13-Jan-2002
Title: Two Divided By Zero 32/??
Series: Book three in the "All The Way to There" arc.
Author: Lasha Lee (anakerie@cinci.rr.com)
Pairings: 1x2, 3x4, 5xOC, various OCxOC
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing.
Warning: Bad words. Het (hey, if people give yaoi warnings, why not het warnings?)
Special note: Someone has told me that the scene in the last part is similar to something in "A Fish Called Wanda." As strange as this might sound, I have never seen this movie. So any ripping off is purely accidental.
Heero had been Sheld's greatest failure.
To be fair, he had been her only failure, but she had taken it so hard that he'd considered lying to her just to cheer her up. Not that he had, or ever would have. Because she was determined to keep trying. Who knew? If she had lived, maybe one day...
In the memory walk, he had stood next to her, and watched himself go backwards through his life, growing younger and younger. He'd shown her Duo, and Relena, and Dr. J, and all of the other people who had, for better or worse, had been such a part of his history, and who he'd turned out to be. The years continued to unwind, and he saw himself with Odin Lowe, watched his four-year-old self firing a gun at a target while Odin nodded in approval.
And then... nothing. The image faded into darkness.
Where had Heero been before going with Odin? Who were his parents? Did he have siblings? Had his parents been killed? Had they willingly given him into Odin's care? Had he been kidnapped? The memories had either been destroyed, or were locked so deeply inside of him that nothing to jar them loose. Not even a memory walk.
He hardly ever thought of things like any longer; he tried very hard not to wonder, but the last few days, watching Gage learn the difficult truth about his own past, had brought the old feelings back to life. He felt a kinship to the boy, an understanding. It was wretched at times, not being sure who you were. He'd often found himself, when eating a food he liked or enjoying a book, wondering which, if either, of his parents he'd inherited his tastes from.
And Gage had to be thinking about that. He knew Zechs, but Laura Landagren was a stranger to him. Did he think about her now? Wonder what she looked like? Wonder if he was like her? He'd come from her womb, and yet she'd been a mystery to him since long before his birth. How deeply that must sting.
As he mused over these things, his hands flashed across his keyboard automatically. This... he could understand. Computers made sense; there was nothing in them that wasn't deliberately put there, nothing that couldn't be removed if it caused a problem. When he had been Gage's age, he'd wished for the same to be true about people. He wished that again now; that he could take Gage, and remove the parts that were Laura and Zechs, replace them with parts of himself and Duo. Yet, doing that would completely change who Gage was, and what right did he or anyone else have to do something like that? Humans were not computers; you got the parts you got, from whomever you got them from, and you had to learn to live with them.
He glanced at something on the screen, frowned, and launched a new search.
They said to catch a crook, you had to think like a crook. He knew that to catch a Gage, he had to think like a Gage. He'd been trying to do that all evening. It was like trying to unravel a knot in a piece of thread.
"He's smart." Heero said to himself. "And he knows he's smart. Shan's no idiot either. They won't do anything without considering how carefully they can pull it off. Even the thing with the lube. They knew they'd be long gone before we ever got to the store. And they're not stupid enough to use Wufei's account again; they'll be detained immediately. That was my fault; I should have set that from the beginning; to have the stores hold them long enough for us to arrive. I really didn't expect them to do that however.
"That's where he's got the upper hand. He'll do the last thing I expect to throw me off the trail. And then he'll turn around and do something that we'd say 'no, he's too smart to try' just to confuse us more." Heero was suddenly reminded of that old movie Jazz had loved, the one with the Sicilian and the poisoned wine goblets. His confusing logic had always put the boy into hysterics. It wasn't nearly as funny trying to go up against the same kind of mind.
Sally Po seemed certain that they'd made for Seta, but how could they? They'd be scanned immediately at the gate. Sometimes kids tried disguises to look older, but the guards always saw through them. Most kids weren't clever enough to pull something like that off.
Then again, most kids weren't Gage Drummond.
Most kids didn't know how to hack a banking system to hide their deposits.
He'd noticed immediately that Gage had not been depositing his field work money in the account he and Duo had set up for him. No deposits had been made to that account at all. And very little money taken from it. However, Jazz stated firmly that every check had cleared his account. Gage had been depositing the money somewhere, but where?
That was what Heero had been trying to find out now.
Gage had not expected to run away, and he'd had little time to pull it off. Knowing that Heero would figure out he had a second bank account, he'd hacked into the mainframe, erasing all links between Jazz's account and his own, so that the deposits were nearly impossible to trace.
Nearly, Heero told himself. There wasn't a computer yet that could beat him, and he was not going to conceded defeat to a fifteen year old, either. You're smart, Gage, but you're young, Heero smiled. And you're playing in my league now.
He had a list in front of him of bank accounts opened in their area on the 10th of last month, the first time Jazz had paid Gage. There were a few hundred of them, and one of them had to be Gage's. The problem right now was determining which one.
Gage loved jokes, and plays on words, and old movies. So the name on the account would definitely be something along that caliber. He didn't know a lot of Deran movies, so the name would probably be an Earth name. He didn't have the software to filter out the names of Deran origin, so he had to do this the hard way. When he was done, he still had 10 names left to check, but it was a lot better than what he'd had before.
None of the names seemed out of the ordinary to him, nothing that jumped out like "Monty Python" or "Ben Dover." So it was probably a fictional character. Here Heero was out of his element.
"DUO!" He called out.
"You rang?" Duo entered the room, and Heero noticed that his limp was bad tonight. He usually remembered to walk on it the right way, easing the pressure, but when he was upset he forgot.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah." Duo shrugged. "I'll be fine. What's up?"
"I want you to look at these names and tell me which one doesn't belong."
"Huh?"
"One of these bank accounts has to belong to Gage. I just can't figure out which one. I figured he'd probably name it after some movie character."
Duo studied the list for a moment, rubbing his chin, "I'd check that one. Alex DeLarge is the main character in "A Clockwork Orange."
"So?"
"Alex was a juvenile delinquent. And he was fifteen years old when the story started."
Heero quickly clicked on the account. "We've got dings from today. Oh geez."
"What?"
"Someone used this account to buy two tickets to Seta earlier today. Under the name Sara Connor."
Duo shook his head. "I guess we were wrong. There's no way they'd let a boy buy tickets under a woman's name." He paused. "Wait a minute. Sara Connor, did you say?"
"Oh my god! Duo, look what else he bought today!"
"He didn't..." Duo gasped. He stared at the list of items.
"Oh yes he did." Heero grabbed the phone. "Wufei, this is Heero. Sally was right. They're on Seta. And you won't BELIEVE how they pulled it off..."
"Hey Sleeping Beauty." Shan leaned forward and kissed Gage gently. "Time to wake up now."
Gage blinked and yawned, stretching, and then making a face. "Too early."
"It's nearly eight. If we're going to go out looking for work, we need to get cracking."
"You wore me out." Gage complained, pulling Shan back down into his arms. "You're dangerous when you're horny, you know that?"
"I'm dangerous when I'm hungry too. If we don't find jobs, we don't eat."
"I know something that's high in protein." Gage smirked.
"I'm sure it is. But a person can't live on it."
"Has it ever been tried? Granted, they'd probably have to ingest quite a bit, but for you, Shanny Boy, I'd be willing to make the sacrifice."
"Hopeless. You are totally hopeless." Shan sighed. He tried to get free of the arms around him, but failed. Gage began kissing his neck.
"Gage, stop." Shan shoved him back, and the other boy looked at him in surprise. "I'm serious. We can play later, but right now, we've got to get moving. This isn't a game; no one's going to take care of us. As much as I love being with you, right now other things have to take precedence."
Gage turned away, sulking.
"Fine." Shan snapped. "Act like a big baby. I'm going to get dressed. Sit there all damn day if you want." He got up and stomped out of the room. A few minutes later Gage heard the shower running.
He laid back, and sighed to himself. Shan was right; on one level he understood that. Their situation was pretty rocky at the moment; they really did have to concentrate on finding a way to survive. On the other hand, the rejection had hurt deeply. So had Shan's comments afterward.
He finally got of bed and dressed, but his heart wasn't in it. Maybe this was all a mistake; they had nothing to their names, Shan was pissed at him, he really had no idea how they were going to support themselves, and as confident as he tried to appear on the surface, he was truly afraid.
So far they'd gotten by on luck. How long could their luck last? Did he really have what it took to outsmart his father and the former pilots for the next three years? Heero was a computer genius; he'd probably found Gage's spare bank account by now no matter how carefully he'd tried to hide it. So even accessing that at the moment was just too risky.
You know how to earn money, a little voice reminded him. You could earn enough to put yourself and Shan up a nice hotel indefinitely. You could earn enough to treat him like he deserves.
Once, he thought. Once I could have done that. It wouldn't have bothered me at all. I mean, it's just my body, right? Only it's not mine any longer. It's no longer mine to give away and no matter why I was doing it, I'd still be betraying Shan, and I'd be no better than Zechs.
Damn life for being so complicated.
The shower had stopped, and he could hear Shan out in the kitchen, and pans clattering around. His stomach growled, but his pride kept him in the bedroom. He wanted to apologize for acting immature earlier, but he wasn't sure how to even go about it. That was part of it.
The other part was that he was afraid to face Shan again, afraid that his lover would insist on ending their little adventure and going back to Dera immediately. Better to live with an angry Shan than without him.
The noises stopped, he could hear Shan coming down the hall toward the bedroom again. He took a breath, trying to calm himself. Whatever he says, I won't break down. He thought firmly. I can handle it.
To his surprise, Shan had a tray in his hands, with two steaming bowls of soup, and some toasted bread. He sat down on the bed next to Gage, and put the tray down between them. He did not meet the other boy's eyes. "I... um... made some breakfast. If you're hungry."
"Thank you." Gage tasted the soup. It was delicious; some kind of egg and broth mixture. Sort of like egg-drop soup but with Deran ingredients.
"Baba makes this for my mother." Shan said suddenly, and he was blushing. "Especially when they've had a fight. She told me that he sucks at saying sorry, and so he lets the soup say it for him."
"Shan, you don't need to apologize. You were right. I've got to start taking this a lot more seriously if we're going to make it. I'm just afraid, that's all. I'm scared to death of letting you down."
"I'm scared too. You don't know what it's like, being the weak one in the family. As much as I hated them treating me like that, I let them. I let them all take care of me. And I just feel like I'm in way over my head here. I've never had to be strong, and I don't know how."
"You are strong, Shan. You were strong enough to come with me."
"Was I?" Shan asked softly. "Or was I just too weak to stand my ground and fight?"
"There's no shame in running from a fight you know you can't win. What chance did we have against them? None." He put down his spoon and moved the empty tray to the floor beside the bed, reaching out for Shan's hands. "Don't give up on me, Shan. Please. I'll find a way to make this work out, I promise."
"I'm not giving up." Shan shook his head. "I'm not going back. We'll be fine; you always land on your feet."
"Sometimes, I land on my back." Gage winked at him. "But that's only fun when I'm taking you with me."
"Ready to go pounding the pavement?"
"I suppose so." Gage glanced back at the bed sadly. "As soon as we find a job, I think we need to put in for some vacation time, though."
Shan's reply was cut short by the sound of the cottage's front door opening.
"I swear, Harold." A woman's voice was saying in disgust. "I appreciate your brother loaning us this place, but he might have at least cleaned it first."
"Now Emma, we're getting it for free." A man's voice answered. "We really can't complain."
The footsteps were headed down the hall.
Gage looked around wildly. The closet? No, they'd want to use that.
"This way." Shan whispered, and dove to the floor, scooting under the bed. Gage crawled under after him quickly, dragging their knapsacks with him, just as Harold and Emma entered the bedroom.
"Look at this. Bed not even made." Emma griped. "And it spells like a damn brothel in here!"
From under the bed, Gage could only see their feet. The woman had plump legs and was wearing stockings and blue pumps way too small for her. The man had on golf pants and loafers. At the brothel comment, Gage shook his fist at Emma's legs, and Shan smothered down his urge to laugh.
His instincts proved correct when Harold opened the closet, putting what he supposed were their bags inside.
Something else caught Gage's eye. The breakfast tray. If they bent down to pick it up, they'd see them. He quickly snaked out his hand and yanked it under the bed a split second before Harold turned around.
The bed creaked as Harold sat down on it. "Now Honeybear. There's no need to start our vacation in a bad mood. We've got two whole weeks in paradise. Let's enjoy it."
"You're right, Dumpling." Emma answered, and sat down on the bed too. Shan glanced up worriedly, visions in his head of it collapsing from their combined weight.
Dumpling? Gage mouthed at him, rolling his eyes.
Don't make me laugh. Shan mouthed back.
Sorry.
"So what does my Honeybear want to do?" Harold was asking.
"Honeybear thinks her Dumpling has been a naughty boy and needs to be punished." Honeybear replied.
"Was I bad?"
"You were very bad." Honeybear confirmed. "You know what that means."
There was the sound of a belt being undone and a zipper being pulled down.
Oh my god. Shan's eyes were huge. They aren't...
Gage had his forearm in his mouth, biting down hard. His eyes were watering.
There was the sound of a meaty smack.
"Bad boy! Bad." Honeybear was scolding, and there was another smack. "Oh, you are so bad I just don't know what to do with you."
"I'm sorry." Dumpling wailed. "I'll be good, I promise. I'll be a good boy."
"You have to make it up to your Mistress." Honeybear ordered. "You know what I mean."
There was the sound of more clothing being removed, and a very large bra landed next to the bed on the floor. Gage glanced at it and then back at Shan, who looked as though he'd forgotten the basic elements of breathing. A pair of black lacy panties landed near the bra.
"Oh, yes, good boy." Honeybear was moaning now. "Right there."
Gage pretended to gag, and Shan wasn't able to stop a laugh from escaping, but luckily Honeybear was making too much noise for it to be heard.
"Now." Honeybear ordered. "Fuck me."
No, Harold. Gage mouthed upward. Don't do it!
The bed began creaking dangerously. A blue shoe hit the floor with a thump.
"YES, HAROLD, YES!" Honeybear shrieked. "FUCK ME LIKE A TEN DOLLAR WHORE!"
Gage shook his head in denial, holding up five fingers. His other hand he pressed tightly over Shan's mouth.
"I'M COMING!" Dumpling cried out. "GET READY, I'M COMINGGGGGG!!!"
The bed creaked a few more times, and then the room grew silent. A minute later, the sound of twin snores could be heard.
Gage, grinning, put a finger to his lips and the boys very slowly crawled out from under the bed with their knapsacks. Not daring to stand up, they crept out into the hallway and through the kitchen, slipping out the back door. Neither of them said a word until they were out on the beach.
"Dumpling," Gage said thoughtfully, breaking the silence. "desperately needs to work on his stamina."
A second later they were both rolling in the stand, tears running down their cheeks. It had been close call, but once again they'd made it through. "Oh god, Gage." Shan moaned, not caring that they were getting some odd looks from other early-morning beach goers. "Please tell me we won't be like that when we get old."
"Of course not." Gage promised. "We're the Lost Boys. We're never going to get old."
He stared up at the sky, watching a shuttle streak across, leaving a trail of white behind it.
His good mood wouldn't have been quite so good if he'd known that that particular shuttle contained six adults who very much desired a word with him at the moment.
End Part 32
(:./lasha/two32)
