28-Nov-2001
"What will it be today?" Diana asked in a weary tone, allowing a hint of irritation to creep into her voice. "Politics? Social values? Religion, or my lack thereof?" She took in the entire room in a glance. It hadn't changed since she was brought here yesterday. Even Treize looked almost exactly the same, in that same stupid boot-and-cape outfit that belonged centuries ago in a culture that was long-since dead. She was beginning to hate that outfit.
The only major difference today was that, for the first time, Velanz was not also present. That immediately put Diana on guard, although she kept her expression mildly irritated for Treize's benefit. Today Zechs was also present. He had been at about half of their meetings, although for the most part he remained the silent observer.
"No, I thought we'd discuss people today," Treize said as he poured her a glass of wine. There was already one sitting on his desk, and after he placed hers on the edge of his desk closest to her, he sipped from his own glass. Diana reached out with her manacled hands to grasp the fine crystal and sipped at it's contents. He'd only started giving her wine in the last few meetings, and she wasn't sure what, exactly, he was hoping to accomplish. She very much doubted that he was trying to get her drunk enough that she'd become indiscreet, and if that was the case, she could have told him that she could not get intoxicated. But he hadn't asked, so she just assumed that there was something deeper going on, even if it was just to make her uncomfortable.
"Do you have anyone in particular in mind, or were you speaking in broad generalities?" she asked coolly, never taking her eyes off of him.
"Actually I did have someone particular in mind," he admitted, bowing his head slightly to her.
"Really?" she asked politely. "How... interesting," she commented, putting a slight sneer into the words while keeping her face blank.
His eyes narrowed slightly, then he managed to calm them again. "I was wondering who do you think Zechs is?"
Diana blinked once before she caught herself. She forced herself to smile slightly as she rapidly organized her thoughts. "He's your right-hand man, the top mobile suit pilot on your side of the war," she smirked for a moment before continuing, "...apparently no one knows who he really is under the bucket, and he's your lover," she finished finally, tilting her head slightly to see his reaction to the last comment.
He decided to ignore her comment, though, so she was denied the possibly interesting sight of him getting angry with her. "All completely normal observations, I'm sure," he said, his eyes flicking up to look at her over the wineglass. "But not what I wanted to know. I want to know who is he to you. Or rather..." he paused for a moment, "Who his double is to you?"
Diana kept the wince off her face as she heard his question. He was so damn quick it wasn't funny! She would hate to see what he could accomplish if he'd been engineered like her, or even just given a little push like the Gundam pilots. "An interesting question, and one you know I won't answer," she responded with a hint of rebuke in her voice.
"That would be why Mr. Velanz is not with us today. He is not aware of this meeting, and whatever you say here will never travel to his ears."
"And you honestly expect me to believe that?" she asked coolly.
"Yes, actually."
"Please give me credit for at least marginal intelligence," she retorted, setting down the wine glass.
"Actually, I was giving you credit for much greater than average intelligence, to see that you could trust me in this."
Diana gave him a searching stare to let him know what she thought about that, but inwardly she was considering his words, once she realized that he was actually serious. Should she give him the information that he wanted? It wasn't that crucial, after all, the Alliance already knew that he worked with her, already knew what he looked like, and it was doubtful that Velanz would be able to pick up anything too damaging from a second-hand conversation, if he ever did hear about it.
No, now that she thought about it, Treize probably would keep his word. He didn't like his double any more than she liked hers. A lot less, actually, hers was closer to distaste while his was actual antagonism. He still needed Velanz, she'd gotten that much out of their discussions - Velanz was holding back crucial bits and pieces of the formulas that would allow Treize's people to build a faster-than-light drive. She'd considered offering it herself, but she wasn't sure that she wanted to hand it over to the enemies of the Gundam pilots.
But Treize wasn't a bad man. Diana was getting very frustrated with the entire situation, and she badly wanted to kill someone, but didn't want to kill the wrong person and bring the wrath of the entire planet on her. And knowing her luck since she'd arrived in this world, that was exactly what would happen. Velanz was easy to hate, Treize wasn't. She'd half been hoping that further exposure to the man would prove her initial impression of him to be incorrect, that he was just better at hiding his true intentions then Velanz was, but that hadn't happened. As far as she could tell, he was a basically decent person with completely understandable goals, although she found some of his methods and the sacrifices he was willing to make completely unforgivable, she could see what would drive him to those lengths. He was at a serious disadvantage here, in that he didn't have complete control over his troops the way she did with hers, and there were several political groups mucking around trying to sabotage him. She only had to worry about one group.
But the trap here was more subtle than that. He wouldn't betray her trust (such as it was), but if she admitted that she was wrong here, that he could be trusted at all, then she would be admitting that she had been incorrect in judging him. Yet not telling him was not an option at this point, it would be as good as admitting that she was a fool, especially when it was so obvious that he would not tell. He'd trapped her. What could she do to salvage the situation?
Diana closed her eyes for several seconds, to get his attention, and then let a hint of chagrin to flicker over her face. Most people would miss it, but she was counting on him to be observant enough to catch it. With a quick glance at her guards to make sure that they didn't misinterpret the motion, she got to her feet. It was difficult to be graceful and poised when you were in a much-worse-for-wear pair of combat fatigues with your hands chained in front of you, but she managed.
Once she was standing, Diana demurely lowered her head and performed an exquisitely graceful curtsey. She paused when she reached the bottom of the movement, and did not rise as she spoke, keeping her eyes trained on the ground. "You have my most profound apologies, Mr. Khushrenada. I misjudged you badly, and in doing so, questioned your trustworthiness, as well as your honor." she thought. She had no use for honor, although she could talk about it with the best of them. In her enemies... well, so few of them had any concept of honor, and for the few that did... she was as comfortable using that against them as any other flaw. The topic had never come up, but she had the distinct impression that Treize would not share her opinions in this matter. "Please accept my apologies," she finished, repeating herself and keeping her eyes trained on the floor.
She might not be able to see him, but in this case, it was probably for the best. Her enhanced hearing caught the slight catch in his breath as she caught him by surprise, and she heard Zechs' s swift intake of breath. After a few seconds both men began breathing again, but she could tell by the rhythm that neither had quite recovered from the shock yet. Even more telling, Treize's heart was racing as he realized that even as she admitted that he had her trapped, she was attacking his confidence. What she was doing was patently ridiculous, but it was also something that people she'd known would have also thought was absolutely necessary. He had to know that she did not think so, which would confuse him more. That was the idea.
Over a minute passed before Treize realized that she fully intended to stand there in that uncomfortable position until he accepted her apology or otherwise dismissed her. What she didn't tell him was that she could quite easily stay in this position for the next six hours with only the slightest strain on her muscles. She guessed that a human girl of comparable age and size would have been getting very uncomfortable already.
"Of course your apology is accepted," Treize replied, forcing a hint of amusement into his voice. But she knew that he was forcing it there, trying to appear casual, and if she'd known that he couldn't see her expression, she would have smiled.
She straightened up, smoothed out invisible creases in her pants (well, they weren't invisible, just so big and so numerous that it wasn't worth worrying about), and seated herself again. Her eyes fixed on Zechs for a long moment before she spoke.
"He's my right hand man."
To his credit, Treize recovered quickly and caught up. "*Your* right hand man?" he asked, raising one eyebrow.
"You don't think that Velanz could possibly hold the loyalty of someone like him?" she asked, jerking her head towards Zechs. "At least, if he's anything like mine, he couldn't. He worked for the Alliance, briefly, but left because of what they were doing to my five. He made his way to the Rebels, and when I finally contacted them, I discovered him."
"Discovered him?" Treize asked at the odd choice of words. He glanced once at his own version of Dev.
"He was originally assigned to me because he had experience with creatures like me," she explained. "They didn't know what they had, and they thought that he was the only one who could possibly deal with me. They were probably right," she added with a slight shrug. "But the result was that I spent a lot of time of with him. Neither the Rebels or the Alliance had any idea what they had. Dev Carter is one of the most brilliant individuals I've ever met. He's a genius, about as close as a human can get to being one of us. He handles the infinite details and hassles involved with running our bases so that I can deal with other things."
"Other things?"
"Attack, defense, that sort of thing. The sort of thing I was designed for."
"I see."
Diana shifted slightly in her seat, relaxing all of the muscles in her legs, one at a time, to make sure that they didn't get too stiff. By their rules, it was her turn to ask a question now. She didn't like asking questions, she felt that that revealed too much about herself, but she could hardly tell him that without revealing even more.
"When did you two first become lovers?" she asked. She actually was curious about this, if for no other reason than because she knew it would irritate them, and she wanted to see what that was like.
Treize blinked. "You are exceedingly rude at times."
She leaned back in her seat, slouching slightly. "Yeah, I know, it's what I fall back on when I get flustered." She grinned at them. "At least I waited to ask that until Velanz wasn't here. If he found out, he'd see it as a weakness and probably try to use it against you."
"He'd see it as a weakness?"
"Anything different or that is considered 'abnormal' is considered a weakness," she responded automatically. She'd spent enough time searching for such 'weaknesses' that it was second nature. "The Alliance doesn't have much tolerance for that sort of thing. Rumors about that sort of activity can be enough cause for dismissal." As she also well knew - she'd arranged to have several officers removed in just that fashion. "But it isn't my turn, it's yours."
"My apologies." His eyes drifted closed for a minute, obviously dredging up old memories. Diana always found it interesting that most humans could not remember things buried deeply and function at the same time. "Our first time... was at the Academy. I was... twenty-one, I believe, visiting for some advanced classes, and, I must admit, I was curious about the boy who always wore a mask and who was crashing through every record that had ever been set at the Academy."
"Mm," Diana responded, not bothering to push for anything more. She could see where this was headed - two people as intelligent and driven as they were would naturally be drawn together. In another life, if they'd met in conflict, they might have ended up as enemies, in this, they, well... she knew where that had come from. With two people like that, there was usually a lot of emotion involved, whether it was positive or negative depended mostly on the situation. "That's enough. I don't need you to draw a picture."
His lips quirked in what might be called a smile. Maybe. "So there is a limit to your rudeness?"
"Doubtful. I just choose what I want to expose myself to."
Wufei finished the usual maintenance of his Gundam, pulled the camouflage tarp over the mobile suit, and headed back for the safehouse. Andrew, thankfully, hadn't said anything to him since the one confrontation, but as always, Wufei found his thoughts returning to what lay ahead.
It had been one week since Diana was captured, and her people were almost ready with their preparations to rescue her. Under other conditions, Wufei might have felt sorry for the Oz troops at the bases (yes, bases) that they were going to hit. Under the present conditions, he could only marvel at their efficiency and ruthlessness. He'd done some terrorist work using only explosives, but like the others, he relied on his Gundam (probably too much) for most of his work. The others, having no Gundams, had turned terrorism into a finely tuned science, and one they were very good at.
As soon as they'd returned from losing Diana, they started planning on how to get her back. They were not going to leave her in the hands of the enemy any longer than was absolutely necessary, but at the same time, they weren't going to mess up their first chance and give the enemy a chance to retaliate against her. They'd already started to sneak in and out of the bases, preparing explosives and planting them very carefully. They wanted to take out specific targets, but didn't want to chance hurting Diana. They also planted explosives at six different bases spread over about a hundred miles. Their aim was to cause confusion and to make sure that no mobile suits would be able to come in to support those at Treize's base. The hangers and underground launch bays were among the things that had been targeted.
Wufei snorted to himself. Shin's comment on that had been, "Strike with maximum strength to cause maximum confusion." He was familiar with the concept, but even as a Gundam pilot he thought that they took it to extremes. They were likely to throw the entirety of Oz and the Alliance into confusion, for a couple of hours at least, until they realized that the attacks were more for show than anything else. By then, it would be too late.
Hopefully. Wufei had been a Gundam pilot too long to ever assume that anything would go according to plan. And even if they did...
No. He refused to think about that. He would not let it get in the way of what had to be done. With that thought firmly in mind, Wufei entered the safehouse. He hadn't gotten more than three steps in the door when Duo suddenly appeared in front of him. Wufei swore that Duo acted like that damned Gundam of his sometimes, appearing and disappearing out of thin air like some ghost.
Wufei opened his mouth to snap something at the long-haired pilot, something on the order of, 'What the hell do you want, Maxwell?' but the expression on Duo's face stopped him. It was... hesitant? No, that wasn't exactly right, but somber, definitely, a marked change from his normal state. Instead, he asked, "What?"
"Wufei, can I talk to you?" Duo asked quietly, with a quick glance around to see if anyone was watching them. The room was empty.
Wufei, as shocked as anything by the sight of a quiet, reserved, Duo, nodded his head shortly and then followed Duo to the bedroom that he and Heero shared when they were here at the same time. He marched into the room and turned around as Duo quietly closed the door.
"What's going on?" he asked immediately, startling Wufei.
"What are you talking about?"
"You tell me," Duo said with a slight snort. "Ever since they got Diana, you've been on edge. Andrew too. Now I know that he had a long talk with you right after you got back here, so I'm guessing that that had something to do with it. Now what's going on?"
"Why don't you ask Andrew?" Wufei suggested snidely, buying himself some time to think.
"I did, he won't tell me anything." Duo sounded disgusted. "So what's going on?"
Wufei was relieved that Andrew hadn't told him anything. He still had no idea what he was going to do if he was ever ordered to directly fight Treize or Zechs, and he knew that he did not want to have to explain this problem to Duo or any of the others. "Nothing."
"Don't give me that crap, I know something's going on."
"If there is, it does not concern you."
"Does not concern me... bullshit! You've been distracted for days now, and sooner or later it's going to show up in your work, and that could be deadly for all of us! I think that definitely qualifies as concerning us! Now..."
"I am dealing with it," Wufei interrupted him. "It is my business. It will not interfere with my performance."
Duo actually bit his lip, Wufei saw the motion and it both did and didn't surprise him. It didn't surprise him because he would have thought that Duo wouldn't have the self control to be able to silence himself without a gesture like that. It did surprise him because he wouldn't have thought that Duo had enough tact to know when to stop pushing.
After several seconds Duo said, "All right, Wu. If you say you've got it under control... then I believe you. But you do know that we're here, right? We may not be like them, but we still are a team."
Wufei nodded. "I thank you for your... understanding," he finally said. "I will explain... soon. After the current situation is dealt with."
"Thanks. Ok, now that I got that out, I guess I'd better let you go back to whatever it was you were going to do, meditating or something." He spun around, causing Wufei to duck slightly to avoid being hit in the face with several pounds of braid, and then left.
Wufei stared after him for a minute, then went in search of Andrew.
Andrew heard soft footsteps and looked up, one hand automatically going for the gun stashed in his waistband before he saw that it was Wufei. Well, that explained the itching at the back of his scalp that had been bothering him for the last twenty minutes. The Gundam pilots were so intense, he could practically feel it when one of them was focused on him, for whatever reason. Wait, practically? He could feel it. There were times that his power was useful, other times it was completely useless, worse than useless, to the point where he wished he could somehow rip it out of him. This was the first time that he could remember that it was just plain annoying.
"You didn't tell him."
No need to ask what Wufei was talking about. "I told you I wouldn't say anything, and I didn't. I don't lie to my friends."
"Still." Wufei fell silent for a few moments, then offered, "I said I would tell him what was happening."
Andrew stared at him, waiting for him to continue. After several minutes, his silence was rewarded.
"I... am not happy. I made a promise, and I will keep it. But I am... relieved, slightly."
"It's been weighing on your conscience." It was a simple statement of fact, and Andrew did his best to keep emotion out of his voice, but he must have let something slip because Wufei turned to stare at him.
"Yes. This surprises you?" There was a hint of scorn in his voice.
"No, not really. I was just confusing you with Shin, for a second."
"Why should that make any difference?" Wufei asked, his brow furrowing slightly, his attention completely on Andrew now.
"Because he would not have your problem. Of course, I don't know if he'd manage to get himself into that situation, either," Andrew added with a sigh. He still couldn't believe what was going on. He saw the blank expression on Wufei's face and elaborated. "We were trained not to feel things like that," he reminded the other man. "If he believed that what he was doing was not a danger to his comrades, then that would be the end of it. If it was a danger... well, he'd either immediately inform them of it so they could be on alert if it was still necessary to complete the action, or he would not do it in the first place. We weren't suppose to be able to feel that sort of discomfort."
This was the problem he had with their doubles. His group had been raised together, knew just about everything there was to know about each other. They were used to it, and expected each other to know those things. Then they met their doubles, who were very much like them, but very different at the same time, and those expectations couldn't help but be transferred, with very different results. Things that every one of them took for granted and automatically assumed the others would know might never occur to their doubles, and it caused no end of confusion.
"I see," Wufei said coldly, and Andrew sensed a flash of anger from him. It only took a moment's thought to figure out what he was angry about.
"We already killed them. Everyone responsible for creating us is dead, except for Velanz. We'll get him soon," he added matter-of-factly. There was no denying that Velanz was quite brilliant, probably a genius in his own sick way, but he wasn't like them, and there were six of them.
Wufei nodded to himself, showing no surprise that Andrew had known what he was thinking. "You don't wish any more like yourselves to be... created?"
"We're not human, we're abominations," Andrew said, shaking his head. "If it was just the strength or the speed or the intelligence, it wouldn't be such an issue, but the did things in our heads besides making us smart. They fiddled with the connections between reason and emotion, and that's what makes us most dangerous. It's also what makes us least human. They shouldn't have done it, and although I have no intention of killing myself to erase the mistake, I can and will make sure that it doesn't happen again."
Wufei tilted his head slightly, examining Andrew's face. "You are not an... evil person," he said finally.
Andrew decided that this conversation had gone far enough. In a deliberate attempt to lighten the mood, he said with a slight laugh, "You have my apologies beforehand, but I'm afraid that a terrorist is hardly the best judge of who is good and evil in the world."
Wufei's lips quirked in a slight smile. "If you want, I will drop the topic, but I spoke nothing less than the truth."
Diana lay back on the low bunk with her hands above her head. She hated being captured. When she wasn't being tortured or recovering from being tortured, she was being bored out of her mind. One of her hands brushed against the metal that made up the frame of the bed, and her hand automatically closed around it. Here was a sign that her captors still didn't really understand what she was. When the Alliance had held her, they'd kept her in a room that held nothing except a number of cameras, a chain in the wall to attach her chains to, and herself. They gave her nothing that might possibly be used as a weapon. She could think of a half-dozen ways to use this bed (or pieces of it) as a weapon, not to mention just throwing it at anyone who got too close. She'd already ripped off a piece of the metal underneath, where no one would notice the damage. The piece had torn unevenly, leaving a very sharp and ragged edge. She'd pulled out a number of strands of her own hair, braided them together, and then tied the piece of metal to her thigh. She guessed that long hair was good for something, after all. She could kill herself with that piece of metal if she had to.
Diana had been caught without a way to kill herself once before, and if things went bad, she did not intend to be caught in that position again.
She blinked and released her grip on the bed when she heard the lock click a second before the door opened. She sat up as the woman she'd seen when they first brought her here walked through the door. As she observed the woman, Diana frowned. There was something wrong. The woman walking in was definitely the same woman, Diana saw a few scars and pock-marks that wouldn't be present on a twin of some sort, but still...
Diana was a master of reading body language, and if she didn't know better, she would have thought that this was an entirely different person than the one she'd seen previously.
The woman started, looking alarmed, and as far as Diana could tell, the emotion wasn't feigned. "You... you're just a child!" she exclaimed. Her voice was quite a bit higher than Diana remembered it, too.
Diana got more confused, but decided to play along. "I haven't been a child in a very long time," she said quietly, matching the woman's tone.
The woman looked a little dismayed, but didn't say anything else. After a few seconds Diana asked, "If you don't mind me asking, who are you?" There was something very, very, very odd going on here.
"I'm Lady Une," the woman replied, and Diana blinked. She was fairly certain that Lady Une was the woman that Duo had cheerfully described as 'completely psychotic' and 'that bitch', who had almost finished off all of the Gundam pilots when she'd held the colonies themselves hostage against the pilots. That might describe the woman that Diana had seen when she was first brought here, but not this woman. Then there were all the rumors she'd heard from the guards about 'the Lady', and how you could never know what sort of mood she was in, but to watch out when she had her glasses on...
Diana wasn't an idiot, and she immediately thought of one possible explanation for the woman's behavior. Her head told her that the conclusion she'd come to made sense, but she simply couldn't accept it.
Turning her head and staring directly at the woman, she put on her most forbidding face and demanded in a cold voice, "I want to speak to Lady Une. Now!"
The woman jumped back, one hand in front of her mouth, obviously more than a little startled and frightened by Diana's sudden change in attitude. Then she froze, her eyes going blank and Diana could practically see the lines of her face shift slightly, becoming harder, less forgiving, and Diana had her answer, even before Lady Une responded in a much lower voice. "I have some questions for you!"
Diana stifled a moan and threw herself backwards onto the bed.
End Part 13
First off, I want to apologize for letting so much time pass between the last post and this one. I am going to finish this story... eventually... but right now My Dads has most of my attention, which means it's probably going to be a very long time until the next part of this one comes out.
That said, it was cool to come back to this story for a little while, it has a slightly different tone from most of the stuff that I've been working on lately, and it's a lot of fun writing Diana's frustration with this world and its inhabitants.
(:./marika/others13)
