Warning: Violence, substance abuse.
Disclaimer: These characters are used and abused without permission. But they enjoy it. =^_~=
~~~~~~~~~~Episode Ninety-Three: Coming Down
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." ~Sir Winston ChurchillSeptember 14th, 1903
I wonder what day it is...
I'll bet it's Friday.....Duo always makes chocolate mousse on Friday...
Maybe I'll play that game again...count the number of water drips until I fall asleep. My record so far is four hundred and twelve...or two hundred and fourteen...not sure now...
Heero wouldn't have admitted out loud that he was losing hope, but his options were few. He was getting to know his environment a little too well now. Once he learned every dip and crag of the stone floor while he still had the strength to explore it, but now he could barely move. Once he had trained his eyes to detect even the faintest spark of light coming from the tiny door at the end of the hall, but the blackness seeped into his very blood, darkening his sight even when the guards came to check on him. Only one thought kept him drinking the odd-smelling ground water that seeped in through cracks in the ceiling and collected in pools on the floor, instead of abstaining and hastening his demise.
Duo must be going out of his mind...I wish I'd never gotten him involved now.....he would've been better off if he'd never met me.
There's a rock sticking in my back again. How long has that been there?
Maybe Byron's just toying with me...he could still change his mind...maybe he's trying to soften me up so I'll agree to re-enlist under his command. My pledge of loyalty would go a long way if the others found out about Jeffrhyss...he could have a revolt on his hands if he's not careful...
As he laid sprawled out on the stone block floor, staring up at nothing, a drop of water flew down from above and splattered across his left cheek. Heero made not a sound but attempted to reach up with his right hand and brush it away. His whole arm felt like a bag of cement, and after lifting it a scant few inches, he had to let it drop back down again. He let out a tiny, almost imperceptible crackling sigh.
No. He's not toying with me. This is real. Even if he did let me out, I'd be no good to anyone. I haven't any strength left at all.....only fit for the scrap heap.
...this is really it...
.....I'm going to die here.....
**********When Duo left Bridlewood, he left no trace of his presence behind except a few flavourful memories and Shadow the cat. He thought it would be better for her all around to stay in Arthur's cottage among familiar surroundings, especially since Catherine had all but banned the feline from her premises, but when Arthur sent a polite request that the chef come and remove the animal, he had to comply. Curious as he wondered what had recently gone wrong, Duo made a foray to the back wall of the property and clambered over it nimbly, with Arthur waiting patiently for him on the other side.
"Alright, what got clawed?" he said blandly after jumping to the ground and folding his arms around a new black waistcoat.
Arthur shook his head, took off his tweed cap, scratched his wispy-haired pate with the same hand, replaced the cap and turned toward Duo with his hands perched on either side of his belly. "There's summat a wee bit spooky aboot that moggie," said he, with a distrustful quiver in his voice.
Duo squinted. "I wish I had time for editorials, but..."
"Three nights in a row," Arthur went on, gesticulating with one hand and then the other, "ah left that cat in the front room an' locked the door, an' ev'ry night she got loose!" There was a pause in which Duo thought about asking what the problem was, but it ran short. "Not only that, but the other day, there were a pack o' dogs off their leads in the park out back. That animal jumped up on the roof, and ev'ry one o' them hounds ran off whimperin' at the sight of 'er! There were a day, no' that far back, mind you, when a cat like that would be branded a witch!"
There was a longer pause. Duo looked to either side, then shrugged with his eyebrows. "Is it a crime to have a weird cat?"
"Just call it doon, laddie. Ah've no' got all day." Arthur waved vaguely at a tree next to the cottage and wandered off. Duo, thinking he only had to retrive Shadow and move on to his next destination, walked over to the tree and immediately heard that something was amiss. Dry, fallen leaves crunched under his feet, a good month ahead of schedule. He blinked, looked up, and there was his feline friend, perched on a limb that was completely devoid of leaves. The other portions of the tree were still lively and green; there was no reason for the leaves to be dropping so soon.
"Shadow!" he called impatiently, holding his arms up. "C'mere, sugarplum...you're bothering Uncle Artie now..."
Shadow looked down at Duo across a space of about six feet, bristled, and leapt up to a higher branch. As soon as she began settling down and licking her paws, a leaf fell to the ground, untouched. It was, just as Arthur described, downright spooky.
The ex-chef was still cautiously trying to coax the cat down when Hilde ran up to him, having spotted the lad from a second-floor window. "Where have you been!? I've been trying to get ahold of you for two days now!" Still in her maid's uniform, she stepped back and had a good look at what Duo was wearing. He appeared to have a new shirt, slacks and waistcoat, all in midnight black, and as a quizzical finishing touch, pure white patent shoes. It wasn't at all normal for any clothier to sell black dress shirts, even for funerals, so Hilde guessed he must have had it dyed. She wasn't sure what she thought of his new look. "What happened to you?"
"I'm not after a fashion critique right now, if you don't mind," Duo said, though he preened while he said it. Then he stared upwards, looking for an expeditious yet non-shirt-ripping method of climbing the tree. "C'mon, Shadow, get down here! Busy day!" Shadow was having none of it, and growled softly.
The two youths stood back from the tree, looking up silently. Neither had ever seen Shadow take such a nasty attitude before. "Is...this a bad time?" Hilde asked.
Duo shook it off, opting to leave the cat there if she was really so opposed to moving. "Ain't no good times no more, hon."
"They're, um...working on the map, still," she said, nodding back at the house, "and if you've got time, I need you for something."
"Time!" the boy scoffed, pacing away. "It's not my time that's at a premium."
Hilde's eyes stung at the needless reminder that Heero was growing weaker and thinner by the day. "I need you to help me bring back Wufei. I know where he's been hiding...but I don't wanna go in and get him on my own." She twisted her apron in both hands, glancing down nervously. Clearly, wherever Wufei was, it was a place she didn't want to be.
Duo looked up at Shadow one more time, and gave up. He then beckoned Hilde over to the wall, gave her a step up and over, and they were both scarce within minutes. As long as there was the faintest hope that Wufei had found out where Heero was, he was top priority. "Don't worry, I'm way ahead of you on the Wufei topic. I just want to make one quick stop first," Duo added as they took flight. "Some reinforcements are in order."
**********In the cold storage room, off the hallway to the kitchen, recently vacated by a certain staff member, there was a curious little workstation set up at a heavy wooden table. Three chairs, each on a different side of the table, the centre one with its back to the door, were occupied by Quatre, Lucrezia, and Trowa, respectively. Wanting very badly to make up for her lack of recent support, Lucrezia had conned Otto into thinking Milliardo had sent her to check up on him in order to gain free room and board, as well as close proximity to Duo and the others. Duo was grateful for her offer, and put her to work straight away.
She wired Mrs. Trimble and asked that all of Lord Jeffrhyss' unclaimed mail be forwarded to the manor, and so the pile of questioning letters grew and grew. The three of them sat around that table at least once a day with the misguided mail, three fine nib pens, a pot of red ink, and a large folding map of the world, plus a smaller map that encompassed only Britain and Europe. Piece by piece, they read the return addresses on each item of correspondence and marked the point of origin with a tiny red dot on either or both maps, depending on how close together the dots were the closer the senders got to England. Very few of the letters came from residential addresses, rather from postal depots and telegraph offices for the purposes of anonymity, but it was good enough for a general idea of where the bulk of Jeffrhyss' associates were hiding out. Duo reasoned that this was the first step to finding the primary compound in case Wufei failed.
They worked quietly for about ten minutes before Quatre slumped back in his chair and rubbed his eyes with a miniscule sigh. Lucrezia put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder after putting a dot somewhere in Panama. "Take a break if you're tired."
"It's not that," he replied. "Merlyn made that beautiful continental breakfast this morning, but I couldn't touch a bite of it."
"I only choked down half a piece of toast myself," Trowa added, taking a magnifying glass to a telegram with frayed edges.
"Well, try not to think about it," Lucrezia ordered, timidly asserting herself as the adult of the group. It hit her pretty hard when Sally told her what happened to Heero the day of the big train heist, and coming back to the group and discovering the rest of the plot didn't help. "And for heaven's sake, don't skip lunch too. You won't help Heero by trying to race him to the finish line."
"I know..." Quatre pulled himself back up to the table and resumed his work without any further complaints.
Another five minutes went by, and the distant sound of the front doorbell, still proudly belting out the first few notes of 'Rule Britannia', drifted down to the not-terribly-cold cold room. "That might be the postman," Lucrezia thought out loud, leaving her workstation swiftly. Her dark teal skirt swirled around her as she slipped through the barely opened door, and then she was gone.
Once he was certain they were alone, Trowa drained what was left in his water glass, one of two sitting on the far end of the table, and sighed slightly. "Is it too much to hope for that Duo isn't going to do something ludicrously stupid when he finds this place?"
"Probably," Quatre conceded. They had both been shaken by how badly the boy had taken recent events, but it made Quatre put down his pen and think suddenly. He squinted a bit at his friend. "If I'd been captured the same way, and if the same thing was going to happen to me...would you go nuts like that too?"
Trowa shifted uncomfortably. "Aw, c'mon..."
"No, really! I'd like to know.....would you quit your job and start an international guerrilla war to save me?"
When their eyes finally met, Trowa couldn't hold the gaze for more than a couple of seconds before he looked away with a smirk of embarassment, turning red about the ears. "...well, yeah, but we're..."
Quatre leaned forward. "But we're what?"
"We're not just plain friends like those two," Trowa stammered, hiding behind his bangs and fiddling with his pen. "We're.....y'know.......different."
Quatre folled his eyes at the map below and muttered, "Not that much different."
"...huh?"
The conversation abruptly ended as Lucrezia returned with another small stack of correspondence for Jeffrhyss. "Just a few this moring," she commented, flipping through them.
Trowa immediately grabbed his empty glass and presented it on an outstretched arm to the woman. "Um...I hate to ask, but would you mind getting me a refill?"
Not at all snobbish about doing favours for friends, Lucrezia took the glass and set down the letters. "Sure," she said blandly, turning to leave again. The boys shared a knowing glance as she vanished; some subjects were still inappropriate for a lady's ears.
"What do you mean, 'not that different'?" Trowa hissed in a gossipy strain, leaning right over the maps.
Wide-eyed, Quatre swallowed and glanced nervously from side to side. "Well...I mean...it's not that I...that is to say, it's not my place to....." He sputtered, and babbled, and worked up a real sweat over whatever it was. Finally, the combination of half-words and embarassed little squeaks and hand gestures painted an odd picture that could be seen and interpreted only by those who knew what normal people did not, and Trowa's jaw dropped.
"No...way."
Quatre gave a squicky shrug. "That's kinda why Duo's been acting the way he has...he lost more than a friend."
The very idea of Duo and Heero being secret lovers punched Trowa right in the gut, and he made a sour face. "Ew..."
"What do you mean, 'ew'? That's the pot calling the kettle black if ever I heard it!"
Trowa shook his head and shrugged innocently. "I just...I can't picture Heero that way. Duo, maybe, what with the hair an' all...but Heero? ...no, that's too weird. You must've got it wrong."
He...he really doesn't believe me. He's never not believed me before. Quatre was about to snap back with a witty retort, but sensed someone approaching and clammed up. In the seconds that followed, he grabbed his own half-full water glass and drank down the remainder in three big gulps, just as Lucrezia opened the door.
"Here you go," she said simply, handing Trowa his quencher.
"Um, Lucy?" Quatre wiped his mouth on his sleeve and held out his glass. "Could I please have some more water too?"
Lucrezia looked shiftily between them with mild dissatisfaction at being nominated den mother in absentia. Slowly, she took the second glass. "...alright..." She vacated the room a second time, squinting over her shoulder at the blond boy.
As soon as she was gone, Quatre scowled. "I don't see why you're so skeptical all of a sudden. They both had utterly miserable childhoods which could warp anyone's personality, so it wouldn't be very nice of you to pass quick judgements."
"So you think they're...odd...because they were deprived?" Trowa scratched a spot on his neck. "So what's your excuse?"
Quatre gasped in an offended sort of way. "No need to take that attitude!" he grumped, leaning back and folding his arms.
"Well, this is just silly. Even if you're right, and I'm not convinced that you are, you can't compare them and us."
"I know, because they've been at it like rabbits all summer!"
The notion hung in the air, heavily laden with both envy and disgust, and while Trowa's eyes were busy expanding from innuendo overload, Lucrezia returned with a second glass of water and set it down. "That new chef says I should bring a whole pitcher next time," she said, and she began angling herself down into her chair, but didn't quite make it. Trowa grabbed something off the table and dragged it down out of sight with both hands, making hesitant noises.
"Lucy, could you..." He tensed up and strained under the table, and there was a loud snap. Then he exhaled softly and brought forth two pieces of a pen, a black shaft and a little metal arrowhead. "The nib on my pen broke. Could you bring me another one, please?"
Lucrezia was frozen at a forty-five degree angle to her chair, half up and half down. "What?" she spat.
Trowa held up both pieces so they could be clearly examined. "See? Broke."
She sat down and huffed. "We've still got two perfectly good pens, we can share."
While she looked down at the new stack of letters, Trowa gave Quatre a hot, piercing look indicating that he very much wanted to continue their conversation. Taking the hint, Quatre squirrelled his own fountain pen away under the table and tried to break it in a similar fashion, but he didn't seem to have the finger strength. With a tiny gasp, he took it out again and showed it to Lucrezia. "Mine's...bent." Indeed, the nib was slightly askew.
Lucrezia thought it was the worst display of subtlety she had ever seen in all her born days. She propped her elbows up on the table and massaged her temples. "If you want new pens so bad, you go and get them."
Both boys thought it was the best offer they were likely to get. In unison, they rose from the table, took their pieces of pens and left, briskly searching for an argument-worthy spot elsewhere in the cellar. Finding the kitchen and pantry occupied, they ended up in the scullery, where Trowa threw his hands up and launched the first attack. "Let's say, just for a minute, that I think you're right about them, which I doubt." He ignored Quatre's fervent eye-rolling. "If it's true, are you actually jealous of them? I mean...is that what you want?"
The gardener sighed and propped himself up on a wring washer. He's right, in a way...I only know what Duo tells me...plus the occasional vague impression seeping off him. I haven't gotten Heero's side of the story at all, and if it turns out that Duo's been a pathological liar all along, then of course I wouldn't know any different. Then again, if he's telling the truth, it's almost as if they're deliberately hiding from me, otherwise I'd know for sure...but even so...how lucky they are! "...I don't know exactly what I want. Maybe I'm only jealous of the idea that they might have each other to hold onto through anything."
Trowa checked in all directions, on guard against eavesdroppers, then stuck his hands in his pockets and stepped closer. "We've got each other..."
Quatre folded his hands on top of the washer and rested his chin on the lot. "I thought we did," he said, with an edge creeping into his voice. "So how come we don't talk anymore?"
At first, Trowa nearly said something inexcusably male-minded like 'What's to talk about?' but thought better of it and stepped away, looking down. They had plenty to talk about, plenty to sort out, but days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and somehow the subject of how their relationship had changed kept getting swept under the carpet. For his own part, Byron had a lot to answer for.
"It all happened too fast," Quatre concluded.
".....that doesn't mean it can't be fixed..."
It was a mystery to them both, how the same concept of togetherness could work so well for some people and so badly for others, but a simple fact remained--it wasn't having a positive effect. Their usual in-depth conversations had diminished severely over the months, though it was still better than the first few days after the 'pleasure den incident' when they had monstrous difficulty looking each other in the eye. On the grand relationship scale of life, they were pretty close to lukewarm.
"Listen," Trowa continued after a long silence, "...we're still practically kids, right? I mean, you see it in the newspapers all the time, people are living longer now than they did even fifty years ago, getting more time to figure things out, so...so if we don't get everything right on the first try, what's the harm?"
Quatre pondered, then looked up at him with wonder, seeing him as a young man of unseen, and rather disturbing, depths. "You've been reading the obituaries again, haven't you?"
Trowa shifted all over. "No," he lied innocently.
Shortly after, they slowly smiled at each other, and then began snickering uncontrollably. Even when Quatre was feeling at his worst, Trowa could use his peculiar philosophic outlook on life to put his problems in perspective. It was perhaps his most unusual and underappreciated talent, and if it worked that well on his friend, then perhaps they had something to hold onto after all. Once they calmed down a bit, they seemed to share a common, if not slightly telepathic, thought, that if something between them wasn't working, they had plenty of time to fix it. This, frankly, flew in the face of everything they had learned about the fragility of life lately, but it didn't seem to matter. "Heero first," said Quatre. And maybe then...we'll see.
Trowa nodded once in satisfaction. "Heero first."
**********Hilde had a terrible time keeping up with Duo as he shot through the streets like a black and brown blur. He had become possessed by a strange and powerful new energy that made him move faster and talk smarter and laugh louder than he had the entire year previous. She chased him on and off trains in her high-heeled boots at a pace that would have made Olympic sprinters balk, and still he pressed forward tirelessly, a man on a mission. "So where did you get those clothes?" she finally found breath to ask him as he paused to read a wall map in the underground.
"What, these old rags?" he purred, dragging both hands luxuriantly down his chest all the way to his thighs. "Custom-made. Nothing but the best. If I'm gonna be the catalyst of death and destruction that flattens Lord Jeffrhyss and everyone who follows him, I've at least gotta look the part, don't I?" He smiled with great confidence in his darkly pleasant magnetism. The outfit started with a black dress shirt buttoned all the way to the top with no tie, and the sleeves were just a tiny bit puffed out, enough to hide the silhouette of his arms but not enough to make him look ridiculous. Overtop of it was a slightly elongated and very form-fitting waistcoat, black with black buttons, that gave him a trim and rather shapely figure. The tailored black slacks underneath the set tapered finely down to the highly-polished white Oxfords, giving the whole ensemble a sense of richness and refinement that suggested he must have blown what was left of his wages from the manor on it in one go.
Hilde's sensibility jived with everything but the death and destruction part. "Right."
Duo reached into his back pocket and whipped out a folded pamphlet while soaking up her gaze, unfurled it, and compared the information in the typed message to the map of London on the wall. The housemaid looked over his shoulder a little at the paper, but the only word she could read on it was 'women'. "We're going to go pick up our reinforcements now," the ex-chef said in a kind of train conductor voice, "so all further inquiries about my fabulous wardrobe will have to wait 'till later."
They were off again, up the steps to ground level and down the streets of a rather poor district that Duo hadn't visited for a long time. He led Hilde to an address printed on the old pamphlet, a memento of a very auspicious meeting, where he had it on good authority that a trusted friend was making an important announcement at an emergency meeting. They ended up at the Opal Room of the Barnsbury Hotel in Pentonville, where they pushed through a swinging door of frosted glass and brass trim into a forum of about a hundred and fifty ladies seated around many round tables with white table cloths and silver tea things. At the front of the room, framed by two large flower bouquets on pedestals, was an oak podium from which the keynote speaker was delivering an address. One or two heads in the crowd turned to gawk at the newcomers, but for the most part, they were riveted to the speech being given up at the front.
"...understand that I leave with no regrets, and that when my work abroad is completed, I'll be coming straight back to fulfill whatever tasks you may find for me." The woman at the podium, all done up in a fern green dress, puffy up-swept hairdo, and wide-brimmed feathered hat was Sally. She was making a brief farewell speech at the emergency meeting of her Womens' Suffrage Society, who had looked to her for guidance over the last several years in their fight for equal rights. The doctor looked a very grand lady indeed, contrasting elegantly against the warm-toned wood of the floors and furnishings, lit by traditional gas lamps. "During my leave of absence, I assure you all that you'll be in excellent hands. As you know, Miss Mary Carscadden is back from her tour of Canada, and has graciously consented to take over the reins. Let's give her a big Pentonville welcome!"
Sally started the applause and stepped aside as a pretty, thirtyish brunette in a cream-coloured dress and hat rose from a table near the front and replaced her at the lectern. She smiled broadly and tapped a set of notecards on it while the crowd settled back down. "Thank yeh, Doctor Poole, an' thank yeh all for the verra kind welcome," she began in a thick Scottish accent. While she made her speech, Sally slipped out through a side door, and taking the cue, Duo pulled Hilde back out the main door and into the hallway where they all regrouped after a few moments.
"Glad that's over with," said Sally as she walked briskly towards them.
Unaware that it had all been arranged, Hilde gaped at her. "What did you just quit for!? Don't tell me you've changed your mind about getting us the vote!"
Sally smiled wistfully at her boots, adjusted the black Gladstone bag under her arm, and put a hand on Hilde's shoulder. "Assuming we can get to Heero in time and take him to a safe location, he's going to be battling severe malnutrition, decreased motor control, hypersensitivity to noise and light, ringing in the ears, spots before the eyes, tingling in his hands and feet, and the possibility of major organ failure. He's going to need a professional who knows his medical history and can watch over him full-time until we know what's what, so I'm going to quit my practice for the next little while."
Touched by the gesture, Hilde took hold of the woman's hand and squeezed it. "But...who'll take care of your other patients?"
"Doctor Walsh in Redding owes me a favour for covering her maternity leave. It's all taken care of."
"We'd better get going," Duo cut in. Then he nodded at Sally's little black bag. "Have you got it?"
Sally bristled from the neck up, somewhat disapproving of whatever Duo was referring to. Hilde just stood there and looked confused. "Against my better judgement," the doctor confirmed.
Duo nodded, stepped aside, and pointed the way for the ladies with an outstretched arm. "After you," he offered. The trio left the hotel and continued on to their next destination, but Hilde remained befuddled at the way the other two seemed to know something she didn't.
**********Sutherby Hotel was quiet at last. The contractors, surveyors, landscapers, and other skilled tradesmen had all packed up and left, leaving behind a highly-polished jewel a small automobile jaunt from the English Channel. Sixty-two rooms, twenty of them with an ensuite bath, two large group dining rooms with the finest linen and silver, plus a tennis court, bowls pitch, duck pond, greenhouse, and a long list of other highly enviable features, all bankrolled by Peaceraft gold bullion. The advertising campaign was set to launch on the first of the month, in time to accept bookings from members of the new upper middle class who would have liked to spend their winters in the south but had no old country estates to go to.
At the other end of the legal activities scale, the highest-ranking members of the Cinq association were sequestered somewhere, voting off the first batch of applicants and deciding how much more they would require of the finalists. There was little to be done until notice was given as to whether the Peacecraft delegation would be advancing to the last round or not, so Relena and Milliardo were lounging in their private second-floor study overlooking the duck pond, trying to relax. They sat at opposite ends of a long Queen Anne sofa, he with the political portion of the newspaper and a suit of dull grey, and she with the remainder, her feet tucked up beside her underneath the ruffles of a white lace dress. The mood was sombre.
Relena acted bored as she flipped through the classified ads and the agony column, but there was quite a bit on her mind. "Marcus was back visiting again yesterday," she mentioned, trying to whip together a conversation.
Mired in an article about the state of South Africa, Milliardo barely heard her. "Mm."
"I would have brought him in to see you, but you seemed so busy..." The girl picked at one thumbnail with the other, noticing a little white spot that couldn't be scratched off. "He desperately wants a job here...I thought, with his personality, he'd make a nice concierge..."
"Whatever you think best," the other murmured.
Relena smiled faintly at the opposite wall. "To be honest, I don't think it's the money or the position he's after."
Finally looking up, the soldier's gaze softened just a bit. "I don't mind...I've spoken with him, and he seems a very suitable young man. We must have his family over for tea."
"Yes...he's quite suitable..." Relena's voice lightened with sadness, and she secretly brought a hand up to rest just below her throat, where something small was concealed under the pristine fabric, dangling from a delicate chain. It was her golden swan pendant, given to her by Heero. The day after she had seen him snatched by the side of the railroad tracks and carted away, she placed it back around her neck and had not taken it off since. If only I knew where he was...and if he's alright... Before the gnawing fear could return to the pit of her stomach, she changed the subject. "Do you think father would have approved of Marcus?"
"I'm certain of it."
Relena nodded thoughtfully, looking out the window. "You brought Lucrezia home to meet him once, I remember," she ventured daringly. "What did he think of her?"
Milliardo's grip tightened slightly around the newsprint sheaves, and he frowned. "I don't think that's an appropriate topic for discussion, do you?" he growled in a warning tone.
"I can't believe you're still dragging out this stupid grudge! She was only doing what she thought was right, you can't fault her for that forever!" And as for your suspicions, Relena continued silently, you know she'd never look at another man...and for that matter...Heero would never look at her. I've accepted that now...
"She made it perfectly clear where her loyalties lie," the young man grumped. "Now we go it alone."
Relena watched him as he shook the folds out of the newspaper and returned furiously to his reading. He could act as self-righteous and impervious to emotional hurt as he liked, but she could tell how unhappy he was. Perhaps he had come to realize that it was his own pride that drove Lucrezia away in the first place, but that same pride was keeping him from making things right. She tapped a hand to the golden swan under her dress once more and brushed back a lock of hair. "You can stay angry at someone for as long as you like...but you never know how long you have to make up with them. Someday you might want that person back...only to find that time's run out."
Milliardo had heard enough. He very calmly folded up the newspaper, set it on the coffee table, and stood. "I should have a word with our new manager, see if he's found anyone to fill those last few positions yet." And he left.
Relena sighed. So stubborn...always has been, but this time he's going to do serious damage. If he loses her for good... Again she thought of her swan pendant, and how she swore all her servants to secrecy, on pain of sacking, that they should never reveal to her brother even the slightest hint that she had been briefly engaged to Heero. I don't know why love makes us do such stupid things, but I do know that it never completely goes away. At least Milliardo has a chance of seeing Lucrezia again, if he'll just admit he could have been wrong.....but Heero...
As she sat and began worrying again, a fairly recent memory leapt forward, from her family's trip to Morocco to meet with the Cinq officials. The old man in charge of the most powerful faction had a run-in with Heero, right in front of her, and suddenly she remembered it with startling clarity.
"Stop talking like I belong to you!" Heero snapped with a fury she had never seen before. "I don't belong to anyone anymore!"
Relena was still reeling from the hurtful discovery that she had been very soundly duped, but somehow she managed to stay in the moment and pay close attention. The old man with the peg legs was acting smug. "You're confused," he said. "I understand that. Overexposure to common society is creating a conflict with your default programming, but my senior advisors tell me the damage is not irreparable. You can come back."
"Are you deaf!?" Heero shouted back. "I said I'm not going anywhere with you! All I want is to be left alone!"
"Then it was a grave tactical error on your part to come here at all, was it not?" the old man snarled, visibly offended by his puppet's behaviour. "...my advisors are all of the opinion that persuasion is pointless when there is an opportunity to take by force."
Relena sat straight up on the sofa, glanced out the window at the duck pond to ground herself in her current reality, and parroted Lord Jeffrhyss' words in her mind. ...'take by force'! ...it was him! Suddenly it all made perfect sense, and she marvelled that she hadn't added it up sooner. Heero's abduction couldn't have been carried out by common thugs, it was the work of professionals. She saw the way he fought, and it just wasn't possible any other way. Jeffrhyss had already threatened to steal him back, and in aggravated retribution for being shot at, the details of which were still blurry to Relena, he had done it. She leaned back and exhaled.
I wonder if I could get myself an audience with this man, or at least with one of his subordinates...without Milliardo knowing, of course. There must be something I have that His Lordship wants...something I can bargain with... For the rest of the day, she made it her mission to come up with a plan. She couldn't control whether or not Milliardo went chasing after his lost love, but if there was even the faintest hope of seeing hers again, she was going to grab it.
**********Hilde told Sally her story in her own words as the trio made a short train journey far into the east end, specifically, into the neighbourhood surrounding Whitechapel Road, a dreary and desolate area known and avoided for its history of savage crime. Hilde made it quite clear that semi-respectable girls such as herself would never venture there, particularly at night, except that she had followed Wufei to an underground apartment the evening before and found out where he'd been hiding.
"First I thought he was just drunk or something," the housemaid explained, "until I tried to find him at Catherine's and she said she had to start renting his room out because he'd been gone so long and hadn't paid her in weeks! She's storing all his things in the cellar, and if he doesn't cough up what he owes, she might pawn some of it off..."
"And what was he like the other day?" Sally asked while they paused on a street corner to wait for a gap in the traffic. While the women talked, Duo was keenly watching everyone who was watching them, for they were three reasonably well-dressed young people in the middle of the slums, prime targets for robbers, even in daylight.
Hilde crinkled her brow as she composed her best and quickest description of what happened. "He was...manic. He looked half asleep, but at the same time he was flitting around like a hummingbird full of brandy." She wrinkled her nose. "And he smelled like...burnt grass."
Duo and Sally shared a sidelong glance, after which the boy bent down to her ear. "How is it you spent your formative years in and out of orphanages, sleeping in back alleys, selling flowers to businessmen who were probably deliberately out looking for a bit on the side, and still managed to lead a sheltered life?" he asked.
The girl made a point of sticking her nose in the air and looking offended. "I always thought in the back of my mind that I was going to be a lady someday, and I had some very good older friends who didn't quite make it, so when they told me to stay out of certain neighbourhoods and not to talk to certain people, I listened."
"That was probably a good thing," Sally chuckled, patting her on the shoulder.
After some twists and turns down back alleys filled with all manner of grime and trash, not to mention the dregs of humanity who laid passed out from excessive drink and trying to escape reality, Hilde pointed her companions to a set of concrete steps bordered by a rusted iron rail that led below street level, ending in a peculiar door. It was of a heavy wood, with some strange designs carved into it. They were pictograms, about two inches across and arranged in a vertical line along the edge of the door that swung inward. Sally ran her hand along the carvings, squinting as she read, "Good Fortune Tavern."
Duo sneered. If they could afford the time and effort to carve their name into the door instead of just hanging up a sign, it meant the law couldn't touch them, so they feared no relocation. "Someone's luck just ran out," he muttered, and then he pushed through the door with the ladies close behind.
Inside, it looked almost convincingly like a bar, but the clientele gave it away as something more. The majority of the men inside appeared to be Chinese, or at least of Asian descent, and about eight of them sat huddled around scattered tables nursing one liquor or another. The furnishings were of poor, splintered wood, as old as some of the gray-haired customers and well-abused in their lifetime. Each table had a squatty, round, red candle for a centrepiece, sitting on a square of red cloth with a tiny yellow tassel at each corner. On the walls hung colourful tapestries depicting clouded mountainscapes and writhing green dragons chasing flaming pearls across the sky, erasing any doubt that the Chinese element of London had a firm foothold here. There was a small bar from which drinks were dispensed, but the smoky residue that pervaded the atmosphere indicated that drinks were not the main attraction. Against the far wall, Duo spotted a doorway covered by hanging strands of beads and strode boldly toward it, pushing politely past the diminuitive Chinese lady who stepped up to him, thinking he was a customer.
The trio swatted away the bead curtain and found themselves in a long hallway with many doors on either side, and another tapestry decorating the wall at the very end. Without meeting much resistance, Duo began flinging open door after door, each time letting a fresh billow of that burnt-grass smell into the hallway, and not retreating until he had looked at everyone inside. In each room there were two to four men of varied descent, and even the occasional woman, sitting on a floor covering of cushions, draping their gaunt faces over a small, circular table with short little legs. On any given table was an earthenware gaslamp and a pot of black paste, of which the patrons took sample after sample to fill the tiny stone bowls of their long-handled bamboo pipes. Duo was disappointed time after time until he came to the last door on the right-hand side, and beneath his wild eyes grew a devious grin as he finally spotted his quarry.
A braided blur shot into the room, grabbed one of two occupants, a thirtyish Chinaman in dark brown robes, and shovelled him to the door with both hands, slamming the wooden slab as soon as the two ladies were inside. They stood around the table in a semi-circle, looking down at the remaining customer with mixed feelings. The seated figure was only barely recognizable as Wufei.
Duo leapt down and crouched next to the lad, peering at his face with curious determination. Wufei seemed not to notice any of them, his pipe dangling limply from one hand and his eyes staring vacantly down at the table. His face was unnaturally pale, and his hair hung straight down in greasy strings, unfurled from the ponytail he normally wore. No other person in the building was as tanked up as he was, indicating that he must have gotten a very early start. They all crowded around, snapping their fingers in his face, calling his name, and prodding him lightly, but he wouldn't respond. Sally checked his vitals, but he was breathing just fine. He just wasn't aware of them.
Impatient for a sign of life, Duo grabbed Wufei by a handful of his hair and shook his head a bit. "Wakey wakey!" he crooned right in the boy's ear.
"Don't hurt him," kvetched Hilde from afar.
"Aw, I'm not gonna hurt him, poor baby," Duo whined back self-righteously. He peered at Wufei's rapidly changing eyes, blinking and rolling, focusing and unfocusing, and then beckoned Sally over. "I don't have to hurt him to get answers out of him."
Hilde squinted, terribly confused, and noticed the way Sally frowned as she brought her little black Gladstone bag over to Wufei's other side. "I hope you realize I'm not taking any legal responsibility for cracking this stuff open again," the doctor said as she opened the bag and took out a small burlap sack, closed with a drawstring, and about the size of a bunch of grapes.
Duo gave her curt nod. "Noted. Do it."
"Somebody better tell me what's going on before I lose it," said Hilde, curling her knees up to her chest where she sat on the floor.
"Your friend here is an opium addict," Sally explained as she examined the burlap sack for holes or other recent imperfections. "It builds up in the patient's system the longer they're hooked. Judging by the way he looks, he's been at it for weeks."
Hilde eyed the little sack and got a strange feeling from it. Somehow it looked familar. "And what's that?"
Duo looked somewhere off to the side, remembering the last time they had to drag out the bag of powders. It was in a little cottage on the property of Suthery House, when Heero lost control due to withdrawl symptoms over that very mixture of powders and leaves, the instrument of Jeffrhyss' control. Ironically, the only way they could break Heero's addiction to the substance was to reintroduce it to him, during the process of which they learned a lot about Jeffrhyss' original plan for him. Duo hoped it would work just as well on Wufei. "A souvenir from Heero's past," said he.
"There's no guarantee this will work at all," Sally remarked, looking up. "It could have been formulated for Heero and no one else."
"I'm not looking for total mind control, just a little truth serum will do."
With a resigned flick of her eyebrows, Sally finished unwrapping the string that held the little sack together, and fanned out the open edges. Then from the assorted paraphernalia on the low table before them, she built an open-faced burner out of a metal trivet, the still-burning gas lamp, and a ceramic dish with gold around the rim and colourful inlays. Tipping the little sack over the dish, she sprinkled a few teaspoons of the mysterious mixture labelled with a zero, a blend of multicoloured powders, leaves, and crystals, then set the sack aside and turned up the heat. Within moments of being exposed to the flame, the pile of dried sludge began to burn, giving off a twisting, dancing plume of grayish smoke that climbed in a thin, delicate stream to a height of about eighteen inches, and then swirled away into nothing. Sally motioned for Hilde to sit back from the table, even as she did the same.
With a swift, jerky movement that made the girls jump slightly, Duo grabbed Wufei's near arm, twisted it behind his back, put his other hand on the back of his head, and pushed his face down toward the pile of smouldering material, forcing him to inhale as much of the noxious vapour as possible. Wufei's free hand dropped the bamboo pipe and flailed around a bit, but due to an overwhelming lack of awareness, he didn't even know whether to fight back or not. He coughed and gasped mightily as the smoke crawled down his nose and throat against his will, and as the new batch of chemicals wafted up to his brain, he calmed down again, sitting back as docile as a lamb.
Duo smiled slightly in satisfaction. "That oughta be enough...now let's see if this stuff is really as good as advertised." He stood up, dusted himself off lightly, and squared his shoulders as he prepared to bark out orders like a drill sergeant. "Alright! Stand up, stretch your arms out to either side, close your eyes, lean your head back, and alternate touching the tip of your nose with the first finger on either hand!"
Shaky and slow, Wufei got up from his cushion, stretched his arms out laterally, closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and made a sloppy but effective show of touching his fingertips to the tip of his nose. Sally folded her arms and snorted. "I thought you weren't looking for total mind control."
Duo threw her a toothy smirk. "I just wanted to see if he'd do it," he chuckled.
"Oh, really," the doctor scoffed, getting up off her cushion and traversing the room in two big strides. She clamped Wufei's arms to his sides and shoved him back down into the pile of assorted pillows beneath him. "You wanted your truth serum, so use it. The mixture is boosting the level of opiates in his bloodstream, so the sooner we get him off all these chemicals completely, the sooner I can rehab him back into a member of the team."
Reminded that time was short, Duo knelt back down on the floor, towering over the slumping Wufei by several inches. He looked down on him with contempt that couldn't be disguised. The ladies retreated a short distance back, and then the interrogation began. "I hope you got a good long whiff of that stuff...because I'm not letting up until I get some answers," Duo growled with a hint of a smile, leaning up to the suspect's ear. "I've gotta say, I haven't been impressed with your performance lately. You're shiftless...you're lazy...you don't show up for meetings, and you haven't fulfilled one of your promises since we started trusting you more. Why d'you figure that is?"
Wufei was breathing rather heavily, perhaps a subconsious attempt to get the mind-bending smoke out of his system, but for the moment, it gripped him tightly. The double hit of narcotics coursing through his blood made him incapable of defending himself as he sat in his blurry-eyed stupor.
"Let me put it a more direct way," Duo said, settling himself down and draping an arm around his subject. "You told us about twelve times that you had some contacts who could tell you where Heero is. Surprise, surprise, none of them wanna know you! So...do you have any valid contacts left at all?"
Gradually, Wufei shook his head. "...no," came the tiny reply, the first word he had uttered since their arrival.
"Thaaat's right, no allies, no friends, so you alienate the few allies and friends you have left by lying to them, very interesting..." Duo rubbed his chin and thought for a bit. "But why all the lies, Wu? I'm sure you'll agree we would've had a much easier time of it if you'd just coughed up what facts you had and told us you couldn't get anymore...unless you were afraid to tell us the truth...unless the truth was a lot worse than we ever could have possibly imagined..." All eyes were on Wufei as he swayed and stared in the vague direction of the table. After a few more thoughtful blinks, Duo tightened his grip on the spot where Wufei's shoulder met his neck, purposely trying to inflict pain. "You know where Heero is...don't you?"
Wufei's head lolled to the side. "...yes....."
The girls' worried gazes turned to angry glares.
"You've been to the primary compound, haven't you?"
This time, he only nodded.
"Explain it to me. Start to finish."
While Sally and Hilde crawled closer, Wufei blinked and quivered, compelled to obey the order but having a hard time forming complete sentences in his drug-saturated brain. His voice was the consistency of stale bread being dragged over coarse gravel, with little bits breaking off all the time. "They took me there...right after my transfer. Everyone goes through central processing...so they can..."
"So they can brainwash you," Duo scoffed.
"Let him finish!" Hilde snapped.
"...I saw some of the layout," Wufei continued, trance-like. "...saw some of the interior maps.....I memorized them while I was waiting to be seen by--"
"Do you know where it is!?" Duo shouted, grabbing him by both shoulders and turning him with a violent shake. "Do you know how to get in without being seen!?" The others were shocked, but dared not interfere.
"I...don't know..."
Duo's snarl intensified, and his grip tightened until he finally threw Wufei to one side and slouched in the opposite direction, hiding his face behind a clenched fist. Sally got up, walked over, and knelt behind him, using what little motherly instinct she had to comfort him. "You got what you wanted. He can't back out now, not after we all heard the truth.....let's just get him out of here, and get back to work."
The ex-chef took his time deciding. Part of him wanted to flatten the traitor right then and there, because if he'd fessed up sooner, they might have saved Heero days of torment, but as much as he hated to admit it to himself, they needed Wufei. There were many secrets locked in his mind behind a wall of drugs and hallucinations, secrets they absolutely had to have. Duo slowly turned, his face on fire with rage. "Time to go," he growled. It took all three of them to drag Wufei to his feet, usher him out of the building and get him into a cab, and all along the way Sally was shoving herbs from her black bag down his throat, starting the cleansing process as soon as possible. They only had a short time to disinfect his brain enough that he would be useful, and he had been fighting against them for weeks in advance.
**********Later in the afternoon, once the second post had arrived, Lucrezia sat alone in the cold storage room, inputting the last few entries into the 'Jeffrhyss database', as it had been casually dubbed. Some of the return addresses were scrawly, or blotchy, or made difficult to read for some other reason, but she pressed on. She owed Heero at least that much. At one point, she slouched back with her hands on either side of her weary face and looked at all the red dots on the map, marvelling at how far His Lordship's tentacles had reached in only a few decades. A few years ago, I was just a brat trying to escape an arranged marriage...how did I ever find my way into this mess??
She contemplated it quietly, then pulled her chair back up to the table with a huff, just to finish off the last letter and have her tea. She picked up the little beige envelope, somewhat different that the others, and studied it. There was no return address. Lucrezia sighed, knowing she would have to open this one, a task she usually left to the boys, so she tore into it with an angry thumb and pulled out a single sheet of top-quality linen stationery. It was the first piece of Jeffrhyss' mail that had arrived in such an ostentatious fashion, folded and sealed at the edges with a little gold seal that was embossed with some sort of palm tree pattern.
Drawing her eyebrows down with a smirk at the odd emblem, she brought the paper momentarily up to her nose and sniffed. She could swear it smelled vaguely of the ocean and sun-kissed sands, but dismissed it as her imagination. Then she moved on to breaking the seal and unfolding the letter. The dreadfully boring week she had been complaining about bitterly was about to get a whole lot more interesting.
"J.
I told you so.
- G."
Lucrezia swallowed. She knew that handwriting.
Giorgenson! .....but it can't be. He's dead...
On impulse, she turned the letter over and then back again, as if she had dreamed the message, but it was still there.
...there's no date...he could have written it before he disappeared.....but still...
She shook her head faintly, unable to tear her eyes off it, until she squirreled the note away in the pocket of her dress and flew upstairs, somehow needing to stow it in a safe place until Duo could take a look at it. Telling herself her judgement was being clouded by the mere hope that the kindly old crackpot might have survived whatever assassination attempts Cinq had thrown at him, she shut herself away in her room for awhile, to think. There was obviously a difference between a miracle and a foolhardy wish, but at that moment, it didn't matter.
**********Heero couldn't be sure anymore if the guards were coming in at regular intervals or not. At first there were four of them checking on his status while he was still healthy enough to put up a fight, then three, and now two, as there was no longer any need for the presence of extra muscle men. They would clip-clop down the hall with a lantern and a set of keys, open his cell door, close it behind them, and tighten the shackle around his leg, lest he slip out of it as he got thinner. There would have been no place to go had he gotten out of it anyway, but it was all part of the demoralization process. Berserkers had to be humbled before their ultimate execution.
Two goons walked down the hall. Two goons entered the cell. One watched the prisoner from a distance, holding what appeared to be a croquet hoop on a long pole over Heero's neck, a warning as well as a restraint. The other tightened the shackle with a small wrench. They were under orders never to interact with the prisoner, because there was a well-documented history around the world of prisoners striking up conversation with their jailers, developing pity for them, and eventually gaining the emotional upper hand, which made them harder to break. The goons were in and out in less than a minute, speaking nary a word to each other or Heero.
...that wasn't very sociable...
Once they were gone, Heero's wandering mind fluttered back to the immediate problem of thirst. In this dungeon, the only thing a prisoner could control was whether or not to continue drinking the foul-smelling water. As yet, no decision had been made.
I suppose if Duo's right, and there is an afterlife, he's going to kick my butt all up and down the celestial firmament for giving up, and that won't be pleasant.
He made a feeble attempt to roll over on his side and patted his hand around on the rocks in the dark, until he found a puddle. It gave off an aroma of minerals and algae, but it wasn't too bad. Heero exhaled strongly.
Well...I could always imagine it's a shot of Glenfiddich with a vodka chaser...
The prisoner dipped his cupped hand into the puddle, brought it up to his mouth, and slurped down the stagnant liquid, wincing. Then he flopped back down on his back with a raspy and elongated coughing fit.
Mazui! Just awful! ...oh well...at least it's not likely to get worse.
I wonder what day it is...
I'll bet it's Thursday...
Beef stew day...
~~~~~~~~~~
Next, in Episode Ninety-Four: Duo takes his team abroad and starts planning the biggest heist of his thieving life, but Wufei still can't get his head completely in the game. Relena appeals to Byron's ambition in an attempt to bargain for Heero's safety, while a dreadful fever sends Heero into a downward spiral of eye-opening hallucinations, where some of his most private and devastating questions are answered.
Boy...one episode ago, I still had a Grandfather and most of my health. *coughs up yellow stuff* I'm truly sorry for all the delays, but...sometimes life throws you a curveball. I'm going to make a VERY conservative estimate on when Episode 94 will be out...let's say...mmm.....Feb. 11th. I'm gonna try and make it. *deep breath*