Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Butterfly: Black Wings ❯ Chapter Two ( Chapter 2 )

A/N: words spoken in a foreign language will appear as follows:

## "words spoken in a foreign laugnage" ##

Butterfly: Black Wings

by: Banshee Puppet

Chapter Two: Failsafe

"Engine Two is out! I repeat, Engine Two has failed! Water, we've got to get out of here before this whole thing blows!"

Sally cursed under her breath. "Wufei is still in there!" she protested. "How much longer can we last?" she demanded.

Lin Pao had gotten them again. While the small crew waited for their commradde, he'd had his men leak duuvinium into the docking station. The gaseous chemical, though harmless to humans, causes metals and plastics to compress. A loud thud indicated another massive dent in the outer hull.

"Two minutes, and that's if we're lucky!" the young man in the co-pilot's seat returned in a panic. "I don't wnat to leave Chang either Captain, but if we don't get out of here now we won't get another chance!"

"Damnit! YOU RECKLESS BASTARDS!!" Sally screamed.

"Incoming from HQ. It's Lady Une."

Sally turned to the screen as the girl patched her through. "Water, get your men back here right now."

"But Wufei is..."

"We will get him back Sally. Rest assured of that. But in order to get him back, I need you alive."

Sally clenched her fists. "Maya, take us home."

"Roger that."

And the long flight back to Earth was filled with morbid silence. `Wufei, you damn fool, don't you dare die, not now,' Sally thought. `Not before I can kick your no-good ass.'

Venice. History had made it a city of waterways and it hadn't changed much. Catherine shivered and pulled the plastic poncho she wore tighter over her head. It was the rainy season here in the Italian city, and the canals were slightly flooded.

She thanked the boatman and tipped him, apologizing for the wet bills before slipping into the old Hilton Hotel. She removed the poncho's hood and looked around. Within her own mind, she let off a low whistle. `Fancy. I know that Quatre is loaded, but knowing it and seeing it are two very different things.'

##"Can I help you?" ## the clerk asked.

In halting Italian, Catharine spoke. ##"Yes. Please. I am looking for Mr. Winner and... Mr. Barton. I...uh..." ## She struggled to find the word she was looking for. ## "I am..his.." ##

The main raised a hand and said in thickly accented English that she had to take special care to understand, "You are...Mr. Barton's sister? ...Miss Catherine?"

"Yes!" Catherine said, relieved. Trowa had called her his sister? It made her happy. She'd always felt as if he was a younger brother to her, so that he felt similarly felt good, and she needed to feel good, now especially. She needed happiness and distraction.

"Penthouse Level. #2 on the right side," he said thickly. "All the way up top."

"Thank you very much!" she replied.

"I will call ahead of you."

"Thanks."

Quatre nearly jumped out of his skin when the phone rang. "Y-yes? I mean,...si?" he stumbled, straightening his hair. ## "Okay, yes. Thank you very much... ...Buona Sera," ## he said, hanging up the phone.

Trowa sat up on the floor and raised an eyebrow at the slight blonde.

"Catherine is here! She's earlier than I thought! For Allah's sake, where's my shirt?!"

Trowa handed the button down over, not looking at all concerned as the Arabian boy tried desperately to make himself look presentable within the next theiry seconds. "How can you be so calm? Catherine will be up here any second and I'm only half-dressed!" Quatre panicked. "She'll think...!"

"That I was giving you a massage?" Trowa finished for him calmly. "Calm down. Getting your shoulders rubbed isn't really a crime, Quatre."

`Well, no, b-but...vest, vest, vest...' the blonde thought.

Trowa handed it to him. "Exactly where you left it," he stated.

"Don't be so embarrased. It was only a massage. You've been stressed and you needed it."

"But...!"

Trowa had to repress a laugh. Quatre was really such fun to torture about this sort of thing. They were close, so of course that kind of rumor would circulate. He grabbed Quatre by the shoulders to prevent the blonde's impending panic attack. "Quatre, I offered to give you a back massage, not a blow job. Stop flipping out."

Quatre's cheeks flared and the blonde began to stutter, no words actually distinguishable through the string of pure nonsense. Trowa just pulled the boy into a friendly hug and laughed. "I'm sorry Quatre, but watching you get this flusters is amusing," he said.

"Trowa, you're becoming an irritating jerk lately," the smaller young man protested.

"I know." `Yeah, I'm awful, wretched, and at this rate I'll ruin that innocent mind of yours completely. But...I am also...happy, very happy, my friend, to feel as if I am being useful to you,' he thought.

"Oh! Sorry if I'm intruding! The door was open, so I thought..." Catherine had caught them in their embrace, faces close, just as Quatre looked up to glare at the tall European.

Trowa let go, and unable to resist, said, "not at all! We were just finalizing our engagement."

"Huh?" Catherine blinked, unsure whether he was serious or not. He joked with the same tone he spoke with, so it was difficult to tell.

"Trowa!" Quatre protested, tackling the brunette in his `righteous indignation'. "Don't give her strange ideas! It's bad enough that Duo's gotten Heero to join in on the wedding jokes without you helping!!!"

Trowa's eyes became deadly serious. "Quatre."

"What?" Quatre blinked at the sudden shift of expression.

"... ...move further down," the green eyed man said suggestively.

It was then that he realized he was straddling Trowa's waist and he blushed, squeaked, and leapt to his feet. "Ohh you! He's..." he began to explain to Catherine when his green-eyed friend erupted into peals of laughter, holding his stomach. Quatre sighed. "...just teasing me," he explained. `He's a horrible, horrible person."

Catherine stared at Trowa's smiling face for a few long moments. `He's so happy. I-I'm glad, but-I feel like I'm interrupting him.'

"I'm sorry Catherine," Trowa said finally, brushing himself off and offering her a seat on the couch. "What brings you to Venice?"

"I'm on a temporary leave of absence, actually," the woman admitted, feeling guilty for being secretive up until now.

"On leave? Why?" Trowa asked. It seemed unusual was all; the circus had been Catherine's entire life for as long as he'd known her. She didn't have anything else or the impetus to get anything else. She was happy there, at least he'd always thought so.

"I...can't concentrate," she said quietly. "Someone might get hurt, like that time...when I cut you. You remember, right?"

Trowa's eyes grew grave as he shot Quatre a look. "I'm going to make us some tea!" the blood said enthusiastically before scurrying out of the room. Trowa sat down beside the woman, leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees. "What happened Cathy?" he asked.

Catherine Bloom hesitated, something she wasn't known for doing, pretty much, well, ever. "Cathy?" he repeated.

"I...met someone," she said after a pause. "But he's gone now." She decided not to tell him that it was Wufei. She didn't want him to be angry with his friend. She sighed. "I'm not angry anymore. I just don't understand. He feels the same way I do, so I...I can't stop thinking about it, Trowa, and it's distracting me pretty badly."

`Cathy.' She wasn't crying, he realized, and figured it was simply because she'd run out of tears to shed. She'd cried about this enough; that's how it seemed. And it pained Trowa to know it, but there wasn't really anything he could do to help her. He put his hand on her knee and gave it a slightly awkward pat, which was all it took for the tears to streak down her face once again. "Damn it." She wiped at them over and over. "I promised myself I wouldn't cry anymore But I...Trowa...I..."

"Shh," he comforted, holding her in a loose embrace. "It's okay."

"It's not okay at all!" she demanded. "I miss him so much! It's so painful that sometimes I can hardly breathe and I...I just don't know what to do! I can't even work. I can't...I...how do I get past this? Tell me, please, I just don't know what to do. Everything has changed."

Trowa tightened his arms around her protectively. He'd never before seen her in such a state. For so long it had been her that was protecting him. "You're right," he told her. "It's not okay, but telling you that sort of thing is really all that I can do, because I don't understand either Cathy. I don't understand love. You know that."

"It's...not easy..." she said, her tears stopping once again. "But it was worth it, even if only for a little while."

Wufei awoke to a throbbing headache and cold metal. Slowly, and taking extra care around a shoulder that felt particularly tender, he pulled himself into an upright position. `Where?' he wondered, and then the previous week flashed through his mind. That's right. Lin Pao-Lin had trickedh im. `Peace is what happens when people are tired of fighting. His revolutionary ways go against his own wishes,' he thought.

"Welcome back Sleeping Beauty,"

Lin's sarcastic tone cut through the hollow silence and was not appreciated for its efforts.

"Why am I here?" Wufei asked flatly, pulling against the cuffs that had his hands bound behind his back. Another chain was laced through here and looped around a steel construction beam. He wasn't going anywhere for a while. Well, crap. Oh, he had no intention of giving up. He was Chang Wufei, after all; he'd been in worse situations than this, but at the moment, he really didn't know how he was going to get out of this one, so he glared at his cousin to let him know how not pleased he was.

"Wufei Change, you are a gundam pilot, a preventer as well, and a survivor of the suicidal L-5, surely you can understand the steps that I am taking."

Wufei could hear a dangerous echo of Treize in his cousin now. `Trieze. How much longer do I have to keep fighting you? I don't want to fight to defeat you anymore. I want to fight for Catherine.' He heaved a mental sigh. `Catherine...' and then he snapped himself back into the present. It was pointless to dwell on his reasons for fighting now. All he wanted to do was stop Lin, because he had to, because he was a dragon, but also a black butterfly, and black wings have always been a symbol of those who have fallen. These warriors of the past with their black wings and their black hands-all we can do now is protect those who cannot protect themselves, and hope that when we die for that kind of love, those who we've left behind can honor our sacrifice, and with time, forgive us our heavy sins.

"Stop talking in riddles. What are you looking for?"

"A book, actually."

"A book?" Wufei well knew that even if he said a book, that wasn't what he truly meant.

"Yes, a little black book cataloging the Nation's dirty little secrets, and a manmade star that will finish this long and repetitive conversation between Earth and the Colonies. It's a fragile affair, you know, breaking the world, but I think it's finally coming together."

As usual, Lin Pao spoke in qualifiers and riddles, hinting at his meanings but not giving enough to go on for anything solid. `Break the world? Little black book? What the hell is he driving at?' Wufei realized now that he would have to wait it out for now. `I'll stop you at L-5 then, when I know what it is you're planning,' he decided. It was really all that he could do for now.

"I'm going to stop you!" he snapped, pulling on his chains.

Lin Pao gave a simple, light-hearted laugh. "Well how would I have any fun if you didn't try?" he asked innocently.

Sad to say, but that is the first time that Wufei realized his cousin wasn't quite sane. It had never crossed his mind before because...well, because the roads Lin took to his goal were always completely logical...but there was something missing, something unable to be claimed by war or by peace. `What...what made you this way?' he wondered. `Why are you still so angry with me, after all these years?' Wufei knew that Lin Pao had always hated him, but couldn't understand why the former monk was treating this like some personal vendetta. So he was surprised when Lin left the room and his current guard, leaning on her shotgun sighed. "It's because something small will never work, because blowing up the Earth, like they planned back then didn't come to the root of the problem."

"So what are you guys...?" Wufei started to ask. It seemed as if he would be able to get some information out of this woman-no, girl-she couldn't be more than sixteen, though not much younger than he was now, only a few years, there was still a lot of growing up to do.

"We're going to use K-04's mobile transmission frequency to destroy the colonies, all of them. It's what it was intended for anyway. We only need L-5's code to unlock the device now."

"WHAT??!" Wufei couldn't believe what he was hearing! They'd worked so hard to protect the colonies! Now Lin Pao wanted to blow them up? Kill millions of people. That...

"That's his idea of bringing peace! That's totally unforgivable!" He was enraged, fighting against his chains. He felt the steel give, only very slightly, and his eyes widened marginally in surprise. Okay, so he was getting somewhere. Good.

"If the colonies are gone there won't be anyone left for the Earth to fight. That's why. Sacrifices must be made for our beautiful dreams. Anyway, this is what the earth intended all along. If they didn't, that failsafe would never have been installed."

`Failsafe? What failsafe?' Wufei wondered. He'd never heard anything about this.

"You guys, the gundam pilots, you're all so strong and still so naive. That's why you should be here to see the rebirth of outer space, so that you can see how misguided you have been in fighting useless battles for useless ideals, when all along, Earth has had us all in its palm, for its own whims, but the Earth can't be destroyed. It's our heritage, so this is all that we can do."

Wufei's rage calmed and he smirked up at the foolish girl. "All that we can do?" he asked. "I know a girl who doesn't believe in that sort of phrase, and that's why I'm certain now, that I can definitely defeat you. That sort of phrase...aren't you just covering up your own cowardice? Weaklings like you shouldn't be fighting." And she wasn't weak in the way that he had thought that Sally was weak so long ago; rather, her spirit was weak, it had a flaw of cowardice in it. `I can definitely defeat that kind of weakness,' the gundam pilot thought. `No problem.' Catharine had been right, he realized now: he would always be fighting. `I don't need the Altron, or the Shenlong anymore. I don't even need Nataku. I can be strong on my own now, at last, I can be strong as Chang Wufei and that will be enough. I can fight as I am, a man only, and I can win. I will definitely win, even if it kills me.'

~End Chapter Two~

A/N: Well, this chapter was extremely difficult to write and I feel that it wasn't terribly interesting, yet necessary. I don't know, I feel the first story of the arc was and will continue to be more entertaining because the Wu/Cat dialogues were fun (if somewhat pointless) and this story is primarily plot. Well, Quatre's back rub was fun to write though! Hah! I really wanted Quatre and Trowa to be sort of ubiquitous(I think that's the word I want to use here.) Are they very good friends, is it something more-that should be up for interpretation. I want to let the reader see my story's side characters relationships in the light they choose for the post part...though Trowa teasing Quatre and saying "blow job" so easily, I dunno, I imagine Quatre's expression and laugh. As far as Wu & Cathy, I don't think they'll see each other again until towards the end of this story and then more fun in the final story of the arc. Uhm,so...yeah...now to figure out what happens next and hope that it's more interesting than this chapter. I'm soooo bad at writing action! Sorry! I'll try to get better! In the meanwhile, thank you for reading anyway, and I hope to have a new chapter up soon.