Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Wayward ❯ Wayward - Chapter Two ( Chapter 2 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Authors Notes: Here is chapter two



Authors Notes: Here is chapter two. Enjoy. Thankies to my muses, Trenchcoat Man and Marika Webster. Thankies to Rashaka-chan. Why? Cause you're just so cool! And thankies to all you readers out there who take time out of your busy, busy schedules to read my pitiful little fanfics!

Disclaimer: ::points to the large black and red banner that says "Gundam Wing does not belong to Sailorcelestial, please don't sue!"::

Wayward - Chapter Two



Heat from the midday sun prickled the hair on the back of her neck, but not in a bad way. It was deliciously warm after several days cooped up in the house, and the birds singing all around made the scene only that much more enjoyable. She wanted so badly to get up and run, maybe find some kids her own age to play with.
Instead, Mariemaia looked up from her wheelchair and into the face of her guardian. Everyone else called the woman Lady Une. Mariemaia alone had the privilege of calling her Miss Une. No one knew her first name; it seemed she didn't have one. Perhaps she didn't like it. It didn't matter, because Miss Une was probably one of the nicest people she'd ever met. Considering most of the people she'd met had either wanted to use her or obey her, that wasn't very hard to believe.
"Miss Une, will you tell me again?" Mariemaia fidgeted as well as she could with two barely functioning legs.
"Tell you what?" asked the woman softly, though the girl knew she didn't need to.
"About him. My father." The question was one she asked almost every day. The story always started out the same, but inevitably Une related something in the new telling that she had omitted in previous ones.
"He was a good man, no matter what others may say," began the Lady Une, who had known him better than most, "he really only wanted what was best for the colonies and for Earth. He was just confused about the way to go about it until the end." Une stood behind her chair, but the girl knew anyway that tears were flowing down the woman's cheeks. They always did. "He lead the OZ specials force hidden within the Alliance Military, and His Excellency was loved by all of his soldiers, even though only a few found the courage to remain loyal to him once Romafeller took over." And so the story continued, and once more Mariemaia found something new within it, something to help her understand the man who had fathered her. When the story ended, the two remained silent for several minutes, both gazing at the stone before them but thinking different thoughts.
"We almost always meet this way," a voice, familiar, interrupted their silence. Mariemaia turned a smile towards the woman she didn't necessarily like, but felt she had to be kind to anyway.
"Hello, Miss Dorothy."
"Miss Mariemaia," replied the platinum girl, with that same note of sarcastic reverence as always. Dorothy never really respected anyone, and she really wasn't all that good at pretending she did. But as Mariemaia looked on her, there seemed something slightly different about the conniving Catalonia this day. "Paying your respects to Mister Treize?"
"Of course," Une responded, voice a bit cold. She never appreciated being interrupted while thinking about Treize.
"As always. I came to honor Mister Milliardo." Dorothy leaned over and placed the flowers over the second, bodiless grave. "I know it seems silly, now that everyone knows he's alive. But I feel he deserves to be honored, dead or alive, and I feel more comfortable doing it here." She was pale, Mariemaia realized, pale and shaking.
"Are you alright, Miss Dorothy?"
"What?" Dark eyes flickered to the little girl, fear shining in them for just the briefest of moments. Then the glimmer of false respect returned and Dorothy seemed to gather her control. "I'm fine, Miss Mariemaia. You shouldn't worry about me when you have your own problems. How are your legs? Getting stronger?"
"Yes. I'm working on trying to walk again."
"Enough." Une jerked her wheelchair back and away from the blonde woman, much more roughly than necessary. She seemed in that second almost like a different person, harder, colder. "Mariemaia's return to health is no business of yours. Good day, Miss Catalonia."
"Good day, Lady Une, Miss Mariemaia." The silky voice followed them long after they had left the graveyard, and Mariemaia found that she couldn't erase from her mind the expression of terror in which the woman had looked at her. What could have frightened Dorothy Catalonia so much?


~~**~~**~~**~~**~~**~~


Quatre looked up at the seemingly cold and lifeless palace. The throbbing in his head had eased somewhat during the trip to Earth, but as he confronted the scene of the crime the pain returned full force. He wanted to think of it as needle-pricks all around his skull, but needles were too small to explain away this agony. His wrists throbbed as well, and his ankles. In fact, his entire body hurt, because tendrils of pain snaked from his back around his sides. Sweet Allah, what was done to Relena?
"You okay?" asked the Prussian eyed youth at his side. It was so odd, to turn there and not see Trowa, but Hiiro.
"I'll be fine." He left it at that, not wanting to explain that he was feeling what was left over of Relena's pain. "Let's go in; they're expecting us, aren't they?"
"Should be," Hiiro grunted. They started up the entryway stairs, the front door to Sanch Palace looming before them, promising a dark and grisly scene within its boundaries. The two sentries standing at the doors were slumped, faces tight and mourning. Apparently the palace staff had been told. They couldn't be kept in the dark. After all, these were some of the closest people to Relena, other than her brother and the pilots.
"Where can we find Prince Milliardo?" Quatre phrased his question gently.
"He should be in the . . ." the speaking sentry paused to collect himself, then continued, "the palace morgue."
Quatre answered by way of nodding and he and Hiiro passed quickly through the doors, not quite dealing with their own pain yet, let alone able to help someone else with theirs. They followed the line of grieving servants pointing them the way, and before they were truly ready, they reached the palace morgue. Milliardo stood just outside the door, head bowed, platinum hair hiding his face. His head lifted slightly at the sound of their two footsteps coming towards him, and Milliardo turned his solemn face to them.
"You're prompt. I guess I shouldn't have expected anything less from former Gundam pilots."
"Do you want us to inspect . . . the body?" Hiiro asked, pausing to consider whether to use her name or not and deciding on not. Quatre's jumbled empathic powers couldn't tell him whether he did this for Milliardo's sake or his own.
"Y-yes," the prince's voice quavered, "our doctors decided not to run an autopsy until you arrived. Any evidence gained from it will be turned over to you. I'm going to warn the both of you now," his face seemed to sag with the weight of what he had seen, "it . . . it's rather disturbing."
"We can handle it," stated Hiiro with a certain amount of stoic pride. He liked being known as the "Emotionless Wonder" as some people called him, and liked his reputation for being able to cope with the most gruesome of scenes. Quatre had to wonder, however, whether the fact that this was Relena's murder and Relena's body would affect the former Wing pilot more than he suspected.
"Then go in." Milliardo moved aside to allow them entrance into the cold, sterile place known as the morgue.
Relena was lying on a standard metal morgue table, naked and exposed. There was no sheet as Quatre had expected, perhaps because the doctors were simply waiting to perform the autopsy. As he let his eyes wander over her body, he took in not the most private places her clothing had hidden, but the tell-tale marks of her death. The large, gaping holes in her ankles and wrists had been cleaned, as had her pale face and the wounds at her sides. But her head . . . oh Allah, her head . . .
"I'm sorry you had to see that," stated a voice behind him, startling the little blonde ever so slightly, "but I haven't figured out yet how to take them out without causing even more damage to her skull, perhaps deformity." The voice belonged to a rather young looking man, with mussed brown hair and intense eyes behind his round glasses. His white lab coat was stained a sickly blue by the morgue lights, and there was a collection of many different types of pens taking up residence in his front coat pocket. "You're the famous Gundam pilots, I assume." He stuck out a hand that was much too large for his wiry body. "I'm Doctor Albert Galer; I'll be performing the autopsy." Those bright, deep eyes flickered to Hiiro before returning to their gaze at Quatre. "Are you two sure you want to be here for this?"
"We can handle it," Hiiro repeated before Quatre could say anything.
"Alright, since you're Gundam pilots, I'll take your word as absolute law." Galer flashed a quick, amused wink towards Quatre before brushing past them. Quatre couldn't suppress his smirk. He liked this doctor, even if he were going to be cutting open one of Quatre's friends soon. "Here you are," Galer said as he tossed each of them a set of flimsy green surgical gowns and masks. "I have to insist you wears these; I'm also an embalmer, and I'll be doing that right after the autopsy. Why waste time, right?" Then the doctor grumbled something under his breath that Quatre thought might be a curse against Milliardo for hiding the death of Relena from the public. "That embalming fluid can really stink up a place, and it's probably not the best thing to inhale too much of it. I won't insist you stay for that part unless you really want to, but wear the masks just in case."
Quatre knew he wasn't going to stay, but couldn't speak for Hiiro. So instead he asked the question darting around his tired mind. "You don't agree with Milliardo, do you?" Galer shook his head.
"No, I don't. The citizens of the Earth, and especially of Sanch, have a right to know that their most beloved leader is dead."
"But he's only hiding it until the killer is found. He wants to be able to tell his people that a horrible thing happened, but the person was caught so it won't happen again."
"What does it matter?" Galer asked as he set up his tray of tools, "It's already happened. Relena Peacecraft is dead, and hiding that fact until the assassin is found won't change it, or make it any better. It only implies that the general populace is not mature or evolved enough to handle this situation in a decent manner."
"Look at the wars two years ago," grunted Hiiro, who had been silent up until this point.
"What?" Galer turned an appraising eye to the boy.
"Two years ago when the Earth and the colonies were at war, when OZ controlled all of outer space, the colony citizens were all too willing to believe what they were told. When we tried to go home to them, they called for our captures and executions, all because OZ had told them we were the enemies. The people of Earth didn't spare us any mercy or compassion, either. We were outcasts. I say that people haven't changed much in two years, and Milliardo is doing the right thing." There was a pause, where in the silence Quatre wondered what they would do if Hiiro had insulted this kind yet intelligent doctor. Then Galer's face broke into a great grin.
"You don't talk that often, but when you do you know what you're talking about. I like that." He snapped on a pair of latex gloves almost cheerfully. "Shall we begin?"


**^^**^^**^^**^^**^^**^^**^^**


An hour passed. Quatre didn't know how he managed to remain in the room with Relena's body. Galer checked over her external wounds and made notes, both on paper and on tape. He also took tissue samples from underneath her nails. Then Doctor Galer had used a scalpel to slowly slice open the skin and muscle of her chest. Quatre had to look away when he cracked her sternum and spread her ribcage, and he'd noticed Hiiro looking a bit pale beneath his surgical mask. More than once the little blonde asked him if he'd wanted to leave, but every time Hiiro refused. He was, it seemed, determined to see the entire thing through.
"Extensive internal tearing and bleeding in the tissue surrounding the wound on the patient's right side." As soon as he'd begun taking notes, Galer's expressive voice had dulled to that monotone he was expected to speak in for his records. "No other obvious internal injuries. Conclusion: patient was not beaten in any area other than the face." He paused. Then: "The problem still remains of how to remove the protruding nails from patient's skull without causing further damage."
"Stop." Quatre and Galer both looked up at Hiiro's sudden order. He was still pale and shaken, beads of sweat condensing on his forehead.
"Do you want to leave?" It was the first time the doctor had asked, apparently assuming that if the boy wanted to leave he would do so on his own. "I can't just stop the autopsy in the middle -"
"Stop calling her 'patient.' Her name was Relena. She isn't just a random corpse in your drawers. Don't treat her like her identity left when she died." Hiiro paused and Quatre could hear the hiss as he sucked in a deep breath. "Everything she was is still here, and I won't let you keep referring to her as 'patient.'"
"I'm sorry, Hiiro," and Galer truly did sound remorseful, "but I have to, for the purposes of the record. My boss wouldn't like me using the . . . Relena's name in my official report."
"Then just send the final copy to me." Hiiro turned and left, tugging off his mask as he went, something shining deep in his Prussian eyes. Quatre didn't know what to think; this situation was bringing out more in the former Wing pilot that he had ever dared to think could exist in that stoic frame. There were emotions radiating from him that Quatre couldn't begin to place, because most were wrapped in a thick blanket of confusion, as if Hiiro's perplexity were the only thing keeping him sane.
"Will he be alright?" Galer's bright eyes bored into Quatre from across the autopsy table, Relena's open chest cavity gaping beneath them.
"He'll be fine," the Arabian replied, "he's resilient."
"Good, because as much as I like you both, I can't change the way things are for you." He gave a slightly sorrowful smile, "I'm not a changer of worlds, like Gundam pilots."
"How sad."


~~**~~**~~**~~**~~**~~**~~


Wufei stared at the ceiling in that way he had when he pondered some particularly disturbing problem. Only an hour ago he'd ordered the surveillance tapes from the military bunker where Aurora had been stolen from. Rarely did a case ever turn out to be so easily solved, but it couldn't hurt to have a look at the tapes. Who knew, perhaps their thief would turn out to be an amateur.
But what weighed most heavily on his fatigued mind was not this random theft, but the secret crime which he could not reveal to any of his comrades. Not even his partner. He sighed and pulled the glasses from his nose, depositing them lightly on top of the papers littering his usually well-organized desk. On a normal basis his work space was compulsively neat; however, the Chinese boy had too much on his mind to worry about where his 'in' and 'out' boxes were situated.
"Wufei?" The worried lilt of Sally's voice greeted him from the doorway. The older woman was leaning inside, brows knitted together as she viewed the state of her partner's desk. "It's late. Are you ready to go?" She referred to the fact that he usually walked her home, unwilling to allow her to go alone. For a moment he allowed himself to weigh the pros and cons of each decision in his mind before his natural protective instinct for anything female won over his God-given right to privacy. He sighed and glanced over the desk one last time before reaching over and clicking off the small green lamp overlooking the mess.
"Let's go." He tossed the Aurora files haphazardly into his briefcase and set off on their nightly ritual. As usual they were the last out of the building, therefore the locking responsibility fell to them. Once Preventer Headquarters was nice and snug for the night, Wufei and Sally turned right and began to trek down the orderly colony streets towards her home. His was in the completely opposite direction.
"Full day?"
"Yes." He didn't answer her unspoken question, and he was sure she had known he wouldn't. But it just wouldn't do for Sally to give up on something so easily, even if she knew he had a reason for keeping silent. It just was not her way, as talking too much was not his. So he compromised. "I think there's a connection between two cases the officials think are unrelated." He didn't bother to clarify that the officials didn't even know about one of them.
"Oh?" It was a classic Sally-ish open-ended question, designed to make him feel as if he should say more. He ignored it.
"You've done something different with your hair," he said instead, and the question did its job by catching her off guard.
"I didn't think you'd even notice," she replied with a small smirk. "It's not dramatic or anything." And it wasn't. In lieu of her normal twin twists, Sally Po had her hair in a loose bun on top of her head, several ringlets spilling down around her face. He rather liked the way those strands framed her features, making them look more delicate than they were. In fact, the style gave Sally a generally softer appearance that made him really see her. Not as a Preventer, as he had become accustomed to, but a woman.
Damn . . .
He'd seen it coming. Slowly, nothing sudden or intense, but a gradual change both in her and in himself that made such a match possible. Her strength was not limited to the battlefield anymore, but extended into her everyday work and life. He no longer felt the need to hide the smallest details of his life from her, though there were still some secrets he preferred to keep locked away for now. And now this physical change, a difference in her that he could almost imagine was deliberate. Was she trying to make him think of her this way?
"Wufei -"
"I know, I've been quiet," he began to apologize, but she cut him off.
"That's not it. You're always quiet. It's just that we're here." She raised an eyebrow as he looked up, startled to see her house before them so quickly. The walk couldn't be over yet. He'd barely begun to look at her, and now it was time for her to leave his gaze for the night.
No. A night was too long.
"Sally . . ." the tentative sound of his own voice astonished the Chinese boy. By Allah, as Quatre would say, he was seventeen years old, a former Gundam pilot, and a Preventer for the Earthsphere Alliance. Why was this so hard for him?
The woman smiled and reached for his hand.
"Come on in." She swung open the gate, inviting him into her home. It wasn't the first time she'd given this invitation, but it was the first time he had initiated the asking and the first time he would accept. He nodded and without saying anything stepped into the boundaries of her home. She followed, shutting the gate in a hurried motion as if afraid that if she left it open he would change his mind and bolt for freedom.
"Come, Onna." He looked at her with fierce eyes, the command an unconscious attempt at regaining some semblance of manly control over the situation. Sally, however, was not to put up with that sort of thing.
"We're going to have to work on this whole 'onna' thing, but in the mean time, understand this: it's my house. That means I'm in charge and we go by my rules." With that she grabbed his hand and dragged him, not exactly kicking and screaming, into what was sure to be a fate much sweeter than Death.


~~**~~**~~**~~**~~**~~


Hiiro sipped his coffee carefully, cursing a bit when it burned his tongue anyway. Not only was there cream and sugar in what he had specifically said should have been black coffee, the mess was scorching hot as well. Either the kitchen staff was grieving over Relena's death, or they were just plain incompetent.
One of the machines hooked up to his laptop beeped, a red light beginning to blink furiously. Good, at least the test is done. For the past six hours he'd been waiting on the results of the DNA tests he'd run on the tissue samples taken from Relena's fingernails. The beeping meant that the machine had analyzed the DNA pattern of the skin cells, run them through the records of every person on file for any sort of crime at all, and come up with a match. Hiiro grunted, almost disappointed at how simple this had been. Why couldn't the Sanch officials do this on their own? Were they all that unused to violence of any sort?
Hiiro turned the laptop to face him, prepared to look upon the face of the assassin.
Any face at all.
Except the one he saw.
"No . . . it can't . . . shit."


End Chapter Two.