Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Cult Characteristic ❯ Chapter 11

ELEVEN

The door shut quietly, the barest whisper through the house followed by a soft click. It was almost smothered by the soft slumbers of the house's inhabitants and the sounds of night prowlers on the hunt, but one heard.

Heero looked up from the book in his lap and frowned at the clock on the wall. It was almost four am. He didn't say anything when Wufei stumbled into the kitchen, oblivious to his presence on the couch only a few metres away. Instead, Heero listened to what Wufei could tell him without words.

There was only the vaguest hint of liquor in the air. A few drinks, nothing to put him over the limit so he could safely drive Relena home. The faint scent of Relena's perfume lingering, mixed with a more exotic, smoky smell that tickled Heero's nose. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing, except the heavy fall of each foot against the wooden floor. Too heavy.

Frowning, Heero stood, tucking the book under the cushions, hoping no one found it and if they did that they did not assume it was his. He made sure Wufei saw him as he slipped up beside his friend and gently peeled the coat off his shoulders. Shoulder that, now he was close enough to touch, Heero saw were tense. Heero reached out and gently began to knead, hoping to coax words from his silent companion.

He was rewarded with the slow relaxation of muscles and a deep sigh. Heero forced his fingers to continue, working their way down the length of Wufei's back, flicking over the small bumps of his spine.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Heero finally prodded when it became obvious nothing was going to follow the sigh. Wufei finally turned to face him, some emotion etched on his face that Heero did not recognise. A mixture of things that didn't fit on the usually calm, logical man.

"No, I do not want to talk about it," Wufei hissed through clenched teeth. "But there is no alternative." With that he motioned for Heero to follow him into `little china'.

Curious and more than a little nervous, Heero followed, stopping briefly at the white gateway to his own wing of the house and opening his senses to the soft whisper of breath that continued peacefully. Satisfied Duo was still asleep, he passed through the gold and maroon arch into the dragon's lair.

It was strange, walking the dark hall, moonlight slipping through the slim windows sporadically breaking the monotony of the wall, glinting off the gold panels, illuminating shards of blood coloured hangings of winged serpents and exotic lands. The walls seemed alive, writhing, trying to break free of themselves, trying to reach out and touch.

Heero had stayed away from the other wings of the house, for no particular reason save Duo was not in them but in his own. As he watched Wufei's back as he moved through his territory, Heero realised how completely Wufei belonged. He was the master of this small world in a way Heero would never be in his own. It was like seeing a lair of unfamiliar things that leapt out with wicked intent only to be soothed by the appearance of the master.

"Nataku would have loved this place," Heero whispered, only vaguely aware he had spoken out loud.

"She does."

Heero stopped mid stride and gaped at Wufei's back. Wufei didn't even pause, turning into a room off to the right. Heero shook his head, deciding there would be time to consider that statement later, and walked through the open door.

An office. A very clean, well organised office. It was filled with familiar tokens, each one forcing a shiver down Heero's spine, a shudder through his limbs. Wufei was booting up the computer under the desk, already patching something in to the slim wall screen. Heero watched in dazed amazement as files appeared, faces and bios, streams of information from publicly accessible net files. At the same time Heero was aware of Wufei's fingers flicking pictures out from beneath small yellow post-its, taping them onto the wall beside the computer.

"What is all this?"

"You already know the answer to that," Wufei replied coldly, passing a laptop to Heero as he sat down in the rather uncomfortable looking chair behind the desk. Heero quickly took the only other chair in the room.

"This man," Wufei said softly as he pointed to a man on the wall screen, is Senator Devourjac. He is the man in charge of `cleaning up' L2."

Heero nodded, familiar with the name, if not so much with the face. Relena had met with him several times while Heero was working as her bodyguard. He had never stayed in the room long, but something about Devourjac had never seemed…right.

"These are his sons," Wufei continued, clicking to open the net file images on the Devourjac family and pointing to two young men who looked even nastier than their father. Heero shifted uncomfortably. Something about them was not…right! And it wasn't just the anger pouring off Wufei. There was something more if he could just point his gun at it.

These are from the security videos from outside the cult house," Wufei hissed as he pointed to the images he had taped to the wall beside the wall screen. The men on the screen were the same two men in the photographs. Heero growled.

"Oh, it gets better. I saw Garmen at the party, and he pointed out some things to me." Wufei clicked on another photo file and a young woman appeared on the screen. She had the same nose and mouth as the male Devourjac's, but the eyes were more slanted. She was familiar.

"Rosemary Devourjac," Heero said softly, putting a name to the face, dredging it from his memory. "She attended Relena's pacifist school during the war…"

Wufei was nodding. His eyes were urging Heero to put the whole puzzle together, but it was complex. There were a lot of loose ends and some `facts' that were little more than speculation.

"Before you start thinking too hard, let me show you what got me," Wufei almost whispered, voice choking with pent-up emotion. "Is this familiar?" He held up a small photo and Heero found he had to look away.

"It's Duo…that night…" He stumbled, choking on the words. "In that…hole…"

Wufei only nodded, dropping the picture on the table and grabbing another. Heero turned his face aside, no more able to look at it than the first.

"Fiona."

"Yes, Duo, and Fiona," Wufei agreed. "But look at the photos Heero. Ignore who they are, and just look!"

It took more courage than Heero had thought he possessed, but he forced himself to look, and fastening a glare on his face he was able to look past the identities to the photos themselves. Blood, bruises, pale skin…Eyes that should have been dead but were strangely alive as if they actually knew a way it could get worse, and maybe they did. Then he saw it. The true similarity.

"Black trousers…Black shirt…Fiona's wearing a black…shawl?" All their clothing was torn and filthy, but they wore the same trousers, the same shirt. A uniform?

"At the party, we were served by young boys, not a one older than fourteen, I would swear it on Nataku's grave. They all wore black trousers, black shirts and black capes. Not one of them would go anywhere near the Devourjac table."

Heero stared at the photos again, dumbfounded. If Wufei was right, and all the servers were once orphans of L2 now `owned' by the Cult…Why would they flaunt it at the party? Why have them wear those clothes?

"Because no one would ever look past the faces in those photos, Heero. Garmen dropped hints for me all night and I barely figured it out!"

Heero pushed the photos aside, unable to look at them anymore.

"Explain!" Heero demanded, waving his arm over the desk of post-its.

"On the left are the street rats of L2; all the lower class that's been dragging the colony down since it was made. On the right are the cult figures. In the middle are the missing elements."

"There don't seem to be many missing," Heero pointed out, a hint of sarcasm in his voice as he stared at the yellow squares that were thoroughly scribbled on in Wufei's neat hand.

"We needed a benefactor, and we needed a motive," Wufei said too calmly. Heero realised Wufei was fast slipping into mission mode and was aware he himself was not far behind.

"And?" Heero prodded. Crunch time.

"Relena originally sent Dorothy to L2, straight after the Maremeia incident," Wufei pointed out. "Dorothy told us wen she got back nothing short of extermination would clean up that colony and that she wasn't willing to do it."

"…Hn…" A smirk appeared on Wufei's face at that response.

"Not a week later Rosemary is on her way to L2. A week later, Rose's dear old father, Randolf Devourjac, is made a Senator and given complete political authority over L2. Within a month crime is down 50% and the colony is finally making ends meet."

Heero glared. He wasn't sure what he was glaring at. He didn't need to ask to know the reason crime had gone down was because the criminals were gone, but on L2… `criminals' was a rather broad term.

"In the same week Randolf became a Senator, his two sons took up residence in the Devourjac manor, the same manor I just had dinner at. That same manor just happens to have an old sewer running underneath that comes out only a block away from the cult headquarters we discovered. As you know, no large amounts of trafficking were reported between the colony shuttle bays and the cult house. However, over the past year the traffic between the shuttle bays and the Devourjac manor has increased by 20% each month."

Fury was such a small word. So was rage. Still Heero couldn't think of anything better to describe what he felt. It was all there, right under their noses, and they couldn't prove a damn thing, could they?

"Is there more?"

"Of course," Wufei replied smugly. "When Dorothy originally returned from L2, the Devourjac's were a minor noble house that Treize would have sneered and laughed at. They had two manor houses to their name and were on the brink of putting one under mortgage."

"They were broke?" He exclaimed, startled.

"Very. Two days after Dorothy's return, Rosemary's bank account receives an anonymous cheque or one million credits. A similar amount is added to her account each week for the next two months, an even larger sum now appearing in her father's account fortnightly."

"The benefactor," Heero supplied, needing to say something, anything, to keep his mind focused and stop him from storming out the door right then.

"Yes, The Benefactor. But isn't it strange that when Dorothy returned we were in the middle of an election campaign and the only person with the authority to elect anyone to colonial positions was Relena Peacecraft?"

Heero gasped, kicked his chair back as he stumbled to his feet, fuming as all the pieces finally fell into place. He didn't want to believe it, but…He couldn't believe it, but…

"It can't be…"

"She has the money. She has the power. She even…" Wufei hesitated only a second before plunging forward. "She even has the motive."

"What?" Heero hissed, seething. He could barely control himself, only his trainging as a gundam pilot, kicking in after too long in silence, keeping him in check.

"With Duo out of the way, she had you."

*

"With Duo out of the way, she had you."

The shadow by the door slumped against the wall silently, tears in his eyes as he tried to breath without making a sound. It had taken so much effort to get there, to move as he once had despite his injuries and the bone-deep lethargy that kept telling him to go back to sleep. He had followed their voices, drawn inexplicably through the haunting red and gold hall to the doorway where the soft light of computer screens lit their smooth faces, making their eyes seem all that more slanted, and all that more foreign. Not that he loved them any less.

But he could not let them see him. Could not let them know he had heard. If they knew, they might try to stop him, or try to hide things from him. Hell,t hey were hiding things from him already, and he didn't like it.

Duo slipped back down the hallway, slowly and not without a little pain. He came to the foyer and blinked at the white archway that led to Heero's rooms, then turned his entire being slightly to the left.

Darkness. A gaping black hole filled with secrets. It called to him and Duo gave into the call, knowing what he needed, knowing what he had to do. Duo shuffled silently into the wing of the house that was his and his alone, knowing that it would not be Duo Maxwell who would walk out.

Shinigami was rising.