Part 24 THE EXPRESSION (a)
They searched, they shoved, and they sniffed through the crowd as it left the courthouse, jabbing lights and microphones into every face that came their way, seeking out the attorney, the Peacecrafts, and the most scandalous character since Maxwell's Demon himself, his sole defender. They found no trace of him, not even a glimpse of the tousled dark hair in the crowd, and the media machine moved on to what scraps they could preen from the carcass, like true vultures. It didn't matter whether they had cornered him for an interview anyway (it's doubtful they would have gotten anything besides an adamant response of No Comment' to each question); by midday the public would have already poured over the footage mercilessly and they would have found something catchy and pretty in print to coin for Heero Yuy, a Clyde for Maxwell's Bonnie. So they scrapped amongst themselves for the first opportunity at the most infamous actors of the tragedy obsessing the headlines and few had time to be the wiser to an open window on the west side of the building. Looking in, one saw the empty bathroom, and looking out from within you could still see the disheveled bushes where a body had passed through and looking further down one's line of sight, you'd see Heero Yuy disappearing off in the distance.
It was a Thursday, a very bright and promising-looking Thursday morning. The sun apparently hadn't gotten the memo.
Deputy Roman M. Vega would be scheduled to take his shift again at promptly 8 o'clock at night, and the libraries were already opening in town. Back in the city where Heero had began, a good three or four days' drive from Cinq, the other college students who had managed to keep themselves out of any nationally involved scandal had already begun to fall into that lovely lull of a vacation where you're no longer awaiting it, but not yet dreading the end of it. And in their absence, the school was drained of its usual buzzing of bodies and voices in the halls, and the library was back to collecting dust. In that library, where Heero had spent many hours cramming and burying the sense of aimlessness that was growing within him at the time in books, a single librarian came through the door after unlocking it and turned on one of the lights to light his path.
The rest of the room remained shadowy, sleepy—the sky clouded over here, unlike in Cinq—and the tall shelves were indistinguishable from one another. He walked confidently toward one row in particular and walked cautiously down the aisle, his eyes sweeping over the spines of the books crowded together in their sleep. After a few moments of searching, his hand descended toward a mundane looking book sitting humbly on the second shelf from the ground and pulled it out. He held it up and read the cover, squinting until he remembered to pull his glasses out of his pocket. At first glance—at any glance, really—it didn't look like a book that had just found its way to an elite list: the most secretly demanded books of the day. Arthur J. Washburn's anthropology of many migrant communities titled blandly, "My Studies," was authored by a man who was almost equally bland, and not particularly interesting or outgoing besides his studies, obviously, had written this book nearly ten years ago and it had sold as well as it could for being authored by who it was—a nobody. One copy had found its way to this library and this librarian could count the number of times it been requested or checked out on one hand. One of those few had been a professor of anthropology, and another had been Heero Yuy. He'd been rather bland as well during that time; he was pointlessly studying without a real passion for anything and he'd become so desperate he'd randomly picked something off a shelf. So desperate, he was taking books home as a lush might take home anonymous women, without thought, without real care, and without importance the next morning, the next day.
This book did not blatantly deal with Nekonese culture, but dedicated one chapter to them, among dozens of other gypsy cultures and societies, all others human. If it had, by now it would have already been needed two reprintings by sheer abrupt demand. The general public did not know of this book, and the general public was under the impression nothing had been published in American books about the race, but a select few did know of it, and they were the most sensible kind of people. That librarian was one of them, and he quietly took the book home to read it as a companion work to the unending juggernaut of trial footage on the news. He had even heard a few rumors Heero's manuscript had been leaked and copies were being made, but he overlooked it as just a rumor, a part of the over-frenzied reaction.
The chapter dealing with Nekos wasn't overly long, and it was more of a summary of their way of life, of the Nekos themselves, than an investigation into their own civilization, a nomadic, tribal one that had been developing independent of America or modern human culture.
As an anthropologist, he was very apt with languages and used it as a tool, but many of the tribes had a few individuals who knew English from being in contact with human hunters, traders, and some Inuit tribes that coexisted with them in the north. There were too many dialects specialized for a certain tribe or a certain trade for him to learn proper Nekonese, but he was able to distinguish that there those localisms, and two major universal tongues, Hunter's and Elder's Nekonese. Nekos of all different tribes could communicate through these catholic languages, during large mass hunting excursions and the assemblies of the Elders. He picked up the basic structure of the language (subject-verb-object, just as many classical languages) and some of the major vocabulary, one of them being the word for the Nekonese ear, which obviously had no translation into English: Ikkunnoi. Heero would read this word and years later hear it again, while having his own radical anthropologic experience.
He studied their daily routines and would trace their migration patterns—the men would always follow the prey and the sources of nourishment; the women, Elders, and kits would either keep a village or a semi-permanent encampment to perform daily tasks. He often made comparisons to the indigenous hienn people of the Americas, and had a suspicion a few might even have melded with Nekonese culture and mingled because of their similar lifestyles. But the extent of knowledge of Nekonese genetics was as proficient as his talent with women. He didn't even begin to suspect that they were similar enough to human beings to cross-breed, to hybridize, to have half-Neko, half-human offspring. He didn't know that some of the Native American bloodlines had been infused in Northern Neko bloodlines for centuries. They were able to retain a very stable gene pool and an abundance of advantageous alleles even as infusion occurred. They were still able to retain their strengths as Nekos and combine it with human benefits: heightened senses with more adaptable immune systems; untamed strength and agility with durability and stamina; incredible tempo of recuperation with longer life spans. Had Washburn been more deeply south while studying these creatures he would have seen a progressive village, one with Neko and human cohabitation and prosperity—seen corn growing beside fixed huts and houses where there once only would have been a hut of prized wolf and bear furs and smoked meat. Mixed people holding an English Shakespeare book in one hand and a traditional Nekonese bone spear in the other.
These Nekonese and mixed, Dires, tribes lived for centuries, while America bustled and innovated beneath them, in the cold wilds and seclusion north in Canada and even sometimes as far as the Arctic circle and Alaska. They moved like wolves, with the herds that sustained them, and often times competed with and killed those wolves. They lived separately of normal human society, and even those with human wives and husbands and mixed children were either of Indian or hunter or furtrapper descent. Separate from the main bloodline of hienn civilization they remained until colder winters drove them further south and drew the weak into their graves, until recent famines had pushed them towards that civilization unless they had the intention of starvation. That's when the sparks had begun. Politicians and conservatives who had became aware of the race in that time as truly more than bedtime story figments or packs of animals feeding and killing without sentience were already edgy about the issue of Nekos, and when word spread of the progressive villages that housed both kits and children, where Neko and hienn laid down together, it began to truly rile up a few people. To political men like Senator Peacecraft, they saw them as senseless practitioners of bestiality and they opposed all interracial interaction that was not strictly platonic, trade-related, and brief, and the public began to form opinions while little was factually known and rumor began to spread, while Neko people were being forced closer to their metropolises, to their cities, to their homes. And it was that fear of the unknown, bestial culture descending from the north, almost like a wolf pack, that fed the public image.
Parents on the borderlines, the areas nearest to Neko settlements, began to change the lines in the old bedtime stories. "Who's afraid of the Big Bad Neko? He'll huff and he'll puff and he'll blow your house down!"
The day passed into evening in eerie silence, in a sort of calm that was most disturbing. The protesting citizens outside the courthouse still milled unhappily, and scuffles still broke out almost regularly near the jail, swaggering teenagers and troublemakers trying to come too close to the police department, but they were less violence than before and now often turned away at the first request. The storm that Duo Maxwell's botched assassination had created dissolved too easily, too quickly with the verdict, and left the town like a ghost town in comparison to what it had been only hours before. The media frenzy was immune to the lull, of course—they would probably go on for weeks, no matter if everything did manage to go back to normal so quickly in Cinq. Maxwell's Demon and his infamy and his defeat were media morsels too juicy to abandon so readily. But the day was uneventful for hours—no violence in the streets, no Peacecraft to shoot down the one-eared Neko in fiery rhetoric, no sign of Heero Yuy's reponse or even of the man himself.
Nothing drastic happened and the day stretched out into a horrible famine of spirit. Duo Maxwell lay slumped in the corner of his cell, and this time when there was food brought to him, he was unconscious and not just to stubborn to accept it. When he finished dreaming of the day his family had been killed, his ikkunnoi had been sheared off, and his life forever damned, he sat up, coughing dryly and wrapping his arms around his stomach while it twisted hungrily. He didn't touch the food, and even if he had been willing to give up his pride and reach for it, he felt too weak to get up. What good would it do, anyway? Prolong his life so the hienn could take all the more shots at him? No thanks. So, unwilling to face the dreadful thoughts in his mind, he ran back to his dreams, where his mother, father, and siblings still lived and breathed, and died over and over again. He slept while his body craved, until darkness and his own fading strength would wake him later, the entire day spent.
Contrary to daily tradition, Vega did not appear on the job, in his perfectly pressed uniform and his sympathetic brown eyes rested and ready for another night shift at the Cinq PD, even if he was assigned to the usually dismal tasks of monitoring the arrested in their cells, strolling up and down corridors for hours with not much to do to occupy his mind. Breaking an immaculate record, he called in claiming sickness, for which his wife vouched on the phone as well. When he hung up, pardoned for a day and as healthy as he'd ever been in his life, he remained in the kitchen with his wife, face distorted with concern and bafflement. Evelyn was not dressed in her traditional insomnia-inspired garb, she still wore her clothes from the day and the baggy sweater that had once been her mother's and stood at the other side of the kitchen. The coffeemaker gurgled raucously and coffee slowly filled. He turned and went back to the table, which were his family had always converged and it was instinct to gather there now. His expression was troubled, but not panicked, but not quite composed either.
Evelyn sat down beside him once the coffee had filled up and slid a I'd Rather Be Dead Than Forty' mug toward him, watching his face carefully. "I know you're concerned for them both, Roman, but he's a grown man. He's made his own decisions to do this—it was his decision to call us and ask for help in the first place, and it'll be his decision if he wants to show himself." She smiled, and the signs of sleeplessness were already setting into her eyes, but she put a hand on her husband's wrist and shook it affectionately. "Don't fret about it. There's nothing you can do about this but offer help when he comes looking for it."
"It's just like all those stories you used to read in magazines, you know? Terrible things happen to decent people, and you don't realize how horrible it is until it happens to you or someone you know," Vega groaned, setting his cheek into the palm of his hand, ruffling at his hair with the other. "It sucks," he added eloquently, taking a drink.
"They do, and it does," she agreed.
"And I feel horrible about it—poor guy looked like he was about to drop dead even before today, can't imagine how he looks now."
"You want to look just like him? Don't worry so much, Roman; most of this is out of your hands. I know you're always concerned for others, but you don't need to do this. If he needs help, I'm pretty sure he'll come back to us for it. He seemed grateful to us the last time, even though he left so early this morning."
"And now I suppose now you're gonna tell me nothing's as bad as it seems," he grumbled good-humoredly, still staring down into the black, unsweetened coffee while his wife leaned against his shoulder and hummed an affirmative happily, putting her hand on his back.
"Did you see Dorothy at all?" she asked calmly, picking up the coffee mug from her husband's hand when he was done sipping from it and taking a swig for herself, only accelerating her journey into nightly sleeplessness.
"Not a trace," Vega said. He glanced up at the clock while the second hand sliced the time away tick after tick. "I'm beginning to think she abducted him or something."
"She may be a mischievous little duchess who thinks she's just playing one big chess game, but that's going a little far, even for her. She was much too fascinated by Heero to do anything drastic—she's probably following him around and confusing the poor man with the way she encrypts everything when she talks. If she is, he's safe enough." By now, her arms had slipped completely around the Chicano's shoulders and her chin slipped into its habitual cove on his shoulder, where it'd laid on many waking nights, pining for sleep. But that shoulder was still tensed, still coursing with anxiety typical of his compassionate nature, still filled with anxieties over the welfare of another. The older Catalonia woman listened to his voice sigh, closing her eyes with a drowsy urge for one of the first times that week, and listened to it roll out beside her ear.
"His safety's not really my concern, Ev—it's Duo's. It's been close to two hours now since Rob called and if he doesn't get word of it soon, I don't think Duo will make it through till morning. I heard what he said about Duo not eating, and I know he hasn't touched a thing—"
They both startled when the sound of a body heavily lunging through the door in the entranceway broke the silence of their home at ten at night, strikingly loud without the distant hum of an unwatched television or children playing in the living room or Dorothy prowling back and forth, busy with some affair. The door had been unlocked, and whomever came plowing through it staggered forward clumsily, as if they'd been expecting much more resistance trying to enter. From their angle at the kitchen table, the pair was only able to see a fraction of the entry hall, glowing with a yellow lightbulb, and Vega craned his neck back to take a quick, defensive look. He automatically assumed someone was breaking in, unaware that the owners were still at home, or some bum of a kid had grown bored over his long Peace Commemoration holiday and had picked up the habit of wandering into stranger's homes. Listening a second longer, he heard a long, haggard groan as the man steadied himself and trudged down the corridor. Evelyn moved instinctually behind her husband's frame as he pushed the chair away and stood up, and she was close enough to feel the gasp of air going into his lungs through his back while she glanced around his shoulder.
"Heero!" Vega exclaimed. Whatever gladness was in his voice at his presence quickly turned to a hiss of concern, as he looked upon the sight that was the traveler, standing and panting in his entryway. "Where the hell have you been?"
"What does it matter?" he murmured in response. The Japanese man brought along an aroma of a bar, of second-hand smoke clinging to his clothes and distant hints of alcohol that were even noticeable to the lesser senses of a hienn, and beneath it was a mixture of grime and sweat that embodied the flagrant sense of despair that hung around him. Whiskey remained undeniably on his breath, and one could instantly connect it with the heavy, gawky steps he took, with one hand against the wall to guide him as he walked into the kitchen. But he was still Heero Yuy—his depression was not marked by the hints of alcohol in the air surrounding him or even by his state of dress, because his shirt remained unruffled and his appearance still very much preened. It was the waning in his eyes paired with the dead man's enthusiasm that really said it all. He seemed only to move forward on some unholy force that propelled him even as his mind was losing itself along the way.
"What happened to you?" Vega asked, this time more concerned than agitated, taking a step toward the Japanese man, who had lost that propulsion somewhere between the corridor and the kitchen where he now stood, almost teetering. The deputy put his hand on the shorter man's shoulder as he came close on a comforting instinct and nearly jerked back. He was shivering, twitching inconstantly beneath his hand. "Where did you go all day? You were damned near impossible to find and D—wait, are you drunk?"
Heero took a defensive step back, with an incriminating wobble to his gait and gruffness in his voice that did normally accompany one too many glasses of his preferred drink, whiskey. He shrugged Vega's hand off rudely and in the dim lighting, the shadows stretching his face made him seem like death freshly warmed over. "No," he grunted dimly. "I tried to, but I only had enough money for one drink."
"Whatever, I guess it's more important just that you're here," Vega dismissed reluctantly, reasserting his hand on the Japanese man's trembling shoulder. There was a more important matter at hand. "God, you're freezing. You walked here again, didn't you? Man, you are something. Evelyn and I'll make you something warm to eat if you want, but you need to get going as soon as possible. They summoned you to the courthouse hours ago—"
"What the fuck for?" Heero grumbled sourly, suddenly ripping his shoulder away from the weight of the deputy's hand and stepping back again. His eyes had turned glazed, like those of a deer carcass after lying dead on the road for a few hours, and those hollow eyes turned on Vega with a vacant expression and an unenthusiastic scowl. His words were slurred, but more from exhaustion than any other force. "No one listened to me then, so why should I expect that to change? It's probably just the press, they'll want to interview me or something vain like that. Waste of time." He scoffed bluntly. Disillusionment radiated off of him while his eyelids drooped low, his brief show of life spent. "I need some money."
"Not to get drunk, you don't."
That dismal little light returned to his eyes, fiercesome in the dark. "Yes, I do," he hissed back.
"You need to get down to the courthouse soon, before they just forget it all and head home. Then Duo'll really be screwed over," Vega said angrily. He was sure if he was upset by the sullen contempt he was being shown by a man who'm he'd welcomed into his home and spent the last day searching around for, if it was the way he continually brushed his hand off his shoulder when it was only to comfort him, if it was the fact he seemed to care more about getting too intoxicated to think than worry about a bit about Duo, the sole reason he was here in this city—most likely it was a combination of all of those, and it was working. The man who had been too softhearted to strike back at his abusive uncle when he tried to leave home at eighteen years of age was starting to heat up beneath the collar, watching Heero stand in his kitchen, defying him, stinking of a run-down bar and disregard. "And this time it will be your fault."
"You want to reconsider that?" Heero growled flatly.
"Do you want Duo's death on your conscience? Are you going do nothing about it?" was the undaunted challenge, and Vega's face did not budge even when Heero's body finally seemed to lose that last little flame that had held it up and he slumped visibly, losing all of the intimidation in his body. In the darkness, his face finally began to reflect his mind when it crumbled and his brows dug painfully together, hopeless and on the brink of falling over the edge where he'd been walking for the last few days. Even his voice warbled with vulnerability when he choked out, "No—No, I don't, but I tried already, I'll just fail him again—!"
While the two men standing in the kitchen remained that way, one too surprised by the other crumbling so readily even when he had suspected he would, the woman who had stood behind her husband, watching the scene, decided to break the silence before it settled itself on them. She walked around Vega in her bare feet and gave the traveler a comforting embrace without a second thought, resting the side of her head on the top of his and telling him quietly, "You haven't failed, Heero." Though no man really enjoyed the sight of his wife embracing any other man, Vega only watched as Heero leaned forward into his wife, put his arms around the first bit of warmth and compassion he'd felt in a long time, and ignored every rational thought that came to his exhausted mind. He felt horrible, and Eveyln's comfort assuaged that, and he liked it. It wasn't Duo's arms wrapped around him—but he was too tired to care from whom the comfort came.
"You still have your chance, you know," she hummed, petting the back of his head as she leaned back and smiled warmly down at him. "Judge Robert Reimer called our house a few hours ago, looking for you. He wants to discuss something with you about Duo's well-being in private. No press, no pressure."
Heero lifted his weary head from her shoulder, his disheveled dark hair tickling at her chin as he moved, and turned a tired face up toward her, eyes wide and scraping for whatever crumb of hope they could get. She could see the glimmer on his skin where the lines of moisture had formed and dripped down his face, though he did not cry aloud. "The judge—?"
Vega had moved beside them, and this time when he clasped a hand on Heero's shoulder, it was not refused. "I'll give you a ride over there—that is, if you're not too stubborn just to walk there yourself," he offered, with a little laugh at the end.
The courthouse had lost all of its shine and vigor, all of its occupants, all of the protestors who had massed before the stairs with their homemade narrow-minded signs, by the time the clocks in the city had turned unanimously to a quarter to midnight, and the traffic that had yearned to pass through that street had finally returned, a quiet, river-like stream of cars and their silent highlights. That was good news for him, as he shut the passenger side door and walked up the stairs alone, while Vega remained in the parked car, watching the road and the dizzying headlights stream back and forth. Even though it was dark, he could almost see every chip in every stair and it was a much more sinister experience walking up them the second time, when he was painfully aware of his failure and without the cushion of false hopes. Going up them that morning had already begun to blur in his mind. It didn't help that he had gone drinking afterward, but everything had been moving so much faster that morning than they were now. Maxwell's Demon's verdict was in, and it was guilty—the city could sleep sound now, things could relax again.
The door was opened when he reached it and a security guard held it while he passed through. The halls echoed eerily every sound he made, as empty as a skeleton's skull. The guard remained at the door where he remained silently, and Heero took another harrowing walk down to the courtroom, through those doors, and past the witness stand. He had to travel past every memory he'd been fighting with over the last few days, brush by every time he had seen Duo's eyes darken on that witness stand, every time that attorney gave him his victorious smile as he paced back and forth in front of him, and, as the bohemian would have put it so eloquently, it fucking sucked.'
The door to the judge's quarters was unlocked, but it had been ingrained in Heero to always knock, so that's what he did, after standing at the large oak door for a few minutes, steeling himself for the worse. God knew no matter how bad things were, they always found a way to get worse, he thought as he raised his hand. But before he had the chance to knock, the old voice from within hailed him. "Just come on in, Mr. Yuy," the judge beckoned, and the traveler obeyed, twisting the doorknob with a hint of anxiety shining through the overwhelming color of depression in his eyes.
Inside, the judge Reimer, who had overseen Duo's trial and then administered his verdict, now sat at his desk, now longer writing studiously as the paper lying before him suggested he had been. His robes had been hung up somewhere, and his glasses had been folded up and placed on the desk beside the warm yellow light. He looked amazingly mundane, normal without his distinct magistrate clothing, and his gavel now replaced with a more harmless ballpoint pen. When Heero stepped into the doorway, he calmly set the pen down and watched him stand there with a softening expression until he politely offered him to take a seat. The traveler's eyes flickered cautiously at first, though no one in their right mind should be so suspicious of an old man at a desk with only wisps of hair clinging to his head, but it was it was hard to avoid.
Every doorway he'd turned and walked through up to this point hadn't resulted in the best—stepping into that gypsy's tent had preceded a consuming and risky infatuation, following Duo to Cinq had ripped him from almost every idea of the world he had had, and trying to save a criminal who didn't want the accept the help had broken his heart. Numbly accepting Relena's offer at a relationship had emptied his bored existence into a hole and that had started it all. Going through more of those doorways was not something he looked forward too, now, considering just how more miserable he stood to become if he chose the wrong one.
But there is a right one somewhere, right?
And on an impulse, Heero stepped in and closed the door behind him. There was nothing behind him but woe to drive him forward, self-doubt thrown aside, after all.