."
Everyone was surprised at the admission, Heero most of all. "How exactly can you do that?"
Sally smirked. "Easy. One of my more reluctant patients is a clerk who works with immigration. He'll either give me whatever official documents I want, or I'll tell his wife what he was really doing when he threw his back out of alignment." Impressed glances flew around the room. "That's right, I've got a devious mind just the same as any one of you," the doctor said proudly.
Catherine didn't even pretend to understand. She simply shrugged and went further around the table to Quatre. As the bundle of straws approached, he eyed each of the flimsy paper tubes with a peculiar sensation coming over him. There was a problem in his life, a mountain of sin and depravity which he could neither climb nor circumnavigate alone. In his mind, he desperately needed absolution, or at least a form of punishment that wasn't self-driven, and he couldn't get either one of those things in England. Morocco could provide the means of his salvation, if he could sneak away from the pack and throw himself on the mercy of others belonging to his faith. He wasn't even sure what he wanted from them, whether it was to be scorned, or beaten, or if he was exceptionally fortunate, for someone to tell him that what happened after chasing Byron wasn't his fault. Trowa had already told him that a hundred and one times, but it wasn't the same. Somehow, it didn't seem to count unless it came from people accountable to the same God that Quatre was. It was potentially all within his grasp, if he could only choose one of the two remaining short straws, and then plan a brief disappearing act after the fiscal meeting. It wouldn't have to be for very long, maybe a day or two...and then he'd be back to his seeds and bulbs in time for the spring planting. It could work.
Quatre fought to keep his hand from trembling as he reached out to grasp a straw. He wavered between two in the middle before finally committing to one and yanking it out. It was long. His face fell, and he dropped the straw into his lap as he sat back down. Trowa saw his disappointment, but could never have known how much that trip to Morocco meant to his friend.
Swerving around chairs to get to Lucrezia, Catherine held out the fistful of paper sticks, which was dwindling rapidly. Lucrezia briefly pondered declining the same way Sally did; she honestly didn't feel like a cross-border trek, and she was still concerned about her family tracking her movements. On the other hand, she had grown considerably stronger during the last few years, and if they tried to march her across the Atlantic to marry Mr. Rockefeller after all this time, she felt she had the confidence to say no and stick to it. The only thing left that could possibly keep her in England would be Milliardo, and since he had chosen to isolate himself so thoroughly... "Couldn't hurt," she muttered to herself, and she elegantly pulled out a short straw. As soon as she saw it, she wasn't sure if she wanted it, but it was too late.
Now the barmaid turned to Duo and Heero, and neither of them looked happy. There was no way to avoid being separated now. One of them was statistically bound to leave the other behind. Anxious and already depressed, they simultaneously reached out for the remaining two straws. Heero got the short one. He waggled the straw back and forth in his fingers as if tapping the air, and seemed to sigh with his eyes. "...well...maybe this would be as good a time as any to...break for lunch."
Taking the hint and running with it, Catherine excused herself to fetch them all some menus, and the rest of the group scattered a bit, condensing into smaller units with less firey topics for debate. Duo stared at the floor for a bit, then walked quietly out of the meeting room, his braid dragging sadly behind him. Heero wasn't very far behind, as soon as he saw the mood his friend was in. He found the chef out in the hall, at the dead end furthest from the hustle and bustle of the main dining area, leaning against the wall and picking at his fingernails. Heero walked up beside him, stuck his hands in his pockets, and waited for Duo to start venting.
"I don't want you to go," the chef said quietly. He then appeared to have a sudden brainstorm, and chattered excitedly about it. "Maybe I can scrape together enough money to go with you! I'll send all that stuff back that I bought! Sure, it was on Relena's account, but maybe if I bring it to the store in person, they'll give me the cash and then I...can....." It was sounding less and less plausible the more he harped on it, so he stopped, and looked back down at his nails.
"I won't be gone long. A few days...a week at the most. There's likely to be a rush of people leaving the area right after the meeting, so..." It was quite plain that Duo wasn't being cheered up at all by this fact. Heero looked around to make sure nobody was watching, then stepped closer and rubbed one of Duo's shoulders warmly. "We've been apart longer than that before."
"If it was anywhere else, I wouldn't be so worried," Duo explained, still looking away. "If you were going to Paris to study painting, I wouldn't be so worried. If you were going to Rio with a boatload of dancing girls, I wouldn't be so worried!"
It was easy to understand why he was so upset. Duo never liked the idea of Heero being within five hundred miles of Jeffrhyss, and now they would undoubtedly be in the same room together. Rationally, Duo knew and trusted each and every one of Heero's abilites, enough to let him go without any fear that he wouldn't come back. But still, he worried. "...I'll bring you back a souvenir," Heero teased.
At last, Duo looked up and grinned, clamping an arm around Heero's neck and squeezing playfully. "Yeah, you'd better!" They had a bit of a chuckle over it, and then it was fine. It was starting to sink in that worry didn't do either of them any good, and that it was best to enjoy what they could while they were able. Keeping that in mind, Heero chose to wait awhile before seriously pondering Trowa and Quatre's role in their windfall; Duo was still the top priority.
**********Quatre spent the afternoon alone in the conservatory. There were plenty of places he could have gone if he needed some solitude, but he naturally gravitated to the conservatory because the very presence of greenery was calming to him. The plan was to lay low for awhile and figure things out, but his mind had shut down like someone had tossed a wooden shoe into his internal gears. He had little means of defence when Trowa wandered in, pausing briefly to knock at the door frame.
"Want some company?"
Quatre didn't protest, but didn't encourage him to stay either. Nevertheless, the cinnamon-haired boy took a seat on one of the white-painted iron chairs and waited for something to happen. After a moment or two, Quatre sighed. "You know...I tried going into town yesterday, to get my mind off it...and it seemed like everywhere I went, there was a girl smiling at me. They were probably just being friendly, but I kept looking at them and wondering...'Was she there? Does she know?'"
Trowa nodded a bit, and leaned back in his chair, slouching. "I've been getting some of that too. There's probably nothing to worry about though...we'll never see those people again."
"Oh, I see them," Quatre said fervently. "...every night, in my dreams, I see them."
"What can I do to make you forget this ever happened?"
The gardener stood and walked around the conservatory with his hands in his pockets, shaking his head and furrowing his brow from the lingering anxiety. "Nothing. I don't need to forget. This may be difficult to understand...but I need to be punished before I can move on. This is absolutely the worst thing I've ever done, and there's no one I can talk to about it. Not my sisters, not my friends, not--"
"Why not me?"
"Because..." Quatre stopped his pacing and glared. "Do I have to explain why??"
"You don't need anyone to punish you, because you're doing a fine job of that all by yourself!" Trowa observed. "The only person you have any reason to be afraid of is me, and I keep telling you, I'm okay with it!"
The gardener pouted, picking at a wilting ficus plant. "It doesn't feel like that's enough."
"Well, it should be. We both know I'm not the religious type...aside from the usual sailors' prayers for good weather and that sort of thing, I haven't been exposed to it all that much...but I've already forgiven you a dozen times. All these rules for behaviour are just there to bring order to society, and protect the victims, but I don't feel like a victim. We got in a jam, things happened, we got out safely, and that's all there was to it. Now...you can either drag yourself around the house wearing a haircloth and flogging yourself every five steps..." That actually made Quatre giggle a bit. "...or you can let it go and start talking to me again."
It was truly the best offer he'd had since the nightmare began, and since all the terrible offers were coming from somewhere in himself, he thought that fate must have been trying to tell him something. Now wasn't necessarily the time to close himself off and wait for righteous retribution--he was needed too badly in the real world. Quatre smiled. "Okay."
~~~~~~~~~~
Next, in Episode Seventy-Five: The trek to Morocco brings surprises, danger, answers, and perhaps more questions as the chosen three crash the biggest party of the year. Back in London, Quatre makes one last, desperate attempt to win Dorothy over, with unexpected results.
Bad weekend. Bad, bad, bad weekend. But never mind. It's over. And I'm back in business, yay! =^_^= It might seem like a long way away, but the next episode will be on March 10th, and I promise you, it will more than make up for the lateness of this eppy. =) Thanks again for sticking by me, it really means a lot.