06-May-2006
Title: Launch 20/20
Author: TB
Archive: GWA and
http://www.geocities.com/brother_maxwell/TB_home_page.html
Category: yaoi
Pairing: 3x4, 1+4
Disclaimer: Not mine, but gently used. (-ish.)
Summary: Part 20: Some painful confrontations, and good-byes.
Sally looked down at Quatre gravely. "Are you sure you want to do this?" she asked.
Quatre nodded his reply. The "cell" Trowa had been confined to since his capture was hardly destitute; he had a cot with extra blankets, a table with two chairs, even a large window. But it was unmistakably confinement. The room was white and antiseptic in design, functional but maddeningly unyielding, and the two-way mirror that Quatre stood before made no pretense at being anything but prison-like. Trowa, jumpsuited in orange and looking unkempt after several days of unrelenting questioning, stood at the window staring out moodily.
"We'll be right outside," Heero said softly at his elbow. Quatre smiled at his friend, and at Duo who stood behind him. Then Sally entered the key at the door, and the latch slipped for him. Quatre pushed gently at the cool metal, and it opened soundlessly.
Trowa turned from contemplating the view as Quatre entered. His eyes skipped over Quatre's body, once again wrapped concealingly in a thick jumper and soft canvas trousers. Then Trowa gestured with mocking gallantry at the table, as if he were the host and Quatre the guest.
"I can send the butler for tea," the taller man said, something scathing working in the undertones of his low voice. "Perhaps some scones and clotted cream? Truffles and mousse?"
"I served you soup made from field rations the first day we met," Quatre replied mildly, hearing the door close behind him. "And I wasn't the one who couldn't finish it."
A wary smile, so minute he almost missed it, floated over Trowa's mouth. "Ever-gracious. Even when it's only to yourself."
Quatre decided against waiting for Trowa to join him, and sat hard in one of the chairs at the table, sticking his cushion behind him so he could sit in some semblance of comfort. Though it was getting easier to move about, the short walk from the car to the lower levels of Preventers HQ had left him with a fine trembling in his hands and a hollow feeling in his stomach. But playing the weakling, even for real, wouldn't win him anything with Trowa, and so he didn't ask for the water he saw in the pitcher on the counter along the opposite wall. He sat, caught his breath, waiting for equilibrium, or for Trowa to make the first move.
It wasn't one he'd expected, but then, he'd never known Trowa very well. Trowa suddenly drew out one of the chairs, across the table from Quatre, and sat in a slightly exaggerated slump, kicking out his long legs between the rungs below. His flat agate gaze was one shade off insolent, his right eye only half visible beneath the shaggy fall of lank hair. "I've been wondering if you play anymore," he said abruptly.
The circuitous route. Or maybe his answer really would mean something, in Trowa-speak. Quatre replied, "Not really. Not since the war, I guess."
"That's too bad. You were good."
He'd been classically trained in violin and piano. He'd liked piano more, never comfortable giving himself over to an instrument so emotionally demanding as the violin. "You still play?" he asked Trowa, willing to go along.
"Sometimes."
The thought had no sooner occurred to him than it was out of his mouth, without any consideration for feasability. "I could have your flute shipped here," he said, and winced at his own boldness.
Trowa either didn't pick up on it, or ignored it. "It's not my flute," he said. "I only used it because it was what you had."
Quatre exhaled, and wished his legs weren't too rubbery to go and get the water. "It was yours the moment you touched it," he said honestly. It wasn't as if he'd ever played it. And it had given him pleasure to keep the flute in his home, since he couldn't keep Trowa.
Trowa's posture slipped into aggression, and he leaned across the table on one elbow, his orange suit its own connotative bully. "You don't have to always give me things, Quatre."
Quatre could only blink at him. "Things were all you ever let me give you," he answered at last.
Trowa's face changed, but didn't, and Quatre couldn't read it anyway. He flinched a little in surprise when Trowa stood abruptly, his chair skidding loudly on the tiled floor. Trowa strode to the counter and splashed water from the pitcher into a glass, then returned to the table and thrust the glass at Quatre. He took it carefully, and sipped. Trowa didn't wait for his thanks, returning the window and glaring at it darkly.
"I suppose you heard about my deal with Une," he said.
"Immunity for your testimony."
"Yes." Trowa turned just enough that he could include Quatre in his gaze without seeming to. "So where's the speech on morality? On the importance of solidarity? Not screwing over a team-mate?"
"Don't be stupid," Quatre said wearily, and put the glass down when he saw his hand shaking. "If you hadn't gotten that deal I would have had lawyers in here getting it for you. I've spent two days convincing Wufei to ask for the same." He thought Trowa was surprised, but if he was, he hid it quickly. "Besides which, you've demonstrated that ESA prisons are comically easy to break into. Une's not going to put a Gundam pilot in one and cross her fingers."
Trowa's full lips turned down in a little scowl, and his eyes went back to the window. "Did you know I'm supposed to report my every movement to them for the rest of my life? If I take a piss I have to record it. I can't walk to the mail box without alerting the Senate."
"Am I here to listen to you feel sorry for yourself?" Quatre asked. "You made your damn bed."
Silence greeted that. Just when Quatre had decided Trowa meant to ignore it, he said, "It should have had you in it."
That hurt. It hurt hard, and deep, and for a minute he couldn't breathe around it. He reached for the water, clamping his fingers around it and raising it to his mouth. It spilled a bit when he swallowed, and he had to wipe his chin. He stared at his wet fingers, and said, "That was always your choice. I waited five years for you to make it." A breathless little laugh started somewhere in his gut and didn't make it past his throat. "I should kick the crap out of you for that," he muttered. "I spent five years hoping one day I'd be more than a convenient port of call. And telling myself the whole time to move on. Thinking I could live on the crumbs you gave me, like any person could starve and still be happy." He clenched his hands into fists, and then forced them flat and open on his thighs. "You don't have the right to say that to me. Not anymore."
"It's not like it's just my fault," Trowa shot back, crossing his arms over his chest belligerently. "I asked you to come to L3 with me."
"To live at the circus! And do what, Trowa? You didn't even stay there. We both had ideas. Ambitions. Yours aren't any more or less important than mine."
"Oh, here we go," Trowa retorted nastily. He came back to the table, dropping into his chair and leaning forward again. "You were always the responsible one, weren't you. You had the ten-year plan and the contacts and you knew the game and you played by the rules. You were so busy being the perfect son you didn't even notice them sucking away your soul." He stared down Quatre's instinctive protest. "You know what?" he added. He dropped his chin to his hand. "You gave some pretty speeches on the IEO. How long has it been since you believed in something like that? Since you felt that passionate, Quatre? Since you felt that alive? You really want to go back to a life of writing thank-you notes for hotel staff like you're somebody's grandma?"
He had to look away. He'd known it would be like this, that Trowa would be angry and would go on the attack. He'd thought he could handle it, that facing the man he loved on the ship the week before had deadened him to the worst. But he was always wrong about Trowa, wasn't he?
"The thing I wonder about," he said at last, "is the backdoor you left. The bug I found on the IEO wasn't there to steal information, was it. It was there to establish a link between your computers and ours. It was clever. But you had to know we'd find it. You had to anticipate that someone would find it in time and use it to bring you down."
He could feel Trowa's eyes on his face. Searching him, feeling him out. He deliberately kept his eyes turned away, letting the observers on the other side of the window be the judge of Trowa's minute expressions.
A beat later, Trowa leant back. "I didn't anticipate Heero coming back," he said conversationally. "That was a neat trick. Impeccable timing. The Preventers have some good men on their teams, but the real hackers can earn three times as much working against the system. Working for people like me. So I guess the answer is-- no. I didn't think you'd find it in time. I didn't think you'd ever find the bug to begin with."
"Still. You took a risk. That's not like you."
"Is it not?" Quatre glanced inadvertently, and found Trowa still gazing at him. "What do you want me to say, Quat?" Trowa asked him. His tone was oddly patient suddenly. "That I didn't really believe in Mariemaia Khushrenada? That I left a trail of breadcrumbs hoping someone would put it together? That I deliberately recruited wildcards like Catalonia who would make irrevocable mistakes? That I'd made it my personal mission to keep an eye on the dissidents, as far back as the Barton Rebellion in 196?"
Quatre smoothed his fingers down the sides of the glass. "Yes," he answered truthfully. "I'd be very glad to hear you say that."
"It's a good story," Trowa agreed softly. "It'll play well with a jury, too. Khushrenada will be lucky to see sunlight again. Wufei will hang for them. You'll have your scapegoats and your convictions, and in a year, no-one will remember we even threatened to shatter their peace." He paused. "I hear President Brussels has announced that he's running for a second term."
"Yes." Quatre drank to wet his throat. "Just yesterday."
"I didn't believe in her," Trowa said. "I never thought it would work. But maybe it ought to have. Maybe then people would understand. Maybe then they'd have to wake up a little, and take their heads out of the god-damn sand and see what we did for them."
"Maybe we should have just died during the wars," Quatre said quietly. "But we didn't. I know it's hard. There's not a single one of us who doesn't struggle with the fact that we lived."
"Really, Quatre?" Trowa demanded. "Even you?"
His mouth stayed open, but no words emerged. His eyes were suddenly stinging. Through the blur he saw something change on Trowa's face, but he would never be sure if it really was regret. Someone knocked on the mirror.
Trowa stared down at the table. "They want you back outside," he said neutrally.
He was out of water. He set the glass aside and pressed his damp palms to the thighs of his trousers. "It isn't that I don't understand why you did it. I just don't understand how you could. How you could want other people to grow up like you did. Like we all did. Trapped, and-- angry."
The knock came again, hard and staccato this time. Trowa looked automatically at the mirror, but Quatre did not. He said, "Answer me."
Trowa's eyes flicked back to him. "You have no idea who I am, Quatre."
This time it was the door, and it swung open on Sally. Quatre didn't wait for her to say anything. He stood and brushed past her. Duo made to stop him as he walked into the corridor, but he hesitated long enough for Quatre to slip away. No-one called after him as he fled.
Heero found him sitting on a bench in the back courtyard of HQ. He sat perhaps a foot away from Quatre, and offered a paper cup. Quatre took it automatically, and found that it was tea, still steaming gently.
He said, "You must think I'm a real moron."
Heero's shoulders rose and fell. "I don't pretend to understand all of it," he replied after a moment. He looked where Quatre was looking, at the arrangement of olive trees and flowering bushes that formed a low hedge maze in the courtyard.
"I know he's playing me."
Heero glanced sideways at him. "Maybe that's the only way he knows to be with people."
"So that makes it okay?" Quatre forced himself to sip from the tea, and was surprised to find it was prepared exactly as he liked it. Maybe Heero had asked someone; it would be a strange thing to remember after five years of absence.
Heero rubbed his hands on his trousers. "Weren't you playing him?"
That made him look. "What do you mean?" he asked slowly.
Heero met his look. "I don't think you know you're doing it. But you do. You got him to say what you thought you were going to hear."
That stung. "I didn't."
"You always lead the conversation in the only way you can stand to go." Heero shrugged awkwardly again. "It's not a bad thing," he added. "It's just how you are."
There was a limit to how many unflattering things a person could hear about himself in one day. Quatre felt too raw even to cry about it. He said, "It sounds like a bad thing."
Heero inhaled sharply and looked away. "You're a really brave person," he murmured. "You can stand a lot more than most people." He rubbed his legs again. "I never really understood why you were together," he said. "You and Trowa."
"I'm starting to get the feeling that we weren't," Quatre admitted bitterly. "If everyone felt that way, why didn't anyone ever say anything?"
Heero flushed a little. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that."
Quatre sighed, and rested the cup between his knees. "No, I'm sorry. I don't mean to jump all over you." He found a smile, and reached for Heero's forearm, gripping it tightly for a moment. "I don't want you to run away because I'm being horrid."
"You're never horrid," Heero said. He didn't move his arm the way he would have done when they were younger, and Quatre left his hand there a little longer, grateful for the connection. Heero's presence was calming and gentle. He thought of asking where Heero had been for so long, what he had seen and done; but even as he thought it he realised he didn't need to. Heero would tell them when he was ready, or maybe he never would, but his experience had obviously changed him. For the better.
"Yes," Heero said.
Quatre glanced at him, startled. Heero smiled a little, just a twitch of his mouth really. But then he sobered, his eyes darkening and his thick eyebrows coming together in a frown. He asked, "Do you really feel that way? That we should have died in the war?"
He removed his hand quickly. "I don't know."
"Yes, you do." Heero waited for him to look back, but Quatre stubbornly stared at the hedge maze. "You regret it? That you lived?"
"I don't regret it," he answered grudgingly. "I just-- " He finished the tea, and crumpled the paper cup between his hands. "Sometimes I-- struggle-- to understand why I lived, when so many others didn't."
"You had the training. And the will."
"I really thought I would die," he confessed. "I thought-- I thought it would be fitting. That it would be just. After the things I'd done, after bringing Zero into the world. After my father died. I don't know. I've tried to live a good life since then. To do the right things, the good things. But there are days when that doesn't seem to be enough."
Heero's dark head shifted. He said, "I think maybe that's all there is. There's no cosmic scale to balance. Just-- trying."
"Heero?" When their eyes met, Quatre finished, "Don't leave. Please. I mean-- if you feel like you have to go-- I'll understand. But not just yet, all right?"
Heero's face was reddening again. "I hadn't really planned..."
"You could stay with us. Duo and I." He hesitated. "It would mean a lot to him. To me."
Heero looked off into the maze again. At last, he nodded his assent. "All right," he said, only a little clumsily. "I would like that."
Quatre watched the shuttle taxi to the launch runway. The window they stood behind blocked the intense wind and noise of the space port, adding a buffer between the inevitable and their last minutes together. Wufei stood silently beside him, immaculately dressed and groomed, his face thin and remote. The thick bandage that he wore about his neck was mute testimony to his recovery, but he stood as straight as ever, the thick strap of his duffle digging into the shoulder of his simple cotton button-down.
Duo caught Quatre's eyes, and jerked his chin in the direction of the sitting area behind them. Quatre nodded his thanks, and Duo made a discrete turnabout, walking out of earshot to give them some privacy.
"Are you sure about this?" Quatre asked one more time.
Wufei released a deep breath. "I'm sure."
"It's not like you can just turn around and come home. Twenty-one months if you change your mind, Wufei."
"I've made my decision." Wufei shifted the lay of the strap of his bag, pulling it across this chest. "We both know it's for the best. At least I can be of some use on Mars."
When Une had suggested sending Wufei to the Mars Terraforming Project to serve out his sentence, Quatre had protested loud and long. But Wufei was not the only former soldier of questionable reputation who had chosen an exile to a backwater science colony. Maybe Wufei really would be happier among people like Zechs Merquise and Lucretia Noin, themselves trying to carve out a new life far away from the wreckage of the old. And certainly the President had been happy to send yet another failed rebel to a colony so desolate the chances of Wufei ever reappearing to cause trouble were slim indeed. But knowing the whys didn't particularly make Quatre feel better.
"What's going to happen to Khushrenada?" Wufei asked after a minute of silence.
"There will be a trial. After that, I really don't know." There was a possibility that as long as she lived, she would be a focal point for rebellion. Quatre knew it wouldn't matter if they sent her to Pluto; there would always be someone to take her place, someone with a grudge, someone charismatic enough, someone to lead so that others could follow.
Wufei sent a sidelong glance toward Quatre; then he turned his head to look fully at the other man. He said, "I'm in your debt."
"No," Quatre answered.
"No?"
"There's no debt." He wasn't quite sure how to explain, and settled carefully on adding, "I'm still your friend."
Something bitter tugged at Wufei's thin mouth. "Then I'm in your debt for that, as well."
Quatre looked away this time. He heard Wufei exhale abruptly, and then say, "I apologise."
Oh, they were both masters of this dance. Wufei wasn't sorry and they both knew it; and Wufei was no longer his friend, and they both knew that, too. Quatre replied listlessly, "You don't have to."
"Yes. I do."
Quatre's throat felt tight. He swallowed, but it remained dry. He said, "I had this idea that-- I don't know, that we shouldn't part angry. Stupid, huh."
"I'm not angry."
"Maybe you should be."
"That wouldn't achieve anything, would it?"
He might have fought harder for himself. He was twenty years old, and his life was as good as over. It made Quatre angry. It made him feel sick that he couldn't do anything about it.
Quatre said, "Do you... do you want me to go?" Wufei's eyes flickered. He tried not to be hurt when Wufei nodded immediately, and concentrated on steeling himself for the end. "All right," he mumbled. "Well-- good-bye."
"I'm sorry," Wufei sighed. "That was rude."
"You're entitled," Quatre excused him.
"No-one is."
He didn't want to argue honour. Wufei wanted him gone, and maybe he should just accept that and leave. He watched Wufei glanced behind them to the others for a moment, then turn back to the window.
"Good-bye," he said again, and walked away.
Duo and Heero stood together across the terminal corridor by the kiosk selling coffee. Heero immediately handed him a hot cup of tea-- he was always thoughtful these days. Quatre smiled his mute appreciation as he faced Wufei's solitary stance at the window again. Between the three of them and the man who had once been one of them, two Preventer guards drifted closer to the prisoner, their presence unobtrusive but unmistakable.
Duo's phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and checked the number; he raised grave eyes to Quatre, who stiffened. Duo flipped the mobile open and pressed it to his ear.
"Agent Lightning," he said. There was a long silence as he listened, but Quatre saw the moment he heard the bad news. Duo lost all his colour. He took the mobile from his ear, but didn't close it.
"What's wrong?" Heero asked, his eyes sharp on Duo's face.
"Trowa's gone," Duo said.
"Gone?" Quatre repeated dumbly.
"His room is empty. There's no sign of forced entry or escape. He's just gone." Suddenly Duo flushed. "I can't believe him! I'm going to shoot him myself when I catch his skinny ass-- " There was more, but Duo was already running down the terminal.
The desk called Wufei to board. Torn, Quatre stared after Duo, then at Wufei, walking toward the ramp. Heero recaptured his attention with a little touch on his arm, and said, "I'll go with Duo. It will be all right." He waited only long enough for Quatre to acknowledge him, and then he took off as well. Feeling rather useless, Quatre turned back to find Wufei pausing to hand over his ticket to a steward.
He didn't look back before disappearing into the tunnel.
Wufei was as good as gone, and if Trowa really had escaped somehow, he would be deep in hiding already. For the first time since that frantic morning on the IEO three weeks earlier, Quatre felt like-- it was over.
He stayed long enough to watch Wufei's shuttle launch, and then he let the two Preventer escorts drive him home.
End Part 20
(:./erin/launch20)
