Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Palace of Justice ❯ 8 ( Chapter 8 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Lethanon 
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Sci-fi / Thriller | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 01.16.2011 | Pages: 3 | Words: 5.3K | Visits: 317 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Sci-fi / Thriller | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 01.16.2011 | Pages: 3 | Words: 5.3K | Visits: 317 | Status: Work In Progress
8:
Trowa took his time getting out of the wet clothes and into the dry, comfortable house clothes. Heero was sitting on the sleeping bag and Duo went to him immediately, leaving Trowa to do as he pleased. He went to the bed and carefully climbed in. Heero had bound Wufei in bandages so he looked rather like a mummy but Trowa wasn’t laughing, knowing the bandages hid holes in Wufei’s body. Two hundred of them, each slowly leaking and they couldn’t remove the plugs until they got him home, which could be a while. Wufei didn’t look to be in pain, didn’t really look like anything, completely dead to the world, chest barely rising and falling.
Trowa lay down beside him, grateful when Duo or Heero or someone turned off the lights. He slid closer in the dark, reaching out a shaking hand to lie on Wufei’s chest, just feeling it rise and fall, letting it sink in that he was there, and they got him out and it would be okay now, because he wouldn’t stop until it was. He would get Wufei home, and this time he wasn’t taking no for an answer or letting Wufei go to any stupid job interviews. He shouldn’t have let him go last time.
The rounded bump of the plug hole over Wufei’s heart made him shudder, a similar sized lump forming in his own throat, catching the words he couldn’t say in front of Duo and Heero thankfully because Wufei wouldn’t hear them anyway. But he was sorry anyway, that he’d given up so easily, that he hadn’t followed it up, had given Wufei space and tried to be understanding. He was sorry he hadn’t been demanding, hadn’t forced their issues the way Quatre had always hinted he should. He’d let the courtship die, let Wufei run away from the possibilities he kept flirting with, and look where it had landed them.
It had been the last thing he expected when the capsule opened and he shuddered thinking of Nataku there now, but he thought it a very small price to pay to have Wufei there in his bed, breathing. The lengths Frank had gone to for Wufei to be released were incredible and Trowa couldn’t thank him enough, though really the only person who had freed Wufei was Wufei himself. His conscience had guided Frank’s actions, and his resolve. His mind and heart and all the things Trowa loved so much and it slowly sank in why he’d felt so comfortable inside Frank. Why everyone was so content, and why everything seemed to work just the way it should.
It was all Wufei. He wondered if Nataku would do half as well at guiding Frank. Only time would tell and he didn’t care to spend any more time inside Frank than he had to.
He fell asleep with one over Wufei’s heart, the other tangled in his hair. He didn’t dream.
The lights came up and he jerked awake, cursing softly when he kicked Wufei, but the other man was just as unconscious as when Heero had laid him there. Heero was already awake, Duo had clearly been asleep but sat up, yawning as he looked blearily at the bed and sighed when he saw Wufei was still out of it.
“I don’t think he’ll wake for a while. I’ve been thinking about how Frank connects to the Origen, and I’m pretty sure his brain’s been awake the whole time. He’ll sleep for a while.”
It made Trowa shudder and for once he didn’t race for the shower, lingering in bed, reaching out to tuck stray strands of inky hair off Wufei’s face, still amused at how long it had gotten. It would annoy Wufei incessantly, but Trowa knew if he implied he liked it Wufei wouldn’t cut it, and he intended to do more than imply.
“You have to go to work. Act sick. Call in sick tomorrow,” Heero ordered and Trowa just nodded in agreement. He took his suit when Duo brought it over and slowly got changed, stealing glances at Wufei the whole time. He wanted to stay, just in case he woke up, but Heero was right. They had to get him out of here, and to do that he had to go to work.
“What a night...” Duo went into the bathroom and washed his face, coming back out and getting changed quickly. Trowa quirked a brow at him and Duo just shrugged.
“Fei’s gonna need clothes and lots of easy to eat food, and liquids and we need more bandages, and stuff. Besides, I need to keep my cover too. We’ll have breakfast at the interchange as usual.”
As usual. As if they’d been doing it forever. It felt like forever. Trowa looked back at the bed, but forced himself not to go back over. Why? To stroke his hair one more time? To kiss his cheek? Wufei would be none the wiser, and Heero would be. There was no point other than it would make him feel better and Trowa didn’t particularly feel like feeling better, so he left and Duo followed him out.
They walked in silence and Trowa kept an eye out for any sign of their passage last night but Duo had done a good job of covering their tracks. There was much more life in Chinatown for this hour of the morning and Duo shared a knowing look with him but they didn’t say anything, just got on the shuttle.
“Morning Mister Bloom! Muffins and coffee?”
“Yes please!” Duo grinned at Tracey and Trowa just nodded, forcing a smile before going to the back of the cafe, to a nice dark corner booth and sliding in. He didn’t want to watch the world, and thought it best if they stayed low. Duo seemed to agree, sliding in across from him and watching him quietly.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Yeah...stupid question. Sorry.” He smiled up at Tracey when she brought their order over and she smiled back, walking away with a soft blush but otherwise leaving them to it. Duo sighed and sipped the coffee but pushed the muffin away and Trowa followed suit.
“I honestly thought he just freaked when you wouldn’t stop asking him out and ran...”
“So did I,” Trowa mumbled, not wanting to talk about it. He’d let Wufei down, and he had all day to try and think of ways to make it up to him, already knowing none of them were ever going to be enough.
“Do you think Heero’s right, and he was awake the whole time? That he knew what was going on?”
Trowa was quiet for a long time, thinking it over, but like Heero he came to the same conclusion and the sick look on his face said it all. Duo slumped.
“Out of all the people in the whole universe, Frank lured me in.” Why not Heero, who was a much easier target? Or Duo? Why not Une or Sally? Why not someone entirely unconnected to Wufei, someone on the station maybe? Frank could have recruited anyone, and manipulated them into doing what he wanted in the same way he had manipulated the man who built Nataku. But he hadn’t asked just anyone, he’d asked Trowa.
“Because Wufei wanted you,” Duo sighed, and he gave up on trying to drink his coffee and just watched Trowa. It was clear he was trying to think of something to say, but his silence said it all. There was nothing to be said.
Wufei hadn’t run away; he’d wanted to say yes, to give it a go with Trowa, but they’d taken him before he got the chance, and now...now who knew what he thought. They all just had to wait until he woke up, and that could be a while.
“I gotta go, or I’ll be late.” He grabbed his coffee but left the muffin and Duo watched him go with a pained smile before turning to call Tracey over. Trowa heard him ask if he could have a box to take the muffins away, and left it at that.
He felt numb through the day and spent the time sitting in his cockpit. Everyone put it down to him being over his nerves and wanting to get out again until he came out after lunch sniffling and looking red-faced, and then they didn’t suspect he’d been crying at all, but assumed he was coming down with something. His boss sent him home early and told him not to come in tomorrow. If he was still sick the day after he could just leave a message on the clerk’s message board. Trowa was so genuinely grateful he nearly cried again. It only made his ruse look all the more genuine.
He was on the shuttle when the first rumour reached him. Two business men were whispering about it in hushed tones. Something had been stolen from Level 5, no one knew what it was, it was all being kept very hush hush but it was the first crime on the colony ever. They were taking it very seriously. Word was they were going to do a room by room search of the entire station. Trowa doubted that; it could take years, but if they could reduce the possibilities down they might search particular sectors.
He tried not to hurry back to His Room, but he still sighed with relief when the door closed behind him.
“You’re home early.”
“They told me to go home, gave me tomorrow off and said if I needed more time to just leave them a note on the message board.”
“Handy,” Heero noted softly but Trowa was already moving past him, to the bed, sitting on the edge and just staring. He hadn’t moved since this morning, clearly hadn’t woken and Heero didn’t bother to say so when it was so obvious. The drugs Nataku had left were laid out on the end of the bed though and there was a drip in Wufei’s arm and Trowa sighed, grateful that at least Heero had his head on straight.
“How many people can you fit inside one of the Fighters?”
“I was really pushing it when I thought about fitting three. And they’re coded to your DNA to go through the Molecularization...”
Heero sighed and Trowa had to agree. The SiS wasn’t a way out and Trowa felt too messed up in the head to think of a better way. Luckily, Heero was still working on the problem, clearly having re-prioritized.
“We need to lure in Quatre.”
That got Trowa’s attention and he sat up, blinking at Heero and trying to follow his line of thought. It made sense; Quatre travelled with a team, always, which meant a bigger shuttle. But Quatre had been burned by the satellites once before so he was unlikely to fall for it, especially since Trowa and now Heero and Duo had disappeared after investigating similar occurrences. He would be monitoring them though...
“When the next satellite comes in, if we can get near it we could leave a transmitter on it, have it transmit a signal to him.”
Heero jerked and then grinned because they both knew it would work. They just had to figure out when the next satellite was coming in, which shouldn’t be hard if Trowa kept an eye on the military scouting schedule.
“If Quatre brings a ship to us, we just have to find a way to get Frank to get us out using the eye,” Heero nodded, and really that was the crux of the matter. They had no idea if Frank would help them or not. Trowa looked at the Computer and sighed. They couldn’t even track down Nataku and ask her to help now.
“I heard people talking about something being stolen on the shuttle. It’s probably not a good idea to bring attention to ourselves by calling Frank’s Room.”
“Your message history has been deleted,” Heero observed. “I checked earlier. It’s like it never happened.”
“Frank covered my tracks,” Trowa mused, recalling Frank’s final warning and shaking his head. If they were on their own, they could very well be stuck there until Wufei was functional, they mastered the science of Molecularization, Heero, Duo and Wufei all enlisted, and they rigged their SiS-50 fighters to accept DNA that wasn’t in Frank’s system...they could be stuck for several lifetimes. They didn’t have that long, and were going to have to find a way to make Frank help them, but letting things die down a little was a good start.
The door opened and Duo came in, blinking at Trowa and then smiling wanly.
“They let you go home early...nice of them.” He staggered in and dumped his shopping in the middle of the floor and Heero attacked it immediately. “I was worried about buying bandages, thought that might be a dead giveaway so I stole them from a shelter down in Level 2.”
“Good thinking,” Heero agreed and he piled the new clothes in the closet beside Trowa’s then restocked the first aid kit while Duo put the extra food away in the fridge. Heero told Duo their thoughts on a way to get out of Frank and Duo made his own quiet observations, agreeing it was the better than the few ideas he had come up with. Trowa let their soft talk wash over him, turning instead to watch Wufei, absorbed in the rise and fall of his chest with each breath and the slight frown on his face that hinted Wufei was in pain. Which meant he was even the tiniest bit conscious. Trowa reached out and stroked the faint line between his brows, smiling faintly, torn between wanting him to get the rest he needed and wanting him to wake up right the hell now and yell at them all for worrying.
“What do you think they’re doing with the satellites?” Duo asked curiously, grabbing a muesli bar from the kitchen and handing the rest around. Trowa took it, but sat it in his lap, not calm enough to eat yet. Soon, but not yet.
“Hard to say...They’re just relay satellites. It’s like stealing messenger pigeons that aren’t carrying any messages, and then releasing them back into the wild,” Trowa mused, actually finding it funny more than anything. There were a few reasons he might do that, like maybe he wanted to feed it or keep it as a pet for a while, but he doubted Frank wanted a pet satellite.
“And they only destroyed that one to tie up loose ends with Nataku,” Heero agreed, but he was thinking. He had that strange strained look to his eyes that always made Trowa nervous his eyes might pop out of his head and then they’d have to watch him put them back in again. Duo would never let any of them forget it, every time they encountered anything remotely gross he would compare it to that time Heero’s eyes popped out of his head...
“What if they were putting in a relay.” Duo shifted excitedly, grabbing his laptop and launching the image of the satellite network. “All the satellites they’ve intercepted have been interchanges; points of contact where several lines of satellite communication meet. Kind of like the shuttle interchanges here inside Frank.”
“Right,” Heero agreed softly, staring hard at the picture as if it might suddenly reveal their plan.
“Well, if you rigged all the interchanges to not only continue relaying the messages being sent to their original destination, but also to send a copy somewhere else, say...to Frank, then...”
“You’d know everything,” Trowa sat up, remembering Frank’s boast and wondering why they hadn’t realised it before. That was how Frank maintained himself and kept the colony out of sight, by always knowing where no one else was going to be.
“The Preventers have been updating the satellite relay system because so much of it was damaged in the wars. Frank must be having to update to keep up with the times.”
“Or there’s a particular piece of information he wants but can’t get any other way,” Duo smirked, shrugging as Heero and Trowa both glared at him for ruining their nice, simple explanation for all things. “Spanner in the works just sucks all round, don’t it?”
Eloquent, Duo. Really eloquent. Trowa sighed and opened his damn muesli bar, chewing without much interest as he examined the satellite network image. Duo had already marked the effected satellites in red, the destroyed one in green.
“There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to it.” At least not one he could see and he looked to Duo but he shook his head as well.
“I can try what I’ve hacked so far and see if I can’t find anything?”
“Just be careful not to leave evidence you’ve hacked anything. We don’t want them tracing it back here.” Wouldn’t that just be fun to explain? Hello senior individuals in charge of Frank, oh you’ve noticed all this illegal cabling Heero has littered my floor with? And you’re aware Heero and Duo have no identification? And that I have an awful lot of money that seems to have come from nowhere? And you’re concerned about the small arsenal we have? And our un-networked computers and gadgets are ringing alarm bells for you? Oh, and yes that is the Origen asleep in my bed...yeah, not a conversation he felt like having any time soon. Not that there would be a conversation because Heero would have killed them before they got through the door, and then it would have been a night of skulking about the station trying to dispose of bodies. Which Trowa still wasn’t in the mood for, thank you kindly.
Heero was already working, taking his laptop to the desk and sitting in their one chair, fingers flying on the keys, gaze fixed on the screen. Trowa looked down at Duo and smiled at exaggerated roll of the eyes he got, but then Duo got up and came to sit on the bed with him, watching Wufei. He looked gentler like this, having nothing to do besides wait and watch and Trowa could see all the reasons Heero had finally given in and decided to have a life. This was a side of Duo even his friends rarely saw, a lowering of walls so high even Duo himself had trouble scrambling over them at times. It left Trowa with the feeling of emptiness he’d felt after the bad dreams and he softly stroked Wufei’s fingers, willing them to respond. They didn’t.
“Hey...if Frank built a copy of Wufei, to replace him, and cloned his heart and brain and lungs and everything...how come Nataku’s a girl?”
Trowa frowned, because it was strange. Duo had explained it away with his theory that Frank had made himself a girlfriend, but that was far-fetched, considering the gender of the host was irrelevant. But Nataku, while apparently being a robot, had a female form just as Duo had said and it left them both frowning as they puzzled it out.
“I told you it was weird her name was Nataku,” Heero point out, turning only long enough to fix them both with a knowing look before turning back to his laptop.
“Wait...Frank remade Wufei’s dead wife? With Wufei’s organs? Is that even possible?”
Trowa was just thinking it through. Heart, brain, lungs...they were the vital organs, but the robotic parts were all female in gender, and she had been named Nataku. Trowa looked at Wufei and frowned, unable to keep from following two parallel lines of thought and not sure which was the right one.
“Either Frank made her, or Wufei did.”
“If Wufei was responsible, it would mean he had some sort of control, which would also mean he could’ve gotten himself out of this pickle without us being called in,” Duo reasoned.
“True. So we assume Frank made her Nataku deliberately, instead of a direct copy of Wufei. Why? What’s the difference between Wufei and her?”
“Experience,” Heero responded again and Trowa really wished if he was going to be a part of the conversation that he would stop doing the whole ‘I can do two things at once’ thing and join the conversation whole heartedly. It was just annoying to have him jumping in with answers all the time when you were never sure if he was listening at all to begin with.
It was also annoying that he was right.
“Anyone know what Wufei was like as a kid?” Trowa mused, wishing he knew what Wufei was like as a child, that he knew stories about him growing up, and had pictures of him at different ages. He wished he knew everything, even if Wufei would likely make it his life’s mission to hunt down every last image and burn it.
“They recruited him to pilot a Gundam. That should pretty much sum up what he was like!” Duo pointed out, exasperated, but then he paused.
“Angry,” Trowa mumbled. “Determined, adamant he’s right when he’s not...”
“All the fire and none of the water,” Duo mumbled and Trowa just stared at him. “What?”
“Nothing, that was just very poetic,” Trowa laughed at him, shaking his head and covering his laughter by turning his head a little so his hair hid his grin.
“Shut up!” And Duo was blushing, arms folded over his chest, sulking. Brilliant. But he’d had a point and Trowa looked down at Wufei and tried to compare what Wufei guiding Frank was compared to what Wufei without restraint guiding Frank would be.
“We shouldn’t have put Nataku in,” Heero agreed, not needing Trowa to say it and they all just nodded. But they knew taking her out wasn’t really an option either, because then Frank really did have free reign, and there was a reason the people who made Frank had thought he needed a human conscience. And they couldn’t just go pick a random person off the street and put them in, for one...they could be just as bad as Nataku, and secondly they’d be sentencing them to the same fate Wufei had been, which was frankly worse than death, pun entirely intended! It was just all so cleverly done, and they had no way of knowing if their suspicions were correct until Wufei woke up, and even he might not know. Just how conscious was he and how much control had he managed? What if it really had been none at all?
“This sucks.” Duo flopped down across the end of the bed and fiddled with Wufei’s toes, smirking when Trowa scowled at him. He was right, it did suck and he wished Nataku and Frank had arranged a larger room because this one was getting damn crowded. At least Duo and Heero weren’t doing the rabbit thing with him there; he supposed that was a small consolation.
“You can start building the transmitter we’re going to attach to the satellite,” Heero said, pointing to a bag of supplies near the kitchenette bench. “Everything you need should be in there.”
“I’ll do the programming, you build?” Duo arched a brow, waiting for Trowa’s response. Trowa thought he looked like a racoon.
“You just want to write the message to Quatre,” Trowa knew immediately and Duo grinned but Trowa nodded and let him take the laptop. Heero would likely end up editing whatever got sent anyway so it wasn’t really doing any harm. Besides, he wasn’t in the mood for typing and building meant he got to do something with his hands other than pet Wufei and wait for him to wake up.
He was slow to start, still not engaging with the task as he emptied the components Heero had gathered into a pile on the sleeping bag and slowly started rummaging for what he needed, but once that was done and process was so easy and familiar he sank into it gratefully. The mission mindset was an odd one, sometimes it wouldn’t come without the adrenalin or the added incentive of ‘oh shit I’m gonna die’ but sometimes Trowa found himself in it for no particular reason at all. He’d read an entire book without moving. He’d make a four course meal...just for himself. He’d got for a quick run in the morning and get home at sunset. Something just clicked into place, the world disappeared and the only conscious thing he could think of was the moment and what he had to do. Read, cook, run. Make a transmitter. He liked the mindset, it was familiar and easy and what he needed.
It was ‘night’ inside Frank by the time he finished and he handed it over to Duo so he could load the program. He was proud of his work too. The transmitter was small, the size of his palm, and wafer thin. They could attach it to any plate on the satellite and no one would notice it was there. Even Duo looked impressed as he turned it over a few times in his hands, eyeing Trowa curiously.
“You been keeping busy between call ins to work with us?”
“I knit too,” Trowa smirked.
“No way!”
“You’re right...no way.” Sometimes, Duo was just gullible, and it was so fun and easy to fall into the pattern of giving him what he half expected to hear, just to see him fumble for a response. He helped Duo shift the transmitter to connect everything he needed and then sat back and amused himself watching boyfriend 1 and boyfriend 2 spend time together typing on their laptops. Neither looked up or so much as acknowledged the other’s existence, but Trowa knew either could have told him exactly where the other was, what they were doing and probably how many words a minute they were typing at.
He was about to comment on it when Wufei jerked into a sitting position on the bed, green goo erupting from his mouth and nose, and Trowa was almost sure his ears. It came out in a fountaining mess of sludge and Heero reacted immediately, hauling Wufei up and taking him to the shower, dumping him rather unceremoniously on the floor. Trowa was a step behind and Duo leaned against his shoulder as they watched the green mess pour out of Wufei in choking chunks. There was far too much of it, enough to fill Wufei, and when it finally began to slow Wufei’s body slumped back against the shower wall and fell limp once more, a sticky green trail of ooze still leaking out one side of his mouth.
“Okay, that was disgusting!”
“Duo!” Trowa scowled but Duo just shrugged and moved back into the main room, going to the bed and pulling off the sheets, tossing them in the kitchenette and getting new sheets from the closet. Trowa stopped watching him then and turned back to Heero, stepping into the shower to help him get Wufei out of the bandages and showering him clean again.
Duo had remade the bed by the time they brought Wufei back out, clean and wrapped in towels and Trowa laid him out while Heero got the first aid kit. Heero passed a handful of bandages to him and Trowa watched, stunned, as he grabbed a q-tip, dipped it in disinfectant and started sticking it into one of the plugs on Wufei’s arm. It came out slightly bloodied and Trowa took a minute to settle his stomach and mind before picking up a q-tip of his own and getting to work.
It was a long process but an hour later Wufei was clean and bandaged and they even managed to get a pair of house pants on him, more for fear of his wrath when he woke up naked than anyone caring he was naked while he was unconscious. Trowa tucked him in under the sheet and hesitated over the slimed blanket, sighing.
“I bought extras,” Duo told him softly and went to fetch it from one of the bags he’d brought back from his shopping expedition. Trowa took it gratefully and tossed it over Wufei, leaving him alone because after sticking q-tips in him for an hour he didn’t feel like doing anything more.
“He’ll wake up in a few hours.”
“Wait, did you know that was going to happen? Heero, you could warn a guy!”
“I didn’t know, Duo,” Heero defended himself grumpily, then admitted in a soft voice, “I suspected.”
“That’s the same thing you whack job!”
It wasn’t but neither Heero or Trowa bothered to point it out. Duo didn’t do disgusting too well and this would likely just become one of those things he reminded them about for years to come. Remember that time when Wufei was unconscious and all of a sudden turned into a vomiting slime monster? Definitely was going to remind them for years.
Trowa sighed and went to get a muesli bar, pausing only when Duo sat on his sleeping bag, clutching his teddy bear, gaping at him.
“What?”
“NOW you want to eat?”
He was hungry now. And Wufei had expelled all the crap from the capsule and would wake up soon and then Trowa would want to spend time with him, not eating, so it was a better idea to eat now. Right? He didn’t see why Duo was freaking out about it.
“I’m hungry now.”
“You’re all mental!”
Trowa took his time getting out of the wet clothes and into the dry, comfortable house clothes. Heero was sitting on the sleeping bag and Duo went to him immediately, leaving Trowa to do as he pleased. He went to the bed and carefully climbed in. Heero had bound Wufei in bandages so he looked rather like a mummy but Trowa wasn’t laughing, knowing the bandages hid holes in Wufei’s body. Two hundred of them, each slowly leaking and they couldn’t remove the plugs until they got him home, which could be a while. Wufei didn’t look to be in pain, didn’t really look like anything, completely dead to the world, chest barely rising and falling.
Trowa lay down beside him, grateful when Duo or Heero or someone turned off the lights. He slid closer in the dark, reaching out a shaking hand to lie on Wufei’s chest, just feeling it rise and fall, letting it sink in that he was there, and they got him out and it would be okay now, because he wouldn’t stop until it was. He would get Wufei home, and this time he wasn’t taking no for an answer or letting Wufei go to any stupid job interviews. He shouldn’t have let him go last time.
The rounded bump of the plug hole over Wufei’s heart made him shudder, a similar sized lump forming in his own throat, catching the words he couldn’t say in front of Duo and Heero thankfully because Wufei wouldn’t hear them anyway. But he was sorry anyway, that he’d given up so easily, that he hadn’t followed it up, had given Wufei space and tried to be understanding. He was sorry he hadn’t been demanding, hadn’t forced their issues the way Quatre had always hinted he should. He’d let the courtship die, let Wufei run away from the possibilities he kept flirting with, and look where it had landed them.
It had been the last thing he expected when the capsule opened and he shuddered thinking of Nataku there now, but he thought it a very small price to pay to have Wufei there in his bed, breathing. The lengths Frank had gone to for Wufei to be released were incredible and Trowa couldn’t thank him enough, though really the only person who had freed Wufei was Wufei himself. His conscience had guided Frank’s actions, and his resolve. His mind and heart and all the things Trowa loved so much and it slowly sank in why he’d felt so comfortable inside Frank. Why everyone was so content, and why everything seemed to work just the way it should.
It was all Wufei. He wondered if Nataku would do half as well at guiding Frank. Only time would tell and he didn’t care to spend any more time inside Frank than he had to.
He fell asleep with one over Wufei’s heart, the other tangled in his hair. He didn’t dream.
The lights came up and he jerked awake, cursing softly when he kicked Wufei, but the other man was just as unconscious as when Heero had laid him there. Heero was already awake, Duo had clearly been asleep but sat up, yawning as he looked blearily at the bed and sighed when he saw Wufei was still out of it.
“I don’t think he’ll wake for a while. I’ve been thinking about how Frank connects to the Origen, and I’m pretty sure his brain’s been awake the whole time. He’ll sleep for a while.”
It made Trowa shudder and for once he didn’t race for the shower, lingering in bed, reaching out to tuck stray strands of inky hair off Wufei’s face, still amused at how long it had gotten. It would annoy Wufei incessantly, but Trowa knew if he implied he liked it Wufei wouldn’t cut it, and he intended to do more than imply.
“You have to go to work. Act sick. Call in sick tomorrow,” Heero ordered and Trowa just nodded in agreement. He took his suit when Duo brought it over and slowly got changed, stealing glances at Wufei the whole time. He wanted to stay, just in case he woke up, but Heero was right. They had to get him out of here, and to do that he had to go to work.
“What a night...” Duo went into the bathroom and washed his face, coming back out and getting changed quickly. Trowa quirked a brow at him and Duo just shrugged.
“Fei’s gonna need clothes and lots of easy to eat food, and liquids and we need more bandages, and stuff. Besides, I need to keep my cover too. We’ll have breakfast at the interchange as usual.”
As usual. As if they’d been doing it forever. It felt like forever. Trowa looked back at the bed, but forced himself not to go back over. Why? To stroke his hair one more time? To kiss his cheek? Wufei would be none the wiser, and Heero would be. There was no point other than it would make him feel better and Trowa didn’t particularly feel like feeling better, so he left and Duo followed him out.
They walked in silence and Trowa kept an eye out for any sign of their passage last night but Duo had done a good job of covering their tracks. There was much more life in Chinatown for this hour of the morning and Duo shared a knowing look with him but they didn’t say anything, just got on the shuttle.
“Morning Mister Bloom! Muffins and coffee?”
“Yes please!” Duo grinned at Tracey and Trowa just nodded, forcing a smile before going to the back of the cafe, to a nice dark corner booth and sliding in. He didn’t want to watch the world, and thought it best if they stayed low. Duo seemed to agree, sliding in across from him and watching him quietly.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Yeah...stupid question. Sorry.” He smiled up at Tracey when she brought their order over and she smiled back, walking away with a soft blush but otherwise leaving them to it. Duo sighed and sipped the coffee but pushed the muffin away and Trowa followed suit.
“I honestly thought he just freaked when you wouldn’t stop asking him out and ran...”
“So did I,” Trowa mumbled, not wanting to talk about it. He’d let Wufei down, and he had all day to try and think of ways to make it up to him, already knowing none of them were ever going to be enough.
“Do you think Heero’s right, and he was awake the whole time? That he knew what was going on?”
Trowa was quiet for a long time, thinking it over, but like Heero he came to the same conclusion and the sick look on his face said it all. Duo slumped.
“Out of all the people in the whole universe, Frank lured me in.” Why not Heero, who was a much easier target? Or Duo? Why not Une or Sally? Why not someone entirely unconnected to Wufei, someone on the station maybe? Frank could have recruited anyone, and manipulated them into doing what he wanted in the same way he had manipulated the man who built Nataku. But he hadn’t asked just anyone, he’d asked Trowa.
“Because Wufei wanted you,” Duo sighed, and he gave up on trying to drink his coffee and just watched Trowa. It was clear he was trying to think of something to say, but his silence said it all. There was nothing to be said.
Wufei hadn’t run away; he’d wanted to say yes, to give it a go with Trowa, but they’d taken him before he got the chance, and now...now who knew what he thought. They all just had to wait until he woke up, and that could be a while.
“I gotta go, or I’ll be late.” He grabbed his coffee but left the muffin and Duo watched him go with a pained smile before turning to call Tracey over. Trowa heard him ask if he could have a box to take the muffins away, and left it at that.
He felt numb through the day and spent the time sitting in his cockpit. Everyone put it down to him being over his nerves and wanting to get out again until he came out after lunch sniffling and looking red-faced, and then they didn’t suspect he’d been crying at all, but assumed he was coming down with something. His boss sent him home early and told him not to come in tomorrow. If he was still sick the day after he could just leave a message on the clerk’s message board. Trowa was so genuinely grateful he nearly cried again. It only made his ruse look all the more genuine.
He was on the shuttle when the first rumour reached him. Two business men were whispering about it in hushed tones. Something had been stolen from Level 5, no one knew what it was, it was all being kept very hush hush but it was the first crime on the colony ever. They were taking it very seriously. Word was they were going to do a room by room search of the entire station. Trowa doubted that; it could take years, but if they could reduce the possibilities down they might search particular sectors.
He tried not to hurry back to His Room, but he still sighed with relief when the door closed behind him.
“You’re home early.”
“They told me to go home, gave me tomorrow off and said if I needed more time to just leave them a note on the message board.”
“Handy,” Heero noted softly but Trowa was already moving past him, to the bed, sitting on the edge and just staring. He hadn’t moved since this morning, clearly hadn’t woken and Heero didn’t bother to say so when it was so obvious. The drugs Nataku had left were laid out on the end of the bed though and there was a drip in Wufei’s arm and Trowa sighed, grateful that at least Heero had his head on straight.
“How many people can you fit inside one of the Fighters?”
“I was really pushing it when I thought about fitting three. And they’re coded to your DNA to go through the Molecularization...”
Heero sighed and Trowa had to agree. The SiS wasn’t a way out and Trowa felt too messed up in the head to think of a better way. Luckily, Heero was still working on the problem, clearly having re-prioritized.
“We need to lure in Quatre.”
That got Trowa’s attention and he sat up, blinking at Heero and trying to follow his line of thought. It made sense; Quatre travelled with a team, always, which meant a bigger shuttle. But Quatre had been burned by the satellites once before so he was unlikely to fall for it, especially since Trowa and now Heero and Duo had disappeared after investigating similar occurrences. He would be monitoring them though...
“When the next satellite comes in, if we can get near it we could leave a transmitter on it, have it transmit a signal to him.”
Heero jerked and then grinned because they both knew it would work. They just had to figure out when the next satellite was coming in, which shouldn’t be hard if Trowa kept an eye on the military scouting schedule.
“If Quatre brings a ship to us, we just have to find a way to get Frank to get us out using the eye,” Heero nodded, and really that was the crux of the matter. They had no idea if Frank would help them or not. Trowa looked at the Computer and sighed. They couldn’t even track down Nataku and ask her to help now.
“I heard people talking about something being stolen on the shuttle. It’s probably not a good idea to bring attention to ourselves by calling Frank’s Room.”
“Your message history has been deleted,” Heero observed. “I checked earlier. It’s like it never happened.”
“Frank covered my tracks,” Trowa mused, recalling Frank’s final warning and shaking his head. If they were on their own, they could very well be stuck there until Wufei was functional, they mastered the science of Molecularization, Heero, Duo and Wufei all enlisted, and they rigged their SiS-50 fighters to accept DNA that wasn’t in Frank’s system...they could be stuck for several lifetimes. They didn’t have that long, and were going to have to find a way to make Frank help them, but letting things die down a little was a good start.
The door opened and Duo came in, blinking at Trowa and then smiling wanly.
“They let you go home early...nice of them.” He staggered in and dumped his shopping in the middle of the floor and Heero attacked it immediately. “I was worried about buying bandages, thought that might be a dead giveaway so I stole them from a shelter down in Level 2.”
“Good thinking,” Heero agreed and he piled the new clothes in the closet beside Trowa’s then restocked the first aid kit while Duo put the extra food away in the fridge. Heero told Duo their thoughts on a way to get out of Frank and Duo made his own quiet observations, agreeing it was the better than the few ideas he had come up with. Trowa let their soft talk wash over him, turning instead to watch Wufei, absorbed in the rise and fall of his chest with each breath and the slight frown on his face that hinted Wufei was in pain. Which meant he was even the tiniest bit conscious. Trowa reached out and stroked the faint line between his brows, smiling faintly, torn between wanting him to get the rest he needed and wanting him to wake up right the hell now and yell at them all for worrying.
“What do you think they’re doing with the satellites?” Duo asked curiously, grabbing a muesli bar from the kitchen and handing the rest around. Trowa took it, but sat it in his lap, not calm enough to eat yet. Soon, but not yet.
“Hard to say...They’re just relay satellites. It’s like stealing messenger pigeons that aren’t carrying any messages, and then releasing them back into the wild,” Trowa mused, actually finding it funny more than anything. There were a few reasons he might do that, like maybe he wanted to feed it or keep it as a pet for a while, but he doubted Frank wanted a pet satellite.
“And they only destroyed that one to tie up loose ends with Nataku,” Heero agreed, but he was thinking. He had that strange strained look to his eyes that always made Trowa nervous his eyes might pop out of his head and then they’d have to watch him put them back in again. Duo would never let any of them forget it, every time they encountered anything remotely gross he would compare it to that time Heero’s eyes popped out of his head...
“What if they were putting in a relay.” Duo shifted excitedly, grabbing his laptop and launching the image of the satellite network. “All the satellites they’ve intercepted have been interchanges; points of contact where several lines of satellite communication meet. Kind of like the shuttle interchanges here inside Frank.”
“Right,” Heero agreed softly, staring hard at the picture as if it might suddenly reveal their plan.
“Well, if you rigged all the interchanges to not only continue relaying the messages being sent to their original destination, but also to send a copy somewhere else, say...to Frank, then...”
“You’d know everything,” Trowa sat up, remembering Frank’s boast and wondering why they hadn’t realised it before. That was how Frank maintained himself and kept the colony out of sight, by always knowing where no one else was going to be.
“The Preventers have been updating the satellite relay system because so much of it was damaged in the wars. Frank must be having to update to keep up with the times.”
“Or there’s a particular piece of information he wants but can’t get any other way,” Duo smirked, shrugging as Heero and Trowa both glared at him for ruining their nice, simple explanation for all things. “Spanner in the works just sucks all round, don’t it?”
Eloquent, Duo. Really eloquent. Trowa sighed and opened his damn muesli bar, chewing without much interest as he examined the satellite network image. Duo had already marked the effected satellites in red, the destroyed one in green.
“There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to it.” At least not one he could see and he looked to Duo but he shook his head as well.
“I can try what I’ve hacked so far and see if I can’t find anything?”
“Just be careful not to leave evidence you’ve hacked anything. We don’t want them tracing it back here.” Wouldn’t that just be fun to explain? Hello senior individuals in charge of Frank, oh you’ve noticed all this illegal cabling Heero has littered my floor with? And you’re aware Heero and Duo have no identification? And that I have an awful lot of money that seems to have come from nowhere? And you’re concerned about the small arsenal we have? And our un-networked computers and gadgets are ringing alarm bells for you? Oh, and yes that is the Origen asleep in my bed...yeah, not a conversation he felt like having any time soon. Not that there would be a conversation because Heero would have killed them before they got through the door, and then it would have been a night of skulking about the station trying to dispose of bodies. Which Trowa still wasn’t in the mood for, thank you kindly.
Heero was already working, taking his laptop to the desk and sitting in their one chair, fingers flying on the keys, gaze fixed on the screen. Trowa looked down at Duo and smiled at exaggerated roll of the eyes he got, but then Duo got up and came to sit on the bed with him, watching Wufei. He looked gentler like this, having nothing to do besides wait and watch and Trowa could see all the reasons Heero had finally given in and decided to have a life. This was a side of Duo even his friends rarely saw, a lowering of walls so high even Duo himself had trouble scrambling over them at times. It left Trowa with the feeling of emptiness he’d felt after the bad dreams and he softly stroked Wufei’s fingers, willing them to respond. They didn’t.
“Hey...if Frank built a copy of Wufei, to replace him, and cloned his heart and brain and lungs and everything...how come Nataku’s a girl?”
Trowa frowned, because it was strange. Duo had explained it away with his theory that Frank had made himself a girlfriend, but that was far-fetched, considering the gender of the host was irrelevant. But Nataku, while apparently being a robot, had a female form just as Duo had said and it left them both frowning as they puzzled it out.
“I told you it was weird her name was Nataku,” Heero point out, turning only long enough to fix them both with a knowing look before turning back to his laptop.
“Wait...Frank remade Wufei’s dead wife? With Wufei’s organs? Is that even possible?”
Trowa was just thinking it through. Heart, brain, lungs...they were the vital organs, but the robotic parts were all female in gender, and she had been named Nataku. Trowa looked at Wufei and frowned, unable to keep from following two parallel lines of thought and not sure which was the right one.
“Either Frank made her, or Wufei did.”
“If Wufei was responsible, it would mean he had some sort of control, which would also mean he could’ve gotten himself out of this pickle without us being called in,” Duo reasoned.
“True. So we assume Frank made her Nataku deliberately, instead of a direct copy of Wufei. Why? What’s the difference between Wufei and her?”
“Experience,” Heero responded again and Trowa really wished if he was going to be a part of the conversation that he would stop doing the whole ‘I can do two things at once’ thing and join the conversation whole heartedly. It was just annoying to have him jumping in with answers all the time when you were never sure if he was listening at all to begin with.
It was also annoying that he was right.
“Anyone know what Wufei was like as a kid?” Trowa mused, wishing he knew what Wufei was like as a child, that he knew stories about him growing up, and had pictures of him at different ages. He wished he knew everything, even if Wufei would likely make it his life’s mission to hunt down every last image and burn it.
“They recruited him to pilot a Gundam. That should pretty much sum up what he was like!” Duo pointed out, exasperated, but then he paused.
“Angry,” Trowa mumbled. “Determined, adamant he’s right when he’s not...”
“All the fire and none of the water,” Duo mumbled and Trowa just stared at him. “What?”
“Nothing, that was just very poetic,” Trowa laughed at him, shaking his head and covering his laughter by turning his head a little so his hair hid his grin.
“Shut up!” And Duo was blushing, arms folded over his chest, sulking. Brilliant. But he’d had a point and Trowa looked down at Wufei and tried to compare what Wufei guiding Frank was compared to what Wufei without restraint guiding Frank would be.
“We shouldn’t have put Nataku in,” Heero agreed, not needing Trowa to say it and they all just nodded. But they knew taking her out wasn’t really an option either, because then Frank really did have free reign, and there was a reason the people who made Frank had thought he needed a human conscience. And they couldn’t just go pick a random person off the street and put them in, for one...they could be just as bad as Nataku, and secondly they’d be sentencing them to the same fate Wufei had been, which was frankly worse than death, pun entirely intended! It was just all so cleverly done, and they had no way of knowing if their suspicions were correct until Wufei woke up, and even he might not know. Just how conscious was he and how much control had he managed? What if it really had been none at all?
“This sucks.” Duo flopped down across the end of the bed and fiddled with Wufei’s toes, smirking when Trowa scowled at him. He was right, it did suck and he wished Nataku and Frank had arranged a larger room because this one was getting damn crowded. At least Duo and Heero weren’t doing the rabbit thing with him there; he supposed that was a small consolation.
“You can start building the transmitter we’re going to attach to the satellite,” Heero said, pointing to a bag of supplies near the kitchenette bench. “Everything you need should be in there.”
“I’ll do the programming, you build?” Duo arched a brow, waiting for Trowa’s response. Trowa thought he looked like a racoon.
“You just want to write the message to Quatre,” Trowa knew immediately and Duo grinned but Trowa nodded and let him take the laptop. Heero would likely end up editing whatever got sent anyway so it wasn’t really doing any harm. Besides, he wasn’t in the mood for typing and building meant he got to do something with his hands other than pet Wufei and wait for him to wake up.
He was slow to start, still not engaging with the task as he emptied the components Heero had gathered into a pile on the sleeping bag and slowly started rummaging for what he needed, but once that was done and process was so easy and familiar he sank into it gratefully. The mission mindset was an odd one, sometimes it wouldn’t come without the adrenalin or the added incentive of ‘oh shit I’m gonna die’ but sometimes Trowa found himself in it for no particular reason at all. He’d read an entire book without moving. He’d make a four course meal...just for himself. He’d got for a quick run in the morning and get home at sunset. Something just clicked into place, the world disappeared and the only conscious thing he could think of was the moment and what he had to do. Read, cook, run. Make a transmitter. He liked the mindset, it was familiar and easy and what he needed.
It was ‘night’ inside Frank by the time he finished and he handed it over to Duo so he could load the program. He was proud of his work too. The transmitter was small, the size of his palm, and wafer thin. They could attach it to any plate on the satellite and no one would notice it was there. Even Duo looked impressed as he turned it over a few times in his hands, eyeing Trowa curiously.
“You been keeping busy between call ins to work with us?”
“I knit too,” Trowa smirked.
“No way!”
“You’re right...no way.” Sometimes, Duo was just gullible, and it was so fun and easy to fall into the pattern of giving him what he half expected to hear, just to see him fumble for a response. He helped Duo shift the transmitter to connect everything he needed and then sat back and amused himself watching boyfriend 1 and boyfriend 2 spend time together typing on their laptops. Neither looked up or so much as acknowledged the other’s existence, but Trowa knew either could have told him exactly where the other was, what they were doing and probably how many words a minute they were typing at.
He was about to comment on it when Wufei jerked into a sitting position on the bed, green goo erupting from his mouth and nose, and Trowa was almost sure his ears. It came out in a fountaining mess of sludge and Heero reacted immediately, hauling Wufei up and taking him to the shower, dumping him rather unceremoniously on the floor. Trowa was a step behind and Duo leaned against his shoulder as they watched the green mess pour out of Wufei in choking chunks. There was far too much of it, enough to fill Wufei, and when it finally began to slow Wufei’s body slumped back against the shower wall and fell limp once more, a sticky green trail of ooze still leaking out one side of his mouth.
“Okay, that was disgusting!”
“Duo!” Trowa scowled but Duo just shrugged and moved back into the main room, going to the bed and pulling off the sheets, tossing them in the kitchenette and getting new sheets from the closet. Trowa stopped watching him then and turned back to Heero, stepping into the shower to help him get Wufei out of the bandages and showering him clean again.
Duo had remade the bed by the time they brought Wufei back out, clean and wrapped in towels and Trowa laid him out while Heero got the first aid kit. Heero passed a handful of bandages to him and Trowa watched, stunned, as he grabbed a q-tip, dipped it in disinfectant and started sticking it into one of the plugs on Wufei’s arm. It came out slightly bloodied and Trowa took a minute to settle his stomach and mind before picking up a q-tip of his own and getting to work.
It was a long process but an hour later Wufei was clean and bandaged and they even managed to get a pair of house pants on him, more for fear of his wrath when he woke up naked than anyone caring he was naked while he was unconscious. Trowa tucked him in under the sheet and hesitated over the slimed blanket, sighing.
“I bought extras,” Duo told him softly and went to fetch it from one of the bags he’d brought back from his shopping expedition. Trowa took it gratefully and tossed it over Wufei, leaving him alone because after sticking q-tips in him for an hour he didn’t feel like doing anything more.
“He’ll wake up in a few hours.”
“Wait, did you know that was going to happen? Heero, you could warn a guy!”
“I didn’t know, Duo,” Heero defended himself grumpily, then admitted in a soft voice, “I suspected.”
“That’s the same thing you whack job!”
It wasn’t but neither Heero or Trowa bothered to point it out. Duo didn’t do disgusting too well and this would likely just become one of those things he reminded them about for years to come. Remember that time when Wufei was unconscious and all of a sudden turned into a vomiting slime monster? Definitely was going to remind them for years.
Trowa sighed and went to get a muesli bar, pausing only when Duo sat on his sleeping bag, clutching his teddy bear, gaping at him.
“What?”
“NOW you want to eat?”
He was hungry now. And Wufei had expelled all the crap from the capsule and would wake up soon and then Trowa would want to spend time with him, not eating, so it was a better idea to eat now. Right? He didn’t see why Duo was freaking out about it.
“I’m hungry now.”
“You’re all mental!”