warning: Relena, shockingly ooc (like pretty much everyone else^^)
I was back in France, ensconced in one of those pretentiously luxurious and enormous four poster beds with a myriad of silken pillows and burgundy brocade draperies... the room was dark and quiet and cozy, in a slightly fuzzy, diffuse sort of way, as if everything, including my ears, mouth and brain, were filled with soft and smothering cotton wool... but the very best thing about the bed, the room and the cozyness was that Heero, beautiful and for once agreeable, was lying on top of me... wearing a tremendous pink dress and smelling of rum, sea water and... perfume? That was strange. But rather inconsequential. Dress or not, it was still Heero sprawling on top of me and I intended to make good use of the enormous bed and have my wicked way with him... Drowsily, I cracked one eye open and lifted my hand towards an exotically tattooed and deliciously naked shoulder and was just about to grab Heero and kiss him senseless when an ear-splittingly shrill scream assaulted my sleep deprived, sadly hung over brain and almost caused me to pass out.
"Where do you think you're touching, you lecher?"
Either the self-made rum I had knocked back like water the night before (and many nights before that night) had finally started to dissolve my sense organs or Heero's voice had somehow miraculously acquired a falsetto – in any case, the scream sounded suspiciously... female.
Alarmed, I forced my eyes open again and blinked owlishly around myself.
I was indeed lying on a nice and comfortable bed, surrounded by soft and pliant pillows (light red ones with gold tassels), and there was someone on top of me, scantily dressed in a sea of pink ruffles, but it certainly wasn't Heero.
Politely, I removed my hand from a frill-covered thigh and spluttered something incomprehensible.
"Good grief, an imbecile." The fair-haired woman lying halfway across my upper body propped herself up on one elbow and rolled her eyes. I was in no shape to contradict her, my mind was far too busy trying to figure out why I had woken up in a dry proper bed with a semi-nude and unfamiliar woman sprawling on top of me and no recollection whatsoever of how, when and why she and I had ended up like this. Truth be told, this situation was not entirely unfamiliar, I had woken up with hangovers and female company before (after all, I had always been rather fond of drinking and women), but most of the time I at least remembered chatting them up or talking to them or... well, meeting them. And anyway, after I had lost my heart to Heero, who was quite possibly the love of my life, I had somehow assumed that alcohol-induced, anonymous sex was a thing of the past... obviously that was not so. But speaking of...
"Heero!" I cried. He absolutely couldn't, mustn't ever – as in over-my-dead-body-ever – find out about this, or—
"Oh no, not again..."
"Beg your pardon?"
"What is wrong with all of you? Why must every reasonably handsome man on this frog-infested, god-forsaken island be fawning over my BROTHER?" My presumed conquest seemed to harbor some deep frustrations about Heero's fabulous popularity among the islanders and I couldn't really fault her, being Heero's sister would certainly frustrate me to no end.
"You're Heero's sister? Your name's Relena, right?"
The woman turned red like a lobster.
"Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! I'm his HALF-sister! We don't even look alike. Which you would have noticed if you had even looked at me properly, but obviously you didn't even manage that much!" That was true, but then again just a minute ago she had almost bitten my head off for barely touching her shoulder. Women could be so incredibly complicated sometimes... Anyway, I had far more important things to think about at that moment. If she was Heero's sister that meant that I had not only cheated on Heero, but cheated on him with his own kin! How much more horrible could it get?
"Dear god! I mean, no offence, but did we- I mean, did you a-and I, did we-" I squirmed uncomfortably.
Relena harrumphed and only shrugged her naked shoulders. (Which I had tried to fondle only two minutes earlier, I realized with dread.)
"Oh, no, no, no, god, no! We couldn't have—well, we could, but…", I floundered, on the verge of surrendering to full-blown, headless desperation.
"Oh, don't flatter yourself! You were out like a light before I even managed to drag you here, far too drunk too walk, much less do... anything else. It's always the same! First they drink like there's no tomorrow and then they fall asleep on you before you can get their shoes off! One of these days, I'll get away from here and find a place where men actually look at you without seeing you double and don't get sick on your bed or your dress or mistake you for your brother! I mean—" Well, I didn't really listen to her beyond her first angry exclamations. A dizzying wave of relief was crashing over me, momentarily numbing my senses and when I recovered enough to check the state of my clothes (just to make sure), I realized that – despite my rumbled attire and the fact that my boots and socks were missing – I was still mostly dressed.
"Um, I don't want to interrupt you, Miss, but... where are we exactly? I've got to hurry back before... people start to worry about me." Or Heero notices that I spent the night in his sister's bed, in said sister's arms, dead drunk, but still.
Relena's shoulders slumped and her rant came to a halt in mid-sentence. When it became more and more unlikely that she would answer my question, I leaned forward a bit and chanced a quick look into her down turned face. It was scrunched up in a grimace, but her cheeks were suspiciously damp. Damn.
Even though she had practically abducted me to have sex with her while I was barely even conscious, I just couldn't let a woman cry just because I wouldn't sleep with her. (It certainly stroked my ego, even though Relena's taste in men didn't strike me as very discriminating.)
"I'm sorry, Miss. Look, half a year ago I would have jumped at the chance to, hm... get to know you better. There is nothing wrong with you, it was just really bad timing." I awkwardly petted her back and made an attempt to get the pink puff sleeve, which had slipped halfway down her upper arm, back onto her shoulder. How strange, I thought. She really was tattooed there, I hadn't imagined it before when I had tried to cuddle up to her. Well, she was the daughter of a pirate living in a pirates' nest. Everyone on the island probably sported a tattoo or two, nothing strange about it at all. The design, however, was rather uninspired: a string of tiny, spidery numbers…
"I don't need your pity!", Relena groused, impatiently slapping my hand away from her dress. "You have five minutes to get your things and get lost before I go and tell my father!"
"What? Hey, it was you who-"
"Fine. Four minutes. You better hurry."
I opened my mouth to protest, then thought better of it and hastily clambered out of bed (no easy feat considering its size). I almost broke my neck trying to put on socks and boots while stumbling towards the door, circumventing a lilac dressing table and foot stool on the way. Once there, I tore the door open and fell through it... to land in a familiar looking hallway. It was the Sailor's Inn! Or at least one of its many hallways… I just had to get back to my room before the others got up. Judging by the twilight in Relena's room, it was still rather early. With some luck, I would be back in my bed feigning sleep long before the first parrots started to crow over the island. Carefully looking around myself, I ventured down the hallway and sneaked downstairs, through the barroom and up another flight of stairs and then another and another and another, round a corner and there was the room I shared with Wufei! Swallowing nervously, I drew the door halfway open and slipped through, finding my roommate wrapped in his blankets and hugging my straw pillow.
When I woke up the second time that morning, it was to find Quatre, Trowa, Wufei and Heero sitting around a three foot long piece of paper, pointing around excitedly, making sweeping hand gestures and babbling all at once without listening at all. I dragged myself out of bed and joined them on the wooden floor, curious to see what the commotion was about.
They were looking at the map, which had been hand-drawn on the rear pages of what used to be Quatre's cookbook, but now was a riotously colourful collage of torn paper scraps loosely glued together with gruel.
"That's ... the map, right?" I wanted to make sure that is really was what it looked like, or didn't look like, actually.
While Quatre glared at me, Wufei grabbed my arm and presented me with a second scroll, which was much shorter than the first.
"Take a look at this! We managed to adjust the measurements on Heero's back to allow for his vertical growth in the last 13 years of his life, since he got the tattoo."
I hadn't thought of that, but if Heero had been tattooed as a child, the map must have been considerably distorted while he was growing up. The modified map was a simple depiction of islands, shallows, whirlpools and exotic rock formations, with mermaids and sea monsters littered in between. A wiggly path of tiny footprints led through the clutter of distinctive landmarks to a bold black X sign. It looked just like any other treasure map I had ever seen in my life.
"Heero told us that he got the tattoo when he was five," Quatre said. "He was staying with his mother at that time while his father was off adventuring. None of his father's friends and business associates actually knew that he had a wife and a little boy somewhere in the South Seas. That's why his father probably thought that his secret son would be the perfect safe keeper of his map– it wouldn't get lost or easily destroyed and no one knew about Heero anyway. However, it seems that Heero's mother, a capable and enterprising lady herself, had her own designs on the gold… She took her son and started to look for the treasure herself when..." Quatre hesitated for a moment, glancing in Heero's direction and I had a very bad feeling about what he'd say next.
"...when my father discovered that we were missing, went after us and took revenge on my mother."
"What did he do to her?"
"He abandoned her without food and water on a deserted island in the middle of the sea and took me with him on his ship."
"Oh Heero, I'm so sorry!" There was nothing I could have said to comfort him, it certainly was a terrible thing to do, a pirate thing, and not at all uncommon.
"No reason to feel sorry. I know my mother. She found a way to leave the island or the means to survive there."
"Oh, I'm sure she did." Lying for Heero was too easy. And if it made it more bearable for him to think that his mother somehow saved herself, I certainly wouldn't contradict him.
"Ok, so now that we have the map, why were you quarrelling just now?"
"We weren't quarrelling!", Wufei protested. "I only mentioned that this string of small islands in the top left corner look almost like those small islands near Madagascar..."
"Which are thousands of sea miles from here." Trowa intercepted.
"But I've seen a very similar rock formation to this one here in the North Sea," Quatre chipped in hopefully. His twitching intensified with his exitement. "And it would only take us half the time to go there!"
"You know, this would be so much easier if we actually had the exact coordinates. These islands and rocks could be anywhere..."
"Wait, there were no coordinates?"
"No, there weren't."
"Damn. If we had the coordinates..."
"Yep. It would be a piece of cake."
And then it hit me.
Coordinates. Longitude and Latitude. Numbers!
Damn, damn, damn!
"Um... actually, I might know where to find them..."