Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The One-Eared Neko ❯ THE ABSENCE OF DREAMS ( Chapter 17 )

Part 17 THE ABSENCE OF DREAMS

He was looking. Pressing his hand to the glass, he was peering down and they were gazing up in magnificent hope. He smiled, pressing his palm tighter, when one ventured forward. Through the wood-shaving flooring the orange tabby cat kitten crept forward. It wove through the motley litter and he was certain that it was the one he wanted to adopt. Peering through the pet shop window, Heero was laughing quietly to himself. The glass was cold under his palm, the day warm and amiable, and the kitten's eyes large and green. So it came as a surprise to see the brute of a hand swing down and smash its tiny, fragile skull. As he watched the corpse fall to the ground and lie there without blood, his palm still pressed to the window, he heard a voice saying his name softly.

Duo's voice called out to him repeatedly.

"Heero-Heero!"

Slowly, the traveler opened his eyes from the dream to the cool hotel sheets wrapped over him. The seductive echo of the bohemian's voice revealed itself to be simply masked over another's voice-teasing him in his own head. The Japanese man gradually lifted himself from the bed and silently gazed around the rather sparsely furnished, blue-painted hotel room where he suddenly found himself.

"Heero, are you there? If you are, please open the door!"

He blinked twice at the alien sound of Relena's voice before it vaguely registered that she was the source of the noise. Her buttery, simple, and wholesome memory rushed back to him and the suffocation that she and his antiquated lifestyle had brought. No doubt she would have begun a frightened search for him upon news of his disappearance, Heero was sure as he slowly rose from the bed, and it would have intensified unimaginably after hearing news of him traveling with a wanted con man.

With a sigh, the traveler slipped out of the lonesome hotel bed and padded toward the door. The scent of bohemians and their smoking habits still lingered in the room, along the bare blue walls and spartan lack of furniture.

She would have been even more horrified to learn he hadn't just traveled with him, killed alongside him, and committed crimes with him.

"Heero! It's me, Relena. You don't have to be afraid, Heero, we've come to free you."

He might have fallen for him, too.

And with a disdainful, unhappy look marring his face, he slid the golden-colored lock firmly into place and went back to bed. As he pulled the comforter back, ready to collapse back into the simple mourning of sleep, Relena began to sound more and more panicked. She whispered something loudly to the person supposedly beside her, though Heero wouldn't be surprised if she had finally gone out of her mind and was plotting with the floral print on the wall. He pushed aside the blankets, fell back to the mattress and then lumped them back over him.

"Heero!" Relena cried out again, this time louder and even more persistently. "Don't be alarmed."

"About what...?" Heero grumbled dully into the pillow.

An authoritative male voice soon cut the high-pitched and concerned monotony of his old girlfriend's voice, slightly surprising him. He vaguely thought it was the manager. "We're coming in! Move, move, move!" he announced, seconds before opening the standard lock in the doorknob with a tiny clink.

Heero was unconcerned, until the heavy boot fell on the door at a perfect right angle and flung it violently against the wall. Golden bits of the sliding lock scattered to the floor like a lady's broken necklace of beads.

He was only slightly concerned when the bodyguards rushed in. He had seen them looming at large in Senator Peacecraft's wake and accompanying Relena and himself and holding back as they went about their Saturday activities, always watching over the muse of flipping through a magazine or sipping a drink. Flatly staring over the fabric of the pillow, on eye barely exposed, Heero snorted disdainfully. He didn't recognize any of these guards. The new guard, under Relena's order, he supposed.

The bulky suit-clad figures burst through the opened door like troops pouring onto that French sand on the sixth of June. Their beady, searching eyes first fell on him and quickly scattered about the room, weapons drawn. A table was inadvertently knocked over and the complimentary plastic-wrapped cups, coffee maker, and whiskey glasses crashed to the ground, spilling across the dark blue carpet. Heero watched listlessly, as if it really weren't there, and the loud commotion and mess of sudden human voices and guns being whipped at every insignificant corner were all something he'd dreamt up. As he watched, a pair of pale baby blue heels calmly stepped over the mess of shattered glass in what seemed like slow motion.

Heero pulled the covers over his head and groaned.

---

Relena tossed a heavy coat over his shoulders in the most feminine way and comforting manner that she could. As he was moved from the hotel room, he was still only dressed in what he'd been left in, a tank top beneath his old pressed white shirts and his slacks, and the day was significantly more chilled than expected for the summer. He was pulled from one of her assistant's arms as she pulled him to her side and they were both, in turn, swept up by the imaginable amount of police officers, plainclothes FBI officers, and the complete Peacecraft security network. It was comprised of everything from the publicist to the Peacecraft daughter's associate, the aging but reliable Pagan who followed with his old, lined face closely protective.

He could feel her eyes sliding up and down the side of his face, but he barely registered it. The array of blue uniforms crisscrossed with radios, badges and bulging with bulletproof vests paired with the formal and masculine suits of black, rushing in front and to the side and surging behind them. The light was brighter than usual-he assumed it was a side effect from being drugged. Sometimes he would feel his hair being brushed away from his face and comfort whispered to him, but it fell upon deaf ears.

The police and bodyguards swathed off the stairway with obnoxious yellow tape. They ruptured the room to glean it clean for any scraps of evidence and Heero and Relena were taken to the parking lot. He squinted in the glaring sunlight and his vision blurred, side effects rekindled beneath the sudden light. The dim figure of an ambulance with opened doors appeared before him and Relena's presence left him as strong arms hoisted him to the back and into the hands of others. The absence of the overprotective blonde was momentary; his old girlfriend and foster sister crawled inside as well.

He was being examined by a scruffy brunet medic when he fully regained his vision.

The golden presence and ordinarily flawless face of the young Peacecraft hovered behind him, patiently considering him with her cornflower shade of blue.

A sharp light stared him in the eye. The precise, detached hand of the medic lifted to his cheekbone and gently pulled down his eyelid and the penlight clicked off. "Well, they're looking better now. How can you see? Any better?" the man asked as he hurriedly put the light away and rummaged another item from his medical purse sitting beside him.

"Yes. They're fine," Heero said lifelessly.

"Well, that's good, because they check out. All that's left is everything else."

The traveler bowed his head slightly. "Alright."

Despite the odd, strangled tone his voice made, he still felt a cold absence in his chest that choked what little emotion he displayed anyway. The Japanese man dryly cleared his throat and found a cold water bottle pressed into his palm.

He took a drink as the young scruffy-haired medic waited to peer inside his mouth. Obediently he opened his mouth and it briefly was glanced at before it received a bill of health. The medic also rattled off a list of memorized operational questions about Heero's health at the moment, which were all answered with the same monotone affirmative grunt.

"Do you have any drugs that you know of in your bloodstream?"

In suspicion, he narrowed his eyes. "Why do you ask?"

The medic's face was good-intention itself. "Even I know you were kidnapped by an infamous criminal, even though I don't own a television set since my last eviction. I was just wondering if you may have anything in your bloodstream out of the ordinary."

"Yes. Tranquilizers," the Japanese college man grunted finally.

"Do you know what kind?"

"No. I was never told. But they were strong. Lasted for at least eight hours, though."

"Alright," the medic nodded.

Relena still watched silently.

Not that he was complaining, Heero thought dimly. He knew she would have the opportunity to open her mouth and express exactly what was on her mind soon enough about leaving her for a criminal.

"Thank you for the water." Listlessly he screwed on the lid and returned it.

"It's nothing. Hey, you can call me Robert, none of that ridiculous sir stuff. I'm the same age as you," the brunet medic, apparently named Robert, said graciously, putting on a genuinely friendly, small-town-bred smile. It made Heero ache. He only saw a bohemian in his place.

Heero nodded silently. Precisely continuing the medical exam, the medic quietly shuffled through his assortment of equipment intended to preserve life and produced a needle. There wasn't even a twitch of fear in his dark blue eyes, they were desensitized and a banal shade of their brooding Prussian. The thin needle mounted on the hollow container, marked with tiny white numbers, beaded a few drops of the sloshing clear fluid inside.

"Don't be alarmed. We're just giving you something to help you recover your strength," Robert explained, void of a smile, professionally engrossed while he disinfected Heero's arm just above the major vein in the crook of his elbow.

There was a distant spark and the shot was completed, being discarded promptly in a hazardous waste basket installed into the ambulance walls. Heero dimly recognized Relena's honeysweet and reassuring tone politely thanking the medic. He was too strangely enraptured by the tiny teddy bear perched high on the white walls. Black beady eyes smiled compassionately over the silky red ribbon tied around its neck. It smiled at him, and he momentarily left the reality of the situation behind him, blinking up at it with such a drained expression that it looked like a hopeless prayer. The warmth of Relena's arm around his shoulder was lost on him.

Robert sighed quietly as he unhitched a separate medical kid, aside from the standard cuts-and-bruises one. A gleaming plastic array of vials, equal parts vaccination liquids and antibiotics and sedatives and blood containers, was visible from Heero's seat on the cot beside a swinging IV bag. He selected one of the later bottles and a fresh needle for extraction. "Alright. Last thing, I promise. The guys at the hospital might want to check your blood for those tranquilizers among other things, so we'll be taking care of it now. The first shots was just a little nourishment-I heard you had a history of low blood sugar problems in your childhood."

"Yes, I did, but how did-" His voice groped around groggily, while his brain was hardly aware of making the words.

"I told them, Heero," Relena supplied gently, rubbing his shoulder. "It's okay."

"You'll be fine. We'll arrive shortly."

Heero frowned, snapped from his reverie of the singular teddy bear swaying gently on the wall. "We're going to the hospital?" he asked groggily. A squinting glance out the tiny glass windows set in the back doors established that they were indeed moving, as the harsh silver gleam of business buildings rushed by. "There's no need to take me to a doctor."

"Don't be silly, Heero," Relena said finally, stroking his arm. "Don't worry about it. He's only trying to help you and the least you can do is be cooperative."

Robert shuffled over in the moving ambulance, testing a new needle. "It's just a blood test. Besides, if you're as healthy as you appear to be, you'll take a few hour's nap while they run the tests and be released most likely." He shrugged warmly. "Like the miss said, nothing to work yourself up about."

The blonde smiled and invited her cheek to rest on Heero's shoulder. Both her and his listless frame rose and fell gently in a sigh of defeat.

The blood sample was taken and Heero absently rubbed the area with a thumb until the bleeding stopped, again gazing deeply at the enigma of the teddy bear with the comforting face. When the chipper Robert glanced over his shoulder at the seeming coupled pair, he noticed Heero's engaged stare and traced it to the tiny stuffed animal suspended on the wall and swaying with the dips of the road below the ambulance. A smile stretched his face gently. "Ah, I see you've noticed Joseph up there."

Heero quietly turned his head.

Robert's grin practically glowed in a way that was painfully reminiscent of one brunet bohemian. "It's kinda nice. Usually all my patients are too close to death to notice him up there, and he never gets any attention except from me and the crew."

Setting down the medical purse on a small projecting ledge and rested a shoulder against the wall, looking up a few inches at the scruffy teddy bear. He happily tapped at the stuffed paw. "We have a cabinet full of teddy bears, all wrapped up in plastic. We give them to the kids we pick up with broken bones, fractures or sprains-stuff like that. There was this one girl who collapsed from dehydration and eventually died."

Heero flinched in the form of a minute frown, watching the medic chatter.

"She was a real sweetie if I ever saw one. In the ambulance, I was attending her. Somewhere between Park Drive and Franklin she regained consciousness all of a sudden and just looked up at me with those little candy eyes of hers. I wasn't sure what she wanted, but as soon as I pulled out that teddy bear there, she lit up like a church candle." Robert chuckled.

"Then we reached the hospital. Just before they lifted her into the wheelchair, she motioned me over and thanked me and gave him back. Even when I told her that she could have him, she shook her head. Then she said that he should stay, because he was the nicest teddy bear she'd ever done met and other kids would need him more than she did now."

"That's sweet," Relena added softly. In the moment, she cradled Heero's shoulder tighter against her arm, but even if he were paying any attention to her, he would have just brushed it off as casually as he'd done before.

He still gazed deeply at the teddy bear, and glanced once over to the bright and neighborly medic who didn't mind speaking of death. In the place of his small, modest smile, the image of a sharp, false, and humorously embittered one replaced it. Along the ridge of his ear cartilage, the red marks of absent earrings arose and his hair was longer and lighter, spilt-ended and matted slightly from time and stress. And Heero ached, knowing that he was just imagining it.

Robert chuckled nostalgically and looked at him. "Would you like to hold him, too?"

Much to Relena's surprise, he nodded without a second's thought. A few moments later, the scruffy, silently comforting Joseph was untied from his station on the wall and handed to the traveler.

He gazed down at the beady black eyes and the tiny stitched smile. And found one for himself, as he thumbed the fuzzy, teacup handle-shaped ear on the left side of his head.

"Hi, Joe," he said quietly.

---

Just as predicted, he received a clean bill of health and was released a few hours later. Beneath an alias he checked out and was released into the Peacecraft custody once more. At the hotel, his belongings had been found, and he'd requested to keep them with him. His backpack was tucked under his arm. Heero silently shrugged on a coat as he walked for the door without a word to the assembly of guards escorting both him and Ms. Peacecraft. They paused at the door, looking back over their shoulders in the same stifling silence. Dully, Heero growled to himself and wondered what Relena could be doing, chatting with the doctor for so long.

In her baby blue heels and a royal blue overcoat that covered all and hung down at her knees, giving the illusion she wore nothing beyond the coat. A matching wide, baby blue ribbon was tied at the back of her neck in her honey-blonde hair. The doctor and she both exchanged a professional smile and she thanked him as she received the manila folder. There was even the semblance of a bow before they parted and she walked up to his side.

"What's that?" Heero inquired dully.

If he hadn't been forced to wait for this specific folder, he really wouldn't have cared even if there were thousands of dollars in it. Money was no object to the Peacecraft line, and money couldn't replace the natural charms of a gypsy boy, so it didn't interest him in any matter. The relative secretiveness behind that all-endearing smile was what stirred a morbid curiosity in him. Folding it innocently under her arm and tucking it out of reach, Relena gently beamed at him and intertwined her delicate pale fingers with his own.

"It's nothing. Just some medical records, Heero," she soothed him, brushing the pad of her thumb along his knuckles. The dull fire of protest in the traveler's chest was nullified with suspicion.

"Records on me?" Heero inquired warily, looking over evenly into her cornflower blue eyes.

Resisting a red-handed blush, the Peacecraft daughter twisted their hands tighter and smiled ambiguously as she began to move. Her baby blue heels moved innocently across the floor with a pattern of click, click, click.

"Oh, but that doesn't matter. It's just a little something I was worried about. Blood tests, and that. But you shouldn't worry at all-they're all clean. We'll be going home again after Father's convention tonight." Relena beamed honestly and sweetly, huddling tightly against him in a gesture of welcome and comfort. "Isn't that wonderful? Finally, you'll be able to be at peace again and all of this will be behind you. We can start living our lives again, like before all of this happened."

Heero momentarily flickered a distrusting glance down at her. The word 'our' was more alarming than it'd ever been before, but the happiness in her sinless face stopped him from speaking up. He thought for a moment, she might have been checking for rabies or something ridiculous like that.

The mass of bodyguards moved and escorted them out into open air. Relena clung content to Heero's side as they walked and smiled brightly to the men and women walking inside and watching them, not yet recognizing them. Any that would have realized that the Peacecraft children were leaving the hospital would have been deflected by the bodyguards anyway. The door of her dark limousine-thank God for black, because her choices in vehicles were unusual and most often pastel-was opened for them and they slipped inside. Heero let his adoptive sister in first, then glanced at the bodyguards, and finally stepped in himself.

The driver wasted no time in leaving the hospital. Relena sighed to the left of him and praised their luck on escaping the media radar. With all the coverage that his kidnapping had received, news of his rescue would practically cause a frenzy that would engulf all of the Peacecraft family for as long as the public cared to care. And there was no telling how much peace work could be done while constantly trying to skirt the paparazzi. Peace work. That thought caused Heero to automatically recall what Duo had said, snarling in the dimness-that he was only an animal that had forgotten its place, why not scrape off the scum before it infects everything? Images of a tiny humanoid kitten and the soldiers holding it still as they whipped out their butane lighters came unbidden to his brain and he looked over at Relena.

She was gazing out the window almost as if she were pondering how deep the sky was and a sliver of air from the cracked window was throwing bits of her blonde hair behind her. She was beautiful, but only in an appreciative way. She was like an interesting painting where you stopped, swished your wine around, and hummed to your friends about. A statue-like beauty and the daughter of a possible figurehead. She had been beautiful before, in an inspiring, womanly way, but it had somehow gone sour in his mind, like bad wine.

Heero wondered if she knew what her father had done.

Relena sighed again and noticed then that Heero was looking at her. With a congenial smile, she quit her complaining about that relentless press and moved closer to him. "But it's all over now, Heero. We'll go home after the convention and everything can be normal again," the blonde woman said soothingly. "I can't believe that you were gone only for a few days. It seemed so horribly long, searching for you."

"I'm fine," he replied reassuringly. It wasn't really informative, but it was enough. As his adoptive sister and later girlfriend, she'd eventually adapted to his short and often seemingly antisocial answers. She pulled her lips back in a reserved smile, unsatisfied with the answer.

"Are you sure, Heero?" Relena's hand was on his face. "You went through something awful, Heero, you know you can always tell me about anything. It's okay."

Although he had the quiet intention of not breaking her heart and just quietly slipping away from her one day, without all the fret and fuss she could bring with her, there was a sudden stab in his heart that told him that it was wrong. Just being touched by her suddenly seemed like the worst thing he could do. Imagine what Duo would think-how it would feel looking at Relena when all he wanted was to go back to him. But he couldn't do that anymore.

A tiny image of Duo unhappily bared a fang at him, warning him that he'd promised to stay out of his way. If he went back for him, he be breaking a promise he'd distinctly made-if he didn't, he wasn't sure he wouldn't be consumed by the sweeping insistence of the Peacecraft family, be consumed by the memory of Duo. There was no way to walk away without getting hurt, one way or another, when he looked at it and it was slowly making him sick to his stomach. Sitting here, unable to do anything.

"You're not hurt at all, are you?" She asked, shifting over so that her legs pointed at his own, intersecting and creating a triangle of space between them that was slowly closing in. Her palm still warmed his face.

"Don't touch me," someone growled coldly, and to Heero's mild surprise, he discovered it was himself after he jerked away from Relena's hand and felt his brow tightening up.

She almost looked like she was choking. Warm skin turned awfully pale. "Heero? Is something wrong?" Relena asked and the triangle between them momentarily expanded, only to shrink radically as she moved even closer. As what could be expected, she mistakenly thought the violent recoil to be the cause of anyone but herself. But that wasn't her fault. There was no way to know of the realizations her boyfriend had come to in their short time apart. There was no way she could know.

"Did that criminal do something to you? Are you alright? Did he hurt you at all?" Her cornflower blue eyes were concerned, but still somehow very disturbing.

"I'm okay, Relena, for the fourth time. I just want to think for a while, alright?" he responded patiently, though the insistent concern burning at him through her eyes did something to chew away at his restraint.

"Was it that con man, Heero? I know it can be hard sometimes, for people to talk about when they've been traumatized like that," the blonde woman soothed quietly, taking up his hand in a gesture intended to instill peace in him and instead only fueling a fire that had been simply brooding embers for too long, "but trust me, I'm here for you-"

His dark Prussian eyes widened slightly in the poisonous way they do when faced with accusations, and a the hints of disgust weren't overly hard to find in Heero's face as he pulled his hand away, without jolting her this time, and moved back a few inches. If he had seen himself, he would have noticed the unhappy bared lip and thought it resembled Duo's. "Traumatized like that?" he asked, incredulous that she would infer something like that. "Are you saying that you think that Duo might have raped me or something? How can you just assume something so sick like that?"

"Heero, be calm. You can tell me-"

"Nothing happened, Relena," he growled back tersely. The volume in his voice waned a little as he reined back his surprise. "I told you I'm fine. Nothing happened."

"What am I supposed to think, Heero, when you stare off into space and you won't even respond to me when I touch you? I'm worried about you! You're acting so strangely!"

The Japanese man shifted completely into the opposite seat, keeping a safe distance between him and the blonde-haired woman of innocence and ignorance. Not that he was recoiling from her unwarranted ministrations; he wasn't sure he could control himself if he was constantly thinking of Duo and how wrong it was to be touched by Relena, the daughter of the one who had ordered the ruin of Duo's life and the bloody demise of his family. To be touched by anyone when he couldn't think straight, being torn so badly. He caught his breath before it left him in a sigh and folded his arms unhappily as he stared out the window.

"Please just leave me alone." His voice was flat, barren, and ultimately dead.

She considered him carefully for a moment before shifting as well and straightening out in her seat. Relena took the time to vainly brush off her long, designer fleece coat and gaze down at her hands for a second, before the nature that upset him took root again despite all the warnings. "That's alright," she conceded, at first. "But you needn't worry. The police will catch that despicable con man soon enough and justice will be handled for what he did to you."

Gleaming metallic signs passed on the narrow roadway, reflecting the light of the sun streaming off the high buildings around them. With his chin supported in his palm, elbow in the windowsill, Heero snorted to himself. "That's impossible. Duo's too good to be caught so easily. The only way you could ever lay your hands on him would be in hundreds of bloody pieces, and only if he wanted you to."

Her intertwined fingers tightened abruptly and her spine shot up straight and she stared over at him like a rather ridiculous-looking, ruffled stork. "He's not a human, Heero. He's no match for the enforcement in this city and Father's private investigators. There's no way we won't have swift justice for his crimes-he will be punished."

"Duo is not wicked. And he deserves every once of revenge he can get," he snapped angrily in return.

Relena stared at him, unreadable in her mixing furies. "What?"

It took a second for him to register that he had actually spoken out loud, and then the expression smeared across his foster sister's face had soured incredulously. "Don't tell me you're sympathizing with an animal like that! What has he done to you, Heero? He did something to you, I just know it!"

Heero only saw red. "He showed me the truth," he growled curtly, again snapping his wrist away from her grip.

He was vaguely aware that a few split seconds later his voice had snapped out at Pagan, his silhouette and two other's on the tinted glass separating the driver and the passengers, to stop the car. Obedient as a dog, the brakes were soon graciously applied and the gleaming black limousine pulled to the side of the bustling street. Waiting until the engine rumbled into a low purr and rolled to a stop, Heero glared over at Relena in frustration, fist around the metal handlebar.

"First of all, Relena Peacecraft," the blue-eyed man ground out, "Duo has been more of a responsible human being in his short life than you could ever imagine being in the entirety of yours. Second of all, I never was kidnapped or taken by force by any means-I followed him willingly and I left you in the soundest of state of mind."

"Heero!" she gasped.

That only suffered a sterner grimace. "And lastly, Relena, know that I do love you dearly as a sibling who has been there for me in the past when I have suffered-but nothing further. And nor could I, after seeing your true nature-an ignorant woman who seems intent on staying just the way she is."

Her mouth gaped obscenely. "Heero!"

"I refuse to live with your delusions any longer." He kicked the door viciously to allow a gust of breezy cool air to toss his disheveled hair about, accenting the hostile expression. "Don't follow me."

When he slammed the door on the dark limousine, he cut off the lamentation of the Peacecraft daughter's honey-ignorant voice to him, but didn't care. He ignored the sudden protest she made to someone else and started walking in the opposite direction. A storm was brewing in him, and it pushed him along the ground effortlessly.

He was going to help Duo-and fuck whatever or whoever was going to try to come between him and the one-eared Neko's salvation. They knew nothing. If he had to, he'd stand in front of Duo's revengeful gun to eat a bullet himself if it would mean escaping cleanly; he'd die in his father, Senator Peacecraft's place without a moment's hesitation. If Duo fell into the hands of such a fearful and violent community, with all guns and blame faced toward a different culture they didn't understand and the bad-blood of an attempted assassination on his hands, he wouldn't stand a chance.

It would be the death of Duo if he were caught. There was no doubt about it.

The second bulky silhouette bolted from the passenger side door at the beckon of Relena's frantic voice and lunged forcefully at him, knocking the wind from him. Heero cried out, realizing he'd been struck by the bodyguard and now was thrown to the ground. Gruff hands full of precise violence wrenched his arms behind his back as his face pressed painfully into the cement. With an angry exclamation, Heero surged up against the immense bodyguard and managed to whip his elbow out of his grip and cleanly into the side of his face. He buckled to the side and allowed Heero breathing room again, propping himself up on his other elbow. For an instant, he sat there, staring up in a daze into the unreal, shining skyscrapers.

Then the unforgiving fist of the other unseen guard took the consciousness from one Heero Yuy.

Okay, minor error. Something got fucked up when I uploaded, or I must have been too busy stuffing my nose with peas or something to notice. My bad. A lot of you probably noticed there were two chapter 17's, and they were both at the beginning. Yeah, my fault. All fixed. Sorry. Oh, and to address something: I'm currently about half to 3/4 of the way done with chapter 20. They get longer, yes, don't worry.