Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Intruder ❯ The light at the end of the hall... ( Chapter 4 )

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Intruder - Part Four
The light at the end of the hall...


Duo stood in his room. He was still.
Heero watched feeling lost, wondering how the most easy-going of all of them had just exploded in a torrent of rage and confusion like that. That was bothering Duo too. He just couldn't understand what he had seen.
~ What are you doing? Don't know, not much. Where are you? My room. What time is it? Don't know, maybe lunchtime? Why are you here? Helping him ~ He looked at Heero ~ How? Playing recordings. Who? Don't know. Don't know!? Don't be stupid, you must know! Must know! Who? Who? WHO? ~
"Duo, -" Heero began
~ Duo. That's me, Duo. Duo who? ~


Trowa stood in the door way surveying the destruction. He couldn't tell if that was how it was supposed to be or not. He stood watching. Heero stood watching.
Duo stood, blind to them both.
He heard footsteps from behind. Running footsteps, two sets of running footsteps walking. Everything was so slow.
"Maxwell!" Chang called up the corridor
Then the silence was broken, the moment was lost, and time regained its continuous rhythm through space. Wufei came in the door.
~ Maxwell? Duo Maxwell? Duo Maxwell. ~
"Duo Maxwell." Said Duo, blankly. Then suddenly reverting to his usual grin.
"Hey, Wufei, What're you doin' up? You're s'posed t'be in bed."
"Yes" he admitted, "but I would rather do something than sit and do nothing."
Quatre came round the corner, Trowa stopped him. 'Wait.'
"Well y' can help me an' Heero check these tapes if ya want to." Duo offered.
"I would."
'Ok.' Trowa said as he let Quatre by.
~ What happened? ~ he thought as he moved past Trowa, into the room.
"Hi, Quatre, do you want t' help too?"
"Sure, If you want me to Duo."
"Oh great, course I do! It'd take us age otherwise!" he beamed "Anyway, Heero's no good for conversation, an' I get bored of talkin' t' the wall."
Quatre laughed, this was the Duo he knew. The Duo they all knew. Trowa and even Heero smiled. ~ Situation diffused, mission accomplished. ~
Then they both left the other three to check the vidscreens alone.


"What happened, Heero?" Trowa asked once they were settled over a game of chess and two cans in the Mess.
"He saw this." he said holding up the data disk.
"What's on it?"
"Him. At least it appears to be anyway."
"What? What do you mean? He wouldn't go out like that over a picture of himself on TV. He's been on the news before, when they, I mean, when we captured Deathscythe. There were posters of him everywhere, but the picture wasn't very good, you couldn't see his face too well. I made sure of that."
"It was of him doing something he hadn't done"
"What?"
"Ok, you are Trowa, right? Trowa Barton."
"...Right"
"And you walk into your room and see yourself, Trowa Barton, on TV doing something which you personally haven't done. What is that like? How do you feel?"
"Confused, and kind of, kind of out of place, I guess."
"So that is exactly what Duo felt, except the guy who is possibly the closest he's got to a his best friend could have been killed this morning, and he's still angry from that. He's also still angry at whoever it was that was shooting at you this morning. Angry at the message which he played, but didn't put there, and now he sees himself putting it there, and all this pent up anger and rage just explodes out of him, all at once. Then it's all gone, and he's fine. There is nothing medically wrong, physically or mentally, with Duo Maxwell. In fact he is probably the most sane of us all around here."
"Now there's a comforting thought."
"He may seem like a pain in the butt, and often is, nevertheless, he still knows exactly what he's doing and why, and he, with Quatre's help, keep us all together."
Heero smiled slightly, just enough to make the difference visible, but Trowa saw it and agreed. Finishing his drink he said
"I think Quatre had the right idea earlier."
"What was that?"
"We all deserve a good rest. I'm going to have mine now. See you later, Heero."
"Yeah, 'night" ~ Not a bad idea ~ Heero yawned and finished his drink. ~ Time for bed ~


Quatre yawned, he was exhausted. This had been a day he doubted he'd ever forget.
~ Well I'm glad it's not just me ~ Duo thought, as he yawned too. He was tired. Tired from this busy, troublesome day. ~ I seriously need some sleep. ~
He looked across at Wufei. He was still engrossed in the vidscreens, looking for something, anything to identify Duo's new twin. Duo yawned again, louder, on purpose. It worked. Wufei took a deep breath, hiding his tiredness and sighed.
"Shall we call it a day, guys?" Quatre asked. He had been awake all day, unlike either Duo or Wufei and must have been on the verge of dozing off for the last hour or so.
"Yes"
"Yeah, I guess. It ain't like the recordings are gonna disappear overnight, are they?"
"Good idea, lets make backup files of all of them."
"All of 'em? Aw, c'mon Chang, I was kiddin'."
"Alright, but I'm transferring copies of all files to my computer too."
"Fine, whatever. Can I go t' sleep now?"
"Yes"
"Shh. Quatre's off." He whispered, motioning to the lightly sleeping blonde. "You copy those files, I'll take him to his room."
Duo left with Quatre.
Then he came back.
"Ain't ya done it yet?"
"...Transfer completed."
"Yeah, great. See ya in the mornin', 'k Chang?"
"Yes. Good night, Duo Maxwell."
"'Night."


That night Heero slept lightly, even more so than usual. He wasn't the only one, as Trowa also was restless in his sleep. Quatre was still lying on the bed covered in an oversized coat where Duo had left him. Maxwell himself was sprawled out on his bed, as he had dropped onto it when Wufei left, falling asleep as his head hit the pillow.
Wufei however, although he wouldn't have admitted it was still in pain from his throbbing skull. He had removed all the bandages earlier, hoping that the others would forget faster, but he now realized that perhaps he shouldn't have. Finding a comfortable way to lie was proving more difficult than he expected, and as he wasn't really that tired, since he had "slept" for most of the day, he left his room and headed for the hangar. As he strolled down the dimmed corridors he went over the day's events in his head to himself.
~ If Heero hadn't got to the systems room in time, we could have been one pilot down, permanently. ~ This thought bothered him. He had decided that the attacker had not been out just for Trowa, but for all of them, or any of them he could get anyway. The only reason he had gone for Trowa was because he was the easiest target. Wufei and Heero weren't there, and Duo and Quatre were sitting down. Trowa however had walked in and stood up next to the window. He didn't like the fact that some unknown man could have got into their base, their home, with out some kind of alarm being set off, or at least doing something. That was enough on its own, but this trespasser obviously had something against the five Gundam pilots.
Ok, it wasn't like they didn't have any enemies; it was just that most of them were either mobile dolls or mobile suit pilots. If this was the case, they would rather have a MS fight rather than man to man, as everyone knew that the five Gundam boys were lethal in hand to hand combat when they had to be, they had been trained to do so.
~ I wonder where he is now ~ he thought as he wandered up the darkened halls. Instinctively he went towards the hangar, it was his most common journey in the whole compound. Despite this, he stopped when he reached the corner, between the hangar and the old pilot's wing.
This was where visitors would stay when they came over, but neither Catherine nor Hilde where around at the moment, Catherine was off working with the circus on L3 and Hilde was probably at home, in her flat on the L2 colony. From where he was standing Wufei could see a faint glow from around the corner down that hall.
~ But if no-ones been there for at least a month, why has one of the rooms got it's light on? ~ He took a step forwards, down the hall and stopped.
~ What if it was the intruder? No, Heero and Trowa had locked him up somewhere, and he couldn't have got out. It's probably Duo leaving a "present" for Hilde, or just been left on and no-one had noticed it before. ~
But as Chang tried to persuade himself it was nothing important, doubt crept back into his mind. ~ You didn't walk away from your last encounter, and Maxwell isn't here to patch you up now...~ He ignored the voice and kept on down the passage. The light was getting stronger now, he could see clearly in front of him. He could hear a faint rumble, and went around the corner. The light was coming from under the door, and the sound was getting louder too. This was the third door, Catherine's room. Trowa's old place. The faint rumble now sounded like heavy breathing. Wufei took a breath, and slid open the door. He shut it quietly and sighed. Walking back up to visit the hangar.
~ I must talk to Trowa in the morning. He shouldn't be keeping his pets in the girls wing. Even if they are "harmless". ~ He continued on his way.


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