Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Palace of Justice ❯ 22 ( Chapter 22 )

22:If he closed his eyes and breathed out very slowly, let the whole world drop away from him, just focussed on the breath and the feel of it on his skin...there. That was what it had felt like. That was just the amount of pressure Wufei's fingers had when they slid around the back of his neck and gently tugged him closer and that...that right there was precisely what soft lips had felt like against his own, with that gentle little puff of air, like relief to finally be there, kissing Wufei.

"Triton, are you alright?" And just like that, it was gone again. Trowa opened his eyes and had to just stare to keep from crying out, or worse reaching out to grab and pull closer and kiss because while the face was the same, that was not Wufei. It had breasts, for starters.

"I'm fine, Taku."

"Is Triton sick?" Hatty piped in immediately, hurrying over and sitting beside him, leaning in far too close and it was strange that they had the same face, but close up they looked nothing like Wufei. They didn't look real. And the person who should have been behind those dark eyes wasn't there.

"No, Hatty. I'm fine. I was just resting."

"Like sleeping? I'll sleep with you, Triton! You can sleep on me!"

Her enthusiasm hurt all the more in the wake of Heero's snickering. He straightened her cap and then frowned because now she had legs it was all the more obvious she wasn't wearing anything. Nataku had clothes, so really...it was a logical step. Besides, it was weird looking at the giant hole in her gut where she didn't need a stomach, not to mention the fact he could see all her organs. Gross!

"Come on..." He grabbed her wrist and took her down to the unit in the lift, rummaging through the closets until he found a simple white sleeveless dress that looked about the right size. A little big perhaps, but Hatty wouldn't know the difference.

"Put this on."

"But...why?" She was looking at it like it might burn her and Trowa sighed pointing to his own clothes.

"They don't hurt, see? Everyone else has them. You'll look good."

"I'll look pretty?" Honestly, did it have to be this hard to get the robot girl to put clothes on? No wonder Harrison had switched her off! But that was unfair and something he didn't really want to think about so he sighed and nodded and listened patiently to her squeal in delight as she hurriedly attempted to dress. And failed. So he helped her pull it on and get her arms through and basically put it on for her and then looked her up and down and nodded in appreciation.

"There. Much better."

"I...I wasn't pretty before?" Was she actually going to cry? Surely not. Robots couldn't cry, right?

"Of course you were. But you can't go walking around without clothes on. People would think youwere weird. You don't want to be weird, you want to be pretty...right?"

She paused, apparently considering this but then her expression only grew more distressed.

"I looked weird? But you said I looked pretty because I had my hat on!" Oh God, she really was going to cry. No, this totally wasn't possible, right?

"No, Hatty, it was fine, you were just with me! But we're not in Harry's workshop anymore, we're out where other people are and they don't like when people don't act just like them. So you need to wear clothes to fit in! But you look pretty either way, I promise!" Thank God Heero was upstairs or he was never going to live this down.

"Oh. Okay." And just like that she was smiling again. Would it really be that bad for his health to beat his head against a wall until he fell unconscious? Maybe he would wake up in his apartment and realise it really had all just been a bad dream. But that would mean no Wufei, so he didn't go and test the theory.

"What do you dream about?"

It was one of those things. A Hatty thing? The kind that left his brain figuratively leaking out his ears while some small conscious part of him tried to catch up to the conversation and make some kind of sense from it.

"I don't remember." Lots of people didn't, after all, who was to say he always did? So there was the occasional nightmare that liked to repeat itself. Those hadn't shown their faces for a while anyway, replaced with dreams of longing and want that he preferred to forget on waking. If only he could forget now, but he doubted he wanted to.

"Oh." She seemed to be thinking quite hard, judging by the crinkle above her brow. Or was that just skin peeling off? They really had to get that fixed.

"Hatty...do you dream?" Say no, say no, say no...NO!

"I don't know. What if I do and I just don't remember?" Such genuine concern did not belong on a robotic face. Trowa sighed and rubbed his temple before grabbing her wrist and dragging her back into the lift because it was about time for Farrar to be done with his new machinations.

"Hatty...did you know Farrar, before?"

"No?" She seemed to have no idea why he would think it, and she appeared adamant enough about it that Trowa wondered if he wasn't just getting ridiculously paranoid, or losing his mind altogether. He thought he was well within his rights to do either, or both really.

"Should I?"

"No, no..." He waved a hand and sighed again. "I was just curious." That kills cats, Trowa, even big scary lion-like cats. Curiosity was bad...He needed sleep, seriously.

"He thinks he's done," Heero grumbled from where he was still madly typing on the computer. Trowa wondered if he wasn't secretly writing down secret pornographic dream-tales about Duo, because there really couldn't be that much to type about. Or that much to hack. Whatever.

Still, it was interesting that he thought he was finished now, when he'd seemed pretty sure he wasn't going to get it done in less than a day. And the guy had to be rusty, he'd been a monk for a while now after all. So Trowa wandered over with Hatty and they stood together, peering down at the Pad, which while slightly larger than the others didn't appear to be all that different. Unless of course you turned around when Nataku pointed behind you and noticed the giant ray-gun looking barrel pointing right at your head.

"Well."

"Well," Giles agreed, rolling his eyes.

"It doesn't need to be bigger?" Size was supposed to matter right, and if it didn't why was it as big as it was? Really, was this the exact size required? That seemed...odd. It just looked disproportionate to the distance it was going to have to cover and Trowa did not, under any circumstances, want to rematerialise short of their destination. You couldn't keep elephants on the moon, and for this Preventers were definitely giving him an elephant!

"It's not the actual laser," Nataku corrected him.

"It's not?" It sure as hell looked like it to him!

"It's just a booster to draw power from the one already on the Station. It works on isolated frequencies so Frank can't stop us using it. It's quite clever." She sounded a little too impressed and Trowa eyed her dubiously before he realised she was happy, which meant one thing.

"He fixed your access issues."

"He fixed my access issues," she agreed smugly and he just snorted at her and went to sit on the table Heero was working on, because surely that would get the guy's attention. Or even just annoy him. Just a little bit.

"Access issues," Heero snickered and Trowa nearly fell back off the table because was that a joke? Heero was smirking and that had definitely been a snicker, so that was a joke, right? From Yuy. Falling off would have been entirely valid. But he hadn't! Not entirely.

"That's terrible," Trowa muttered, hoping Hatty didn't hear because he was not explaining the joke to her. Ever.

"But you're grinning," Heero pointed out, his own face carefully blank. Bastard.

"He's grinning, and I'm ready to see if I'm as good as I used to be," Farrar muttered, fiddling with a control board that looked dubiously put together to Trowa, but he wasn't an expert so he didn't say anything.

"I need exact co-ordinates of a clear space?"

Heero was already pulling up Preventers headquarters and getting the numbers but Trowa was frowning, thinking about it because last time he'd been there, people had been all over the place, and while there were plenty of nice open areas, the officers there made no secret of the fact they moved things to suit their current requirements. A room that might have been clear a week ago could be a storage closet right now.

"I don't feel like ending up with a chair leg..."

"That wouldn't look right at all!" Hatty agreed, wide eyed and coming over to measure the length of his leg before scurrying off to measure the nearest chair. Trowa ignored her as much as possible because really, someone needed to teach the robots sarcasm. Or at least program them a sense of humour, if that was even possible.

"Here," Heero handed over a piece of paper with the numbers and Farrar didn't even ask where it was, just started punching the numbers in. Trowa almost asked but refused to be the only one with curiosity issues and bit his tongue.

"Who's going?" Farrar looked up at them all and this was the tricky part, because they had no real way of knowing if the person was going to materialize on the other end, or just...end up somewhere else. If they sent Farrar and it didn't work, they didn't have another shot.

"Me." Nataku stepped on without hesitation and Trowa wondered idly why he hadn't thought of that.

"I can send a signal back to let you know if it works." And if she ended up with chair legs, it wouldn't kill her. At least, theoretically, though Trowa thought it would still be uncomfortable.

"Will your signal reach that far?" Trust Heero to think of the logistics.

"I installed a booster," Farrar muttered, already distracted getting her on her way.

"Trowa, if..." But Nataku didn't get to finish, shimmering out of existence and Trowa watched in fascination as the external cameras came to life on the screens and showed the sigil on the outside of Frank lighting up, the eye opening and a burst of light erupting, disappearing into the dark of space, shooting at earth like a star.

If indeed. Because robots had final words. The silence seemed long and more arduous than Trowa had expected. Almost as if he were worried. As if they all were, but then he supposed they all needed this to work. It was their ticket home, if all else failed, and the key to success if all else didn't.

The controller in Farrar's hand came to life and he smiled, leaning back in his chair and Trowa finally exhaled. He hadn't even known he was holding his breath.

"She said the room was not completely empty but she has the situation under control and there should be no problems with anyone else coming through."

"Someone was in the room?" Trowa glanced at Heero, wondering just where he had sent her but he shrugged, clearly not knowing who it was.

"I'll go and tell Preventers what we're doing, get them up to speed, though there's not a lot to add since what we sent them last on the shuttles."

Which left Trowa on Frank. Not that he hadn't known that was the way it was going to happen; Heero actually worked for Preventers, after all. They were much more likely to listen to the hero of the world than the weird call in, who it was rumoured liked to throw knives at people during training sessions for shits and giggles.

"I'll stay with Triton!" Of course, because they'd been considering letting Hatty go to Earth. Not. But no one bothered to point it out to her. She probably felt more special this way anyway. Like she was making her own decisions. Because free will was definitely important to machines.

"I'm staying," Giles noted softly and Tracey was nodding, clearly not going anywhere either. At least he wasn't going to be alone in Frank's head, though he thought he might have preferred being alone so there were no witnesses to see him completely lose his shit.

"We'll build the replica within ten hours," Farrar promised softly. "I'll use the co-ordinates from the Pad here as our landing point. I've set it not to accept new bodies if the Pad is already in use, so it won't double up. Don't try and bypass that command."

"Fine." Because he had no intention of accidentally getting merged with Heero Yuy, thank you very much. He didn't bother saying anything as Farrar collected what he needed and got on the Pad. Tracey stepped up to take the controls and Trowa hated the way Farrar smiled at him. Calmly, as if all was right in the world, or was going to be. Maybe it was just what rich people did, only Farrar had been that insufferable before he became the universe's richest man. It was that whole monk thing he had going on.

"Patience, Mister Bloom." And with that he was gone and Trowa wanted to throw his shoe at thin air. He would have if he hadn't suspected Hatty would chase it and fetch it for him like a well trained puppy.

"Get as much done as you can," Heero ordered, stepping up onto the pad and nodding to Tracey who didn't hesitate to press the send key and just like that they were alone. Not really, sure, but that hint of hope Trowa had felt when Duo and Heero arrived was gone. He was alone, with the horrors he'd discovered inside Frank, the only one left eaten alive.

The real question was, get as much of what done as possible? There was nothing left to do besides wait because once that Pad was built, Une was going to send an army through it and flood Frank with bacteria he could never imagine. With any luck Nataku would find a way to breach level 1 and that would be that. Mostly. There would be a whole lot of political mess to clean up, sure, but his job would be done.

He went downstairs but the room just wasn't the same and he left Giles and Tracey to man the place while he went back to His Room. The shuttle felt smaller than it had, and yet emptier at the same time. The people at the temple were going about the same prayerful duties as every other day but it seemed more meaningless now. The faces lacked emotion, their hands showed no expression and Trowa knew it wasn't the case; that it was he who had changed. His own face refused to acknowledge their expressions. Could process nothing more than it had already seen and instead he felt cold and a gnawing hunger started to build inside.

He forced himself to leave them alone to their silent vigil and hurried on to His Room.

Quiet. Still. They were just words. They couldn't begin to describe the emptiness he felt stepping inside, the door closing him in, to find the room mostly abandoned, their things gone. The juicer sat in the corner, innocent and incongruous. Just a juicer. A cup of half drank tea still sat in the sink, growing mould. He refused to tip it out.

Only mould was unhealthy and he didn't want his room being filthy. If He came back. It needed to be clean and he found himself striding to the sink and emptying the cup, forcing down the regret as he watched the liquid run down into the hole and disappear. The warm water on his hands as he washed the cup clean didn't feel clean like it had once. It wasn't hot enough, or something. He sighed and dried it, putting it away in the cupboard, but left the juicer where it was.

Lying on the bed, he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Then breathed out. In again. And out.

There. There is was again. Just like that, was how it had felt. Relief and want and grace, all in one. If he could just let go, it was still there. He was still there.

"Wufei."

The light behind his eyes changed and he frowned, wondering if he hadn't finally managed to nod off, only he didn't think about being asleep when he was asleep and if made him frown more, opening his eyes and staring at the interactive board on the wall.

The cursor was blinking, but it was the single word scrawled across it that made his heart race, thundering in his chest so hard he ached and he shot up off the bed and stepped up to it, tracing the word with his fingers as if to make sure it was real.

Yes?

It couldn't be, but there it was. Only it couldn't be. Was it some sick joke of Frank's? Could machines play sick jokes? Or did Frank really think he was Wufei? Was that really any better, or sicker?

Did it matter when his whole body felt energised to the point of explosion? He didn't know what to do, where to run, if he should hide or throw himself into it and just for a minute pretend it could be true. As if he wanted it to be true, for Wufei to be on the other end. To be Frank.

"I'm losing my mind."

No response, just his own ragged, heavy breathing. His own desperate need to feel the gentle brush of Wufei's hair against his shoulder. His breath on his skin. His touch on his lips. Knowing.

Then find it.

Laughter broke from him and he sat down hard on the floor, staring up at the message board, grateful his hair was covering his face so the machine couldn't see his tears. As if Frank cared enough to look. As if Frank wanted to see him break and fall and crumble the way he felt himself breaking apart inside. As if a computer could deliberately hurt so deeply.

"Why?" Because really, why any of it? Why build Frank, when they'd fought so hard for the peace these people had apparently wanted so badly? Why make it so monstrous that only a human mind could tame it? Why give it a conscience at all, make it aware of the things men struggled with on a daily basis? Why plan and machinate to the extremes that it did, to the point that the entire universe was at risk of falling under Frank's majesty?

Why Wufei? Of all the billions of people alive in the universe, why take the only one Trowa wanted for himself?

Because you're going to need it.

Of course. He choked back the words he wanted to bellow at the screen, forced himself not to say them because he didn't want Frank to have them. Didn't want a machine to think it had beaten him, even if there was just the slightest chance it might have. He couldn't let Heero have the satisfaction of knowing Trowa had fucked it all up and told Frank their plan. So he kept it all hidden inside, got himself up off the floor and went to shower.

Because hot water is scalding, blessed relief, and yet nowhere near as burning as the gentle scrape of another's fingertips against your thigh. He closed his eyes and leant back against the wall, remembering and resting and taking a few minutes just to be.

And he woke to the water beating on his head, cheek pressed to the cool floor, legs curled up around himself in the small cubicle. Blinking, he sat up and fumbled over his head for the switch, pushing the tap off and scowling at the floor as if it were to blame for his subconscious apparently thinking it was a good place to take a nap.

If a nap it had been. Panic took over but took form only in the hurried precision of well practised moves as he rolled out of the shower into standing, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his hips as he lunged for his watch, shaking his head at the hour lost but grateful he hadn't woken to Heero's boot nudging him and a glare demanding to know why he was sleeping on the job. Because perfect people didn't sleep, unless one eye was open or something.

The cursor was blinking on the message board, but their conversation was gone and Trowa found himself standing there and staring at the blankness. It felt like a copy of something inside him, a stark reminder of what his life had been those last few months as hope slipped and turned into something else.

"Please tell me you haven't been staring at that wall this whole time?"

Startled and trying damn hard not to show it, Trowa just blinked at Tracey as she stepped out of the closet, off the Molecularization Pad and even she seemed a little confused by it, turning to stare and then just arching one slender brow at him. He just shrugged.

"Apparently closets are the best place to put them." She had, after all.

"Right." If you could roll your eyes using your voice, she just had.

"So, did your staring give you any epiphanies we should be aware of?"

"Nope." Like he'd just been staring there in a towel all this time. He grabbed some clothes from the closet and went into the bathroom to change because being naked in front of Tracey right then wasn't something he felt like being. He wished he'd slept longer, feeling worse than he had before, but the thought of Tracey finding him naked and asleep in the shower wasn't much more appealing than Heero and that thought had been bad enough to give him nightmares for months.

"Well. That's nice. Can we go, then?" She called through the door and Trowa barely restrained himself from putting his fist through the door in an attempt to hit her face. Mostly because he wasn't sure what happened when you tried to punch a door that could disappear in a heartbeat just because you walked toward it. He didn't think it would be all that satisfying, either way.

He finished dressing and went back out, waiting expectantly because she hadn't even told him what she was doing there. Yet.

"Thought you might want this," she shoved a large mug of steaming coffee into his hand and snorted at the way he immediately snatched it up and took a swig.

"So?" Did he have to beg? Because he didn't do that sort of thing.

"Hatty started freaking out you hadn't come back."

And this was his problem because? He scowled and she shrugged, pointing to the Pad because apparently it was his problem and he had to go deal with it. He sighed and got on the Pad like a good puppy and took a sip of coffee before he could even think about whether it was a good idea.

It wasn't. He spat it hard at the elevator wall and coughed hard, going to wipe it off and deciding to just leave it. Tracey could clean it if it bothered her that much. Besides, the lurch of the lift going up after Re-molecularization was doing strange things to his mostly empty stomach and it was taking all of his attention just to stare at the coffee on the wall as it slid in the opposite direction to what they were heading.

Why the lift doors still made a little ping upon arrival? He had no idea.

"TRITON!" She was wrapped around him before he even saw her, legs around his waist and arms so tight he knew he was going to have bruises tomorrow. And she was talking complete gibberish. Not like words he couldn't understand, but actual computer garble.

"31 - 45 -2 - 76 - 5 - 31 - 9 - 26 - 66."

"Hatty?" It didn't register at all, she just kept talking and Trowa stumbled to the nearest chair and sat down, not amused at all when she just clung tighter, making them both, he was sure, extremely uncomfortable. If robots could feel uncomfortable.

"Hatty!"

"We've tried. She won't shut up. Just keeps repeating the same garbage over and over." Giles came out from under the desk where he appeared to have set up a more permanent base for all the things they had introduced to Frank's systems and the new Molecularization Pad system. It even looked vaguely tidy. He must have been bored.

"That's nice. Was she smothering you while you tried to get her attention too?"

"Me? No. She saved that for you." And he seemed so damn amused by it too. Bastard.

"Hatty! Damn it! STOP!" He hauled her arms off him and forced them into her lap, but her legs were a lost cause. He could only imagine the octopus-like picture they made but he'd never really been that concerned with appearances. Until now, maybe.

"We tried everything. She just keeps spouting numbers. But...at least they're quieter now? When she started she was really bellowing them out."

That didn't help him figure out what the hell to do about it. Still, he managed to get her untangled from him and to sit in the chair, pointing sternly to get her to stay while he just stared at her and tried to decide what to do with her. Putting her down wasn't an option. Not really, anyway, even if he did entertain it several times as he tried to come up with a solution.

"What were you doing before she started?"

"Nothing. Just cleaning up the control boards here, checking on the orb..."

"The orb?" He looked over at the capsule, something about it nagging at him, and then back at Hatty, counting silently in his head as he did.

"You said it might last what? Two days?"

"Yes. It hasn't been that long yet." Duh.

"What if it's not lasting that long?"

They both just stared at him and shrugged and he had to agree. Who the hell knew what then. Frank would be free to do whatever he wanted. Again. They couldn't just keep sticking things in the Origen capsule and hope that eventually something would work. Or they could, but it was getting old. He wanted something that actually gave them a leg up. Anything, at this point.

"Is she still connected to Frank?"

"No, she doesn't have wireless the way Nataku does. At least...I don't think she does?" The pause and the way Giles was looking at Hatty made Trowa furious. They weren't thinking ahead; weren't considering all the possibilities every time and that could get them all killed. They couldn't afford to die! Who the hell had time for that? And they definitely didn't understand what Heero Yuy might do to their corpses, let alone Duo Maxwell. These people really just had no idea.

But maybe he was expecting too much of them. They were just people, after all.

And now he was thinking like Yuy. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair and went to take a closer look at Hatty, wrinkling his nose as he knelt down in front of her and tried to catch her gaze. It worked, thankfully, though her lips didn't still, whispering the numbers in a seemingly random pattern.

"Does it repeat?"

"I'm not sure. I tried writing it down for a while but if it does repeat, it's a long sequence? I can record it if you like and put it through a decoder?"

You should have done that to begin with. Only Trowa didn't say it just nodded and kept his gaze locked with Hatty's.

"Sweetheart. I need to look around inside your head for a minute, okay? Please don't flinch or scream." If she even knew what the hell he was saying at all, but he didn't need her carrying on while his hands were rummaging around her brain. The thought that it was in some small way also Wufei's brain was not helping him at all.

"You're not really going to...oh god, you are..." He didn't even bother to look at Tracey, trying to remember the section of Harrison's notes on Hatty's brain, or really he supposed it was Nataku's brain and he just had to assume they were alike in most ways. His fingers grazed things he didn't want to think about and grew moist with a sticky substance he didn't linger on, looking for the connections where brain matter became hard matter and systems, following each to the computers controlling and generating power.

"That is wrong in so many ways..." Giles muttered, shaking his head and Trowa scowled at him but kept looking, finding an access point near what he thought he wanted and plugging her in to the nearest laptop port.

He went to type, but stared at the substance on his fingers and his scowl at Giles became a demanding glare. Giles obediently went about accessing Hatty but all that scrolled across the screen were the numbers she kept repeating over and over and Trowa sighed glumly. It was worth a try, but when he stared at his sticky hand he wasn't so sure. He was still standing there staring at it when Hatty's hand slammed into the side of his face full force, the ring of the slap hard in his ears and the room.

Everyone paused, silent, staring at Hatty as if to see what she would do next, even her lips still for a moment. Then she blinked and her hand went back to her lap and she began muttering numbers again.

"Dude, talk about a delayed reaction!"

"You've spent too much time with Maxwell!" Trowa snarled immediately, moving to rub his cheek and stopping himself just short of smearing Hatty-brain-matter all over it. "I'm going to wash my damn hand. When I get back I expect you to have some damn idea what the hell is wrong with her!"

"Touchy touchy," Tracey muttered but had the sense to duck out of the way of his shoe as it sailed over her head.

"Don't think I'm giving that back!"