Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Palace of Justice ❯ 16 ( Chapter 16 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Lethanon 
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Sci-fi / Thriller | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 01.21.2011 | Pages: 4 | Words: 5.5K | Visits: 305 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Sci-fi / Thriller | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 01.21.2011 | Pages: 4 | Words: 5.5K | Visits: 305 | Status: Work In Progress
16:
A week might not be a long time, but Trowa thought a day could feel like it was. Especially when it had barely started. He sat in the cafe across from Duo wondering how Duo still looked like they had only just arrived on planet Frank while he looked like someone had gutted him, smashed his face into a fridge, gouged out his eyes with a spoon only to stuff them back in and kept him awake on a hundred plus hour marathon of weirdness.
Duo almost looked happy. It wasn’t fair at all. Trowa glared at him over the table.
“Okay, I’m sorry I punched you! But you surprised me, I was in the damn shower, man! Naked!”
“I know,” Trowa reminded him. “I’m traumatized for life.”
“Funny.” Trowa didn’t think it was. His guts and the wicked bruise on them definitely didn’t think so. He wasn’t actually angry at Duo, but at himself for not having thought to tell them not to go in the shower at a particular time so he could avoid seeing anyone naked, or worse.
“So...Wufei.”
“Duo, I’m not talking about this with you,” Trowa rolled his eyes in exasperation. Was he really going to have to put up with this every morning until he gave in and blabbed? And if he did give in and blab would Duo just take that as permission to keep asking and expecting him to blab every morning? Very likely.
“But Tro!” Duo was actually pouting and took a large bite out of his muffin to chew on in his annoyance. “I tell you about Heero!”
“I don’t ask you to!” Trowa pointed out, and really he often wished Duo would tell him a little less about the things he did with Heero. He’d gotten better as their relationship grew more stable but he still occasionally said things that fell far over the line of too much information.
“But I’m asking you to!” Duo leant forward, eyes pleading and hopeful and Trowa picked up his muffin and shoved it in Duo’s mouth, more to distract himself than because it was funny, though watching him struggle to decide whether to eat it or spit it out was amusing.
“What are you asking me? Do you even know? What don’t you know that you want so badly to hear?” Because really, Trowa was confused. They were all sleeping in the same room, if he and Wufei were getting up to something then he would have thought Duo would know. Even Duo seemed to agree for a minute, slumping back in his seat and thinking about it curiously.
“It’s just...you were really happy, when you were working with Wufei. You were fun. You pulled pranks and were constantly trying to find the next thing that would piss him off. Even Heero started to do stupid things just for the hell of it. I liked it. And then...” Then nothing, he didn’t need to say it, they both knew how the story had ended. Wufei gone, Trowa retreating, giving in and going home. The end of the strange familial group that had formed. It was strange how even the strongest things ended so easily. Relationships were fragile, like the people who had them.
“We both know Wufei isn’t going to leave Preventers,” Trowa pointed out, and if Wufei wasn’t leaving then that meant he was going to have to go back. Everything would go back to the way Duo wanted it, so he was still at a loss as to why they were having this awkward breakfast conversation. He didn’t think Duo really knew either.
“Just...I was hoping, when you first came back and I noticed you were sort of interested...I was hoping he would say yes, and now he has...I dunno. It makes me happy. I wish you felt comfortable talking to me about it.” He shrugged, letting it drop, sipping at his coffee instead and despite the fact he wasn’t pouting, or maybe because he wasn’t, Trowa felt like he’d kicked a puppy.
“Duo...” He sighed and ran an irritated hand through his hair, glaring at his muffin as if this whole conversation were somehow its fault. After all, if it had properly stuffed Duo’s mouth, Duo wouldn’t be able to talk and make him feel uncomfortable like a puppy kicker.
“I’m happy. I’m so happy I’m terrified. The idiot won’t sit in bed and just take a time out and if he gets himself axed now, I...” He shut his mouth and shook his head because Duo already knew, Trowa could tell by the look on his face.
“Honestly, I’m more worried about Quatre.”
It was so out of the blue Trowa blinked stupidly at him and it took him a full minute to realise Duo had changed the topic on purpose, to give him space and an excuse to not talk any more about it right now. And he wondered if he hadn’t maybe misjudged Duo a little, if maybe he understood more than Trowa had been willing to give him credit for.
“Quatre can take care of himself. In the business world, discrediting Quatre isn’t possible. Frank’s not going to succeed...he has no idea what sort of fire he’s playing with going after him.” And Trowa believed that with every fibre of his being. Quatre was scary on a mission for Preventers, cold and annoyed at having to be there at all. Quatre doing actual business made Trowa afraid of money in general in case it had at some point come in contact with Quatre, which in most cases it very likely had. Quatre was an armoured whale in a small ocean.
“You guys still talk then? I mean...regularly?”
“Of course, doesn’t every...” Quatre didn’t talk to them anymore? Really? That was odd.
“He talks to us when he’s at Preventers, but that’s so rare these days and he’s just too busy otherwise.”
Yet he took time out to come and see Trowa every Sunday, to play music together, watch bad movies and cook extravagant dinners for two. Quatre had only missed one, and it had been because the flight back from Mars was delayed and he hadn’t been able to charter a private shuttle. Trowa had forgiven him.
“Huh.He’s been pretty busy. Guess I didn’t really appreciate how busy.” That won a laugh from Duo, and a piece of muffin thrown at him.
“Tro, you live in a bubble, there’s a lot of things you don’t appreciate.” Duo’s sense of humour being on the list.
“But it’s a nice bubble,” Trowa grinned and Duo just laughed harder, finishing his coffee and calling out to Tracey to check if their take aways were ready. They were and they both got up, clearing their mess and tossing it in the provided bins before wishing Tracey a good day and going to stand in front of the shuttle bay, each heading in a different direction.
“Have a good day, Tro. And stop worrying about Wufei! Heero’ll take care of him. I know he doesn’t act like it sometimes, but he really does care. He just wants to get everyone home safe.”
Trowa knew that, but it was nice to be reminded and he waved Duo off at the shuttle before getting on his own and heading in to work. It was becoming far too easy to lie his way out of his simulator and over to the broken Pad. His superior officer was changing from being ‘capable’ in Trowa’s eyes to be being ‘gullible’. Not that he cared since it meant he could go straight to Hanger101.
Giles Hume struggled so hard to get out of his chair when Trowa appeared, he knocked the chair over and nosedived into the floor, continuing to struggle forward, trying to get to Trowa. At first Trowa assumed the man wanted to kill him, which was stupid considering Giles was still chained to a chair and Trowa was a man of many talents, but the look on his face and the way he kept looking behind him as if expecting something to chase after him made Trowa pause in that assumption.
“Giles?” The man was terrified and Trowa looked back at the table and thought he might understand why.
“Hatty?”
“Mister Bloom.” She was sitting up, if you could call it sitting when you didn’t have a body below your ribs, arms moving sluggishly as she inspected the things he had left on the table. The hole he had made in her head was far more grotesque now she was up and moving and...talking. He remembered the systems he had activated the day before and cringed because okay, that had been a really bad idea after all.
“Good morning Hatty,” he said softly, hurrying to help Giles, getting him up and quickly undoing the chains, letting him loose because he didn’t think the man would try to do anything. Giles just stumbled back against the wall, still staring at Hatty so Trowa left him to pull himself together and tried to figure himself out because it was extremely disturbing to see her moving. He wasn’t even sure what was functional and what wasn’t. Could she see? Her voice box was working, so what else could she do?
“Good morning,” She replied and when she lifted her hand and made the movement to push hair back behind her ear that didn’t exist he thought he might understand why Giles was freaking out.
“Hatty...what are you doing?” He had no idea what to do or say and so just went about what he would have done had she not been there, getting out his laptop and setting it up before getting the pins ready and going to stand in front of her.
“I was trying to talk to your friend, but he didn’t want to talk to me.” She sounded truly devastated and he sighed, because that was his fault too. He’d programmed her to help him by talking to other applications. Unfortunately, not plugged in other programs became human, apparently. Poor Giles. He wondered how long Hatty had been trying to talk to him.
“I’m sorry, Hatty. He wasn’t expecting you to want to talk to him. He’ll know better next time.” So would Trowa. If things were turned off he should just leave them alone! But now that she was on, he didn’t want to turn her off, feeling oddly like it would be like killing a part of Wufei. Ridiculous, yes, but still a feeling he was experiencing and struggling with.
“Where were you? I thought you would be here...” Because Harrison had always been there? Right up until he switched her off, Trowa assumed.
“I’m sorry, I had to go back to my friends for the night. To sleep.”
“Sleep?” She looked confused by the idea, then her facial features settled again. “I was asleep.”
“Yes...I suppose you were.” He didn’t want to upset her by pointing out she had been pretty much dead, not just asleep. It wasn’t a good idea to piss off the robot when he still needed its help.
He held up the collection of pins and pointed at the ports on her head.
“I need to plug these in. Is that okay? Then we can do some work?”
“Of course! I can do it!” She was clumsy but she managed to plug each in and he let her do it, not wanting to get much closer while she was flailing her arms about. He felt guilty about pulling her shoulder apart now, wondering if it was contributing to her lack of communication.
She got everything hooked up and Trowa synced her with the computer, startled when several additional programs launched at the same time, assuming they were related to Hatty. Maybe he should have rebooted after making the changes yesterday and all these surprises could have been avoided.
“Okay, Hatty?”
“I’m fine.” Right, because everyone was fine with being half completed and dumped for the better model. But then, he supposed she was doing better than the other two models which really were dead.
“Giles...Giles?” He looked back and found the man just sitting on the floor staring at them both like they were mad and sighed, scratching his head before going over to kneel in front of him.
“Just...ignore Hatty. I didn’t realise I’d turned on her brain. She’s harmless, really, and I need her. Now...come on, I want to show you what I’m trying to do and why and then maybe you can help me out.”
“You...you’re not going to kill me?”
“Uh...no, I don’t think so. Dead bodies don’t really do much to help me out.” They were pretty annoying actually; they were heavy and stank and didn’t give you answers when you asked questions. Completely useless.
Giles seemed to settle then, peering past him at Hatty before looking back at him sternly.
“That thing is creepy.”
“Aw, she’s not so bad...” Trowa looked over at her and she waved excitedly. “That’s a lie, she’s totally creepy. Now come on, need you to read these journals.”
So Giles took a seat, making sure Trowa was between him and Hatty and he started reading the journals, asking questions every now and then while Trowa explained in between building some of the Pad components exactly what had happened. Who he was and how he got there and what he was trying to do.
“You were really a Gundam Pilot?” Out of everything he had told him, that was the question Giles asked first. Trowa chuckled and nodded his head. Yes, he’d been a Gundam Pilot, and he had enjoyed it, mostly. He didn’t regret it, and that was the part that mattered, or so Wufei liked to tell him.
“Huh...that’s pretty cool,” Giles noted faintly, which was saying something considering what he was reading. “So you’re trying to build a duplicate Pad, like the one here? Why?”
“This one’s on the wrong side the magnetic field protecting Level 1. I can’t get my team through the military security without a lot of people getting hurt.”
“So you thought it would be easier to build a Pad on the other side of the field. So you’re building the parts here and sending them there to assemble?”
“That’s the idea,” Trowa agreed. He was struggling to hold down a metal plate that didn’t want to bend the right way so he could weld it when an unfamiliar hand got in the way and he just stared, taking a very deep breath before smiling up at Hatty and welding it in place.
“Thank you, Hatty.”
“You’re welcome Mister Bloom.”
“Hatty...you can call me Triton.”
“Thank you, Triton!” She seemed so genuinely happy, like she was doing him an incredible favour. It was unsettling, to say the least, and Giles seemed to agree, just staring at him like he was insane for not just pulling her to pieces. Maybe he was right, but Trowa still needed her.
“So your friend, the Origen...he’s...like her?”
“She was made from clones of parts of him combined with simulative software and hardware that means ...well, the actual Nataku Harry finished...can sustain Frank just as well as a human would have.”
“You hope,” Giles added and Trowa just shrugged because it was impossible to know how successful Nataku was being as the Origen. The colony hadn’t crashed, but that wasn’t something she had any control over anyway. Frank seemed to be playing nice, but who really knew what the System was thinking?
“Even if you manage to build a duplicate of this Pad, and your friends show up and you get out of here, how are you going to disable...Frank...really? Why did you call it Frank?”
Why did everyone end up asking about that? Trowa sighed and explained that Duo had named it Frank after Frankenstein. Giles was of the opinion that made no sense at all, and Trowa almost had to agree with him, but it was Duo. It didn’t have to make sense if it came out of Duo’s mouth.
“Well, anyway, even if you manage to get out, how are you going to disable Frank without hurting the people on board? The people who live here are good people. Genuinely wonderful people, living ordinary, happy lives.”
Trowa knew that. He’d known that since he first got there and went out to see for himself, with no pre-conceptions. He only had to have coffee in the cafe every morning and see Tracey to know that. But if it came down to getting Wufei home or helping these people survive, he couldn’t guarantee he would do the right thing.
“I’m not sure.”
“I have an idea.” But Giles hesitated on it, looking at him seriously as if he expected Trowa to freak out about it. Considering Hatty was singing softly not two metres from them, it had to be a pretty wild idea for Giles to assume he was going to freak over it.
“You have the Origen, right?”
“...yes.” He already didn’t like this idea.
“If you plug him into a port...completely plug him in, all two hundred ports, then he should have full access, to all systems. Theoretically, as the human mind he should be able to overpower the System.”
“But Frank has a human mind...” Wufei’s mind to be exact, or a vague variation thereof. He still really disliked this idea, but he could already see it was a possibility. If the Origen was anyone other than who it was he might have been more ready to consider it, but not yet. Not until there was no other choice.
“But his connection to that human mind isn’t human...there’s still that special something missing. Just like it’s missing from our friend there.” He gestured vaguely at Hatty and Trowa was starting to find his aversion to her very amusing.
He thought about it and realised Giles was talking about the human soul or spirit...that special something that allowed them to feel and respond accordingly. Accessing a human conscience didn’t give Frank human emotion and Giles thought that could be the difference. Frank was incapable of anger. Wufei certainly was not.
“I’ll think about it,” Trowa agreed softly. He wouldn’t give it a great deal of thought, but now the idea was planted he knew it would remain churning away in the back of his mind.
“So,” he said just by way of conversation, and to change the topic. “No family?”
“My wife and I...we had a child. He was killed by a ten year old boy who wanted money...stabbed him and ran away and no one stopped to help him.”
Everyone had a story, Trowa reminded himself. People were a sum of their experiences and while all the people here were good people, they were here for a reason. He had tried not to think about the tragedies that had populated Frank but now he found himself facing one and it wasn’t a pretty picture. Giles wasn’t bad looking, but he wasn’t handsome either...
“So Lana...that was my wife’s name, she wanted a fresh start, a completely new slate. So when a friend told us about the colony we just decided to do it. There was no reason not to, nothing we couldn’t leave behind.”
“You said you had no family,” Trowa noted softly. Where was Lana? Was she missing her husband? Had she grown suspicious of his absence last night? Was he already listed as a missing person?
“She died the first year of the colony. She tried, her heart just wasn’t in it, and it gave out.”
They were quiet a long time, Giles lost in his memories, Trowa in wonder at the strangeness of mankind. They were at once a spectacularly resilient race, and at the same time equally fragile.
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago,” Giles murmured and there was little grief left in it, time having faded it to something like another life. Giles was just the mechanic now, but maybe his previous life had something to do with why he was so adamant on fixing the things everyone else had given up on. It wasn’t a bad trait, quite the contrary, even if it had a bitter beginning.
“And yourself?”
Trowa was startled by the question, pausing in his work to look from Giles to Hatty and back again before replying.
“No. No family. Just...the other pilots. They’re like brothers to me, you know?”
“I can imagine,” Giles agreed with a soft chuckle. “But no girlfriend? Boyfriend perhaps?”
His relationship was still so new with Wufei that Trowa almost didn’t want to mention it just for fear he would jinx himself, but he’d avoiding speaking to Duo about anything because he didn’t want the man telling anyone else what he said. Giles didn’t know anyone to tell and Trowa sighed, rubbing his head and trying to concentrate on the job at hand while he thought of a way to answer.
“The Origen.”
“No...really?” Giles was gaping, then laughing and Trowa really wished people would stop laughing at him every time they found out he was interested in Wufei.
“Yeah, really. He wasn’t always the Origen you know. I...I courted him for a year, we worked together and I kept hinting I wanted more, trying to push him into it I guess and it was this weird cat and mouse game. The others thought it was hilarious, but I didn’t care I just wanted him to say yes. To at least let us try, but he’s so stubborn about everything! And then he went for this job interview and I didn’t hear from him again.”
“You assumed he ran,” Giles surmised and Trowa just nodded in agreement. Giles sighed, pottering around collecting various pieces from around the workshop and piling them in front of himself ready to assemble.
“So he’s finally said yes then?” Trowa hummed his agreement. “Strange place for it.” Trowa had to agree. Of all the times and places for Wufei to agree, this was certainly not one Trowa would have imagined in his worst nightmares.
“He’s just...he’s addicted to this stuff the System ran him on, and he’s got ports like Hatty here, and he’s so weak and I just want him to take it easy but he’s being impossible and trying to prove he can help or something, drives me insane!”
“Doesn’t want to be useless,” Giles agreed and Trowa just grunted. Being useless was not a fault Wufei ever needed to worry about. Giving Trowa an ulcer on a stomach Duo had already pounded...that was worth worrying about.
“Bit of advice, kid?” Kid? Really? They were down to Kid now? He supposed Giles was old enough to be his father, but that was completely not the point. Trowa was not a Kid and couldn’t remember ever being one. Not where it mattered.
“You can’t live someone else’s life for ‘em. Love is knowing what you want, and never giving it up. If you really love the guy, just keep reminding them and they’ll keep coming back when they’re ready.”
“What are you, a philosopher now?” Trowa chuckled but it was good advice and maybe it was what he’d been waiting to hear.
“I’ll love you, Triton!”
Giles and Trowa stared at Hatty, shuddered together and refused to talk about it any further, heads bending over their work as they went about assembling as much of a second Pad as they could, sending the parts through to His Room. Having Giles there helped; the man knew his stuff and Trowa could stop referencing the mechanics manual and reference the man instead, saving himself a great deal of time and frustration. And Giles had shortcuts to get things to work, and improvements they had made to the military Pads over the years as technology had continued to advance.
The result was that he got twice as much work done as he had expected to, and even caught a few glimpses of Duo when Hatty mentioned something strange happening on Level 5 and showed them footage. He was trying to break in to a room and Trowa had Hatty help him, which she did happily. He could even admit it was easier with her awake, because he didn’t have to worry about typing the commands himself; he just told Hatty to take care of it without even looking up from his work.
“Alright...that’s enough for today. I’ve got to try and get this thing assembled anyway, or start trying to anyway...” He brushed his hands off and rubbed at gritty eyes, regretting not getting the eye drops he had been planning on yesterday.
“Uh...Trowa?” He sighed because he knew he couldn’t just keep Giles here. Or he could, but there wasn’t even a toilet and while there was a waste disposal and a sink, that was asking someone to live in pretty disgusting conditions. And despite having no family, Giles was still known about the station and the longer he was ‘sick’ the more people would start to wonder why they hadn’t seen him. But he wasn’t sure he could trust him. It wasn’t that he expected the man to rush off and tell the first person he saw everything that happened, but it wasn’t an impossibility either.
“Just...one more night?
“With Hatty?” Giles clarified and Trowa cringed because yeah, that was asking a bit. He sighed and decided on a compromise, smirking as he rummaged in his bag for a transmitter.
“Give me your arm.” Giles did so and Trowa welded a transmitter onto his wrist before holding it up to Hatty.
“Can you sync with this?”
“Of course, Triton!” Immediately the stats of the bracelet appeared on his laptop screen. Sometimes having a half made robot girl came in handy.
“Excellent. Hatty, I want you to keep an eye on this tracker; watch it all the time. If Giles’ takes it off, I want you to trap him in whatever room he is in, and tell me where it is; leave a message on my message board, okay?”
“Of course, Triton!” He hoped she wasn’t just broken and repeating the same thing over and over, but either way Giles looked about ready to pee his pants at the thought of either Hatty stalking him all night or Trowa coming to get him if he abused his trust. Either way it worked for Trowa.
“Excellent. In that case, Giles, you are free to go. Where do you want me to drop you off?”
“Level 2,” Giles whispered, still staring at Hatty. “Sector 62...anywhere there.”
“Hatty, can you find an empty open space in Sector 62 and calibrate the Pad with Giles’s information?”
“Yes, Sir!” She seemed excited and the information appeared hot and fast on the screen, a lot quicker than he could have hoped to have typed it in, let alone the process of searching a place. “Ready, Triton.”
Giles backed up onto the Pad and waited.
“I’ll come to your simulator in the morning?”
“First chance you get,” Trowa agreed. “I’ll be waiting.” He loved it when he got to sound a little ominous. It was a bit mean of him, especially considering he’d already scared the pants of Giles, but it was just...fun. And then Giles was gone and he had to hope Hatty could do as he’d asked.
“Re-calibrate the Pad with my details, and locate the shower in My Room? Set it to go in fifteen minutes.”
“Certainly...” It was done almost immediately and Trowa sighed, looking at her and going over to pack up his things, stuffing them away and disconnecting his laptop to take with him. Then he hesitated, unplugging Hatty and fetching his black cap from his bag, putting it on her head and reconnecting all the pins, grinning at the effect. She looked even stranger, but the cap covered the horrible hole in her head and made her look like a young girl with a strange hat on. Except for the fact her chest was open with all his insides showing.
“What is it?”
“It’s a hat. It suits you.”
“I look good?” She seemed so genuinely pleased it hurt.
“Yeah, Hatty. You look good.”
“Thank you, Triton! I love it!” And somehow that hurt even more. He went and stood on the Pad, just waiting while Hatty chattered about her hat and sang to herself and he wondered who had taught her to sing or if it was something she had learnt from the System. It was a strange quirk, one that confused him and left him aching.
He was standing in the shower, Hatty’s words ringing in his ears, because what did a machine know of love? Was it something they had been programmed to think they understood? Was it something that could be defined in their databases? Or had they acquired it from observing their human charges? Could they understand what they were acquiring? Or was there something in the human components that escaped logical reason...could they actually feel? Could they love?
Could Nataku?
He sighed and left the shower, stepping out to find Wufei sitting on the kitchenette bench, sipping on a cup of tea while Heero peeled carrots. Duo was playing on the Computer...Tetris, of all things. It was all so normal, and so human that Trowa could hardly process it. He felt raw and wanted to be empty. He dumped his backpack and went straight back in to the shower, tossing his clothes in the corner and climbing under the spray, turning it on extra hot as if he could burn away the grimy feel of his skin.
“Trowa?”
Wufei. He didn’t ask permission, just got in the shower with him and the arms around him were strong and familiar and Trowa gave into them, wrapping Wufei tightly in his own embrace and burying his face in against Wufei’s shoulder. A hand came up to rest on his head and his eyes stung.
Could they really understand? Feel this?
The shower drank his tears, Wufei’s shoulder swallowed his sobs and his hands soothed his shaking.
A week might not be a long time, but Trowa thought a day could feel like it was. Especially when it had barely started. He sat in the cafe across from Duo wondering how Duo still looked like they had only just arrived on planet Frank while he looked like someone had gutted him, smashed his face into a fridge, gouged out his eyes with a spoon only to stuff them back in and kept him awake on a hundred plus hour marathon of weirdness.
Duo almost looked happy. It wasn’t fair at all. Trowa glared at him over the table.
“Okay, I’m sorry I punched you! But you surprised me, I was in the damn shower, man! Naked!”
“I know,” Trowa reminded him. “I’m traumatized for life.”
“Funny.” Trowa didn’t think it was. His guts and the wicked bruise on them definitely didn’t think so. He wasn’t actually angry at Duo, but at himself for not having thought to tell them not to go in the shower at a particular time so he could avoid seeing anyone naked, or worse.
“So...Wufei.”
“Duo, I’m not talking about this with you,” Trowa rolled his eyes in exasperation. Was he really going to have to put up with this every morning until he gave in and blabbed? And if he did give in and blab would Duo just take that as permission to keep asking and expecting him to blab every morning? Very likely.
“But Tro!” Duo was actually pouting and took a large bite out of his muffin to chew on in his annoyance. “I tell you about Heero!”
“I don’t ask you to!” Trowa pointed out, and really he often wished Duo would tell him a little less about the things he did with Heero. He’d gotten better as their relationship grew more stable but he still occasionally said things that fell far over the line of too much information.
“But I’m asking you to!” Duo leant forward, eyes pleading and hopeful and Trowa picked up his muffin and shoved it in Duo’s mouth, more to distract himself than because it was funny, though watching him struggle to decide whether to eat it or spit it out was amusing.
“What are you asking me? Do you even know? What don’t you know that you want so badly to hear?” Because really, Trowa was confused. They were all sleeping in the same room, if he and Wufei were getting up to something then he would have thought Duo would know. Even Duo seemed to agree for a minute, slumping back in his seat and thinking about it curiously.
“It’s just...you were really happy, when you were working with Wufei. You were fun. You pulled pranks and were constantly trying to find the next thing that would piss him off. Even Heero started to do stupid things just for the hell of it. I liked it. And then...” Then nothing, he didn’t need to say it, they both knew how the story had ended. Wufei gone, Trowa retreating, giving in and going home. The end of the strange familial group that had formed. It was strange how even the strongest things ended so easily. Relationships were fragile, like the people who had them.
“We both know Wufei isn’t going to leave Preventers,” Trowa pointed out, and if Wufei wasn’t leaving then that meant he was going to have to go back. Everything would go back to the way Duo wanted it, so he was still at a loss as to why they were having this awkward breakfast conversation. He didn’t think Duo really knew either.
“Just...I was hoping, when you first came back and I noticed you were sort of interested...I was hoping he would say yes, and now he has...I dunno. It makes me happy. I wish you felt comfortable talking to me about it.” He shrugged, letting it drop, sipping at his coffee instead and despite the fact he wasn’t pouting, or maybe because he wasn’t, Trowa felt like he’d kicked a puppy.
“Duo...” He sighed and ran an irritated hand through his hair, glaring at his muffin as if this whole conversation were somehow its fault. After all, if it had properly stuffed Duo’s mouth, Duo wouldn’t be able to talk and make him feel uncomfortable like a puppy kicker.
“I’m happy. I’m so happy I’m terrified. The idiot won’t sit in bed and just take a time out and if he gets himself axed now, I...” He shut his mouth and shook his head because Duo already knew, Trowa could tell by the look on his face.
“Honestly, I’m more worried about Quatre.”
It was so out of the blue Trowa blinked stupidly at him and it took him a full minute to realise Duo had changed the topic on purpose, to give him space and an excuse to not talk any more about it right now. And he wondered if he hadn’t maybe misjudged Duo a little, if maybe he understood more than Trowa had been willing to give him credit for.
“Quatre can take care of himself. In the business world, discrediting Quatre isn’t possible. Frank’s not going to succeed...he has no idea what sort of fire he’s playing with going after him.” And Trowa believed that with every fibre of his being. Quatre was scary on a mission for Preventers, cold and annoyed at having to be there at all. Quatre doing actual business made Trowa afraid of money in general in case it had at some point come in contact with Quatre, which in most cases it very likely had. Quatre was an armoured whale in a small ocean.
“You guys still talk then? I mean...regularly?”
“Of course, doesn’t every...” Quatre didn’t talk to them anymore? Really? That was odd.
“He talks to us when he’s at Preventers, but that’s so rare these days and he’s just too busy otherwise.”
Yet he took time out to come and see Trowa every Sunday, to play music together, watch bad movies and cook extravagant dinners for two. Quatre had only missed one, and it had been because the flight back from Mars was delayed and he hadn’t been able to charter a private shuttle. Trowa had forgiven him.
“Huh.He’s been pretty busy. Guess I didn’t really appreciate how busy.” That won a laugh from Duo, and a piece of muffin thrown at him.
“Tro, you live in a bubble, there’s a lot of things you don’t appreciate.” Duo’s sense of humour being on the list.
“But it’s a nice bubble,” Trowa grinned and Duo just laughed harder, finishing his coffee and calling out to Tracey to check if their take aways were ready. They were and they both got up, clearing their mess and tossing it in the provided bins before wishing Tracey a good day and going to stand in front of the shuttle bay, each heading in a different direction.
“Have a good day, Tro. And stop worrying about Wufei! Heero’ll take care of him. I know he doesn’t act like it sometimes, but he really does care. He just wants to get everyone home safe.”
Trowa knew that, but it was nice to be reminded and he waved Duo off at the shuttle before getting on his own and heading in to work. It was becoming far too easy to lie his way out of his simulator and over to the broken Pad. His superior officer was changing from being ‘capable’ in Trowa’s eyes to be being ‘gullible’. Not that he cared since it meant he could go straight to Hanger101.
Giles Hume struggled so hard to get out of his chair when Trowa appeared, he knocked the chair over and nosedived into the floor, continuing to struggle forward, trying to get to Trowa. At first Trowa assumed the man wanted to kill him, which was stupid considering Giles was still chained to a chair and Trowa was a man of many talents, but the look on his face and the way he kept looking behind him as if expecting something to chase after him made Trowa pause in that assumption.
“Giles?” The man was terrified and Trowa looked back at the table and thought he might understand why.
“Hatty?”
“Mister Bloom.” She was sitting up, if you could call it sitting when you didn’t have a body below your ribs, arms moving sluggishly as she inspected the things he had left on the table. The hole he had made in her head was far more grotesque now she was up and moving and...talking. He remembered the systems he had activated the day before and cringed because okay, that had been a really bad idea after all.
“Good morning Hatty,” he said softly, hurrying to help Giles, getting him up and quickly undoing the chains, letting him loose because he didn’t think the man would try to do anything. Giles just stumbled back against the wall, still staring at Hatty so Trowa left him to pull himself together and tried to figure himself out because it was extremely disturbing to see her moving. He wasn’t even sure what was functional and what wasn’t. Could she see? Her voice box was working, so what else could she do?
“Good morning,” She replied and when she lifted her hand and made the movement to push hair back behind her ear that didn’t exist he thought he might understand why Giles was freaking out.
“Hatty...what are you doing?” He had no idea what to do or say and so just went about what he would have done had she not been there, getting out his laptop and setting it up before getting the pins ready and going to stand in front of her.
“I was trying to talk to your friend, but he didn’t want to talk to me.” She sounded truly devastated and he sighed, because that was his fault too. He’d programmed her to help him by talking to other applications. Unfortunately, not plugged in other programs became human, apparently. Poor Giles. He wondered how long Hatty had been trying to talk to him.
“I’m sorry, Hatty. He wasn’t expecting you to want to talk to him. He’ll know better next time.” So would Trowa. If things were turned off he should just leave them alone! But now that she was on, he didn’t want to turn her off, feeling oddly like it would be like killing a part of Wufei. Ridiculous, yes, but still a feeling he was experiencing and struggling with.
“Where were you? I thought you would be here...” Because Harrison had always been there? Right up until he switched her off, Trowa assumed.
“I’m sorry, I had to go back to my friends for the night. To sleep.”
“Sleep?” She looked confused by the idea, then her facial features settled again. “I was asleep.”
“Yes...I suppose you were.” He didn’t want to upset her by pointing out she had been pretty much dead, not just asleep. It wasn’t a good idea to piss off the robot when he still needed its help.
He held up the collection of pins and pointed at the ports on her head.
“I need to plug these in. Is that okay? Then we can do some work?”
“Of course! I can do it!” She was clumsy but she managed to plug each in and he let her do it, not wanting to get much closer while she was flailing her arms about. He felt guilty about pulling her shoulder apart now, wondering if it was contributing to her lack of communication.
She got everything hooked up and Trowa synced her with the computer, startled when several additional programs launched at the same time, assuming they were related to Hatty. Maybe he should have rebooted after making the changes yesterday and all these surprises could have been avoided.
“Okay, Hatty?”
“I’m fine.” Right, because everyone was fine with being half completed and dumped for the better model. But then, he supposed she was doing better than the other two models which really were dead.
“Giles...Giles?” He looked back and found the man just sitting on the floor staring at them both like they were mad and sighed, scratching his head before going over to kneel in front of him.
“Just...ignore Hatty. I didn’t realise I’d turned on her brain. She’s harmless, really, and I need her. Now...come on, I want to show you what I’m trying to do and why and then maybe you can help me out.”
“You...you’re not going to kill me?”
“Uh...no, I don’t think so. Dead bodies don’t really do much to help me out.” They were pretty annoying actually; they were heavy and stank and didn’t give you answers when you asked questions. Completely useless.
Giles seemed to settle then, peering past him at Hatty before looking back at him sternly.
“That thing is creepy.”
“Aw, she’s not so bad...” Trowa looked over at her and she waved excitedly. “That’s a lie, she’s totally creepy. Now come on, need you to read these journals.”
So Giles took a seat, making sure Trowa was between him and Hatty and he started reading the journals, asking questions every now and then while Trowa explained in between building some of the Pad components exactly what had happened. Who he was and how he got there and what he was trying to do.
“You were really a Gundam Pilot?” Out of everything he had told him, that was the question Giles asked first. Trowa chuckled and nodded his head. Yes, he’d been a Gundam Pilot, and he had enjoyed it, mostly. He didn’t regret it, and that was the part that mattered, or so Wufei liked to tell him.
“Huh...that’s pretty cool,” Giles noted faintly, which was saying something considering what he was reading. “So you’re trying to build a duplicate Pad, like the one here? Why?”
“This one’s on the wrong side the magnetic field protecting Level 1. I can’t get my team through the military security without a lot of people getting hurt.”
“So you thought it would be easier to build a Pad on the other side of the field. So you’re building the parts here and sending them there to assemble?”
“That’s the idea,” Trowa agreed. He was struggling to hold down a metal plate that didn’t want to bend the right way so he could weld it when an unfamiliar hand got in the way and he just stared, taking a very deep breath before smiling up at Hatty and welding it in place.
“Thank you, Hatty.”
“You’re welcome Mister Bloom.”
“Hatty...you can call me Triton.”
“Thank you, Triton!” She seemed so genuinely happy, like she was doing him an incredible favour. It was unsettling, to say the least, and Giles seemed to agree, just staring at him like he was insane for not just pulling her to pieces. Maybe he was right, but Trowa still needed her.
“So your friend, the Origen...he’s...like her?”
“She was made from clones of parts of him combined with simulative software and hardware that means ...well, the actual Nataku Harry finished...can sustain Frank just as well as a human would have.”
“You hope,” Giles added and Trowa just shrugged because it was impossible to know how successful Nataku was being as the Origen. The colony hadn’t crashed, but that wasn’t something she had any control over anyway. Frank seemed to be playing nice, but who really knew what the System was thinking?
“Even if you manage to build a duplicate of this Pad, and your friends show up and you get out of here, how are you going to disable...Frank...really? Why did you call it Frank?”
Why did everyone end up asking about that? Trowa sighed and explained that Duo had named it Frank after Frankenstein. Giles was of the opinion that made no sense at all, and Trowa almost had to agree with him, but it was Duo. It didn’t have to make sense if it came out of Duo’s mouth.
“Well, anyway, even if you manage to get out, how are you going to disable Frank without hurting the people on board? The people who live here are good people. Genuinely wonderful people, living ordinary, happy lives.”
Trowa knew that. He’d known that since he first got there and went out to see for himself, with no pre-conceptions. He only had to have coffee in the cafe every morning and see Tracey to know that. But if it came down to getting Wufei home or helping these people survive, he couldn’t guarantee he would do the right thing.
“I’m not sure.”
“I have an idea.” But Giles hesitated on it, looking at him seriously as if he expected Trowa to freak out about it. Considering Hatty was singing softly not two metres from them, it had to be a pretty wild idea for Giles to assume he was going to freak over it.
“You have the Origen, right?”
“...yes.” He already didn’t like this idea.
“If you plug him into a port...completely plug him in, all two hundred ports, then he should have full access, to all systems. Theoretically, as the human mind he should be able to overpower the System.”
“But Frank has a human mind...” Wufei’s mind to be exact, or a vague variation thereof. He still really disliked this idea, but he could already see it was a possibility. If the Origen was anyone other than who it was he might have been more ready to consider it, but not yet. Not until there was no other choice.
“But his connection to that human mind isn’t human...there’s still that special something missing. Just like it’s missing from our friend there.” He gestured vaguely at Hatty and Trowa was starting to find his aversion to her very amusing.
He thought about it and realised Giles was talking about the human soul or spirit...that special something that allowed them to feel and respond accordingly. Accessing a human conscience didn’t give Frank human emotion and Giles thought that could be the difference. Frank was incapable of anger. Wufei certainly was not.
“I’ll think about it,” Trowa agreed softly. He wouldn’t give it a great deal of thought, but now the idea was planted he knew it would remain churning away in the back of his mind.
“So,” he said just by way of conversation, and to change the topic. “No family?”
“My wife and I...we had a child. He was killed by a ten year old boy who wanted money...stabbed him and ran away and no one stopped to help him.”
Everyone had a story, Trowa reminded himself. People were a sum of their experiences and while all the people here were good people, they were here for a reason. He had tried not to think about the tragedies that had populated Frank but now he found himself facing one and it wasn’t a pretty picture. Giles wasn’t bad looking, but he wasn’t handsome either...
“So Lana...that was my wife’s name, she wanted a fresh start, a completely new slate. So when a friend told us about the colony we just decided to do it. There was no reason not to, nothing we couldn’t leave behind.”
“You said you had no family,” Trowa noted softly. Where was Lana? Was she missing her husband? Had she grown suspicious of his absence last night? Was he already listed as a missing person?
“She died the first year of the colony. She tried, her heart just wasn’t in it, and it gave out.”
They were quiet a long time, Giles lost in his memories, Trowa in wonder at the strangeness of mankind. They were at once a spectacularly resilient race, and at the same time equally fragile.
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago,” Giles murmured and there was little grief left in it, time having faded it to something like another life. Giles was just the mechanic now, but maybe his previous life had something to do with why he was so adamant on fixing the things everyone else had given up on. It wasn’t a bad trait, quite the contrary, even if it had a bitter beginning.
“And yourself?”
Trowa was startled by the question, pausing in his work to look from Giles to Hatty and back again before replying.
“No. No family. Just...the other pilots. They’re like brothers to me, you know?”
“I can imagine,” Giles agreed with a soft chuckle. “But no girlfriend? Boyfriend perhaps?”
His relationship was still so new with Wufei that Trowa almost didn’t want to mention it just for fear he would jinx himself, but he’d avoiding speaking to Duo about anything because he didn’t want the man telling anyone else what he said. Giles didn’t know anyone to tell and Trowa sighed, rubbing his head and trying to concentrate on the job at hand while he thought of a way to answer.
“The Origen.”
“No...really?” Giles was gaping, then laughing and Trowa really wished people would stop laughing at him every time they found out he was interested in Wufei.
“Yeah, really. He wasn’t always the Origen you know. I...I courted him for a year, we worked together and I kept hinting I wanted more, trying to push him into it I guess and it was this weird cat and mouse game. The others thought it was hilarious, but I didn’t care I just wanted him to say yes. To at least let us try, but he’s so stubborn about everything! And then he went for this job interview and I didn’t hear from him again.”
“You assumed he ran,” Giles surmised and Trowa just nodded in agreement. Giles sighed, pottering around collecting various pieces from around the workshop and piling them in front of himself ready to assemble.
“So he’s finally said yes then?” Trowa hummed his agreement. “Strange place for it.” Trowa had to agree. Of all the times and places for Wufei to agree, this was certainly not one Trowa would have imagined in his worst nightmares.
“He’s just...he’s addicted to this stuff the System ran him on, and he’s got ports like Hatty here, and he’s so weak and I just want him to take it easy but he’s being impossible and trying to prove he can help or something, drives me insane!”
“Doesn’t want to be useless,” Giles agreed and Trowa just grunted. Being useless was not a fault Wufei ever needed to worry about. Giving Trowa an ulcer on a stomach Duo had already pounded...that was worth worrying about.
“Bit of advice, kid?” Kid? Really? They were down to Kid now? He supposed Giles was old enough to be his father, but that was completely not the point. Trowa was not a Kid and couldn’t remember ever being one. Not where it mattered.
“You can’t live someone else’s life for ‘em. Love is knowing what you want, and never giving it up. If you really love the guy, just keep reminding them and they’ll keep coming back when they’re ready.”
“What are you, a philosopher now?” Trowa chuckled but it was good advice and maybe it was what he’d been waiting to hear.
“I’ll love you, Triton!”
Giles and Trowa stared at Hatty, shuddered together and refused to talk about it any further, heads bending over their work as they went about assembling as much of a second Pad as they could, sending the parts through to His Room. Having Giles there helped; the man knew his stuff and Trowa could stop referencing the mechanics manual and reference the man instead, saving himself a great deal of time and frustration. And Giles had shortcuts to get things to work, and improvements they had made to the military Pads over the years as technology had continued to advance.
The result was that he got twice as much work done as he had expected to, and even caught a few glimpses of Duo when Hatty mentioned something strange happening on Level 5 and showed them footage. He was trying to break in to a room and Trowa had Hatty help him, which she did happily. He could even admit it was easier with her awake, because he didn’t have to worry about typing the commands himself; he just told Hatty to take care of it without even looking up from his work.
“Alright...that’s enough for today. I’ve got to try and get this thing assembled anyway, or start trying to anyway...” He brushed his hands off and rubbed at gritty eyes, regretting not getting the eye drops he had been planning on yesterday.
“Uh...Trowa?” He sighed because he knew he couldn’t just keep Giles here. Or he could, but there wasn’t even a toilet and while there was a waste disposal and a sink, that was asking someone to live in pretty disgusting conditions. And despite having no family, Giles was still known about the station and the longer he was ‘sick’ the more people would start to wonder why they hadn’t seen him. But he wasn’t sure he could trust him. It wasn’t that he expected the man to rush off and tell the first person he saw everything that happened, but it wasn’t an impossibility either.
“Just...one more night?
“With Hatty?” Giles clarified and Trowa cringed because yeah, that was asking a bit. He sighed and decided on a compromise, smirking as he rummaged in his bag for a transmitter.
“Give me your arm.” Giles did so and Trowa welded a transmitter onto his wrist before holding it up to Hatty.
“Can you sync with this?”
“Of course, Triton!” Immediately the stats of the bracelet appeared on his laptop screen. Sometimes having a half made robot girl came in handy.
“Excellent. Hatty, I want you to keep an eye on this tracker; watch it all the time. If Giles’ takes it off, I want you to trap him in whatever room he is in, and tell me where it is; leave a message on my message board, okay?”
“Of course, Triton!” He hoped she wasn’t just broken and repeating the same thing over and over, but either way Giles looked about ready to pee his pants at the thought of either Hatty stalking him all night or Trowa coming to get him if he abused his trust. Either way it worked for Trowa.
“Excellent. In that case, Giles, you are free to go. Where do you want me to drop you off?”
“Level 2,” Giles whispered, still staring at Hatty. “Sector 62...anywhere there.”
“Hatty, can you find an empty open space in Sector 62 and calibrate the Pad with Giles’s information?”
“Yes, Sir!” She seemed excited and the information appeared hot and fast on the screen, a lot quicker than he could have hoped to have typed it in, let alone the process of searching a place. “Ready, Triton.”
Giles backed up onto the Pad and waited.
“I’ll come to your simulator in the morning?”
“First chance you get,” Trowa agreed. “I’ll be waiting.” He loved it when he got to sound a little ominous. It was a bit mean of him, especially considering he’d already scared the pants of Giles, but it was just...fun. And then Giles was gone and he had to hope Hatty could do as he’d asked.
“Re-calibrate the Pad with my details, and locate the shower in My Room? Set it to go in fifteen minutes.”
“Certainly...” It was done almost immediately and Trowa sighed, looking at her and going over to pack up his things, stuffing them away and disconnecting his laptop to take with him. Then he hesitated, unplugging Hatty and fetching his black cap from his bag, putting it on her head and reconnecting all the pins, grinning at the effect. She looked even stranger, but the cap covered the horrible hole in her head and made her look like a young girl with a strange hat on. Except for the fact her chest was open with all his insides showing.
“What is it?”
“It’s a hat. It suits you.”
“I look good?” She seemed so genuinely pleased it hurt.
“Yeah, Hatty. You look good.”
“Thank you, Triton! I love it!” And somehow that hurt even more. He went and stood on the Pad, just waiting while Hatty chattered about her hat and sang to herself and he wondered who had taught her to sing or if it was something she had learnt from the System. It was a strange quirk, one that confused him and left him aching.
He was standing in the shower, Hatty’s words ringing in his ears, because what did a machine know of love? Was it something they had been programmed to think they understood? Was it something that could be defined in their databases? Or had they acquired it from observing their human charges? Could they understand what they were acquiring? Or was there something in the human components that escaped logical reason...could they actually feel? Could they love?
Could Nataku?
He sighed and left the shower, stepping out to find Wufei sitting on the kitchenette bench, sipping on a cup of tea while Heero peeled carrots. Duo was playing on the Computer...Tetris, of all things. It was all so normal, and so human that Trowa could hardly process it. He felt raw and wanted to be empty. He dumped his backpack and went straight back in to the shower, tossing his clothes in the corner and climbing under the spray, turning it on extra hot as if he could burn away the grimy feel of his skin.
“Trowa?”
Wufei. He didn’t ask permission, just got in the shower with him and the arms around him were strong and familiar and Trowa gave into them, wrapping Wufei tightly in his own embrace and burying his face in against Wufei’s shoulder. A hand came up to rest on his head and his eyes stung.
Could they really understand? Feel this?
The shower drank his tears, Wufei’s shoulder swallowed his sobs and his hands soothed his shaking.