Author: Sparkle Itamashii
Title: Inheritance
Warnings: Respect the "R" rating. Please see my profile for details.
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing AC is NOT MINE.
Chapter Twenty
The front door swung open with a high pitched squeak that was painful in the near silence. My breath caught in my throat as I waited for Artemis to make some sort of attack but to the best of my knowledge she didn't move at all. I heard two tentative footsteps and I steeled myself to round the corner- four steps would put whoever it was just close enough for me to shoot.
"Duo?"
I started at the sound of my name and nearly fell around the corner, acutely aware of how tight my grip on my gun had been as my fingers loosened. "Heero? What the hell- You scared the shit out of me!"
He eyed the gun with a raised eyebrow. "I told you I'd be back in an hour…"
Artemis stood beside him, tail wagging in a lazy arc as she looked between us like nothing had happened. "Yeah, but Artemis…" I trailed off, confused. She'd been so aggressive a moment before, like she hadn't known it was Heero. Why had she…?
"Are you ready?" Heero said, patience clearly wearing thin. He moved past me and tossed a quick glance into the kitchen and then to Mara. "Good."
"Heero," I began, slipping my gun nervously back into its holster. My hands were shaking from the rush of adrenaline that was no longer needed.
But he cut me off with a shake of his head before I could say anything more. Grabbing the duffle bag from the kitchen floor, he began to head for the front door. "Grab the kid and let's go."
Scowling at his turned back, I grabbed Artemis by the collar. "I'm going to put her outside."
Judging by the way he looked at me just then, I think for a second he thought I'd meant Mara. Realization dawned on him when he fully turned and saw my white-knuckled grip on Artemis' collar. "Leave her."
"If you think someone's going to come to our house, wouldn't it be better to have her out of it?" I said hotly. If someone came inside our house, someone that wasn't Heero or I or brought in by one of us, I had no doubts that she would do her goddamned best to savage them beyond repair. But Artemis wouldn't be a match for anyone with a gun. "She could get hurt."
He clenched his jaw, thoughts obviously running the same track as mine before he rolled his eyes. "Fine. Hurry."
Giving him a bit of a nasty look, I walked her quickly to the back door. She would have followed me if I'd just called her but my hands were shaking and I needed something to hold. I needed control of something so badly at that point that it didn't matter whether it was something as huge as my life or as stupid as which direction the dog went. The sliding glass door that led to our backyard was cold with the night chill but it wasn't cold enough to be freezing yet and slid open with ease.
Artemis, normally the first wriggling her way out the door to romp in the backyard, tucked her tail and tried to shy away from the outside, looking at me like she thought I was going to take her our back to beat her. I suppose she couldn't understand why I had her by the collar, since we almost never had to grab it. I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax and smile for her, though it didn't seem to help at all.
"It's okay," I soothed, trying to ignore the sensation that everything was completely not okay. For the moment, nothing bad had happened and it was still 'okay'. Hopefully it would stay that way. "Come on, I'll show you."
I stepped outside into the night air and felt that sudden shortness of breath as the cold sharply invaded my lungs. I had released Artemis' collar and for a second I thought she was going to try and run back to where Heero was but she remained, eyeing me suspiciously. Patting my thighs and hoping she would follow, I beckoned her out onto the back deck. "Come on girl, please. We really have to go," I cajoled sweetly.
Her tail curled up and she darted outside straight into me, mouth open and tongue lolling. I scratched her furiously behind their ears, fighting off the way my eyes stung with tears. I didn't want to leave her here. She'd been with us for so long that it felt like she was really family. She was really one of those 'people' I trusted and loved and I know she trusted and loved us and here we were, leaving her out in the cold. Literally.
"Be good, okay? I don't know when we'll be back but Mrs. Wels and her friend will come take care of you for a bit." I kissed the top of her head as she sobered at my tone.
I gave her one last pat on the head, a simple ruffle of her floppy ears, then slipped inside and closed the door behind me. I forced myself to ignore the way she stood at the lip of the door, forced myself to ignore the whining scratching against the glass. I turned my back. I walked away. I had a feeling I was going to be walking, or more likely running away from a lot for a while, just like I was getting ready to do with Heero and Mara. Nothing that required running from was ever a short ordeal.
When I reached the front of the house, Heero was already gone. He'd taken the duffle bag and moved Mara outside; I could hear the car engine running. Odd, I thought to myself as I opened the front door and turned off the last of the interior lights. The engine was running a lot more smoothly than Heero's car but it didn't sound a thing like mine.
Which might have been, I discovered a moment later, because it was not either of our cars that idled in our driveway.
"You rented a car?" I asked incredulously of Heero, who was closing the trunk. "Where is your car? Why did you-"
"Just get in, Duo," he said has he moved around the side of the car and opened the driver side door. He was obviously tiring of me asking questions. "We can talk about this later."
My lip curled a little in resentment of his words but I moved to the passenger side and climbed inside, despite my logical, sane reservations about the idea of joining Heero in the car. He'd obviously lost his mind. At that point all I could think of was that he'd finally snapped. The stress of… whatever was finally getting to him and he'd just snapped under the pressure. He was seeing conspiracies and trying to drag everyone around him into this delusion of insecurity.
And worse… it was working.
I was scared.
"Where are we going?" I whispered around the lump of unease that had long since settled in my gut.
"The airport," he said grimly, tossing the car into reverse and backing out of the short driveway.
I didn't figure I would be getting more of an explanation than that so I let it drop. I settled into my chair, ready for a decently long drive, but he shut off the engine as soon as we'd rounded the corner. The lights followed half a second later. Confused, I sat up straight and looked behind us, to our house, but there was nothing amiss.
"Heero," I said slowly, "I feel the need to point out that this is not the airport."
"I'm just watching," he said distractedly, shifting in his seat so he could clearly see our house. The motion sensing light for the driveway was still brightly lit but everything else was dark and silent. "I just… nevermind." He threw a glance to Mara in the backseat but she was sleeping peacefully in her little car seat.
I sighed and turned my attention to the house. A few minutes passed and the light from the garage lamp faded, winking out and washing everything in darkness. The neighbors almost never turned their porch-lights on and the only light was from the dimly flickering street lamp down the road. I could faintly hear Artemis barking in the backyard, begging to be let back into the house where she probably thought we still were. A few houses down another dog answered her calls, howling at the top of his lungs. It was probably that little viszla, Kaden, I thought tiredly as I relaxed into the seat, waiting for Heero to see whatever the hell it was he was so stoically trying to see.
"What's-"
"Roll down your window."
"What? Are you crazy? It's freezing outside!" I hissed, motioning to Mara with a vague gesture. "If we're trying to be sneaky, waking up a sleeping child is really not the way to go about it."
"Then just fucking crack it a little," he said dangerously, not even bothering to look at me. His eyes were glued to our silent, dark house.
"Screw you," I told him viciously, sure to keep my voice as quiet as possible despite that I felt like yelling. I hated being in the dark; literally and figuratively. "I can't anyway unless you turn the car on first- they're automatic."
He made an exasperated noise in the back of his throat and leaned back enough to turn the key. The fan whirred to life and the interior clock lit up but the engine didn't start. I pressed my finger to the window button and it slid down an inch or two with a mechanical hiss. As soon as it had, Heero flicked the key again and we were enveloped in silence once more. Cold air began slowly seeping in through the newly created opening and I hunkered down into my seat just a little more.
"Happy?" I muttered, not caring if he thought I was sulking. I was.
"No."
"You never are…" I replied in a flat tone.
What the hell was his problem? Dragging me out in the middle of the night with Mara in a rental car to god knows where and he wouldn't even take three fucking seconds to explain what was happening. I mean… I guess I could understand the feeling, the sense that there was something going on and there not being enough time to properly explain. Sometimes it was better to leave someone completely in the dark than to only give them a part of the information so they could screw everything over royally. But by then I would have liked to of thought I wasn't one of those people, at least in Heero's eyes.
"Heero-"
"Shut up. Listen."
I wanted to say more but I wisely closed my mouth and sank down in the seat, closing my eyes so that my hearing would be a little more focused. He was crazy. Insane. He'd completely lost it. There was nothing to hear and every second we sat in eerie, chilled silence was a second I spent getting a deeper feeling of unease.
But it was just as I was about to tell him we should just go if we were going to go that I heard it. Faint at first, it was the rumbling of another car. I'd heard a couple pass but none like this one; this one had the undercurrent whine of a machine that was running more than just an engine.
Slowly I sat and opened my eyes, peeking out the window in a way that wouldn't block Heero's line of sight. There was a dark colored car coming down the far street, the one where the highway exit was. As I stared, mouth open a little bit in shock, it pulled into our driveway and four men exited the car. Even down the street where we were I could see that they were packing heat in no small way. They approached our front door and the one in the lead almost deftly picked the lock; they were inside our house within a matter of seconds.
"How did you know they were going to come tonight?" I whispered, my breath choked with cold fear as I settled back in my seat.
"I didn't," he said as he started the engine, though the lights remained off, leaving us shrouded in darkness.
"Oh. So you just felt like scaring the shit out of me and uprooting our existence by going on the run on the off chance that someone might show up? I mean, granted it worked, but Heero, really…"
"I didn't know they would be here tonight," he clarified, snapping at me. "I knew they would come in the evening because no one would think it unusual for us to have houseguests in the evening. They'd be least likely to be caught."
"So why didn't we just high-tail it out of there an hour ago?" I asked as he turned down a side street. We were heading for the highway. No one used this street if they weren't going to the highway.
"Time," he said simply. "Even though we've seen where they are now and they don't know where we are, we're still only half a step ahead of them."
"And you're hoping we can get two steps ahead," I said flatly. Ever the soldier, he was.
"Yes."
"Bronner's is Earth based. Does that mean we're going… you know, up?" I pointed to the roof of the car but Heero knew where I meant; the colonies.
"We're meeting Wu Fei on one of the L1 colonies."
"Were you guys planning this all along?" An idea dawned on me then as a few things began to connect. "Is this about those labs?"
"Yes," he said simply after a moment. "There's something… dangerous there," he continued, much to my surprise. "It wasn't supposed to be uncovered. There are only seven people who have ever had the means to enter the original lab," he said grimly. "One of them is dead and one of them is me. Now the entire world is about to have access to something that not even the remaining five should be able to touch."
"And you're not going to tell me what that is." It wasn't a question. I knew the answer before he said a word.
"Not if I don't have to. I hadn't wanted it to get this far and I'm going to drop you and Mara with Wu Fei and take care of this."
Alarms rang in my head and I gave him an incredulous look. "I would ask if you've gone completely insane but I already know the answer," I told him in disbelief. "Let me help you! Let someone help you!"
"You've got to watch Mara," he said almost sharply. "Right now that is something I don't want anyone else doing You're the only one I trust to keep her safe."
I knew they were just pretty words. I knew that any of the other ex-pilots could have protected Mara as well as if not better than I could at the moment. I knew that, had he a choice, he would probably leave me out of whatever this was entirely because in his own way I knew he wanted to protect me as well. So I let it drop. I surrendered to him quietly, sinking into my seat as we merged onto the highway and thinking to myself that if I could just wait a little while, this whole thing would blow over and we could get back to life soon.
But it was so, so far from being over.
/End Chapter Twenty, Inheritance/
