Warning: Any religious viewpoints expressed are opinions of the characters, not the authoress.
Disclaimer: These characters are used and abused without permission. But they enjoy it. =^_~=
~~~~~~~~~~Episode Ninety-Two: Oedipus Invitus
"You can't unring a bell." ~AnonymousSeptember 6th, 1903
Sally gaped at the sheer number of envelopes that had just been dumped on her desk. It was a mountain of letters, telegrams and envelopes the likes of which she had never seen before, and they all bore the striking similarity of being address to the same man, who apparently hadn't answered a single summons. As it settled, and as a few pieces dropped over the side and onto the floor, she waited while Lucrezia put the empty box aside and sat down opposite her with a tired but determined expression, and arched an eyebrow at her silently.
Lucrezia leaned back and folded her arms. "There's more."
"More than this?" Sally exclaimed.
"They kept coming even while I was there. I telegraphed Mrs. Trimble as soon as I got back, and they were sill arriving, three, even four at a time."
"Weird." The doctor picked up one after the other, read the names on each one, and shook her head, puzzled. "Have you read them all?"
Sighing in frustration, Lucrezia looked down at the floor. "There's too many, and some of them are in languages I can't read."
Sally tapped one of the stiff envelopes against her fingernails, and bit her lip, and thought. "Duo needs to see these. It could mean something."
Of course, it was the obvious solution, but something must have made Lucrezia apprehensive about doing so, else it would have been done already. She began picking guiltily at her dress, and didn't look up for several seconds. "Would you mind coming with me? He must be in a terrible state by now, and...I haven't been helping much lately..."
Her friend smiled warmly, and rose to fetch her hat and gloves. "As if you need to ask."
**********Heero went into his unlit cell with the steely determination to hang on long enough for Lord Jeffrhyss to sort out his subordinate. For the first few days, it worked. Dressed in rags though he was, with an iron shackle around his left ankle and a heavy chain attached, bolting him to the floor, he came up with a plan of meditation, deep breathing, and minimal movement. As soon as Jeffrhyss finds out about this, he'll demote Byron to janitor and send someone down to get me out of here, he told himself. It won't be long.
Somehow, the first few days turned into a week, and Jeffrhyss didn't show. The intention of not moving to conserve precious calories became an unfortunate necessity as he got hungrier and hungrier. No amount of meditation could block the gnawing stomach pain, dizziness, headaches and occasional blackouts that started slowly and grew as the lonely hours ticked by, and then Heero began to get worried.
After many days of darkness, listening only to the syncopated dripping of water as it formed tiny pools in the hollows of the stones below, there was at last a sound coming from the end of the long hallway to the carved stone stairs. Far off in the distance, a heavy door opened, bringing with it a few faint streaks of yellowish-white light, but the rays all but died before reaching the cell. A lone figure came sauntering down the hall with an oil lantern, his hard-soled shoes making an ominous clip-clop noise that echoed at will. It was too even and able-bodied a sound to be Jeffrhyss, which depressed Heero even further.
Byron waltzed up to the only barred wall of the rocky cage, carrying a lamp in one hand and what appeared to be an enormous turkey sandwich on a fluffy kaiser roll, with fresh lettuce, sliced tomato, cheese, and just a hint of Dijon mustard in the other. He was chowing down shamelessly, and spoke with his mouth full. "You should've seen the buffet at the shareholders' meeting! It was unbelievable!"
Even the soft orange glow of the lantern's flame was too much for Heero's eyes, so he turned his head in disgust, but could still smell the food. It was tortuous. "You came...all the way down here...just to tell me that?" he said tiredly.
Byron set the lantern down on the floor and took another big bite of his sandwich. "It's also my lunch break. My personal trainer wants me to take a walk a half-hour after each meal, and I couldn't wait that long." He swallowed and smirked, smacking his lips. "And I just had to come down and visit my number-one fan!"
"Don't waste that garbage on me," Heero rasped, leaning against the farthest stone wall, slowly letting his eyes adjust by degrees. "Save it for someone with...the energy to pretend they can't see through you." The mere effort of speaking was enough to leave him winded, and the growling of his stomach drowned out all else.
"You're not...displeased with your accomodations, are you?" Byron swooned with a hand on his heart, acting terribly offended. He smirked again and took another leisurely bite of his lunch, this time dropping a buttery breadcrumb about the size of a walnut. It bounced to a stop just in front of the slimy iron bars, and Heero's gaze was riveted to the morsel while Byron rambled on. "I don't think you fully appreciate the rich history of this place," he said, waving a hand at the walls and ceiling. "It was apparently carved out of the mountainside hundreds of years ago, a secret under the protection of a clan that Jeffrhyss wiped out at one time or another. The caretakers tell me they found all sorts of artifacts inside when they cleaned it out for renovations...it might date all the way back to ancient Rome! What do you think about that?"
Heero had to shut his eyes again, to get the image of the breadcrumb out of his head. "What do you want, Byron?"
The jailer arched his eyebrows. "Oh! That's very nice of you to offer...hmm...what could I ask for? ...I know..." He crouched right where he stood. An inch to the right, and he would have squashed the bit of bread, which he hadn't noticed yet. "You seem to be well acquainted with the Peacecrafts.....that blond soldier-boy said he's acting on behalf of an anonymous third party. Normally, Cinq doesn't abide anonymity, but the majority has decided to let Peacecraft compete anyway. If he wins, they'll find out who he's working for at the initiation. I'm much less patient, however, and I'd love to know who this mystery master is in advance.....is he royalty? ...a business mogul of some kind? ...someone in the government?" Silence followed, and he got a bit testy because of it. "Oh, come on! One little hint!"
"Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you," Heero snarled.
"Not even if I could get you out of here?" Byron teased back.
An empty suggestion. "You'd never let me go that cheaply. And it wouldn't matter anyway...because Jeffrhyss will have your head...when he finds out about this." Heero watched his foe stand back up and languidly lick a patch of mustard off his thumb, unconcerned. The captive squinted. "He doesn't know, does he?"
Byron looked up in playful thought, humming. "No, I can honestly say, without a word of a lie, that no one has told Lord Jeffrhyss about your capture."
In the deathly quiet space between that concept and the next, Byron finished off his sandwich, and Heero became extremely distructful of everything he had told himself about his former master coming down to collect him. Suddenly in a panic, Heero forced himself to stand feebly, his eyes widening, and lurched as far forward as he could before the ankle chain stopped him, well away from the bars. "Where is he!?" he demanded urgently. At the moment, Jeffrhyss was the lesser of two evils, and the only person likely to save him from a long, painful, lingering death.
At first, Byron turned away, to prolong the agony, but gave in after a few moments, cruelly dangling clues in front of Heero like a salmon before a dancing circus bear. "When did you see him last? Can you remember?"
It took longer than usual for Heero to retrieve the information from his nutrient-deprived brain. "In Morocco...he was.....he was messing with my mind again...trying to win me back.....and I turned him down..."
"Oh, you did more than turn him down," Byron finished for him, his mouth curling into a snakelike smile. "In fact, you did me a substantial favour."
Heero's mind raced. The desert trek, the grand assembly, the unexpected meeting with Relena, and finally, the confrontation with Jeffrhyss. He remembered, through a slightly blurred lens, aiming a gun at his mentor, and Relena trying to block the path of the bullet. He remembered being tackled by her brother, and squeezing the trigger out of reflex, and a scream, and a thud. He remembered the aftermath when the crowd finally cleared, when he and Trowa saw blood on the ground and high-tailed it out of the citadel with Lucrezia in tow. After so many weeks without any retribution for attacking his master, Heero had dared to think he was safe, that he was in some way forgiven, but another possibilty was emerging that he had never even counted upon. He swallowed, swaying a bit. "...what happened to him? .....where is he??"
Byron folded his arms, his eyes narrowing. "You know how old I was when I joined up? Nine. Just nine years old. And I fought like hell to be recognized for my talents.....but no. All I ever heard about...was you. Jeffrhyss couldn't be bothered hand-training an ordinary whelp like me! I tried so hard to be noticed through my efforts, but all I ever heard him talk about with his aides was 'Heero this' and 'Heero that'! He had so much invested in you that he couldn't even see his other agents anymore! And I was there, for years and years, standing on the sidelines waiting for my big break...and now I've got it!" He saw the look of horrified revelation in his victim's face, then chuckled. "You've already done so much for me, I can only ask you for one more thing.....to die." And then he turned and walked away.
Heero was unflattered by the undertones of jealousy. He tried to jump frantically toward the bars, but was caught by the ankle chain and fell to the ground unpleasantly. Hauling himself up on all fours, he reached out to grab handfuls of air as he hollered after the boy. The picture Byron had so vaguely drawn couldn't be true, it just couldn't. "What happened to Jeffrhyss!? I have a right to know! ...you can't hide it forever, not from everyone! ...tell me!!"
Only Byron's light, retreating footsteps answered back. Heero slumped, face-down on the cold, damp stones, exhausted. There would be no salvation or reprieve from his master, for his master was in no position to save anyone, least of all himself. He knew that now.
...what have I gotten myself into?
All delusions gone, tricky thinking was now the key to survival. He looked up at the discarded breadcrumb, and reached for it, but as much as he pulled and strained at the shackle holding him back, it remained a scant few inches beyond his fingers. He couldn't reach the bars, even as the iron cut into his foot and drew a pasty red circle around it. Ultimately, he gave up and collapsed again, panting from the agony of effort, and still tormented by the fading aromatic tendrils of turkey and fresh bread. That was the spot where he lost consciousness yet again, after struggling to come up with a plan while drenched in mortal futility. Not once did he consider that someone other than Jeffrhyss could have saved him, but it seemed too great a stretch of the imagination at the time.
**********Hilde felt both honoured and intimidated that she had been given the singular task of watching Wufei carefully, to make sure he did what he was asked. He was the only one of their group capable of finding out where Heero was being kept, but lately he had become shiftless and distant, as if he didn't quite grasp what was at stake. Sometimes he looked half-asleep, and other times he was hyperactive, often switching to one state within minutes of leaving another. Since he seemed to respond to Hilde more than the others, she was assigned to watch him all hours of the day, and remind him that he had a job to do. Contrary to Duo's hopes, she wasn't very good at it, but she hid this fact from him very well.
Wufei seemed to have his own agenda, a plan that he refused to share with anyone, but allowed Hilde to watch since she was glued to him wherever he went anyway. At that moment, he was dragging her by the arm down a posh-looking street in the business district, a place full of tall brick buildings with colourful awnings and uniformed doormen, banks and hotels and department stores and high-class office complexes. Hilde still wasn't sure where Wufei got his money, but he couldn't possibly have had enough to hang out with the upper crust in a place such as that, she thought. As far as she could tell, he was wasting time yet again, and it wasn't going to wash this time. "That does it," she grumped, tugging on her arm and trying to slow them both down. "You tell me what we're doing here or I'm not moving another step!"
To her surprise, Wufei stopped. "You're not moving another step anyway." He immediately started scanning each building for a specific target, then looked up at a massive clock built into the side of one of the tall brick spires in the square, then looked back down again. Rather quickly, he found what he was looking for, and grinned satanically. "Stay right here," he ordered, and then he took off running across the street, right into the heavy traffic of cabs, horses, motorcars and pedestrians. Hilde squeaked with shock and actually took one step off the curb, but had to jump back again, not confident enough to dodge vehicles the way he could.
While the housemaid watched helplessly, Wufei darted across to one of the impressive office buildings, and then snaked along the sidewalk to reach his target, none other than Count Khushrenada, who had just exited one of the banks after a less than successful meeting with the manager. Treize was walking north, and Wufei followed him, as close as two feet behind. Sensing something was amiss, Treize stopped, looked to either side and a bit behind him, but Wufei nibmly avoided his gaze, holding in peals of laughter. Finally they started walking again, only to stop a second time as the Count's vague sixth sense told him he wasn't alone, even in a street full of busy businessmen. This time, Wufei delicately tapped him on the shoulder and rocked back on his heels, clasping his hands behind him as he waited for the reaction of disgust he was relishing in advance.
Just as he planned, Treize turned around, saw Wufei's sunny smile, and crunched his hands tighter around the rolled-up newspaper he carried in slight annoyance. "You again?"
"I knew it! I knew you missed me!" the boy crowed, slinging a friendly arm around his comrade's back. "I just wondered what your plans were for lunch. Maybe we could share a surf n' turf platter somewhere, hm?"
"I wouldn't let you choose the restaurant," Treize sniffed haughtily, shrugging off the arm. "I'm liable to end up with a mysterious case of food poisoning."
Wufei's eyebrows took an upward leap, though his eyelids remained at half-mast. "Ah...so you'll be dining at home, then?"
Still not seeing him as much of a threat, Treize merely narrowed his eyes curiously. "Why? What are you up to?"
"Just making a friendly inquiry, that's all! My goodness, don't you have a suspicious mind!" Whistling happily, Wufei turned away and walked back into traffic, effortlessly sauntering through the morass without getting so much as a scratch. When he got to the other side, Hilde looked significantly less happy than she did before.
"What was all that about?" she whined, having watched the time-wasting scene from start to finish.
Wufei was too far gone to even think about giving her answers. He was absolutely glowing from the knowledge that the immediate portion of his plan was falling neatly into place. "Never mind that now, I have to find a phone!" He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her off in another direction, laughing all the way. Hilde couldn't get a single word in edgewise as she was pulled behind him like a disobedient dog.
On the other side of the street, Treize paid no mind to the interruption, and made his way back to Lady Une's. He was already in a foul mood, for his upcoming nuptuals were constantly being delayed by his fiancée forever changing her mind. First she wanted an outdoor wedding. Then she wanted an indoor wedding with enough potted plants to make it seem like the outdoors. Then she wanted French catering, then Swiss, then Italian, then French again. Then she changed the date twice to accomodate relatives who had prior committments on the original date. Then she gained three pounds from stress-induced eating and had to have her dress altered. At that rate, they wouldn't be getting married until after the first snowfall, if they were very lucky.
As he walked in the door, the ever-snooty butler greeted him as usual, and Treize brushed him off in his normal uncaring manner. "Where's Madam?" he inquired blandly.
"Madam is answering a telegram from her Aunt Medea," said the butler. "Apparently there is a disagreement over the floral arrangements for the church."
The Count rolled his eyes selfishly. Oh, Saints preserve us... He whipped the folded newspaper out from under his arm and batted it against his opposite hand, venting his frustration safely. "I'll be lunching alone, then."
"Very good, sir."
The butler trotted away to make the arrangements while Treize settled himself into the east dining room, an austentatious display of golden cherubs, red paisley wallpaper, crystal chandeliers and a long mahogany table that could easily seat twenty. He thought it a shame to let such finery go to waste in between dinner parties, so he had made it his personal luncheonette whenever his charming companion was otherwise engaged. Within minutes, the butler and one of the kitchen staff brought forth his meal on a wheeled cart of silver plate, delicately engraved with laurel leaves in the ancient Greek fashion. They laid out nut bread with seville marmalade, veal croquettes made with a delicate grating of fine imported cheese, a garden salad, lemon sponge, and white wine to wash it all down with. Once the bearers were dismissed, he inhaled the succulent aromas with immense anticipatory joy, but no sooner had he got stuck in than an argument coming from outside broke his peace.
Treize pulled a face, put down his fork, and picked up a croquette pastry, carrying it to the door and munching on it with every step. He threw open the heavy wooden slab and found the butler arguing with the house steward, apparently over whether or not to inform the Count of some minor trouble that had occurred earlier that day. He scowled them into silence, and they snapped to attention before him. "What's the matter?" he grunted, still chewing.
The butler nodded downwards in deference. "Terribly sorry, sir. There was a fracas earlier with the delivery boy from the green grocer's. A most...unsanitary character. Mr. Hargreeves wishes to lodge a complaint with the firm."
"Indeed I do!" shouted the steward known as Hargreeves, a man somewhat younger than the butler but lacking nothing in the way of class and authority. "Fancy them hiring immigrants fresh off the boat like that! I can understand being short-staffed, but there's no excuse for sending a greasy little Chinaman into a neighbourhood of this social standing!"
Suddenly, Treize was listening, and stopped just as he was about to take another bite. "...Chinaman?"
"Yes, sir, and I shall be having a very strong word with their manager, I can promise you that!"
A greasy little Chinaman had delivered food to the house unexpectedly. For the first time in a long time, Treize began to panic as his own snarky voice echoed in his head. "...liable to end up with a mysterious case of food poisoning!" He stared, horrified, at the half-eaten meat pastry in his hand, and dropped it on the floor, feeling a little queasy already. Swallowing down the taste of bile that was suddenly creeping up his throat, he wheeled on Hargreeves, his face slowly turning red with rage. "Tell me exactly what happened. What did this fellow bring with him?"
Hargreeves was rather surprised at this. He himself was purported to have the worst temper in the house, not Treize. "The regular food order for the day, sir. Fruit, vegetables, meat, bread--"
"And your imported Limburger cheese as well, sir!" the butler cut in. "He very nearly dropped the lot tripping over the threshold."
Treize's eyes bugged out. "You let him in!?" he hollered, leaning almost right into them. Without waiting for an answer, he shoved past them both and bolted downstairs to the kitchen, clasping his neck with one hand and coughing instinctively, certain he had just been poisoned. He shouted for water, and no less than a dozen servants sprang forward to offer him some as he careened down the hall and into the main food preparation area, where the day's groceries were all laid out and being incorporated into the evening meal. It was impossible to tell which food was new and which had been there the day before. While his bumbling staff left their backs turned, Wufei could have contaminated it all with some mystery bacteria, probably smuggled out of a top-secret biological weapons lab, or at least off someone's filthy kitchen floor.
As he walked around in a slow circle, gazing with nauseating clarity at everything and everyone around him, he was just about to run upstairs and place an emergency call to Une's doctor when the butler found him again and announced that there was already an incoming telephone call for the Count. Treize stormed up the steps, shot through the halls like a big, angry bullet, grabbed the two-piece instrument out of the hands of a frightened servant, and bellowed into the receiver. "What!?"
There was a languid pause, and then Wufei's voice crackled over the line in sweet smugness. "You know, I just wanted to let you know that you were so right about not eating out. I mean, if you go to any old place in town, you never know who'll be handling your food, do you?"
Nothing on the Count moved except a single curled lip. "What...did you do?"
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, my lord Count," Wufei sang cheerily. Then, with no warning, he began coughing violently into the phone. Treize instinctively yanked the earpiece away from the audible spray of germs, then put it back, berating himself for his momentary stupidity, just in time to hear the boy clear his throat apologetically. "Sorry...must've picked up a little bug on the east side. I'm sure it's nothing."
Shaking with rage, Treize slammed the phone down and marched back to the kitchen. Everyone heard him coming, and some ran for cover, ducking out of sight just as he appeared in the doorway. "All of this has to go!" he shouted, pointing broadly at all the food scattered around the countertops. "Throw it away! Every last bit of it!"
Curiously apprehensive, the lowly dishwashers hastened to obey the order, while the butler and the cooks protested loudly about the unexplained waste, but Treize wasn't budging. He watched carefully as every scrap of food was chucked in the bin, then ordered that any utensils that couldn't be sterilized were to be thrown into the furnace at once. It was bedlam for several minutes as the entire culinary staff was transformed into a makeshift hazmat team, scrubbing down every surface with bleach until the fumes burned everyone's nostrils worse than the mystery disease they were trying to eradicate ever could.
On the other end of the telephone line, in the post office nearest to the spot where he confronted the Count, Wufei laughed so hard he nearly keeled over from the strain. All the bystanders in the post office had been watching curiously since the call began, some glaring at the noisy intrusion into their daily lives, and Hilde was embarassed just being there. She stared at the snickering lad and shook her head. "I can't believe you just did that." Wufei showed no signs of pulling himself together, so she hit him in the arm. "Stop laughing! There are innocent servants living in that house, not just Treize! Did you tamper with their food!?"
Still smiling, Wufei rubbed his arm and scoffed at her. "Of course not, but he doesn't know that! It was just an innocent delivery..."
Hilde folded her arms sternly. "This is how you spend your time instead of finding out where Heero is?"
That was when Wufei's outward behaviour dramatically changed. The smile disappeared, replaced with a disgusted expression as he grappled with the girl's utter unappreciation of his efforts. "I'm only doing this for you!!" he blared in disbelief.
Hilde gaped at the implied accusation. "When did I ever ask you to give Treize psychosomatically-induced food poisoning!?"
Silently, angrily, Wufei leaned forward, glaring through narrow slits as the girl leaned back and swallowed. It was times like this, she noticed, times when he got right up in her face for whatever reason, that she could smell something peculiar on him, a smoky perfume of burnt leaves that was both sweet and bitter at the same time. It was clinging to his clothes more than it was actually coming out of his nostrils, and his eyes were a bit glassy, now that she really looked closely. What she couldn't possibly see was the picture of the world that was presented to Wufei, through the filter of a habit he had picked up over the weeks, while his stress level rose and rose. Behind his heavy-lidded eyes, the universe looked quite different. "You think I've forgotten what he did to you...to both of us," he said with reasonable clarity to the figure of a young girl before him. She didn't look much like Hilde to him, in fact it was difficult to say whether he even knew Hilde was there. All he could see was a ghost, whose hand he took lovingly in both of his own as he shook his head sadly. "When I think back on it, I know I could have done more to save you...I'm so sorry I failed, mei jing shen..."
His voice was softening strangely, and the incomprehensible foreign bit at the end didn't settle Hilde's nerves any. She blinked, frozen nervously in place. "No big."
Grateful that he hadn't lost either the respect or affection of the ghost, Wufei threw his arms around it and hugged it with a sigh, breathing out sweet nothings and nuzzling the apparition's neck. "Wo ai ni..."
By now, Hilde was totally spooked. Wufei was no longer acting rationally, by any stretch of the imagination, and over-disrupting his thought process could be dangerous. She swallowed and smiled, gently pushing him back to look directly into his slightly glazed eyes. "Would you do something else for me if it would really make me happy?"
"Anything," he quickly agreed.
"Find out where Jeffrhyss' headquarters is?" she asked sweetly. Wufei looked down and away disinterestedly, and she huffed in frustration. "Don't make that face at me! If I tell you to do something, I expect it to be done!"
Wufei stared blankly, and stared, and stared...and then did something unexpected. "You're right. I'm sorry." Suddenly, he was the very picture of humility, taking her hand gingerly and cradling it in the crook of his arm as he led her further down the street, walking on the outside like a gentleman escorting his lady fair to high tea. "I might be able to think of someone if we take a walk through the park."
Hilde just walked. She was much too skittish to say anything else while he was this unpredictable. That's it. He's lost his marbles. And I thought Duo was taking it badly! She spent the rest of the stroll wondering whether or not to tell Duo about the odd occurrence, for it would not only reveal that she hadn't been keeping the close eye on Wufei that she promised, but would also heap more problems on their interim leader. Feeling like a trinket on the boy's arm, she followed him here and there as he looked up old contacts, and though few of them were even remotely helpful, she noticed that Wufei introduced her to every one of them as his 'dear friend', using an affectionate tone of voice such as a wayward husband uses to get back into his wife's good graces. It further confirmed that something was seriously amiss, though she couldn't say exactly what.
**********Quatre quickly found that he couldn't stay in the kitchen with Duo for any length of time without getting either a headache or an upset stomach, sometimes both. The intense mixture of rage and despair was too much for his delicate senses, and so he frequently sought refuge in his garden, feeling just as helpless as Duo. The overall frustration level in the tiny group was building by the hour, as they seemed to have no recourse against the abduction of their captain.
By that evening, the emotionally-battered gardener had done and re-done everything he could possibly do in the garden, and was still looking for reasons not to go inside. There wasn't a single weed left on the property, there weren't any rocks out of place around the goldfish pond, the lawn was immaculately trimmed, and every flower had already been deadheaded. Just when he fearfully began thinking that he would have to go in and face all the negative feelings being spewed from floor to ceiling, he felt something new, a bubbling, boiling anger, acute in its onset and fiercely intense, coming from the kitchen. It was a tough decision, whether to run and hide or see what was going on, but in the end, Quatre chose to intervene out of concern for his friend. Upon dragging himself inside, he saw the source of the shouting which was easily permeating the walls and windows by then, and he sighed sadly as he took up a position on the sidelines.
Most if not all of the household had gathered in the kitchen since the ruckus started. Merlyn was present, but was trying to pretend that nothing was wrong, calmly chopping vegetables somewhere in the background. The housemaids were all there, save Hilde, and they formed a quiet little peanut gallery behind Otto, who was trying to put Duo back in his place after an act of utter defiance. "Fine, but until then, you work for me, and you'll do as you're told!" the bear bellowed in response to Duo's latest empty threat.
Whatever had been going on before Quatre's arrival, it left Duo fit to be tied. "What do you know about anything anyway!?" he shouted back, his voice crackling from recent overuse. "All you do is sit up in your little library and give orders like some jumbo Napoleon, and I don't have to take it anymore!"
Quatre dashed forward, not liking the tone of finality in Duo's statement. "What are you doing?" he begged, just as Trowa came in through the back door.
Otto pointed at the gardener with a warning in his furious eyes. "I'll deal with this, Sagheer, just step back!"
Anxious to plead his case with somebody who would listen, Duo turned to Quatre with his hands held out before him. "He wants lobster for dinner when he knows darn well that I refuse to cook them on moral grounds!"
Otto stood back and scrunched up his face with a twitch. "What 'moral grounds'!? It's just food!"
The chef scoffed, then walked around in a self-righteous little circle, snarling and glowering at everyone. "Do you know what people do to lobsters!? They plunge them into boiling hot water while they're still alive and cook them to death! No living thing on Earth deserves that, and I won't do it!"
Quatre knew this was just leftover Heero-related angst that was spilling over into culinary matters, but he couldn't really say it out loud. He didn't get the chance anyway, for Otto notched up his authoritative anger level, shaking a finger at the disobedient servant. "You're lucky to be working here at all, after the trouble you've caused! If it were up to me, you'd know your place in this house and stay in it!"
"Oh, well, if I'm that much of a burden to you, maybe I should make myself scarce!" Duo shot back sarcastically.
"And what's that supposed to mean!?"
"You want me to spell it out so even an orangutan like you can understand!!? FINE!!" With that, Duo leapt over to the stove, grabbed a spatula and a pot of seven-minute chocolate frosting that was cooling for a cake, and climbed right on top of the counter, dusty shoes and all. Then, gripping the spatula in a tightly-clenched hand, he began slapping large amounts of frosting on the overhead cupboard doors, like a mad painter flinging emulsion at a canvas. In a furious flash, he spelled out 'I Q-U-I-T' in foot-tall letters with three large exclamation points following soon after. When he was done, he threw the pan and spatula on the floor, littering the immediate area with leftover frosting as he leaned forward to scowl menacingly back at Otto. "Got that!?" he hollered a second or two before jumping down off the counter and pushing past everyone to the back door. He slammed his way out of the house without a look back.
Nobody moved at first. Even Merlyn stopped chopping for a moment or two as the surrealism set in. Otto stood clenching and unclenching his fists, inwardly counting to one hundred, desperately clinging to whatever dignity he had left after the exchange. The others seemed entertained yet unconcerned, but Trowa and Quatre looked at each other with great worry. The taller of the two made for the door, but was stopped by a gentle arm. "Let me," Quatre said quietly. Trowa was dubious, but hung his head and let him go, resigned to being the second-best man for the job.
Quatre jogged out back and had a good look around, but Duo had disappeared. The sun was starting its downward drift, and a reddish glow was streaming out from the front of the house, the time of day when it felt very strange not hearing Duo clattering around in the kitchen. Quatre had to put all such uncomfortable thoughts of an uncertain future aside in order to clear his mind and focus, listening for the plaintive brainwaves of a soul in anguish. Drawn directly forward, he slipped into the hedge maze and navigated by instinct, until he found himself standing over Duo in a woody dead end. The chef was sitting in a curled-up ball on the ground with his knees tucked up to his chest and his face hidden. Without a word, Quatre sat down beside him.
The sun sank quite a bit lower before Duo acknowledged his guest, and when he finally lifted his head, Quatre was surprised to see no tears on his face. The grief inside him was enormous, and yet he kept it inside successfully. "That was the last straw, obviously.......Merlyn's probably dunked that poor little lobster by now..."
Quatre swallowed. "Uh.....Duo?"
"What?"
"You just quit."
Duo stared straight ahead with much determination. "I'm aware."
Having confirmed that his friend hadn't just experience a lapse in consciousness, Quatre shrugged a bit. "Okay."
"Wufei hasn't come up with much yet, but he did tell me the exact procedure for executing a berserker," Duo continued in a drained sort of monotone. "First they lock you away, somewhere underground where there's no light, no food, and no one to talk to, and they check on you every few days to make sure you're wasting away properly. Then when it looks like you're about to die from malnutrition, they bring you back upstairs and show you off to all the young agents-in-training, and tell them, 'This is what will happen to you if you ever disobey us.' Then they give a knife to a volunteer and let them put you out of your misery in front of everyone. The volunteer gets all the retained assets of the berserker as a bonus, and then they dump your body in a field somewhere for wild animals to pick at." There was a grave-like silence after that, as Quatre didn't know how to respond, but Duo saved him the trouble. "Starving is a more painful way to die than anything else I can think of. I've seen people starve, on the streets...they get to a point where even if they had a four-course meal in front of them, they couldn't eat it without being sick. It's like your whole gut is twisting itself into knots...I even felt it a bit myself once...when I was really hard up in the middle of winter."
Quatre twiddled his thumbs for awhile, trying to think of something comforting to say. "Well, those people had probably already given up. Heero won't do that. He knows you'll be moving mountains trying to get to him, and he'll hang on for you, I'm sure of it."
Duo drew his lips tightly inward, shaking his head and picking at a loose thread on the knee of his black duty trousers. "If I thought this was only about Heero and Jeffrhyss, I might be able to believe that."
The gardener squinted. "What else could it be?"
Slowly, the chef sighed, no longer concerned about personal secrecy, since it soon wouldn't matter. "You know what he means to me?" he asked quietly.
Even though he didn't ask the whole question, Quatre understood. He and Hilde were perhaps the only ones who knew of Duo's peculiar leanings, and the way Duo and Heero had slowly come together over time. There were occasions, Quatre thought, when he could sense more than he politely should have known, but he lacked the willpower to forcibly prevent those sensual impressions from leaking through his mental wall. He himself once thought he felt that way about someone else, but lately, he wasn't so sure. He nodded vocally. "I know."
"Just out of idle curiosity, if I was in your country, with Heero, doing what we're doing, what would happen to us?"
Quatre's stomach lurched. He had been counting his blessings all along that Duo hadn't asked that question yet, and suddenly, there it was. "You would be given a chance to repent...and if not.....you'd probably both be stoned to death."
To the other boy's surprise, Duo lifted his head with a faint smile and squinted at the first of the evening's stars. "See, I like that. When you do wrong, you know exactly what's going to happen to you in the short-term, so you can walk into it with your eyes wide open, instead of watching your back for the rest of your life wondering when someone's gonna drop a piano on you." Then he looked back down, shaking his head at the grass again. "I just didn't see this coming..."
Curious, Quatre uncoiled himself and twisted to his left to look at Duo more carefully. "I don't understand...you think you're being punished in some way?"
"What else have I done wrong to deserve having my best friend taken away from me!? What else has he done to deserve--"
"Okay, stop right there!" Quatre snapped, shifting around angrily on the lawn until he was kneeling right over the chef, pointing a finger in his face. "You and I haven't always agreed about anything to do with God, but I think it's pretty damn arrogant of you to assume he'd go to all the trouble of orchestrating Heero's past and everything in it up to this point, just to make you feel bad about a little indiscretion! He has an entire planet to run! I think even your priests would agree that no one person's sense of guilt is that important in the grand scheme of things!"
"Then why does it happen!!?" Duo screamed back, vaulting to his feet and flailing his arms about. "Why do the worst possible things happen to the best possible people!? Why did I have to..." He stopped a few paces away, quieting down and passing his shaking hands down over his face briefly.
Quatre rose and stood slightly behind him. "Duo, none of this is your fault."
"He wasn't interested in me at first...we could have gone on for years just being friends, but I kept pushing and pushing! It wasn't enough for me!" Duo wrapped his arms around himself, squeezing in anguish, but the tears still wouldn't come. "If I'd just controlled myself more, or prayed harder, or done something other than throwing myself at him, he'd be out here instead of in there where I can't help him!!"
"He chose you instead of his work. He chose. You couldn't make up his mind for him any more than Jeffrhyss could." Sensing that he wasn't getting through, Quatre walked in front of Duo and pulled his hand away from his face to stop him gnawing on his thumbnail. "As far as your...personal life goes...I can't look you in the eye and tell you I approve.....but I've done my share of sinning, so I'm no one to judge. What I do know is that Heero did walk into this with his eyes wide open, and he knew what could happen much better than you did. You can't blame yourself for someone else's choices, not when their mind is free."
Looking away in thought, Duo began grinding his teeth slowly, and scowling at the surrounding shrubbery with what could only be categorized as a demonic glare that grew deeper by the second. "...you're right. I'm not to blame...they are. The whole, stinking bunch of them." Then, from the innermost depths of him, came a churning, smoky shadow, darker than the blackest night. It was so hideous and terrifying that Quatre actually took a step back, feeling a noose of pure hatred tightening around his throat. "As soon as Wufei comes up with the goods, we're going after him. I don't care if we have to blow their miserable compound right off the map, I'm going in there and I'm bringing Heero back...and I won't spare anyone who gets in my way."
Quatre took another step back, swallowing and shifting his eyes towards the escape route. The aura of death wafting off of Duo was unspeakably awful, and the gardener felt partly responsible for stirring it up. Uh-oh...maybe I went too far. "Um...maybe you ought to sleep on this for awhile...you don't want to do anything rash without thinking about it first...right?"
Duo straightened up, shoulders back and chin forward, with a distinct coldness in his eyes. "I'm gonna go talk to Arthur for awhile...then I'll get my stuff and go to Catherine's." He walked out of the hedge maze, but the dark aura lingered for several seconds after he left, and it made Quatre shiver violently. Now he feared for Duo as much as he feared for Heero--they were both becoming firmly ensnared in the clutches of death, one willingly, and one not. Later that evening, Sally and Lucrezia arrived, delayed by a ticket-takers strike on the railroad and expecting to meet with Duo about their precious cargo, but he was already gone. For Quatre's sake, it was just as well.
~~~~~~~~~~
Next, in Episode Ninety-Three: Driven by grief and a thirst for revenge, Duo begins remaking himself as a harbinger of death, much to the fear and chagrin of those around him. Wufei finally comes up with some information, but his mind is far from the game.
Oi...okay, that was a hellish couple of weeks. The remaining release dates are going to be tentative, because of my family stuff, so expect Episode 93 on or about December 12th, okey dokers? Thanks for the support! I promise I'm gonna read my emails soon! =P