Impossible

A Gundam Wing Fan Fiction

Rambled Off by The Manwell

Book Three: PARTNERS

Duo Maxwell

I can't decide what's worse: knowing something's going on but being unable to find out what it is... and thinking something might be going on but unable to translate the hopelessly vague shifting feeling in your gut. I kinda suspect that both scenarios totally bite in their own ways. But at the moment, I'm attempting to deal with the latter. And, well, we all know how well I "deal" with my instincts being messed with. Yeah, yeah, I know it's not much to go on, but it's not like I was really interested in tottering off to beddy-bye anyway.

Ducking out into the hall, I stalk past Heero's door without more than a glance at it. Sure, I could drag him around the building with me, but what would be the point? It's not like we can discuss anything of importance here and, let's face it, the guy's exhausted. But, with the month he's had, who wouldn't be?

And here I am ready to run laps around the damn complex just to burn off these infuriating maybes. I stifle a sigh as I realize that I'd left my rooms without more than just that for a goal. I mean, it's not as if I actually expect to observe some underhanded scheme in progress while I'm meandering around during the night cycle, but you never know. And, honestly, I've always preferred my methods of observation to electronic treasure hunts. Perhaps that's why Heero and I make such a great team...

But no, that's not true. Heero and I have always made a great team because we've constantly challenged each other in different ways. And of course, the respect has always been there. And... if I let myself admit it, so has the caring. Hell, after Heero'd self-destructed during the war, it had been obvious that I'd given a damn about him. But maybe I'd started caring even further back than that.

My mind very helpfully shoves the uncomfortable memory of me breaking into an Alliance affiliated hospital and offering my only parachute to a near-stranger... and then having to watch him pass out in mid-fall. I normally try not to remember the time when Heero almost hadn't opened his parachute. But for some reason, he'd snapped out of it at the last possible moment. And the bastard had come away from that harrowing experience with only a broken leg.

I consider what I can remember of my actions back then, of the help I'd offered him, of the connection I'd tentatively tried to create despite his being the Original Curmudgeon TM.

Damn. I guess I'd cared even that far back.

Shit.

I am such an utter asshole. Do nice, normal people without an assload of emotional baggage usually take the better part of four years to realize they care for someone? The answer has got to be no.

You know, for the record, introspection sucks.

I continue my meandering, eyes watchful and ears perked even as my thoughts and memories from the war drift through my awareness. Most of this shit I haven't thought about since it'd happened... but tonight seems to be a bit of an odd night. I mean, for one thing, I'm wandering aimlessly while voluntarily reminiscing about a time in my life that doesn't exactly inspire sweet dreams...

And it's just when I've had this thought that things start getting interesting.

"Felix? Is that you?"

I turn toward the open door of the small laboratory Heero and I had finished with right before we'd beaten a path to the dubious comforts of the employee cafeteria. I blink at Adamsson's assistant as if I'd been surprised out of some deep thought or other.

"Hey, man," I greet in a tone that sounds automatic.

The man frowns at me. "What are you doing still awake?"

I shrug. "Sometimes I just can't get comfortable my first night in a new place, you know?" Which is, oddly enough, true. My first night is always spent learning the rhythm of the darkness around me. It's vital to the once-was-street-kid part of my brain that I be able to differentiate the strange nighttime noises from the usual ones, even while I'm asleep.

The man hums thoughtfully. "Never had that problem myself, but then, I wasn't raised a MacGyver."

I chuckle. "A childhood trauma if there is one," I agree. And then, with a slight frown, I ask, "So, what are you doing up at this hour if you're not a fellow insomniac?"

"The usual. Working. Now that you and Rupert have adjusted everything to the correct settings in this room, I can finish compiling the data I need for a project that's due in a few days."

"Ah, crunch time?" I ask with a note of sympathy.

"How aptly put. But where are my manners? Come in and have a seat."

"Oh, no," I murmur. "You have work to do. I don't want to disturb you." Although being in such close proximity to one of the employees here while he's working might open a window or two into this investigation...

"You won't. It's a completely mindless – if necessary – task."

"Well... all right. For a little while anyway." So I tromp into the lab and make myself comfortable in a swiveling chair a few feet away from Nedly. We pass several minutes in companionable small talk. I suppose I hadn't exactly been fair when I'd bitched about this guy earlier. Heero's right about him; he's not so bad if you can just keep him from launching off about his pet projects.

"So, when you can't sleep do you usually wander around looking like a man who's carrying the weight of the universe on his shoulders?"

I grin. "I don't make it a habit to think about anything nearly that profound." Which is why my thoughts from earlier still seem so damn weird. I mean, since when do I ever comb through my own past? I may be a masochist but I don't want to become either homicidally enraged or suicidally depressed. Weekends are short enough without inviting those old demons across the threshold to join the party.

"I thought perhaps you'd been considering an answer to your situation."

"What situation is that?" I query, reaching for and expressing my confusion rather than any anxiety that comment might have generated.

"The reason for why you're unhappy at the moment, of course."

"Who says I'm unhappy? Maybe I'm just impatient?" I suggest, leaning back in my chair and leaning my chin in one hand. The stack of printouts beneath my elbow makes an adequate cushion where it rests on the long table and I find myself settling in a bit further.

"Everyone's unhappy in some way, shape, or form," the assistant tells me as he clicks away through columns of numbers on the computer screen.

"And you figure you're, what?... like the Happiness Enforcer?"

The man is smack dab directly in my line of sight, so regardless of how relaxed I appear to be, I can't not notice his moment of hesitation. "Well... no. But people really ought to do something to achieve their own happiness."

I let myself frown. "Well... yeah. But let's be honest. People are lazy. Or they've become used to being unhappy. Nobody changes habits like those spontaneously."

A small grin tugs at the assistant's mouth as he continues highlighting and clicking away. With a suppressed air of triumph, he replies, "Exactly."

And suddenly, I'm wide awake. And that sensation alarms me. Hadn't I been fully aware of my surroundings when I'd wandered in here? I thought I had... but now it feels like I've managed to break the surface of a warm pool.

What the hell?

I force myself to appear unaffected by all of this. But with that famous paranoia of mine resurfacing, I can't resist goading him, "You'd be a very rich man if you could sell the world happiness. Too bad it'd never last."

At this, his smile only widens. "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for rest of his life." He shakes his head, amused by some private joke I hope I'm misunderstanding. "Everyone has a dream, a need, a desire. They just need a little... direction." And then the man slides a glance that's positively calculating in my direction, "So tell me. Have you determined a way to achieve your goals yet, Mr. MacGyver?"

And there's really only one response to the cunning manipulation radiating from the man opposite me:

Holy fucking hell.