Night Wind
Part II – Let the Night Begin
Chapter Seventeen: The Missing
He misses Hero.
And he knows Duo misses Hero.
Mission accepted.
The little boy's expression is almost fierce as he stalks down the staircase in the dead of the night. He'd waited while Duo and Trowa had talked in the kitchen again. He'd waited until he'd heard the doors to both Duo and Trowa's rooms open and close. And still he'd waited.
Nothing can be allowed to interfere with his mission, after all.
He hops silently from shadow to shadow as he works his way toward his objective, his target.
The huge house echoes with the predawn silence. There aren't even any weird noises coming from Wufei and Taki's room at this hour.
Creepy.
Jaspien takes a deep breath and prepares for his next move. He doesn't let himself think about it too much. He dashes across the hall and disappears into the room with all the books. A library, Duo had called it, but it seems kind of small for a library.
Jaspien dismisses the thought. He's not here for the books. He's here for something far more important.
Still moving as quietly as he can, Jaspien sidles up to the desk and crawls into the chair. He has to sit up on his knees in order to see the keyboard on the vid phone. He stares at the blank screen for several minutes, wary of turning the machine on and attracting attention. But this is the mission. Every mission has some risk.
He pushes the ON button and waits.
And cringes as the welcoming chime rings in his ears and seems to blast through the house.
He doesn't wait for someone to come down and check on him. He has to finish his mission, after all.
He brings up the email server and checks to be sure he's connected to the internet. Quickly, he stabs out his messages with his small fingers. He signs it and sends it.
In another instant, the machine has been turned off and the little boy is gliding his way soundlessly back up the stairs. No one stirs as the door to the boy's room eases open and then shuts in almost unblemished silence. And in the dark, electronic void of the internet, a message waits for a young man who calls himself Heero Yuy:
Dear Hero,
Please come home and help Duo with his smile. It got broke when you went away. I love you. We miss you.
Love, Jaspien
...ooo...
"Have they talked about their past yet?"
The elderly woman glances up quickly from the bundle of knitting in her lap and blinks at the sight of the sheriff standing next to her recently mended rocking chair. "Oh my, you startled me..."
The blond woman offers an apologetic smile. "Sorry. I didn't mean to."
Ossia and Fiero's grandmother indulges a brief chuckle. "I know. If you'd meant to scare me, I'd probably be having a heart attack right now."
"That's not funny," the sheriff admonishes.
"Oh, you're no fun."
The sheriff doesn't argue the point. She takes a seat on a well-padded ottoman and allows her attention to be drawn away. Together, the two women find themselves gazing out the large window at two figures working in the garden.
"Have you managed to get them to have any fun yet?" the old woman hears the sheriff ask.
She shakes her head. "No. They're so... quiet. So..."
"Alone," the sheriff breathes.
"I never would have believed two people could be solitary together."
"It... seems strange, doesn't it?"
The elderly lady transfers her gaze to her young visitor. "What do you mean, dear?"
"I'm... not sure," she admits. "Just that there's something unusual about them."
"Something more unusual than not being able to remember their own childhoods?"
The sheriff blinks at that. Another apologetic smile forms across her lips at the soft rebuke. "I'm not one to judge am I?"
Turning in her chair to better see the young woman's expression, Leise's mother abandons her knitting and settles a hand on the sheriff's slumped back. Rubbing gently between her shoulder blades, she whispers, "You still have the nightmares?"
The woman nods. "Still. Always."
"I'm sorry, dear."
"I know." She forces a trembling smile. "Thank you."
The heavy silence is almost healing – inasmuch as the past can be healed – and the sheriff finds herself mesmerized by the simple, beautiful motions of her childhood friends. Gladly, she focuses her attention on their movements. Movements that seem choreographed. A dance among the roses.
"Amazing," she whispers.
"It is," the elderly woman agrees softly. "I... haven't gotten much work done on this scarf for Fiero. I keep watching them."
"It's like they know what the other is about to do." It truly is a sight worthy of being marveled.
"Perhaps they do," the old woman suggests simply.
This startles the blonde woman. "What do you mean?"
With a shrug, she elaborates, "I can only guess what the two of them have been through together. It must have been a... bonding experience if nothing else."
"Do you really believe that?" the sheriff asks, her investigative nature surging to the fore.
"Does it matter what I believe? They are here. They seem... well, not unhappy."
The sheriff pauses for a long moment, considering her words. "Do you... would you like me to..."
"To what, dear?"
The sheriff swallows. "I could... check a few things for you," she offers. "If you really wanted to know the truth..."
"Stop, dear. Stop." A gentle hand settles on the sheriff's arm to accompany the whispered request. "Thank–" The elderly woman has to force her own knot of emotion down. "Thank you, but no."
The pain she sees in those tired eyes stops the sheriff from asking if the woman is even a little curious. But it is not for lack of curiosity that she refuses.
"We've only just found them." Her veined hands clench in the partially woven scarf. "And we could lose them so easily. We must trust them. We must love them. And, perhaps, someday they will want to tell us."
The sheriff opens her mouth but then closes it abruptly. Tears shimmer in her eyes. She whispers, "Sometimes I really wish you were my grandmother, too."
"Oh, child..."
A hand rubs warmly along her back. Another grasps her chilled fingers.
"Were I allowed to choose another granddaughter, that woman would be you, dear. She would be you."
The sheriff leans into the embrace and fights back the moisture that blurs her vision. She focuses on the figures beyond the window and lets the rhythm of their seamless operation lull her. In fact, their gentle, accidental dance is so soothing that the sheriff forgets to be wary of such inexplicable grace.
...ooo...
"How long are you planning to wait for them?"
Trowa would have smiled at the impatient demand, but he knows the expression would only reveal the depths of his pain. "As long as it takes."
Duo sighs and pours himself another glass of whiskey. "Well, I'm giving Heero one more day to drag his sorry ass back here."
"And then you'll what? Go looking for him?" Trowa predicts on a rolling breath.
Duo glares at the dark chuckle his drinking buddy had almost released. "Yeah," he replies defensively.
"You won't find him."
"Oh, I most certainly will."
Leaning his jaw on one hand, Trowa persists, "And what will you do when you've cornered him?"
Duo grins. He takes a long, unhealthy gulp from the tumbler in his grasp. "Well, I've gotta admit," he says once he's able to speak, "that part's still a bit... open to interpretation."
"You don't know what you'll say?" Trowa inquires mildly, one eyebrow raised.
Duo laughs. "Oh, no. More like I can't decide what to say first."
"Hm," Trowa hums in understanding.
"What about you?" Duo asks his equally inebriated companion.
Trowa shrugs fluidly and Duo can't help but appreciate the slightly off-balance, mellow pleasantness that has settled over the usually self-restrained acrobat-turned-investigator. "Can't do anything really before I break into her laptop."
Duo pauses in mid sip and lowers his glass. He gazes at the other man and feels a hint of... warning even through the haze of the alcohol. "Holy shit, Tro. You really do have a death wish."
"I'll never find her otherwise," he predicts and Duo starts to consider trying to hack into Heero's laptop... until he remembers it's still stored somewhere in Heero's room in L2. In fact, he can't recall the last time Heero even used the damn thing... Who's to say any of the data thereon would be of any use to him now?
Duo shares this possibility: "What if you go to all that trouble and you don't even find anything useful?"
Trowa smiles slightly and draws his fingertips around the rim of his sweating glass. "I'll find something. Everything."
Duo eyes him with doubt. "What makes you so sure?"
"I saw it," he replies quietly. "Months ago on the shuttle trip to Earth to find Heero. I saw the folder on the hard drive."
Duo blinks. "Then, uh, why didn't you look through it then, man? Save yourself some grief?"
Trowa barks out a laugh – a hallow, hopeless sound. He says, "She'd just asked me to go on one of her mysterious missions with her. I thought she trusted me." All traces of humor evaporate from him. "I trusted her."
Seeing the onset of grief in the other man's slouching posture, Duo reaches for the bottle between them and tops off both of their glasses. Lifting his tumbler in a toast, Duo proclaims, "Here's to retribution, man."
Soldiering his enthusiasm, Trowa lifts his own brimming glass and clinks the rim against Duo's. "Retribution," he agrees blandly.
"It's the least they can do for us."
"The least," Trowa repeats in an eerie tone.
"I said 'for us' not 'to us,' Tro," Duo says quickly.
The half smirk returns to Trowa's features. He takes a delicate sip of his ice-and-whiskey cocktail. "Don't underestimate them, Duo."
"Heh. Whatever, dude." He raises his glass and intones sarcastically, "Cheers."
This sends Trowa into a fit of silent laughter. Yokaze's lover lowers his arms and face to the table.
Entertained by this, Duo watches Trowa's quivering shoulders and listens to his muffled mirth. "Man, you are totally doing a one-eighty here. Mental note to self: get Tro plastered more often."
Trowa pushes himself away from the surface of the table and leans so far back in his chair the back seems to be all that's holding him up from falling over backwards. "You just want to take advantage of me, Maxwell," Trowa accuses with a grin.
Duo laughs before summoning up a suggestive leer. "You think so, eh?"
Trowa chuckles. "Oh shut up." He reaches for his own glass and swallows down a bit more of their chosen poison.
"Sure thing, dad."
Trowa almost spits out his alcohol at the jibe.
Duo laughs loudly at the procession of expressions that flicker across his friend's face.
"Fuck!" Trowa hisses when he can. "That shit almost went up my damn nose you bastard!"
And the sound of hearing Trowa Barton, a.k.a. "Mr. Cool," using four expletives in two consecutive breaths, sets Duo off again. In fact, he laughs so hard he lists a little too far to the right and tumbles right off his chair. And this, in turn, renews Trowa's laughter. He slaps the surface of the table with an open palm three times. During this, Duo rolls over onto his back on the cool floor and chuckles dazedly up at the plaster ceiling.
And it is at this precise moment when the kitchen door bursts open and a hastily dressed Chang Wufei gifts them with a severe glower.
"What in the hell do the two of you think you are doing in here at two in the morning!" he demands brusquely.
"Just, ah, hangin' out, Wu," Duo assures him with an unfocused smile. "Pull up a chair and have a drink with us!"
"Go ahead and take Duo's," Trowa invites mildly. "He can't use either where he's gone."
Duo snorts and meets Trowa's gaze. Then, amazingly, the two of them bust into hysterical laughter in absolute unison.
"The both of you are pathetic," Wufei states, striding across the kitchen to collect the remains of the whiskey bottle from the table.
"Newsflash!" Duo crows and Trowa laughs harder.
"This is ridiculous," Wufei grumbles as he dumps the remains of the bottle down the sink and follows it with Duo's half-full but abandoned tumbler.
"Aw... Lookit that, Tro. Wuffers is getting rid of our funny juice like he's gonna take care of us." Duo adopts a sincere, wide-eyed expression and whispers, "Are you gonna take care of us, Wu?"
Trowa crosses his arms over his stomach and attempts to hold his painfully quivering sides in with both hands.
"Shut up, Maxwell," Wufei commands.
"He yelled at me!" Duo observes indignantly from his spot on the floor. "Trowa, sic 'em!"
"Shut... up, D-Duo," Trowa manages between great, silent laughs. "Or... I'm gonna... st-start... hic-cupping like a... damn... drunk!"
"You are a damn drunk!" Wufei roars. "Now off to bed the both of you!"
"Oooh! Trowa, he's sending us to bed... together."
Trowa throws back his head and barks out another bout of laughter.
"Damn it to hell, Maxwell! March your sorry ass up those stairs and go to sleep!"
Duo snorts derisively. "Sleep, he says. Yeah, oookay."
"Come on, Duo," Trowa says, panting softly from the table. "He's crashed our party."
"Well, we'll just move it then, won't we?" Duo inquires as Trowa makes an unsteady but successful attempt to stand. He waits until Trowa walks around to him and holds out his hands for Duo to take. Duo grins and reaches for him, intent on dragging him down to the floor, too.
"Don't even think about it, junior," Trowa scolds.
Duo laughs. "Aw shucks, Dad..."
"Bed! Now! Both of you!" Wufei snaps.
Trowa rolls his eyes.
Duo bleats, "Meeeyooow!"
Trowa tries to swallow back his laughter but snorts several times instead.
And then strong hands are pulling Duo to his feet and both he and Trowa find themselves being herded up the staircase which sways annoyingly underneath them.
When morning announces its arrival with the delivery of two very nauseating hangovers, neither Duo nor Trowa will remember being shoved onto their respective beds and passing out fully clothed. They will not remember the sounds of their doors slamming behind their aggravated and sober friend. They will not remember having heard the sound of that friend's footsteps moving back toward the stairs rather than further on down the hall. And if they had managed to hear the welcoming chime of the vid phone being turned on, they would not have remembered that either.
They would not be told until much later that downstairs, in the small study, Wufei had just run out of patience. They could not have known their friend had decided it is time for Heero and Yokaze to get back here and clean up the mess Trowa and Duo are making of themselves. And neither of them will be surprised to learn that their friend had felt no remorse whatsoever in sending out the APB on Heero's rental car.
End of Chapter Seventeen
