Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Palace of Justice ❯ 26 ( Chapter 26 )
[ 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: 05.12.2012 | Updated On: 05.12.2012 | Pages: 4 | Words: 5.5K | Visits: 178 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Sci-fi / Thriller | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 05.12.2012 | Updated On: 05.12.2012 | Pages: 4 | Words: 5.5K | Visits: 178 | Status: Work In Progress
26:
Anyone who complained about Molecularization would forever have Trowa’s scorn, because nothing could compare to the feeling of a gunshot wound re-Molecularizing in your chest. He wheezed hard and stumbled off the Pad, aware of Wufei letting him down, checking the room and then just standing there, nearby and ready if Trowa needed him. Trowa needed air, was what he needed. He took long swallows and struggled to feel anything past the pain before he finally managed to Push himself into a sitting position.
The room was empty, but looked like a bomb had done off. Or several bombs. There were holes in some of the circuits on the walls, a burn mark streaked across the floor and the computers and manuals they had set up were strewn across the floor as if someone had pushed over the table, and tripped over the contents. There had been a fight, shots fired and blood across the floor. That last might have been his, but the splotch over in the corner wasn’t his.
Wufei went to the wall and snatched up the instructions Tracey had put up, compiling them quickly in order and shoving them into Trowa’s bag, which had been tossed into a corner, discarded. He found Trowa’s copy of Hatty’s manual, and his SiS manual and shoved them in before going back to help Trowa to his feet.
“We need to move.”
“I know, I’m fine. Let’s go.”
Only Wufei didn’t move, just stared at him and there was something strange in it. Something Trowa couldn’t quite place and he felt out of his depth just standing there with Wufei staring at him.
“Let’s get this straight. You’re not fine. If you need to stop, you tell me. If you need a hand, you tell me. If you need anything at all, you tell me. Otherwise I put you back on that Pad and I send you back to Une, and I don’t care if you shoot her.”
“Straight,” Trowa agreed, mostly because he desperately needed a crutch and immediately slumped against Wufei’s shoulder, sighing in relief as it took the pressure off his middle. Who knew standing was so complicated?
Wufei didn’t wait any longer, taking them downstairs and getting them down to the shuttle station. They didn’t talk until they were safely seated in a carriage alone, heading for Level 1.
“You’re tracking Hatty.” It wasn’t a question because Trowa already knew. He’d seen Wufei phasing in and out, obviously accessing something and then they would move on. He couldn’t risk accessing Nataku and letting her know they were there, but Hatty was different. Just how different remained to be seen, but it was the different part that mattered.
“She’s in Harrison’s workshop.”
“How’d she get there?” Because you couldn’t Molecularize into the workshop, only out of it and the only way in they had was the broken SiS Harrison had set up for just that reason. It occurred to Trowa that Farrar might not even know the workshop existed. That Harrison might have made it specifically so Farrar couldn’t access it. That Harrison had figured something out, or at least suspected.
“Everything Frank’s done, made Farrar the richest man in the world.”
“You’ve only just figured that out?” Wufei snorted and shook his head, clearly annoyed. Trowa watched him, forcing himself to finally take a minute to stop and think about the whole thing, assimilate everything he knew and didn’t know about Frank and what was going on and it occurred to him he’d let his personal feelings get very much in the way of his professional ones.
“Frank isn’t Frank, is he?”
“Frank is Frank,” Wufei corrected. “He’s just not what you all seem to think.” Wufei sighed and tugged his ponytail over his shoulder, toying with the ends, brushing them against his lips and Trowa realised he liked the feel of it. It had to tickle a little and Trowa doubted that was a sensation Wufei had felt in a very long time.
He’d ignored his best source of information, fooled by his own fear for Wufei’s wellbeing.
“Frank, by design, requires a human conscience, to make decisions. Without it his life support systems function for about a month before the whole system starts to shut down. It’s his failsafe.”
So they had to keep someone plugged in, or get everyone off the station. They’d plugged the orb in about five days ago, maybe six. They had three weeks to solve the problem. It felt like an age, to Trowa. Plenty of time, surely?
“When I first noticed Farrar accessing the system, I didn’t know what to make of it. He didn’t seem to be doing anything, but after a while I saw a pattern to his access. I didn’t know what he was doing but I was worried. So I devised my own plan, but it was…hard.” It sounded like hard didn’t begin to cover it.
“You had control?” He’d been able to do things.
“It’s not like control. I wasn’t me anymore. I was…part of the machine. I was making decisions for the machine, because it was me…” He shook his head, clearly unable to explain it. Trowa doubted he would ever find the words, but wasn’t about to stop him trying.
“You made Frank destroy the satellites to get me to come.” How had he known it would be Trowa? Only of course it would be. Wufei had been a Preventer, he knew they would have given it to Duo, and that Heero would have insisted he call in Trowa, and that it would be them.
“That’s how Frank knew my name.” Because it had been Wufei, all along.
“It wasn’t me,” Wufei said softly. “In a way, it was never me.” He sounded sad and Trowa would have done anything to take it away, but knew that wasn’t possible so they just sat in silence and Trowa reached out to take Wufei’s hand and just held it, warm and safe in his own.
He needed time to think. To remember everything that had happened and see it from his new perspective. All those conversations on the message board, he couldn’t be sure who he’d been talking to. Wufei, or Nataku or Hatty, even Farrar was a possibility. Or just Frank the machine, it could have been anyone! He felt violated, as though he’d come home after weeks of wearing underwear to learn someone had rifled through his underwear drawer.
“Do those hurt?”
The question clearly startled Wufei and he looked down at the cap on the plug on the back of his hand as if he was surprised to find it there. As if he could forget they were all over his body. Eventually, Wufei just shrugged.
“Does your chest hurt?” It hurt that bad? Each one, or all of them collectively? He wanted to know but knew Wufei wouldn’t tell him.
“My chest hurts,” he confirmed, just to try and get a rise and he was rewarded with Wufei shifting uncomfortably but Trowa refused to let go of his hand and he couldn’t move far without them both looking ridiculous.
“You weren’t supposed to get shot.”
“I apologise. It wasn’t exactly my fault.” And he laughed softly because only Wufei would make out like he’d done it deliberately, just to annoy the man and get some sympathy. Not that he wouldn’t have considered it, but he wouldn’t have thought it would actually work and getting shot for no reason at all really just didn’t appeal.
“That’s not...that’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Wufei grumbled, finally looking at him, meeting Trowa’s gaze with one that hurt because it meant Wufei cared. A lot.
“I’m sorry.” Honestly, it had been a tad on the unavoidable side of things!
“Hatty’s override was activated recently?”
“Yeah, she was spazzing out, kept repeating these instructions over and over. It wasn’t you then...” When he’d realised Wufei had wi-fi access he’d hoped it had been under his orders that Hatty had flipped out, but that only left one option and Trowa didn’t like that at all.
“It must have been Nataku.”
“Maybe,” but Wufei didn’t sound convinced and that left a sour taste in Trowa’s mouth. Or maybe that was just fluid from the hole in his chest? It was hard to say. That Wufei wasn’t sure meant it could have been Farrar, or Frank, or anyone else who knew what was going on. Hell, if he was going to start pointing fingers at suspects he should put Heero and Duo on that list as well. Maybe even Quatre, and Une.
It was a good thing he wasn’t that fond of lists.
“So really, Heero doesn’t even need to blow Frank up? He just needs to sit back and watch the Station switch itself off?”
“Theoretically? Yes,” Wufei muttered, but he seemed confused by the change in conversation. That only amused Trowa, because as far as he was concerned it was still the same, giant conversation they had been having since he woke up, it just had a whole bunch of sub-topics involved.
“Heero would find that very disappointing.”
“You don’t say.” And finally he won a smile, though it wasn’t like the smiles Wufei used to give him when he did something truly outrageous. Like the time he’d trained a bird to say ‘I love you Wu’ and let it loose in the cafeteria at lunch. It had taken weeks for Wufei to forgive him, and that wasn’t including the report he had to write explaining what he had done to Une, and why, and that he was truly sorry. Which he still wasn’t, but writing the report had helped Wufei get over the horror of everyone at work knowing Trowa wanted to drag him to bed and that had definitely been worth the lie.
Trowa had never had much of a problem with lying, when it suited his purposes. Lies were such fickle things, and really depended on the viewpoint you viewed the situation from.
“Why did you name her Hatty?”
“Because it’s her name.” Really, that was what he wanted to pick at? Duo named the giant space colony from Hell Frank, but Wufei picked on him for calling his handicapped doppelganger Hatty? And people thought Trowa had issues!
“Would you have rathered I call her Fei?”
That got his attention, and a guttural grunt that made Trowa laugh, which hurt his chest horribly and had him wheezing, eyes watering as he tried to blink back the pain. Wufei’s obvious concern only soothed a little as Trowa tried to avoid his flailing hands searching for a way to help.
“Shh, it’s fine. I just shouldn’t be making jokes at a time like this.” Wufei calmed immediately and sat back, looking like he knew full well Trowa was deliberately placating him but unable to say anything about it because Trowa was behaving, in order to placate.
“Farrar said Harrison made you...”
“He lied.”
Obviously, but it was a curious lie. It had certainly served a purpose, but like most lies it was surrounded by truths, to make it believable. Farrar had been trying to gain their trust, but he’d also helped them keep Wufei alive. He’d kept them hidden during the Chinatown search, and he’d given them the recipe for the passionflower addiction tonic. He’d had very obvious knowledge of the Origen, but he’d made that knowledge seem plausible by placing the blame for it on his brother.
And it was plausible, because Harrison had done so much. Had been responsible for a large part of the station. But just how much of it had been Harrison’s handiwork, and how much of it had been Farrar? Trowa contemplated it as they caught shuttle after shuttle, being sure to avoid major routes and not to head in a straight line, for fear of being monitored and their destination discovered. But it wasn’t until they were off the shuttle, standing at the platform for the military shuttle to Level 1 that Trowa figured it out.
Farrar had known about Harrison’s workshop, and the Pad there, that it could access any part of Frank. That it was the only place that could. But Farrar couldn’t get there himself. Harrison had been military, for a time. That was what Farrar had said, and it all finally made so much sense. Farrar had built the Pads and the Origen, and together they had built Frank, Farrar dealing with the sectors that would house civilian life, and Harrison doing the same for the military. And when it became clear the biggest threat to Frank’s security was his own brother, Harrison had built his workshop and started the long process of trying to find a way to fix the mistake.
Hatty hadn’t been an earlier, discarded version of Nataku. She had been an incomplete new copy, the building of which was interrupted by her maker’s death. She hadn’t been on that table a week when Trowa found her, weak certainly but not yet dead. Heart still beating, not for months like a lifeless programmed machine, but humanely, struggling to live another day while waiting for someone to save her.
“God, I was so stupid,” he mumbled, frowning still because Hatty had still freaked out with some kind of override. Hadn’t she? Why did Hatty always end up giving him more questions than answers?
“Trowa?” Wufei was at his elbow and Trowa forced himself to shake it off for the moment. He could always ask Hatty about it when they caught up to her. For now there were definitely other things to think about. Like how the hell to get to Harrison’s workshop.
“Why didn’t we just use the Pad in My Room?”
“It doesn’t show up as active on my sensors.”
“Meaning...you have sensors,” Trowa noted, feeling queasy but saying nothing more about it because Wufei was glaring at him again. He waved them onto the next shuttle and was grateful when Wufei didn’t question it, just followed his lead. He was still contemplating Harrison and Hatty, and what exactly Harrison had been planning to do, anyway, and it entertained his thoughts all the way to Level 1.
“Bloom! What the hell took you so long?” Trowa had never thought he would be that glad to see Giles. The old man looked worse for wear, a massive bruise on the side of his head and a bandage wrapped tight around one leg, but he hobbled over to them and spoke deliberately loudly. Trowa wasn’t stupid; he went with it.
“This that expert you went to get? That SiS isn’t going to move itself!”
“Sir, yes Sir. Sorry, it took me a while to find him, he was working on the computer troubles up on Level 5.”
“Right. Well...hurry it up now!” Giles bustled past the men moving around them, into the locker rooms and he hurriedly shoved uniforms into their hands and a new I.D for Wufei. Trowa didn’t question where it had come from, or how he’d known they would be there, he just went about getting into the uniform. At least out of the Preventers clothes he was in, since by the time he got out of those Wufei was already dressed and helping him into the SiS pilot’s uniform.
His chest ached horribly and every time he raised his arm it sent a shot of agony blazing through his side and ribs. There was no time to feel it and he took deep, hissing breaths until he was dressed and he didn’t complain at all when Wufei knelt down and hurriedly tied the laces on his boots. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t have done the same thing for Wufei, and the other man didn’t even make a snide comment let alone the endless tirade of bad jokes Trowa would have let loose. Or maybe he would have leered, he would have been on his knees in front of Wufei after all...
“Stop thinking. Right now,” Wufei warned and Trowa just smirked, completely not innocent.
“Let’s go,” Giles muttered and Trowa let him lead because he sounded darker than usual. Like bad things had happened. Obviously. Because they were on Frank, and it wasn’t like he was there for sunshine and roses. He’d been shot, of course bad things had happened! But being shot had taken him back to Wufei, which he considered good, only then Wufei had taken them both straight back to Frank, which Trowa really didn’t think was that great.
Life could be so weird.
Trowa was grateful they took the train around to the SiS repair bay, pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to manage the walk, and when they got there he just stood there for a minute taking in the dramatic increase in aircraft. They didn’t seem to have battle damage, but men were working on them and it was obvious there was something wrong.
“Systems failing,” Giles mumbled under his breath. “Some stealth issues, some refuelling problems...standard for the most part but some of the errors are too human.” Sabotage. Because the military wasn’t necessarily playing Farrar’s game. It had been Harrison’s, after all.
Trowa climbed in the SiS with Wufei in his lap, groaning at the pain of being pushed against Wufei’s chest but then they were re-Molecularizing and he was just grateful his stomach was still empty as he struggled to recall how to breathe. No pain could possibly compare.
“Geez, Tro, breathe...” Hands helped him to the side and away from the Pad and Trowa looked up at Duo in relief, waving him off but Duo ignored him and led him to a chair, pushing him down into carefully. Wufei was looking around the lab, taking things in and Trowa watched him curiously. This hadn’t been Wufei’s birthplace as he had originally suspected, but it had to be similar. He wondered what sort of ghosts lingered in Wufei’s memory and wished he could crawl inside and pick through it all, maybe erase a few things here or there. But Wufei wasn’t a machine, and he was no longer convinced Hatty was either.
“Triton?” Hatty hesitated before coming out from behind the computer desk, crouching down to be at eye level with him, biting her lower lip nervously. “You’re okay?”
“Sure, Hatty. I’m okay.” He had a giant hole in him that was currently aching like a bitch, but by her standards he supposed he was fine. Not that Wufei would agree, but he wasn’t thinking about Wufei right then, which was a change. He thought at this point, any change might be just what they needed.
“What the hell happened?” Wufei’s voice pulled Trowa out of his contemplation and Trowa looked over to see him standing beside Heero, who was sprawled out on a blanket against the wall, on a drip, looking worse for wear and completely unconscious.
“He came out on the wrong side of Nataku and a wall,” Duo grumbled and only the lack of fear in his voice made Trowa relax. “He’ll be okay, I think, just...you should have seen it!” He actually sounded excited. Trowa and Wufei both stood there, blinking and feeling...dumb.
“Heero rolled and went for his gun and just as he came to his feet Nataku came flying at him and body slammed him into the wall! There was this massive dent in the wall and everything! And the crunch...it was so gross! And Heero was knocked out cold! Heero!”
Trowa had to admit that was pretty impressive, but he hadn’t thought to ever see Duo that excited about it. Which meant Heero was going to be fine. It was at that point that even Duo seemed to realise they were confused by his reaction and he shrugged, waving a hand at Heero’s body.
“He’s fine, he was awake earlier and tried to get up to you know...do something.”
That explained absolutely nothing at all.
“So Duo pinched a nerve and knocked him out again,” Giles explained, rolling his eyes. As if it were obvious, and Trowa thought it probably would have been if he hadn’t been damn near crying from the pain in his own chest.
“Quatre?”
“No idea. With Nataku, we’re assuming. We came here through the Pad in Your Room, disconnected it on our way through.” Duo seemed quite pleased with what they had achieved, which confused Trowa since it seemed like all he had achieved was making Yuy unconscious. Admittedly, that was an achievement.
But that explained why Wufei hadn’t been able to find a signal for it on his scanners or whatever. Which still creeped him the hell out!
“Why did you come here?” He would have done the same, but he was curious about their reasons.
“Hatty brought us,” Giles said softly. “We weren’t sure what to do and she was adamant we come here. Heero didn’t want to, he was worried she was compromised but...” Giles shrugged and smiled and Trowa just sighed because yeah, it was like that. There was something about Hatty. You could trust her.
But then, he had thought they could trust Nataku too, and that hadn’t exactly turned out the way he’d planned. He really had to stop trusting people, it was a problem.
“Did I do the right thing?” She sounded so genuinely nervous and finally Trowa relaxed about her and just smiled, real and complete and like he should have from the first moment she opened her eyes.
“Yeah, Hatty. You did the right thing. You did great. This was the best place to come.”
“I know.” She seemed confused, and he realised she had known that it was where they should hide, but if they’d told her to go elsewhere she would have. Because she wanted to do the right thing. She was so young, in so many ways. Younger than Trowa had suspected.
“Where’s Tracey?”
But the answer was already obvious, because if she wasn’t with them, she was against them. With Nataku.
“Right. So no coffee then?”
It was the break from reality they all needed. Or the break back into reality, he supposed, depending on what side of the fence you stood. Giles laughed and took a seat at the computer, pulling up the schematic of the Frank and Duo quickly sat in the other free chair. Wufei stood, in the middle of the room, staring up at the large screen as if he would make them tell him where they were hiding just by glaring at it.
“They’re not upstairs,” Trowa confirmed and Giles blacked out that area. “And they can’t access Level 1.” It too disappeared from their map.
“They could be hiding somewhere in Chinatown, Farrar would know people there?” Duo suggested but he sounded uncertain. They had, after all, gotten to Harrison’s lab through Chinatown, and apparently hadn’t seen the enemy in their travels. That didn’t mean they hadn’t been there.
The problem was, they could be anywhere. They could take as many good guesses as they liked but without actually going out to see there was no way to know for sure, and they didn’t have the time or personnel to do that. Trowa stared at the map, trying to think what sector he would go to, where he would take Quatre and why but he wasn’t sure what Farrar’s goal was in taking Quatre to begin with so he couldn’t decide who he was likely to take him to.
“I know where they are.”
Trowa stared at Wufei, trying to decide if he liked Wufei being wireless or if it was just another thing on a long, long list of creepy. He thought it was likely the latter, and the fact he had to think about it probably meant he was in need of pain medication. Or therapy. Or both.
“The Eye,” Duo realised, following Wufei’s line of sight in nodding, sounding like he felt stupid for not having realised it himself. And Trowa had to admit, it was stupid. They had a hostage, which only worked if they had a way of trading him for something they wanted. You couldn’t trade if you couldn’t get it off Frank, and the only way other than the Origen room was the Eye.
“Suit up, Duo.”
Duo blinked but that was all, then he turned and started grabbing his weapons, strapping them in places Trowa did not want to think about while Trowa just sat there frowning. He hated when he couldn’t argue about being excluded.
“Don’t frown at me like that, you knew it would come to this. You can help us from here,” Wufei scowled, toying with the end of his sword hilt over his shoulder and staring at the screen still as if it might tell him what they were up to in the Eye Room.
“You’ll be outnumbered.”
“Which means nothing while we have the advantage. Besides, it’s three on three. We’re not outnumbered at all.”
That was assuming Quatre was awake and in a position to help them, and that Farrar hadn’t enlisted a lot more help since taking his hostage. Though from what he knew of the size of the Eye Room and its surroundings, Trowa doubted he would have recruited much help, if any. Why involve people who didn’t need to be involved? That just complicated a plan that was otherwise nicely uncomplicated, and Farrar wasn’t an idiot.
“I’ll have to go with you,” Giles noted. “You’ll have to go back out through the SiS bay, now that the other Pad is deactivated.”
“Maybe we should consider re-activating that?” Trowa suggested. He could understand why they had done it in the first place, but he was almost certain the enemy would avoid his room at all costs, and at the end of the day they could always learn from the enemy and just shoot anyone who came through the Pad unannounced. That way he really might get to shoot Une eventually.
“We’ll come back through it. Once we’re out of Level 1, you come back here,” Wufei instructed Giles and the man didn’t dare to argue. Trowa didn’t blame him. Wufei looked scary. And sexy. Scary and sexy and Trowa wanted to be anywhere but where they were so he could do much more interesting things than stare.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” he warned Wufei and it earned him a solid glare.
“You mean like get shot point blank?”
Right. Trowa just spun back around in his chair to face the computer, typing in a few commands and watching the screen zoom in on the path from Level 1 to the Eye and he studied the possible ways to get there. He knew how Duo and Heero had gotten in last time, and how Nataku had taken him out, but maybe Wufei knew other ways. It was hard to say what Wufei did and didn’t know, since Wufei himself seemed to have no idea what he knew.
He was surprised by the gentle fingers that stroked the back of his neck, brushing lightly against the ends of his hair and then he didn’t have time to be surprised because Wufei had leant down and was kissing him, harder than Trowa would have expected had he dared to expect a kiss, but still sweet and everything he wanted.
He felt immediately calm and at the same time as if his heart was going to explode out the hole in his chest. He was still sitting there, staring at nothing when the Pad fired and Giles, Duo and Wufei were gone while his lips still tingled deliciously.
“What does it feel like?” Hatty was sitting on the edge of the desk, legs swinging, eyes wide and fixed on his mouth, her own lips slightly parted and puckered. Trowa shifted uncomfortably away from her and shrugged, because he was not the person who should be having the birds and the bees talk with Hatty. Maybe if they got everything sorted out, Sally might? Or Une? No...no girl should be subjected to Une fumbling her way through that conversation.
“It feels like my heart is broken into dust, and moulded back together again and put back inside me better than it had been before.”
She thought about that for a long time. Long enough for Trowa to find them on the military surveillance cameras, riding the train back to the front station. Wufei looked calm and relaxed but it was all a front, Trowa knew. He always looked like that before the storm. This was Wufei when he was dangerous. When he was relaxed he allowed himself to get angry; to yell and rant and rage. It was when he got too calm you had to worry.
“Do you think, maybe one day, someone might kiss me?” Someone. Not him.
Trowa looked at her then. Really looked. She was wearing the hat he had given her, still backwards but a little to the side where he obviously found it comfortable. She was wearing the dress he had found her but she had found tights to cover her legs, as if trying to hide her metal legs. Her skin was flawless, no freckles or scars but along the edge it darkened and disappeared into the enclosure of her metal framework. Her eyes peered out, wet and moist and watering a little, lashes thick and dark as they fluttered quickly every time she blinked.
No. No one would want to kiss her, because no one would ever truly understand her, or find her beautiful. No one would see the things he saw in her; no one would spend enough time with her to see such things. In the past he would have said no because he didn’t think she would live long enough to see the end of Frank, let alone beyond that. But now...now he knew it would be no because she was too much apart from them whilst still being one of them. Her fate was the cruellest of all; to be left incomplete, her maker dead.
“Maybe,” he heard himself say. “Who knows what tomorrow might bring, right?”
She stared at him a long time, and he held his breath while she did. And then she blinked and smiled, looking away and his chest ached in places no bullet had touched.
“Maybe.”
Converting /tmp/phpt76jKU to /dev/stdout
Anyone who complained about Molecularization would forever have Trowa’s scorn, because nothing could compare to the feeling of a gunshot wound re-Molecularizing in your chest. He wheezed hard and stumbled off the Pad, aware of Wufei letting him down, checking the room and then just standing there, nearby and ready if Trowa needed him. Trowa needed air, was what he needed. He took long swallows and struggled to feel anything past the pain before he finally managed to Push himself into a sitting position.
The room was empty, but looked like a bomb had done off. Or several bombs. There were holes in some of the circuits on the walls, a burn mark streaked across the floor and the computers and manuals they had set up were strewn across the floor as if someone had pushed over the table, and tripped over the contents. There had been a fight, shots fired and blood across the floor. That last might have been his, but the splotch over in the corner wasn’t his.
Wufei went to the wall and snatched up the instructions Tracey had put up, compiling them quickly in order and shoving them into Trowa’s bag, which had been tossed into a corner, discarded. He found Trowa’s copy of Hatty’s manual, and his SiS manual and shoved them in before going back to help Trowa to his feet.
“We need to move.”
“I know, I’m fine. Let’s go.”
Only Wufei didn’t move, just stared at him and there was something strange in it. Something Trowa couldn’t quite place and he felt out of his depth just standing there with Wufei staring at him.
“Let’s get this straight. You’re not fine. If you need to stop, you tell me. If you need a hand, you tell me. If you need anything at all, you tell me. Otherwise I put you back on that Pad and I send you back to Une, and I don’t care if you shoot her.”
“Straight,” Trowa agreed, mostly because he desperately needed a crutch and immediately slumped against Wufei’s shoulder, sighing in relief as it took the pressure off his middle. Who knew standing was so complicated?
Wufei didn’t wait any longer, taking them downstairs and getting them down to the shuttle station. They didn’t talk until they were safely seated in a carriage alone, heading for Level 1.
“You’re tracking Hatty.” It wasn’t a question because Trowa already knew. He’d seen Wufei phasing in and out, obviously accessing something and then they would move on. He couldn’t risk accessing Nataku and letting her know they were there, but Hatty was different. Just how different remained to be seen, but it was the different part that mattered.
“She’s in Harrison’s workshop.”
“How’d she get there?” Because you couldn’t Molecularize into the workshop, only out of it and the only way in they had was the broken SiS Harrison had set up for just that reason. It occurred to Trowa that Farrar might not even know the workshop existed. That Harrison might have made it specifically so Farrar couldn’t access it. That Harrison had figured something out, or at least suspected.
“Everything Frank’s done, made Farrar the richest man in the world.”
“You’ve only just figured that out?” Wufei snorted and shook his head, clearly annoyed. Trowa watched him, forcing himself to finally take a minute to stop and think about the whole thing, assimilate everything he knew and didn’t know about Frank and what was going on and it occurred to him he’d let his personal feelings get very much in the way of his professional ones.
“Frank isn’t Frank, is he?”
“Frank is Frank,” Wufei corrected. “He’s just not what you all seem to think.” Wufei sighed and tugged his ponytail over his shoulder, toying with the ends, brushing them against his lips and Trowa realised he liked the feel of it. It had to tickle a little and Trowa doubted that was a sensation Wufei had felt in a very long time.
He’d ignored his best source of information, fooled by his own fear for Wufei’s wellbeing.
“Frank, by design, requires a human conscience, to make decisions. Without it his life support systems function for about a month before the whole system starts to shut down. It’s his failsafe.”
So they had to keep someone plugged in, or get everyone off the station. They’d plugged the orb in about five days ago, maybe six. They had three weeks to solve the problem. It felt like an age, to Trowa. Plenty of time, surely?
“When I first noticed Farrar accessing the system, I didn’t know what to make of it. He didn’t seem to be doing anything, but after a while I saw a pattern to his access. I didn’t know what he was doing but I was worried. So I devised my own plan, but it was…hard.” It sounded like hard didn’t begin to cover it.
“You had control?” He’d been able to do things.
“It’s not like control. I wasn’t me anymore. I was…part of the machine. I was making decisions for the machine, because it was me…” He shook his head, clearly unable to explain it. Trowa doubted he would ever find the words, but wasn’t about to stop him trying.
“You made Frank destroy the satellites to get me to come.” How had he known it would be Trowa? Only of course it would be. Wufei had been a Preventer, he knew they would have given it to Duo, and that Heero would have insisted he call in Trowa, and that it would be them.
“That’s how Frank knew my name.” Because it had been Wufei, all along.
“It wasn’t me,” Wufei said softly. “In a way, it was never me.” He sounded sad and Trowa would have done anything to take it away, but knew that wasn’t possible so they just sat in silence and Trowa reached out to take Wufei’s hand and just held it, warm and safe in his own.
He needed time to think. To remember everything that had happened and see it from his new perspective. All those conversations on the message board, he couldn’t be sure who he’d been talking to. Wufei, or Nataku or Hatty, even Farrar was a possibility. Or just Frank the machine, it could have been anyone! He felt violated, as though he’d come home after weeks of wearing underwear to learn someone had rifled through his underwear drawer.
“Do those hurt?”
The question clearly startled Wufei and he looked down at the cap on the plug on the back of his hand as if he was surprised to find it there. As if he could forget they were all over his body. Eventually, Wufei just shrugged.
“Does your chest hurt?” It hurt that bad? Each one, or all of them collectively? He wanted to know but knew Wufei wouldn’t tell him.
“My chest hurts,” he confirmed, just to try and get a rise and he was rewarded with Wufei shifting uncomfortably but Trowa refused to let go of his hand and he couldn’t move far without them both looking ridiculous.
“You weren’t supposed to get shot.”
“I apologise. It wasn’t exactly my fault.” And he laughed softly because only Wufei would make out like he’d done it deliberately, just to annoy the man and get some sympathy. Not that he wouldn’t have considered it, but he wouldn’t have thought it would actually work and getting shot for no reason at all really just didn’t appeal.
“That’s not...that’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Wufei grumbled, finally looking at him, meeting Trowa’s gaze with one that hurt because it meant Wufei cared. A lot.
“I’m sorry.” Honestly, it had been a tad on the unavoidable side of things!
“Hatty’s override was activated recently?”
“Yeah, she was spazzing out, kept repeating these instructions over and over. It wasn’t you then...” When he’d realised Wufei had wi-fi access he’d hoped it had been under his orders that Hatty had flipped out, but that only left one option and Trowa didn’t like that at all.
“It must have been Nataku.”
“Maybe,” but Wufei didn’t sound convinced and that left a sour taste in Trowa’s mouth. Or maybe that was just fluid from the hole in his chest? It was hard to say. That Wufei wasn’t sure meant it could have been Farrar, or Frank, or anyone else who knew what was going on. Hell, if he was going to start pointing fingers at suspects he should put Heero and Duo on that list as well. Maybe even Quatre, and Une.
It was a good thing he wasn’t that fond of lists.
“So really, Heero doesn’t even need to blow Frank up? He just needs to sit back and watch the Station switch itself off?”
“Theoretically? Yes,” Wufei muttered, but he seemed confused by the change in conversation. That only amused Trowa, because as far as he was concerned it was still the same, giant conversation they had been having since he woke up, it just had a whole bunch of sub-topics involved.
“Heero would find that very disappointing.”
“You don’t say.” And finally he won a smile, though it wasn’t like the smiles Wufei used to give him when he did something truly outrageous. Like the time he’d trained a bird to say ‘I love you Wu’ and let it loose in the cafeteria at lunch. It had taken weeks for Wufei to forgive him, and that wasn’t including the report he had to write explaining what he had done to Une, and why, and that he was truly sorry. Which he still wasn’t, but writing the report had helped Wufei get over the horror of everyone at work knowing Trowa wanted to drag him to bed and that had definitely been worth the lie.
Trowa had never had much of a problem with lying, when it suited his purposes. Lies were such fickle things, and really depended on the viewpoint you viewed the situation from.
“Why did you name her Hatty?”
“Because it’s her name.” Really, that was what he wanted to pick at? Duo named the giant space colony from Hell Frank, but Wufei picked on him for calling his handicapped doppelganger Hatty? And people thought Trowa had issues!
“Would you have rathered I call her Fei?”
That got his attention, and a guttural grunt that made Trowa laugh, which hurt his chest horribly and had him wheezing, eyes watering as he tried to blink back the pain. Wufei’s obvious concern only soothed a little as Trowa tried to avoid his flailing hands searching for a way to help.
“Shh, it’s fine. I just shouldn’t be making jokes at a time like this.” Wufei calmed immediately and sat back, looking like he knew full well Trowa was deliberately placating him but unable to say anything about it because Trowa was behaving, in order to placate.
“Farrar said Harrison made you...”
“He lied.”
Obviously, but it was a curious lie. It had certainly served a purpose, but like most lies it was surrounded by truths, to make it believable. Farrar had been trying to gain their trust, but he’d also helped them keep Wufei alive. He’d kept them hidden during the Chinatown search, and he’d given them the recipe for the passionflower addiction tonic. He’d had very obvious knowledge of the Origen, but he’d made that knowledge seem plausible by placing the blame for it on his brother.
And it was plausible, because Harrison had done so much. Had been responsible for a large part of the station. But just how much of it had been Harrison’s handiwork, and how much of it had been Farrar? Trowa contemplated it as they caught shuttle after shuttle, being sure to avoid major routes and not to head in a straight line, for fear of being monitored and their destination discovered. But it wasn’t until they were off the shuttle, standing at the platform for the military shuttle to Level 1 that Trowa figured it out.
Farrar had known about Harrison’s workshop, and the Pad there, that it could access any part of Frank. That it was the only place that could. But Farrar couldn’t get there himself. Harrison had been military, for a time. That was what Farrar had said, and it all finally made so much sense. Farrar had built the Pads and the Origen, and together they had built Frank, Farrar dealing with the sectors that would house civilian life, and Harrison doing the same for the military. And when it became clear the biggest threat to Frank’s security was his own brother, Harrison had built his workshop and started the long process of trying to find a way to fix the mistake.
Hatty hadn’t been an earlier, discarded version of Nataku. She had been an incomplete new copy, the building of which was interrupted by her maker’s death. She hadn’t been on that table a week when Trowa found her, weak certainly but not yet dead. Heart still beating, not for months like a lifeless programmed machine, but humanely, struggling to live another day while waiting for someone to save her.
“God, I was so stupid,” he mumbled, frowning still because Hatty had still freaked out with some kind of override. Hadn’t she? Why did Hatty always end up giving him more questions than answers?
“Trowa?” Wufei was at his elbow and Trowa forced himself to shake it off for the moment. He could always ask Hatty about it when they caught up to her. For now there were definitely other things to think about. Like how the hell to get to Harrison’s workshop.
“Why didn’t we just use the Pad in My Room?”
“It doesn’t show up as active on my sensors.”
“Meaning...you have sensors,” Trowa noted, feeling queasy but saying nothing more about it because Wufei was glaring at him again. He waved them onto the next shuttle and was grateful when Wufei didn’t question it, just followed his lead. He was still contemplating Harrison and Hatty, and what exactly Harrison had been planning to do, anyway, and it entertained his thoughts all the way to Level 1.
“Bloom! What the hell took you so long?” Trowa had never thought he would be that glad to see Giles. The old man looked worse for wear, a massive bruise on the side of his head and a bandage wrapped tight around one leg, but he hobbled over to them and spoke deliberately loudly. Trowa wasn’t stupid; he went with it.
“This that expert you went to get? That SiS isn’t going to move itself!”
“Sir, yes Sir. Sorry, it took me a while to find him, he was working on the computer troubles up on Level 5.”
“Right. Well...hurry it up now!” Giles bustled past the men moving around them, into the locker rooms and he hurriedly shoved uniforms into their hands and a new I.D for Wufei. Trowa didn’t question where it had come from, or how he’d known they would be there, he just went about getting into the uniform. At least out of the Preventers clothes he was in, since by the time he got out of those Wufei was already dressed and helping him into the SiS pilot’s uniform.
His chest ached horribly and every time he raised his arm it sent a shot of agony blazing through his side and ribs. There was no time to feel it and he took deep, hissing breaths until he was dressed and he didn’t complain at all when Wufei knelt down and hurriedly tied the laces on his boots. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t have done the same thing for Wufei, and the other man didn’t even make a snide comment let alone the endless tirade of bad jokes Trowa would have let loose. Or maybe he would have leered, he would have been on his knees in front of Wufei after all...
“Stop thinking. Right now,” Wufei warned and Trowa just smirked, completely not innocent.
“Let’s go,” Giles muttered and Trowa let him lead because he sounded darker than usual. Like bad things had happened. Obviously. Because they were on Frank, and it wasn’t like he was there for sunshine and roses. He’d been shot, of course bad things had happened! But being shot had taken him back to Wufei, which he considered good, only then Wufei had taken them both straight back to Frank, which Trowa really didn’t think was that great.
Life could be so weird.
Trowa was grateful they took the train around to the SiS repair bay, pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to manage the walk, and when they got there he just stood there for a minute taking in the dramatic increase in aircraft. They didn’t seem to have battle damage, but men were working on them and it was obvious there was something wrong.
“Systems failing,” Giles mumbled under his breath. “Some stealth issues, some refuelling problems...standard for the most part but some of the errors are too human.” Sabotage. Because the military wasn’t necessarily playing Farrar’s game. It had been Harrison’s, after all.
Trowa climbed in the SiS with Wufei in his lap, groaning at the pain of being pushed against Wufei’s chest but then they were re-Molecularizing and he was just grateful his stomach was still empty as he struggled to recall how to breathe. No pain could possibly compare.
“Geez, Tro, breathe...” Hands helped him to the side and away from the Pad and Trowa looked up at Duo in relief, waving him off but Duo ignored him and led him to a chair, pushing him down into carefully. Wufei was looking around the lab, taking things in and Trowa watched him curiously. This hadn’t been Wufei’s birthplace as he had originally suspected, but it had to be similar. He wondered what sort of ghosts lingered in Wufei’s memory and wished he could crawl inside and pick through it all, maybe erase a few things here or there. But Wufei wasn’t a machine, and he was no longer convinced Hatty was either.
“Triton?” Hatty hesitated before coming out from behind the computer desk, crouching down to be at eye level with him, biting her lower lip nervously. “You’re okay?”
“Sure, Hatty. I’m okay.” He had a giant hole in him that was currently aching like a bitch, but by her standards he supposed he was fine. Not that Wufei would agree, but he wasn’t thinking about Wufei right then, which was a change. He thought at this point, any change might be just what they needed.
“What the hell happened?” Wufei’s voice pulled Trowa out of his contemplation and Trowa looked over to see him standing beside Heero, who was sprawled out on a blanket against the wall, on a drip, looking worse for wear and completely unconscious.
“He came out on the wrong side of Nataku and a wall,” Duo grumbled and only the lack of fear in his voice made Trowa relax. “He’ll be okay, I think, just...you should have seen it!” He actually sounded excited. Trowa and Wufei both stood there, blinking and feeling...dumb.
“Heero rolled and went for his gun and just as he came to his feet Nataku came flying at him and body slammed him into the wall! There was this massive dent in the wall and everything! And the crunch...it was so gross! And Heero was knocked out cold! Heero!”
Trowa had to admit that was pretty impressive, but he hadn’t thought to ever see Duo that excited about it. Which meant Heero was going to be fine. It was at that point that even Duo seemed to realise they were confused by his reaction and he shrugged, waving a hand at Heero’s body.
“He’s fine, he was awake earlier and tried to get up to you know...do something.”
That explained absolutely nothing at all.
“So Duo pinched a nerve and knocked him out again,” Giles explained, rolling his eyes. As if it were obvious, and Trowa thought it probably would have been if he hadn’t been damn near crying from the pain in his own chest.
“Quatre?”
“No idea. With Nataku, we’re assuming. We came here through the Pad in Your Room, disconnected it on our way through.” Duo seemed quite pleased with what they had achieved, which confused Trowa since it seemed like all he had achieved was making Yuy unconscious. Admittedly, that was an achievement.
But that explained why Wufei hadn’t been able to find a signal for it on his scanners or whatever. Which still creeped him the hell out!
“Why did you come here?” He would have done the same, but he was curious about their reasons.
“Hatty brought us,” Giles said softly. “We weren’t sure what to do and she was adamant we come here. Heero didn’t want to, he was worried she was compromised but...” Giles shrugged and smiled and Trowa just sighed because yeah, it was like that. There was something about Hatty. You could trust her.
But then, he had thought they could trust Nataku too, and that hadn’t exactly turned out the way he’d planned. He really had to stop trusting people, it was a problem.
“Did I do the right thing?” She sounded so genuinely nervous and finally Trowa relaxed about her and just smiled, real and complete and like he should have from the first moment she opened her eyes.
“Yeah, Hatty. You did the right thing. You did great. This was the best place to come.”
“I know.” She seemed confused, and he realised she had known that it was where they should hide, but if they’d told her to go elsewhere she would have. Because she wanted to do the right thing. She was so young, in so many ways. Younger than Trowa had suspected.
“Where’s Tracey?”
But the answer was already obvious, because if she wasn’t with them, she was against them. With Nataku.
“Right. So no coffee then?”
It was the break from reality they all needed. Or the break back into reality, he supposed, depending on what side of the fence you stood. Giles laughed and took a seat at the computer, pulling up the schematic of the Frank and Duo quickly sat in the other free chair. Wufei stood, in the middle of the room, staring up at the large screen as if he would make them tell him where they were hiding just by glaring at it.
“They’re not upstairs,” Trowa confirmed and Giles blacked out that area. “And they can’t access Level 1.” It too disappeared from their map.
“They could be hiding somewhere in Chinatown, Farrar would know people there?” Duo suggested but he sounded uncertain. They had, after all, gotten to Harrison’s lab through Chinatown, and apparently hadn’t seen the enemy in their travels. That didn’t mean they hadn’t been there.
The problem was, they could be anywhere. They could take as many good guesses as they liked but without actually going out to see there was no way to know for sure, and they didn’t have the time or personnel to do that. Trowa stared at the map, trying to think what sector he would go to, where he would take Quatre and why but he wasn’t sure what Farrar’s goal was in taking Quatre to begin with so he couldn’t decide who he was likely to take him to.
“I know where they are.”
Trowa stared at Wufei, trying to decide if he liked Wufei being wireless or if it was just another thing on a long, long list of creepy. He thought it was likely the latter, and the fact he had to think about it probably meant he was in need of pain medication. Or therapy. Or both.
“The Eye,” Duo realised, following Wufei’s line of sight in nodding, sounding like he felt stupid for not having realised it himself. And Trowa had to admit, it was stupid. They had a hostage, which only worked if they had a way of trading him for something they wanted. You couldn’t trade if you couldn’t get it off Frank, and the only way other than the Origen room was the Eye.
“Suit up, Duo.”
Duo blinked but that was all, then he turned and started grabbing his weapons, strapping them in places Trowa did not want to think about while Trowa just sat there frowning. He hated when he couldn’t argue about being excluded.
“Don’t frown at me like that, you knew it would come to this. You can help us from here,” Wufei scowled, toying with the end of his sword hilt over his shoulder and staring at the screen still as if it might tell him what they were up to in the Eye Room.
“You’ll be outnumbered.”
“Which means nothing while we have the advantage. Besides, it’s three on three. We’re not outnumbered at all.”
That was assuming Quatre was awake and in a position to help them, and that Farrar hadn’t enlisted a lot more help since taking his hostage. Though from what he knew of the size of the Eye Room and its surroundings, Trowa doubted he would have recruited much help, if any. Why involve people who didn’t need to be involved? That just complicated a plan that was otherwise nicely uncomplicated, and Farrar wasn’t an idiot.
“I’ll have to go with you,” Giles noted. “You’ll have to go back out through the SiS bay, now that the other Pad is deactivated.”
“Maybe we should consider re-activating that?” Trowa suggested. He could understand why they had done it in the first place, but he was almost certain the enemy would avoid his room at all costs, and at the end of the day they could always learn from the enemy and just shoot anyone who came through the Pad unannounced. That way he really might get to shoot Une eventually.
“We’ll come back through it. Once we’re out of Level 1, you come back here,” Wufei instructed Giles and the man didn’t dare to argue. Trowa didn’t blame him. Wufei looked scary. And sexy. Scary and sexy and Trowa wanted to be anywhere but where they were so he could do much more interesting things than stare.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” he warned Wufei and it earned him a solid glare.
“You mean like get shot point blank?”
Right. Trowa just spun back around in his chair to face the computer, typing in a few commands and watching the screen zoom in on the path from Level 1 to the Eye and he studied the possible ways to get there. He knew how Duo and Heero had gotten in last time, and how Nataku had taken him out, but maybe Wufei knew other ways. It was hard to say what Wufei did and didn’t know, since Wufei himself seemed to have no idea what he knew.
He was surprised by the gentle fingers that stroked the back of his neck, brushing lightly against the ends of his hair and then he didn’t have time to be surprised because Wufei had leant down and was kissing him, harder than Trowa would have expected had he dared to expect a kiss, but still sweet and everything he wanted.
He felt immediately calm and at the same time as if his heart was going to explode out the hole in his chest. He was still sitting there, staring at nothing when the Pad fired and Giles, Duo and Wufei were gone while his lips still tingled deliciously.
“What does it feel like?” Hatty was sitting on the edge of the desk, legs swinging, eyes wide and fixed on his mouth, her own lips slightly parted and puckered. Trowa shifted uncomfortably away from her and shrugged, because he was not the person who should be having the birds and the bees talk with Hatty. Maybe if they got everything sorted out, Sally might? Or Une? No...no girl should be subjected to Une fumbling her way through that conversation.
“It feels like my heart is broken into dust, and moulded back together again and put back inside me better than it had been before.”
She thought about that for a long time. Long enough for Trowa to find them on the military surveillance cameras, riding the train back to the front station. Wufei looked calm and relaxed but it was all a front, Trowa knew. He always looked like that before the storm. This was Wufei when he was dangerous. When he was relaxed he allowed himself to get angry; to yell and rant and rage. It was when he got too calm you had to worry.
“Do you think, maybe one day, someone might kiss me?” Someone. Not him.
Trowa looked at her then. Really looked. She was wearing the hat he had given her, still backwards but a little to the side where he obviously found it comfortable. She was wearing the dress he had found her but she had found tights to cover her legs, as if trying to hide her metal legs. Her skin was flawless, no freckles or scars but along the edge it darkened and disappeared into the enclosure of her metal framework. Her eyes peered out, wet and moist and watering a little, lashes thick and dark as they fluttered quickly every time she blinked.
No. No one would want to kiss her, because no one would ever truly understand her, or find her beautiful. No one would see the things he saw in her; no one would spend enough time with her to see such things. In the past he would have said no because he didn’t think she would live long enough to see the end of Frank, let alone beyond that. But now...now he knew it would be no because she was too much apart from them whilst still being one of them. Her fate was the cruellest of all; to be left incomplete, her maker dead.
“Maybe,” he heard himself say. “Who knows what tomorrow might bring, right?”
She stared at him a long time, and he held his breath while she did. And then she blinked and smiled, looking away and his chest ached in places no bullet had touched.
“Maybe.”
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