Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Inverse ❯ Chapter 1
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Misanagi 
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Drama | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 02.05.2004 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.6K | Visits: 215 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Drama | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 02.05.2004 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.6K | Visits: 215 | Status: Completed
Inverse
By Misanagi
Rating: PG 13
Warnings: Angst, violence, shonen-ai, shojo-ai.
Pairings: 3+4+3, D+R
Spoilers: The end of the series.
Timeline: After the battle of Libra.
Summary: Quatre rescues Dorothy from imprisonment, hoping to give her a new chance of living.
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or the characters used in this fic.
Archives: http://www.fanfiction.net/~Misanagi http://www.psinergy.com/dryerspace/gundaniumline/misanagi/misanagi.html
Feedback: Yes please! misanagi_zzzz@hotmail.com
Thanks to: Anne and Ruth for beta reading and all the helpful suggestions, you are the best!
Notes: I wrote this for Hex-sama and her mailing list, Lady Wing. (http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/Lady_Wing/)
===========================================
Chapter 1
The young man walked through the iron gates and into the dark room. He tried to stop himself from limping but now and then the pain in his side was too strong to ignore. Two armed Romefeller soldiers walked behind him, but kept their distance. They didn't know exactly who he was but there was something about him that radiated power.
It had been only a week since that last battle with Libra and things were still in virtual chaos. The Romefeller troops went wild after the death of their leader but before they could disperse and start another power struggle, Colonel Une took command of the troops and prevented any possible insubordination. The war was just ending and the remaining troops still needed a commander. Between Relena Peacecraft and the Colonel, the task of restoring peace in a broken world had started but God knew that was a difficult task.
The teenager was no stranger to the situation the world was facing and he realized that if he wanted to complete the task, he could not stay in the hospital bed. He would have to do it by himself. Some of the guilt he had pushed away was reappearing. The teen couldn't help thinking of his friends; he knew they would be very worried when they found that he was missing. He had left a note, but knowing his friends, they would go looking for him, note or no note. The guilt was pushed aside for the tenth time. The youth wasn’t proud of escaping from his hospital bed and stealing a Taurus suit to go to this ship but he knew that if he’d asked his friends they would have said no and even tied him to the bed to prevent him from leaving.
He looked at his watch and estimated that he had another two hours before they found out that he was missing, and another fifteen minutes before they realized where he had gone. After all, he hadn't been overly careful when he had stolen that suit. It wasn’t his injuries that bothered him; it was all the medication that was still in his system and made all of his movements slower and more difficult. He was sure that no civilian would detect it but for the Gundam pilots, he had left a trail as easy to follow as a yellow brick road. They would track him down in no time and discover that he was in the Romefeller ship number 01517, also know as the temporary holding compound for those suspected of war crimes.
The boy smiled sadly. He didn’t doubt that it would only take some time before he was a resident instead of a visitor on that ship. The war had ended but after being a terrorist, he knew that there would come a time when he would have to pay for his actions - that was why waiting was not an option. The matter needed to be resolved before it was too late and his name was no longer a tool he could use. He had made himself as presentable as possible but his body was covered in bruises and his weakness could be seen by the way in which he walked. Someone in his condition should be resting in the medical wing of MO II, not venturing through space.
At the end of the hall there was a middle aged man sitting behind a desk. He was wearing a Romefeller uniform and the twin straps on his shoulders showed that he was a captain. His feet were resting on top of the table; one of his hands was holding a cigarette while the other held a glass filled with something that looked like water but smelled like vodka. When he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, he looked up, fixing his brown eyes on the youngster and lowering his glass to the table.
“Who are you?” he asked with a tone that implied that he was annoyed by the visit.
The boy regarded the captain with a steady gaze; his soft aquamarine eyes piercing though him.
“My name is Quatre Raberba Winner.”
* * *
Quatre noticed that he looked more intimidating than the older and bigger man in front of him. “I came here to negotiate the release of one of your prisoners.” He said; his voice held an authority that could also be seen in his posture, his demeanor and the way in which he spoke. Quatre Winner was a businessman and his young age was in no way, an obstacle to perform any task.
“And what makes you think you have the power to free any prisoner?” the captain asked, in a neutral tone.
Quatre smirked at him, “I came here to make a deal with you.” He paused a moment to create some tension and to evaluate the way in which the man in front of him reacted to his words. His father’s voice echoed in his head, ‘The pause is a sign of power and control. It lets your opponent know that you are in charge and that they are lucky to do business with you.’ After he saw the captain eyes shine with curiosity he continued, “I offer to pay bail and to take responsibility of any charges the prisoner may be accused of.”
“And who is this prisoner?” asked the captain, already lured by the idea of making some money.
“Miss Dorothy Catalonia.”
The man kept looking at Quatre for a moment but finally decided to look for the prisoner’s file. He used an old computer terminal and moments later the information was displayed on screen. “Dorothy Catalonia was found at the destructed Libra, virtually unharmed. She was taken into custody with the rest of the Libra crew but refused to give us any information besides her name.” The captain looked back at Quatre like he was hoping that the youth would give them some more information about the girl, but Quatre remained silent.
“What is your interest in the prisoner?” continued the captain, after waiting for a moment.
“That’s not something I want to disclose,” replied Quatre with a tone that left no room for argument.
“You don’t seem to understand, Mr. Winner,” said the captain, unable to call the young man in front of him anything but that. “I would be putting myself on the line to help you so I think I deserve-”
“You will be compensated for your efforts,” said Quatre, interrupting the man. “Name your price.”
The man smirked. “I can see you don’t like to beat around the bush so I’ll do the same. I want fifty thousand credits transferred to my personal account.”
“Agreed,” answered Quatre immediately. “I’ll just need to accompany Miss Catalonia to a mobile suit that I will preprogram. After she is out of the ship's range, I will transfer the money.”
“Certainly,” said the man smiling, “but I still have another problem. One of the prisoners can’t simply disappear so I’ll need a… replacement for Miss Catalonia.”
“I’ll be willing to stay here in her place.”
Quatre could see that the captain was curious about him and his motives but the older man’s greed kept him from asking more questions. Quatre knew the type: when an opportunity knocked on their door they weren’t about to close it.
* * *
Those stupid soldiers had easily forgotten who she was. She wouldn’t had been Milliardo’s right hand if she wasn't a capable woman. The men's advances were tiring her. They were annoying and kept interrupting when she needed to think.
She removed her foot from the man’s head, sent a threatening glare to the rest of the male soldiers, and went back to her spot against the wall. After she was at a safe distance, some of the man’s friends helped him up and dragged him to the other side of the large cell. He had been really stupid; all of them had witnessed what she had done to the last one who had tried to touch her. Now he probably had a concussion on top of a broken wrist.
Dorothy rested her cuffed hands on her lap and closed her eyes, resuming her thinking. She wondered where Quatre was and if he was all right. Sometimes she wished that he was and sometimes she wished that he was dying painfully in a hospital bed. He confused her so much. Dorothy hated how she couldn’t stop thinking about him; it made her reflect about herself and that’s what she hated the most. She was feeling more than she had in years and that bothered her.
After a lot of work, the young woman had managed to ignore the rest of the world. She felt apathy for the people around her but Quatre had somehow gotten under her skin. It wasn’t like what had happened with Miss Relena - she had gotten used to the calm and serenity she felt around the former queen of the world - but with Quatre everything was different.
Tears hadn’t been shed from her eyes but Trowa’s words were stuck firmly in her mind. Crying was useless, crying didn’t help, crying didn’t get anything done; it was nothing more than a sign of weakness. Dorothy had made a vow to herself when she was younger - she refused to cry and she wasn’t about to break it. Not for a war, not for her grandfather’s death and definitely not for a sentimental blond pilot. Understanding him was impossible for her; she couldn’t conceive how a person like that existed and couldn’t begin to comprehend what he was doing in a war. There was no place for feelings in a war; to be compassionate meant death.
‘But he lived,’ said that little voice in her head, the one she was trying to avoid so much and that lately was only getting stronger. That was the part of her that couldn’t hate Quatre Winner for what he had done. When he had pleaded for her life a small ray of hope had entered her heart, a hope for humanity that she thought she didn’t have any more. It wasn’t all his fault, Relena had helped a lot too. The way the young diplomat kept hoping for peace, even when she had been given a front row seat for some of the biggest battles in the war, had affected Dorothy as much as a caring terrorist.
It was not the way the world was supposed to be.
Dorothy had learned at a young age how the world worked. She was ten when her father died and eleven when her mother committed suicide. That had taught a child the way of the world. When she was twelve she had found a key to the school psychologist's private files and spent a few hours reading hers. Most of the documents were studies made when she was little; complicated analyses of a picture she had drawn when she was three or evaluations of her linguistic capabilities based on some interview made long ago. The last entry, however, was only a year old and a short one. “The child seems to have accepted well the death of her parents.”
That single sentence caused her months of pondering about herself and how she was viewed by others. Yes, she had accepted that people died, that was a truth about life that everyone has to accept at some point, but that didn’t mean that she had forgotten her parents. It was around that time when she realized why seeing a father with a young child always made her nostalgic and jealous. Dorothy knew that she was viewed as a cold person because she didn’t want to show her pain and eventually she buried it where it wouldn’t bother her any more. She stopped caring; she detached herself from the world around her and became a spectator watching life the way she would do a show, and waiting impatiently for the exciting parts that would make her feel even a shadow of what she had buried long ago. Some part of her wanted to feel again even if it meant that the pain would return too. That was the part that kept dragging the thought of Quatre Winner into her mind. Quatre was everything she was not and all she secretly wanted to be.
* * *
After he was led into the deeper parts of the ship, Quatre could tell why they had decided that it would be good to use it as a detention center. The ship had been used to transport mobile dolls, and since most of them had been destroyed in battle, the space could be used for other purposes. The ship was equipped with large storerooms that could accommodate a large amount of people. Some technicians always traveled with the mobile dolls so the large rooms also had sanitary facilities. There were only two ways to exit the room. The first was a set of metallic doors that needed an electronic key to be opened and the lock was on the outside of the room. Those doors led to the rest of the ship. The second was one iron gate that could only be opened from the inside of the storeroom. It led outside, in other words, to outer space. The prisoners were effectively locked in.
The man Quatre was following stopped in front of a metallic door. Quatre watched him take the electronic key from the breast pocket of his uniform and use it to unlock the entry. The door beeped and then slid open automatically.
Without going in, Quatre looked inside. The large room was filled with approximately one hundred men and women. There were no beds but the floor was covered with mattresses and blankets. Some of the prisoners turned to the door while others just ignored it. They were tired; Quatre could see it in their eyes. He noticed that everyone had their hands cuffed in front of them. There didn’t seem to be enough blankets to go around but each prisoner wore a set of cuffs.
“Is that really necessary?” Quatre asked, gesturing to the hands of a woman nearby.
“It prevents them from fighting among themselves,” answered the captain. Before Quatre could say anything else the captain took a step into the room and called, “Dorothy Catalonia, outside.”
Quatre hadn’t seen her before because she was sitting on a far wall, where the shadows hid her from view. He noticed her when she stood up and started walking towards them. Her long blonde hair was tied in a braid and she still wore the uniform she had when he had last seen her. She kept her chin up and walked with the air of superiority that had always distinguished her from others.
When she was near the door, a man tried to jump at her from behind. “You’ll pay for breaking my wrist!” he screamed as he launched at her.
Quatre resisted the urge to hit his forehead at the man’s lack of tactic and stealth. Who screamed when attempting a surprise attack? Not that the man’s outburst had actually harmed him since Dorothy had noticed him way before. Quatre had to admit that the girl had skills. She easily deflected the blow aimed to her head and hit the man in the back of the head with her cuffed hands.
There was a moment of silence in the room. The captain beside Quatre took out his gun and pointed it to the fallen man.
“Catalonia, outside! And if anybody else tries to interfere they’ll have a nice bullet wound for their efforts.”
Quatre exited the room and decided to wait for her outside. He didn’t know what kind of reaction he could expect from Dorothy; she wasn’t as easy to predict as some people thought.
* * *
Dorothy saw him as soon as she exited the holding room and was frozen for a second. She just looked at him and tried to sort all the conflicted thoughts that ran through her head in that moment. It took her only another second to push everything aside and adopt the controlled mask she always wore.
“Quatre Winner, I see you recovered just fine.” There was not a note of emotion in her voice; it was an even tone that showed absolutely nothing.
“Yes, thank you for asking,” answered Quatre, adopting the same tone.
“I can only wonder what brings you here.”
“You, of course.”
Dorothy wasn’t expecting that. That simple statement brought all the confusion back to her head. “Me?” she asked, hiding her thoughts behind her neutral tone.
“I negotiated your release.”
Now, Dorothy was angry. Quatre had the ability to make her angrier that she ever remembered being. He was a contradiction; he couldn’t be that way. She had tried to kill him and he repaid her by pleading for her life and then saving her from imprisonment. A person like that couldn’t exist; if he did, her whole universe would fall apart. She could feel that glass wall that she had been building for years crack. Quatre Winner was trying to shatter it and he was succeeding.
“Why?” she asked; her even tone was gone and the doubts she was feeling were leaking into her voice.
“Because there’s still hope for you, Dorothy, but this isn’t the place to find it.” He smiled sadly at her and took her hand. She let him do it, and felt all the anger disappear slowly, leaving her tired, too tired to argue, too tired to think. There would be time to do that later. Dorothy felt her cuffs being unlocked and as soon as that happened, she let go of Quatre’s hand. She may have been tired and she may have been confused but she was still Dorothy Catalonia and quite capable of taking care of herself.
“Don’t expect me to repay you for this,” she told Quatre, regaining the cool of her voice. He nodded as she knew he would. If he was a normal person he would ask or at least expect something but he was Quatre Winner and he defied everything that she defined as normal.
They followed the captain to the only room that was still being used as a hangar in the ship. Quatre walked to the suit he had used to get to the ship and motioned for Dorothy to follow him.
“You won’t need to pilot it,” he told her. “It’s already preprogrammed to take you to MO II. From there, you can go wherever you want.”
Dorothy nodded to him and got into the suit. Quatre reached in and pressed a special command followed by a password.
“Goodbye, Dorothy,” he said as the hatched closed. She didn’t answer.
* * *
It took a couple of minutes before the Taurus was launched and disappeared from view. Quatre kept looking at space, thinking about Dorothy and hoping that she could find the answers to the questions he knew were plaguing her.
“I believe we still have some business to attend to, Mr. Winner,” said the captain, interrupting Quatre’s thoughts.
“Certainly,” replied Quatre turning around. “Shall we?”
* * *
Dorothy sat in the cockpit of the Taurus, looking at the space. She felt like she was looking at it for the first time; it seemed so… peaceful. She couldn’t see the glowing lights of a battle or the rapid movements of mobile suits. The only things left to see were the remains of the biggest battle the world had ever seen. Everything was confusing, even space. Space felt lonely; nothing had ever felt lonely before. Dorothy closed her eyes, she was tired of thinking and right then, she didn’t see the point of it. Nothing made sense anymore.
TBC
By Misanagi
Rating: PG 13
Warnings: Angst, violence, shonen-ai, shojo-ai.
Pairings: 3+4+3, D+R
Spoilers: The end of the series.
Timeline: After the battle of Libra.
Summary: Quatre rescues Dorothy from imprisonment, hoping to give her a new chance of living.
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or the characters used in this fic.
Archives: http://www.fanfiction.net/~Misanagi http://www.psinergy.com/dryerspace/gundaniumline/misanagi/misanagi.html
Feedback: Yes please! misanagi_zzzz@hotmail.com
Thanks to: Anne and Ruth for beta reading and all the helpful suggestions, you are the best!
Notes: I wrote this for Hex-sama and her mailing list, Lady Wing. (http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/Lady_Wing/)
===========================================
Chapter 1
The young man walked through the iron gates and into the dark room. He tried to stop himself from limping but now and then the pain in his side was too strong to ignore. Two armed Romefeller soldiers walked behind him, but kept their distance. They didn't know exactly who he was but there was something about him that radiated power.
It had been only a week since that last battle with Libra and things were still in virtual chaos. The Romefeller troops went wild after the death of their leader but before they could disperse and start another power struggle, Colonel Une took command of the troops and prevented any possible insubordination. The war was just ending and the remaining troops still needed a commander. Between Relena Peacecraft and the Colonel, the task of restoring peace in a broken world had started but God knew that was a difficult task.
The teenager was no stranger to the situation the world was facing and he realized that if he wanted to complete the task, he could not stay in the hospital bed. He would have to do it by himself. Some of the guilt he had pushed away was reappearing. The teen couldn't help thinking of his friends; he knew they would be very worried when they found that he was missing. He had left a note, but knowing his friends, they would go looking for him, note or no note. The guilt was pushed aside for the tenth time. The youth wasn’t proud of escaping from his hospital bed and stealing a Taurus suit to go to this ship but he knew that if he’d asked his friends they would have said no and even tied him to the bed to prevent him from leaving.
He looked at his watch and estimated that he had another two hours before they found out that he was missing, and another fifteen minutes before they realized where he had gone. After all, he hadn't been overly careful when he had stolen that suit. It wasn’t his injuries that bothered him; it was all the medication that was still in his system and made all of his movements slower and more difficult. He was sure that no civilian would detect it but for the Gundam pilots, he had left a trail as easy to follow as a yellow brick road. They would track him down in no time and discover that he was in the Romefeller ship number 01517, also know as the temporary holding compound for those suspected of war crimes.
The boy smiled sadly. He didn’t doubt that it would only take some time before he was a resident instead of a visitor on that ship. The war had ended but after being a terrorist, he knew that there would come a time when he would have to pay for his actions - that was why waiting was not an option. The matter needed to be resolved before it was too late and his name was no longer a tool he could use. He had made himself as presentable as possible but his body was covered in bruises and his weakness could be seen by the way in which he walked. Someone in his condition should be resting in the medical wing of MO II, not venturing through space.
At the end of the hall there was a middle aged man sitting behind a desk. He was wearing a Romefeller uniform and the twin straps on his shoulders showed that he was a captain. His feet were resting on top of the table; one of his hands was holding a cigarette while the other held a glass filled with something that looked like water but smelled like vodka. When he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, he looked up, fixing his brown eyes on the youngster and lowering his glass to the table.
“Who are you?” he asked with a tone that implied that he was annoyed by the visit.
The boy regarded the captain with a steady gaze; his soft aquamarine eyes piercing though him.
“My name is Quatre Raberba Winner.”
* * *
Quatre noticed that he looked more intimidating than the older and bigger man in front of him. “I came here to negotiate the release of one of your prisoners.” He said; his voice held an authority that could also be seen in his posture, his demeanor and the way in which he spoke. Quatre Winner was a businessman and his young age was in no way, an obstacle to perform any task.
“And what makes you think you have the power to free any prisoner?” the captain asked, in a neutral tone.
Quatre smirked at him, “I came here to make a deal with you.” He paused a moment to create some tension and to evaluate the way in which the man in front of him reacted to his words. His father’s voice echoed in his head, ‘The pause is a sign of power and control. It lets your opponent know that you are in charge and that they are lucky to do business with you.’ After he saw the captain eyes shine with curiosity he continued, “I offer to pay bail and to take responsibility of any charges the prisoner may be accused of.”
“And who is this prisoner?” asked the captain, already lured by the idea of making some money.
“Miss Dorothy Catalonia.”
The man kept looking at Quatre for a moment but finally decided to look for the prisoner’s file. He used an old computer terminal and moments later the information was displayed on screen. “Dorothy Catalonia was found at the destructed Libra, virtually unharmed. She was taken into custody with the rest of the Libra crew but refused to give us any information besides her name.” The captain looked back at Quatre like he was hoping that the youth would give them some more information about the girl, but Quatre remained silent.
“What is your interest in the prisoner?” continued the captain, after waiting for a moment.
“That’s not something I want to disclose,” replied Quatre with a tone that left no room for argument.
“You don’t seem to understand, Mr. Winner,” said the captain, unable to call the young man in front of him anything but that. “I would be putting myself on the line to help you so I think I deserve-”
“You will be compensated for your efforts,” said Quatre, interrupting the man. “Name your price.”
The man smirked. “I can see you don’t like to beat around the bush so I’ll do the same. I want fifty thousand credits transferred to my personal account.”
“Agreed,” answered Quatre immediately. “I’ll just need to accompany Miss Catalonia to a mobile suit that I will preprogram. After she is out of the ship's range, I will transfer the money.”
“Certainly,” said the man smiling, “but I still have another problem. One of the prisoners can’t simply disappear so I’ll need a… replacement for Miss Catalonia.”
“I’ll be willing to stay here in her place.”
Quatre could see that the captain was curious about him and his motives but the older man’s greed kept him from asking more questions. Quatre knew the type: when an opportunity knocked on their door they weren’t about to close it.
* * *
Those stupid soldiers had easily forgotten who she was. She wouldn’t had been Milliardo’s right hand if she wasn't a capable woman. The men's advances were tiring her. They were annoying and kept interrupting when she needed to think.
She removed her foot from the man’s head, sent a threatening glare to the rest of the male soldiers, and went back to her spot against the wall. After she was at a safe distance, some of the man’s friends helped him up and dragged him to the other side of the large cell. He had been really stupid; all of them had witnessed what she had done to the last one who had tried to touch her. Now he probably had a concussion on top of a broken wrist.
Dorothy rested her cuffed hands on her lap and closed her eyes, resuming her thinking. She wondered where Quatre was and if he was all right. Sometimes she wished that he was and sometimes she wished that he was dying painfully in a hospital bed. He confused her so much. Dorothy hated how she couldn’t stop thinking about him; it made her reflect about herself and that’s what she hated the most. She was feeling more than she had in years and that bothered her.
After a lot of work, the young woman had managed to ignore the rest of the world. She felt apathy for the people around her but Quatre had somehow gotten under her skin. It wasn’t like what had happened with Miss Relena - she had gotten used to the calm and serenity she felt around the former queen of the world - but with Quatre everything was different.
Tears hadn’t been shed from her eyes but Trowa’s words were stuck firmly in her mind. Crying was useless, crying didn’t help, crying didn’t get anything done; it was nothing more than a sign of weakness. Dorothy had made a vow to herself when she was younger - she refused to cry and she wasn’t about to break it. Not for a war, not for her grandfather’s death and definitely not for a sentimental blond pilot. Understanding him was impossible for her; she couldn’t conceive how a person like that existed and couldn’t begin to comprehend what he was doing in a war. There was no place for feelings in a war; to be compassionate meant death.
‘But he lived,’ said that little voice in her head, the one she was trying to avoid so much and that lately was only getting stronger. That was the part of her that couldn’t hate Quatre Winner for what he had done. When he had pleaded for her life a small ray of hope had entered her heart, a hope for humanity that she thought she didn’t have any more. It wasn’t all his fault, Relena had helped a lot too. The way the young diplomat kept hoping for peace, even when she had been given a front row seat for some of the biggest battles in the war, had affected Dorothy as much as a caring terrorist.
It was not the way the world was supposed to be.
Dorothy had learned at a young age how the world worked. She was ten when her father died and eleven when her mother committed suicide. That had taught a child the way of the world. When she was twelve she had found a key to the school psychologist's private files and spent a few hours reading hers. Most of the documents were studies made when she was little; complicated analyses of a picture she had drawn when she was three or evaluations of her linguistic capabilities based on some interview made long ago. The last entry, however, was only a year old and a short one. “The child seems to have accepted well the death of her parents.”
That single sentence caused her months of pondering about herself and how she was viewed by others. Yes, she had accepted that people died, that was a truth about life that everyone has to accept at some point, but that didn’t mean that she had forgotten her parents. It was around that time when she realized why seeing a father with a young child always made her nostalgic and jealous. Dorothy knew that she was viewed as a cold person because she didn’t want to show her pain and eventually she buried it where it wouldn’t bother her any more. She stopped caring; she detached herself from the world around her and became a spectator watching life the way she would do a show, and waiting impatiently for the exciting parts that would make her feel even a shadow of what she had buried long ago. Some part of her wanted to feel again even if it meant that the pain would return too. That was the part that kept dragging the thought of Quatre Winner into her mind. Quatre was everything she was not and all she secretly wanted to be.
* * *
After he was led into the deeper parts of the ship, Quatre could tell why they had decided that it would be good to use it as a detention center. The ship had been used to transport mobile dolls, and since most of them had been destroyed in battle, the space could be used for other purposes. The ship was equipped with large storerooms that could accommodate a large amount of people. Some technicians always traveled with the mobile dolls so the large rooms also had sanitary facilities. There were only two ways to exit the room. The first was a set of metallic doors that needed an electronic key to be opened and the lock was on the outside of the room. Those doors led to the rest of the ship. The second was one iron gate that could only be opened from the inside of the storeroom. It led outside, in other words, to outer space. The prisoners were effectively locked in.
The man Quatre was following stopped in front of a metallic door. Quatre watched him take the electronic key from the breast pocket of his uniform and use it to unlock the entry. The door beeped and then slid open automatically.
Without going in, Quatre looked inside. The large room was filled with approximately one hundred men and women. There were no beds but the floor was covered with mattresses and blankets. Some of the prisoners turned to the door while others just ignored it. They were tired; Quatre could see it in their eyes. He noticed that everyone had their hands cuffed in front of them. There didn’t seem to be enough blankets to go around but each prisoner wore a set of cuffs.
“Is that really necessary?” Quatre asked, gesturing to the hands of a woman nearby.
“It prevents them from fighting among themselves,” answered the captain. Before Quatre could say anything else the captain took a step into the room and called, “Dorothy Catalonia, outside.”
Quatre hadn’t seen her before because she was sitting on a far wall, where the shadows hid her from view. He noticed her when she stood up and started walking towards them. Her long blonde hair was tied in a braid and she still wore the uniform she had when he had last seen her. She kept her chin up and walked with the air of superiority that had always distinguished her from others.
When she was near the door, a man tried to jump at her from behind. “You’ll pay for breaking my wrist!” he screamed as he launched at her.
Quatre resisted the urge to hit his forehead at the man’s lack of tactic and stealth. Who screamed when attempting a surprise attack? Not that the man’s outburst had actually harmed him since Dorothy had noticed him way before. Quatre had to admit that the girl had skills. She easily deflected the blow aimed to her head and hit the man in the back of the head with her cuffed hands.
There was a moment of silence in the room. The captain beside Quatre took out his gun and pointed it to the fallen man.
“Catalonia, outside! And if anybody else tries to interfere they’ll have a nice bullet wound for their efforts.”
Quatre exited the room and decided to wait for her outside. He didn’t know what kind of reaction he could expect from Dorothy; she wasn’t as easy to predict as some people thought.
* * *
Dorothy saw him as soon as she exited the holding room and was frozen for a second. She just looked at him and tried to sort all the conflicted thoughts that ran through her head in that moment. It took her only another second to push everything aside and adopt the controlled mask she always wore.
“Quatre Winner, I see you recovered just fine.” There was not a note of emotion in her voice; it was an even tone that showed absolutely nothing.
“Yes, thank you for asking,” answered Quatre, adopting the same tone.
“I can only wonder what brings you here.”
“You, of course.”
Dorothy wasn’t expecting that. That simple statement brought all the confusion back to her head. “Me?” she asked, hiding her thoughts behind her neutral tone.
“I negotiated your release.”
Now, Dorothy was angry. Quatre had the ability to make her angrier that she ever remembered being. He was a contradiction; he couldn’t be that way. She had tried to kill him and he repaid her by pleading for her life and then saving her from imprisonment. A person like that couldn’t exist; if he did, her whole universe would fall apart. She could feel that glass wall that she had been building for years crack. Quatre Winner was trying to shatter it and he was succeeding.
“Why?” she asked; her even tone was gone and the doubts she was feeling were leaking into her voice.
“Because there’s still hope for you, Dorothy, but this isn’t the place to find it.” He smiled sadly at her and took her hand. She let him do it, and felt all the anger disappear slowly, leaving her tired, too tired to argue, too tired to think. There would be time to do that later. Dorothy felt her cuffs being unlocked and as soon as that happened, she let go of Quatre’s hand. She may have been tired and she may have been confused but she was still Dorothy Catalonia and quite capable of taking care of herself.
“Don’t expect me to repay you for this,” she told Quatre, regaining the cool of her voice. He nodded as she knew he would. If he was a normal person he would ask or at least expect something but he was Quatre Winner and he defied everything that she defined as normal.
They followed the captain to the only room that was still being used as a hangar in the ship. Quatre walked to the suit he had used to get to the ship and motioned for Dorothy to follow him.
“You won’t need to pilot it,” he told her. “It’s already preprogrammed to take you to MO II. From there, you can go wherever you want.”
Dorothy nodded to him and got into the suit. Quatre reached in and pressed a special command followed by a password.
“Goodbye, Dorothy,” he said as the hatched closed. She didn’t answer.
* * *
It took a couple of minutes before the Taurus was launched and disappeared from view. Quatre kept looking at space, thinking about Dorothy and hoping that she could find the answers to the questions he knew were plaguing her.
“I believe we still have some business to attend to, Mr. Winner,” said the captain, interrupting Quatre’s thoughts.
“Certainly,” replied Quatre turning around. “Shall we?”
* * *
Dorothy sat in the cockpit of the Taurus, looking at the space. She felt like she was looking at it for the first time; it seemed so… peaceful. She couldn’t see the glowing lights of a battle or the rapid movements of mobile suits. The only things left to see were the remains of the biggest battle the world had ever seen. Everything was confusing, even space. Space felt lonely; nothing had ever felt lonely before. Dorothy closed her eyes, she was tired of thinking and right then, she didn’t see the point of it. Nothing made sense anymore.
TBC