Through the Vortex
Chapter 21

Comeuppance

I can only imagine that Quatre Winner stood out like a sore thumb in the local shopping mall as he picked out large-sized men's clothing, mostly sweat pants, T-shirts and fleeced over shirts. The shopping bags bearing the label of a well-known men's store held three different sizes of boxers, a large number of socks, a pair of expensive tennis shoes and slippers as well as several overly-large sets of pajamas. Along with those items, he bought toiletries he thought I might need, including a toothbrush and paste, shaving supplies, deodorant and hair supplies.

He was probably surprised to come home two hours later to a dark and ominously quiet house. I followed his entry from the garage by the close of the door and listened to his footsteps as he climbed the stairs to the second floor, plastic packages crinkling as he walked. He approached my bedroom and hesitated a moment outside my door before knocking. "Duo? Are you alright?"

"Yeah," I sniffed, answering him from my position in the middle of the large bed. He opened the door and came in, letting the hall light spill into my otherwise dark room. I can't imagine what he thought when he saw me curled up under the covers having yet another emotional meltdown. I'd been set off this time by my writing about the day that changed my life forever and then realizing the enormity of my situation now that I was back on Earth. I went from being mildly optimistic about the future to the depths of despair in less than two-hours.

"What's the matter?" my friend asked, dropping the shopping bags in his hands and coming quickly to the bed. He must have glimpsed my red splotchy face and watery eyes. "Did something happen while I was gone? Are you all right?" He reached out his hand to touch my robe-covered shoulder, no doubt feeling the trembling of my body as I fought and failed to compose myself. "Please talk to me, Duo." He sat on the edge of the mattress, and other than my pitiful sniffles, the room was quiet while Quatre patiently waited for me to answer him.

I've decided that being alone after the sun sets, sitting in the darkness with my thoughts and memories, is not very good for my mental health. After I'd written several pages about my experiences, and ending with my being sucked up into the vortex, I'd paused to contemplate the twists and turns of my life. The enormity of the task that lay ahead of me seemed insurmountable, including living without Heero and the reality of being a single parent to twins. I was just suddenly overwhelmed by it all, and it became too much for me to bear. I suspected the hormones injected daily into my system and my physical condition didn't help matters. The emotions that I usually kept controlled and hidden behind an easy smile, suddenly had a loose valve that let all my inner turmoil come bursting out, whether I wanted them to or not.

"Oh, Quat." I turned my wet, fear-filled eyes to my concerned friend, feeling panic building in my chest. "What am I going to do? How can I raise two kids on my own? I don't know anything about babies or how to take care of them. How the hell do you put on a diaper and what do they eat?" My friend brushed the hair away from my face as I blathered on. "As Hildah's Chosen I didn't have to worry about how I was going to support or care for two kids. I... I can't possibly go back to Preventers and living life on the edge when I'm responsible for two lives. Honestly, I was sick to death of law enforcement, but it's all I know. How can I possibly work and make a living at any job with two babies to take care of?"

I knew I was rambling, but I hadn't realized that my voice had risen or that I sounded as panicked as I felt until I heard Quatre trying to calm me. "Shh, it's all right, Duo," he said soothingly, sounding infinitely calm. He was being the anchor I needed to cling to at that moment. "I told you, I'm here for you. I'm going to help you emotionally, physically and financially. If you'll let me, I'll see to it that the three of you want for nothing."

I shook my head, ignoring the tears on my face. "It's not right. We're not your responsibility." I wiped at my eyes even though more tears were about to spill over.

"Are you saying that if I needed your help in some way that you wouldn't do what you could for me?"

I shrugged and hiccupped. "Of course I'd help. It's just not the same."

"Oh, but it is the same," he gently corrected me. "You and the babies can stay here or at any one of my other houses, and you can take classes online if you want to change careers. Then again, I can always use some help in my company. If you want to work from home, I could hire you for your computer skills on any number of jobs. We'd be helping each other out then, wouldn't we?"

I wiped at my face, trying to push my depression aside. "Sorry, Quat. I don't know what's gotten into me. Well, I do," I added and motioned to my belly. "But you know what I mean. I never gave into the urge to cry before and now I'm bursting into tears at the drop of a hat. It's so damn embarrassing."

"I seem to recall one of my sisters doing the same thing when she was pregnant. She blamed the fluctuating hormones and her general discomfort. It passed soon after her baby was born."

"Shit, and I've got over three months to go."

"How far along are you, Duo?" Quatre frowned. I could see he was doing the calculations in his head and the numbers weren't adding up.

"A little more than three months. The A.U. speeds up the natural process. I'll deliver in my seventh month."

"How is that possible?" he asked, surprised.

"I don't know how any of this is possible," I answered, sounding miserable even to my own ears. "But Sally's going to try to find out and maybe use some of the technology to boost our own medical technology."

My friend smiled gently at me. "See? Anything is possible, Duo. You just have to have some faith in yourself and in me, and believe that things are going turn out all right." That's Quatre Winner for you, always looking for the silver lining of even the blackest cloud, an eternal optimist.

With our conversation having been turned to a more positive track, I began to feel marginally better. "Thanks, Quat." I even managed a smile as I wiped my damp face with the sleeve of Trowa's robe.

"You're welcome."

He stayed with me until I calmed completely, and after he'd gone downstairs with the excuse of starting some dinner, I heard him placing a call to Sally Poe, hoping for some insight into how to handle a pregnant, emotional male. I told myself that one day I would tell him how clearly his voice carried to the upstairs.

Quatre brought my dinner to me a short while later and for the life of me I can't recall what it was, only that it tasted bland in comparison to the food Mueller had fed me. Sometime after he left the room, I burrowed under the covers again and fell into a deep slumber, drained by my return through the vortex, my several emotional outbursts, and from all that had happened that day.

I awoke with a start sometime during the night, not sure what had awakened me. I placed my hand over my stomach to remind myself that the day before hadn't been a dream. I really was back on Earth, still pregnant and with a whole new set of problems to deal with.

"Duo?"

I jumped slightly and quickly pulled my blankets up to my chin when I recognized the voice calling my name. "Heero?" I felt a weight settle on the edge of the mattress to my left, and the small reading lamp was turned on to reveal Heero, dressed in dark jeans and a long-sleeve, black T-shirt. His face, even in profile, looked haggard and worn. My former lover, sitting within touching distance on the edge of my bed, turned his questioning gaze from the lamp to me.

"How long have you been here?" I asked, my voice groggy from sleep.

"About fifteen minutes."

"Why?"

There was a long pause before Heero answered, his voice low enough that Quatre wouldn't wake up and come rushing in. "I had to see you," he said earnestly. "Despite what Quatre and Wufei wanted, I couldn't stay away after what you'd said in the hospital this morning. I'm sorry, Duo. I... I thought I was being cautious enough that you'd never find out that I'd been going somewhere with Trowa on Tuesday and Thursday nights."

"Were you having an affair with him?" A part of me was afraid of hearing his answer, but another was relieved that I could finally put to rest the questions that had plagued me for far too long.

"No," he answered firmly.

"Do you love Trowa?"

"Only as a friend, never as a lover."

"Then what were you two doing sneaking around behind our backs?"

"I gave my word not to tell," he answered, looking defensive and conflicted. "It's Trowa's secret, not mine."

"So Trowa has a secret that somehow involves you, one that he doesn't want to tell Quatre and you don't want to tell me," I stated, recounting the facts. "Can you see how bad it looks from where we stand?" I asked.

"I know and I'm sorry," he rushed to say, his hand reaching out and clasping mine. "But I swear to you, I've never been unfaithful to you in any way, and I've known no other love but yours, Duo. Please, come home and let's start again. I've missed you so much." With that confession, he lunged forward, wrapped his arms around me and claimed my lips, kissing me with all the love and passion he possessed.

Call me weak or even a fool, but I accepted his kiss and clung to Heero while my mind tried to reconcile what he'd just said in reply to the accusations that had been bouncing around in my head for so long. If he was to be believed, and I didn't doubt his word, Heero had remained faithful to me. A sudden wave of my own guilt overwhelmed me. I'd made love to two men during the time we'd been apart while Heero had been faithful to me. Suddenly everything had twisted around and I was now the guilty party.

As our kiss softened and drew to an end, I was surprised to find Heero stretched out beside me, our bodies close enough to feel each other's warmth. It dawned on me that if he shifted closer, he might be able to feel the slight bulging contour of my body. I pulled back slightly, enough to curl up on my side to face him, hoping to protect my secret. Any further action on my part was stopped, however, when Heero whispered, "I love you, Duo. I need you more than anything else in my life. Please come home."

He was being honest and sincere - I could hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes. I knew then that I had no choice but to be honest with him as well, at least about some aspects regarding my stay in Sangor. "Heero, I need to tell you about some of the things that happened to me during the last couple of months," I began, swallowing down my growing trepidation.

Pulling back slightly, Heero studied my face and stroked my cheek with the back of his fingers. "You can tell me anything, Duo. You know that."

I nodded, wondering how to begin and afraid of how Heero was going to react. "What did you think of Duwan?" I asked, deciding on tackling this unavoidable problem from a different angle. Stalling is what my little inner voice was calling it. "Did he tell you much about his world?"

Heero raised one eyebrow then dropped his hand from my face and sighed. "At first we thought he was you because he looked exactly like you. Moments after he was spit out of the vortex, naked and unconscious, we rushed him to the hospital where Sally took over his care. When he regained consciousness, he started speaking gibberish, calling himself Duwan and asking for people by names we didn't know. He seemed to recognize some of us, but called us by strange names also. Sally thought he'd suffered some sort of brain trauma while in the vortex, which seemed logical because he'd sustained several blows to this head and had a mild concussion. After just a couple of hours in the hospital, I took him home, thinking you'd prefer it to the hospital. I was hoping that after being back in familiar surroundings you'd gain your memory back.

"Of course, he didn't recognize the apartment and didn't know how to do the simplest things for himself. He kept asking for his caretaker and to be taken to his chooser, and to some place called a center where he could complete his contract. At least I think that's what he said. He didn't go into what he meant, but he repeated his demands over and over.

"I began to notice differences in him, other than his odd behavior. Physical differences. He wore delicate chains on his ankles and a metal collar around his neck, like the ones you wore this morning when you returned. His skin was uncommonly smooth and hairless. Like I said, he used different names for all of us, and appeared completely unfamiliar with everything around him, including the city, a car, our apartment and even the food. I became even more suspicious of his behavior, especially when I had to explain to him how to use the toilet and take a shower and by the elaborate and bizarre world he often alluded to. It seemed too detailed to be just the workings of an imaginative mind.

"Then he demand to know what was wrong with me when I refused to have sex with him. I didn't think it was right to be intimate with you when you were so mixed up and kept calling me by another name. I began to entertain the possibility that he wasn't you. Then Trowa came over to help and Duwan threw himself into his arms, demanding of him all the things he'd demanded of me, even sex. That's when I knew he wasn't you. You would never cheat on me, especially with Trowa."

I knew at that moment what that saying meant, "Putting the last nail in the coffin." I was dead meat. Heero had named my sin, and what was worse was that he never believed I was even capable of it. Normally, he would have been right; cheating on him had never crossed my mind. Unfortunately, having been dropped into Erith with all the insecurities I had about myself, Heero and about our relationship, along with the need to fit into Duwan's life, not to mention the Passion Elixir, I was susceptible to Herron and his desire for me in the guise of his lover. The loud and steady pounding of my heart felt like the beat of a dirge being played to mark the imminent death of our relationship. While Heero continued to tell me what happened next, I had to force myself away from my inner turmoil in order to pay better attention to what he was saying.

"Duwan became very unhappy and fairly miserable to be around. He hated the food I prepared, complained about every drink I set in front of him and said his clothing chafed his skin. Nothing Trowa or I did seemed to help until I got a vid call from Relena. Once he heard her voice, he ran to the vid screen and took over the conversation, begging her to intercede on his behalf and find his chooser. Duwan then demanded I take him to visit Relena to re-negotiate his contract if his chooser couldn't be found. Of course we tried to figure out what he was talking about, but he was so agitated that very little of what he said made sense.

"By that time I'd decided he wasn't you. I was convinced that some form of transfer or switch had to have occurred within the energy vortex. I called Relena back, explained my theory to her and that told her I was going to figure out how to get you back. I asked her to care for Duwan until I could figure out how I was going to accomplish that feat."

I nervously cleared my throat, needing to interrupt. I felt unable to meet his eyes as I asked, "So he didn't tell you much about Erith or his role in his world?"

"He ranted, Duo." There was a touch of annoyance in his voice. "Most of the time I could hardly understand what he was saying much less what he meant. He was overly emotional and spoke strangely."

"But you understood that he had two lovers, well, he actually had three but I never met the third guy."

"Someone that looked like myself and Trowa, I assume?"

I nodded, "They looked almost exactly like the two of you."

"Tell me of this other world, Duo. How did you handle being in an unfamiliar place?"

I shrugged. "I was in shock at first, but it didn't take me too long to figure out I was in a completely different world than Earth. Everything was odd, the colors of nature weren't like here and their words and way of life was strange to say the least.

"The first person I met after I regained consciousness was Wufei's double and he corrected me by saying his name was Wudon. Sally's double came into the room and her name was Sallah. Realizing I wasn't just having a bad dream, because dreams don't hurt like I did, I figured I'd been displaced by some mad scientist's experiment gone wrong. During my time there, I learned that the Erithians are generally peaceful people, their society is a matriarchal-caste system. Yours, Trowa's and my doubles are in the third tier of that system, called Purple. Quatre, Wufei and Hilde's counterparts are Red, the second tier. Dorothy and Relena's doubles are Blues, the top dogs in that society. From what I was told, women born Blue had ruled Erith for a long time, beginning with the end of a global war in which the men of their world fought each other to near extinction. But that's another story altogether. Basically, the Reds, consisting mostly women and fewer men, are Blue's helpers, their support system. The women in those two upper levels of color are too busy to take time off to bear their own children, so surrogates are used for that purpose."

I stopped for a moment, wondering again how much more I should tell Heero. My conscience told me he deserved to know the truth. My brain, on the other hand, told me to do myself a favor and shut the hell up. Then Heero asked the question I'd hoped to put off for a while. Unknowingly, by changing the conversation away from what Duwan's purpose in Erith's society was, he'd forced me into a moral corner. To lie or not to lie, that was the question.

"What happened when you met Duwan's lovers?"

I think my swallow was loud enough to wake Quatre, sleeping in the other room. "Well, I didn't know they were his lovers at first," I began, sounding nervous even to my own ears. "Herron was by my side when I woke up in Duwan's room. He kissed me, thinking I was Duwan and then left. He lived with Relena's double as her chosen." I waved off the questions I could see Heero was wanting to ask. I didn't want to become distracted from what I had to say by telling him every detail of Erith's society. "I didn't see him again for a while, and when I did, he was brought to my bedroom again. My caretaker, Mueller, told me he was Duwan's lover, but even though I tried, I found myself at a loss, not knowing to how I should deal with him. I'd already told Mueller that I wasn't Duwan and he'd convinced me to keep up the facade of being my counterpart, fearing the consequences. But I swear to you, Heero, I meant to remain faithful to you."

Heero reached out suddenly and grabbed hold of my upper arm, pinching it painfully in his grip while his eyes, focused on me, dark and forbidding. "What did you do, Duo?"

I shut my eyes in order to block out the look of apprehension that flashed across Heero's face, knowing that his expression would turn to anger the moment I answered his question. Reluctantly, I went on with my story. "I was nervous and skittish, so when Herron approached me, I bolted to my bedside table and took a drink of what I thought was liquor. I'd hoped it would help to calm my nerves so I could think of a way out of the situation." I lowered my head, feeling ashamed. "I couldn't have made a worse move. I drank the whole thing not realizing that what I'd consumed was a drink referred to as the Passion Elixir. I found out almost immediately that it was like drinking a triple dose of Viagra. Herron, startled by what I'd done, drank a good amount of the elixir also... and I was beyond resistance."

The room remained deathly silent for a several long moments, forcing me to open my eyes. I raised my head, hoping Heero could see in my face the remorse I felt for having been so weak. "I'm sorry, Heero. I couldn't help myself. The drug was too overwhelming and Herron looked exactly like you, and in my mind he was you." I reached out for his hand, resting on his thigh, only to have him quickly move it, avoiding my touch.

Cold, steely eyes glared me, filled with hurt and anger. "Did you sleep with him again after that time?" he snarled. Unable to find my voice, I nodded. "And you had the balls to be angry with me for what you believed was infidelity on my part?" he asked, his voice rising with each word. "You cheated on me!" he yelled and threw himself off of the bed, getting away from me as fast as he could.

"Heero, I'm sorry,"I said, pleadingly. "I don't know what else to say. I didn't think I'd ever see you again. I was in a strange new world where my role in it was pretty messed up. I was confused and scared of the unknown and missing you like hell. I grieved for you countless nights, but I never thought I'd get back here to you. Believe me, I only did what I had to do to keep up the act of being Duwan. I felt obligated to fulfill his contract and Mueller told me that if I didn't, I'd end up stripped of my color. In Erith that means being thrown out to the gutter, to be less than a street rat. I didn't want to be that again, Heero. I... I was afraid." I pulled my blankets up and held them under my chin again, suddenly feeling very insecure under Heero's glowering presence.

"Did you have sex with Trowa's double also?"

I flinched, mentally and physically. One thing Heero has always been good at is getting straight to the point. Forget about beating around the proverbial bush, that was more my forte. What was there to say to such a question but the truth? I was beyond words at that point, so with my eyes burning with tears of shame I opted to give him a slight nod of my head. Heero promptly turned and stalked out of the bedroom, leaving me alone and feeling more miserable than I think I've ever been at any other time in my life. With my heart aching, I listened to him stomp angrily down the staircase. I knew the moment he got to the front door because he carelessly flung it open and let it slam forcefully against the inside wall, setting off the security alarm. Other than the irritating buzzing sound of the alarm he'd set off, the house fell still. He was gone,and my heart broke once again.

Quatre showed up about fifteen seconds after I buried my face into my pillow and let the dreaded tears flow. "Are you alright, Duo?" he asked, sounding anxious. When I didn't answer, I heard him run from the room. A short while after the alarm was turned off, a quick phone call was made and the house fell silent once more. My friend promptly returned to my side and I felt his weight settle on the bed. "Heero?" he asked. With my face still buried into the pillow, I confirmed his suspicions with a nod. I felt his hand on my shoulder. "Are you going to be okay?"

That, I thought, was the stupidest question I'd ever heard. I turned my head slightly to answer him, still crying. "I don't think I'll ever be all right again. I just told Heero I.. I slept with Herron and Tradell."

"Oh, Duo," was the blond's sympathetic reply, and we both knew that it was going to be a long and sleepless night filled with mountains of regret.

TBC