Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Palace of Justice ❯ 29 ( Chapter 29 )

29

It only got harder to let go. For some reason Trowa had thought the more often you got to hold on, the easier it would be, but when you weren't sure how long it would be until next time this time seemed to take on a whole new meaning. He sighed when Wufei finally pulled away completely, standing and checking the room over, but no one had been there and it was just an excuse to give Trowa the time he needed to pull himself together.

"So."

Wufei turned to look at him curiously, arching on lean brow and waiting patiently, unlike Heero. That wasn't as fun at all, Trowa wanted to lead him on a little, but Wufei knew him too well and wasn't falling for it. Maybe next time.

"Where is Tracey?"

Wufei should have been surprised by the question. That he wasn't answered a lot of Trowa's. There was hesitation, but it didn't feel like delay and Trowa knew Wufei was communicating with Frank, faster than they were having a conversation there in the flesh. Just how did they expect him to save Wufei when they could process exponential amounts of information while he just had his mothball filled human brain? Sometimes the odds really were unfair.

"She is still alive."

"That's not what I asked," Trowa pointed out but he knew before Wufei just shrugged at him that it was the only answer he was going to get. the annoying thing was that he didn't particularly care that the traitor was alive, and would in fact have been much more satisfied to hear about her untimely end. She hadn't been the one to shoot him, sure, but she'd still been a part of fucking him over.

He would just have to remember that she was still alive, in case it was something he could use. Soon. After all, just because she was alive now, didn't mean she was going to stay that way. Trowa was curious to know what Wufei had done to her, in the dark where no one else could see. He didn't think it was kisses in a dark corner, at least not of the kind he would have wanted from Wufei.

Trowa looked curiously at the sword on Wufei's back but it was sheathed and he would have cleaned it by now anyway.

"Alright, let's go," he muttered and Wufei just smirked, smug as to have gotten his way, like he wasn't always getting his way of late. He'd paid a price for it though so Trowa didn't say a word.

Poking the edge of the shower with his toe, Trowa took a deep breath and stepped in onto the Pad, carefully avoiding stepping in Duo's vomit, which he intended to make Duo clean up as soon as there was time. Wufei did the same, stepping deliberately close to Trowa, until they were almost touching and he could feel Wufei's light breath on his throat.

"Please remember," Wufei whispered hurriedly. "No matter what happens, I love you."

He had no more time to enjoy it as his existence lurched and he stumbled sideways, reaching out for Wufei and catching only air. He fell backward as a last resort, crashing into the wall and hoping he wasn't stepping on any of Giles' parts but he heard no objections and figured he was safe. Hands finally reached out to help him and he filled with relief, still not sure how Wufei had gotten so far away from him the moment they molecularized.

"Trowa?"

Only it wasn't the voice he needed. Trowa struggled to look up, to match the voice he was hearing to the face in front of him but it was hard when he didn't want to believe it and he still had Wufei's voice ringing in his ears.

"Duo? Where's Wufei?"

But Duo was as confused by the question as Trowa was by the answer and it took a minute to let the truth settle. Wufei was gone. Whether by his own design, Frank's, or someone else entirely it didn't matter. He wasn't with him, and that was what hurt.

"I'm fine. Just give me a minute," he muttered, staggering to a seat and sitting heavily. Duo left him to it, going back to where Giles was assembling the parts Trowa had requested at near inhuman speed. He'd gotten much more done than Trowa would have thought possible, but he suspected a great portion of it had already been laying around the workshop, just waiting for Harrison to finish the job he'd started.

Damn Wufei and his connection to Frank. Damn them both and their secret conversations. Damn them for leaving him out of their plans. He was angry, but he had no time to be, so he took deep breaths, focused in a way he hadn't had to in years and concentrated on one thing.

Wufei loved him.

"Alright. Where are we up to?" He looked at all the pieces and realised Giles and Hatty had laid out each piece on its corresponding instructions, in order of assembly. Smart, and efficient, and it made it obvious where they were up to but Giles still checked the remaining pile anyway.

"A lot of these parts are ready, but Hatty's checking each one to make sure it's fully functional and has no flaws..." He pointed to where Hatty sat on the other table, plugged into the system, humming softly under her breath, eyes closed but fingers efficiently working at piece after piece, checking the external for flaws, then plugging it into herself and checking it worked before passing it down to Duo to put in the assembly train and picking up the next piece. She never opened her eyes but there was a blue light shining under her eyelids.

"I think we need to finish about thirty more. A few hours at most, unless something's faulty."

Harrison had been so close. Which was probably why Hatty had been in so many pieces when Trowa had first found her. He felt bad all over again for messing her up further instead of putting her back together. But he could apologise later.

The Pad activated and Duo didn't hesitate, snatching up his gun from his side and pointing it stoically at the two figures that appeared.

"Trowa. Thank God, I was so worried!" Trowa was confused for a heartbeat before he remembered the last time Quatre had seen him he'd been shot in the chest and left for dead. But his attention wasn't on Quatre as he strode over, even less hesitation than Duo and punched Nataku in the face.

It hurt. Her metal faceplate protested the attack just under her skin but he felt things break and it felt amazing. Her head spun hard back and the skin at her throat broke, with no blood.

It was satisfying. She didn't scream or cry out but she didn't need to. As she dropped her head forward he saw the plate had buckled on one side of her nose, cutting through the skin and sticking out in a jagged mess, some kind of liquid leaking out one eye. It was so much more satisfying than a black eye.

"Trowa!" Quatre was gaping and Duo was on his feet, coming to intervene if it was needed, but it wasn't. Trowa just stared at the creature and it stared back. He knew it hadn't really been her fault, but that didn't fill the hole in his chest or help him save Wufei.

"Hatty?" He had to wait until she finished inspecting the current piece in her hands but then she opened her eyes and looked at him curiously before grinning.

"You're back! Welcome back, Triton!" He wondered if she was always going to be so stupidly happy to see him. Unfortunately, it was likely.

"Thank you Hatty. I need you to disable Nataku's wireless. Can you do that for me?"

"I can..." But she hesitated which was code for 'but I have a better idea'.

"Whatever you think is best, Hatty. Just make sure no one else can access her."

"But the Origen," Nataku protested and Trowa felt the rage rising in him again. He stalked closer to her and she was forced to stumble backward toward Hatty's waiting hands. He didn't stop until Hatty had Nataku's head firmly in her skinny, agile fingers and then he paused, staring into the all too familiar face.

"You will not touch him."

She seemed distressed, completely out of character.

"But it's my prime directive."

Because she had those, unlike Hatty. He sighed and waved his hand at Hatty who obediently popped off the back of Nataku's head and got to work. It was disturbing, seeing her headcap on the table beside her and Trowa turned away quickly to see what he could do to help Duo and Giles.

Quatre was still looking at him like he had kicked a puppy and Trowa didn't have the heart to point out puppies bled when you broke their faces.

"Hatty, secure the room."

"Okay!" She made it sound like a fun game. To her it probably was. Trowa was starting to agree. High as the stakes were, it was still fun. If Wufei hadn't been involved he suspected he'd be having the time of his life. But Wufei was.

"So the plan is?"

"The plan is finish Hatty."

They were all just staring at him, and he sighed because with the amount of manuals he had to read to get all the information he had just to come to the right conclusions he wasn't all that surprised that they were still a step behind in the comprehension game. But it was still frustrating. He didn't like explaining things that he didn't understand very well himself.

"Nataku is a robot."

"Well shit, you don't say!" Duo rolled his eyes but kept working on the piece of equipment in his hands. They all knew the value of time and Duo seemed to have picked up on his sense of urgency. They needed to stay ahead of Frank, and Trowa had no idea if that was even possible.

"Nataku, what are you?" Trowa asked softly and turned just in time to see her face move mechanically, the switches now visible under the skin.

"I am a humanoid robot."

"Yeah, we got that," Duo muttered, clearly annoyed that Trowa was once again holding back opine good cards. But Giles was listening carefully, the small crease in his brow a clad sign he was puzzling over what Trowa was trying to point out. Quatre was still new enough to it all to look thoroughly creeped out.

"Hatty, what are you?" She was still busy and took a minute to respond, though she smiled as soon as Trowa said her name.

"I'm a robotic humanoid," she said excitedly. Which she had every right to be, being the only one of her kind.

The others were staring at the two robots, clearly confused but aware there was significance to the difference in their titles. It was Giles who figured it out, gasping a little and staring at Trowa as if he'd had anything at all to do with it.

"So ones a cyborg designed with human parts so that it can behave more like a human, and the other..." Quatre was staring at Hatty, still not sure what to make of her, and clearly having no idea why she kept snarling at him. Trowa had to admit it was a little disturbing, especially with the odd blue glowing under her skin showing through in different parts.

"The other is a human supplemented with robotic parts to make it super human."

"It's an Artilect," Giles realised, staring at Hatty with wide eyes as if he were seeing her for the first time. Trowa had heard the term bandied around for decades, but it had all seemed a little far fetched to him. Machines with all the computational abilities of a trillion trillion atoms and the complex psychology of a human brain. Hell, something beyond a human brain. Technology so advanced humans could no longer keep up with it, the machine capable of learning on its own beyond the human capacity to do so.

She was just a child, learning, but she'd been alive barely months and was already in her adolescence. Trowa had no idea what she would become, and didn't care because at the centre of her was a clone of Wufei's mind, Wufei's heart, and in some indefinable way Wufei's soul. She loved him, because Wufei loved him, only she did so with all the single minded determination and blindness of someone who didn't know any better. And it was that blind love that had given her away; had allowed Trowa to see what she was.

"She's not quite an Artilect yet. She's still missing a few pieces that she needs," Trowa noted softly, smiling back at her and feeling the ache in his chest grow when she smiled brightly back at him, going back to work on Nataku.

"Well then," Quatre muttered, clearly still confused but catching on fast. "We better give the lady what she needs..."

"No!" Hatty bellowed and they all froze and stared at her pointing at Quatre with a shaking finger, rage clear on her face. Even Nataku had frozen in place, afraid to move while Hatty still had one hand on her brain.

"Hatty, sweetness?" Trowa tried and she hesitated but just pointed savagely again at Quatre.

"I don't want him touching my private parts!"

They were all gaping, staring at the collection of parts and letting them take on a whole new meaning in their minds and suddenly it felt far more disturbing than it had a minute ago. It was Duo who suddenly sounded like he was choking on something and after a few seconds of trying to hold back he started laughing. Hard. So hard his face went red and he too pointed at Quatre and just laughed.

Hatty seemed to settle at that and went back to working on Nataku, but Quatre sat sullenly, shifting closer to Trowa and muttering darkly under his breath that he'd never even seen the robot girl and she had just decided to hate his guts and it really wasn't fair and she wouldn't even tell him why.

"You are the only person I know who would worry about the Artilect not liking you," Trowa whispered but he was grinning, because it was one of the things that made Quatre so endearing. Even if he was curious himself as to why Hatty had a problem with Quatre. There really didn't seem to be a reason for it.

"It's just...she's Wufei, right? I mean the parts of her that are human, they're parts they've taken from Wufei?"

So he'd read the reports they sent. Probably scoured through them on the shuttle ride here. No wonder he was catching on as fast as he was. But then, he'd also been Nataku's hostage for the past while.

"Yes, she is Wufei..." And that was a sentence Trowa had never dreamed he would say. "But she's not Wufei as well. She doesn't have his memories or experiences, just the key components he was born with. She's Hatty."

"But they both chose you," Quatre pointed out and he was smiling now, nudging Trowa's shoulder a little. It was nice, to be reminded of their dinners and talking like this and the many times he had bemoaned Wufei not responding to his advances and Quatre always there to reassure him it was working. That Wufei was just a blind, stubborn fool who couldn't bare to lose, even when both their hearts were on the line. To remember Quatre knew him, and his fears, and when he looked at Hatty had never seen a monster but instead had seen immediately that she loved. And who.

"Apparently," he agreed finally, but he wasn't sure he could claim it a victory that Hatty had chosen to make him her love interest.

"So if she hates me, I could assume Wufei does as well. Or at least did, when we first met. And apparently for no fathomable reason?"

Trust Quatre to see it that way. But it made Trowa pause and really think about it. Wufei didn't hate Quatre, of that he was certain, so why did Hatty? She could, of course, but in almost all things she was eerily familiar, similar to Wufei in taste and inclination. It was just this one thing they seemed to differ on, unless as Quatre said, Wufei hated him too.

"Wufei doesn't hate you," Trowa said, certain of it. "It is weird that she's so vehement about you though. I think you're the only thing she hates more than Frank." If she even still hated the station, they had seemed to be getting along better but who knew when it was a relationship between robots.

"You know you're not reassuring at all?" But at least Quatre was smiling now, sitting back and letting them do all the work, because he was forbidden from helping by the person they were trying to help.

Time slipped by quickly, and the assembly line steadily grew. After a time Nataku came and sat by Giles, looking miserable even if she wasn't actually capable of misery. A machines interpretation of the emotion, perhaps. After a while even she reached out and picked up a piece, working on assembling it and helping to speed up the process.

"I could start putting these in. If you trust me to do so?" Nataku was looking at Trowa but it was Hatty he looked to, raising a brow in question and watching her think about it, He could tell it wasn't Nataku she was considering, but the quality of the parts she had not yet examined but in the end she just smiled at all of them and nodded to Nataku. Because she trusted them to get it right.

Or she knew she could fix anything they screwed up.

Nataku wasted no time, going to the bench arrows had originally found Hatty on and clearing it while Hatty hurriedly took off her dress and hat, dumping them rather unceremoniously in Trowa's lap. She crouched down in front of him then and he tried to ignore the heart in its strange containment chamber beating in her chest and the strange collection of vein-like arterial components spreading out from it. He didn't know how she worked, and didn't need to.

"Kiss for luck?"

He laughed and gave in, leaning close to kiss her on the cheek and while he could see she was a little disappointed it was all he could give her and her smile was still there so he knew he had done the right thing.

"Good luck, Hatty."

"Silly. I don't need luck," she laughed and stood quickly, skipping to where Nataku was waiting and Trowa sighed, getting up and putting her clothes on a shelf nearby.

"Tell me how to help," he said softly to Nataku and she just pointed at the first page with its component and it began.

Nataku would take the part Trowa handed her, he would read through the whole page of instructions and they would discuss it, make sure they understood and agreed on where it was going and then they would put it in, clearly and one small instruction at a time.

He had thought building the pieces would take the most time, but Giles and Duo finished long before even a third of the base components were installed. duo and Quatre went to see what they could find out in the Hanger, and Trowa knew Duo was going more as a bodyguard for Quatre than anything else. Giles stayed and after a time came to take the instructions from Trowa so Trowa could be a second pair of hands for Nataku.

"You okay, Hatty?"

It had been hours and Hatty had said nothing and Trowa realised he hadn't even thought about the fact she was awake. It was like they were performing surgery and he had perceived her as being in some kind of anaesthetised state, when in reality she was just lying there with her eyes closed, activating components whenever Nataku finished doing something. Lights would blink and occasionally something in Hatty would move without them touching it, but it was all just part of her assimilating the new pieces into herself. Even Nataku seemed to have no idea what to expect, so Trowa was ignoring it and just going with the flow. But he didn't like that she was awake and his fingers shook a little as he worked on installing the next piece of her very complex puzzle.

"I'm fine, Giles. Thank you for asking."

"Does it feel strange?" Seriously where was he getting these questions?

"Maybe? I don't know what strange is. But sometimes it's very interesting."

Trowa didn't think his idea of interesting and hers were the same at all, but Giles didn't seem to agree with him. He was fascinated and as each piece was installed he asked Hatty if she was okay and they talked about what she was doing. He was articulately interested when she would move things around, little parts of herself rearranging themselves around the new pieces. Completing itself.

Trowa was starting to realise Harrison hadn't needed to complete her. If they had left her long enough she would have found a way to Reactivate herself, and with enough time to read all the manuals and the parts left in the workshop she would have been able to build herself. They were just speeding up the process. A lot.

"Hatty?" Trowa interrupted the conversation she was having with Giles, feeling tired and weak. His chest hurt horribly and he pulled back from the table, letting Nataku take over completely again.

"Did I do something wrong?" Hatty sounded panicked and Trowa immediately took her hand, squeezing in reassurance.

"No, not at all. You're doing great. You know you are. I'm still hurt though, and I need to lie down for a while."

"Please don't go!" She sounded so young, and was so small. She reminded him too much of Wufei, before Wufei knew what it was really like to be afraid. She tugged on his hand and looked at him pleadingly. "You can lie down here, with me."

He sighed and looked at Nataku and she just stepped back to give him to time to do it. Giles helped him up onto the table and he lay down beside Hatty, feeling ridiculous but also relieved to have his weight sprawled out on the table instead of on his feet. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore that Nataku and Giles were there, because this was weird enough without remembering people were watching him.

But Hatty's hand was neither warm nor cool, just a strong but gentle presence wrapped around his own and when she squeezed it was with the exact same pressure he had used to reassure her. Learning...always learning. That was Hatty's secret. She would learn forever, even when it seemed there was nothing left to learn.

He fell asleep to her softly humming under her breath, to Ride of the Valkyries, of all things. He laughed as he went under.

He woke to familiar lips on his, soothing fingers in his hair and when he woke Wufei's eyes were looking back at him. His heart sped up immediately and his hands ached to reach out and pull him closer. But something was wrong and it nagged at his mind as the lips pressed against his own.

It didn't smell like him. It wasn't Wufei. She pulled back before he could force her to and he just glared but she was looking at him thoughtfully and there was a sadness to the look that hadn't been there before.

Hatty slid off the edge of the table and Trowa watched her as she did a few turns, examining her new pieces and he marvelled along with her. There were no holes to her composition, she was covered from head to toe in a substance that looked very much like skin, as humanesque now as Nataku had always seemed. They hadn't had skin on their list, but there had been a generator of some kind and he knew, somehow, that she had grown it. She'd grown hair as well, and he wasn't at all surprised to see it hung identical to Wufei's, framing her face just so and making her look that much more like him. She was still the small, fragile creation he had found but the Frankenstein visage s gone, replaced with something Trowa found more personally horrifying.

She got her dress from the shelf and carefully put it on, admiring the way it draped correctly now she actually had a stomach. But it was the hat she reached for, that she wanted the most and Trowa sat up slowly, watching as she very carefully put it on sideways, exactly where Trowa always spun it around to and she looked at him hopefully.

His lips still tingled and his chest felt like either staples had broken, the stitches melted away and his heart had fallen out. He forced a smile and wondered how she could be so exactly perfect, and so completely wrong at the same time.

"You look good, Hatty."

Her smile was beautiful, and entirely her own.

Giles was sitting in the corner, trying not to stare, Nataku at his side. Like Dr Jekyll finally getting to see Hyde for himself in the mirror. Trowa ignored them, because he couldn't have torn his attention away from Hatty if he had wanted to.

"Thank you for helping to complete me," she said softly to Giles and Nataku, sounding almost shy as she curtseyed a little, clearly very pleased with her new appearance. But it was Trowa she walked over to, helping him move to sit on the edge of the table and smoothing his hair down into the way he liked it to fall. She'd even replicated that small collection of freckles on Wufei's shoulder and he just stared at them in confusion, reaching out after a while and stroking them as if they might magically rub off.

"Why?" Because she could have looked like anyone, anything, could have been a supermodel or whatever her ideal of beautiful was. But that was the point. This was her Ida of beautiful; what he loved.

"Because I am what I am," she said softly. She wasn't going to apologise, and she was right not to. She had as much right to the face as Wufei. It was shared between them in a way no one else could understand. She was as much Wufei as Wufei was her.

"Will you help me?"

"Of course," she agreed, stroking a hand down his chest and letting it rest over his chest, her expression pained. He knew that if she could have fixed him, she would have. It hurt her, to see him broken. In pain, even if the worst pain he had was inflicted by her very existence.

She went to the Pad first, walking around it as if seeing it for the first time but when she crouched beside it and lay her palm against it the metal seemed to jump against her skin and then it began to move. It raced around her touch, breaking apart and reforming, making itself anew and settling into place, shiny and looking band new, scratches and markings gone. She hadn't just remade it, she had repaired it and it no longer surprised him at all.

Giles stepped up beside him to help him stand, and Trowa was grateful for the fatherly hand that rubbed at the small of his back. He wasn't sure he would have stayed standing without it.

Hatty stood and stepped onto the remade Pad, jumping on it as if to test its durability and then she smiled, bare feet tapping happily, toes curling as if she were touching grass for the first time.

"It's ready."

"Why do I get the feeling this isn't going to go quite the way you planned?" Giles muttered but he helped Trowa walk over to the Pad. Nataku followed, stepping up beside Hatty and staring at her curiously. It had to be hard, to know she was inferior in every way, but maybe she wasn't capable of understanding that,

"Because it's not my plan anymore," Trowa muttered. He'd had a few good ideas and a way to make it happen but most of those ideas were small and insignificant because he hadn't understood the true horror that was Hatty. He'd underestimated her. Again.

"Hatty, you have a plan, right?" Giles asked, wanting to check and Hatty just smiled, reaching out to pet him on the head. As if he were a puppy. Trowa looked at Nataku and felt a little bad that he hadn't even bothered to fix her face.

Hatty followed his line of sight and frowned, reaching out and cupping Nataku's face with her hand. Nataku winced but then her face was moving under Hatty's touch, looking as if something might break out of it like in one of Duo's now a little too believable horror films. Only nothing broke free of her face and the metal structure reformed into its previous flawless design and her skin repaired itself.

Hatty's hand dropped away and Nataku tilted her head to the side, contemplating the repair work

"Thank you...Hatty." It was like she was trying out the word for the first time, and Trowa couldn't remember if she'd ever used the name or not. If she'd ever thought she would need to.

"You're welcome, Nataku."

Hatty moved back to stand beside Trowa and took his hand. He didn't protest the contact, just stared at her hand in his and wondered why it felt so right when it should have been wrong. He wanted to scream, to protest, to demand the hand in his be Wufei's, and that they let him take Wufei home, at from all of this.

Because he knew, as he looked into Hatty's eyes and saw her really looking back at him,that he was never going home. That none of them were.

The floor lit up like the Eye, sweeping up his legs and engulfing them, but it was warm and this time when he broke apart he felt nothing at all.