Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Justitia ❯ Chapter 2

Justitia 2: justice def. noun.- the administration of law; the act of determining rights and assigning rewards or punishments; "justice deferred is justice denied"

It had been a long haul, a hard stretch, but Trowa Barton had managed to wheedle two weeks vacation from his `employers' and in less than two days had managed to lose his tail before heading home to Preventers to report in. It was the first time he had managed it since accepting the job three months ago and he had needed it. Une had been understanding about the delay in the job, but they had enough information to send in Heero and Duo before his two weeks were up so while he was still on stand-by it was practically a given that he would not be going back. Still, he didn't bother starting on the paperwork. He did, after all, have two weeks holiday, and while he had to do some work, he preferred to laze around the office for a day or two.

It was strange, not having Heero or Duo there, both on leave at home. Quatre, of course, was at work, but his secretary had said he was at home and when he rang there Quat's lovely wife had looked rather annoyed, and the soft music in the background gave him the distinct impression he had interrupted something, so he quickly hung up with a promise to call back later.

Oddly enough, the next person on his rather short list was missing. Or rather, absent was more the correct term. Trowa could not recall a time when Sally Po had not been in her office or very close to it. That she was absent completely from the building, and on a mission no less, was rather intriguing. It took more effort than he had expected, but he finally got a number off her secretary for the partner she had gone with, since the secretary had apparently forgotten the poor chump's name, but when Trowa ran a check of the number through his system he, curiously, had no match.

Now more than just a little interested, he decided, despite the fact he knew the guy was not in his office, to call and see who picked up. At least then he would know what department the guy was in. He really didn't have anything better to do, after all. Besides, it would be good ammunition to use against Sal when she got back if he at least had the guy's name.

The phone rang out three times. Trowa just assumed they were busy and kept calling. The fourth time someone picked up, only there was a lot more noise in the background than he had expected and it almost sounded like computer games…

"For God's sake, you know he's not fucking here and you can't really be that desperate! What's the deal anyway…this phone never rings!"

Staring at the phone in bewilderment, Trowa pressed it back to his ear and honed in to the sounds. Yes, they were computer games. In fact, he was sure it was The Endless Waltz, that damn game based on the war with Gundams and Mechs that was popular amongst kids.

"Don't suppose you're playing Heavyarms?"

There was a startled gasp in response followed by a rather loud clunk and Trowa guessed they'd dropped the phone. There was a small amount of swearing, then the music stopped. Trowa guessed they had paused the game.

"No, why the hell would I want to be Heavyarms? Wait…Is this Trowa?"

Trowa took a moment to stare at the phone again before the voice finally registered.

"Marie…why are you answering Preventers phones?"

"Because no one else is here to answer it?"

Curiouser and curiouser….Trowa started making a mental list of all the places where there was no one around to answer the phone, only it was a rather short list containing…absolutely nothing at all. He reminded himself that Marie had a tendency to go missing around the office frequently. He himself had been sent off on fetch duty more than once, to no avail. She would turn up when it was time to leave and no one could ever make her tell where she had been.

"Marie…Where are you?"

There was a long hesitation and Trowa could hear her chewing on the inside of his cheek; a habit she had developed in the hospital while recovering from the bullet Heero put in her.

"I'll tell you what…meet me at the door to Sub-level three, just inside the stairwell and I'll meet you there. But you better be quick though or I might get bored and decide stomping on Heavyarms would be more entertaining."

The phone line went dead and Trowa sat back in his chair, running his fingers through his hair while he thought. Sub-level three. He could not imagine anything in archives that would interest an adolescent girl. Now entirely engrossed in this newfound mystery, Trowa left a short away message on his desk and headed for the elevator. It only took him to the ground level, but that was okay because it was only three flights of stairs down to the door, and sure enough, just inside, chatting amiably to the young clerk, was Marie. It no longer surprised Trowa that no one had ever managed to find her on one of her jaunts. Not even Heero.

"Afternoon Trowa," she inclined her head, a knowing smirk on her face and he returned it with a little smirk of his own. When had she gotten so…enamored with a sense of self? It seemed to Trowa this was an entirely different person, yet she looked the same and the clerk did not seem to find anything out of the ordinary which led Trowa to the conclusion that this was how Marie always was…down here. It was a nice change from the self-conscious, often terrified Marie he often came across upstairs. Maybe she liked books.

"So, where is the hideout?"

She laughed at that, shaking her head as she sauntered past him and back out the door into the stairwells, saying her farewells to a highly amused clerk. Trowa decided it would be best just to follow. He had not expected them to head further down.

"Sub-level four?"

"No way, that's archives…" Marie scrunched up her nose in distaste and Trowa scratched off the idea of Marie being a bookworm. Definitely not.

"Sub-level five?"

"Still more archives.

"Six?" Trowa asked, not sure where they were headed, or how many flights of stairs it would take. Not that he really minded, but it was more than a little dark and a lot of the lights were broken. He made a mental note to get someone to come down and replace the bulbs. Soon.

"Six is empty…"

Ah. Six it was then! But they walked straight past the door to six and continued on. Marie turned to flash a grin at him as she grabbed the handle on lucky door seven and yanked it open. Trowa just stuck his tongue out and followed her in, completely lost.

There were three corridors. The one headed straight was filled with rubble and he could see no way past it. The north corridor was pitch black, but the southern one was well-lit with bright white bulbs that made the mural on the wall stand out all the more. He studied it as they passed, curious as to the artist, because it was extraordinarily well done. A massive field of gold wheat, a sky almost too blue to be real if he hadn't grown up on a colony, and a lone figure right at the very edge; a young Asian girl, playing with a chain of daises. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except the fact the stunning image was painted on the wall of Preventers Headquarters sub-level seven…That part of it was weird.

Marie led them through a rather elaborate series of twists and turns until Trowa guessed they were somewhere in the middle section of the level that had been blocked off by the collapsed wall. She opened a door and walked into a room, leaving Trowa little choice but to follow her.

It was…nothing that he had expected. Computer monitors were everywhere, tapped into Preventers security and watching every level. Several monitors were blank, other showed varying desktop wallpapers, programs idly running through the day's events. There was a small map on a laptop at Marie's side with a boat on it, sailing south toward…Antarctica. He recalled that was where Sally was headed and his brain registered that this was someone's office. Nothing in there revealed who that might be. There was no golden plaque on the desk or door.

The main monitor was massive, almost like a movie theatre and it showed the paused game of the Endless Waltz. Marie had an extraordinary score. It was so extraordinary that Trowa just had to know which Gundam she had used to get it, and only then did anything at all even slightly fall into place.

"Altron…" His eyes widened behind his hair as his eyes swept the room once more. Sure enough, pushed up against the back of the massive desk, were a pair of well-shined black shoes that he just knew would be a size seven. There were small things, like the wallpapers all containing images of a place he was sure no longer existed. And there was the big thing; the mural of the Asian girl in her field with the daisy chain.

"Wufei refused to let me play unless I used one of his Gundams. I started with Shenlong at first, but Wufei had some pretty neat tricks with Altron and I soon switched over."

Wufei…played Endless Waltz? With Marie? There was something intrinsically wrong with that concept, and yet also…so right. The two who had been at its heart, now playing it on their computer as if it had never been real. Reliving something only they could really understand…together.

And it made sense, that Sally would simply nab her old partner for the mission. What didn't make sense was why Wufei hadn't just taken the mission himself. Wufei couldn't begin to guess why. He hadn't seen or spoken to Wufei in….well…

Trowa's brain stalled momentarily.

"Shit!" He could not recall having seen Wufei at any point in the last year, and even before that. He knew Wufei's desk had been moved when they all got moved to a higher level of the building in the reshuffle months ago, but he had not found out where, figuring Wufei would tell him next time he came in. Only…every time Wufei had come in he had headed down, not up.

He felt his knees growing a little shaky and quickly sat down in the spare chair, the one his assumed Marie usually sat in since she appeared to be in the more worn of the two and it had Wufei's Preventers jacket hanging off the back of it. He couldn't stop looking around the room now, taking it all in, trying to imagine just how Wufei had built the place without anyone noticing. And just why the hell he had not told anyone this was where he was.

"Why…is Wufei's office down here?"

"Dunno," Marie shrugged, opening up a sound program and putting on some a rather lovely little piano piece. It suited the place and it was obvious she was familiar with it. "He won't talk about it. Besides, he's not here that much."

Trowa guessed that was probably true. Every time he had ever thought to find Wufei for lunch he had found Wufei's name on the missions list. In fact, now that he thought about it, he wasn't sure Wufei's name ever left that list. Odd.

It was a mystery to Trowa and one that he wanted a solution to fast because he did not like the answers popping up in his head. Someone had to have known something.

"The mural in the hall…who'd he get to paint that?"

Marie just looked at him like he was nuts before rolling her chair over to the filing cabinet and kicking open the bottom drawer. She grabbed a pile of massive art books and dumped them in his lap. He just swallowed dryly and put them on the desk, not really sure he wanted to look. Who would have thought Wufei could paint?

His gaze snagged on the empty tray on the desk, which was, now that he thought about it, completely devoid of paperwork. Wufei was always on missions, so where were the reports?

"Marie…what's Wufei do when he's here?"

"Wait for them to email him a mission?" Marie shrugged. "I dunno. I told you, he's not here that much. When he is…we just play games on the computer and he usually tries to fix anything that got broken while he was on a mission. Which reminds me. When's his birthday?"

Trowa started at that, trying to remember but he couldn't recall ever knowing the date. It made it all the more clear why he had never received an invite. Though, he had to admit, it was only adding to the complete oddness of the whole situation.

"You don't know either, do you? God, you guys suck! Not even Duo knew and he knows everyone's birthday! No wonder Wufei doesn't like to talk about any of you."

Trowa shuddered at that little revelation, trying hard to recall the date but he knew it was useless. He had never known it to recall. Marie was rocking from side to side on the chair, the swivel mechanism squeaking softly, in need of an oil. Trowa made a mental note to bring some down in the morning, and then realized that he actually intended to come back in the morning.

"Why do you need to know his birthday?"

"So I can get him a present?" Marie rolled her eyes and turned to the laptop, tapping a few keys as the boat stopped moving and transformed into a little stick man with a gun. It started walking rather slowly across the map.

"The Preventer files have his birthday on them," Trowa said softly, pulling his chair over to the desk and grabbing a keyboard from the large stack under the shelf the monitors were resting on.

"Not that one!" Marie grabbed the keyboard and just looked at him for the longest time. Trowa wished he knew what was going through her head, but decided it was probably better he didn't know. She eventually reached over and handed him a different keyboard and when he tapped the enter key a monitor two or three seats away blinked to life, with the small screen asking for a password. Trowa put in his but it wouldn't work.

"Idiot," Marie noted as she leant over his shoulder and tapped something in, so fast he couldn't quite catch it, which he figured was her intention when she stuck her tongue out at him.

The Preventers network came online and he quickly started shuffling through the levels, now able to use his own codes to access the more confidential files. It took more effort than he had expected, but he eventually found Wufei's file buried amongst the field agents. It had not been updated since Sally joined the medical team. It should have listed at least a hundred missions. Trowa scowled at the sight.

Then he laughed. Wufei had replaced his birthday with `I was not born'.

"That's not funny," Marie whispered close to his ear and he turned to see her paler than usual, a horrified expression on her face. "You're all so horrible."

Trowa stopped laughing instantly, all the mirth flooding from his body as Marie slumped back in her chair. She looked thoroughly miserable as she stared at the laptop screen. He had thought it was a joke; a prank, but he quickly realized that he had never actually seen Wufei pull a prank, not that he had seen much of Wufei lately. Still…not once. There was no reason to think it a habit he had suddenly acquired.

Which meant Marie was right. It most certainly was not funny. It was…a statement, of sorts; an acknowledgement that Wufei had heard what people were trying to tell him. It explained why his office was in sub-level seven and why no one had seen him in a year. It explained why he was always on a mission Trowa would have considered suicidal. It explained why Marie was down here and not still standing in the hallway waiting for someone to notice her outside Une's office.

And it explained to Trowa just what a truly horrendous friend he was.

Marie was standing in front of him, looking down at him with a knowing, sad smile on her face. And it hurt. A lot. Because he had known, on some level. He had known they were outcasts, shunned by society for their actions, regardless of the reasons behind them. Trowa knew Heero shuddered at the mention of Wufei's name, not in any visible way but on the inside and so it never surprised him to find Wufei inconspicuously absent from the guest lists Duo drew up. Quatre was a very political person and the last thing he needed was to be seen by the media with one of the people associated with the Marimeia incident, so it had never really surprised Trowa when Wufei was a no show there. He had just never stopped to think about why that absence spilled over into Wufei being missing from the office, and the lunch table and the dinner dates and every other social gathering of their friends. The problem was, he didn't want to think about it because he couldn't quite grasp how he had managed to escape the same fate.

To all appearances, he too had chosen the wrong side, and he too had done it for all the right reasons. He couldn't claim to know what Wufei had been thinking but he knew what he himself had thought, remembered it all too well. He was not guilty and neither was Chang Wufei. Not because of that incident.

But Trowa Barton knew he was guilty right now.

"Do you want to go shopping?"

Trowa looked up, startled from his small reverie, and found Marie holding out her hand questioningly. He quickly logged off the Preventers system and stood to go.

"Shopping for what?"

"Wufei's birthday of course." Marie looked like she thought that was the most obvious thing in the world as she saved her game and logged off.

"But we don't know when it is."

"So? Christmas is not always in December you know, and birthdays are not always when you're born. They can be when people just want to celebrate the fact that you're alive."

Trowa mulled that over in his head as he let Marie pull him back through the corridors and past the pretty mural that he knew could only be of Meilan and he thought Marie was much smarter than people gave her credit for, and she was well worth knowing and having as a friend. She was not a guilty person. Just a scared one. Scared of how the world looked at her and even more scared to give in.

"What does Wufei need?"

"Boots. I gave him some for Christmas but they're already trashed," Marie snorted ruefully and Trowa wondered just how bad Wufei's boots were. It was odd that Marie was not offended that Wufei had practically, apparently, destroyed her gift. Actually she seemed rather pleased with herself. And Trowa realized that there was another reason Marie liked to hang out in that office; Mariemeia Kushrenada had a crush on Chang Wufei. It made him smile, because he could not recall anyone really having a crush on Wufei, except for maybe Sally Po and that had been more of the sisterly kind.

"What else. We can't both buy him boots."

"Why not, he needs more shoes," Marie laughed as they passed the archives clerk on the stairs at sub-level two. "But I'm going to get him something…I dunno, nice I suppose. Something he doesn't need, but that he might actually want. Not that Wufei ever wants anything." Marie rolled her eyes at that, opening the door and slipping out quickly, rushing off to the next corridor and motioning for him to hurry up.

Trowa sauntered across the foyer, nodding politely to the security guard on his way past and making a mental note to have him replaced. How the dumb bastard had failed to see Marie run through here every second day for the past few months was beyond him. They couldn't afford that kind of hiccup in security.

They went to Trowa's office, which was covered in small yellow post-its and it made him wonder yet again just how he had escaped the isolation Marie and Wufei were suffering in. He was no different. He had just been quieter in his choices and kinder in his reasoning.

He picked up the phone and dialed Une's office. It took longer than he had expected for her to pick up and she sounded tired.

"Marie's here. Is it okay if I take her shopping?"

Of course it was, Une was in a meeting and would not be out until later that evening.

"Would it be easier if she stayed at my place tonight?"

Well, she didn't have school in the morning due to a feast day, so if he could bring her in to work she didn't see a problem with it.

"Okay. Not a problem. See you in the morning."

And that was that. Only Marie was looking at him like the devil incarnate. He just arched an eyebrow at her until she sighed, relenting.

"I don't have any clothes to wear…what the hell am I mean to sleep in," she mumbled as they headed back downstairs to the garage.

"I'll buy you some clothes then; ones you can keep at my house for when you stay over." Because this would not be the last time. Mariemeia was about to get her introduction to society at the hands of the most anti-social people he could think of, and if he had his way she wouldn't be doing it alone. He'd drag Wufei right along with her.

"You can't buy me clothes!" Mariemeia protested as she climbed in the passenger side of his car.

"Why not?"

"Because…why the hell would you wanna buy me stuff?"

Trowa just smiled as he drove the car out of Preventers and onto the street.

"Because Christmas is not always in December, Marie."

She stared at him for a while then and eventually just stared out the window. Trowa wasn't sure if he would call that progress.

Shopping with Marie ended up being…an experience. She was an oddly hesitant shopper, pricing everything before she even considered buying, and even then she hardly purchased anything. She ended up with a new pair of boots while Trowa found a new hiker's backpack he thought would be nice to have on a mission. They found the pendant together at the jewelers and decided to pay half each because Marie was right; the damn thing was perfect. Plain white gold, it was the most intricately cast dragon Trowa had ever seen and they both thought the sword in its chest was rather symbolic. So they had a small posy of presents for Wufei's `birthday' and Trowa had bought Marie a new pair of jeans, a black t-shirt and a pair of Winnie the Pooh Pajamas. Apparently the bear had never gone out of style. Trowa also bought them dinner; Chinese takeaway from what Marie assured him was the best joint in town, and she was right.

They were sitting in the food court when something occurred to Trowa.

"Marie…why'd you let me see Wufei's office?" She never had before.

"I was bored," she shrugged. "Besides, I think Wufei likes you. Talk about Heero Yuy and Wufei gets this sad look on his face. Talk about Duo Maxwell and its slightly annoyed, talk about Quatre Winner and you would swear he never knew the guy. Talk about Trowa Barton and maybe, just maybe, you'll get a smile."

Marie grinned at him then, pointing her chopsticks at him, which she wielded rather well, all things considered, but then she had had a good teacher.

"Yeah, that's the one," she pointed to his own small, tight, slightly sad smile. She looked away then, shoveling her food down as if she was afraid he would try to take it away. Trowa just watched her, wondering how he had ever been so blind. So much for the infallible Gundam Pilots.

"You don't seem worried," he noted.

"About what?"

"Wufei."

Marie just snorted and tossed her empty carton in the bin across the walkway.

"He came back from the Russia mission alive. I'm not worried."

Trowa made a mental note to find out what the Russia mission had involved and then made another mental note that his mental notes were getting too long to remember them all before he tossed his empty carton and headed for the car, suddenly not all that worried at all.