25-Jun-2008
Title: Seasonal Drift Part Seventeen
Author: Ebonydove
Archived: GWAddiction
Warnings: Duo's POV
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: not really -- but lots of cheese!
Authors notes: Forgive me know for where this is heading...the muse decided late in the game. Gwen -- you're the best!
I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder as I wiped my mouth and turned around. "Duo, are you ok?" Trowa's eyes were soft and full of understanding. I knew that he could understand having to take a leap of faith after finding out about Quatre's birth and parentage. Still, I was angry at my reaction to the hypothetical situation. In some far stretching reach of my imagination I could fathom that what was happening to Heero was legitimate, even reasonable. Then thoughts of sci-fi films and action heroes with ridiculous plots and too buxom beauties fighting inter-galactic forces roared into my brain and confirmed that it was all too much for me to buy into without more information. I tried to smile, knowing that I didn't quite manage it as I stood on shaky legs. "I'm fine, just a little car-sick." I knew what he was thinking. I don't get car sick, but I just didn't need the extra drama. "I think we should get moving. The lab isn't far and I'd like us to reach it before sundown." He finally said and spared me the voiced concern.
"Yeah, ok." I know it's a shocker, but I've always had a sensitive stomach. I was able to put it aside when I needed to; during missions, the wars, pretty much any nasty situation where my coping skills were tested to the max. I mean, you see enough death and decay you kinda just get numb to it or learn to suppress it. This whole thing with Heero was an entirely different matter though. It hit me on such a deep personal level I was finding it more and more difficult to deal with. I could never really keep anything from these guys, but I give it a good try. Heero had been an emotional train-wreck, which was beyond anything any of us had known of him, so I knew Trowa understood that sometimes the coping mechanism failed, and I'd react in some way. Better to get sick then start swinging I suppose.
By the time Trowa and I made our way back to the van, Heero and Wufei were already in and both staring out their perspective windows. I slid in next to Heero in the back without saying a word and just let the heavy silence filled air take up the space for now. Trowa hopped in the driver's seat again and glanced into the rear-view mirror again. "There's bottled water in the pack behind the last seat."
"Thanks." I crawled over the back of the seat and dug around until I found it. It was warm, but welcomed. I took a large drink of it to get the sick taste out of mouth. I sat back down and spared a glance over to Heero, who was still silently looking out the window. I didn't have a thing to say and actually had to stifle the giggle that was brewing from my own self-depreciating thoughts. I could be such a complete insensitive jackass sometimes. I should have done a better job of masking my thoughts, my rolling emotions, my fatigue, and above all else my disbelief in what I was being asked to accept as our new reality.
It stayed like that for a long time. The four of us sat in silence as the van bounced its way down twisty gravel roads. The sun started to set and I found myself getting sleepy staring into the watercolors of purple and pink as the sun went down behind large pines along the side of the road. It occurred to me then that the landscape seemed odd for a laboratory to be located in. Rural, wooded and far from any other building or town that I had noticed. I started to doze on and off. At one point I must have full-blown head nodded, because I felt Heero's hand slip into mine and give me a small squeeze. I instantly felt a warm sense of comfort wash through me and let my eyes close as we continued to drive on.
I had no concept of how much time had passed when Trowa slowed the van and stopped. It could have been minutes or an hour. The slowing of movement woke me from hazy dreams of the time Heero and I had spent in the recent days. The sun was pretty damn low and the moon had already appeared so I knew we were burning daylight fast. Trowa finally stopped the van all together and sat for a few moments staring at the GPS on his cell before cursing under his breath and frowned.
"Is there a problem?" Wufei asked quietly.
"No. Apparently, we're here."
Wufei looked out the window and I'm sure that he was thinking the same thing that I was. We were in the middle of no-where on a dirt road with the sun going down in what looked to be a pretty damn dense wood. "I see." Wufei got out of the van with the rest of taking his lead, meeting him in the front of the van.
A sudden memory of a Scooby-doo episode popped into my brain. "Well, I suppose if it's a secret lab, then it's got to be well-hidden, right? Maybe we push down on a tree limb or look for a hole in the ground or something." I tried to muster up some enthusiasm, but my humor sounded flat even to me. Trowa rolled his eyes slightly and started off towards the wood. "Do you think we should at least grab the gear and hide the van?" I asked quietly. Trowa just shrugged, so Wufei and I gabbed the gear, locked the van, and left it where it was while Heero and he started into the wood ahead of us.
"Trowa, I don't mean to sound like an ass..."
"But?"
"But, in all seriousness, do you know what we're looking for?" I asked ignoring the smirk he gave me.
"No, but I think I'll know what we're not looking for when I see it." It oddly made sense. Heero nodded his agreement, but still hadn't spoken a word since he got back into the van after his explanation of the Taiidan craft that he and Quatre had explored with Naomi.
I didn't want to admit to anyone, especially Heero that I never took the time to read the report that he and Quatre had put together on the relic they had been asked to investigate. I was overwhelmed with new rookies at the time and hadn't spared it a thought. Now I really wished I had taken the time to review it so that I would have been more prepared for whatever lay ahead. I certainly wasn't prepared for when Trowa and Heero stopped dead in their tracks and stood motionless, staring at the ground.
Those tingly little alarm bells went off in my head. Something was just off and I sensed that Wufei felt the same as we both immediately slowed our pace. A few feet in front of us, Trowa stopped and motioned silently to the ground. In the mossy grass was a bright, blue light about the size of a pen-cap. From where I was, I couldn't tell if it was some kind of motion senor or an actual button.
Wufei deftly maneuvered close to the ground and gave it a good inspection. "Looks like an access panel underneath this moss."
Things that go boom are my specialty so I quickly moved forward and dug into my back pocket searching for a lock pic that was long gone and must have gotten lost in the shuffle. Even without it, if it was wired to blow or trip an alarm I was the fastest at disarming little nasties, despite the rumors that Heero was the king of all things electronic. I took a moment to see if there was anything I could use and settled for the zipper pull off one of the bags. With a quick thank you to the gods of thievery, I was able to use the little metal piece to carefully find the edge of the panel and lift it from the moss. It had a few small lights and what looked to be a space for some kind of key, but no triggers, wires, or anything that I could find that I thought would pose an issue. "Not sure what this has wired underneath, but it doesn't look like anything more than an electrical panel for an access door or something." Trowa and Heero relaxed a slight bit from their stony stances as I started looking around at our surroundings. Trees, shrubs, lots of unruly grasses, a few rocks, but nothing that looked like it could be hiding a door or ramp.
"Well it controls something." Wufei said flatly.
"And near-by." Trowa added.
"Ya know I was kidding about the secret door in the ground in the middle of the woods...but I suppose it is possible that the lab could be underground and this is an access panel to a door of some kind. It certainly can't be above us in the trees." I was more or less thinking out loud when I noticed it; hidden behind a short stance of saplings and a bunch of wild looking shrubs was a small silver line at the base of a good sized tree. It suddenly stuck out in the surroundings like a white elephant. "There." I pointed and made my way over to it with the guys right behind me.
"That's a door." I said triumphantly.
"That's a tree." Trowa stated plainly as he cocked his head to one side and then reached out to it. He ran his hands over the surface for a moment or two and then simply knocked. Sure enough just like out some lame novel, came the tinny sound of metal. We collectively rolled our eyes and set about trying to get the damn thing open. "I think this doctor reads too many sci-fi novels." I heard Trowa grumble and smiled my agreement. "I was skeptical, but his instructions and the GPS did lead us to this spot. The lab must be sub-terrainian."
"Now all we need to do is figure out a way to get in before it gets too dark to see." Wufei added.
I agreed with Wufei. Shapes were starting to look like more than what they were as the shadows got longer in the fading light. I had never really been a nature-boy. The hard streets of L2 weren't exactly tree-lined. That was something very unique about earth that I always admired, just not at the moment. I think we were all starting to get frustrated. Wufei was pacing, hero was scowling, I was all up in my head about L2 AND Trowa was staring at his cell phone like it held the answers to the lost universes when it suddenly chirped. It was so loud in the quiet of the wood I think we all jumped, but it was probably mostly my imagination. Trowa actually snorted after looking at the face of the cell.
"A new dilemma?" Wufei asked quietly mirroring Trowa's frown.
"It's Quatre. He just sent me a damn text. He said dial this number and put the phone on speaker." So we huddled around the soft blue glow of Trowa's cell phone as he placed it on speaker and dialed the number. The tones beeped and as the call began to ring, the tree in front of us let out a soft pop and a hiss of hydrolytic as it started to open.
"Now I know this guy watches too much sci-fi." I scoffed as the tree in front of us slowly opened and a brightly lit set of narrow stairs leading down a long staircase to what looked to be a tunnel at the bottom. "Looks like this is the way we go, Alice." I laughed as I peered down the staircase. Wufei just raised an eyebrow at me and took point as we started single file down the stairs. Wufei first, me next, then Heero with Trowa bringing up the rear. Once we hit the mid-way point the tree-door began to close behind us. I felt a little tremor of unease as it clicked shut and left us with no-where to go but down. The walls were smooth as glass and cylinder inside the staircase corridor until we reached the very bottom and then it became squarer and looked more like a regular hallway. We walked down it until we reached another metal door with a more complicated panel to the left.
"Text Quatre back to let him know we're at the door in the hallway under the damn tree." Wufei grumbled.
Within a minute or less of Trowa's text, the door in front of us clicked and began to open revealing an ecstatic Quatre beaming at us from the other side. "What the hell took you guys so long?" We laughed as he gave us each a quick hug, including Heero and Wufei who were both a little stiff and frowning at him when he did.
"And where the hell have you been?" I snapped back, smile firmly planted.
He shoved a hand through thick blonde locks and let out a little puff of air. "I know, I'm sorry, it's just been so busy and I've been scrambling to get everything prepared in time for you all to get here. Then he paused and gave me a full once over. "Duo, you look...tense. What happened to your hair? And where did you get those boots?"
"It's too long of a story to tell now. I'll have to fill you in later." I groused. Figures the little twerp would notice every detail from the boots, to the hair, to the obvious tension in my whole body. He had no idea what I'd been through with Heero or that Heero and I were not just coworkers anymore. Quatre had always been my confidant and he knew what I had been feeling towards Heero for a long, damn time, but I couldn't relay everything to him with just one little look. He brushed a strand of straggly hair away from my eyes and gave me a good hard look and smiled. I figured he already had it figured out and wasn't surprised. Trowa and Wufei had seen through me like a plain pane of glass too at the farmhouse.
"Well, I can get you settled, but we're a little short on time. The doctor has been making the last few adjustments on the craft so we should be ready for take off in about three hours. That should give us enough time to eat, change into our flight gear, and be prepped for take-off."
"So I really did follow the white rabbit down the damn hole." Wufei huffed. "Slow down and fill us in completely. What craft? What flight? What the hell are you going on about?" All I could do was nod at each of Wufei's questions with my mouth wide open and my hands on my hips.
"I take it that you didn't get my message." Quatre turned those brilliant blue eyes in Trowa's direction with a bit of fierceness in them.
"Nope." Trowa shrugged and tossed him the cell as if he needed to prove that he hadn't and hadn't just ignored a call from his beloved.
"Well, shit." Quatre tossed the phone back to him and smiled again. "I'll fill in you as we walk. The doctor is eager to meet Duo and speak with Heero."
"Eager to meet me?" I asked.
"Well yes, of course. You are the key after all. He needs to make sure you are completely up-to-speed and have all the details so there's no issue with the ship or when we reach the planet."
We all stopped dead in our tracks and Quatre continued to walk briskly down the white-walled, well-lit hallway towards another metal door. He seemed confused when he turned around. "What the hell is the matter, now?" He asked impatiently this time, his glare pointed mostly at Trowa.
"Quat, this is all news to them. We've been running from authorities since catching up with Duo and Heero. They really don't know what you're talking about." Trowa said calmly.
"Oh, I see. Okay, let me start at the beginning then." He punched in a key code and the metal door slid silently opened. The room inside was clean and neat with a few metal chairs, lab counters, sinks, refrigerator, and on the far side of the room, a wall of opaque glass. "Dr. Ishikawa will join us shortly. We were just finishing up a conference call with Une when I came to meet you."
I didn't even have a chance to ask any of what was flying through my brain at the mention of Lady Une. Quatre continued walking and talking until he finally pulled a bunch of chairs over and motioned us all to sit.
"Heero, she sends her deepest apologies for the way the release was handled. There was a miscommunication between her office and the hospital staff on the matter of your treatment and discharge." His smile was pleasant, but his eyes held a firm knowledge of the gravity of what had occurred and much sympathy as well. "She has taken care it and assures me that anyone with any knowledge of you or Duo being there, what occurred there, or about Ms. Ishikawa, has been sworn to secrecy or sent to shack in Siberia." He paused for a moment and Heero simply nodded, wordlessly accepting the apology. Quatre smiled again. "Good, well then, would anyone like some tea while I continue to provide some details?"
I felt the urge to smack him, but he really didn't have any concept of what Heero and I had been through since he saw us last in the hospital so I couldn't really fault him for trying to change the mood with some distraction. Even if it did come in the form of weak English tea. To know now that Heero's hospitalization and treatment while he was there was just a botched cover-up was infuriating. If the purpose was to make Heero disappear, I could have managed that on my own quite easily. Been there, done that... twice. And to know that both Quatre and Trowa really had more to do with the whole thing from the beginning was also damn irritating. I understand the pecking order and all that shit and I accept that orders are orders, but still I was a little...hurt by it. "Quatre, who was Une trying to spirit Heero away from, exactly? I was under the impression her office was behind the investigation and Heero's hospitalization after he had that episode in his apartment and because of Naomi's murder."
Quatre frowned. "Her office? No, not exactly. She approved that Heero be moved to the hospital where her plan was to have him immediately transferred to Dr. Ishikawa's private facility and eventually this lab. That's were the disconnect occurred. The hospital staff seemed to think they knew better on treating Heero, and ignored the orders regarding him." He paused and looked at Heero for a long moment before frowning. "And I'm sorry Heero; I'm partially to blame for that. At the same time I found out that you had been isolated I also discovered that Dr. Ishikawa was missing. There were...priorities so I left you in the hospital in order to locate the doctor. I knew that as along as you were with Duo that you would be safe and once I found Dr. Ishikawa and moved him to this secure lab, I planned to get the two of you out of there. Unfortunately by the time I accomplished my assigned tasks, you and Duo were already gone and on the run." He sighed and resumed the task of making the tea. Heero just took it all in and I concentrated on not hitting something.
"Une decided to dispatch Wufei and Trowa to find you while I helped the doctor make arrangements here, which seemed to work out in the end although the execution in the middle was not very good. Best laid plans and all that." He gave Heero a very sympathetic look, but Heero only diverted his eyes and glared daggers into the nearest wall. Despite being totally obvious on how I felt about the plan's execution, I moved to stand behind Heero so he knew I was right there and was pissed as hell right along with him.
Wufei let out an audible huff of aggravation as well seeing my move and I'm sure from the body language I was displaying. "I assure you Duo and Heero, Trowa and I had very little knowledge of the circumstances leading us to this moment. We were not aware of Une's involvement until after we had already caught up with you at the farmhouse and by then we had decided that it was not our place to fill you in until we were all gathered here together. I also apologize for keeping you in the dark." He gave us a little bow which neither Heero nor I acknowledged. It stung that we thought our friends, who I at least considered to be my very family, had abandoned us at the time, so the apology seemed shallow and a little too late to me.
Heero had remained silent throughout the entire explanation and subsequent apologies and I was beginning to worry what could be going on in his head right then. I wasn't sure if he was mad at me, Quatre, Une, the guys or just the whole damn world. The silence in the room was growing uncomfortable and it wasn't hard to see that Quatre needed something to do with his hands other than fisting them against his side so I let out a huff and jumped on in. "Water under the bridge at this point, right? I'll take some of that tea, Quatre." I finally said and hoped that was a way to move on.
Quatre took an easier breath and immediately set about getting cups from one of the nearby shelves next to the refrigerator. Wufei finally sat down and crossed his arms over his chest as Trowa began to calmly pace back and forth along the glass wall like some kind of large cat.
"So then the preventer's are not after Heero or Duo, but they aren't supporting them either, correct? Trowa asked.
"Yes, that's true. Une is neither confirming nor denying any involvement with the two rouge Preventer's officers." Quatre confirmed as he poured out five cups of tea.
"Well, I kinda figured that the P's weren't going to back me up when I ditched all protocols, policies and procedures, and basically went MIA with Heero here." I groused. Loyalty in an organization like that really didn't mean shit to anyone in my opinion.
Trowa took two of the cups of tea from Qautre and handed one each to Heero and I and then went back to the counter and took one for himself. Heero spared me a fleeting glance as he sipped the tea, but I wasn't sure how to read it. He seemed to be getting tired and like Trowa, seemed distracted by the wall of dark glass in front of us. "And what about this ship and flight to a planet of unknown origin?" Trowa asked.
"Yes, Winner. I think you should cut to the chase and get us to the flight and this ship we are scheduled to take in less than 2 and a half hours." Quatre gave a cup to Wufei and took a sip from the last remaining cup.
End Part 17
(:./ebony/drift17)
