Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The One-Eared Neko ❯ MOSCAS EN LA CASA ( Chapter 21 )

Part 21 MOSCAS EN LA CASA

While the three investigators were still a block from unearthing the traveler's cramped asylum, the youngest and most naïve of the Peacecraft offspring was only three more feet from beholding the image of the lawbreaker who'd taken a hold of her brother in one brief week and transmuted him into something she wasn't sure she recognized, or liked. Only time would tell what the con man had meant in doing so. And that time was, fortunately, at that moment. Her soft, feminine baby blue heels, something the concrete of the cell corridor had not seen for a long time, came to a rest just outside the bars of the last cell on the row, casting a stark gray shadow in the industrial lights. Outside, through the barred glass windows, the night was inky black and inside the cell itself shadow still remained, concealing the criminal enough to give him a chance for decent shut eye. Relena straightened up politely, her face pursed in careful consideration and her eyes reading something of apprehension, but not fear.

She did not fear men like these. She feared their strange misdeeds more than them themselves. Straightening her chin out proudly, she waited for the con man to acknowledge her presence and meanwhile her mind swam with questions. Questions that were filling her, much like they had her brother. Perhaps that was just one of Duo Maxwell's talents, to make those around him constantly question themselves, but meditation was not included in that long repertoire. The bohemian, the con man, the criminal, Maxwell's Demon, and the part-Nekonese, part-hienn son of an Irish Catholic girl and a Nekonese Warrior sat in the center of the cell, where he'd been for most of his famed stay. His thin, sinewy legs were crossed, heel resting on opposite knee, forearms laid down on his knees, palms up, eyes closed, hair matted and brushed behind his ear, ikkunnoi folded against his skull, his hands folded in his lap.

Relena squinted into the shadow while her eyes adjusted. Had she not been wary and suspicious, she might have missed the soft movements of the con man's lips, too soft for her hearing a prayer being repeated.

"Mr. Maxwell?" the woman's voice greeted in her sweet, gracious tone, sending the pensive silence that had hung over the cellblock for the longest time scampering back into the corners. "I would like to speak with you about my brother's whereabouts."

"Yadda-yadda," Duo grumbled distractedly. "I figured as much, ya know-otherwise why would you be here?" Cloaked in the absence of light he found so comforting, the still, black figure of the con man did not move, aside from the constant hushed whispering from his lips that continued the prayer when they were not communicating his distinct attitudes. When he did not seem to answer the question or move at all in a way to acknowledge her, no diplomatic bow or nod, it seemed to stir up a dismal little fear in her chest-the one that feared the possibility that he was, indeed, only an uncivilized animal and there was the danger the bars wouldn't hold. She started a little as Duo finally spoke up and did not, as she feared, growl ravenously at her.

"Just hold your horses," the bohemian said, readjusting something clenched in his fist. His nostrils flared slightly, easily tracing a line of fear straight to the pristine young lady who stood outside his cell. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the difference in light between them, she could dimly make out his thumb rolling over a string of beads and his lips moving even more rapidly, his fingers moving meticulously from bead to bead.

Each new bead heard a shifting of tongue-he alternated languages from bead to bead, though spoken too softly for the hienn to make out with her callow little ears. French followed Portuguese, which followed Mandarin and Spanish, which followed Arabic and Italian, and English followed Hunter's Nekonese. Though he really only had a grasp over a few languages, he had memorized the Hail Mary prayer in many different ones and kept shifting tongue to make sure his mind didn't start to wander to places it didn't need to be.

Eventually, his fingertips slid noiselessly to a glinting silver peace and his lips slowed eloquently, running his thumb over the embossed figure stretched across a tiny metal cross. Once this final prayer was uttered in his native Nekonese dialect, he somberly lowered his head, without another sound, and the gaunt frame of the bohemian stilled completely. For a brief moment, he remained completely motionless, a statue cast in the shadows where he had found the most peace, before his ikkunnoi flattened in humility and he reached up with his right hand to cross himself reverently, the sanctified jewelry swinging rhythmically as he did so, wrapped around his wrist and over his thumb. A long, purging, unhappy sigh followed as silence came down again. This ritual was exceptionally wretched even in its piousness, for Duo Maxwell had only once before clenched this particular red-beaded rosary in his fist, and it had been while weeping and kneeling on a makeshift grave, dirt and dust covering his face and body.

His disheveled head remained bowed as he unraveled it from his palm and carefully hid it around his neck and pulled the collar of the orange jumpsuit up to conceal it. He sighed again, and finally lifted his head to look at the woman outside his cell. The sight of his cat-slit eyes dilated in the shadow startled her and the grim, unsmiling expression he wore gave her no ground. "Well, then," he said flatly, arching an eyebrow expectantly. "What did you want to discuss, Miss Peacecraft?"

Relena straightened up and absorbed her fears with a political face. "My brother, Heero-where is he?"

Duo snorted in morbid amusement and a lazy, insincere grin spread across his face. He bowed his head in a dark little chuckle before rolling it from side to side with feline elasticity, cracking his neck. "You know, I'm really sick of people knocking on my door lately to ask me redundant questions, just when I'm getting the hang of that meditation thing," he purred, giving her a smoky, wry look while slinking to his feet without use of his hands to stand him up. He rose up like a ghost and lurked closer to the bars until the barred shadows played on his face ominously, making that smile even more eerie. His fingers clasped around the bars and his long nails tapped against the metal. "But for you, I guess I can make an exception."

"Where is Heero?" Relena prompted, her sweet voice becoming nothing but business in the presence of Duo's sinister behavior. She was not afraid of his tousled hair, of his dark-ringed eyes of impossible color, of the feline appendage flattened against his head, or of the crack-lipped smile he wore. She feared his bestial strength she had glimpsed in the simple act of getting to his feet, and of turning it against her. But she didn't falter and stared back into his brooding eyes and devilish smile, one offsetting the other and constantly confusing her as to which held the true emotion.

"Off trying to save the world somewhere," Duo drawled. "If not, he might be feeling sorry for himself in some dingy little corner," he added cynically, even rolling his eyes.

Relena didn't appreciate the comment on her adoptive brother and a little suspicion arose immediately. "I won't need to bother you for long if you just answer my question. Where is he, Mr. Maxwell? If you know-"

"Yeah, right," the con man scoffed, leaning his shoulder against the bars. "Like I have any idea where he went, since I've been locked in here for the past forty-eight hours, just twiddling my fucking thumbs." He tossed up a hand absently and ended up shoving it into his pocket, fingering the ration of nicotine the Right Guard had snuck in for him anxiously.

He rolled his eyes again and this time refocused them on the wall with a sigh, scratching at the cigarettes hungrily and wondering how long he could ration them before another thought of the traveler plagued him and he could only remedy it by concentrating on smoking the fag all the way down to the filter as slowly as possible. He'd already lost interest in Relena-she was as agreeable and oblivious as he'd pictured, but with half the spunk he'd expected. Quite boring. His eyes flickered over to her dully as she spoke up again, straight as a rail and still perfectly poised on her powdery, baby blue heels.

"He came to see you yesterday, though," she said calmly, seeking corroboration. Her diction was flawless, her grammar precise and complimenting. Like a diplomacy machine, almost. He was impressed her face could remain so politic and gracious though fear was spilling off her like a bad Prada perfume, though none of that shone through onto his face, either.

"Yeah," Duo grunted lifelessly, peering through the bars at her with one cat-slit, violet eye before returning to staring into the shadowed ceiling, twiddling a cigarette hungrily at his hip between his fingers. He toyed with it and stuck it between his lips experimentally. "He did."

Relena stared back with the stubborn cornflower blue eyes she'd inherited from her grandfather, examining him, and asked, "Did he look well? How was he?" Her voice shifted from the cadence of a highly professional authority to one more suited to a tender, worrying sister and her eyes softened a little.

Duo snorted sullenly and took the cigarette back out of his lips, still torn whether to use one of his last ones up at a time like this, pinching it between his fingers and grimacing at it as he replied. "I dunno. Aside from pigheaded and too damn naïve for his own good, you mean? Well enough, I suppose. But things change. What I'm trying to tell you, lady," the con man said plainly, baring a canine tooth as he frowned, "is that I have no idea or care as to what Heero Yuy is doing right now or where he's doing it or who he's doing it with."

Like all good addicts, he finally remitted to his habit and let it counteract the woes of his life for him while he brooded, leaning back to strike the match in his pocket against the wall and light the cancer stick pinched between his lips.

Meanwhile, the young daughter of Senator Peacecraft retained her fabulous ramrod posture and the contempt in the criminal's voice had turned her face deliberate and cautious again, still femininely clutching her purse with both her hands and looking polar opposite of the one-eared Neko in her white attire and neatly cleaned face. She was prim, precise, and blissfully unaware of many of the horrific things in life. Duo was chemically dependent, disheveled, and knew all too well how unforgiving Lady Luck could be on a bad day. She was completely human and had never known any other culture than her own; Duo considered himself more Neko than anything, born and raised by a progressive Nekonese village in the north but baptized a Catholic by his mother.

The only way these two would have met would be because of their common link in one young Japanese man. Neither could picture a situation where they otherwise would have stopped to talk with each other or acknowledged each other, if they had not shared that one connective. And when Duo lit the cigarette to medicate his mind, Relena normally would have scrunched up her face despite herself and had no more to do with him, but she wanted to know just how someone could have stir Heero up as much as this con man had, how he could turn him into a phantasm she barely recognized. So she stayed fast, standing tall and straight, while the criminal on the other side of the bars slumped against them shapelessly, slinging an arm through and letting it hang in the air.

A billow of smoke escaped from his lips out into the corridor, twisting into nothingness between them. He was eyeing her carefully from beneath his ragged bangs and hunger-pale skin, and when he lifted his smoke from his mouth and let that arm rest on the bars, he asked her, "Does everybody just call you Relena?" When she squinted slightly, surprised by the seemingly irrelevant question, he clarified. "Your family. Do you have a nickname or something, or is it just, 'Relena'? It seems kind of stuffy, don'tcha think? What about your friends, what about Heero? Didn't he have pet name for you or something?"

"No, Heero isn't the kind for silly diminutives," she answered softly.

"Just a thought. But, basically, lady," Duo laid down casually between puffs of smoke, "I'm just wondering if I could call you 'Lena or something, because Relena just doesn't roll off my tongue. In fact, it's kind of burning my mouth, so if I'm gonna try to conduct a halfway decent conversation with you, I'll have to have something else to call you by, other than Relena Peacecraft. And I've been having a shitty week, so just indulge me-alright?"

"Well, um-alright," the fair-headed Peacecraft agreed tentatively. The brooding gleam in the violet eyes exposed in the light, contrasted sharply by the shadows he emerged from, had softened her defenses enough to agree automatically, without her overtly noticing that subtle change.

At her agreement, there was a sliver of a twisted smile sifting through to the surface and she caught a glimpse of it beyond the cigarette smoke and metal bars. Duo's fingers twisted around the filter close to his lips as and the burning stub reddened and glowed as he inhaled. He lifted it away from his mouth and let his wrist go limp again, strung out of the bars so that his fingers hung tiredly in the air and the cigarette was always in danger of falling to the floor. But the half-human, half-Nekonese hand, finely crosscut with various scars, of hard work, of violent fights and accidents, and fingernails rimmed thick with dirt and traces of gun grease, held on and it fumed without interruption.

"So, 'Lena," the one-eared Neko purred at her, wholly charming from ear to ear, "Are you daddy's little girl?"

The years of sheltered life may have made her soft, unaware of harsher things, and ignorant, but Relena could see the signs of contempt coming through to Duo Maxwell's surface as he smiled at her almost seductively, one eye exposed from shadow and glimmering a mesmerizing color of purple. Subtle hints of hatred were rising up in his fine face, becoming more and more clear the more his grin spread. It was stretching much farther than his façade of congeniality and exposing the dark things waiting behind it, directed at her. But she did not slouch, did not flinch, as would any good politician.

"I don't understand what you mean by that, Mr. Maxwell," she said neutrally, though Duo could smell the truth coming off her.

He cocked his head to one side, still pressed up against the bars, and chuckled, bringing the smoke up to his lips again, the additional light from the burning tip illuminating the expression in his eyes. He collaborated casually, neighborly, almost. "You must love your father to death. Are you his little girl? You know, his little ray of sunlight, his precious baby daughter, his pageant-winner, the meaning in his life?" Duo chuckled again, eyes deadlocked with hers and almost daring her to look away. "How're things with your pops, 'Lena? How is the old devil?"

"As fine as he can be," the girl replied succinctly, her eyes returning the threat in their own untouchable, distant way. "You should know. You tried to murder him, after all."

Duo laughed disturbingly, as if no one else was there, and his handsome eyes filled with ugly malice flickered amusedly up into shadows. "Oh, ho, ho. That's cold, 'Lena, that's cold."

"If you have no information of importance to offer me, Mr. Maxwell, I believe I should leave. You have many things to reflect on and very little time to do so. I have other urgent matters to see to, so this will be good night," the Peacecraft daughter offered neatly, plainly, straightening out her posture even more, if it were possible, and trying to present herself as a calm, collected woman in the face of the grinning, embittered criminal who taunted her with just his eyes. The physical posturing did nothing but make Duo laugh again, make him think of how much she reminded him of an imperious rooster, fluffing his feathers in the attempt to make himself appear larger than he was. To hide the fact she was a hapless chicken and he could easily be the fox licking his chops just outside her coop.

"You are frigid, 'Lena," the bohemian taunted, tapping the cigarette twice on the bars. Without warning, his haunting snicker could be heard floating from the shadows. He flicked his cigarette at her and a little arch of smoke and glowing ash flew from between the bars and landed before her baby blue heels. She automatically drew back, and her expression hardened unapologetically, watching the smoke fester off the cigarette on the floor and looking back up at him. He had leaned back into the shadow, and folded his arms smugly against his chest. The only visible part of his face was that disarming smile, his teeth shining in the light. "You can be as cold as an ice queen when you want, can't you? Must run in the family."

Another low, rolling laugh spilled out of him once again, and this time it had been one too many. While still wearing an unwelcoming face, Relena cautiously took a step back from the bars, making it as slight and inconspicuous as she could, now that she had had her time with the con man that had meant to take her father's life and found him much more intimidating than his small stature and charming round eyes would suggest at first glance.

"I'm sorry," she said curtly," but I think it's time that we said goodbye, Mr. Maxwell."

"Leaving so soon?" Duo purred, arching an eyebrow at her in forged curiosity. He shook his head, a saddened expression barely masking the sarcastic smirk twisting underneath. "That's a pity-it really is. I never had the chance to tell you how much I admire you, Miss Relena. And don't even get me started on your father's fine administration-oh, no. Can't say enough things about your dear father, though none of them are good."

She shot him a cold stare over her should after she turned toward the barred doors at the far end of the corridor, warning him. But it did nothing other than feed his sense of twisted malice. He was suddenly to the far-left side of his cell, further from Relena, staring at her through his bangs, through the bars, leaning against the wall. She hadn't heard a thing. His movements were so silent it was like there were two of him, and the other, equally intimidating personality had simply slunk back into the shadows, awaiting his next turn at the prey.

"Do you know what your father has done to me, Relena?" Duo asked huskily, the humor gone and only a severity left that was sharp to the ear. "Do you? Do you have any idea what demented horror your dear father is capable of when he puts his mind to it?"

"I suppose," Relena answered back in her own icy, unfriendly growl, "that it's about equal to what you're capable of, Mr. Maxwell. And we all know you've been putting your mind to it." Her eyes dared him to look away in return-she, after all, was on the safe side of the bars. Her chin rose lifted disdainfully and she turned away from the criminal to begin walking back down the corridor, her heels echoing with a certain clipped scorning sound as well.

Duo slunk through the shadows on the other side, following her like a doppelganger with a pursing snarl. "I'm not a cold-blooded murderer like he is," he hissed, the shadows of the bars crossing his face eerily, spitting out the truth at her back as she continued to walk. "He's a sick fucking man who would slaughter a Neko as soon as look at him, order his men to pillage, rape, and destroy an entire village full of women and children alike. We were waiting for the husbands, the fathers to return when they marched in, Relena-we were cooking dinner and my sisters and brothers were making candles for Easter when they took that first shot and pinned my grandmother's brains to the wall. And there was no one to protect us, because the bodies of my father and all the rest were burning in a ravine somewhere, and your father put them there with his venomous snake of a tongue! I'm not the murderer here!"

The wall separating him from the next empty cell stopped him and his shoed feet scuffed loudly in the silence left behind after his harangue. Soon after could be heard the gentle sound of two heeled feet stopping as well, and eyes much like the Traveler's but very much different at the same time shot him full of daggers. Had they been real, he could have pulled one from each one of his eyes-Relena focused in on his unusually colored eyes to avoid her fear of him taking hold again.

"I love my father dearly, as much as you loved yours, Duo Maxwell, and I will continue to do so as long as I know and believe him to be a good-hearted man who loves me in return," she admonished him with a razor blade tongue. "I don't know who truly is to blame for all his, for your word is just as likely as my father's to be nothing but fabricated filth, but even after I do know the truth, I will still love him."

"What a darling you are," Duo snarled back, narrowing his eyes in a manner that would have sent wolves scampering. "But doesn't change the fact he's a hateful butcher of innocents, does it, sweetheart?"

Relena had turned to face the con man, but she had not given him the satisfaction of approaching the bars, of stooping to his level of impassioned abandon to chew him out in return. She remained safe in her icy stare and her rigid posture line.

"I admit, what you say is truly appalling, Duo-but my father is not the only one with blood on his hands," the girl reminded him pointedly, almost threateningly. "It would only take one crime-the assassination of my father, to satisfy your sense of revenge-if such a thing can be quenched, that is. But I don't think you deserve that vengeance. You call my father a loathsome human being when you hardly embody yourself what makes a respectable one! He may have killed your village, yes, but how many innocent lives have you manipulated, how many innocent people have you stolen from, tricked, deceived and lied, Duo Maxwell? How many people have found their accounts emptied and their pockets picked?" When only a low, hostile growl rolled out from between the bars, she narrowed her eyes. "Those are no allegations, either. Everyone knows that you've done those things.

"Nothing justifies all those crimes-not even murder. Did you commit them simply because you could?" While Duo's face contorted into pure poison, her voice reined itself in and her eyes darkened collectively. The hint of distaste in her voice was unmistakable. "I think you might have even enjoyed them."

The bohemian was bristling as fierce as hell now, and his fists clenched the bars until they groaned. "You're so fucking arrogant it makes my conscience burn," he hissed, eyes almost white with anger.

"Where was that conscience when you committed your first crime?" Relena rebuked coldly.

"Where was your father's compassion when my sister was gutted like trout?" he retorted instantaneously.

"How much did your victims have to suffer for your tragedy? How much of your hatred did you turn on them? How much would they have to endure loosing to make you feel better? A hundred or a thousand of their money?"

"What did any of my village ever do to threaten your lives? We lived peacefully apart from you, we fucking left alone, we never fucking even looked at you! What the hell did we do to deserve an execution order?!" Duo snapped. "Oh, please tell me, Daddy's precious little girl!" His fists crumpled the steel bars they grasped like paper and his white knuckles leaked tiny rivets of blood, leaning as far forward as he could to spit his words at her between the bent bars, twisting the angry lines in his face all the more. "Tell me what the fuck did we did to you!"

"You're becoming rash," Relena reminded him evenly, schooling her face back into the pleasant politic charity it had been before, but her eyes were still as disgusted with him as they'd been moments before. "I do believe this visit should have been terminated long ago, Mr. Maxwell, and I would recommend you getting your rest. It was a pleasure to meet you," she said dryly, "and I hope some day we'll see each other again."

He curled back his lip and spat at her. "Lousy bitch," the one-eared Neko snarled, engulfed by his encompassing rage to much to see anything besides the Peacecraft, black, white, and blood red as he continued, baring a sneering grin. "No wonder he left you."

Her eyes flashed for a moment, but it was not enough to satisfy Duo. She closed up her face to outward showings of anger and became inaccessible again. Her dispassionate voice reached his ears, both human and feline.

"Good day, Mr. Maxwell," the young blonde woman bid him as civilly as she could, before her ridged posture and baby blue heels escorted themselves down the corridor and beyond the bolted metal doors that kept the con man locked in a cell circulating thick with his own seething rage.

Long after she had gone, he remained, and his hatred only grew in a frustrating, horrible beanstalk fed by his own mind, his fury set on loop. He remained there, standing, shaking, hands bleeding and blood running down the jagged edges of the bent steel. Duo Maxwell had finally succumbed to his hate and his frustration and despair, lost sight of his religion and surrender, and it'd been a fucking Peacecraft to break him down.

That was too much, not again, a wound too fresh.

So he whirled on the cement wall, sending his fist into it as hard as he could, imagining Relena's face, then Heero's. And he did it again, imagining that damned dejected look on the traveler's face, and again. But when he hesitated the fourth time, his actions caught up with him. His white knuckles were dark, bleeding red and felt like they had shattered inside his skin. He buckled to his knees in an agonizing burst of pain, slumping against the wall and cradling his knuckles deep into his stomach, gasping dumbly, eyes wide and mouth dry and shapeless. The pain circulated without relent, and his regret circled him like an ill-willed vulture. While alone in the dimness of his cell, he managed to roll over until his back pressed up against the wall and he sank to the floor, his legs splayed out before him with the twitching grace of a corpse.

Duo watched the split knuckles bleed and cradled his agonized hand with the other. Somehow, the anger was as quick to leave as it was to come, but it left like a slow disease and his bones ached hollowly. "Shit," he hissed, drawing his eyebrows together in a tight knot, a crease forming for each of his worries. Still clutching his abused hand, he tenderly flexed his fingers, each bone feeling like it had fractured while it bled. The familiar distant sting told him whatever damage had been done had already begun to knit itself together, thanks to his inhuman eugenics. He managed to fight off the pain enough to scoff at himself.

"I'll be damned if things find a way to get any worse," he whispered hoarsely. He meant it as simply a morbid joke, but the humor part didn't seem to find its way through. "But hell, 'course they will." He chuckled dryly. "Micckhen suo im kube."

He took out cigarette number two of a dwindling supply with that same bleeding hand, lit it with the other, and watched the blood go down his wrist, exhaling smoke and grief.

Long after she had gone and long after the man known as Vega had come in to give him the bible he requested, seen the bloody hand as he'd reached out for it, and had them wrapped up properly, he slumped down in the corner of his cell, took out his rosary with his good hand, and started another prayer. This time it was all in English, and he would barely remember any of it until he would awake the next morning, after dreaming of the traveler's sad face on the opposite side of the glass. Until his tranquil unconcern would come back to him and he could ignore himself again for a time.

---

"Multiple reports are coming in from places around Cinq of the Anti-Neko riots and protests caused by the events in the trial of Peacecraft vs. Maxwell-incidents of violence and rebellion against any suspected to be supportive of the defendant have been frequent and often tragic. Tonight, we confirm the death of two adults, one female and one male, who had allegedly verbally defended Maxwell while watching a broadcast in a local bar and verbally and physically threatened by others in the bar. They were accidentally killed while trying to avoid conflict and were involved in a car collision just outside After Hours Bar and Grill-"

The electronic drone of the broadcast voice being played over images of the bar, the mangled car, all painted with the flickering red glow of police sirens, made all of the information seem all the more distressing. Heero was too tired at the time to really feel that distress, too drained to do anything at the moment but stare at the large television display flickering overhead, advertisement boards and neon lights lit up in a vibrant main square. While the news continued in telling the many tales of horrible anger centered around the courthouse and the one-eared Neko tucked safely away inside a police cell, Heero sat on a lonesome bus-stop bench, a curious-looking sight with an aquarium with two white lab mice occupied the seat to his left and a backpack occupied the one to the right. As strange he might appear, the endless river of white headlights and red taillights streaming by did not stop, did not pay attention to one wearied man lounging on a bench late at night. The electronic marquee scrolling beneath the news declared silently the time was nearing midnight.

His eyes remained focused on the crystal screen displayed over the bustling center square. The light from it lit up the dark circles beneath those eyes, and the deep-set frown of worry that had not left since he had fled from an apartment window an hour before. He watched the video clip of a policeman buckling a malcontent rioter as he rushed the man standing outside the Cinq PD with a glazed stare, as it played over and over again for a masochistic public. He could almost feel his exhaustion pulling his eyes close with cold, heavy fingers while the midnight grew even more frigid and tried to crawl through his jacket.

He couldn't go on. Not like this, at least, was the hazy conclusion his sleep-deprived brain came to as the winds came up biting and strong. He groaned and rubbed his face with numb fingers. Need to do something about it, can't sit here and do nothing.

The mice were shivering in the corner beneath a thin layer of shavings when the traveler stood up from the bench and shoveled his things back up into his arms with a certain quiet desolation. He walked away from the bustling, living stream of lights that composed the busy city streets that night and headed for a warm, lonesome light at the corner, housed inside a phonebooth. Once inside, he slid the door securely shut behind him with a cold, weary hand and set the aquarium containing two of his newest most valued possession so that the albino pair stirred from their bed and sniffed at the air. Heero leaned tiredly against the glass while he lifted the battered copy of the telephone book and flipped to the end of the directory.

With a sigh, he shoved his change into the slot and picked up the receiver to dial, his other thumb marking the number of one Roman M. Vega.

---

"Oh, here, lemme take that for you."

Before Heero could even make it to the front step, the door had swung open and the deputy had rushed out to him while still lopsidedly throwing a jacket over his shoulders. There was that momentary shock of seeing a person he so closely identified with the police uniform he'd seen him in, as the tan-skinned man stepped out dressed in a casual-fit pair of blue jeans and unremarkable white T-shirt and graciously took the aquarium with the shivering pair of mice off his hands. Heero was a little dazed after the weight had been lifted off him-his fingers were so numb he was surprised he'd been able to hold anything for as long as he had. Even after the taxi Vega had sent to pick him up had turned on the heat, they still were undefrosted after stepping out, twenty-some blocks later.

The off-duty guard chuckled welcomingly as he took Heero's load off his hands. "Man, you look like an icicle or something. Come inside before you catch hypothermia on me," he said, ushering the young Japanese man in through the open doorway into a glowing yellow foyer.

Heero was furiously rubbing his hands together as he walked up the steps in a mild, exhausted haze, hoping dimly that they hadn't been frostbitten while wandering the city, always worried the sound of footsteps behind him might have been the Peacecrafts, ready to try and pull him back under their wing, under their control. That it might have been Relena herself, with the face of a woman scorned. Roman Vega hurried up the steps behind his chilled guest and shut the door on the cold winds of 1 A.M. on the warmly lit foyer. Heero was not one to automatically make himself welcome in a foreign house and stood staring at the pairs of shoes lined up against the wall beneath the full coat rack.

Vega smiled at him, still holding the aquarium. "Looks like you're taking good care of them." he said. "Duo appreciates it more than you know."

Still nursing his icy hands, Heero only had a tired, blank expression to offer at the mention of the bohemian, but he managed to draw a worn smile in thanks. "It's alright," he murmured.

"Why don't you take off your shoes and come into the kitchen? I just got home a little while ago and started my dinner, actually, and there's plenty of soup left if you're hungry," the Chicano man offered good-naturedly, taking Heero's backpack from off the floor where he'd dropped it and going down the hall in his bare feet to set the aquarium down on a small table against the wall in the kitchen and put the backpack by a stairway near that table leading upstairs. The exhausted shell of a man that was Heero Yuy at this particular ungodly hour of the morning followed, running somewhat on autopilot. He dully realized he still had his left shoe hitching a ride on his foot and turned around to toe it off beside the other one.

He found himself shuffling into the kitchen a moment later, groaning as the heat returned to his fingers, to most of his tired body and reminding him that each nerve and joint sang with a horrible worn stress and his headache was catching a train to the center of his forehead at that very moment. Rubbing the heel of his palm once into his eye, trying to erase the dark circle hanging beneath it, he glanced over to the stove to see the grown man tending the pot on the stove, an opened can of Campbell's sitting off to the side. It was reassuring that some things could be constant to Heero-most men really were not chefs, and even he had resorted to premade meals himself on many nights. It wasn't enough to make him smile that night, and maybe he wouldn't have it in him to have a sense of humor for many days, but he could appreciate it even as he felt he might fall unconscious there in the middle of the kitchen.

"Are you sure I'm not inconveniencing you at all?" Heero asked again, squinting through sleep-blurry eyes. "I don't want to be a nuisance to you-"

"No, it's fine, really. It's an honor to be able to help," he said busily, already pulling a bowl down from a cupboard beside the stove. "Go ahead and sit down if you want some chicken noodle soup. It'll help you warm up, at least."

The weary Japanese man was about ready to give into the automatic polite decline that had been programmed into him over years and years of attending affluent functions in his parent's tow, but the thought of the bohemian sitting in a cold cement cell and him, here, in a warm, welcome house, made him see a few things in a brighter light. "Sure," he said, glancing over to the table on the other side of the kitchen, illuminated by a dimmed metal chandelier with three functioning bulbs and one that seemed only asleep.

Two women sat at the kitchen table, and from the looks of it and their accompanying coffee mugs, neither of them had been getting much sleep that night either. One, the taller and darker-haired of the two similar looking blondes, was wrapped up in a faded pink robe to cover her thin, silk pajamas and a pair of ratty-looking slippers that may have once been animals, but had lost both buttons and only the noses remained. Her face was drawn from what seemed like a routine bout of insomnia, it had that weary, resigned, but still generally optimistic glow to it that turned a smile towards him as he walked over to the table. The other woman had her nose stuck firmly in a thick, thin-paged book and her bare feet pressed against the rim of the table, each of her nails painted pristine black. He could not see her face, but she wasn't paying attention to him, like the other.

"Hi," the dishwater-blonde woman greeted warmly, her hands folding around the warm porcelain of her plain green coffee mug and a diamond catching the light momentarily on her hand. "How are you?"

Once he had settled down in to a chair around the polished table top, the friendliness in the stranger's eyes was a source of comfort that managed to coax the first honest chuckle out of him that day. "Depends on how I look at it, I guess," he offered with a small smile. "Right now, I'm doing better. Tomorrow's the difficult part to predict."

"Ah," she smiled in return, nursing the coffee cup against her lips again. She laughed a little as well, her wavy blonde hair gnarled from tossing and turning vainly in search of sleep, and he got a little joy out of seeing a little glitter of happiness in eyes that were almost as weary as his own. Almost. He knew she was not suffering the fear of losing the one she loved, because he was shuffling carefully over to the table with two bowls of steaming soup and a golden band catching the light around his finger as well.

Vega's almost innocent brown eyes swept back and forth from Heero to his obvious betrothed and he quickly introduced all those gathered around the table on that sleepless night, the eve of Duo Maxwell's sentencing. "Oh, sorry," he amended quickly, straightening up. "Mr. Yuy, this is my wife, Evelyn. Evelyn, this is Mr. Heero Yuy, and since he's got nowhere to stay, I offered to let him stay for tonight. Is that alright with you?"

"That's fine," said the woman who had been Evelyn Vega for over five years and an insomniac for much longer than that. "It's very nice to meet you, Mr. Yuy. You'll stay up for a bowl with Roman and I, won't you? It'd be nice to have someone else's opinion for once instead of the same conversations about not being able to fall asleep."

"Call me Heero, please, and yes, I think that I will."

Vega gave an approving glow to the exchange between his beloved and the man he'd come to newly admire and then turned his attention over to the other blonde woman at the table, the one who Heero would assume was the sister of the one he had just met from the similar hair color and skin tone. "And this is my sister-in-law, Dorothy Catalonia," he introduced, finally managing to pull her misty blue eyes from the printed lines of some war novel that vaguely rang a bell in the traveler's mind. Dressed in a pair of sweat pants and a halter top that displayed her snow pale skin and slim shoulders, she seemed almost fragile and porcelain, but as soon as they both made eye contact, Heero knew it was all very deceiving. She had some of the most precise, cunningly intelligent eyes he'd seen, but they were doused in a mysterious air that made them seem almost empty and blank. She smiled at Heero and tossed her long twist of blonde hair off her shoulder to reach over the table and offer a handshake.

"Nice to meet you, Ms. Catalonia," Heero said, taking her hand in a firm, professional shake that contradicted her slender figure and complemented her decisive air.

"You too, Heero Yuy. I'm a little disappointed you don't recognize me, though."

While a steaming bowl of chicken noodle was placed in front of him and the police deputy took a seat next to Heero on the empty side of the table with his own, he glanced intermittently between the two. "You two know each other?" he asked, thumbing his spoon as he waited for a response.

Still the same sultry, darkly-confident woman that had strolled up to Duo Maxwell's cell with an intoxicating smell, she reclined back into her chair and removed her feet from the table politely, taking on that self-assured smile that pulled her eyes into such a way she almost looked like a creature of mythology. She chuckled, sliding her thumb between the pages she had last been reading, and rested the heavy book against her knee. "Well, obviously, I've heard of you, there's no one in the city who really hasn't," she explained, taking a sip from her coffee cup to lubricate that mystery in her voice, "but you probably didn't notice me. I was the one who fetched your criminal for you the day you came to visit him."

"Oh, yeah," Vega intoned, taking a spoonful of hot soup carefully into his mouth. "Forgot you were hanging around that day, Dorothy."

"Do you work at the police station?" Heero asked, his own bowl still neglected.

"Oh, no. That's Roman's job," Dorothy said with a chuckle. "But I have been spending some time there lately; what, with such an interesting inmate hanging around. And it's clear to see he draws an equally interesting crowd himself."

"I don't know how very interesting I must seem in comparison to Duo," Heero murmured in return, taking his first spoonful and feeling a little heat returning to his bone-cold fingers as he wrapped them around the bowl when not eating.

"It's a different interest, Heero Yuy, but yes, you are definitely just as interesting as Mr. Maxwell," Dorothy assured him. The table fell into a comfortable silence for a few minutes before she sighed quietly to herself and spoke up again. "By the way, there's been a little something else that's been keeping my interest, but Duo won't speak a word of it to anyone. I'm sure Roman would like to know for sure, too. While you're here, I was wondering if you'd be so kind to indulge us and tell us about it."

The dark-skinned deputy made a curious face at the pale woman across the table and the almost michevious expression overtaking her face. He glanced over to the taciturn guest in the Vega household and back to her, still unable to grasp what she was implying. "Like what?"

Dorothy reveled in the controversy of her thought and even rolled it around her lips with a smirk for a moment before lifting one of her bold eyebrows at him. "What's your real relationship to Duo Maxwell?"

It was her sister, Evelyn, who was first to laugh, outright, at her sister's impudence. She had, after all, dealt with that same wicked curiosity and velvet tongue while she had powdered her nose for all her high school dates and dealt with all the prying questions that came when she snuck in with red decorating her neck. Mind you, it'd been her future husband many of those times, but it didn't quell any of Dorothy's pursuit of the worldly and her thirst for information. And she simply laughed and scoffed, "You just met the poor man! Don't put him under the spotlight like that! He might see just how meddlesome you are," and put her coffee cup back to her lips.

"Dorothy," Vega said disapprovingly, "You know what happened, just keep your nose out of other people's business for once."

The pale temptress's eyes flashed in a predatory way and she waved off her brother-in-law playfully. "Nonsense. I know as much as you do, and I'm just as curious as every other damn person in this city," she purred, turning those sky-blue eyes toward the slightly disgruntled Asian face staring back at her with an unreadable stare. "None of us really know what happened. And that's what's so interesting about you. You're the one book I've found, Mr. Heero Yuy, who has a little steel lock and no key. But you're an open book for the judge, aren't you? When it comes to that criminal, you'd cry your heart out. That notebook of yours, that's what I'd like to get my hands on. What a magnificent read it'd be. A book authored by a truly rare closed book."

Evelyn tossed her eyes a little at her sister's rich, histrionic speech. "I'm sorry, Heero. She's a harmless little inquisitive girl at heart, that's all. If you don't mind her, she might go back to playing with her dolls."

"I really don't think you should be bothering him, Dorothy, he's been having a hard few days, alright? Just-"

"What made them so difficult, then? What makes it so hard to look your kidnapper in the eye while he sits on the hot coals of a hung jury and just let him burn? Roman, you're dying to know as well. You can't stare into those beautiful sad eyes all day long and not wonder what really happened. You don't believe the word of the Peacecrafts, you never have. Everyone with half their sense can see the sad little jester wouldn't kidnap the son of the man he was planning to kill, he's far too moral and Christian for that-But it's not in Duo Maxwell's nature to kiss and tell, so to speak, so-"

"Come on, Dor! Lay off, already."

"Don't deny it, honesty is more noble than the most embellished lie-"

Heero finished the offered dinner quietly and when the argument shifted mainly between the two in-laws, he cleared his throat, put down the bowl with a silencing, soft, tink, and announced plainly, "You want to know what happened?"

Dorothy's almost pupil-less, creamy blue eyes turned to him again, almost purring with victorious pride. "If you'd be so kind to indulge me, yes," she answered cryptically, leaning back against the chair, her war novel resting patiently on her knees.

"If you want to know, go ask him yourself," Heero said flatly. When he stood up from the table, he left all the emotional casings that hid the extent of his exhaustion behind and all at the table could see the waking dead quality he had to his slumping frame. "You'll never find out the truth from any one but him because he's never given it to any one else and probably never will. You can try and find it, but even I'm still looking. And I'm pretty damned tired, so if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to go get some sleep. Thank you for the food, Roman." He nodded to the two women at the table politely even as the remainder of his energy scurried off and his eyelids drooped. "Evelyn, Dorothy, it's been nice to meet you."

While Vega and his wife quickly went through their duties as the homeowners and scrounged up a few blankest and pillows to fill up the couch for their guest, Dorothy remained as quaintly seated across the table with those calculating eyes the color of ice frozen beneath a clear blue sky, almost physically trying to pry within his thoughts wither her simple stare. Had Heero not been ready to sleep through the apocalypse at the time, he would appreciated the thought of how much he must have been alike to her to Duo, but he simply offered her one last drawn smile of courtesy before he found himself collapsing onto the sofa in the Vega's living room. He barely had the perseverance to thank Vega one more time as he accepted a pillow from him before he slumped over and was out cold as soon as he hit the cushions.

Sometime in the ridiculous hours of the morning, he awoke from a pitch-black world of ignorant bliss to blink his eyes open at the soft glowing light that had suddenly manifested in the kitchen. In the archway separating the tiled kitchen from the living room, was the unmistakable figure of Dorothy Catalonia, her thick novel tapping softly in debate on her hip and her long hair twisted up into a bun. Though his eyes were far too sensitive to the light to see anything but dark shapes, he could have sworn those pale blue eyes were almost glowing as she watched him. He heard her smirk with a soft chuckle.

"What time is it?" he grumbled, squinting at her as he sat up groggily.

"Very early," she purred. "Why don't you rest your head some more?"

"What time is it?" he snapped tersely in returned, narrowing his eyes at her. "I need to go to the courthouse very early for the trial, so just tell me what time it is."

"Not this early, you don't." Dorothy smirked and shifted her weight against the archway frame, casually flipping through a few musty pages of her novel, that infernal smirk ever present. Heero wondered what she could find so constantly amusing and wondered if he really wanted to know. He was too easily suckered in by that same kind of devilish smile, and falling for Duo had been a ride rough enough to last him for the rest of his life, thank you very much. The pale woman with the long flaxen hair returned his stare for the longest time until she finally chuckled and tilted her head to glance at the clock overlooking the stove. "Just before five," she said nonchalantly, "But you honestly expect to free the most nefarious criminal of our time on a mere four hours of sleep? Were I Duo, it wouldn't comfort me any to see my knight in shining armor falling asleep during his testimony."

"I'm going now," Heero announced silently, kicking off the blankets to the foot of the sofa and standing up, still dressed in the pair of jeans he'd worn the day before and scrounged around in his backpack for a fresh shirt. He really couldn't have cared less that Dorothy didn't move an inch from her relaxed pose against the archway, watching his bare back in the pale stove-light that illuminated the tranquil darkened household. He tossed a shirt carelessly over his shoulders while he started to fold the blankets he'd used out of pure courteous habit. "Tell Roman and his wife I appreciate all of their generosity and I whole-heartedly apologize for leaving without warning and not staying for breakfast. Tell them I'll find a way to repay their kindness once all of this is over."

"You sure you won't just bite the bullet when your little sticky-fingered heartbreaker goes to the chair?"

Heero was instantly coiled up, glaring over his shoulder, and his eyes threatened Dorothy with a painful death for such a remark and at the moment he was so stressed out he wouldn't have regretted the act for weeks to come. "You want to reconsider what you just said?" he asked tautly. "I'm not necessarily in the most patient of moods, Dorothy, and I'm not going to tolerate any more bullshit to be said about him."

"Thus you should get some more rest, because that's inevitable. He's made some very vocal enemies," the smirking Catalonia woman purred. "I'm so sorry about talking about your precious Duo. I just thought this would be the best time to discuss him, seeing how he's going to be gone so soon. Pity, he was such an interesting conversationalist even when he refused to talk."

Heero's eyes tried to burn through hers if it would just wipe that strange smirk off her face. "Are you one of those enemies?" he asked, his voice suddenly becoming like a knife blade raised at the ready.

"No, no," she laughed, waving her thick novel at him. "Of course not. I'm far too entranced by him, and you too, for that matter, to hate him at all. Don't expect me to behave like the rest of this pitiful city-as indignant as they are ignorant. They're too much like starved dogs, in my opinion, and your Duo simply has the misfortune of being the fresh meat at the wrong place, wrong time. Sooner or later they would have torn their teeth into something, and then here comes the injured beast limping up to their doorstep."

Heero scoffed as he noiselessly piled the blankets neatly at the foot of the sofa, smoothing the top layer down before turning around and facing the strange pale woman completely. "Well, all that matters is if you'll tell Roman what I've asked you," he muttered, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and preparing for a long, bone-draining trek back out into that world of starved dogs that he had to face. "Otherwise, I don't really care what you think-all that matters to me is proving Duo's the victim of a vicious cycle and that the Peacecrafts only have themselves to blame for all they've set in motion." As Heero brushed by the unmoving Dorothy, her eyes still giving off an eerie shine in the dimness from her wicked expression, he heard her whisper impishly.

"Oh, what a brave man you are, Atticus," she purred, arching one of her bold eyebrows at him and filling the one cold blue eye that followed him with a smoldering mischief. "But don't call Tom Robinson to the stand just yet; the Ewells are outside gathering with their guns."

He hesitated for a moment and the woman let out a rich, amused chuckle.

"One more thing before you depart, Heero Yuy. Is your relation to the noble line of Peacecrafts completely on the rocks now? I can't imagine they'd have the heart to invite you to another ballroom banquet after all this. Can't see how Miss Relena would be able to take that." That dark, rumbling purr of a mischievous voice seemed even more chilling the closer to it you came, and Heero stopped for a moment in his tracks, evaluating her face carefully and drawing his face into a neutral scowl.

"I guess not," he muttered.

"Well, it's nearly 5:03 by now. Better get going if you want to see the sour face of your precious again before he receives that sentence. Don't worry. I'll see to it Roman knows all of your sentiments and I guess I'll see you later where the paupers and the Rockefellers lie in equality, then," Dorothy whispered impishly, slinking off into the unlit mystery of the hallway. "Hurry now, knight in shining armor."

Once she had disappeared into the darkness and the faint sound of a door sliding shut echoed down the corridor, he turned toward the door and shook his head to himself. "That woman can be so damned vague, it's driving me insane," he grumbled as he opened the door onto a sleepy, drowsy Cinq street and his mind automatically began to race again as he watched the sun starting to rise on the day of Duo Maxwell's sentencing.

When that sunlight broke through a barred window overlooking the only occupied cell in a particular corridor of Cinq PD, it illuminated the image of Duo Maxwell sitting in the corner of his cell with a morning glow that seemed all too falsely favorable, the bandages wrapped around his fist stained the dull, dark maroon color of blood long dried. His hair was just as gnarled as it'd been the last time the traveler had seen him-he'd refused to brush it or even acknowledge it anymore; his mouth was dry and weak and his lips were split from frowning-he'd barely taken a drink of water; his skin was beginning to feel like a tightening shell over his bones as his body mass shriveled away-he had not eaten for days. But he was not weeping anymore and his rosary beads had been untouched for some time, so he wore a façade of nothingness, of a blank, conceded mind, which was not hard to fake at this point.

He showed a few signs of slippage, but only Vega might have noticed them from watching him so much and if only he'd been there at the moment. He did not sit in the center of the cell and close his eyes, unruffled by everything around him. Sitting with his back and protruding spine pressed against the cold cement and one knobby knee slung over the other leg, he tapped his foot to some unknown rhythm in his brain. He almost sickly enjoyed the hunger ripping through him, he felt like the skin tightening around his bones was a casement he was outgrowing and in death, he'd be free of all of it. Of hunger, of anger, of the traveler's damned sad face.

When that familiar formation of footsteps hailed from the end of the corridor, beckoning him from his cell, Duo chuckled to himself for no real reason and stood up, absently brushing a hand on his orange jumpsuit and keeping his cigarette pinched between his lips as he went to the bars expectantly. They'd be taking him to the courthouse holding cell about now. His two hands slung casually through the bars, staring at the untalkative, rather boring guards who took the morning shifts. He even tapped his toes to a beat while he waited for the door to be opened, waiting to get the inevitable over with.

"G'morning, boys," the criminal saluted breezily, fabricating a grin for their sakes. "We gonna be heading over in a good ol' motorcade or-"

Duo hesitated when he looked at the officers that had normally escorted him to and from the courthouse and caught a strong whiff of something in the air that suggested something was wrong, and it was definitely not the smoke curling off the end of his cigarette. No handcuffs today, either. The grin faded a bit, but the truthful frown beneath it all had yet to come to the surface. "What's up?"

"You're not going to be attending today, Mr. Maxwell."

"Ah, hell. I kind of have nothing else to do but lie and waste away in here, if you haven't noticed, gentlemen, so I don't see why not," the bohemian growled back. He'd be a little pissed if he couldn't attend the issuing of his own execution, and he didn't need any more regret weighing him down than he already had.

"Security reasons," an almost smug voice piped up, and Duo's feline ear snapped sharply toward it and flattened. Marcus Otto. He let out a shameless sneer at the man.

"Oh, don't worry, boys. I'll be able to protect you more than you will me, anyway," he drawled smugly, thrusting his hands out for the handcuffs, awaiting their move with an impenetrable grin, "So slap 'em on and let's get going."

"Sorry. You're staying here today. There have been too many threats and your presence would endanger many of the people attending the trial. Someone will be coming by to notify you of the results," informed the non-descript officer standing at the front of the pack, "eventually."

A few moments later, the bars could be heard grinding close on their half-rusted tracks and the massive lock being thrown over the last door that sealed the most volatile criminals in cell block three of the Cinq Police Department. The most dangerous criminal in that cell block, or rather, the only one, made a very unhappy scowl at their retreating back and scoffed with the dwindling cigarette pinched between those pouting lips. He tossed his hands up between the bars and retreated back into his cell, scoffing and rambling off mumbled lines of profanity in a bestial language none of the guards had ever heard.

---

In 1955 the headlines and photographs might have been stark black and white and on the corners they might have even been the cliché little boy heralding each passerby, waving a copy of the newspapers, the paper still hot from the presses between his fingertips. There might have been an older male, as well, with a booming, clever tongue, exclaiming the name of the infamous criminal for all to hear. The witty nickname, the scintillating character they'd made out of him, perhaps even the horrible pun they'd twisted into the handle that would echo forever in the history of Al Capones and Sons of Sam.

No matter what the secretly controversy-hungry public could think of, his true reputation was known only to a few soldiers who served under Peacecraft orders and done something horrible in the north and found a few ominous knives stabbed in the bedside table with a note from "Maxwell's Demon," years later and, of course, Heero Yuy. The latter of the two was currently walking briskly down a sidewalk in the bustling city, his head lifted high and his face set in determination but with a certain large opportunity for sorrow within him, too. Only when he when through those throngs of press and up those stairs, past the sore, resentful faces of the people who had once been his loving adoptive family, and into the battleground of his life, would that opportunity be realized or defeated.

In 1955 five others would have condemned him to Hell for the thoughts he had for that Maxwell's Demon, the inexhaustible need, the incapacitating worry-but this was not 1955.

This was the day of sentencing.

---

[A/N]

Been a long time, huh? Too long. Between the writer blocks and the family events the time just slips through the cracks, I know. And the other poor stories suffer because of any setbacks on this one, which I hate. I just looked back and noticed that I haven't updated MSMH in almost a month now and the end of Neko seems to be running away from me with its own ideas in mind. I'm gonna put my nose to the grindstone once I finish this and get back to Shini. Besides continuing to read and be as immensely supportive as you all have been, I'd like to ask you to wish me luck-I'm going for an interview Monday the 28th for a student foreign exchange program. I hope to God, to Buddha, to whatever! that I get a spot. So just think pretty thoughts or something, and here's hoping everybody else gets a break, too!

The title is una buena canción by Shakira translating as "Flies in the House", and the last title is a Yardbirds' song I came across as a cover on the Pixies' B-sides CD, and there it was sung in Spanish, as well. I thought the first line was classic and I couldn't resist claiming it for my story: Corazón diablo. Anyone noticing a pattern there? All the chapters I never planned on writing, and trust me, I planned this one out, turn out Spanish one way or another. Promise the next chapter will be soon, promise!