14-Feb-2006
Title: Launch 7/?
Author: TB
Archive: GWA and
http://www.geocities.com/brother_maxwell/TB_home_page.html
Category: yaoi
Pairing: 3x4, 2
Disclaimer: The characters and storyline of Gundam Wing are used here
without permission, but also without profit.
Note: Same as for part 1.
Spoilers: The story begins three years after Endless Waltz and
references both EW and the show.
Summary: I'm going to start giving chapter summaries because I realised
how undescriptive my general summary is.
Part 7: Quatre contacts Trowa, and starts to feel the effects of his replaced medication.
Feedback: Thank you to those who have replied to "Launch." Your praise
and criticism have been very welcome.
Trowa had given him the number before they parted ways after the war. Quatre had been on the way to the Sun with his, Duo's, and Heero's Gundams when he'd heard the news about Mariemaia's uprising. Alone aboard the transport with their suits, he'd called. There'd been no answer then; Trowa had been with Dekim Barton's troops for weeks by then, without ever leaving word with any of the other four.
It had worked now, though. Quatre wasn't sure what that meant. Had Trowa left the line open, knowing Quatre would use it? Or had he merely forgotten its existence?
Not that Trowa forgot anything. It was just that the alternative- Trowa wanting to talk to him- was so implausible.
'You know what the worst part is,' Quatre told the screen that held his erstwhile lover's face. 'I actually believed you when you told me you came to Dorada to see me.'
He won the tiniest twitch, but Trowa's face remained smooth but for a faint frown. 'That was true,' Trowa answered. 'Are you angry about something?'
'The bug you planted on the bridge. What does it do?' He was looking closely for surprise, but wasn't sure he was seeing any. 'Who are you working for?' he pressed.
'Quatre, I'm not sure what you're talking about. The bridge on your ship?'
He definitely had a headache. He pressed between his eyes for a moment, then looked back at the screen. 'You don't do innocent very well.'
'You're not doing so hot at interrogation.' Trowa looked amused. He turned more fully toward the 'vid, leaning on elbow. 'Should we start from the beginning?'
'I think we're five years too late for that,' Quatre said. Trowa blinked, and his frown went from faint to pronounced. 'If I'm wrong about the bug, I'm sorry. If not, I'm putting you on notice. I found it and I'm getting rid of it, if I have to build a new ship.' He reached for the keyboard to cut the call, but Trowa's hand shot out in an instinctive 'stop' gesture.
'All right,' he admitted slowly. 'Calm down. And don't ever just disconnect spyware- you could start an unpleasant chain reaction without the proper codes.' He considered Quatre for a long, uncomfortable minute. Quatre stared back, waiting. 'All right,' Trowa repeated. 'I put it there.'
'Why? For who?'
'For me.' Trowa dropped back in his chair, two long fingers tapping the arm. 'You know I bid for the project.'
'Yes,' Quatre responded automatically, suddenly puzzled. 'What does that-'
'Unilyd got the job. Well, they shouldn't have. It was mine. Whatever they did, when the dust settled, Randalane walked away with several very lucrative contracts that had all been in my back pocket, and half of my employees with them.' His mouth became a little moue of irritation.
Quatre was the one to blink stupidly this time. 'This is blackmail?'
Trowa lifted a shoulder and let it fall. 'It's proving he's hackable. It's letting him know I won't walk away from- what did your captain call it? Corporate backstabbing.'
Quatre absorbed that, turning it over and examining it from all sides. 'It didn't occur to you that the IEO was not, perhaps, the best pawn for your little game?'
'I thought it was perfect, actually. Big enough for media attention, not sensitive enough to provoke an investigation by the Department of Security.'
Trowa brushed his hair a little out of his face, revealing a portion of his nose and cheek. 'It's a threat. Not an attack.'
He sighed, and slumped in his chair to press the heel of his palm over his forehead. 'You know I can't possibly recommend we go to your company now,' he said, knowing the protest would register as weak, the underlying acceptance far louder.
Trowa's frown disappeared, and a tiny little smirk replaced it. 'After this,' he said, 'who else would you trust?'
His twenty minutes were almost up. Quatre chewed the inside of his cheek, gazing at a Trowa who looked remarkably unperturbed. He sighed. 'Good-bye, Trowa,' he answered.
'Good-bye.' They both leaned forward, but Trowa stopped him again. 'About Dorada- seeing you was the good part.'
Quatre signed off feeling far less certain about anything than he had before he made the call. On an impulse, he tried the number again immediately, and was gratified, if depressed, to see that at least one guess had been on the mark.
The number was disconnected.
Mostyn turned the bug over in his hand, puffing air through his moustache idly as he examined it. 'I suppose it was too much to hope for serial numbers,' he muttered.
'I doubt you'll be able to trace it,' Quatre replied. He fidgeted, not able to sit quite still, even for the sake of courtesy in another man's cabin. 'We should just be glad the ESOAA recognised what it was so quickly.'
'You can say that again.'
'We should just be glad-' He stopped when he earned himself a glare, and grinned.
The captain dropped the bug into a bag they'd taken from one of the labs, and sealed it tightly. 'O'Callaghan will be all day looking for more of these on his own,' the older man said.
'I'll help when I get back,' Quatre offered, already standing. 'But since the crisis has been averted, I'm going to take my scheduled trip to the bottom.'
That finally won him a smile. 'About time. I wondered when you'd get around to it.' He winked up at Quatre. 'Maybe you can draw some pictures for the kids' broadcast.'
'One- not very funny, actually. Two- what in hell makes you think I'm capable of speaking to children?'
'You ever going to tell me who that mysterious call of yours went to?'
He tossed a smile back from the hatch. 'No,' he answered lightly. He paused with his hand on the door, thinking of everything Trowa had said. Reluctantly, he added, 'You should think about getting new security,' and sighed inwardly. If Trowa was always going to be a step ahead of him, he might as well acknowledge it.
He met Suki Yamamoto on the way to the fourth deck wet lab, and they chatted about everyone's favourite subject- their upcoming shore leave. She decided to accompany him to the sub launch, and he began to relax as they walked together. The early morning activity had had him wound so tight he hadn't even realised he was grinding his teeth; his jaw was a little sore when he made himself unclench. Even his banter with Mostyn had had the feeling of after-battle adrenaline- too sharp, too pointed. Now that it was fading, his stomach was a little upset, and he remembered he hadn't had anything to eat, unless he counted the coffee on the bridge, and he didn't even want to think about that.
The wash of nausea hit him as he stepped through the hatch into the passageway. He gritted his teeth through it, promising himself free pick of the wet lab's fridge. But when the disorientation came next, he had to stop and grab for the wall.
Suki's face swam, blurry, in his vision. 'Quatre?' she asked, touching his arm. 'Are you all right?'
'Just- need a moment,' he managed. He breathed deeply through his nose, but lost the rhythm. His heart was pounding so hard. When his head began to mimic it, he slumped against the wall, fighting against rising panic.
'We need help here!' Suki was shouting. They were only yards away from the wet lab, and there were suddenly crowds of people around him, Rosalba and Louis and Garima, and Suki was trying to get him to put his head between his knees, and the noise was attracting people from further down the corridor in the van. Quatre barely saw them; it was as if he had suddenly stepped out of his own body. He watched himself fall and hit the ground, aware of gasps as his arms and legs began to shake.
'He's having a seizure!' someone yelled, scared and awed at once.
He pulled back into himself with a crash. He tried desperately to stop himself from thrashing, but there wasn't a single part of his body that responded to his commands. Coppery taste flooded his mouth as his teeth sliced into his tongue. Enormous pressure wrapped around his chest, and it hit him suddenly that it probably felt like this when you were dying.
Then, as slowly and unevenly as it had started, it was over. He wasn't sure exactly when he could move on his own again, because he was just abruptly aware of lying still and not moving at all. He felt heavy, ungainly. His head hurt, but his chest didn't. He didn't even know his eyes were open until Ehrlich's strawberry hair came between him and the wall.
'Back with me?' she demanded. Though her voice was as hard as ever, her hand on his face wasn't. She lifted his head and slid something soft beneath it. He tried to reassure her, but nothing came out of him.
She took his pulse one-handed while she straightened him out with the other arm. 'You're going to be fine,' she told him a moment later. 'Has that ever happened to you before?'
He managed a nod. It had, but not since he was almost too young to remember being scared of it. To be embarrassed by all the grown-ups running frantically about him. The thought of the hall filled with people made his cheeks burn, but Ehrlich seemed to understand him, because she said, 'We're alone. Suki went for the nurse.' She tapped him on the cheek when he closed his eyes. 'I need you to stay awake until the nurse gets here,' she ordered.
He tried. But he was unbearably tired.
'Quatre,' Ehrlich called. She shook him by the shoulder. 'Come on. Look at me.' His eyelids dragged, but he obeyed. She studied him, and seemed glad about whatever she saw. 'Just until the nurse comes,' she repeated.
It wasn't long, but it felt like forever. Then Ehrlich and Nurse Hanley were urging him to his feet, and he found he could do it. They both kept hands under his elbows, and Ehrlich had her arm around his waist, holding him. They used the lift outside the galley up to the second deck and the infirmary, and by the time they were inside the space somewhat larger than a double-bunk cabin, Quatre felt more like himself. They helped him onto a bed, and as soon as his head hit the pillow, his embarrassment returned.
'I'm fine,' he said aloud. 'I just need to catch my breath.'
Hanley snorted. 'You're staying right there, mister,' she told him in no uncertain terms. 'Kathleen, can you pour some water?'
'Really,' Quatre tried again.
'Are you a doctor?' the nurse demanded. She waited, hands planted on her broad hips, until he admitted shamefully that he wasn't. 'Then why don't you let me make that assessment, all right?'
Ehrlich wore a funny little smile when she rescued his attention away to a cup of cold water. Quatre propped himself on an elbow to drink, though even that much effort came hard. 'Thank you,' he told her, subdued.
She nodded. Then she said, 'My mother had seizures.'
'I'm not supposed to,' he answered. 'I take medication.' Hanley came back to his bed, and he said, 'I do take medication. I've been very careful this last week especially.'
'Medication is preventative,' the woman explained, 'not a cure.' She had brought a little wheeled cabinet behind her, the kind every doctor's office had, with a little computer monitor on it and a number of gadgety things attached to it. She slipped a pulse oximeter onto his finger, and began to read the data that appeared on the screen. 'You're fine,' she announced a moment later, a little cheekily.
To his surprise, Ehrlich grinned at him. He smiled back drowsily.
The nurse opened a drawer in her rolling cabinet, and removed a needle and four vacutainer tubes. Quatre cringed when he saw how large they were. 'Really?' he asked her.
'Unless you lied about taking your medication,' she answered. He shook his head. 'Then I'd like to test how much of the drug is in your blood, and run a quick work-up just to check for other factors.' She didn't give him room for protest, snapping a rubber tourniquet around his upper arm and palpating his inside elbow for a vein. 'I'll forward all results to your regular doctor,' she added absently, just as she stuck him with the needle. She slipped the first tube to the end of it, and he watched it fill with his own blood for a moment before glancing up at Ehrlich.
'You don't have to stay for this,' he apologised. 'It looks like I'll be out soon.'
'Try four hours,' Hanlet interrupted. 'You're lying down while I run the labs.'
He was going to miss the sub launch. The way his morning was going, he should probably just accept it gratefully. If he was on it, it would probably sink.
Ehrlich began to move toward the door. 'I hope you feel better,' she told him awkwardly. 'I can- I'll put you down for the next launch, okay? One of the students can take your spot today.'
'Kathleen- thanks.'
She nodded stiffly, hesitated in the doorway, then turned and left them alone.
When she finished taking the blood, the nurse propped him up with several pillows, covered him with a warm blanket, and supplied him with a very large glass of apple juice. He did sleep after that, as if he'd been knocked on the head, but he felt immensely stronger when Hanley woke him.
'I want to test your medication,' was the first thing she said to him.
End Part 7
(:./erin/launch7)
