9 Jan 2001
A strange confrontation.
DISCLAIMER: All Gundam Wing characters are property of Sunrise, Bandai Visuals, Sotsu Agency, and Asahi TV. This work is not written for profit, but for entertainment purposes only.
PAIRINGS: 6x5/5x6, 13x6/6x13, some very mild 4x9
WARNING: AU/modern day San Francisco; implied yaoi will turn to yaoi and eventual lemon in later chapters
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: To Alfred Hitchock who directed the incredible film, "Vertigo."
"Dreams are the Royal Road to the unconscious."- Sigmund Freud
The drive across town was almost surreal. Treize could see the traffic around him, the same crowded intersections, the usual clogged stoplights, but he couldn't hear any of it. It was as if he were traveling in a vacuum, completely silent, the only sound his breath coming heavily, and and an occasional whispered curse to himself.
Even his thoughts, normally chattering full time, were mute.
It seemed like he'd been driving forever, and also as if he's just gotten into his car, when he pulled up outside the large house in Pacific Heights. Leaving his car, he ran to the front door and leaned hard on the door bell, hearing it echo in the huge expanse within.
"Come on, come on, come on," he whispered to the door. "Answer the door god damn it!"
There was a click of locks and the door swung open. Cathrine was standing there, looking at him in puzzlement. "Dr. Khushrenada? What is it -"
"Where is Zechs?" he said, nearly shouting.
"I don't know what you mean," Cathrine began, and Treize had to fight not to lunge at her.
"Where. Is. *Zechs*??" he shouted. "I know he's here, now tell me *where*!!"
"He's in the basement," a young voice called from behind her. Cathrine stepped aside and Treize saw Relena, in her wheelchair, a look of concern on her face. "Why? Has something happened, Treize? You look dreadful - what's happened?"
Treize panted for a moment, just looking at her, and then said, "I want to see him."
"Of course," she said, still anxious, "I was just going down there myself. He... he wanted to see something down there... something that we both have avoided for too long."
"Take me there. Now." Treize demanded.
Relena signaled Cathrine and the older woman came to the wheelchair and began rolling it backward toward a pair of small doors off the main entryway."
"I have to take the elevator," Relena said, "but you can take the stairs - it's quicker. Besides, Cathrine barely fits in here with me as it is."
Sure enough, her aunt was having to squeeze past the chair to manipulate the controls, the elevator obviously having been designed for the wheelchair only.
"Where do I go?" Treize said, calming down a bit. Things were under control - maybe his thoughts hadn't been...
Relena leaned out of the elevator and said, "Down the stairs at the end of the hallway to your left. You come out of the stairwell and just go straight. You'll see the room."
He took off down the hallway as the elevator door slid closed. taking the narrow stairs as fast as he could as they wound down to the lower level of the house. /What have they been avoiding down here? God I have to see him to make sure he's all right.../
He got to the bottom of the stairwell and stepped out into what looked like a wine cellar. The old stone walls were lined with wooden racks that glowed with green and brown and clear bottles. It was chilly, but not intolerably so. There was a door in the far wall that seemed to lead out to a corridor, and Treize ran across the room towards it, beginning to feel a bit better simply because everything seemed so normal. /I must not have been thinking clearly... /
The corridor spread out to his left and right, but straight ahead was a door that was slightly ajar. He opened it and stepped into a moderate sized room that was completely unfurnished. There was some kind of light fixture attached to the wall at the front of the room, but nothing else to mar the expanse of pale blue carpeting that stretched from the door he'd come through to a door in the opposite wall.
"Zechs?" he called.
The door opened and Cathrine wheeled Relena into the room. "He's in the bathroom down the hall," she said, nodding her head back the way she'd come. "He said he's be right here."
"What is this place?" Treize asked, giving an inward sigh of relief that Zechs was that close. Looks like it was never used."
Relena wheeled her chair further into the room and looked around. "Oh, it was used, all right," she said. "This is where Dermail taught my parents about the lights."
"Then they *did* do some kind of conditioning with him - conditioning that involved lights of some kind?" Treize asked, feeling a piece of the fragile crystal fall more solidly into place.
Relena nodded. "Dermail did the first part of the training at his office. Then when he thought my brother was conditioned enough, he taught my parent's how to use the lights." Her face was grim with a touch of disgust.
"And the lights induced his seizures," Treize said, shaking his head softly. "But Relena, why would your parents *want* to induce seizures in him? I thought the seizures were what made them so embarrassed in the first place."
"That was all part of Dr. Dermail's theory," she said scornfully. "He believed - and he got my parents to believe - that by inducing a certain number of seizures, they could prevent him from having any 'random' ones. They could get them all 'out of his system' as it were, and then not have to worry about him blanking out at other times - when *people* might see. You'll notice there are no windows in this room."
Treize was staring at her in disbelief. "That's insane," he said. "Epilepsy doesn't work that way. Seizures aren't something you can 'get out of a person's system' - they happen completely randomly..." He stopped for a moment and thought. "Unless... unless his seizures were more like the other type of epilepsy. Sometimes a grand mal seizure can be induced by a certain frequency of flashing light..."
"Well that's what they did," Relena said. "They didn't make him drop to the floor or have muscle contractions or anything, he would just - go away. Like he always did." She looked down at her dress, expression miserable.
"And I'll bet," Treize said slowly, "that he always twirled his hair when he 'went away', didn't he?" He was standing beneath the light fixture now, moving a finger to switch it on.
"Oh, don't!" he heard Relena say as his finger moved on the switch. A brilliant flashing light came out and he quickly turned it off. "A strobe," he said and turned to Relena, only to see her crying with her hands over her face.
"You don't know what it did to him," she said through tears. "At first he never remembered what they did when they brought him down here, but after he realized why they were doing it he would try to run. They would have to carry him down here for the sessions... he would scream, I could hear him screaming all the way down..."
She ran a hand over her eyes and looked up at Treize. "They made him lie on the floor... and they tied him up... Otherwise he would have run out of here. He wanted to run out of here..."
Treize moved to kneel beside her chair. "Relena," he murmured. "How long did this last?"
"They would keep him down here for an hour," she said, her voice quieting somewhat. "Each seizure only took a couple of minutes, They just did it over and over and over again... just so he wouldn't embarrass them when he was in public."
"They were wrong to do it, Relena," he began, but she interrupted him.
"Do you know how I figured all of this out?" she said, looking up at him. "Look up here."
She wheeled her chair to the corner of the room and pointed upwards. Treize could see a metal ducting vent disappearing into the ceiling.
"My room was right above here, on the second floor. Everything they said came right out of the air duct. Every word, every slap, every scream. I heard everything."
"And that's why you didn't want to come back down here," Treize said softly. "Well that's perfectly understandable."
"I listened to that every day from the time he was ten to when he was seventeen," she said. "No one ever knew about it except for me and Zechs. None of his teachers knew; his doctor didn't know; no one knew."
Treize kneeled down beside her again. "I'm glad you're finally coming to terms with this, Relena. It was a horrible thing to live with and frankly... well, *I* think you're parents were a couple of sadistic bastards for what they did."
There was a creaking of floor boards above them and Relena looked up. "Zechs?" she called. "Zechs, what are you doing up there? I told you we'd be down here!"
Treize looked up as well, puzzled for a moment. "Are... are you sure that's Zechs?" he said.
Relena looked over at him. "It has to be," she said, "he's the only other one in the house right now." She looked up again. "Zechs? We're down here - in the basement!" The footsteps could be heard crossing the floor and then the elevator hummed to life.
"I don't know what he was thinking," Relena said, "he knew we were down here."
They heard the mechanism slow to stop and, far off down the hall, the doors opening. Both of them waited in silence until finally the door to the room swung open.
Zechs was standing in the doorway, a look of anxiety on his face. "Relena! What -"
"Look, Zechs - Treize is here," she said. The blond man looked across the room and their gazes locked. "Treize," the younger man whispered. "I -"
"He told you he loved you, didn't he?" Relena said, looking over at her brother, and smiling.
Zechs tore his eyes away from Treize and looked at her, laughing a little as he blinked tears back. "Yeah - yeah he did..."
"And I meant it, too," Treize said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
"That's so sweet," Relena said teasingly, punching Zechs's arm lightly. "I knew it all along. He looks at you just the same way Wufei did, you know."
"Does he?" Zechs said, looking back at Treize and almost smiling. Treize almost smiled back.
"Yes, definitely," she said. "And that's why he has to die like Wufei."
Treize saw Zechs's face drain of color as he slowly turned his head to look at his sister. /Oh *shit*... I wasn't wrong... I wasn't wrong.../
"W-What did you say, Relena?" Zechs whispered, staring at her as if he didn't know her.
She looked up at him and smiled, taking his hand. "I said he has to die like Wufei. It's a pity because I really liked him." She sighed and rested her cheek on Zechs's hand, looking over at Treize, almost as if she felt sympathy for him. Then he felt a heavy blow on his head and the floor was spinning up to meet him.
He was only out for a moment, just a quick descent into a rather dark, dizzying, world where it was safe and quiet. Quiet, that is, until he heard Zechs scream.
"No, Relena! Don't, please!! Turn it off!!"
Through the pain and fog that had enveloped his head, Treize could tell that the strobe had been activated. He could see Zechs, kneeling on the floor across the room with his hands over his eyes. He made a move to go to him and found the cold barrel of a gun against his temple. He froze. /Cathrine... I was wondering where she'd gotten to.../
Relena looked over at him and shook her head sadly. "I wish you boys would just understand that Zechs and I are meant to be together."
"Relena, NO!!" Zechs screamed, dropping his hands for a moment and, seeing that the strobe was still pulsing, immediately bringing them back up to shield his eyes. "Relena tell me you didn't kill Fei... oh, please... tell me you didn't..."
"He refused to see reason, Zechs," she said calmly. "Who was he, anyway? Just some silly little boy who wanted to get you in bed. He had no idea what we'd been through together. No idea at all of everything I'd done to make sure you were safe.
Another piece of the puzzle, one that Treize hadn't even realized was there, fell into place. Zechs seemed to realize it at the same time because he tried to look at his sister, unable to do it though, because of the strobe.
"Relena," he said softly, sadly, "you killed Mother and Father, didn't you?"
"Of course I did," she said, as if he'd asked whether she had brushed her teeth before getting into bed. "I couldn't let them hurt you anymore. I know it took me a long time to build up the courage to do it, but I finally did." She looked over at the crouched form on the floor beside her. "You know I love you, Zechs. I love you more than anything in the world. And I won't ever let you be hurt again."
She reached out to smooth his hair and he flinched. "Not Mother and Father, who deserved to die so much sooner. Not any of those silly boys that you brought over to the house. Not Wufei - who actually thought he could take you away from me... Do you know what he told me, Zechs? He told me that he was going to convince you to move away from San Francisco with him. Just so you wouldn't be able to see me. Isn't that horrible? It was right after he figured out about Mother and Father. He told me I was crazy and that he'd have me arrested if I didn't leave you alone. That's when I realized he had to die, too."
"Damn you, Relena, I loved him!!!" Zechs screamed at her, bringing his hands down to grab a hold of her shoulders. "I loved him more than life itself and you - goddamn you!! - you killed him!!! You... killed..."
He had made the mistake of opening his eyes and Treize watched in horror as the seizure began: the vacant look, the fingers straying up to catch a lock of pale gold hair to twist...
He wanted to scream at Zechs - make him come out of it, but the barrel of the gun pressed more tightly against his temple and he couldn't do a thing. He was still woozy from the blow Cathrine had given him and from what it felt like was pinned under her.
He looked up to see Relena turning to him. "So this is goodbye, Treize. I love my brother, and he loves me. We're going to be married, you know. We'll live right here in this house forever. We'll never leave. And we'll have children and we'll treat them so kindly that they'll love their mommy and daddy and they'll never want to leave, either..."
Zechs was stirring out of the seizure, his eyes beginning to focus again.
/Oh, the hell with it - she's going to kill me anyway - it's the only chance I have./ "Close your eyes, Zechs!" he yelled out, feeling the gun move. There was a shot and he felt a searing pain go through the side of his head. /Piece of cake/ he thought to himself. /Flesh wound - her aim was off... better play dead... oh, damn this hurts!/
His call had been well timed and now Zechs was conscious again, his hands over his eyes.
Cathrine was speaking, calmly as usual. "He's still breathing, should I shoot him again?"
"NO!!!" Zechs screamed. "Please, Relena! I'll stop going to him for therapy. I'll never see him again, all right? You don't need to kill him. Please!!"
"He loves you," Treize heard Relena say. "He'll try to come between us on our wedding night."
Zechs was crying, hard, and through the blood dripping into his eyes Treize could see the blond crawling on his knees to where Relena was sitting, his hands still covering his eyes.
"I swear, Relena - he won't come between us. I won't let him. I promise... just let him live, all right?"
"Tonight is our wedding night," she said softly, pressing Zechs's head down into her lap and stroking his hair. "Tonight you'll lead me into the bridal chamber and we'll sleep together and hold each other all night long, and no one will ever hurt you again. You'll be perfectly safe with me..."
"Don't kill him, Relena," Zechs said, crying softly. "I'll do anything you want, only don't kill him..."
She smiled down at him. "I knew you felt the same way," she said in a loving whisper.
"Yes," Zechs said, sounding exhausted. His hand was tracing idly on the floor beside him and it reminded Treize of the times in his office when those same long fingers had traced the curve of his leather sofa. "It will be a lovely wedding night, Relena..." He was silent for several moments and then added, "But we don't want anyone intruding on our privacy do we?"
He continued to sit with his head in her lap, eyes tightly shut, fingers tracing patterns in the carpet. "I'm your husband now... you should listen to me..."
Relena's smile became brilliant at his words. "Yes! I'm your wife... oh, Zechs, I'll keep you so safe... I love you..."
"I love you, too, Relena. I want to be upstairs with you right now - just the two of us. So tell these other people here to go, so we can be alone..."
"Aunt Cathrine," Relena said, looking up at the woman for the first time since Treize had come into the room, "please prepare the bed for my husband and I. Then go to your room and stay there - we need our privacy tonight."
"Of course, Relena," the older woman said and Treize felt a shiver go through him. /She must be completely insane as well.../
He saw her feet walking swiftly across the carpet and out the door that Zechs had come through. That left just him.
"Tell him to go, too, Relena," Zechs said. She shook her head.
"No, we're going up first. I think I may keep him down here for awhile..." She went back to stroking Zechs's hair.
He smiled, sadly, and said, "I *thought* you might like it better that way, love. Let's go up, then. Why don't you turn off that... that light so I can see where I'm going."
"You don't need to see," Relena said, laughing softly. "Just push my wheelchair - I'll tell you where you need to go."
As they left the room, she held up a small, rectangular box and pointed it upwards towards Zechs, who was now standing behind her. Immediately it began flashing and Zechs shut his eyes quickly, pushing the chair towards the door. Treize wanted to go after them, but by the time he got up to his knees they had disappeared down the hallway. He was creeping across the floor towards the wall, to give himself leverage to stand, when he heard the elevator head upwards.
/God... Zechs - did you really have to give in to that? Please don't do anything stupid... /
He was almost to the far wall when he noticed something on the carpet. What had been impeccably clean, medium pile was now pressed down and blackened in places. At first it just looked like dirt someone had tracked in, but then one of the marks seemed to resolve itself into a letter 'a.' He back up a bit and, as the blood from his head wound dripped quietly onto the carpet, he read the words, "call police."
The image of Zechs, dreamily tracing patterns in the carpet came to him. The black substance, when he reached out to touch it, felt like mechanic's grease. "The wheelchair," he whispered to himself. "He got it from the wheelchair..."
The sound of the elevator, moving far above him, made him jump and he knew he was losing time as well as blood. He made it to the wall and leveraged himself up, staggering across the room, back the way he had come in. By the time he reached the top of the stairs, he felt ready to pass out.
He had to get to the phone - wherever there *was* a phone - or at least out of the house for help. Bracing himself against the corridor wall, he made his way to the front entryway as fast as he could. Every third step he seemed to stumble, and once or twice the darkness threatened to engulf him again, but he finally made it to the entry, only to hear the sound of footsteps coming towards him from further back in the house. He ducked under the large Parson's table across from the front door just before Cathrine walked through the entryway.
He could see she was smiling - a vague, dreamy kind of smile, and she hummed softly, as if she were pleased with herself. Treize fought down a wave of nausea at the expression and held his breath, praying for her to go by, and quickly. At last she passed into the corridor on the far side of the hall and gradually both the humming and her footsteps faded.
Now the house was completely silent. As Treize crossed to the front door he strained to hear anything from the upper story, but nothing came. "Ah, Zechs - hold on... I'm going to get help..." he stumbled out the front door, and stepped into swirling fog. It was cold and clung to him like wet clothes but anything, it seemed, was better than that house. Getting out to the curb, he looked up and down the street and spotted a phone booth at one end.
"Just get there and call the police," he muttered to himself, beginning to feel faint. He knew he'd lost a lot of blood, but told himself that all head wounds bled a lot and that it was probably no more than a bad scratch. "Just get there, just get there, just get there." He repeated it over and over to himself as he made his way down the street towards the lighted phone box.
After what seemed like ages, he reached it, and grabbed the handset. The numbers seemed to swim before his eyes, and it took several attempts to dial correctly. Soon, however, a soothingly bored voice answered and asked what address he was calling from. For a few frantic moments, Treize couldn't for the life of him remember, but then it came to him and he gave them the cross streets.
"What's the problem, sir?"
"It's... my friend's sister... she's just admitted to killing someone... actually more than one person... "
"She's saying she *killed* someone, sir?"
"Yes. Yes, and she's got my friend... upstairs... and she's still very unstable... possibly psychotic, and we really need someone here *fast.* She has a gun..."
"All right sir, just give me the address and I'll get the police out to you."
By some miracle, Treize remembered the address and the operator told him to hold while she notified the police. Coming back on the line, she asked, "Has anyone been injured, sir? Should I send the paramedics?"
"Oh, yeah," he said, as the phone itself began to waver in front of him. "Me... I think I've been shot in the head..."
As the world dimmed around him, he could hear the voice of the emergency operator, now not quite as bored, saying, "Sir? Did you say you'd been shot in the head?"
Then, at last, it was blessedly quiet.
End of Chapter 17
(:./kumiko/rr17)
