Shadows of Yesterday
CHAPTER SIX: SECOND CHANCES
"Y-you...you...you're...fuck, fuck, fuck!" Duo spluttered, quite like Sam had done several days earlier upon finding out he was a Gundam Pilot.
Said traitor was currently snickering at him in the background. He was obviously not aware of how serious this situation was!
"How...eloquent, Mr. Maxwell. I see your vocabulary has improved so much since the war. Any other lovely vulgarities you care to regale my ears with?" Dorothy asked, calm as ever, now stepping inside the room.
"Lady, please tell me this is some sort of cruel, twisted joke! Please tell me ya are not askin' Dorothy fuckin' Catalonia ta join our division!"
"I could tell you that, Duo," Lady Une replied, just as calm as Dorothy. "But that would be lying. And I seem to remember that you set quite a bit of store by honesty, yes?"
Duo went through several retorts in his mind, beginning with Fuck honesty!, heading to Dorothy fuckin' Catalonia?, and finally ending with the one he decided to voice.
"Why?" he asked in exasperation.
"She has many useful skills, Duo," Lady Une replied, sighing internally, She had known this wouldn't turn out well. "Her skills in political maneuvering and manipulation alone should make her a strong candidate in your mind, to say the least of her combat skills and her mastery of the Mobile Doll system."
Sam was now looking back and forth between the two of them, confusion plain of his face, gaze occasionally darting towards the woman who had introduced herself as Dorothy Catalonia.
For some odd reason, that name struck a chord somewhere in his head. Catalonia...wasn't that...
He paled subtly. Now he remembered—Dorothy Catalonia was the granddaughter of Duke Dermail, one of the biggest war mongers during the war. And that was to say the least of her own battle-loving ways—he remembered hearing how she joined White Fang, the group that had tried to destroy the Earth, just because she could!
And Lady Une wanted this psycho to join the division!
Shit, he though, quite succinctly.
"Fuck no!" Duo exclaimed. "Nuh-uh, no way, no fuckin' way! She's a psycho, Lady, a fuckin' psycho! Does the fact that her eyebrows are goddamned forked mean anythin' ta ya at all?
"As...entertaining as this is, Mr. Maxwell," Dorothy interjected, now taking a seat in one of the spare chairs. "Please leave my eyebrows out of it. There's only so much a girl can take before it becomes quite repetitive and annoying."
Duo glared at her. "I know what you're doin', Catalonia, and let me assure ya, I ain't fallin' for it!"
She raised one forked eyebrow, causing Sam to snicker quietly. "And what exactly am I doing, Mr. Maxwell!"
He flailed his arms exasperatedly. "I dunno...whatever it is that ya do, actin' all polite ta get people ta trust you and then bam! ya stab them in the back the first chance ya get!"
Lady Une finally decided to just sit back and watch this play out.
She wished she had brought some popcorn, though.
Dorothy was the one glaring at him now, arms crossed. "And is it so hard to believe that I may have changed somewhat in the last year?"
"Yes. Very hard. Excruciatingly hard," Duo replied.
"In case you've forgotten, Mr. Maxwell, we were on the same side when little Mariemaia rebelled."
"Really? 'Cause the only side I ever remember you actually officially bein' on was Romefeller. Ya inspired a bunch of civilians and supplied some trucks durin' the rebellion."
They were both glaring at each other now, and Sam was joining Une in the wish for popcorn.
Surprisingly, Dorothy relented first, sighing. "Well, how about a compromise, Mr. Maxwell?"
He held his glare for a few moments longer, but eventually curiosity won out. He steepled his fingers in front of his face. "What kind of compromise?"
"You let me join, on...probation, shall we say? I'll go through whatever training you and your friend Mr. Tahary here decide to provide, while simultaneously using my numerous political skills to help get the division on its feet and immersed in the shadowy world of black ops. And all I require from you is a modicum of trust and perhaps, a second chance. I can't help being who I was and am, you know."
Something flashed in his eyes, then, a bit of pain and the smallest bit of understanding.
When he finally spoke, it was to bark, "Tahary. Hallway. Now,"
Sam nodded silently, eyes wide, and followed the now agitated boy out into the hall.
Dorothy waited until the door had closed behind them and she heard the quiet murmur of voices before speaking.
"So, what do you think, Lady Une?"
Said woman shook her head. "You had him at the words 'second chance.' The last bit did you a lot of favors, too. Damn, Catalonia, you sure know how to hit a man below the belt."
She chuckled. "I do have some skills in that area, I suppose. But honestly, what are they thinking?"
Lady Une's eyes sharpened. "What do you know that I don't?"
"Quite a bit, I imagine. Weren't you the one extolling my political and information gathering skills just a few moments ago?"
"Let me guess, you aren't going to tell me, are you?"
"Nope."
"Sadist."
"And proud of it...though I will tell you, he has some very good reasons to hate them. Has every right to, really."
"Really?"
"It's not going to work, m'lady."
"Worth a try."
Meanwhile, out in the hall, Duo and Sam were having a hissed conversation, complete with violent gestures—at least on Duo's part.
"Fuck it, I hate that woman! She knows exactly how ta get underneath my skin!"
"Duo...I know what she's done, and believe me, I think as much of her sanity as you do...but don't you think she has a point?"
"Yes, Sam, that's the fuckin' point—she has one! And that's what irritates the hell out of me."
Duo leaned back against the wall and buried his face in his hands, sighing heavily.
"I...I think we should give her a second chance, like she asks," Sam said, nervously. "Like the one we gave to Caleb, like the one given to Une and most every other soldier in the War...like the one Une gave me. Like..."
Sam looked to the ceiling and prayed one last time for his life, before taking the metaphorical plunge.
"...like the one the other pilots obviously didn't give you," he whispered.
Duo's breathing hitched and he went completely still.
"Duo...I never knew her before, only what the news said. But...there's something in her, something that's telling the truth. She's changed. And...I think it's for the better. What do you say?"
Duo was still for several more seconds before he finally looked up from his hands, something dark and unreadable in his eyes.
"Second chances," he murmured darkly and with just a hint of wistfulness, turning his gaze upward. "What I wouldn't give..."
Decision made, he surprised Sam by turning and heading for the conference room, slamming the door open to stand on the threshold and glare at the women within—specifically, the one looking at him with a strange sort of expectation on her face.
"This isn't a second chance," he growled. "This is a final chance."
It definitely said something that the wide, pleased, almost maniacal grin that spread across her face didn't scare him.
Not one bit.
Over the next month and a half, as agents began to steadily pour in from across the Sphere, Sam and Duo—with the occasional help of Une and even less often, Dorothy—slowly worked their way through the list of candidates, recruiting, rejecting, and on occasion, being rejected.
On the days when they didn't have any interviews—quite often, considering missions and travel—they would spend the day trying to make progress on all of the other crap involved in starting a black-ops division.
Duo got in contact with Howard and the Sweepers a couple weeks in, and soon had the entirety of the group on board, both for the training and later, information gathering. Howard himself along with a team he had selected would be heading for headquarters the moment Duo said the word—and when asked, Howard merely laughed off his concerns, saying that he more than trusted his second, Brian, to run things for a couple of months, and that it would be good practice for when he himself finally kicked the bucket.
(At which Duo had smacked him upside the head. Hard.)
He had also tried to get in touch with some old friends on L2, to see if they would consider helping and/or joining. The same with a few acquaintances he had kept during the war.
Needless to say, that hadn't turned out well. Half of said friends and acquaintances had apparently turned up dead sometime in the last few years, and the other half were paranoid to the point of obsession and hadn't replied yet.
(A small percentage were also currently in prison or undergoing mental treatment. He really needed to be more thorough in his background checks.)
He had a feeling he would be waiting a long time for those replies.
Une had yet to reveal whom she was trying to recruit for training, and every time he or Sam tried to ask, she would merely reply, "I haven't found them yet, so there's no point in telling you until I know they're on board. Stop asking."
Not that they did...though the fact that she had started smirking uncontrollably whenever she saw them, or specifically, Duo, a couple weeks ago, scared them slightly.
They had put together a rough outline of their training regime, but had decided to leave the rest to Une's mysterious "experts," considering that they would be retraining as well.
Hell knew they needed it.
A few of those "off" days were also spent gleefully taking off on their own without permission and simply spending the day being what they were—young men, and in the case of Duo, teenaged.
Let's just say a lot of interesting information came to light during these outings. For example, Sam's secret love of gardening. And some of Duo's more...interesting pranks on OZ bases during the war, never brought to light by said organization for fear of embarrassment.
To this day, mention the Pink Incident to any former OZ soldier that was stationed at the Berlin base and they will turn a very interesting shade of aforementioned color and stutter uncontrollably through the following conversation.
Sam laughed uncontrollably and almost had to be Heimlich-maneuvered by Duo after being told of that particular prank, considering he had been in the middle of eating a hamburger when the ex-pilot told him the story.
One of the most interesting days, however, had happened not on one of their unscheduled jaunts, but the day Lucrezia Noin had walked through the door of 'their' conference room, interrupting a most important discussion on the merits of "Spock" and "Lizard" in the game rock-paper-scissors.
She had gotten in Duo's face, demanded to know exactly why he hadn't told her he was forming a black-ops division and that he need help, and then promptly seated herself in a chair between them, introduced herself to a wide-eyed Sam, and informed them she was joining and nothing they did would stop her.
Needless to say, they had sat in shocked silence for more than a minute before she finally got impatient and snapped her fingers in front of their faces, saying "Hellooo? Anyone home?"
Duo had been the first to snap out of his daze, and subsequently ask the question-hybrid-statement that was rapidly becoming one of his numerous trademarks.
"Why."
She had proceeded to explain that while she loved the Preventer's and all that jazz, there had always been a small part of her that protested the rigid, regimented, ruled-almost-by-politicians ways of the Preventer's. She missed the days of the war, when she was free to fight in her white Taurus.
She also reminded them of the little-remembered fact that she had been an instructor for new recruits at the Victoria base until one Wufei Chang showed up.
And then, finally, in a small, quiet voice she confessed that she could no longer feasibly work under Zechs Marquise if he was going to continue to be such a, in her words "ignorant, arrogant, chauvinistic, tight-assed bastard."
That was all it had taken for Duo—and Sam, though he wasn't quite what she was talking about—to say "you're in" without a second thought.
Honestly. The woman had all but admitted to the man that she loved him during the Mariemaia rebellion. She deserved a little bitterness.
So now they had at least one certified teacher—Howard unfortunately didn't count as certified, though he protested that vehemently—and Une full heartedly approved of her. Sally Po had already been informed and sworn to secrecy and promised covertly act as division doctor during retraining—and to train anyone who expressed an interest or talent for becoming one as well, as after retraining she would have to return full-time to Preventer's, though she would help if any emergency cases came up.
Dorothy had vanished for a full three weeks, to begin the building of the division's information network and to also re-immerse herself in the political world, seeing as she had all but vanished from the public eye for the previous three weeks. She began a steady rhetoric of passing information to Une and by extension them, providing detailed reports on the current state of political world.
The only details they had yet to truly figure out were the small ones—name of the division, symbol of the division, and uniform of the division. Those, between themselves, Une, Dorothy, and Noin—who had been invaluable in adding more structure to their training regime—had been mutually agreed upon to leave until near the end of training, when they started to get a feel for how the division members worked together as a whole, and what would work best for said members. (And by extension, themselves.)
After all, they were all basically devoting the prime of their lives to this division. They deserved a say in what the face of it was going to be.
Otherwise, Duo might just stick them all in rabbit suits, just for kicks.
Also, facilities—which they figured Une had something set up, somewhere, or in the process of being set up. They had yet to ask.
And thus, that was the current state of things as the last interviewee finally walked out of the conference room, proud holder of a new black-ops job.
The two of them did the only thing feasible at that moment—they leaned back in their chairs, threw their hands up, and whooped at the top of their lungs.
"We're done!" Duo exclaimed. "Finally! It's over! No more interviews, no more egotistical rants—"
"—no more calling security, no more overdosing on Tylenol—" Sam added, twirling in his swivel chair, one of which they had both bought several weeks ago as they had essentially moved into Conference Room 1C.
"—bein' mistaken for desk jockeys takin' the place of the Commanders, bein' called a girl—"
"—hiding from Dorothy and her intelligence network every time we sneak out to have some fun—"
"—bein' treated like lepers by every other agent in the organization because we happen ta be a little insane—"
This was the scene Noin came upon as she walked into the Conference Room to check on the two, considering that she knew they had just finished their last interview. She had never been particularly close to Duo during the war, even after they started fighting on the same side, more of a friend to Quatre and Howard than anyone else. Over the last month, though, she had grown steadily closer to both him and Sam, a boy she vaguely remember seeing a few times around the office, but never knew his name.
She guessed she could call them friends, now.
Of course, she'd have had to have been blind not to notice the animosity displayed towards the other pilots by Duo. It confused her because as far as she'd known, they'd been relatively close come the end of the Mariemaia rebellion. She wondered what had happened.
Duo wasn't saying anything, and no one else seemed to know either. If they did, they were keeping silent as well.
But for now, she thought as she watched the two boys begin to waltz around the room with each other, I have black-mail photos to take.
In her hands was a digital camera.
Duo and Sam were laughing hysterically, waltzing and dancing and twirling around the conference room, when a bright flash and a whirring noise caused them to jump apart. Unfortunately, backwards for both of them put Sam into a wall and Duo into a chair. They both fell, cursing violently.
Laughter reached their ears, interrupting the tirade. They both looked up to see Noin standing in the doorway—camera held in hand. She snapped another photo before they could recover.
"Noin..." Duo growled. "It's not funny!"
The chuckling began to die away. "Yes, it is, Duo," Noin replied, turning the dial on the camera to look at her pictures. "Very funny."
"You are an evil, evil woman," Sam said from his place on the floor where he sat rubbing his head.
"Oh really? You just realized that, Tahary?" she teased. "I see you two are...happy...to be done with your interviews!"
"Damn right we're happy!" Duo exclaimed, finally standing and heading over to Sam to help him to his feet. "Pleased! Giddy! Fuckin' ecstatic! Do ya know how many bottles of Tylenol we've gone through in the last month and a half?"
"Do I want to know?" she asked, still amused.
"No, you don't," Sam interjected when it looked like Duo was about to actually reply. He had a feeling the amount of Tylenol they had consumed might actually be considered illegal—aka, addiction—in some places.
Best not to tell that to a Preventer's agent, even if she was technically one of their own now.
"Say, Sam," Duo suddenly said, perking up considerably. "We're done with the interviews."
"Yeah..." he said slowly.
"Which means we have ta start retrainin' soon, once we get everyone back here. Reminds me, we need ta ask Une about facilities..."
"Uh-huh," he replied, not quite sure where he was going with this. Noin was confused too, though she took advantage of their distraction to place the camera safely in a pocket.
"Which means Une can no longer hide from us who she's gettin' ta be the re-trainers. What's say we bust into her office unannounced and find out?"
An unholy grin spread across Sam's face, mirroring the one already on Duo's. A month and a half hanging around the self-proclaimed Shinigami had done wonders for his self-confidence and sense of humor.
(And also pretty much destroyed any sense of self-preservation.)
"Let's go," he replied, and in the next instant they were gone, leaving Noin to blink as the breeze blew by her. But then a similar grin spread across her face—
—they had forgotten about the camera.
Agents moved hastily out of the way, and some called around corners to warn friends and colleagues of the approaching threat.
Maxwell and Tahary were on the move.
They raced down the hallways, laughing maniacally—though less fervently, in Sam's case. He wasn't totally corrupted yet—completely forgoing the elevators and instead taking the stairs, all three flights, up to Une's office.
They vaguely registered a group of five people in their peripheral vision, coming down the hallway from the elevators as they blew by Une's secretary ("Hi Sophie, bye Sophie!") and into her office with a crack of the door against the wall.
Une sighed and didn't even bother to look up from the paperwork she was trying to finish before her next appointment in two minutes. She didn't need to. There were only two people in the building who insisted on abusing her door in such a manner on a regular basis.
"Duo, Sam," she said, signing yet another document. "What is it now? I have an appointment in less than two minutes."
"Lady Une—"
"We have finished our interviews—"
She looked up, eyes wide. They were speaking in tandem. There were only two words for when that happened—not good.
A fact not helped by the wide, insane grins on their faces, even as they continued speaking.
"And we have decided—"
"Ta not stop buggin' ya or leave your office—"
"Until you tell us who you're bringing in for the retraining," they finished in synch, before seating themselves in her chairs.
"So, Lady," Duo began.
"Who are they?" Sam finished.
She merely looked back and forth between them for a few moments, before movement at the door caught her eye. Her eyes widened infinitesimally, and she smiled.
Now Duo and Sam were scared. Une was smiling again, that scary shark-smile that usually spelled bad things for them. And it was wider than they had ever seen it.
"Well, boys," she practically purred. "I actually wasn't going to tell you until retraining started. However, considering that they're standing behind you right now, I supposed that's kind of pointless isn't it?"
They both whirled so fast she was surprised they didn't get whiplash.
Sam's first thought was What the hell?
There were five men standing behind them, five old men. How did Une expect these guys to do anything?
And that was to say the least of their looks. One looked like he had a mushroom on his head, for God's sake! And was that a claw? A rubber nose?
A choked noise from his right drew his attention to Duo, who, he now saw, had gone white at the sight of the five men.
Bone white.
"Duo?" he asked, concerned. But the boy didn't seem to hear him.
Duo was currently in a state of shock. There was no way he was seeing what he was seeing. Because if he was seeing what he was seeing, then there were five fucking ghosts in the room. Only they were obviously very much alive.
"Impossible," a voice said hoarsely, and he realized that it was his own. "You're dead. You died. You died a fuckin' year ago, on the Libra! I saw it! What the fuck?"
"Now, now, 02," said the man with the claw, and Duo flinched. "Obviously we're not dead. Otherwise we wouldn't be standing here, ready and semi-willing to train your little black-ops division."
Duo stood, fury and confusion warring for dominance in his eyes. "How?" he snarled, L2 accent coming out in force. "How da fuck did ya survive?"
"That's something I'd like to know myself—" Une began to say, however she was cut off by the man with the mushroom hair.
"Is that any way to speak to your elders, boy?" said Professor G; J, H, S, and O chuckling beside him.
Duo did the only thing he could at that moment. It was all too much—Dorothy, Noin, the interviews, and now the five men responsible for destroying what was left of his and the other pilot's childhood, five men he was sure had died a year ago when the remains of the Libra exploded.
He blacked out.
And Sam merely looked on in utter confusion, even as he cried out and reached out to stop his friend from falling to the ground.
One of these days, he really needed to sit Duo down and have him explain everything about his past.
He was sick to death of being the last one to know everything.
Well, there's the sort-of cliffhanger I had planned for last chapter, until Dorothy quite gleefully took over. Yeah, you read it. The Scientists. All five of them, not just one or two like you guys guessed or suggested. Prepare for all manners of pain, terror, and chaos. This chapter was originally 'Dead Men Walking', but 'Second Chances' fit better, even if it's more cliché...and it's the longest yet.
I'm going to address this RIGHT NOW so that everyone stops asking. The other pilots will be in this story. WILL. BE. IN. THE STORY. It just won't happen for a while yet. I have a lot planned before they are even a blip on my radar, and as I've told some reviewers, you will likely all despise me by the time they show up. There. Now you know.
Also, just so you know, the next chapter likely won't be until at least next weekend. I have been banned from the computer starting tomorrow until I finish my summer reading assignments; All Quiet on the Western Front, Mythology by Edith Hamilton, and The Kite Runner. And school starts next Wednesday. Sorry to all.
Thanks to everyone who reviewed and everything else—especially Anonymous Void, again, for answering my consistent questions and giving amazing ideas. Without AN this chapter would not have been out tonight.
Because you've all been so amazing, I'm going to give a teaser—an epic line that I decided last night Duo would say somewhere in this story. Somewhere.
Strength is when you keep yourself standing, even if everybody else would understand if you broke down.
See you next week. Hopefully I won't be dead from school.
Ciao!