Disclaimer-Don't own nothing
Shoutouts:
Infinity: Trowa's going to remain an enigma for a while longer.
relenalover: You've got some Heero/Relena in this chapter, but it'll be a bit before the Trowa/Quatre/Middie/Other Person is worked out.
MacuKnight: We'll eventually see some Zechs, Noin, Treize, Lady, and Mariemaia.
December 7th, 2004, Part II
10:07 AM—FOURTH PERIOD—LUNCH
"Trowa?"
Trowa looked up from where he was staring at his lunch, his stomach and mind too jangled up inside to force his mouth or throat into even the most mechanical motions of chewing and swallowing. Quatre was approaching his seat on the second row of the cold metal bleachers tentatively, like an unfamiliar father with his crying child.
"Are you all right?" he asked shyly.
Trowa made a small, guttural, noncommittal noise and turned back to staring at his sandwich. Amazing how rips in the dough could be so interesting to the scattered mind.
"I know it's a shock to see her again," Quatre offered quietly.
"I knew that I'd eventually see her again," Trowa said simply, dismissing the suggestion, averting his gaze from his food to the football field. "I guess I just wasn't prepared for it now. With Cathy and everything especially."
"Can you really just leave it like it is with her?" Quatre sat down next to Trowa, folded his hands in his lap, and looked at his friend.
Trowa sighed heavily. "I don't think I have much choice. I don't want to talk to her again."
"You're really sure?"
"I don't want to," Trowa repeated.
"Why not? You know that she had to—"
"I know that she had to," Trowa interrupted. "I also know that the Captain would be alive if it wasn't for her. I won't blame her for it, but I'm not interested in being friends with her again."
Quatre made a noise and pushed his bangs off of his forehead. "At the risk of sounding like Duo, sheesh. What a world we live in. We're pretty beyond the average high-school teenagers, huh?"
"Simply by virtue of being who we are," Trowa replied flatly. "If you have a problem, join the club."
"We attract them like flypaper," Quatre tagged on, with a weak laugh. "Trowa, just don't hurt her, okay? I know you lost the Captain, but Middie suffered, too."
"I know." Trowa stood up, turned around, reared back his arm, and tossed the remains of his sandwich over the bleachers and into the parking lot. The last remaining sea gulls swooped down to pick at the carcass of whole wheat bread, lettuce, yellow cheese, bologna, and salami. Trowa bunched up the dark pink plastic in his hand and shoved it in his pocket. "I'll throw that out later."
"You want to go back inside?" Quatre offered, standing up and brushing invisible dust off his jeans.
Trowa shrugged passively. "Not really. I don't want to see Middie right now."
"You wanna walk around downtown?" Quatre tried again.
Trowa shrugged again, but lighter this time. "Why not."
Quatre smiled and rubbed Trowa's arm comfortingly. "Cool."
10:48 AM—FIFTH PERIOD—PHYSICAL EDUCATION
"Ah, archery week," Duo said, picking three arrows out of the cylindrical container with his free hand; his other hand full of the bow. "I'm surprised some crackhead hasn't shot someone up yet."
"They're all waiting for you to do it," Wufei muttered, arranging his bow and arrow, and eyeing the target at the other end of the auxiliary gym. A white circle encompassed in, equaling one point. Then a red one, a yellow one, and a green one, 2, 3, and 4 points worth respectively. Finally, there was the black circle, the bull's eye, worth 5 points.
"You're so nice to me, Wufei. I feel so loved." Duo placed his arrow against the bow, pulled back the string and let one fly across the room, landing on the line between the green and black circle. "Well, close enough."
"Close enough is not good enough," Heero muttered from two spaces down, holding his bow and arrow straight. He pulled back the string to an almost impossible length, both eyes fixed on the future trajectory of the arrow. With a sudden but soft movement he let the string go; the arrow shot through the air almost invisible until it landed solidly in the bull's eye.
"Nice shot, Heero," Nataku complimented.
Heero grunted his gratitude and set up another arrow. This one flew through the air and landed directly alongside the previous, not a millimeter between them.
"Good God, Heero!" Duo yelped with a little jump. "Are you training to kill somebody or something?"
Silence and a glare was Heero's answer as he began preparing his bow and arrow again. Duo raised his hand and bit his thumbnail, a tactic to suppress worrying he had picked up as a child and couldn't seem to kick. In fact, contrary to Sister Helen's attempts at reforming Duo from his thumbnail-biting, the habit was contagious; Hilde had started doing it long ago.
"Duo," Hilde said, coming over from her spot to touch her boyfriend's arm. "What's wrong?"
"Ah, Hilde, thy know mineself so well," Duo said, turning around with a smile. He dropped his voice and leaned in towards the side of her face. "We'll talk about it on the way home, okay?"
"All right." Hilde frowned, but allowed Duo a quick peck before returning to her X-marked, duct-taped designated shooting area.
Heero glanced over to make sure Duo was back in his spot and distracted by shooting before returning to look at his bow. Duo was just as curious about Heero's motivations as they all were of Duo's suspicious job. But just as Duo didn't think he could afford to fill them in, Heero knew he could not afford to tell anyone his reasons.
Especially Relena. Heero could never tell her why he had been training in shooting ranges for years, perfecting his aim and control of a steel gun. She would be horrified, she would beg him not to go through with it, that it would ruin everything that he had ever worked for, and why would he want to end the life he lived and knew?
Heero mused on the image of Relena's face. He had met her on the street when they were both 11, having quite literally run into each other on the way home from school. Relena had stared shyly at him, and had opened her mouth to talk just when Odin showed up to usher his stepson away. Three years later they had met again in June, both newly-joined Band members of After Colony High School. He had not recognized her right off, but she had remembered him, and in time his memory had conjured up the image of the shy, blushing girl who'd knocked him over accidentally.
Three years had changed her; she was much more confident now, though still very quiet at the time. She led the Trumpet section by the nose, rivaling only Heero in power, eventually beating him out for section leader by the skin of her teeth, and was now his partner Drum Major this year. He'd heard her laugh, a laugh of silver and gold intertwined, when she'd heard the news. Her first excited moment was when she was informed that she and Heero were now Drum Majors; she had turned and hugged him around the waist, jumping up and down, laughing and shrieking.
For some reason, whenever he picked up the gun that belonged to his stepfather and looked at it with the eyes of a bloodthirsty killer, the image of Relena bouncing up and down with her arms around him, laughing with euphoria, made him put it back in its case and quickly leave the room.
"Look alive, Heero," Trowa muttered at him, before shooting off his own arrow. Heero shook his head as if to rearrange his thoughts and pulled back the string before scoring another perfect bull's-eye.
11: 23 AM—SIXTH PERIOD—BROADCAST JOURNALISM
"You're Middie, right?"
Middie looked up. The girl she had mistaken for a boy was looming over her like a hungry seagull over an eating tourist. Up close, the girl still looked tomboyish, but was decidedly female by her build.
"That's my name," Middie answered smoothly, as if she had never been embarrassed by her earlier gender confusion.
"My name is Hilde Shbeiker." Hilde sat down in the desk in front of her. "Sorry to pry, but what was all that in the cafeteria?"
"Are you a friend of No-Na—I mean, Trowa?" Middie evaded.
"Yeah, my boyfriend introduced us."
"Who's your boyfriend?"
"Duo."
"Who?"
"The one with the braid. And back to the question—what happened in the cafeteria?"
Middie sighed, and smirked a little. "Nothing gets past you, does it?"
"Oh, lots of things get past me," Hilde joked dismissively. "But I'm one of the nosiest people you'll ever meet. And I'm stubborn, as anyone will tell you. So, what happened back there?"
"I really don't want to talk about it." Middie opened her book and began flipping pages.
"Middie, I know we just met and all, so you don't have to tell me everything. But what affects Trowa affects Duo, and I want to know what's what."
"It's none of your business," Middie said crisply.
"I just want to know one thing," Hilde pressed. "This fight you and Trowa have going on—will it last forever or will it end soon?"
Middie opened her mouth, and then paused. She honestly had no idea. She had wanted to see No-Name again for 7 years, ever since he had abruptly walked out of the alleyway. She remembered the mixed look of betrayal and fury in his green eyes before turning to stony, expressionless orbs in his face as he turned around and murmured his good-bye. She remembered calling his name, begging him to come back and not leave her alone, but he had walked on. Not so much as a trace of him had been found until today, and the flames that fueled his anger apparently had not smoldered.
"It should…eventually fizzle out," Middie supplied cautiously, glancing at Hilde to register the amount of stock she put into the statement.
Hilde bit her lip and sent a searching look at Middie, who did not flinch. The new girl was certainly smooth as silk. She had a deceptive and secretive air around her that, while intriguing, had the ability to put people off.
"All right, then," Hilde finally said, and Middie breathed a silent sigh of relief. "Sorry to be so nosy, but I need to be in the loop, you know? If I'm even a little bit involved, I want to know what's going on."
"Don't worry about it," Middie said in a way that closed the conversation.
"Miss Shbeiker, kindly re-join the rest of the class!" the teacher hollered in her direction.
"Yes, ma'am," Hilde answered, twisting around so she was sitting upright and facing the front.
"As I was saying before I had to correct Miss Shbeiker's manners," the teacher half-complained, shooting a glare at Hilde, who remained straight-faced. "As a reminder from yesterday: your upcoming tests are completely your own idea. Your topics are of your own making, and your ratings will determine your grade. I'll give you the rest of the period to choose your partners, and come up with your topics and your strategies for executing them."
"Wait, what are we supposed to do?" Middie asked, poking Hilde's arm with a pencil.
"We have to interview the student body over something we pick with a partner," Hilde answered, turning her head to look at Middie.
"Miss Shbeiker, I wasn't aware that I permitted shouting in my classroom," the teacher yelled through clenched teeth from her desk in the front of the room.
"She was just explaining to me what the test was," Middie spoke up.
"Well, perhaps if she hadn't been talking while I was, you would know what the test was about."
Middie was shocked to see what was practically a sneer on the teacher's mouth. She glanced back and forth at the teacher and Hilde, whose face had turned a dark pink. Hilde pushed back her chair and stood up, her fists clenching.
"Ms. Aldridge, are you aware that anti-Semitism is not allowed in schools, or anywhere else for that matter?" Hilde shot at her, anger just barely surfacing in the tone of her voice.
Ms. Aldridge stood up as well, nearly toppling her chair. "I amnot an anti-Semite, Miss Shbeiker, and you will not use my discipline as a tool to make me so. Shut your mouth and find a partner for your test before I issue you a detention."
Hilde breathed in and out very sharply, looking ready to protest, or yell, or throw something. With a sudden jerking movement Hilde turned and plopped down hard into her chair, turning so her back faced the teacher and her front faced Middie.
"Be my partner, Middie?" Hilde said, her voice quivering with fury.
"Keep it down, Miss Shbeiker," Ms. Aldridge warned threateningly.
"I'll be your partner," Middie said swiftly, seeing Hilde brace to retort. "Do you have any idea as to what you want to do?"
"Prejudice in schools," Hilde almost snapped at her. "What people think about it, how bad it's gotten—"
"Whoa, wait a minute." Middie pulled out a notebook and a mechanical pencil. She opened to a blank page in the middle of the notebook, clicked the eraser of her pencil to get the lead out, and began scribbling down notes.
"Prejudice in schools…how much…" She looked up. "How about what they plan to do about it?"
"Good one," Hilde complimented, her tone softening just the slightest bit. "The war and prejudice."
Middie wrote down Hilde's idea, and then added while speaking, "The types of prejudice."
"Religious prejudice. Is there an "ism" for that?"
"Don't know. Racism."
"Homophobia."
"Sexism…oh, and looksism." Middie wrote down her last idea, and then began tapping the desk with her eraser. "Who are we going to ask?"
"The teachers, the students, the coaches, the janitors, our friends, and our families," Hilde listed off immediately.
Middie penned down Hilde's words, and then looked up. "What's the matter with Ms. Aldridge?" she questioned. "Why is she so mean to you?"
"Because she thinks I'm a Christ-killer," Hilde said, her face flushing dark pink again, her hand grabbing the golden Star of David that hung about her neck on a thin chain. "And I'm not. How can I be; my boyfriend lives in a church, for God's sakes! And it's not like our religions are all that different."
"Some people are stupid about that kind of stuff," Middie conceded. "Like in World War II."
"That war wasn't even about religion, it was about power," Hilde corrected snappishly. "They just picked a scapegoat and it happened to be my faith. And I'll bet anything Aldridge over there will be even nastier to me now, since Hanukah is being celebrated. She lives right near my synagogue. I see her glaring at me when we go on Saturdays."
"Why doesn't she move, then?"
"She thinks the property value has gone down because we moved here and she won't get the full value for her house." Hilde snorted viciously. "God, I'll pay her to move."
"Maybe we can work this into our project," Middie said thoughtfully. She looked down at her paper and jotted down another idea. "How…the…recipients…"
"Good word," Hilde complimented.
"Thanks…feel…about…it." Middie put down her pencil and looked up. "So, how about we hold up the question to the camera's face on a black background or something, and then all the answers to that question come in successive order, and then ask the next question, lather, rinse, repeat?"
"Good idea," Hilde said appreciatively.
"Wait, I just thought of something," Middie said, looking slightly alarmed. "What if she fails you for using this topic?"
"Then I'll take it to the principal," Hilde replied. "I'll take it up to the School Board if I have to. I'm sick of being treated like dirt by this woman."
Middie twitched her eyebrows up and down, and glanced at Ms. Aldridge. "Good luck."
12: 47 PM—SEVENTH PERIOD—PSYCHOLOGY II
Dorothy shut her text book and shoved it in her bookbag. The bell would ring in 5 minutes and she was already done with her homework. It had been assigned ten minutes ago. Most students were still muddling through the third question, but Psychology was an easy topic for Dorothy.
Dorothy propped her chin up on her fist, and thought of what had happened at lunch that day. It was quite obvious that there was more to Middie than met the eye even before Trowa's big blowout with her. Dorothy wondered what could possibly cause Trowa, the silent wonder, to get so angry.
Dorothy pulled out a pencil and ripped a piece of paper from one of her notebooks. She headed the top with Trowa's name, preceding a dash and the question "What's wrong with him?"
She tapped her pencil against the desk and thought. Quatre had managed to pry out the facts that Trowa had been orphaned at the age of one, sent to an orphanage in a faraway country, adopted at the age of four, and suddenly orphaned again at the age of ten. After Trowa and Quatre's disappearance at Lunch, Duo had filled them in on the fact that Trowa had found out he had a sister. But the interim period between the ages of ten and fourteen were unknown to all except Trowa himself, and possibly Quatre.
Dorothy jotted down these notes, and then skipped a few lines and wrote down "Middie—Connection". Relena had gotten Middie to relay her short paragraph of history.
"Born in France," Dorothy thought to herself as she wrote it down, and then drew a line to Trowa's note of "Sent to France at age 4".
"Left France at age 10," Dorothy thought, wrote down, and drew a line to Trowa's identical note.
That was all Middie had allowed herself to say. Underneath all her notes, Dorothy wrote down in capital letters: "WHAT HAPPENED IN FRANCE?"
Dorothy tapped her chin with her eraser and thought. Having a grandfather in international politics—especially the shady type of politics Dorothy knew he dealt with—certainly would help. Dorothy sketchily remembered something about several drug gang wars in Europe and Asia that lasted from 1933 to the time she was ten. They had been small-scale at first, slowly intensifying along the way as drugs were outlawed, and finally elevating into a time when it was no longer safe to walk down the streets in some areas spanning the two continents. Several hundred people—dealers, buyers, and bystanders alike—had been killed before the United Nations finally sent in a medium-sized troop to successfully stop the gang wars.
"Gang war" was written underneath Dorothy's capitalized heading, and below that was written "Barton" and "Une".
Dorothy stopped and stared at "Une". An image of a woman came up in her mind: a tall, brunette, brown-eyed woman that she, Dorothy, had met once or twice.
"Of course!" Dorothy murmured, her eyes widening excitedly. "Treize's fiancé."
Dorothy scribbled down a hasty note to herself to call her cousin just as the bell rang. She closed up her mechanical pencil and dropped her notebook in her bookbag, stood up, slung her bookbag over her shoulder, and left the classroom.
1: 05 PM—EIGTH PERIOD—ORCHESTRA IV
"All right, all right, stop your yammering," the Orchestra teacher, Mrs. Vidalvi, ordered authoritatively. The noise level in the Orchestra classroom dropped substantially, but not enough to satisfy the teacher. She picked up her music stand and banged it on the floor, effectively giving rise to an outraged cry of protest, leading to a gradual decline of noise until perfect silence, the only exceptions being the clicking of pens and mechanical pencil and the rustling of papers, reigned.
"Yes, I know you're excited to know who are getting the flute and violin duet," she continued, tapping her clipboard with her pen. "Unfortunately, I could only pick two of you, you are all so talented, and all that other stuff, blah blah blah. I pick the ones who feel the music, guys and dolls. Even if you were perfect, if I wasn't feeling it, chances are the audience won't feel it either. Remember that it always takes a certain amount of emotion to really play music. So, I picked the ones who played it best with that emotion."
Mrs. Vidalvi looked down at her clipboard, and then looked up. "So, congratulations, Trowa Barton and Quatre R. Winner, you are our next duet."
Quatre's face lit up like a skating rink at Christmastime. He turned and grabbed Trowa's arm excitedly, who allowed a very small smile to grace his countenance.
"Now, as it's Friday, the game is tonight, and our concert is not for two months, I'd say it's time for a break." Mrs. Vidalvi clapped her hands. "Keep it down, though. I'll be in my office. If I can hear you breath too loudly, you'll be playing on your stomach for the next week."
She wasn't kidding. They'd all heard the horror stories of delinquent students who had been forced to play on one leg, with one hand, or at the worst, while doing a headstand. Mrs. Vidalvi was one of the strangest teachers to ever stalk After Colony High School's halls, yet the students loved her, complete with her bizarre disciplines.
But, being students, the instant Mrs. Vidalvi shut her office door, the voices began working like a factory after the union had ended a strike.
"Trowa, this is great!" Quatre exclaimed emphatically, his excited face now tinged with rose. "I absolutely love this piece; I really hoped I'd get the part…"
"Like, oh my Gawd! Like, no way!" a falsetto, mocking voice said from behind Quatre.
Quatre blinked but otherwise pressed on without hesitation. "Look, we should probably get together to practice it every once in a while."
"Uh-oh, Trowa, better watch it. Looks like Winner's asking you out."
"Ignore it, Trowa," Quatre breathed swiftly, seeing Trowa's eyebrows cock in a manner that foretold danger on the horizon.
"No man is safe with Quatre Raberba Winner on the prowl…"
"I don't recall inviting you into the conversation," Trowa said icily, glaring at the group of obnoxious boys behind them. They snickered stupidly. One spoke up again.
"Well, well, Trowa. Wine him, dine him, sixty-ni…"
"If you finish that sentence, I'll kill you." A muscle in Trowa's brown twitched, a sure sign that he was getting angry once again.
"Oh-ho-ho," another one crooned nastily. "Did you hear that, guys? Better not mess with Trowa's little squeeze."
"Trowa, please, just ignore them," Quatre pleaded, grabbing Trowa's arm. Trowa had gone rigid. His eyes were cocked dangerously.
"Yeah, Trowa, listen to your girlfriend."
Trowa shoved back his chair as he stood up. He took a menacing step forward, Quatre's importunes falling on decidedly deaf ears.
"I hear loud breathing!"
Mrs. Vidalvi's door banged against the wall and then back into the jam as she viciously shoved it up and let it fall shut. Trowa's mind cleared in time for Quatre to grab his wrist and pull him back down into his seat.
"Trowa, please don't, if the school calls my parents again they'll really send me away this time…"
Trowa snorted and turned his back on the mockers, who had fallen silent with Mrs. Vidalvi's warning, turning back to look at Quatre. "So, Cathy won't mind if we practice in our living room."
"I'd really like to meet your sister," Quatre said warmly.
"Meeting the family…"
Quatre grabbed Trowa's arm again to prevent him from rising. "Trowa…no."
Trowa flexed his fingers menacingly but now heeded Quatre's pleas. Resolutely he straightened his already rigid back and tried to block out the taunting laughs of the ignorant mass behind them.
"Thank you."
1: 57 PM—ON THE ROAD FROM SCHOOL
Duo's thumbnail was grateful not to have been chewed completely away. Hilde's hand fell into her boyfriend's, and her eyes turned to his face with obvious concern.
"Are you worried about Heero, Duo?"
Duo sighed heavily. "Yeah. He really worries me, Hilde. You know when I made that crack about being shot up? I looked at him, and there was something there. In his eyes. Like he wasn't taking it as a really bad joke, which it was."
"I notice it too, sometimes," Hilde admitted. "Like he really wants to kill somebody. But who could he possibly want to kill?"
Duo chewed the inside of his lip, thinking of the secret Heero had told them in their Junior year.
"Maybe…maybe the guy who killed his mother?"
Hilde mentally digested the thought. "But how would he know who did it? Wasn't he just a little kid?"
"Yeah, but he was RIGHT there, and he's not blind. Even if he was a little kid, seeing your mother murdered…you remember that." He resumed chewing his thumbnail, his other hand still resolutely clasped to Hilde.
"…Well, I guess we shouldn't worry about it too much," Duo said resignedly, after a very long silence. "There's not much we can do about it. So, Hilde m'dear, what did your parents say about me sleeping over tonight?"
"No, my Mom doesn't like the idea." Hilde laughed deprecatingly.
"Why, what does she think will happen?"
"I, apparently, have hormones she doesn't trust. Even if my boyfriend IS an altar boy."
"I'm not an altar boy," Duo said, blinking confusedly.
"I told them you were so they'd think you were above the average teenage boy, but I guess it didn't work."
Duo's hand left hers and draped around her shoulder, pulling her towards him and turning his face so it stared at his.
"Am I better than the average teenage boy?" he asked, his previous playfulness banished by full, unmitigated seriousness.
"Of course." Hilde leaned herself upward on her tiptoes to give him a kiss. "Do you remember my ex-boyfriend, Trant?"
"How could I forget him?" Duo's eyes sparked with an old anger. He'd once caught Trant doing everything but full-blown beating Hilde in the school stairwell after a football game. Duo still felt that Trant's ensuing six days in the hospital had not been enough punishment for him.
"Did you know he was always coming on to me? That day…that day he was hitting me because I…I told him "no"." She trailed off, her eyes focusing somewhere far away. Duo squeezed her shoulder, and her eyes suddenly snapped back into focus. "You've never even hinted at it, for over two years. I'd say you're much better than the average teenage boy, and Trant…he's not worthy for you to wipe your feet on."
"Glad to hear it," Duo said, lifting her chin with his fingers and giving her a deep kiss. "We've gotten pretty good at this walking-and-kissing-simultaneously thing, haven't we?" he breathed, pulling back for a second before kissing her again.
"Well, we're talented people," Hilde complimented, after pulling back again.
The two turned up Hilde's walk, not paying attention to the path ahead, eyes only for each other, each knowing the way by habit and instinct. Hilde dug into her pocket and extracted her keys between her index and middle finger. One more kiss, and both turned to look at the door.
Hilde's keys fell to the pavement with a soft yet deafening clink. Her hands flew to her mouth, and Duo swore quietly but audibly.
Written in blue spray-paint on the door set ajar was the pen stroke of evil.
FASCISM LIVES! SIEG HIEL!
