Castle to Sand

Chapter 3: Relapse

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam. The lyrics mentioned are from "The Outsider" by A Perfect Circle. I am not affiliated with APC in any way, nor do I own the song.

The bullet passed straight through his shoulder. He'll be perfectly fine.

There's nothing to worry about.

Just go sit down and make yourself comfortable.

The stitches may take a while to apply.

These voices passed by, floating through Quatre's singularly focussed mind. He drifted from hallway to hallway, his pale, fragile figure casting all the illusion of a spirit. His deep-sunken eyes just glazed over everything, not quite taking any of it in. For a while the blonde had stayed in the waiting room of the ER, but his numb legs soon found themselves incapable of waiting any longer for motion. They moved of their own resolve, leaving Quatre a passenger in his own body, gazing out empty windows to the foggy world beyond.

Who is that?

Why is he in this wing?

Is he a patient?

He passed them all by, his own throat too constricted to reply. In the ambulance he'd been able to hold his resolve and look to be the strong one, but watching Trowa being rolled away on the gurney simply broke his weakening mind. He could see Trowa's accusing green eyes staring up at him from the hospital bed saying to him with his mouth taped to the oxygen machine, "This is your fault. You're the reason that I'm here."

Quatre gave a weak, wry smile at the bulletin board outside the ER waiting room. "He's just doing his job."

"Mister Winner?" A voice called from inside the waiting room and Quatre mechanically made his way in, stomach shrivelling in agonizing anxiety as he did so. The plump nurse looked at him through horned glasses and smiled at him, despite his ghastly withered appearance. "Mister Barton is ready to take visitors now. He should be ready to leave by morning."

Nodding numbly, he was led into the community recovery room. The tarp dividers hanging from the ceilings kept one whispering family from the others, giving them some source of privacy with their loved ones…

Quatre eased up next to the bed, and felt the guilt clench his sunken stomach tighter. Trowa's eyes were closed and he was breathing regularly, the air tube absent from his nose and mouth. Reaching forward slowly for Trowa's hand, he caught a glimpse of the IV, but passed by it, placing his palm on top of Trowa's fingers and the man twitched and slowly opened his eyes to give Quatre a slow, tired smirk.

The blonde man tightened his grip just slightly on the green-eyed man's hand and gave a weak smile. Trowa gave a chuckle of a laugh, lips slowly parting to let out a drowsy voice. "Don't look at me like that. I'm fine."

"Like Hell you are." Quatre managed in a shaky, forceful whisper. "You didn't have to take that bullet, Trowa."

Trowa laughed and shook his head slightly. "What would you rather me have done?" Still smiling, his green eyes continued to laugh. "We've both had worse." Quatre stood still a moment and then allowed himself to nod his agreement. Trowa turned his hand over—carefully so as not to dislodge the IV—and took Quatre's hand in his own and gripped it as reassuringly as possible. "Go home. Get some sleep. I'll see you tomorrow afternoon." Again Quatre nodded and returned the squeezing before heading out of the visitation room.

Tomorrow was another day and Quatre couldn't face it without some semblance of sleep.

Quatre followed his own silhouette in the full body mirror by his bed and went directly into the bathroom. The entire complex had been silent, eerily so and now his room was even worse, void of sound save the slight squeaking of the fan. For long moments, he merely stood in front of the mirror, staring at the bags under his eyes and the waxen appearance of his tight skin. Reaching up a hand, he touched his face and shook his head.

Had it not been for Trowa, he wouldn't have even been there.

They'd expected an attack, they'd expected something to happen, but Quatre had been blindly faithful in his own people and this, above all other things, made him sick. All of his life he'd wanted to be able to trust people, to give them the benefit of the doubt. Just the same, he thought that the war would have cured him of that. Apparently not. But of all the people that he'd pushed away, the personification of his vision for society had been the one so excluded from his life. That was of no one's fault but his own. He slumped down on the ground and placed his head on the porcelain counter top, the cold surface just making his thoughts more cynical.

Quatre grit his teeth together and suddenly stopped, staring blankly at the wall with a look of utter realization on his face. His lips parted slightly, slowly, blue eyes widened a bit more than usual with brows relaxed slightly above them, framing those blue depths in a precise golden line. "Gundam pilots," he whispered to himself as though it would make sense to anyone listening. The Gundam pilots were the only purely truthful people in the world anymore. They had fought for the freedoms and for the peace of mankind. Their battles hadn't been fuelled by bloodlust or carnal instincts, but the with logical reasoning that if they fought and won against war, not against the people, that peace could finally reign.

However, had it not been the people who had started the war to begin with? Hadn't it been man's animal thirst for violence that had brought on the war? "So," Quatre thought, slowly standing, lethargic and boneless, "when we took away the only way to allow that need out, we doomed mankind to civil unrest." Without an outlet to the remaining violent drive, man would inevitably turn in on itself once more.

"Of course we didn't see it," Quatre murmured as he made his way to the bed, "we were so blinded by ideals that we believed that every person was just as tempered as we were, ourselves." He sat down, soon sprawling out, causing the bedsprings to groan. "The pilots, the war heroes… they're the only ones to be trusted."

Trowa made his way into the main part of the building, wearing the same suit that he'd had the night before. Dried blood caked the jacket and the white shirt and while, under any other circumstance he would have been upset by the ruining of one of his favourite jackets, he was much more appreciative of the repercussions its ruin had prevented. Quatre was alive and that's what mattered.

Even still, he wasn't about to go to work wearing a bloodied suit so Trowa took the long walk down the resident hall to his room where he removed the stained garments and discarded them into the waste bin.

As he passed in front of the mirror, he paused and turned to the glossy surface. The stitches in his shoulders stretched the skin around the bullet hole, making it more difficult to move, but with the scatterings of more of the same across his chest, Trowa passed it off as just another scar to add to the collection. Besides Heero, Trowa had held on to the suspicion that he had the most battlefield imperfections dotting and slashing at his torso and legs. When he'd first seen Heero, Trowa had taken one look at all the scars on one shoulder and knew that he most certainly didn't win the gold metal for most war-related injuries. The brunette exhaled and stretched his shoulder out, (just as he had with any of the other self-stitched injuries) until he was convinced that it would be good enough.

Trowa looked at himself a little longer and sniffed at the remaining stale feeling that the hospital had left behind, even on his dirtied clothes. He turned to the shower and reached for the curtain blocking it from the rest of the bathroom and stopped.

Someone was on the other side.

The young man slunk to the barrier wall between the shower and toilet and reached around, pushing back the curtain with a quick push to the plastic rings up top, but nothing happened. In the mirror, the man was still standing there staring right back at where Trowa crouched, but those clouded eyes remained fixed on the spot when the pilot stood and made his way out from behind the barricade.

The man's scruffy face and deep-set fogged eyes tugged at Trowa's mind and then realization crumbled around him.

This was the assassin. Someone had brought the assassin's corpse into his room and left it where they knew he would find it. Trowa reached out, numb to the shock of death and searched the pockets of the man's suit jacket. Cigarettes and a lighter were immediately produced and Trowa laid them down on the counter. Why would someone have gone through all the trouble of bringing the body up to his room and still neglect to remove the pocket contents? Brows furrowing, Trowa flipped the cigarette package over only to see heavy letters in black ink, dotted with dried blood from the assassin's own bullet wound.

"Self Destruct."

The man grit his teeth and picked up the box and rushed back into the bedroom to gather and jump into his clothes. By the time he rushed out of the apartment, his jacket was only halfway on and the package had been flung into one of his pockets.

The lighter, however had been forgotten and brushed onto the tile floor where it had skittered and landed with the other side facing up, showing a carving of sharp, messy letters…

"Self destruct?" Dorothy repeated, turning in from the sun bed built into one of Quatre's office windows. She'd been there since morning; it seemed, talking about extreme restrictions on workers for WEI. Amazingly enough, it seemed that these restrictions had been Quatre's idea and, while the thought boggled Trowa, there were simply more important things at hand. "Where did this come from?" She asked, flipping the cigarette package between slim fingers.

Trowa shook his head. "It was in the pocket of last night's shooter."

"That's ludicrous. I made sure that he was dead when we were waiting for the ambulance," Dorothy commented. She'd revealed that evening to Quatre that she had, in fact, been the one who'd shot him down after the attempted assassination had been made. For once in his life, Trowa had been thankful for the uppity girl's presence when he'd found this out. "Unless you got it off of him when you were fighting."

Quatre looked up suddenly, bleary eyes stunned and withdrawn. "Why didn't you bring this up sooner, Trowa? You could have told me if you'd had it before the shooting."

With a sigh, Trowa got ready for the explanation, but the main doors were flung open, emitting a very frightened secretary. "Mister Winner," She began in a shrill voice, breathy and shaking, "The housekeeper just told me that there's a corpse in one of the rooms in the residential wing."

Blue eyes immediately turned accusingly to Trowa. "I didn't bring him here," the man explained, expecting that the glare had been brought on by this suspected act. Quatre shook his head and turned back to the secretary, stepping out wearily from behind the desk. "It's alright, we'll take care of it." Quatre explained to the woman and she nodded slowly, but accepted that the corpse problem would be taken care of.

"He's in the shower," Trowa began as the three made their way into the cramped room. They crammed into the bathroom, leaning over the figure that had now slumped to the ground in a heap of dead skin and bones.

Dorothy covered her nose, but leaned in closer. "That's definitely him alright, but who brought him here and why?" The woman straightened, shaking her head. "There has to me a motive."

The blonde man furrowed his brows. "They want WEI out of business, isn't that motive enough? If they give us a bad enough reputation on the inside, more people will be wanting to go against the company."

"So what do we do? Call in the police?" The tall woman asked. "That would just spread all of this all over the media."

"Preventers," Trowa suggested. "If anyone's going to be able to help, it'll be Preventers." He turned to Quatre who, amazingly bit his lip and slowly nodded. "Alright, I can take care of this. You two have other things you need to do." When Dorothy opened her mouth to protest, Quatre merely looked at her and shook his head, leading her out begrudgingly.

With Duo and Heero in town, getting one of them to the office wasn't very difficult at all. One call on the vid phone to Duo was all it took to pry him out of his temporary office to come take a look at the scene. 'To think,' Trowa mused to himself as he invited Duo in, 'With all of this, you'd think we'd been detectives, not killers…' Trowa showed the braided man into the bathroom while Duo made small talk, like he usually did, but upon seeing the corpse in the shower, he fell silent and sunk down to take a look at the body.

"Poor guy," He murmured, moving parts of the body around as though searching it for things that Trowa had passed over, "Didn't even bother to put up the occupied sign." Duo exhaled and sat back on his heels. "That's just damned disrespectful." He bit at his lip for a moment, still staring at the body. "What did you say the cigarette pack said?" Trowa didn't bother answering, opting to hand over the box instead. " 'Self destruct?' Sounds like Heero, but Heero does not pull jokes, right?"

Duo stood, flipping the cigarette pack in his hand. "Was there anything else on him?"

Trowa, having completely forgotten the lighter, turned to look where it had been on the counter, but found it gone. Brows furrowing, he looked under the pile of towels and the bloodstained clothes from the party. Just as he was about to open his mouth to declare it missing, there was an exclamation from Duo and the man slid the lighter up off the floor. He flipped it over, looking for the letters and then finally a sneer crossed his usually cheerful face. " 'Everyone has their day to die…' What the hell is that about? D'ya think that Quatre's… you know, in real trouble?"

"I would think so," Trowa admitted after a moment of hesitation. "Did you hear about the assassination attempt at the party?"

Nodding, Duo stared down at the words. The man looked as though there was a bad taste forming in his mouth. "Course I did; it was all over the news. I'm just glad you both got out alright."

Green eyes looked at his old companion in the mirror. "This man is the same one from last night." Duo looked up suddenly, but Trowa shook his head. "He was here when I got back from the hospital. I don't know who brought him here or who would want to leave clues, but…" again he caught Duo's gaze, "they want to be caught."

Duo looked down for a while, piecing things together in his head. "Do you think he had these things on him last night?" Trowa shook his head that he didn't know and Duo turned around to the shower again. He placed aside the items and leaned into the shower, smelling the man's jacket in hopes of catching a waft of cigarette smoke, but was only left with the pungent odour of decomposing flesh. Duo looked like he was on the verge of sneezing, but he shook it off. "Definitely didn't smell like cigarettes…No need for a lighter. Whoever brought him put this on him."

The braided man hurried out of the bathroom, picking up the vid phone and dialling the office number. "C'mon Heero… pick up." There was a dim click and a brusque "hello." Duo immediately lightened up, obviously thankful that his partner was still in the office. "Ro, it's me, Duo. Turn on the video."

Heero let out a breath, but in a moment the video blinked and turned on, revealing a rather mussed, rather irritated Heero. He gave a subconscious glare to the screen. "What do you want?"

Flashing a grin, Duo held up the cigarette box and the lighter. "Found these with the body. Wanna help me out a bit, buddy?" Heero rolled his eyes and dropped down the glasses that had been resting at the top of his head. He leaned in to read the script and shook his head as though he couldn't see it clearly enough. Duo quirked his lips. "It says 'Self destruct' and 'Everyone has their day to die'. Could ya help me out and look it up for me?" Heero gave the screen a blank stare as though considering whether or not to say no, but the frustration eased up. Trowa nearly sighed in relief. At least he knew that Heero had enough compassion for an old friend that he'd bother helping to save his life. Then again, as Duo thanked him, he wondered if it was just because Duo had asked.

Heero was typing, just barely in view of the vid phone. For a while there was just the keyboard clicking away, but then it paused and Heero rolled back to the phone. "They're lyrics from a song."

"Lyrics?" Trowa murmured to himself as Duo leaned in, demanding that Heero drop whatever joke he was playing. What criminal in their right mind would use song lyrics as a clue?

Finally Duo shut up and Trowa was pulled from his thoughts only to see that Heero had started glaring. It was hardly the mild look he so often used with Duo. This full-blown glare had caused even his partner, the least susceptible of the pilots to it, to immediately close his mouth, mid-sentence. Trowa, himself had to suppress a shiver. "I'll fax the information." Heero finally quipped and the screen flashed again, dimmed and the click of the receiver could be heard.

"We have to pull all of our strings on the workers now, Dorothy," Quatre insisted vehemently, "Who knows if my people have ever been or ever will be faithful to the company! With the incident at the party, I'm not about to take any more chances!"

Dorothy stood to face the slightly shorter man, her blue eyes glittering with resolve. "Quatre, it doesn't have to do with your workers being unfaithful to you! You've done everything that you can for your people to help them and to support them and almost all of them are thankful for that, but to cut wages and tighten the hold on things that don't need to be worried about is just asking for an overthrow in government. Don't you see? If you do this, you'll be the big corporations that your family strives so hard not to be!"

Scoffing, Quatre turned to the window and stared out. "Maybe the big corporations are right. People are vile, unfaithful and greedy. If they're offered more money by someone else, all that will happen is the early formation of a rebellion."

"The problem's in security, Quatre, not in the workers. A slacking security is what's allowing these things to happen. Do background checks before hire, but do not, by any means, take out your paranoia on the people who have done nothing to you! Don't ask for trouble when you don't—"

Quatre slammed his fist into the heavy glass window, quieting Dorothy for the moment that he needed to get his word in. "Civilians have no idea. They work all their lives for people and they follow a blind leader who has a slight reason to believe that there is a problem in management." The man turned, "I refuse to allow such things to be forged just behind my back!"

The woman shook her head, blonde locks falling over her shoulders. "Then perhaps you're just a selfish bureaucrat yourself." Dorothy turned, heading for the door, pausing only to say as she left, "True leaders put their life on the line, whether or not the people can understand the sacrifice."

As she left, Quatre let out a heavy sigh and sank into his desk chair. He ran a hand wearily through his hair. He hadn't slept well since Trowa arrived… not that he was blaming his lack of rest on him, but on the events that had occurred since his appearance. If Preventers hadn't sent Trowa, he'd be dead by now. Quatre dropped his head to the desk, staring at the vid phone distantly. Trowa was the kind of leader that Dorothy had been talking about. He was always quiet; content to believe that the things he said would be passed over or misunderstood.

Quatre smiled to himself. Trowa had always had a hard time expressing himself. After so many years of being on the run from militia to militia, Quatre supposed that he'd just gotten used to not speaking. However, even though the people around him never understood, Trowa had kept fighting. That wasn't to say that he didn't ask questions to himself. Quatre had caught him a few times sitting outside, asking questions to the passive sky. Trowa was a leader; so were Wufei, Duo and especially Heero. Heero hadn't really thought to be the leader of anything, but in his fight, he'd never wavered, never second-guessed himself and in that the people looked to him as a pillar.

"The heart of space…" Quatre murmured to himself. Maybe Dorothy was right. All of the other pilots had what it took to be a leader and maybe it was Quatre's fickle doubt that drained away his ability to support. He decided to allow the restrictions on his workers slide and tighten security, just to see if what Dorothy had said proved to be the truth. A beep answered him from the vid phone and then the fax began to work.

What was that? He hadn't been expecting anything. Quatre stood and walked over to the machine, pulling out the paper as it came. Slowly, he turned it over.

There was typing on the page, separated into what seemed to be stanzas. Quatre read through them, only noticing at the chorus repeat that the paper wasn't of a poem, but of a song. Something by a pre-colonial artist. At the top in Heero's perfect, but scratchy writing it read, "Duo, Ungrateful." Quatre chuckled to himself. Those two were still at it… but still, he wondered as he read through the lyrics again, what would Duo want with song lyrics?

A knock came to his door and, with his mind still absorbed in the paper, he called for the people outside to come in. First Trowa came in, looking up at Quatre in a quiet greeting before settling himself against the wall when Duo followed, hands in his pockets, face all smiles. "Yo, Q," Duo greeted, "Ya get that fax from Heero?"

Quatre looked up from the paper. "What? Oh yeah, I got it." He handed it to Duo who winked at him playfully as he tended to do. "Why song lyrics?"

Trowa almost reflexively produced the two items from his pocket. "I missed the other half of the message." He handed the cigarettes and lighter to Quatre who looked down at them eerily silent. His face was paling slightly in worry and Trowa found himself taking the few strides to the blonde man and put his hand on a slightly shaking shoulder. "Don't worry, we're not going to let anything happen." Quatre looked up, strained blue eyes pink in the whites from too many restless hours. He gave his partner a searching look and slowly nodded.

"These are them," Duo announced after perusing the paper. "Leave it to Ro, I always say. Part of the lyrics were cut out in our pieces. Guess they couldn't fit it all. 'Disconnect and self-destruct one bullet at a time. What's your rush now, everyone will have his day to die.'" He fell silent for a while. "Any clue?"

Trowa shook his head. "Who is it by?"

Shrugging, Duo bit his lip. "Some Maynard guy."

"Maynard…?" Quatre looked up suddenly, his eyes wide as though he'd been faced with an impossible prospect. The other two were looking to him expectantly and Quatre looked down slightly. "It shouldn't matter, but the Maynard I knew worked with my father before I left to train with the Professors." He shook his head, perplexed. "Father fired him, but he never told me why."

The room was silent for nearly a full minute (quite an accomplishment with Duo in the room), anxiety heightening as a ringing pitch through the room. Finally Trowa broke the silence. "Could find out where he lives? Or where he works?"

Quatre thought about it for a moment. "Maybe my secretary has some information in the files." He picked up the phone on his desk and pressed a button. "Yes, I was wondering if you could look up any information on a Maynard Segal. Mmhmm. He should be in the files. Alright. Thanks."

The other two watched him place down the receiver and let out a sigh. "All we can do now is wait… She said that she would check and get back to me."

Slowly, Duo nodded. "Alright, Q. Take care of yourself, okay? I need ta get back to the office." He looked to Trowa, "Watch after him and call me when the info comes in." He waited until the green-eyed man agreed and left the room, seemingly worried and preoccupied, tugging lightly at his braid in thought.

Trowa placed a hand on Quatre's shoulder, silently dismissing himself, but Quatre reached up, holding onto it without saying a word. Trowa looked back, more confused by Quatre's actions than shocked by them. The smaller man looked up with tired blue eyes and wrapped his arms around Trowa's slim waist. He buried his face into his companions shoulder and let out a long, much needed sigh. Raising his hand to the back of Quatre's head in question, green eyes softened under furrowed brows. The blonde murmured something into the shoulder he rested on and shook his head. "Hn?" Trowa asked, not able to understand his partner's voice when it was so muffled.

He'd wanted to say he was sorry. More than anything, Quatre knew now how much Trowa had wanted to protect him and moreover what he'd do to keep him, and Quatre had nearly ruined it a year ago and then again when Trowa had come under orders to protect him. Still whenever he opened his mouth to apologize, his voice came out weak and the words refused to form. He shook his head again. "It's nothing…" He let go of Trowa's waist, slowly, not quite sure If he was ready to face the world again. "I'm just worried is all."

"I told you already," Trowa spoke up, eyes turned away from Quatre so that he didn't frighten the man away again, "I love you and I won't let anything happen to you." He ducked his head. "Don't worry about it. I'll be in my room. Call me up when you get any word." With that, Trowa walked out, leaving Quatre feeling very small.

He was alone again, not confused by Trowa so much as himself. He felt disconnected, on the verge of collapsing…

"One bullet at a time…"