Disclaimer: Usual applies.
Hello! Quick note that is somewhat IMPORTANT: I will be gone, and probably outside any immediate source of internet access, for the next week as I'm going on a small family trip. For some inane, stupid and aggravating reason, when I updated ACD with the installing of Ch8, the update DIDN'T SHOW UP IN THE 'JUST IN'-BOX (that was a week ago). For some, this might be two new chapters (yay?...). I should've contacted..someone...but, either way, I'm leaving and this'll be the only update for the next two weeks - that is, I'll be updating again around Halloween. I need to catch up on my writing as I've been falling behind - and once I come back I'll probably have homwork and midterms yet to make up, so I'll really need a break from ACD for a small, small period of time.
I hope you enjoy this chapter. Thank you.
-Becca-W
______________________________________________________________________________________________
"You have it, then? Is it intact, whole? Is it at all chipped or fragmented?" The smug pleasure in the doctor's voice met with panic at the thought of the damage the Zero system might have endured in its captivity, however solitary its existence had thus been. Heero informed him that it seemed to be just as the doctor had left it, leaving their conversation on a wry note that the doctor had the grace to pause at and consider.
"Yes, yes, I know - you want me to have told you." The doctor, forehead creasing in thought, stared at the young man's face in the vidphone. "Unfortunately, I couldn't do that. This was something I didn't want you involved in. I was yet training you to act under the original guidelines for Operation Meteor, the first, and giving you such information would have been stepping out of my own personal boundaries." The doctor cracked the knuckles on his left hand, adding, "You know very well, Heero, that I would never do that." Dr. J grinned maniacally. "I'm far too interested in my own good to ever bring about my execution, and at the time, that would have been just what I was doing. After all, I was still training you to carry out the commands given to you and you were being trained under Oz's orders. You would have turned me in." Besides, I'm not the last to have lied to you, you bastard kid. The doctor went on grinning.
Heero's even stare served only to slightly unnerve the doctor, who started clicking two of the pincers on his right claw to mutilate the daring silence breaching the distance between them.
"So - what else have you been up to, student?" The doctor turned his eyes away and leaned into his chair. Behind him, to the left, Heero spied a pleasing view of the ocean. "I haven't heard of any ruckus in space yet - are you settling down or have I finally died?"
Heero's eyes flickered from the ocean to the doctor's face.
"You should know - you sent me here."
"Ah, yes - we haven't been in each other's company in a while yet I remember quite clearly your testiness. Worry not, student, the jet lag wears off." The dry, sardonic tone he used then he wielded like a freshly-sharpened knife - carving silence into a conversation when he didn't feel up to a response. Then he suddenly smiled a soft, jeering smile. "How could I forget - you have interesting baggage with you. The Foreign Prime Minister attached herself to your side, didn't she? How is that going, I wonder?"
Heero frowned sharply, offering no reply. The doctor mused, his mouth pursing and thinning with each new thought.
"I do feel a mite sorry for her - her suitcase is a better companion than you." He paused, tilting his head to the side. "I met her once; she asked about you, actually. But that was so long ago. I hear she's growing up nicely. Though what she could possibly occupy herself with on that godforsaken island hell I haven't a clue." No matter the importance of the mission, both the official and the personal one, Dr. J had hated their time on the half-colony before. Heero didn't doubt that he would not have been retrieved and goaded into this mission if Dr. J had not had a heavy dislike for the place. The doctor was surprisingly attached to plantlife and the half-colony had nothing green or growing on it - the lack thereof had put him on snarling, beastly behavior.
"Anyway," Dr. J righted himself, spinning in his seat so that his face hovered two inches from the screen of his vidphone, "How soon am I to get the Zero, then?"
Heero considered him for a moment.
"What're you going to do with it?" The doctor's expression flared into one of puzzled anger, his body immediately tensing at the unwilling sound in the other's voice. He despised this reluctance, it wasn't in his agenda. Stupid boy! He snuffled to himself a little.
"How dare you question me." He ventured, hoping for the desired effect to take place.
"I'm not under your authority anymore, Dr. J." Heero reminded him. Damn. "You're legally unable to retrieve the Zero system from this colony due to prior activity, correct? I've got it, but I'm not giving it away so easily. What are your plans?" The doctor's mouth tightened in anger; he felt like gnashing his teeth but resisted the urge, rather choosing to kick at the legs of his desk, out of Heero's line of sight.
"What the hell would you do with it? - have children pay admission for a ride with it? Hook it up to the local arcade? Take it apart?" The doctor's face paled and he felt his hand get clammy. He wouldn't! The boy might be warped, but he just - he couldn't do that! That was the heart of something genius, it had bred a whole new race of computer/machine hybrids! - and it was the kid's sole, surviving past - didn't the kid hang on anything that was linked to that childhood of his? Or had he become soft staying with all those - all those marks? Blast it, the world was too fucked up and now the only bit he considered worth the trouble of focusing his attention on was being robbed from him, taken on the sly, little cutthroat! The doctor snarled wordlessly at the screen. "I gave my hand and some of my rights as a human being for the Zero! You can't take it away - I want it back!"
Heero's expression tightened.
"You want to compare what we lost for the Zero?" His voice was hesitant, pained and hard. "If you say that, then you have no idea the extent of the damages it has caused." The corner of the doctor's mouth turned up, but it was so forced it seemed to give him an overbite.
"Sure. Then we'll share our childhood miseries of gang wars and prison rape as a therapeutic verbal vent." He threatened Heero with a daunting wave of his claw. "Distance is of no consequence to me - I have ways, Heero...." His tone of voice grew low and even. "I have ways......" Little shithole. Pisser. He seemed to remember similar behavior from the days of Heero's early post-puberty years. Never whined, nope, but the kid always had made the doctor want to jump out a window for his own good.
Heero hadn't budged as his glare mounted in intensity.
"Fuck you. Are you going to tell me or am I going to have to disconnect?" Heero disliked giving miscreants such choices but under the circumstances he felt the doctor had gone to a length not to smash the vidphone manually - all to extract the Zero system from his hands. From former experience he knew the doctor held to his temper only if motivated by extreme self-interest - if there was no risk in losing something he always let his victim feel the extent of his rage.
Yet all the fond attachment Heero had for the Zero, a bred, unwanted liking of the thing that made him its slave, he sensed something underlying the doctor's desperation and need - his feelings for the Zero seemed to range alongside Heero's. In that, he felt briefly sympathetic - the Zero was an all-empowering, destructive, detrimental drug that he had yet to fully wash from his system. The doctor, never having been exposed to the present version - though he had tried the prototype out on himself repeatedly so as to assure that it would not be a fatal experience for humans - seemed to be having an even harder time coping without the Zero, if on a different level. His addiction was different from Heero's, similar only in that it was mostly mental.
They glared at each other possessively. Heero cracked his knuckles while Dr. J clicked his claws together faster than before.
"Where is it?" The doctor growled raspily.
"Nearby. Hidden."
"Ermph."
Heero's silent snarl flashed across the screen.
"If you have nothing else to say - " He said, interrupted as Dr. J sat up straight with a howl.
"Boy, you give it to me - or else - "
"Give me your coordinates and I might get in contact with you." A trail of obscenities buzzed at his head as the doctor let loose.
"You little ass!"
"Officially quitting the mission; the subject of our mutual interest is under close inspection and will be discussed at a later date, unless you choose to sever our connection permanently." Heero rattled off, ignoring the last outburst. Now the doctor ground his teeth together, the muscles in his jaw tightening, aching.
Dr. J sent Heero the coordinates and a small list of other necessities needed to get back in contact with him. Having nothing else of importance to impart to the doctor Heero signed off. He glanced away from the darkened screen, at his foot. The vidphone lay in front of him, close to his knees where he kneeled on the floor of an empty office in the training center; it had the one of three private vidphones left in the building. This was the assistant manager's place. He was eating lunch in the cafeteria, at the one table left - everything else was packed and gone.
Dr. J was one of the wiliest, most dangerous minds Heero knew of. As his pupil Heero was familiar with the doctor's methods; as a close observer he was aware of Dr. J's tendency of self-preservation. Through the man's actions during the past year Heero considered him unpredictable in a very predictable way. During their last conversation he now knew him to be a desperate man as well as a calculating egomaniac, willing to serve personal intentions through manipulation.
His desperation would lead him to some plan of action, most likely involving the personal retrieval of the Zero system now in Heero's grasp. Heero thought is motives played out in self-interest with little regard for the consequence it would have on the masses - so much of what the doctor had done had, in some way, reached people to a general degree, which not many could claim of doing. Yet he ignored the effects he had on others, choosing only to acknowledge those actions that, in turn for affecting the people around him, affected him as well. Dr. J had an odd outlook on longterm planning.
This led Heero to believe that he was no longer very safe on the half-colony. Granted, he wasn't safe anywhere anymore - even he had but a dim view of the ties Dr. J held. Howard would not aid the doctor in his search for Heero and the Zero, but he couldn't keep him from searching. Glancing up, but without seeing his surroundings, Heero planned out the next few steps - he felt he was to shuttle hop very quickly, very soon until further information could assure him of Dr. J's true intentions.
Dr. J was a more known face among officials, having a noted criminal record even Oz could not put to rest during his employ in their organization, but he could slip by them just as well as Heero. Much of what he knew he once learned from Dr. J - but Heero had had other mentors that had left almost no papertrail behind them, as the doctor had. If he acted soon, Heero could avoid being tagged for quite a while, using the tricks of his childhood. Dr. J would hate him for it.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Mrs. Dorlian was with the hunting dogs when she received the call. Leaving the three to the company of her butler, Thompson, she came to the nearest secure vidphone in the house. Her surprise at the caller caused her spasm of happiness.
"Relena! Goodness, I - are you alright?" Instinctive protectiveness took over as the mother peered as best she could into her daughter's eyes. Relena smiled widely, the care-worn face of one of the most familiar people in the world a soothing welcome on its own. She nodded, returning the greeting with warmth, then asked whether she was finding herself very busy at home. Mrs. Dorlian told her she was leading a very relaxed life with few interruptions - she had passed up the social season in mourning for her late husband, now dead barely more than half a year. Minutes later Mrs. Dorlian parted from the vidphone, remarking to a passing maid that she needed to visit with Thompson after dinner.
After having shut down the connection to Earth Relena turned back to the cafeteria in Juan's Inn - Heero slowly, silently chewing at the table they occupied, they being the only other people besides Juan in the room. She walked back, the telecard tucked back into a fold in her purse. At pushing the chair into the table enough she dropped her stare to her plate, the meal in front of her steaming faintly but relatively untouched.
"When are you leaving?" She asked, her voice clear but the tone of it troubled. Picking up a fork she dabbed at a small pile of peas. "I mean, I've made arrangements, but - I'd like to know..."
Heero glanced at her.
"Tonight." The fork tapped against the plate without warning, suddenly loose in her hand. She swallowed the small mouthful she had been balancing on the prongs. After a small moment she chuckled to herself, the sound of it swollen and inappropriate.
"Oh. So soon." Looking up, she gave a small smile in return to his wondering expression. "I wasn't expecting it, but that's not my business." She sighed unwillingly. "I'm...so sorry if I'm not in best form tonight." Questions Relena would have asked a year ago, not now, not in her present stare of mature awareness and knowing and wisdom, popped into her mind, the participants in a meandering, narrow parade - Where? - the colonies, or Earth? Where in the colonies, where on Earth? How? With what? Oh, why, why must you, why? That was the focus, the purpose of that entire, damning parade - WHY? W-H-Y? What possible reason could uproot you so? Our secrets are becoming another link in this bond between us, we're one of the few that secrets can bind rather than part - we're so impossible, aren't we? Cleaved to each other out of the need for need. So difficult to live with, us. But - oh, but why?
Peas were such an ugly shade of green.
Heero stabbed at the table cloth without being noticed. He didn't like to disappoint - really, much of what he had ever done was to prevent failure, which could well end up in disappointment. Not that disappointing idiots weighed too much on his mind - but hurting people who, like he, had the amazing capacity to hope for an entire race of beings was - oh, painful, on either ends. His dinner hadn't tasted well. The taste of food was a pleasant privilege and without it, he regretted having eaten most of his meal only to feel the heft of it without the savory memory of it.
She, on the other hand, was not eating at all. He felt propelled to motivate her into doing so but decided against it - she hadn't seemed hungry to begin with. He tensed when she shifted, her stare beckoning for his eyes to draw up again.
"I hope you have a good trip, Heero. How unfortunate we - couldn't finish up here. Did you find what you needed, at the training center, I mean?" She took her water glass in hand - her hand shook, had she eaten lunch at all or forgotten in the fervor of her reading all that afternoon? - slight interest coloring her voice at the mentioning of the center. He shrugged noncommittally.
"Yeah." Juan cleared off his plate and filled his water glass again; the ice cubes cracked in the warmed glass at contact. "Where will you go, Relena?" She smiled softly.
"Earth. I haven't seen mother in - it feels like years. Since father died." She pondered on the time that had passed briefly, amazed at how quickly it passed. Glancing up, below the fringe of her bangs, she added in a friendly tone, "You're welcome to visit. I haven't been there in a while, but mother would welcome you. We would enjoy your company." Again, he shrugged. He doubted the family's life was void of all friendships - Relena still had contacts from school and he knew, from the investigations he undertook concerning her personal life and history, her parents had divulged in close, intimate relationships with adults similar to their standing and character. In short, he had no intention of showing up when there was no shortage of adoring, respected people at their house.
Instead, he glanced down at the empty space where his plate used to be. With deep dislike he acknowledged the feeling of obligation now moving him to at least give her some evidence as to his plans. Like meat given to a very loving dog. Whether he disliked the action or the feeling that made him committ the action more was unclear to him - poking at a crease in the tablecloth, he went ahead anyway.
"A family is moving to another colony - I've taken a seat on their shuttle." There. He offered the goddamn bone. Relena took it.
"Oh." She nodded, trying to understand. "Where to, if you don't - ah, you do mind." The corners of her mouth turned up slightly. "I won't ask then. I don't want this evening to be uncomfortable. Did you enjoy your dinner?" On that note, she turned her fork to a small pile of peas on her plate, yet undented by her hunger. She now seemed perfectly undisturbed, picking at her food and offering him private smiles from time to time. Fifteen minutes later, they left the cafeteria, Relena moving to the garden and Heero to his room to gather his things.
While she waited - having presumed beforehand that Heero would offer some kind of farewell in his wake she decided to guard the grass rather than his doorway - she hovered among the bushes in the garden, the moon lighting them up in ghostly white. She kept the moon to her back, not wanting to turn to its nighttime glare, the blanched, pockmarked surface eerily clear for what she felt should have been a dark hour. She reached out to touch a blossom, feeling the soft bounce of a petal.
Glancing up, she caught Heero's frame in the door leading out to the garden just as he stepped through it, pausing in his approach to consider the picture he saw. A bag bumped his thigh, hung from the shoulder. She asked for the time: nine o'clock. He had ten minutes. Leaving his luggage leaning against the wall he joined her in scrutiny of the shrubbery, not saying anything. She curled her hands together in one lump, fingers pressing into skin, her stare further sinking into the lone little flower on its humpbacked twig.
"I hope you have a good flight, Heero."
"Thanks." He paused in consideration. "You should take more time off." She chuckled dryly, having thought the same at a previous time and laughed to herself about it then as well.
"Though they have no legal right to, I think my partners in crime would abject to that - they might wonder at my love of them if I kept away so." Heero sideglanced her way.
"So what. They travel with their psychiatrists. You don't." She shrugged.
"It's odd, really. You know, Heero, I feel like I carry two people inside me for everyone to identify - the adult and the child-sized version. They can't see me as a person, it's too - confusing." She bent her head a little in thought, her chin dropping to her chest. "They depend on me as I depend on them but...Depends are for old people, I guess," She finished with a small laugh. Heero remained silent. He chose not to react to the joke. Relena felt this to be a decidedly uncomfortable way to end a perfectly good little vacation. She turned to face him, capturing the focus of his eyes again.
"I had a good time. Someday, I will own a hammock, I know that." She smiled, given suddenly to a rare spasm of dreamy thought. "I'll keep it in a neat shack among lots of unread novels, shelves of them." Again she laughed, but without the bitter taste she had at the back of her throat before. Heero nodded as though he were entertaining a private conversation, his stare yet latched onto her face with inquisitive alertness.
"Really, take more time off. The project won't get started for at least another week; all you'd be doing is cooling arguments between everyone." She sighed audibly.
"We'll see...either way.." Relena gestured limply to the door. "You need to go, if I'm not mistaken." Heero stepped back.
"Yeah..." Relena smiled at him with gracious warmth.
"We'll see each other soon, I hope?" He didn't answer, the Zero springing to mind. But he raised his hand in a wave, turned - and left.
The shuttle had just left the platform when Relena let herself back in. She nearly bumped into Juan, who, with a dapper grin, asked if he could yet do anything for her - she only thanked him, informing the man of her departure tomorrow. Once upstairs, she began packing.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
I love writing Dr. J - he's his own brand of spasticness.
I would love reviews for when I come back; although I'm happy to write for the benefit of anyone interested, it is a wonderful feeling to get feedback, especially when swamped with late-midterms. I'm pulling the pity string here. ^ ^ (aaagh - what defines slow death? Having the "I'm walking on suuuunshine, Waaa-aaaah!"-song stuck betweeen your ears).
Hello! Quick note that is somewhat IMPORTANT: I will be gone, and probably outside any immediate source of internet access, for the next week as I'm going on a small family trip. For some inane, stupid and aggravating reason, when I updated ACD with the installing of Ch8, the update DIDN'T SHOW UP IN THE 'JUST IN'-BOX (that was a week ago). For some, this might be two new chapters (yay?...). I should've contacted..someone...but, either way, I'm leaving and this'll be the only update for the next two weeks - that is, I'll be updating again around Halloween. I need to catch up on my writing as I've been falling behind - and once I come back I'll probably have homwork and midterms yet to make up, so I'll really need a break from ACD for a small, small period of time.
I hope you enjoy this chapter. Thank you.
-Becca-W
______________________________________________________________________________________________
"You have it, then? Is it intact, whole? Is it at all chipped or fragmented?" The smug pleasure in the doctor's voice met with panic at the thought of the damage the Zero system might have endured in its captivity, however solitary its existence had thus been. Heero informed him that it seemed to be just as the doctor had left it, leaving their conversation on a wry note that the doctor had the grace to pause at and consider.
"Yes, yes, I know - you want me to have told you." The doctor, forehead creasing in thought, stared at the young man's face in the vidphone. "Unfortunately, I couldn't do that. This was something I didn't want you involved in. I was yet training you to act under the original guidelines for Operation Meteor, the first, and giving you such information would have been stepping out of my own personal boundaries." The doctor cracked the knuckles on his left hand, adding, "You know very well, Heero, that I would never do that." Dr. J grinned maniacally. "I'm far too interested in my own good to ever bring about my execution, and at the time, that would have been just what I was doing. After all, I was still training you to carry out the commands given to you and you were being trained under Oz's orders. You would have turned me in." Besides, I'm not the last to have lied to you, you bastard kid. The doctor went on grinning.
Heero's even stare served only to slightly unnerve the doctor, who started clicking two of the pincers on his right claw to mutilate the daring silence breaching the distance between them.
"So - what else have you been up to, student?" The doctor turned his eyes away and leaned into his chair. Behind him, to the left, Heero spied a pleasing view of the ocean. "I haven't heard of any ruckus in space yet - are you settling down or have I finally died?"
Heero's eyes flickered from the ocean to the doctor's face.
"You should know - you sent me here."
"Ah, yes - we haven't been in each other's company in a while yet I remember quite clearly your testiness. Worry not, student, the jet lag wears off." The dry, sardonic tone he used then he wielded like a freshly-sharpened knife - carving silence into a conversation when he didn't feel up to a response. Then he suddenly smiled a soft, jeering smile. "How could I forget - you have interesting baggage with you. The Foreign Prime Minister attached herself to your side, didn't she? How is that going, I wonder?"
Heero frowned sharply, offering no reply. The doctor mused, his mouth pursing and thinning with each new thought.
"I do feel a mite sorry for her - her suitcase is a better companion than you." He paused, tilting his head to the side. "I met her once; she asked about you, actually. But that was so long ago. I hear she's growing up nicely. Though what she could possibly occupy herself with on that godforsaken island hell I haven't a clue." No matter the importance of the mission, both the official and the personal one, Dr. J had hated their time on the half-colony before. Heero didn't doubt that he would not have been retrieved and goaded into this mission if Dr. J had not had a heavy dislike for the place. The doctor was surprisingly attached to plantlife and the half-colony had nothing green or growing on it - the lack thereof had put him on snarling, beastly behavior.
"Anyway," Dr. J righted himself, spinning in his seat so that his face hovered two inches from the screen of his vidphone, "How soon am I to get the Zero, then?"
Heero considered him for a moment.
"What're you going to do with it?" The doctor's expression flared into one of puzzled anger, his body immediately tensing at the unwilling sound in the other's voice. He despised this reluctance, it wasn't in his agenda. Stupid boy! He snuffled to himself a little.
"How dare you question me." He ventured, hoping for the desired effect to take place.
"I'm not under your authority anymore, Dr. J." Heero reminded him. Damn. "You're legally unable to retrieve the Zero system from this colony due to prior activity, correct? I've got it, but I'm not giving it away so easily. What are your plans?" The doctor's mouth tightened in anger; he felt like gnashing his teeth but resisted the urge, rather choosing to kick at the legs of his desk, out of Heero's line of sight.
"What the hell would you do with it? - have children pay admission for a ride with it? Hook it up to the local arcade? Take it apart?" The doctor's face paled and he felt his hand get clammy. He wouldn't! The boy might be warped, but he just - he couldn't do that! That was the heart of something genius, it had bred a whole new race of computer/machine hybrids! - and it was the kid's sole, surviving past - didn't the kid hang on anything that was linked to that childhood of his? Or had he become soft staying with all those - all those marks? Blast it, the world was too fucked up and now the only bit he considered worth the trouble of focusing his attention on was being robbed from him, taken on the sly, little cutthroat! The doctor snarled wordlessly at the screen. "I gave my hand and some of my rights as a human being for the Zero! You can't take it away - I want it back!"
Heero's expression tightened.
"You want to compare what we lost for the Zero?" His voice was hesitant, pained and hard. "If you say that, then you have no idea the extent of the damages it has caused." The corner of the doctor's mouth turned up, but it was so forced it seemed to give him an overbite.
"Sure. Then we'll share our childhood miseries of gang wars and prison rape as a therapeutic verbal vent." He threatened Heero with a daunting wave of his claw. "Distance is of no consequence to me - I have ways, Heero...." His tone of voice grew low and even. "I have ways......" Little shithole. Pisser. He seemed to remember similar behavior from the days of Heero's early post-puberty years. Never whined, nope, but the kid always had made the doctor want to jump out a window for his own good.
Heero hadn't budged as his glare mounted in intensity.
"Fuck you. Are you going to tell me or am I going to have to disconnect?" Heero disliked giving miscreants such choices but under the circumstances he felt the doctor had gone to a length not to smash the vidphone manually - all to extract the Zero system from his hands. From former experience he knew the doctor held to his temper only if motivated by extreme self-interest - if there was no risk in losing something he always let his victim feel the extent of his rage.
Yet all the fond attachment Heero had for the Zero, a bred, unwanted liking of the thing that made him its slave, he sensed something underlying the doctor's desperation and need - his feelings for the Zero seemed to range alongside Heero's. In that, he felt briefly sympathetic - the Zero was an all-empowering, destructive, detrimental drug that he had yet to fully wash from his system. The doctor, never having been exposed to the present version - though he had tried the prototype out on himself repeatedly so as to assure that it would not be a fatal experience for humans - seemed to be having an even harder time coping without the Zero, if on a different level. His addiction was different from Heero's, similar only in that it was mostly mental.
They glared at each other possessively. Heero cracked his knuckles while Dr. J clicked his claws together faster than before.
"Where is it?" The doctor growled raspily.
"Nearby. Hidden."
"Ermph."
Heero's silent snarl flashed across the screen.
"If you have nothing else to say - " He said, interrupted as Dr. J sat up straight with a howl.
"Boy, you give it to me - or else - "
"Give me your coordinates and I might get in contact with you." A trail of obscenities buzzed at his head as the doctor let loose.
"You little ass!"
"Officially quitting the mission; the subject of our mutual interest is under close inspection and will be discussed at a later date, unless you choose to sever our connection permanently." Heero rattled off, ignoring the last outburst. Now the doctor ground his teeth together, the muscles in his jaw tightening, aching.
Dr. J sent Heero the coordinates and a small list of other necessities needed to get back in contact with him. Having nothing else of importance to impart to the doctor Heero signed off. He glanced away from the darkened screen, at his foot. The vidphone lay in front of him, close to his knees where he kneeled on the floor of an empty office in the training center; it had the one of three private vidphones left in the building. This was the assistant manager's place. He was eating lunch in the cafeteria, at the one table left - everything else was packed and gone.
Dr. J was one of the wiliest, most dangerous minds Heero knew of. As his pupil Heero was familiar with the doctor's methods; as a close observer he was aware of Dr. J's tendency of self-preservation. Through the man's actions during the past year Heero considered him unpredictable in a very predictable way. During their last conversation he now knew him to be a desperate man as well as a calculating egomaniac, willing to serve personal intentions through manipulation.
His desperation would lead him to some plan of action, most likely involving the personal retrieval of the Zero system now in Heero's grasp. Heero thought is motives played out in self-interest with little regard for the consequence it would have on the masses - so much of what the doctor had done had, in some way, reached people to a general degree, which not many could claim of doing. Yet he ignored the effects he had on others, choosing only to acknowledge those actions that, in turn for affecting the people around him, affected him as well. Dr. J had an odd outlook on longterm planning.
This led Heero to believe that he was no longer very safe on the half-colony. Granted, he wasn't safe anywhere anymore - even he had but a dim view of the ties Dr. J held. Howard would not aid the doctor in his search for Heero and the Zero, but he couldn't keep him from searching. Glancing up, but without seeing his surroundings, Heero planned out the next few steps - he felt he was to shuttle hop very quickly, very soon until further information could assure him of Dr. J's true intentions.
Dr. J was a more known face among officials, having a noted criminal record even Oz could not put to rest during his employ in their organization, but he could slip by them just as well as Heero. Much of what he knew he once learned from Dr. J - but Heero had had other mentors that had left almost no papertrail behind them, as the doctor had. If he acted soon, Heero could avoid being tagged for quite a while, using the tricks of his childhood. Dr. J would hate him for it.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Mrs. Dorlian was with the hunting dogs when she received the call. Leaving the three to the company of her butler, Thompson, she came to the nearest secure vidphone in the house. Her surprise at the caller caused her spasm of happiness.
"Relena! Goodness, I - are you alright?" Instinctive protectiveness took over as the mother peered as best she could into her daughter's eyes. Relena smiled widely, the care-worn face of one of the most familiar people in the world a soothing welcome on its own. She nodded, returning the greeting with warmth, then asked whether she was finding herself very busy at home. Mrs. Dorlian told her she was leading a very relaxed life with few interruptions - she had passed up the social season in mourning for her late husband, now dead barely more than half a year. Minutes later Mrs. Dorlian parted from the vidphone, remarking to a passing maid that she needed to visit with Thompson after dinner.
After having shut down the connection to Earth Relena turned back to the cafeteria in Juan's Inn - Heero slowly, silently chewing at the table they occupied, they being the only other people besides Juan in the room. She walked back, the telecard tucked back into a fold in her purse. At pushing the chair into the table enough she dropped her stare to her plate, the meal in front of her steaming faintly but relatively untouched.
"When are you leaving?" She asked, her voice clear but the tone of it troubled. Picking up a fork she dabbed at a small pile of peas. "I mean, I've made arrangements, but - I'd like to know..."
Heero glanced at her.
"Tonight." The fork tapped against the plate without warning, suddenly loose in her hand. She swallowed the small mouthful she had been balancing on the prongs. After a small moment she chuckled to herself, the sound of it swollen and inappropriate.
"Oh. So soon." Looking up, she gave a small smile in return to his wondering expression. "I wasn't expecting it, but that's not my business." She sighed unwillingly. "I'm...so sorry if I'm not in best form tonight." Questions Relena would have asked a year ago, not now, not in her present stare of mature awareness and knowing and wisdom, popped into her mind, the participants in a meandering, narrow parade - Where? - the colonies, or Earth? Where in the colonies, where on Earth? How? With what? Oh, why, why must you, why? That was the focus, the purpose of that entire, damning parade - WHY? W-H-Y? What possible reason could uproot you so? Our secrets are becoming another link in this bond between us, we're one of the few that secrets can bind rather than part - we're so impossible, aren't we? Cleaved to each other out of the need for need. So difficult to live with, us. But - oh, but why?
Peas were such an ugly shade of green.
Heero stabbed at the table cloth without being noticed. He didn't like to disappoint - really, much of what he had ever done was to prevent failure, which could well end up in disappointment. Not that disappointing idiots weighed too much on his mind - but hurting people who, like he, had the amazing capacity to hope for an entire race of beings was - oh, painful, on either ends. His dinner hadn't tasted well. The taste of food was a pleasant privilege and without it, he regretted having eaten most of his meal only to feel the heft of it without the savory memory of it.
She, on the other hand, was not eating at all. He felt propelled to motivate her into doing so but decided against it - she hadn't seemed hungry to begin with. He tensed when she shifted, her stare beckoning for his eyes to draw up again.
"I hope you have a good trip, Heero. How unfortunate we - couldn't finish up here. Did you find what you needed, at the training center, I mean?" She took her water glass in hand - her hand shook, had she eaten lunch at all or forgotten in the fervor of her reading all that afternoon? - slight interest coloring her voice at the mentioning of the center. He shrugged noncommittally.
"Yeah." Juan cleared off his plate and filled his water glass again; the ice cubes cracked in the warmed glass at contact. "Where will you go, Relena?" She smiled softly.
"Earth. I haven't seen mother in - it feels like years. Since father died." She pondered on the time that had passed briefly, amazed at how quickly it passed. Glancing up, below the fringe of her bangs, she added in a friendly tone, "You're welcome to visit. I haven't been there in a while, but mother would welcome you. We would enjoy your company." Again, he shrugged. He doubted the family's life was void of all friendships - Relena still had contacts from school and he knew, from the investigations he undertook concerning her personal life and history, her parents had divulged in close, intimate relationships with adults similar to their standing and character. In short, he had no intention of showing up when there was no shortage of adoring, respected people at their house.
Instead, he glanced down at the empty space where his plate used to be. With deep dislike he acknowledged the feeling of obligation now moving him to at least give her some evidence as to his plans. Like meat given to a very loving dog. Whether he disliked the action or the feeling that made him committ the action more was unclear to him - poking at a crease in the tablecloth, he went ahead anyway.
"A family is moving to another colony - I've taken a seat on their shuttle." There. He offered the goddamn bone. Relena took it.
"Oh." She nodded, trying to understand. "Where to, if you don't - ah, you do mind." The corners of her mouth turned up slightly. "I won't ask then. I don't want this evening to be uncomfortable. Did you enjoy your dinner?" On that note, she turned her fork to a small pile of peas on her plate, yet undented by her hunger. She now seemed perfectly undisturbed, picking at her food and offering him private smiles from time to time. Fifteen minutes later, they left the cafeteria, Relena moving to the garden and Heero to his room to gather his things.
While she waited - having presumed beforehand that Heero would offer some kind of farewell in his wake she decided to guard the grass rather than his doorway - she hovered among the bushes in the garden, the moon lighting them up in ghostly white. She kept the moon to her back, not wanting to turn to its nighttime glare, the blanched, pockmarked surface eerily clear for what she felt should have been a dark hour. She reached out to touch a blossom, feeling the soft bounce of a petal.
Glancing up, she caught Heero's frame in the door leading out to the garden just as he stepped through it, pausing in his approach to consider the picture he saw. A bag bumped his thigh, hung from the shoulder. She asked for the time: nine o'clock. He had ten minutes. Leaving his luggage leaning against the wall he joined her in scrutiny of the shrubbery, not saying anything. She curled her hands together in one lump, fingers pressing into skin, her stare further sinking into the lone little flower on its humpbacked twig.
"I hope you have a good flight, Heero."
"Thanks." He paused in consideration. "You should take more time off." She chuckled dryly, having thought the same at a previous time and laughed to herself about it then as well.
"Though they have no legal right to, I think my partners in crime would abject to that - they might wonder at my love of them if I kept away so." Heero sideglanced her way.
"So what. They travel with their psychiatrists. You don't." She shrugged.
"It's odd, really. You know, Heero, I feel like I carry two people inside me for everyone to identify - the adult and the child-sized version. They can't see me as a person, it's too - confusing." She bent her head a little in thought, her chin dropping to her chest. "They depend on me as I depend on them but...Depends are for old people, I guess," She finished with a small laugh. Heero remained silent. He chose not to react to the joke. Relena felt this to be a decidedly uncomfortable way to end a perfectly good little vacation. She turned to face him, capturing the focus of his eyes again.
"I had a good time. Someday, I will own a hammock, I know that." She smiled, given suddenly to a rare spasm of dreamy thought. "I'll keep it in a neat shack among lots of unread novels, shelves of them." Again she laughed, but without the bitter taste she had at the back of her throat before. Heero nodded as though he were entertaining a private conversation, his stare yet latched onto her face with inquisitive alertness.
"Really, take more time off. The project won't get started for at least another week; all you'd be doing is cooling arguments between everyone." She sighed audibly.
"We'll see...either way.." Relena gestured limply to the door. "You need to go, if I'm not mistaken." Heero stepped back.
"Yeah..." Relena smiled at him with gracious warmth.
"We'll see each other soon, I hope?" He didn't answer, the Zero springing to mind. But he raised his hand in a wave, turned - and left.
The shuttle had just left the platform when Relena let herself back in. She nearly bumped into Juan, who, with a dapper grin, asked if he could yet do anything for her - she only thanked him, informing the man of her departure tomorrow. Once upstairs, she began packing.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
I love writing Dr. J - he's his own brand of spasticness.
I would love reviews for when I come back; although I'm happy to write for the benefit of anyone interested, it is a wonderful feeling to get feedback, especially when swamped with late-midterms. I'm pulling the pity string here. ^ ^ (aaagh - what defines slow death? Having the "I'm walking on suuuunshine, Waaa-aaaah!"-song stuck betweeen your ears).