New chapter goodness! Not much action, more emotional, filler stuff.
Enjoy!
Quatre sat tiredly in the living room, sipping at his lukewarm tea. He had spent the day alternating between hauling their extensive library from their apartment to Irea's and juggling doctor duties with his sisters.
As much as he wanted to figure out what was going on, he couldn't bear to be too far away from Trowa. His empathetic abilities were at their limits with blocking out the pains of his lover and Wufei while trying to leave himself open to any sign of Duo.
Which led him to this moment. Physically and emotionally drained, all the empath wanted to do was take some time to rest and keep himself calm. Just as he closed the book he had been reading and stood to go make himself a fresh cup of tea, he was flooded with a barrage of feelings, all equally intense and growing stronger by the second.
There was fear, distress, anger, disgust, and desperation...and they just burst through the front door.
Heero flew into the room like a bat out of Hell, all of his usual composed coolness nonexistent. His hair was even more unruly than normal, his shirt untucked, and he looked utterly shell-shocked. As soon as his Prussian gaze landed on the blonde, he was at his side in an instant.
"Quatre, where is everyone?"
"I- uh- well, the women are all out doing their duties since I'm here keeping watch, and Trowa and Wufei are asleep," Quatre replied, taken aback as he wordlessly coaxed the Japanese vampire to sit on the couch with him.
"Good, Wufei doesn't need to hear about this right now, not in his condition," Heero continued apprehensively. "I was just at Midnight Masquerade...it's worse than we expected Quatre, it's so much worse."
The empath's heart clenched painfully. "Is it Duo?"
"Well, it -looks- like him and -sounds- like him...All the lights were on, but no one was home, if you know what I mean," he twitched perceptively as he recapped from the time Noin approached him up until now when he came running through the door. "He didn't even acknowledge Wufei's existence. I told him to stop, he had Wufei, and all he could say was 'Forget about him, it's all about us now.' I just didn't know what to do but get here as fast as I could."
"I understand, I would have done the same," Quatre smiled, albeit sadly. "This really is a dreadful situation, I don't think anywhere in our records is there something like this. We're going to have to make up our own rules from now on..." He suddenly got a furious scowl, startling Heero. "Dorothy is dead. We're going to kill her even if it's the last thing we ever do."
"But would you be able to kill Duo if she sent him after you like she did to me tonight?" Heero asked bluntly.
"No, I know I wouldn't be able to. Neither would Wufei, Trowa, Catherine, or any of my sisters," he sighed. "That's why we need to kill her before she has the opportunity to use him against us. We're going to try our best not to hurt him if we can, he's going to be hurting enough once he comes back to his senses and realizes what she forced him to do."
"No kidding," the Japanese vampire replied darkly.
"I wish Irea and Catherine were here," Quatre said, worry creasing his brow. "My hands are tied right now with Wufei and Trowa out of commission, so it's not like we can go rushing out into the night with a half-assed plan that always seems to work."
"I would have never guessed that your plans were half-assed," Heero smirked. "They worked out fine, didn't they?"
"Yes, but most of the time when it's a crazy situation like this, they're just some harebrained scheme Duo and I concoct on a whim and we do it because it we have nothing better to do," the blonde shrugged.
"And here I was believing you slayers were intelligent, persistent little bastards."
"Well, sorry to burst your bubble on that," Quatre chuckled depreciatively. "I'm just joking, that really only happens when we -are- in situations where we don't know what to do, so we fly by the seat of our pants to save our necks. Pure instinct."
Heero watched his frankly expressive features turn sad again and stood up abruptly. "I apologize Quatre, I've added on to your already heavy burden, I should have waited," he muttered contritely and started back for the door.
"Quatre?"
Heero paused at the sound of Wufei calling out to him, mistaking his voice for the empath's. He was the last person he could face right now.
"Heero- wait, you don't have to leave, you aren't causing me any suffering-" Quatre tried vainly, following him to the front door, but had it shut on him.
"Quatre? What in the hell's going on?"
He grimaced. Why did Wufei have to wake up so damn grumpy all the time? Especially now in his incapacitated state, he was being particularly nerve racking.
"Don't worry about it, it was Heero leaving," Quatre said soothingly, peering in to the bedroom.
"What did he have to say?" Wufei asked irritably.
"Nothing, so -don't- worry about it," he replied, clucking his tongue. "Heero was only dropping in to check up on you and Trowa."
"Bullshit, you're an open book, and you look like your dog just died," the Chinese man remarked candidly, attempting to appear menacing and failing brilliantly. It was hard to seem scary when you're in pain and swathed in bandages.
"All right, fine, he was updating me on what was going on," Quatre responded peevishly, crossing his arms huffily. "That's all. So don't work yourself up into a conniption fit over it."
"Why shouldn't I! It's obviously something I SHOULD be concerned about!" Wufei said hotly. "It's about Duo, isn't it!"
The empath hesitated painfully, and that was all it took for the Asian to fully comprehend the severity of Heero's news. "Well I tried," he sighed, sadly looking at Wufei's aggrieved features.
"I really don't want to know, do I?" he swallowed audibly.
"Not right now, no," Quatre replied sympathetically. "But if you want..."
"No, don't tell me," Wufei winced, the tone of his voice miserable. "I have a feeling that once I know, I'll want to get up and do something...which I obviously can't in this state. It'll only make it worse."
"Just concentrate on getting well, you'll be up and out of here before you realize it. Trust me, I want out there just as much as you do," the blonde said with evident frustration. "Now let me check your bandages..."
Noin and Une had watched the scene between Dorothy, Duo, and Heero with mounting horror. When the Japanese vampire fled the club, Noin turned to her lover.
"Keep an eye out here, I'm going to find Catherine," she instructed, giving her a soft kiss before departing after Heero. She pulled out her cell phone as soon as she hit the pavement and dialed the red-haired woman's number.
/Hello/
"Catherine, where are you? I need you now, there's trouble."
/What's going on/
"I can't tell you over the phone, just tell me where you are or some place close to Masquerade where we can meet up."
/Well, I'm out towards the Chinese district right now, so let's meet halfway at the little café you showed me the other night. See you in a few./
Noin felt her anxiety curdling in her gut as she rushed through crowds and traffic to a little funky café called Victoria, a place where her and Une often escaped to when they weren't needed at the club and they could get some -uninterrupted- privacy. This wasn't exactly the type of situation she wished to be in when going to her escape spot, but it would have to do.
When she got to Victoria, Catherine had already been there and gotten them a quiet table set slightly away from everyone else in the café. The other woman was the epitome of coolness, sipping on some steaming coffee as she sat down.
"So enlighten me," Catherine greeted, raising an eyebrow at the purple-haired woman's clear distress.
"The whole world's gone to shit, is that enlightening enough?" Noin replied dryly, then launched into her tale about how she had opened for Heero, and Dorothy's conversation with her about her ultimate plans, then of the spectacle Duo created in front of everyone.
By the time she was through, Catherine's calm mood had melted away and she mirrored Noin's uneasiness. "So let me get this straight. She has absolute control over him? Like a marionette puppeteer? And he's STRONGER than Heero?" she muttered, alarmed. "I may be new to town, but with the obvious exception of Dorothy, and formerly Milliardo and Treize, no one in this city is stronger than Heero."
"Not any more," Noin sighed heavily, massaging her temples. "Right now, we've got an extremely fucked up situation."
"Do you know where Heero ran off to?" Catherine asked cautiously.
"Who knows where that guy runs off to, he's notorious for vanishing without a trace. Honestly, Middie and I have tried to follow him and he's just gone like that-" she snapped her fingers. "-he's probably out hiding in some secret spot like this café."
The red-haired woman inwardly breathed with relief. At least he didn't give away their whereabouts in his flight, because she knew the first destination he would stop at was the apartment and Wufei.
'Oh great, we're going to have handful when we get home tonight,' Catherine thought with a groan. 'If Wufei finds out what happened...'
"So what's going to be done about it?" she said aloud.
"I think Middie and I are going to wait until Heero comes back around," Noin replied tiredly. "He would be our best bet on planning anything against his mother. No one knows her better than him except for Odin, but he left for Europe earlier tonight."
"Really?"
"Yeah, he wants nothing to do with Dorothy while she's scheming like this, so he told her when she was through playing, he'd be waiting back home for her," she shrugged.
"Interesting," Catherine frowned, then stood up. "All right, well I'll go out and try to track down our mauled friend. We can't wait on Heero to come around if this mess is as serious as you say it is, so we're going to have to drag him in. Just go back to Midnight Masquerade and be with Middie as if nothing happened. This conversation didn't happen."
"I understand," the purple-haired woman nodded and joined her outside. "I'll see you later."
"Indeed. Thanks for the info," Catherine waved and vanished into the crowd.
Hopefully Heero was still at the apartment. Right about now she wasn't in the mood to be running all over the city trying to locate him when she had better things she could be doing. Unfortunately, those better things involved him, so either way she was stuck having to find Heero.
Fun stuff!
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