Disclaimer: These characters are used and abused without permission. But they enjoy it. =^_~=
Note: Due to scheduling screw-ups on my own part, the release dates of each episode may not exactly match the story dates listed after the literary quotation. Problems at home caused me to get out of sequence, but that hasn't changed what I believe should be the proper chronological flow of the story. Maybe I'll be able to get synchronized again, but if I don't, it's no biggie. Just wanted to let you all know. =^_~=
~~~~~~~~~~Episode Eighty-Eight: Wanted
"Shame is pride's cloak." ~William Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"July 27th, 1903
The sting of what happened in Leeds faded at different speeds for the different people involved, but after a week or so, they were all over the initial shock. Then they began coping in different ways. Quatre withdrew into his gardens and stayed there most waking hours, even shutting Trowa out in his mania to understand how his family's integrity could have been shattered so easily. Heero and Duo stayed in Leeds that night, and after a solid ten-hour uninterrupted sleep, Duo was healed just enough that he could walk unassisted. The next afternoon, Heero took him straight to Sally's townhouse, where she prescribed rest and relaxation for the next few days. Duo fobbed it off to Otto as injuries sustained while attempting to climb a tree, and the story went over about as well as could be expected. Life was slowly gravitating toward normal, until the next off-the-wall occurrence.
Heero decided not to try interacting with any more agents, for the time being. It would take awhile for Milliardo to re-schedule his feat anyway, and he couldn't possibly rely on that kind of luck blessing him twice in a row. Finding out about the Peacecraft plot and stopping it was a one in a million chance that wasn't likely to ever happen again. So, Heero went back to his 'normal' life, proofreading for the newspaper during the day, meeting with Duo in secret at night, and cultivating a few hobbies in the meantime.
Sometimes, when he didn't have to be at the office until late, and in the early morning hours between Duo sneaking out and the pub opening for business, he would creep downstairs and sit at the piano. It was an old, creaky, honky-tonk beast, standing upright against the far south wall of the pub. Catherine had once said that she bought it for a song at an estate auction, and that it cost a whole symphony to keep it in tune. Based on the beginner's experience with music that he'd had foisted on him at Christmas, Heero became moderately intrigued with the instrument, and would plink away at it from time to time.
By that morning, he had worked his way through a few of the music books to be found inside the plush padded piano bench, and felt ready for something new. He plucked out a waltz entitled 'My Wild Irish Rose', which didn't look too difficult. As usual, the sounds of his hesitant chords brought Catherine downstairs a little early, yawning and pulling a brush through her hair. She didn't generally like anyone touching her prized piano, but as long as it was someone she knew and trusted, it at least made for pleasant background noise while she swept up after the previous night's carousing. "Morning," she mumbled through another yawn.
"Mm-hm," Heero answered, engrossed in at least getting the notes right. Style would come later.
All was quiet for the next twenty-five seconds while Catherine shuffled into the kitchen, backed by a lilting, triple-beat time on the soft pedal, and then the volcano erupted. "Aaahgck!! Get out! Get out of here, you mangy little...hey!! Oh, that's it, you're in for it!"
Heero stopped playing and hurriedly asked himself, Did I shut my door on the way down? ...uh-oh... Then he continued the song, trying to look innocent.
Catherine came storming out of the kitchen, wide awake with both arms stretched straight out in front of her. Dangling from her hands was a fluffy charcoal gray cat, licking its chops after finding an unguarded bucket of chicken scraps on the floor by the back door to the cooking area. "If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times, keep this animal away from the food!" she bellowed.
The original plan was to keep Shadow a secret, but she was such a curious little thing that she couldn't stand to be a secret for long. Heero forced down a smirk and kept on playing. "She only pesters you because she likes you," he bluffed.
"You must think I'm a real pushover," Catherine sneered, plopping the cat down on the top panel of the piano. "Do you have any concept of the trouble I could get into if the Health Department found a cat loose in the kitchen!? They could write me citations from here to next February! They could even shut me down! That Sir Henry Power guy could walk in here today and you'd be back out on the streets by tomorrow! What is the matter with you!? Don't you think!?"
Heero thought. "I didn't like to say anything, but maybe if your staff kept a cleaner kitchen, Shadow wouldn't be so interested in going there. Maybe you should put those girls of yours on double shifts."
Catherine opened her mouth to say something really nasty and cutting, but closed it, then opened it again with an angrily raised finger, then closed it again. To a point, he was right. The girls had been a bit distracted lately, and it was beginning to affect their work performance. At times, the kitchen was an utter tip, but she hadn't realized how bad it had gotten until just then. She deflated from the shoulders on down. "Okay...maybe I'll have a word with them later," she said, moving away slowly, "but you just keep that animal in your room!" She stomped out of sight and began making clanking noises from afar.
Shadow thought it was an awful lot of fuss over nothing, since the chicken had been rather dry and tasteless anyway. She paced back and forth on top of the piano, listening to the rhythmic sounds coming from the wooden box and feeling the vibrations through her paws, then hopped down to the music stand and walked right in front of the opened book. Heero watched her and smirked as she blocked the notes he was trying to read, and when he faltered, he noticed that his former streak of perfectionism was greatly quieted. The days when he would sit down with a 96-piece silver service set and not leave the table until every scrap was perfectly polished were long gone. It felt...nice.
Next, Shadow stepped down to the keyboard and added a whole slew of sour notes to the song, padding up and down on the keys and crawling over his moving hands. That made Heero laugh out loud, and as the music deteriorated, he scooped her up and cradled her against his chest, not caring about the cat hairs getting all over his older black suit. "Don't you worry about Cathy," he said jokingly as he scratched her behind the ear. "She's just jealous because she knows she's not the only woman in my life." Shadow purred regally and swatted playfully at Heero's face, confident in her importance.
The cuddle session was going on at its own pace, until motion on the far side of the building caught Heero's attention. In the restaurant, Kamal and Hessa had begun their morning clean-up. The girls had more or less been avoiding Heero, partly out of shame and partly because they knew how persuasive he could be when he really wanted to know something, such as Milliardo's next move.
Heero swivelled around on the piano bench, still cradling Shadow, and directed a pointed glare at the girls. Hessa looked back guiltily, as if she wanted to apologize even though she wasn't in Leeds for any of the action. Her nurturing character had been pestering her to make things right ever since her siblings returned from the botched mission, but in the short term, Kamal just yanked her away with an equally sharp glare, quietly advising that she get on with her work. Besides, Heero really wasn't the one who needed an apology.
After watching the girls in the cornflower blue dresses vanish to complete duties elsewhere, Heero stood and carried Shadow back up to his room, bearing the extended snubbing by the Winner sisters with grace and dignity. He knew better than to reprimand the monkeys instead of the organ grinder.
**********Duo took immense satisfaction in presenting Otto with a note from his doctor instructing that he be kept off his feet for a week, but asking to be paid for that week was pushing his luck. Nevertheless, the chef healed quickly through the use of hot compresses and theraputic brandy, and after that it was back to work as normal.
Sally managed to make a few housecalls to check on the recovery progress, and since her profession made her a little more important than plain old tradesmen, Duo was permitted to greet her in the butler's pantry, the happy medium between upstairs and downstairs. "You're lucky you were young and fit before your little 'accident'," she reminded him as she prodded his left shoulder through his white tunic. "The better shape you're in before you get hurt, the faster your body repairs itself."
"Yeah, well...Heero took pretty good care of me after it happened," Duo said, smiling wistfully. His smirky, secretive tone of voice suggested that there was much more to that particular story than he was letting on.
Intuitively, Sally packed up her black Gladstone bag while ducking her head at him a little, searching for traces of a blush. "So...how is everything between you two?" she asked at the bottom of her voice.
Again, Duo smiled in a mysterious way and straightened his tunic in preparation to scoot back downstairs. "Things are great," he replied simply, letting the atmosphere of understatement tell the rest of the tale for him. "I'll tell him you said 'Hi', okay?"
"And remind him that I want an update on how much sleep he's getting," the doctor added. "The last time we talked, I told him if he didn't start sleeping through the night, I'd give him something to calm his nerves."
As Duo turned to open the pantry door for her, he involuntary grabbed the end of his braid and began toying with it, his grin enlarging. "No need...I've got it taken care of."
All traces of the conversation were gone by the time they got out into the hall, and appearing on cue through some wicked magic once again, Bertram Augustus took the lady from Duo in order to show her properly to the door. Duo fought hard to keep his smiles in check as he marched downstairs to resume his duties, and could faintly hear Otto stopping Sally at the front door for a formal discussion of his employee's health, but it really did signal the end of his vacation. To be honest, Duo was starting to get quite bored doing so much nothing, and wondered how he ever managed to do so much of it in a single day before he had a job.
When he arrived at his post, Merlyn could be seen outside, picking berries off the currant bushes next to the patio. Since it was safe to talk business under these circumstances, Quatre quickly scurried out from his room and approached Duo, tugging on his sleeve as he had done several times before over the past week. It was getting to be a farce, but Duo humoured him just one more time. "Yes, dear?"
Quatre crinkled his eyes with shame. "I hate to bother you..."
"But you will..."
"...and I know I'm being a pain lately..." Over Quatre's shoulder, Trowa crept in from another portion of the house and instantly recognized what was happening. He folded his arms and stood behind Quatre, and mouthed the next words he spoke along with him, in silent jest. "Would you make me a few sandwiches to take on the train, please?"
Duo shifted his weight from one foot to the other and folded his arms as well, squinting. "Again?"
"Are you actually going to get on the train this time?" Trowa asked, making Quatre spin around in surprise.
The gardener looked at the tired disbelief on both their faces and talked down to himself on the inside for getting his own hopes up time and again with no result. "Yes, today is definitely the day. I've figured out what I'm going to say, and I'm going to tell her exactly what I think of her."
The other two boys truly wished Quatre would either get it over with or change the record once and for all. He wanted to confront Relena on the subject of his sisters' future, and the way they were being treated, but every time he tried to leave for Hampshire, he chickened out. Time and again, other servants had offered to go with him, to make sure he got there and back with enough time in between to thoroughly have his say, but he constantly insisted that it was something he had to do on his own. The trouble was, he could never actually do it. After begging Duo to make him a bag lunch to eat on the train, he generally ended up eating it somewhere secret on Bridlewood property, hoping not to get caught. "Do you mean it?" Duo asked, ducking down to his eye level with a comically serious face, "or am I going to find you behind the potting shed, knee-deep in leftover cheese and pickle?"
Quatre bent the fingers of both hands back in strange positions, twiddling them nervously. "Actually...could I have something different this time? I was thinking, maybe egg salad or..."
Duo grunted, rolled his eyes, and did an about-face toward the bread bin on the counter. While he worked, Trowa turned Quatre completely around with one hand and looked down at him with pity and disagreement. "Maybe an argument with Relena isn't the best thing for you right now."
"I have to tell her that what she's doing is reprehensible, and that she's dragging down perfectly innocent people along with her," the gardener insisted. "My sisters are being blinded by fancy promises of power and prestige, and they can't speak up for themselves right now, so I've got to do it for them."
With a hesitant shake of his head, Trowa unfolded his arms, putting one hand on the boy's shoulder and letting the other hang in mid-debate. "Okay, just...listen to yourself right now. If you want them to quit, why don't you talk to them instead of badgering Relena when you know darn well she won't listen anyway?"
Quatre looked down, the turned away, walking a few paces down the length of the kitchen table and tapping its surface as he went until he was able to look back up with a scrap of confidence. "...because I can't order them around like that. In some circles...you could say I'm supposed to, because I'm their brother, and it's expected of me, but...I don't personally think I have that right."
"So...you going behind their collective back to Relena is better?"
Quatre stared at Trowa a little while longer, then whipped his head around and walked swiftly to the counter. "Are my sandwiches ready yet?"
Duo was just wrapping the meal in a brown paper bag, and as per usual, he folded down the top edges to create a handle, and held it up with both hands ceremoniously. "One chicken salad, one watercress and pineapple, one shiny red apple, and in future if you want egg salad, give me time to boil an egg first." He handed it over. "Happy trails."
"...thank you." Quatre took the sack lunch and strode bravely out the back door, head held high. He said a genial farewell to Merlyn, who looked up and smiled in her queenly way, and then he was gone. The other two boys just stood around shaking their heads and placing bets on how soon he would be back.
**********Clutching his little brown sack like a talisman of strength, Quatre boarded the local train en route to a station that could take him to Hampshire. Not knowing which it would be, he asked several people for directions along the way and got several different viewpoints on what was the best path to take, but eventually he made it to the correct platform, where he was immediately told that the train was late.
Ages passed, and he ended up polishing off his whole lunch before 10:30 out of boredom. Then it was announced that another train was approaching to take the place of the one that was very, very late, but that seats would be available to three times the normal amount of travellers on a first-come, first-served basis, in order to clear the backlog as quickly as possible. The news was met with disgruntled groans from all around the station, but they would abide by the edict. By the time the replacement train rolled in amid great, billowing puffs of steam, the platform was overflowing with grumpy, late businessmen and finicky couples trying to get to their holiday cruises on time, and Quatre's slight figure was no match for their pushing and shoving. Huge numbers of people flowed onto the train, sweeping right past him without mercy, and it was a struggle just to take a step forward without falling down in the sea of cream fabric.
Inside the train, it was very simple. Two rows of seats on either side of a narrow corridor, and all of them filled. Too polite to be pushy, Quatre was left to wade through the buzzing crowd, vainly searching for a vacant spot to perch. He was shuffled back through car after car, dodging porters and passengers alike, squeezing past suitcases and stubbing every toe he owned on anything available. Then, when it started to look like he'd be standing all the way to Southhampton, he spotted a tiny patch of unguarded real estate at the very back of the last car, and he dove for it, squashing himself in between the window and a very large gentleman whose belly was hanging partway into the aisle. Quatre settled back and sighed happily, then slowly opened his eyes and received a bitter shock.
Sitting directly across from him, facing the back of the train, was Dorothy. She was also squashed into the window seat by an overly large woman, and was staring wide-eyed at Quatre like he was the last carrier of the Black Plague. They both had to suppress a sharp gasp, and then the staring contest began.
Whether it was polite to think so or not, Quatre thought she looked terrible. There were dark blue circles of frustration under her eyes, and she was even paler than usual. Her hair hung in strings and her clothes were nothing short of common. Anna Maria, who sat curled up in her lap, seemed to have suffered no ill effects from whatever had flattened her mistress, nor did the feline seem to care as she licked her paws selfishly. At that same moment, Dorothy was jealously thinking how well Quatre appeared, brimming with energy and off on an adventure all by himself, as if to prove to the world that the weak little boy no longer needed his hand held everywhere he went. The temperature in that particular car of the train dropped about ten degrees as they pierced each other with equally pungent glares, and they spoke not a word to each other the entire trip.
When the train finally arrived in Southhampton, they continued to stare each other down as the people rose from their seats in tiny waves, rippling down the length of the train one row after another in rapid succession. The two very fat people in the aisle seats got up and waddled out of the way, and to prove that he was still a gentleman to those who abused him, Quatre held back to let Dorothy into the aisle first. She carried nothing but her cat and her purse, and kept looking angrily over her shoulder as he followed her out.
Then they were out on the platform, free to go their separate ways, but even walking on a totally even plane so that it could not be said that one was following the other, they seemed to be headed in the same direction, to look for a cab. Due to the immense traffic, what few waiting vehicles stood in front of the station were quickly snatched up by others, until only one remained. Quatre looked at the pony and trap with its semi-shaven, slightly drunk driver sitting atop, then looked at Dorothy. Dorothy looked at him, then at the cart, then back at him, and then started to speed up. Quatre began walking a little faster in response. Then she sped up, and then he sped up again, over and over until they were both running full tilt towards the cart, making the driver cringe and pull away from that side, anticipating an impact. The last of Quatre's genteel nature went out the window as they slammed into the little pull-cart simultaneously, both grabbing for the handle on the little half-door.
"Right, an' where are we off to, then?" the driver slurred at them. A few terse words from the teens, and it was clear that they both wanted to speak to Relena, right away, that instant. Since no other transport was available, they were reduced to sharing a ride to Sutherby House, which they carried out in total silence. When the pony and trap pulled up the long gravel pathway to the front door of the mansion, Dorothy got a head start by thwapping Quatre with her handbag and bolting, leaving him to pay the driver, but he got his own back by having much more sensible shoes on than the young lady's high-heeled boots. They got to the door at the same time, yanked the bell pull at the same time, and began talking over top of each other when Pegan answered the call. The startled butler let them both in at once, almost jumping out of the way as they barrelled past him, and he was actually coated with a light cloud of pure white cat hair stirred up by the whirlwind they created.
Already alerted by the doorbell, Relena was on her way casually to the foyer to see who it was, decked out in white lace, and was stampeded by her former gardener and former best friend all at once. They scrambled through the foyer to get to her and skidded to a halt short of knocking her all the way into the ballroom. "I need to talk to you," Quatre opened, terse and already exhausted.
"I need to talk to you first!" Dorothy whined in return.
Quatre turned to the baroness with a scowl, with his hands on his hips. "Well, you can just wait until I'm finished!"
"What kind of gentleman are you!?" the other shot back.
"Just a minute!" Relena exclaimed, holding her hands up defensively. She glanced between them oddly. "...did you plan to arrive at the same--"
"No!" they shouted at once.
Sighing faintly, Relena turned and strode delicately to a small table near the door, set there temporarily, and opened the tiny drawer. From inside, she drew a newly-minted gold half-sovereign coin with the noble visage of King Edward on it, faced Dorothy, and set the coin up on her thumbnail. "Call it in the air."
As Relena tossed the coin, Dorothy bit her lip in panic. "Tails!"
Relena caught the coin in her throwing hand, slapped it on her other forearm, judged the result, and looked apologetically at the girl. "Sorry." Dorothy pouted and wandered off, stroking Anna Maria's head for consolation, while Relena clasped her hands in front of her and turned to Quatre with raised eyebrows.
Now that he had won the right to speak first, Quatre found that he didn't really want it, but it was too late. He also wasn't counting on being overheard by the likes of Dorothy, but deep down, he didn't care. Balling his fists and then relaxing them again, he focused on Relena's falsely innocent face and said what he had to say. "I think what you've done to my sisters is vile. I think you're using them in the worst possible way, just to further your own hideous cause, and they deserve infinitely better than you. I only wish there was some specific law against what you're doing, so that you could be taken away from them before you do any more damage. They've been through enough without you and your brother imposing your own sick agendas on them, and I'd like you to leave them alone."
Relena contemplated the request, a bit heavy-lidded, and then tilted her head to one side. "Can't. Wish I could, but leadership is all about making the tough decisions. Was there anything else?"
Quatre's jaw hung loose. "That's it? I came all this way and spent days preparing my speech, just for you to turn down it flat!?"
"Believe me, your sisters weren't our first choice, but they've proved to be the best possible choice we could have made at the time. And don't you lecture me on the morality or my 'sick agenda' when you don't even know what it is! This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do, and I'm not the slightest bit happy about it, but it has to be done, and your family approached me, once I'd brought the idea to them casually, without putting any pressure on them at all! Right up until we signed the contract, they were perfectly free to back out at any time at all, and they didn't!" Relena cleverly left out the part where she manipulated Adeela with the golden carrot of her brother's approval. Before he could start thinking about that subject, which was no doubt jostling aroung his brain at that very moment, she steered the conversation over to Dorothy, walking away from the gardener to cut off any possible counterattack. "Now, while I still have some patience left, what do you have to say?"
The question caught Dorothy off guard almost as much as winning the coin toss threw Quatre. She seemed to be spooked and out of focus, also uncomfortable with discussing personal matters in front of her enemy but without any practical choice. As she stood there, blubbering, trying to form coherent syllables, tears welled up in her eyes until she finally spouted forth unobstructed. "I've left Treize...for good. I can't go back there! They both treat me like a servant! I'm less than nothing all of a sudden! They won't listen to me, they laugh at me when they think I can't hear them, they--"
Relena stopped her with an upheld hand. "If you've come here looking for a place to stay...I really don't know if I can trust you anymore. He told me that you were in on his deception the whole time, that it was your only reason for coming to England, and worst of all...that you were never really my friend."
"Please!" the pitiful girl begged. "I have nowhere else to go!"
"What about home?"
"...I don't have a home."
Slowly, Relena began walking a tight circle around Dorothy, a tactic she picked up from many sources. "You used to spend hours telling me about your villa on the Mediterranean, with mountains out your bedroom window and a south-facing vineyard where you used to take tea and biscotti with your friends...sounded rather nice." She stopped a short distance off Dorothy's right hand, watching rather suspect tears roll down her cheeks. She was such a phenominally skilled fibber... "Was that a lie too?"
Once again, Dorothy stared at Quatre with apprehension, but he shrugged coolly. "You already know my secret," he said. "It's only fair that I get to stay and hear yours."
That was that. Nothing in Dorothy's life would be significantly better or worse if one more person knew the truth about her, so she swallowed once, and let it out. "I'm not a baroness at all. There's no villa...no vineyards...and no friends that I ever wanted to see again. My family sells pickled olives at a roadside stand in San Gusmè! They're practically penniless! And when I made the slightest mention of how wretchedly poor we were, father blew up at me without any warning and said if I didn't like it, I could find my own way through life! He threw me out onto those cold streets without the slightest thought for my safety or happiness!" Through her sobbing, she stopped long enough to realize that she was embellishing reality to her benefit just a teensy bit, but it was a difficult habit to break. "...well...maybe he didn't...throw me out...maybe I left...and maybe I complained just a tiny bit too much about our finances...but it doesn't matter now, because I can't possibly go back there, not ever!"
Relena was absolutely aghast, not at the fact that Dorothy wasn't nobility at all, but at the way she had callously tossed aside her entire family, something Relena couldn't have bought for herself with every last penny she was worth. "They must be worried sick after all this time!"
"Probably not after they discovered I'd taken all the money out of mother's clay jar to start my new life," Dorothy admitted painfully. She suddenly held up Anna Maria, her supposed lifelong companion, and made another startling statement. "This isn't even my cat! I bought her because I saw a girl very much like myself in a painting who was a baroness, and she had a cat just like this, so I thought it would make me look convincing...then I made it as far as Germany, buying fancy dresses and eating in the finest restaurants for about a week and a half before the money ran out.
"I met Treize at exactly the right time, while he was showing off in front of his compatriots, boasting about his wealth and buying round after round of drinks. We struck up a conversation...thinking back on it, I suspect he knew all along that I was a fraud, but having a pretty ornament like me on his arm was a nice perk for appearances' sake...and once he found a place for me in his plan, I was set. All expenses paid trip to England. Jewellery, dresses, fine food...everything I'd ever wanted...and all I had to do was lie for it. I'm good at lying. It's the only real talent I have." Beaten in every sense of the word, Dorothy retreated a few paces, gazing down at the floor shamefully. "I can't go back to my family and admit everything I've done. And I can't stay with those love-sick baboons now that they don't need me anymore! Please, Lena...you're the only one left I can turn to. I'm desperate."
For a moment, Relena was genuinely touched, but her doubts crept back into view, and she couldn't possibly agree right away. "While I'm sure you didn't mean that the way it sounded, I still don't know what to do. You've lied so much already, what assurance could you give me that it won't happen again?"
Uninvited, Quatre insinuated himself into the conversation suddenly. "She's telling the truth now," he declared, not expecting them to ask exactly how he knew. Relena met his eyes with curiosity, and he glanced back with quiet confidence, unwilling to explain further. "I can just tell."
Though she was careful not to let it show outwardly, Relena was grateful for Quatre's opinion. They had offended each other so many times lately it was difficult to keep score, but he had never misled her in any way. "Perhaps it's best if we work this out on our own," she continued, however, putting an arm around Dorothy and nudging her toward one of the hallways. She paused to look at Quatre one more time, with a cold stare. "In the meantime, I respect how concerned you are for your family, but if you want them out of my affairs, you should take it up with them, not me."
Peeved that his assistance with the Dorothy situation had been taken without giving anything in return, Quatre stiffened from the neck up. "Fine...I'll see myself out." He left the house, and the pony and trap was still there waiting for him. He opted to take it, no longer caring how or even if Dorothy made it back to London.
Back in one of the great marble hallways of the converted mansion, Dorothy sniffled into her handkerchief, letting Anna Maria step down to the floor to give her arm a rest. "Are you letting me stay?" she snuffled at Relena.
Relena thought back to the night of reckoning with Treize, when the world began to cave in on her. "You've really hurt me, Dorothy."
"I know...and if I had it all to do over again..."
Gradually, Relena's tone and expression changed, taking on a catty slyness that Dorothy failed to notice. If she had, she would have been looking into a peculiar mirror indeed. "A kind gesture worthy of a true baroness may be in order here, to prove your sincerity..."
Dorothy nodded happily, too tired to recognize her friend's tone of manipulation. "...oh, anything!"
Relena stopped and put both hands on Dorothy's slim shoulders, directing her to look straight into her eyes and nowhere else. "I want you to go back to Lady Une's house," she said, and the words had barely escaped her lips before Dorothy was lodging a squeaky protest. "Hear me out, do.....you see, thanks to all the meddling that's gone on over the last two years, Treize is a very real danger to me, for more reasons than you might expect. We're both playing against each other in a massive game, and it would help myself and Milliardo a great deal if we could have some inside information about his plans."
"You...want me...to spy on him?"
"If you want, think of it as a subtle continuation of your prior duties as my maid," her Ladyship rationalized. "If I reinstated your 'salary', as it were, and if you hid this fact from Treize while bringing me back whatever tidbits you were able from time to time, even in telegrams, you could start building a secret nest egg right under his nose, and then when my brother ruins him, you'll be left standing in the very latest fashions, no doubt."
It was simple, sweet, and oh so tempting. The return to the high life was in Dorothy's grasp, and all she had to do was what came naturally to her anyway.
**********Heero's day turned out to be quite ordinary. He went to work, strolled through the park on his lunch break, emptied out his 'In' basket, and headed for his surrogate home without incident. During his limited travels, he spotted the occasional agent or two, but they no longer startled him. Strange as it seemed, they were becoming a very common sight in the city, milling around like army ants without a specific direction or goal, at least on the outside.
Expecting Duo to arrive a little while after the sun set, he whiled away the few hours in between with various activities, including going down to the basement gymnasium to practice some katas, and cleaning his revolver even though it hadn't been fired since the last time he cleaned it. Solid routines were still what kept him going when there was no pressing outside stimulus, and it never hurt to keep one's mind, body, and tools in top condition in preparation for the unknown.
Nothing out of the ordinary happened while he sat up in his room, waiting for Duo and playing a lively game of 'Bat the Yarn Ball' with Shadow back and forth across the hardwood floor, but as he was wont to do, he exited his suite and poked his head into the stairwell where he could see a large portion of the pub, and searched the crowd for his braided bunkmate. The anticipation of his arrival was a pleasant torture that he forced himself to endure for hours at a time, and normally, nothing could completely distract him from it, but that evening, history was made. As his gaze floated from face to face, the mix of the crowd changed. Two agents came straight through the front door of the pub and started sniffing around, first by glancing around the room benignly, and then by showing a squarish piece of paper to some of the regulars, asking them low-volume questions.
Heero's internal danger meter spiked. This was too close to be a coincidence, much too close. He held his breath as Catherine walked up to the men and offered them a drink as she would any other patron, but thankfully they didn't grill her for information. Heero had never once asked her to deliberately lie about his tenancy, but she often refused to give out such information all the same, and that sort of attitude didn't usually go over too well with agents. The bland-looking pair nodded and asked the proprietress for something simple to drink each, then went back to work as soon as she was gone. The third or fourth man they made inquiries of who wasn't already three sheets to the wind took one look at the paper they carried and nodded vigorously, pointing over his shoulder to the staircase.
Milliseconds before the agents could look up to the stairwell and see Heero's face, the ex-agent ducked back into the hallway, tensing up all over. It wasn't difficult to imagine that the paper they were showing around was his own photograph from Jeffrhyss' personnel files, which meant very bad things in his immediate future if they caught him there. He dashed back to his room and quietly locked the door behind him, just as the two agents were making their way up the stairs to investigate.
Not good, not good, not good...
They almost had him cornered, if not for the window. Heero inventoried the whole room in a flash, deciding what to take and what to leave behind. He couldn't leave Shadow alone, not knowing what sort of people might break into his room once he was safely gone, nor could he leave anything that would identify him, particularly his weapon and his notes. Most everything else could be attributed to Duo, since they could even wear the same size clothes, and it could appear as if Duo had been living there solo. He went to the window, opened it, and judged the drop to be about thirty feet, the same fall that had injured the chef.
...very not good...
Outside in the hall, the agents were knocking on doors, looking for him. With only seconds to think, Heero grabbed all of Shadow's feline paraphernalia, took it to the window, and tossed it outside piece by piece, hitting the nearby shrubs with yarn, a jingle ball, and all her other playthings. Then came Shadow herself, and he bundled her up in Duo's plaid blanket all the way up to her neck, then tried stuffing her into the old carpet bag. She was adamantly opposed to the idea, and quite probably would have clawed him in protest if her paws had been free, but he was too quick for her in an emergency situation. Heero whispered calming things to her, and regrettably had to tie the bag's handles shut with a belt from the wardrobe. Then he tied one sleeve of his jacket to the belt, the other sleeve to his gun holster, and finally added his obi, which he had taken to storing upstairs because Shadow liked to gnaw on the ends. The irony of this, when compared with his own admonitions to Duo that he not give up parts of his karate gi for kitty chew toys, was immaterial when faced with the happy realization that the chain just might reach the ground.
Ignoring Shadow's peeved growling noises, Heero hefted the wriggling carpet bag out onto the windowsill, and then over it, carefully passing the chain of fabric down hand over hand until he reached the very end. The bag was just a little ways off the ground, so he gave it a tiny swing and let go with a prayer. Shadow came to a cushioned landing a few feet horizontally offset from the window high up above, and Heero froze to listen for her angry snarls to make sure she was unharmed before deciding to follow.
The knocks and voices were getting closer. One agent was headed down toward Wufei's end of the hall, and the other was gaining on Heero. He made one last check of the room, blew out the lantern, and started climbing out the window just as a chill wind whipped across the back wall of the pub to complete the gut-wrenching effect. With tremendous precision, necessary to ensure that he landed next to the carpet bag and not on top of it, Heero levered himself out onto the windowsill and then crawled down so that he was hanging onto the brick protrusion by the tips of his fingers, plus one ankle. Reaching up with all his powers of balance, he managed to pull the window sash down a few inches to make it less obvious that someone had just exited the room that way, and then let his foot drop down next to the other one.
He kept checking the position of the carpet bag over and over, but a decision had to be made. He could hear the tenant of the next room being interviewed through the adjacent open window, and he would have just a few seconds between the closing of that door and the possible opening of his own to drop to the ground below. By now, his next door neighbour had most assuredly verified his residency to the agent, who would then break down the door, if necessary.
The conversation ended, and the door closed. Heero made one last check, hopping his aching hands further down the windowsill to put maximum lateral distance between himself and Shadow, and then let go. Recalling the skills he and Duo shared in secret, about pretending to be an uncoiled spring on the way down and then coiling back up on impact, Heero landed with significantly more finesse than Duo had inside the grandstand at Leeds. Without stopping to assess any damage to himself, he picked up as many of Shadow's things as he could find, picked up the carpet bag, and froze briefly as he detected the faint sounds of someone picking open the lock to his door. Without waiting to find out if the men were friendly or not, Heero fled the scene, quite possibly never to return.
A few blocks away, Heero stopped running and squatted in an alley to check on Shadow. By now, she had a terrible feeling that something was wrong. She had long since stopped growling and was now shaking slightly, frightened and confused at the way she had been savagely ripped from her happy home life yet again. Crouching in a dark corner, Heero opened the carpet bag, unfolded the blanket and gingerly lifted her out, painfully feeling every tremor in her tiny body. He clutched her close, but not too tight, and spoke to her in the nearest thing he could muster to a soothing tone. "Shh, sshhh, it's alright...I know.....I'm sorry."
He wasn't sure if she really understood, but she calmed down enough that he could carry her in one arm the rest of the way to wherever he was going, which wasn't decided yet. A long and arduous hike was embarked upon, down darkened streets in the general direction of Bridlewood, not knowing what would be there when he arrived. It must have been well past midnight when he finally dragged himself down the lane where the stately home sat, but before he even reached the property line, the sight of strangers milling around across the street from the manor scared him back into the shelter of a tall hedge. A terrible feeling came over him, that agents from all factions were closing in around him, that perhaps the retribution for his actions in Morocco had finally come. Now was not the time he wanted to face such repercussions, but he couldn't vanish into the city until Shadow was taken care of.
The fluffy grey cat had actually fallen asleep in Heero's arms, exhausted from her ordeal. She remained still while her pet carried her back down the road, around the block, and through Regents Park in an attempt to reach the house from the back yard. She stirred as he set her down on the ground while he had a quick peek over the wall, but something told him not to venture any further. By now, Duo was in enough danger after going to the pub and finding his room empty, and then he would probably come back to the house to look for his friend there. Heero's very presence now put everyone in great danger. He knew what he had to do.
Creeping along the wall up to Arthur's cottage, Heero woke Shadow and lifted her up while standing on tiptoe, nudging her sleepy form onto the wall. Then he tried to shoo her away. "Go on," he whispered, not stopping to wonder if she understood. "Go to Arthur...no, don't look at me, just go! Hurry!"
Shadow looked down at him, her turquoise eyes wide and glossy. For several seconds, she didn't move, perhaps hoping that it was all just a game and Heero would soon take her down off the wall and carry her inside. But finally she turned, sniffed around the wall a bit, padded over to the closest point to the roof of the cottage, and took a great leap forward, landing on the thatch with a little crunch. Still sniffing, the cat picked her way a few feet down the roof, then leapt down past the point where Heero could see, landing with a soft thump on what might have been a rain barrel. A final sound, low to the ground, suggested that she made it as far as the grassy carpet next to Arthur's garden, and Heero exhaled at last. Looking all around him for agents on the prowl, he gathered up the carpet bag and the makeshift rope, extracted his holster and jacket, and threw the rest over the wall, hoping that Duo would be able to read the clues as well as he always claimed he could when engrossed in his private detective fetish.
His mission complete, Heero took off like a shot through the sparse forest of the park, without a thought about where he was going or where he sould sleep that night. If the agents were just now wising up to his hideaway at the pub, it might be awhile before they found him at his new job, he reasoned, but how long that security would last, he couldn't say. His quick thinking had borrowed him a few days at the most, and after that, his fate was up in the air. The vultures were beginning to circle.
~~~~~~~~~~
Next, in Episode Eighty-Nine: Dorothy comes through with the information Relena requested, but it trickles down further than expected. Heero dares to visit Duo at the manor, but strategy is the last thing on his mind
Wow...it feels good to actually meet a deadline for once. Of course, I'm royally PISSED OFF right now because I wasn't ALLOWED to go to the Stones concert A.K.A. "SARS-a-Palooza" or "SARS-stock"...I hate my life at the moment. Please send me your personal stories of massive disappointment so I can commisserate. :( Anywho...next episode will (hopefully) be out on August 12th. I'm signing out now, because it's late and I'm tired, yada yada yada. :P