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The Grand Cessation
Disclaimer: The reason I haven't updated for so long was because I was on a mission to actually own Gundam Wing. Mission failed... for the time being..
There was a protest outside the estate today. A hundred men dressed in white cloaks and wearing masks, bearing staffs with large gold symbols of their religion, performed what they called a "peaceful presentation". They had signs with large print and I spent awhile looking outside my window reading every one. "ONLY GOD'S BABIES HAVE SOULS" and "TEST TUBES AREN'T WOMBS: GO TO HELL" and "MONEY DOESN'T BUY SALVATION" and "LUCIFER THINKS HE CAN DO GOD'S WORK". Then of course the more personalized ones "THE WINNER FAMILY WILL BURN WITH THE REST OF THE ORGANIC MATTER COME APOCALYPSE" and "DON'T BOTHER PRAYING, YOU AREN'T PART OF HIS FLOCK". Some man with a microphone, probably their leader, addressed the crowd and talked about the immorality of trying to "play God". But really I guess he was talking to us. Father was gone on a business trip in New Zealand, and I think they knew that. Which means that maybe they were really talking to me. I saw them through my window and I wanted to do something so badly, but A'mal did not let me. She told me that you can't force people to change what they believe, and it takes time and patience. I don't have patience and I don't want to give the time. Well, let them say what they want. I don't want any part of the WEO anymore. But it's my own decision, it doesn't have anything do with them.
Where was that old guy anyway? Duo stopped and scratched his head. He could have sworn that he had checked the exact room where Howard had said he would be staying. The bastard wouldn't be trying to ditch him now, would he? It was supposed to be the other way! And it was more than just a social call. There was no reason in the world why Howard needed to be anywhere other than down in the garage with Heero and him, fixing up the mobile suits. Not even the Gundam pilots themselves pretended to be as good of a mechanic as Howard.
"Agent Maxwell!" A young woman in a military uniform had come out from around a corner, panting. Her jumpiness and exhilaration reminded Duo slightly of good ol' Hilde. In a way it was a welcome sight. Not necessarily the bare fact that she resembled the girl, but what the thought of Hilde symbolized to him. In the back of his mind the drab, dull Artemis was replaced by the rebuilt colony in L2 that really did look like autumn.
"The one and only," he smiled as she continued. She even kind of looked like Hilde, same hair color and eye color. A little taller, but Hilde was kind of short.
"Uh, I've been looking for you, sir!" the woman said with an awkward salute. "Agent Po has arrived on base, sir! And she's requested audience with you and Agent Yuy! Sir!"
Duo laughed. Hilde was never so gosh darn respectful. The girl had, after all, at the flip of a coin turned against her superiors. Of course it was awfully nice for him that she did, but he sure didn't think it was respectful. "Yeah, yeah. About time she got here, too. Though, actually, I guess she got here earlier than expected, huh? Alrighty, lead the way, darling."
"Wait, one thing, sir!" The Hilde look-alike paused, as if remembering something. "Did you or Mr. Yuy leave the base sometime yesterday, or maybe the day before, and take a shuttle?"
"What? Hmm... Not that I know of," Duo answered thoughtfully. "Now, granted I don't babysit Heero, but he's obsessed with his mobile suit right now. He's not moving his ass anytime soon. In fact, good luck getting him to meet with Sally!"
"Oh. Well, we're missing one. And the cameras didn't get any footage of it."
"I dunno anything about it." Duo shrugged, but then like a lightbulb he remembered why he had been out wandering the labyrinth-like hallways in the first place. "Well, maybe it was Howard. I haven't seen him in awhile. And he can work anything with an engine and probably avoid cameras, too."
"What! But why would he want to do that, sir?"
"Ah, calm down, sweetheart. He's not a criminal! Or maybe he is, I don't really know who's deciding the criteria these days for what defines a law-breaker, but I hope they don't know me. Anyway, he's just used to living on the run." Duo grinned at the uncomfortable look on her face. Some people just couldn't comprehend what life was like underneath the golden book of rules. And it wasn't like Howard was a drug dealer or even much of a thief. As far as Duo knew, he just used to work for OZ and made some enemies that he would rather avoid. "Something probably came up. Don't worry about him though, he's a tough old cookie and smart as hell. I'm just glad that it was probably him that left, here I thought he was avoiding me!"
"But it's still illegal to take vessels without-"
"Hey, hey, hey!" Duo smirked. "He helped us freedom fightin' soldiers out enormously during the Eve wars, without him we never could've stopped OZ and the White Fang! He's a hero. Heroes don't have to follow any rules." The woman did not look convinced, and Duo sighed, realizing he was beating his head against a wall. "Enough of that old fart, he's probably just getting senile and paranoid, anyhow. Let's get to Sally, she'll throw a fit if we make her wait too long."
As they walked - and man, did they ever walk in that maze - Duo reminded himself that Howard was as spontaneous as any pilot. How many times had Duo left him without so much as a note goodbye? Well, he would certainly miss the man. He was certainly better company than Heero.
Something had happened to A'mal.
With this knowledge he stood up on shaky legs and took a moment to regain his balance. He felt shockingly weak and tired, but there was no time to rest in war. His brain was already spinning through calculations. He had to act, and he needed to gather an army of sorts. Now where was the nearest vidphone?
"Quatre!" As he had been opening the door, someone else was just on the other side. It was Noin, looking surprised and concerned. She grabbed his arm to support him as he stumbled. "Are you okay? We were so worried!"
The boy was very close to shoving passed her, feeling a surge of impatience. Instead, he smiled. "Thank you for the concern. I must've been tired and lightheaded. All of the meetings and paperwork meant apparently not enough sleep for me!" Then, more gracefully, he continued to walk with his head held high.
"Wait, Quatre!" She sounded worn out herself, but her kindness was there. "I'm worried about you. I think you should rest more."
"I've rested too long," he answered, looking on her with determination. "There are too many things I have to take care of now."
Her kind eyes hardened into frustrated anger. She leaned forward and looked as though she wanted to slap him. "Stop it! You're exhausted and over stressing yourself! Why won't you realize that you're still just a child, and let the adults take care of things for a change? We're making arrangements for WEO right now, it's all set up so-"
"Noin, I'm sorry." Quatre was honestly so. Noin's words were nice, but altogether alien to him. "I gave my childhood up a long time ago, and I can't go back now." He went passed her quickly to let her know that the conversation was over.
Noin's voice wasn't much more than a murmur. "For a boy who isn't a child, you still think like one."
The youth paused, slightly turning his head back to her. Then he continued walking, and this time faster.
"No adult would believe that one sacrifice, even one war could possibly destroy the aggressive side of humanity, Quatre. You're just a kid, and in a way I guess that's what I admired in you pilots the most. The fact that-" Here she caught her voice, though whether in a sob or a gurgle of laughter was unclear to him. "-that you believe something the rest of us are afraid of."
"What a thing for you to say, Miss Noin," Quatre answered without turning around. "You of all people don't believe that the world has changed after all of that?"
"I don't know what I believe. I just know what I see." Noin spoke quietly, but with enough force to make herself heard down the hallway. "Zechs... Zechs and Mr. Treize... especially Mr. Treize..."
"I'm sorry, Noin." Quatre had reached a door in the hallway, and he meant to not wait a second longer to turn the handle. "I need to figure some things out, too, but it seems like the world has no time for philosophers to sit and meditate. It's my fault that my uncle is out there, it's my fault we don't have Gundams anymore, and it's my fault that I haven't found a better way to make people realize the peace that we've achieved in my politics."
"What? Quatre!" Noin started toward him now, looking furious again. "Stop, Quatre! Commander Une will-"
He walked through the door and gave her one last look. He gave her an ironic smile, and spoke kindly. "Une can't do anything to me." He shut the door, cutting any conclusion to his statement short. He walked along the corridor. His eyes were downcast to the floor in his brooding, wondering vaguely if he should be avoiding people on his way out or if Une had realized that she would never be able to hold true to her threats of making him stay. She can't do anything to me. I'm still...
...I'm still...
"Quatre! Quatre Raberba Winner, how delightful!"
"Hm?" The youth looked up to see none other than the slender, mysteriously soft complexion of Dorothy Catalonia's exquisitely calculating face. She offered him a brilliant grin with pearly white teeth that might have looked even more natural if they were cat-like fangs. She wore a dark business suit that had embroidered into it her own personal flair and charm; almost like midnight with a long river of pale gold hair falling down her back like moonbeams. She looked like a feline ready to pounce. "Miss Catalonia! A pleasure as always!" Quatre said with a smile, though he could not cut down his feelings of being on edge.
"The pleasure is mine! But my dear, what a surprise to see you at such a place as this?" She was purring as if she was just making small talk, but her eyes were narrowed with curiosity. "A place like Preventer Headquarters!"
"It's a long story," Quatre said quickly and dismissively.
"Not that long, and I can guess the ending." She chuckled, crossing her arms. "A warrior finds a home in the battleground that he can never quite forget. Ah, how eloquently Mr. Treize would put it! But the truth is, Quatre Raberba Winner, the desert prince of peace, the sensitively sympathetic Newtype... you're here because you're still-"
I'm still...
"-a Gundam pilot." Dorothy's smile had vanished. She looked at him with hard eyes, but it was not an attacking gaze. It was almost as though she were squinting to try to see him better. "Take a walk with me, Quatre. We can have a nice conversation, like we used to have back in the Sanq kingdom! Do you remember those talks, my dear?"
"I'm surprised that you do," he answered. "But pleasantly so, of course."
"Why, yes! There is something fascinating about the pair of us, don't you think so, Mr. Winner? We're both here now, when neither of us really ought to be. Does it suit us? I don't think so. Maybe it's still what we are, even if we wouldn't care to make it our first choice. But regardless, we're both here to take up a sword. I'm applying for a position in the Preventers, and you're-"
"I have something I need to fight for," Quatre interrupted.
"And so do I, my dear. Now how about that walk?" Dorothy smiled brilliantly again, and Quatre considered her for a moment, deciding that she was the biggest threat when she was being sincere. People who found fighting beautiful were that way. The real question was then, a threat to who?
He laid on the cot, his knees up and his arms limply hanging at his sides. At the elbow they jointed upward to meet and handcuffs on his wrists - probably, in all honesty, a smart move on their part. Clumsy bandages lined his open wounds, though they weren't tightly bound enough to do much, anyway. The deep cuts were fine though, as long as he refrained from moving he could hardly feel them. It was the annoying bruises and burns that kept waking him up.
The whole situation was clumsy. Really that was what annoyed him the most. But regardless, he had no plans to focus exclusively on his blunder. That did no good now. Trowa was a calculating youth, and he had already noticed something that bothered him. The metal on the walls was a dark steel. It was entirely different from the lighter metal that he had seen in the Gundanium plant. Of course, this could mean any number of things, but he was a little worried that after he had fallen unconscious after the "interrogation" (if one could call it such a thing, really all that had happened was that he had been pounded upon repeatedly by some unknown man named Orpheus) he had been taken to some cell not at the plant. If so, the difficulty of escape would be raised. He did not know where he was.
Biting back his pain under an empty mask of an expression, he slowly sat up. Irritating, yeah, but he reminded himself that he had had worse. At least, he thought with an ironic smile that didn't make it to his face, he still had his memory.
Deciding that the best thing to do would be to get the process of standing up over with, he swung his legs over to the floor. He put weight on them. "Ahhh..." The heavy breath of a sigh escaped his lips when he remembered that it wasn't that long ago that there were bullets lodged in those legs, somewhere or other. And what had Mujahid said? Something about broken ribs.
He walked - or probably more accurately hobbled - toward the cell door. He grabbed onto the window bars for support when he arrived, and looked out the window. Outside there was a horizontal hallway, and by craning his head he could make out a number of cells. But the entire prison collection didn't seem too large, which at least meant he wasn't at any kind of jail. No, this was private, like those on a ship. Was he on a ship?
There was a guard by the entrance. It was a woman wearing a green uniform. Trowa found that part the most interesting, and he squinted to try to make out some kind of logo or symbol. Trowa took a breath. "Hey, you!"
The guard turned his way. "What? What do you want?" she asked, trying to sound irrate but Trowa could tell that she welcomed a break from the tedious job of standing still.
"I'm just curious," he answered as politely as he knew how. "Where are we, and do I get to meet with Mujahid again?"
"We're on his ship right now, the Hecate," she answered with a shrug. "We haven't left Ereshkigal 2 yet."
"Ah." So it was a ship. At least it was still on the comet. "And Mujahid?"
The guard responded, "Mr. Winner is a very busy man."
Mr. Winner? Trowa exhaled sharply, and when he did so his bruised ribs made him pay for it. He stumbled slightly, but held on to the bars with his hands. "Mr. Winner? Mujahid Winner?"
"Didn't you...?" The guard narrowed her brown eyes, and then a rosy blush filled her tanned face. She had caught her blunder. "I thought the Preventers knew it was him already."
Trowa's face was its usual mask of indifference. "I wouldn't know. I'm not a Preventer, I'm just a mercenary. They don't tell me more than they have to."
"I... I see!" She turned away to hide her embarrassment. "Well, then! Not like it matters, they'll probably execute you anyway! So, well!"
"Of course." Trowa said lightly, but his mind was working as fast as only a Gundam pilot's could. Mujahid Winner. The name wasn't familiar, but familiar enough. If there was a Winner funding a project such as this, it could only be a Raberba Winner. Mujahid must be of some relation to Quatre. The question was why? Quatre had a family of disciplined pacifists. "And the woman with him is his... wife?"
"Why do you care?" The woman was still flustered, apparently.
"I want to know as much as I can about Mujahid," Trowa answered truthfully. "After all, I have to appeal my case to him or else I'm going to die, right? I have no desire to be executed. I have a sister back at home who would be heart broken if I never returned."
That made the green uniformed guard turn back his direction. Women tended to sympathize with honesty, or at least what sounded like honesty. It was kind, but easy enough to manipulate. "Oh. Okay."
She was too jumpy. He needed to get on more personal terms with her. "I'm sorry. I've been impolite. My name is Trowa Barton. I did not mean to make you feel like you were compromising your employer."
"Oh, right." The woman had slowly brought herself closer to his cell door, and he could make her features out better. Cropped black hair and small brown eyes - it was hard to tell her ethnicity. Her skin was just dark enough to perhaps be tribute to any number of Earth countries. Though most likely she was a mutt to some extent, like everyone else. "No, you didn't. My name is Narisah Sarasvati."
"Regards." Trowa shifted his weight, as his legs were aching. He wondered how long it would take her to undo his handcuffs. "It might have been nicer to meet under different conditions though. Unfortunately this will have to suffice." He softened his voice and even offered the slightest of smiles to further express his sincerity.
"Unfortunately?" Narisah's face went pink again, but she didn't turn away. "You know, uhh..." She mumbled a little, as though unsure of what to say. "Well, she is his wife, yeah."
"Hm?" The girl was scatterbrained, however did she get a position in Mujahid's militia? She must have been cheaply bought. As that idea crossed his mind, Trowa wondered how rich Mujahid was compared to Quatre, and what the WEO meant to him.
"She wasn't the first woman that he wanted to marry, that's what I heard." The guard's voice was quick, almost girl-like in its quality. Maybe she was just a girl, and cared to gossip like the rest of the female race. "He really loved a woman who ended up choosing his brother!"
"Zayeed Ahmad Raberba Winner?" he asked the name of Quatre's father, if only to confirm that this was the same Winner.
"Yeah! So then he met Rose in London, years later. Did you know that she was a relative of Romefeller?"
"Relation of Romefeller? Rose Romefeller?"
"No, no, Rose Catalonia. They used their DNA to make a son in the test tubes, but it didn't turn out very well. Alyosha is alive. I think."
"No... I did not know that." It was Trowa's turn to be at a loss for words. Of course, it could be just a coincidence. And Trowa firmly believed that there were coincidences in the world - fate was a concept that he had no time nor patience for. He almost felt like the loner left out of some joke when within no more than a couple minutes of conversation he discovered not one but two names that made him realize how very grave this situation could be.
Narisah was close enough now, close enough that had his wrists not been shackled he could reach his arm through to touch her. Even as he tried to work the last names he had heard into his calculations, his mind also toyed with the idea of getting her to uncuff him and eventually grabbing and threatening her to open the door. And then a third part of his mind noticed that now he could see a logo on her uniform. The same symbol marked the left arm of her sleeve as well as her belt buckle.
It was an eagle with wings spread, as if it were flying. Trowa wasn't sure whether or not to find it ironic that eagles always symbolized freedom.
Author's Notes:
1. The diary entry at the beginning - yeah, those dudes kind of sound like the KKK. Well, we all know how insecure Quatre was about his origins as a 'test tube baby', and I thought, why would that be? When I thought of the futuristic world of Gundam Wing, I knew that there just had to still be heated social/political issues, and that's another thing I'm trying to address in this fic. Especially when those issues concern utter hatred for no reason - so when I thought of 'test tube babies' I figured there would be extremists out there who would think of them as lesser people, like the KKK does for non-white-male-Christians. However please note now that my "KKK" is not meant to consist of any particular religions and I'm not trying to offend (unless you are a part of the KKK.. my fic probably won't be your cup of tea.)
2. Hecate, Artemis, Narisah, Ereshkigal - anyone else noticing a pattern? Yes, I'm naming many of my people and places and things after mythological goddesses, particularly those of the moon.
3. I remember back when I started this fic, I was whipping out chapters every couple of days. Had it been like a month, month and a half now? Ohh, I've been too busy. Plus my internet has been down (and still kind of is) so I haven't been able to read/write as much fanfiction as I've been wanting to.
Thanks as always for those of you who have been keeping up with this peculiar rambling. :-) You are appreciated!
-Serria