Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ IV Dark Sight ❯ Creature Comforts ( Chapter 1 )

Creature Comforts

It would be so nice to just…walk out that door. To leave all this bullshit psychotherapy behind and just…go…to be free. The lobby was empty, the parking lot was empty…the road. At this point of the day, there were hardly any cars at all along that road.

There was a bus, though.

I sighed as I studied the buildings across the street, thinking.

It’d been a long six months.

Initially, Heero had willingly undergone the evaluations. I’d gotten the definite impression that he’d thought he was fine. When they’d started coming across his issues though, when he started to realize he had issues, he’d stopped being so cooperative. For the last three or four months, he’d been playing with his therapist. He told me about it at night in the common room, when everyone else’d gone to bed.

On the other hand, after they got around to medicating Quatre, he’d settled down into some depression before finding a courtyard with flowerbeds in the center of the complex. He’d planted a splendid garden in the plot they’d given him, and he spent most of his free time looking up tips for weeds and things. The only issue they were having with him was that when he started feeling better, he’d stop taking the meds. He’d had about three of those episodes, so now they were trying to impress on him the importance of the consistency.

Quatre’d been out of it so long that I wished them the best of luck. I knew how to make him comply, but I didn’t feel any need to do it when they were pretending like I was just not opening up. They kept trying to insist that things would go faster and easier if I would just…cooperate with them.

It sounded like sweet-talking to me, and I wasn’t that easy.

A car drove by, pulling my attention back to the present and the empty lobby. It was about time for me to go in for another session. It was a waste of time and money if you asked me, but they were insisting.

The receptionist usually sat there and watched me. She’d freaked out when I’d first started coming here…three days after getting here, actually.

I wanted to be free.

Had I ever been free before? Even way back when I was a child, I’d been part of the family. It’d been war times and we’d been in a war zone. I always had to keep an eye out for something on the horizon…

The receptionist was still gone.

I stared at the little window where the woman usually pretended not to be paying me any mind.

The parking lot was empty…there were no cars on the road. There would be a bus in a few minutes that would go straight back to the central station.

The receptionist was still gone.

I listened to the quiet around me, then smiled slightly.

She was going to be pissed as soon as she realized that the one time she decided to trust me, I took off. She was going to gnaw out her own liver knowing that she’d left me where I could just walk out on her.

Damn, that poor woman. I sniggered slightly to myself…and walked out of the Healing Center.

- -

The flight from London had been extremely unappealing, in Duo’s opinion. It had been unappealing from Brazil to London, and the prospect was no better on the way back…only this time they had a two year old and a ten year old.

Of course, Duo wanted to see Indra and Narsi…Mama. Maybe he’d even see Djara again, that was an intriguing thought. He’d loved her once, but she’d been too scared to leave with him when it could have cost her her own life. Turned out to be a good thing, really, because Duo loved Nassaiya, and if Djara had come he’d never have gotten to know her, or had a child with her. He had loved Djara, but he loved Nas.

Anyway, Wufei had noted to Duo that they’d gone to the village, and that they’d questioned the people. Wufei had admitted shame-faced that he’d ordered the entire village killed, and when Nassaiya’s eyes had gone wide with horror, he’d explained quickly that if he hadn’t done it, Heero would have.

The disturbing thing was that the soldiers would have done it if Heero ordered it.

At any rate, the flight from London to Boa Vista had taken hours. When he’d been grumbling about it to his wife, an attendant noted that there’d been a time when it was a twenty-eight hour flight…with six stops.

After the flight itself, of course, was the whole bit where they had to pick up stuff from the delivery place in Manaus and buy some mode of transportation. It was nearly May, when the seasonal monsoon would flood the basin and render all inhabitants boat-ridden. With this in mind, Duo’d arranged a driver to take them from Manaus to the village. He didn’t plan to be in the area when the waters arrived, but he wasn’t stupid. In the event that the waters did come and the SUV couldn’t reach their GPS marked location, the man was going to meet him at a different GPS location that was above the water-level.

Before, when Duo’d initially ran away from Heero, Indra had been at the base. He had been giving Natalie, his sister and Heero’s now-girlfriend, a list of things the village needed. Duo’d jumped from one of the windows of the base building and fractured his leg. The buildings were set high up off the ground so the seasonal flooding didn’t render them useless. Indra had covered Duo’s tracks, then assisted him to his village where his mother had cared for Duo until he’d been in a semblance of health. Months had passed while he lived with the family…which was actually about ten families.

Nassaiya, his now wife, had been a widow in the village. Her son had been seven and her husband had died a year or two before Duo had come on scene. That meant two extra mouths for the people of the village to feed, and had made it hard until Duo’d come and taken the role of father for Vasu. Actually, there’d been three widows in total, and five children between them. His assistance had lifted the village out of the depths and helped them thrive. When he’d left, Nassaiya had tried to get him to take Vasu, so he’d taken them both, thus freeing up the extra pressure on the villagers…and gaining himself a wife. When he’d initially reached Manaus with her, he’d claimed a village elder had performed a marriage ceremony for them, which was completely legal and viable for him to pull off.

After the wars, in After Colony one-nine-eight, the pilots had been on a base in Nanchang…China. Their rights, considering they were different then average citizens, had been laid out in writing. This included the fact that Duo could marry anyone he wanted to in any country, officiated by any local authority…he’d just been fucking around when he’d insisted on it, but it’d turned out to be the best thing to come of that time. His claim and the fact that the villagers hardly had any technology to speak of to keep records, had meant that they couldn’t prove or disprove any of it…and even if they tried, someone in the village would step up and say they’d performed the ceremony and it’d be as good as done anyway. So, he’d claimed Nassaiya as his wife and adopted her son in the legal spectrum of the world, along with a Christian wedding to make it all “valid”. Or, you know, actually real. He’d moved to London, set up with Hilde Schbleiker, gone through a couple apartments, then found out Nas was pregnant and settled down in the place they’d lived at since.

Speaking of, the two little boys were being extremely good for such a long trip. Vasu was excited to go see the places he kinda remembered, and Camden didn’t get half of it. All Cam knew was that his mom and dad were both right there, so it was okay.

“The base is up here, huh?” the driver muttered at him in bad English.

“Yeah,” Duo agreed in Portuguese instead. He’d been forced to learn it damn quick when he’d first started living in the village, so he knew the colloquial a lot better than the formal, and had subsequently stopped taking the class Hilde’d talked him into doing. “We don’t need to go in as far as the base, though.”

“Isn’t that your destination?” the guy asked blankly, then thought—probably trying to translate it into English.

“No,” Duo disagreed. “I said toward the base so you knew where to drive. We’re not here for that. Nas is a basin native, so we’re finding our family. Why do you think we marked the GPS?”

The man stared at him in disbelief.

“If I’d just wanted to go to the base, I wouldn’t have bothered for pick-up times,” Duo added, vaguely annoyed. If he’d been going to the base he wouldn’t have bought his own boat either…the thing was motorized, and on top of the SUV. He’d had to row a boat across the Amazon River when they’d first taken off. It’d taken over night and had been hell if they found the current, aside from having to tie to a tree so they could sleep.

“You remember more than I thought you would,” Nas noted, smiling at him from where she was sitting between the two boys. “I thought you’d only remember some.”

“I keep hearing it,” Duo explained with a slightly proud smile for her. “I can language slip like a fish in water when I’ve learned it.”

The man driving laughed.

The trip continued on, getting more bumpy since there weren’t exactly roads where they were heading…and it finally got to a point that Duo realized had been the outer fishing grounds. He’d helped Indra make the boat he’d later used to escape, and gone fishing with him daily for their food…and that tree was the tie point…sort of. The hitching area was remarkably high up when the water was gone…and…

“Aha!” the driver exclaimed happily as they neared a dock area…

But something wasn’t right.

Duo and Nas both frowned at the construction that rose off the forest floor…because it was empty.

“Uh-oh,” Duo muttered intelligently.

“The only problem with the natives is they wander!” the driver exclaimed, laughing happily as he put the thing in park. “Shall I drop you off here, Mr. Maxwell?”

“Haha,” Duo retorted glumly, sliding from the car and looking around.

“They probably moved away from the base,” Nas noted, glancing in that direction. “We either need to go find Natalie or go over and see if Djara’s family is still there.”

Duo hesitated as he remembered carrying Nas and Vasu up the stairs with the flood water nipping at his heels…he’d barely managed that, let alone when Djara’s scream had indicated she was being washed away. He’d dove right in after her with a rope around his middle and Indra at hand.

“Come on, Duo,” Nas added quietly. “Let’s go over to Djara’s first.”

“Yeah,” Duo muttered, climbing back into the car as he stared up at the construction that had saved his life.

“If Wufei really did say to have them killed,” Nas noted, leaning forward to look at him, “then this is a bad place. Especially if someone was hurt.”

“Wufei said they kinda beat the crap out of Indra,” Duo conceded.

“They’d want away from here, and away from the base,” Nassaiya added quietly.

“Dad?”

Duo looked to Vasu.

“Are we almost there yet? My butt fell asleep.”

“I’m sorry, son,” Duo muttered, reaching back to pat the boy’s leg. “We’ll figure this out as soon as we can.”

- -

Quatre jumped slightly, realizing the thing was a spider and flicking it away. He hated spiders. He could tell now that Trowa had been fucking with him before, but that didn’t mean the stigma had gone away for the eight-legged freaks.

The blond dug his fingers down into the soft earth and grabbed the weed by the root, yanking it from the ground and flicking the excess dirt away before adding the offending plant to his pile carefully, so it wouldn’t release any seeds.

“You don’t like me anymore, do you?”

Quatre turned his head to look at Heero a long moment, then frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”

Heero was rocking as he sat on the bench of a picnic table, looking to his feet. “You always used to talk to me,” he noted. “You don’t talk to me anymore…you’d rather be with the silent plants than talking to me…”

Quatre didn’t know how to respond to that. He really liked gardening. It was quiet, and when you put out the effort, your garden was beautiful. He couldn’t leave the guy hanging though…

“You need to talk more and real to your therapist,” Quatre noted finally. “You need to stop playing with him and do what he says.”

Heero’s eyes snapped onto his, looking almost betrayed.

“When you do that, I’ll talk to you out here.”

Heero glared at him, then turned and stormed back toward the building.

Quatre shook his head and looked to his watch. It was nearly time for him to take his meds again. He had to do it in front of the nurse anymore…and they got upset if he was late.

He set the alarm.

- -

Wufei grinned slightly as cars honked at him in aggravation, not bothering to pick up his speed as he crossed the street.

He loved the city.

It hadn’t taken him too long to acclimatize himself to the cooler temperatures. He’d been freezing when he’d first gotten to London, but it wasn’t so horrible anymore. He knew that he’d get a nasty shock come winter, but he figured the summer would be fine. He wasn’t stuck with a couple psychopaths in the middle of a jungle anymore. He wasn’t constantly having to watch out for the two he’d had to control. He wasn’t confined and constrained. He could do anything he wanted to, and he’d started doing it about a month after they’d found Quatre.

That was the starting point for him. That was when his new life had really started. He’d gone through some de-stress sessions with the therapist and still went once a month, but he didn’t need supervised or medicated. He wasn’t being followed or watched…and hardly even noticed. He’d gone back to China…Spain, hell, he’d even gone into Egypt. He always made sure to stop by the Healing Center to see Quatre when he got back from these trips, because Quatre had been the one worried about losing them all…and in the depths of his madness he’d been absolutely terrified about the prospect.

Hell, even Duo’d go see him. Actually, Duo’d bought him a rose bush that was thriving, last Wufei knew.

At any rate, things were looking up, and the small pleasures like pissing cars off as you sped down the road on a bike were just entertaining. There was life all around him…people were smiling or frowning…people were joking to one another down the sidewalks…

His phone started ringing and he coasted onto the sidewalk, propping himself slightly against he pole as he noted it was the Healing Center. That generally meant Quatre, Heero, or Trow.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Chang?”

Or their nurse? What?

“…yeah? What’s up?”

“Have you spoken with Trowa Barton at all today?”

“No, it’s been a week or two,” Wufei noted, glancing at his watch.

“And if he were to contact you, would you call us here?”

“Just check your phone records,” Wufei noted skeptically.

“I meant in person.”

“Considering that you have him there…”

Wufei already knew better than that, though. Her tone was far too pessimistic for that.

“Actually, he never showed up for his appointment today.”

“So check his room,” Wufei noted pointedly. “Shit, we don’t get along. You realize that don’t you? Barton and I all but despise each other.”

“How about Mr. Maxwell?”

“Duo?” the Chinese man repeated and snorted. “Duo headed to Brazil yesterday to visit his wife’s family in the Amazon Basin. He’s not due back until later this month.”

…and he does despise Trowa.

“Can you verify that he left on time?”

“Aside from him calling me at some god-awful hour this morning to let me know he’d landed, no. Check the flight manifests. He set down in Boa Vista and his next stop is Manaus. He should probably be out in the jungle by this point.”

“It should be obvious to you that we’ve checked the compound.”

“It’s not my problem,” Wufei informed her. “I have nothing to do with him or his choices. I will not assist or detain him if he arrives in my presence. I will tell him to go back to you, though. How does that work?”

“Mr. Chang…”

Wufei laughed a bit at that. “It’s not my problem, and I’m not going to make it my problem. Good luck finding him, though. Chances are you’ll never see him again.”

She guffawed at that.

“Good day, Ma’am,” Wufei added, looking to the buildings around him, and closing his phone. He thought a long moment and sighed in consternation. He’d almost quit smoking…he’d gotten down to one a week and was about to just end it…and now he wanted another one.

Wufei slid his phone into his pocket and rubbed at his face a moment, then pushed off again.

It wasn’t his problem.