by Ashura
Relena gripped the back of Quatre’s seat with white knuckles as Trowa spun them around another corner on two wheels.
"Got your seatbelt on?" the acrobat asked belatedly.
"As if I wouldn’t," Relena glowered. "You really do think you’re immortal, don’t you?"
Trowa shrugged, his expression bland, and brought Quatre’s E-type to a screaming halt on the Peacecraft mansion’s lawn.
The blonde scowled disapprovingly as he opened the door. "I don’t mind fast—I mean, it’s supposed to go fast—but couldn’t you go easier on the landing? I have awful visions of what could happen to my car." He offered a hand to Relena—who tried not to let on she was trembling—and helped her crawl out of the back seat.
"Sorry," Trowa said, finally apologetic. "I got a little carried away."
He slipped his hand into Quatre’s, and Relena bit back a sudden stab of jealousy as the two boys followed her to the front door. It was, she decided, completely natural—the happiest lovers in the world would have difficulty matching the delighted radiance that all but emanated from those two. If she was envious of the happiness they’d found together, that she’d tried for but never quite reached—well, so would anybody. Somehow, they managed to sustain themselves on the glimpses and stolen nights their long-distance relationship could afford them. Trowa stayed with the circus because he truly loved it, but it kept him travelling. And Quatre, while he might have wished otherwise, could no more run off and join him than she could.
But they loved each other fiercely, any idiot could see that, and they kept on. And she was witnessing firsthand the way one would drop everything else without hesitation if they other needed him.
So who wouldn’t be jealous of a love like that?
"Relena...?" Quatre’s soft voice broke into her thoughts, and she realised she was fumbling with the key in the rusted lock. "Are you all right?"
She nodded, turning the key hastily, glancing back at them as the mechanism creaked reluctantly open.
"Do you two ever fight?" she asked abruptly.
She could tell her question had startled them, but at the same time that it was not the first time they’d been asked. She watched the progression in both their eyes, from startled surprise to mild guilt to curiosity.
"Sometimes," they said at once.
Relena’s gently-raised eyebrow relayed her disbelief eloquently enough, and Quatre chuckled.
"Not often, no. We don’t see each other often enough to waste time fighting—no matter how nice it is to make up after," he added slyly, and Relena rolled her eyes. "But we’ve had our share, I promise you. Now, are we going in?"
Relena nodded, still not completely convinced, and ushered them inside. "I’m not quite sure what we’re looking for," she admitted, as the dust and age of the place assaulted them. Trowa sneezed. "Journals, I suppose, records—books, disks, anything at all."
Trowa nodded-somehow, when he did it, it looked like a salute. "Anywhere in particular we should start?"
Relena shook her head. "I don’t know where anything is, except what Zechs showed me last week."
"Then why don’t we all stick together, at least until we have a better idea of the layout?" Trowa suggested, and Relena smiled at him gratefully, wondering if he didn’t want to go off alone either, or if she was just that transparent to him.
It was hours, though, before they had acquired a "better idea" of the mansion’s grounds. The former home of the Sanq royal family had been abandoned abruptly, and allowed over the years to degrade further into disrepair. What the young detectives found, then, were the charred, dust-covered remnants of the inhabitants’ hasty retreat.
Quatre brushed his fingers across the faded spine of some aged book, its pages long-since damaged by smoke til they were unrecognisable. "How it must have felt," he said softly, "to leave all this behind...to run away, to know your home was falling apart...."
"I imagine," Relena agreed, "that it must have been incredible once."
"And full of people." Trowa added his nostalgic whisper to theirs. "Did you stop to look at the ballroom as we passed? You can tell it was spellbinding—you can almost see them there, still, in a really strange way...."
Three solemn nods, before they resumed their search anew, dispelling the sleeping ghosts of an age long-ended that hovered in the shadows.
A small sound of frustration escaped Heero’s throat as he fixed his computer screen with a withering glare.
Unfazed, it continued to blink brazenly at him:
NO MATCH FOUND.
"Still nothing?" a soft soprano inquired wearily from where Catherine curled with a small stack of old magazines on the couch. Despite a brief afternoon stint in Relena’s basement, their headquarters was a suite Quatre had rented for them all in a hotel—it would have been impossible to keep their search discreet if all give of them had stayed with Relena, who lived with her brother, Peygan, and Miss Noin.
Besides, neither Quatre nor Heero had ever really become comfortable with Preventer Wind, the peacetime Zechs Merquise.
So now, with Trowa, Quatre and Relena off searching the Peacecraft mansion and Duo still scouring libraries, Heero and Catherine conducted their research in relative quiet and with dauntingly little result.
"Still nothing," Heero confirmed. "It shouldn’t be that difficult, all I want is a genealogy record to get Katrina’s brother’s name."
"Romafeller wiped a lot of Sanq records," Catherine explained, and Heero looked up at her in surprise. He hadn’t realised she paid that much attention to the politics that surrounded the war. She caught the look and let out an irritated sigh. "I repeat, I’m not completely ignorant."
"I know you’re not. I’m sorry." Heero scowled into his screen at having been so readily caught. "But I didn’t know about that."
Catherine shrugged. "Dorothy Catalonia mentioned it once." Her grey eyes narrowed in thought, and she paused, her fingers frozen in mid-turn of a crinkled page. "You know, she said something else the same night...Heero, why not run Catalonia and Khushrenada, if you can’t get Peacecraft?"
"Huh? Oh, why not?" Heero’s fingers flew, and words began scrolling down his screen again. "Any idea what I should be looking for?"
Catherine had her head bent over her pile again, flipping frantically through pages. "I will in a minute—just narrow it to those in the right age bracket...."
Heero, more than a little impressed—though he would never have admitted it—stole a glance at her past the computer screen as his fingers, long-since accustomed to typing without input from his eyes or conscious mind, processed the search requirements. He wondered, however idly, if the secret to the circus siblings’ bond was really no more than the ability to move gracefully in impossibly tight jeans. On either one, it was distracting. Tousled auburn hair fell haphazardly around her face as she bent to the stack of magazines, brushing against her shoulders and the soft green sweater that draped her frame. A few loose strands clung there, glistening golden-red in the light that filtered through the window.
Heero, normally trained to notice such detail only out of tactical necessity, wondered where these observations were coming from, and how long he’d been having them without noticing.
Quite a while, his subconscious informed him. You just weren’t paying attention.
"Louis," Catherine said abruptly, sliding off the couch with a satisfied sigh. "Louis Catalonia. Look for something about him in a duel with Philip Cressida."
There was something vaguely familiar in that, and Heero’s furious typing was rewarded when colour blossomed on his screen and took the form of a photo-capture of a dashing, handsome, smiling young man with white-blonde hair and pale blue eyes.
"I think we’re onto something," he said, suddenly quite conscious of Catherine’s proximity as she leaned across his shoulder to better see.
"Now we work backward," she suggested, sounding pleased. "That’s Katrina’s brother...now we look for his connection to Quatre’s father."
"It might take a while," Heero cautioned, noting that while there was more information on this lead than any they’d yet found, he had to expect that not all of it had escaped Romafeller’s purging.
Catherine shrugged. "So I’ll put coffee on." Heero’s eyes continued to follow her as she padded to the kitchenette, berating himself all the while.
Life with Duo and Hilde had been making him soft. This was a mission. It was no time to let himself get distracted!
But really...after years of soldiering, one failed attempt at a relationship, and Duo’s constant badgering about how abnormal he was, it felt kind of nice to be distracted.
Duo let out a sigh and slumped onto the table. He was surrounded by a pile of yellowed newspapers and tabloid magazines, and the dust was making his nose tickle.
Duo decided he’d earned break. Shoving the pile aside and fumbling in his pocket for cigarettes, he abandoned the realms of twenty-year-old court intrigue for the damp, musty autumn air.
He lit a cigarette as the library door swung shut behind him, ignoring the pointed glare of a young mother who was ushering her child out of a nearby car. Smoking was hardly the most death-defying thing Duo had ever done, and despite Heero and Hilde both nagging him about it incessantly, he wasn’t inclined to feel apologetic over it.
He punched his access number into the public phone that stood sentinel near the door. It rang at least eight times before the visual receiver clicked on to reveal Hilde, wrapped in an oversized t-shirt and hastily toweling her hair. "Yes—oh! Duo!" A sigh of relief at the familiar, unthreatening face of her roommate. "How’s it going?"
"Dusty," Duo proclaimed, wrinkling his nose. "I’m taking a break, thought I’d call and see how you were."
Hilde shrugged, tossing the towel aside and running her fingers through her short dark hair. "Business as usual, really. I get to drive the forklift a lot without Heero around to lift things."
Duo grinned. "So that’s why you wanted to get rid of him...and I, as usual, tag along in his wake...."
Hilde snorted. "I think Heero would dispute that, and I for one know better. Not that I don’t like having the place all to myself," she added. "It’s amasingly quiet here without you."
"Aw, but Hilde," Duo teased, "I would never have thought you liked it quiet!"
"Well, I do—sometimes," she amended with a grin, before re-settling herself in front of the phone on what Duo recognised as one of their kitchen stools. "So why don’t you tell me how the sleuthing is going? I’m dying of curiousity here!"
Duo grinned. "Oh, all right!" He flicked the last ashes from his cigarette and snubbed it out on the bricks of the library wall. "It’s going pretty slowly, Hilde, to be honest. We’ve figured out that the Queen had Relena, took off for L4, and had Quatre, but that’s about it. Oh—and that Mr Winner was an old friend of her brother’s or something. That’s the part we’re looking for now."
Hilde nodded thoughtfully. "Let me guess—the old records have all been ‘cleaned out’ so there’s nothing to find."
Duo nodded. "You got it. I’m in the library looking through old gossip columns."
She laughed. "Then get back to it! I have a scrapyard to run—I can see Murphy’s truck pulling in right now, and I’m not dressed. Besides, you have scandals to uncover."
Duo grinned sheepishly. "Okay, okay, I’ll let you go. See you when we get back, Hilde."
"Sure thing. Say hi to everybody for me. And keep me updated," she added impishly.
He tossed her a hasty mock-salute. "Ninmu ryokai!"
She clicked off the phone, and he got back to work.
"Sir?" A soft voice called to him as he settled back at the table. He looked up to see one of the librarians, a slim brunette barely older than Duo himself, cradling a plastic-covered periodical in her arms. "This might help you, I thought I’d bring it over for you to see."
"Huh? Oh, thanks—let’s take a look." She set it down in front of him, flipping through pages til a bright full-colour spread opened in front of him. "This one."
THE DEATH OF A DYNASTY, it read. A NATION DEVOTED TO PACIFISM ENCOUTNERS A NEW KIND OF BATTLE.
It was an analysis of the Sanq Kingdom’s demise—not comprehensive by any means, but informative nonetheless. Duo’s eyes widened. "This is fantastic, thanks!"
The librarian smiled, her hazel eyes sparkling. It was, Duo, realised abruptly, the same look he’d seen on Wufei’s face from time to time at the prospect of new knowledge. Huh...that’s a thought. Wonder why nobody’s called in Wu-man and Sally on this yet? Probably because he’s never gotten along with Relena, so she wouldn’t think to. Well, maybe if we need his help later.
"I’ll let you know if I find anything else," the girl said, vanishing into stacks of books, and Duo bent over the magazine to glean what he could.
Empty-handed and subdued, Relena, Quatre, and Trowa piled back into the car they’d left parked on the lawn.
Quatre patted Relena’s shoulder comfortingly. "We may not have found anything, but I’m glad we went," he told her honestly.
Trowa nodded. "Sure was something to see," he agreed, turning the key to bring the E-type rumbling to life. "You both buckled in?"
His white-knuckled passengers nodded. "Why do you keep letting him drive?" Relena asked in a low voice—not low enough, and Trowa laughed.
"Yes, Quatre, why do you?" he asked teasingly.
"Because he doesn’t get to drive my car very often," Quatre answered innocently, ignoring his lover. "Or any nice car, for that matter—just those trucks the circus uses to cart things around in. And he likes it. And since I love him," he added dryly, "I foolishly trust him not to endanger my life."
"Besides," Trowa inserted smootly, "get Quatre here on a bad day, and he redefines the term ‘road rage.’"
Relena raised an eyebrow, and Quatre blushed.
They spun into the driveway of the house Relena shared with Zechs and Noin, and skidded to a screeching halt outside her door.
"Pick you up tomorrow?" Trowa asked as she climbed gingerly out of the backseat.
She made a face at him. "No thanks. How about I pick you up?"
Trowa looked disappointed. Quatre chuckled. "Suit yourself." She tossed them both a wave and disappeared inside.
Trowa reached for the gear shift and found Quatre’s fingers lacing into his own.
"I think we should go see what else Sanq has to offer," the blonde said neutrally, though from the corner of his eye Trowa could see the smile threatening to break across his face.
"You mean we should stall," he responded, deadpan.
Quatre did grin at that. "Are you saying you don’t want to spend some time alone with me?" he demanded, trying to sound hurt and failing miserably.
Trowa lifted their joined hands to his lips, kissing his lover’s fingers teasingly. "Of course not."
Quatre smirked, brushing those same fingers across Trowa’s lips. "Then let’s go into town for a while. I found a restaurant earlier I want to try with you, and I’m not ready to go back to the others yet."
"All right," Trowa said agreeably. "You navigate."
The car very nearly took flight, and Quatre chose to keep his mind off the possibility of imminent doom by tracing abstract patterns along the length of Trowa’s denim-clad thigh. "I hope the others had better luck," he mused thoughtfully.
"Quatre," said Trowa reluctantly, "your doing that is making it really hard to keep my mind on driving."
Quatre considered carefully how much fun danger could really be.
Relena watched out the window as the boys drove away, then tossed herself limply in the oversized armchair usually reserved for Peygan, poking idly at the dying fire.
She was tired. Tired and frustrated, because their search of her ancestral home had turned up nothing.
She'd get some dinner, and a hot bath—then she could call the hotel and see what progress the others had made. If, indeed, they'd made any.
She fished the worn photograph from her pocket and stared at it—the long, pale silky hair; the crystal blue eyes sparkling merrily even from the faded cracks of a ragged, torn portrait; the delicate, childlike face. She looked so young—younger than a mother should, especially a mother whose children had seen as much as hers had.
"Why won't you tell us?" she asked the picture wearily. "Mother, why won't you reveal your secrets?"
The photo, predictably, did not answer.
"Relena." It was her brother's voice, and she twisted in the chair to follow his movements as he crossed the room to kneel in front of her. "Can I ask you a favour?"
She nodded, a little startled. While they were attempting to turn mutual respect and a wistful desire for family into a true relationship, the siblings were still not as close as either would have liked. And her certainly wasn't inclined to ask her for things. "What is it?"
"Let the past go," he answered simply, closing her fingers around the photograph so he wouldn't have to see it. "Please...just let it all be over." His head dropped, and soft strands of platinum hair fell forward to obscure his face. "I know that you went back to the palace—and that it's not as hard for you as it is for me. I have a hard enough time moving on, Relena—I need to just forget, or I'll never have a life of my own."
Relena's heart wrenched, and impulsively she reached out to squeeze his hand. "I'm sorry." She sighed, brushed tendrils of hair away from his eyes. "There are a few more answers I need before I can let it all go—but then I will, Zechs, I promise."
"Answers?" he repeated, faint surprise darkening his blue eyes. "What answers?"
Sighing, she opened his fingers and pressed the photograph into his palm. "Zechs...who does that woman look like?"
He blinked at her, and at the picture, not understanding. "Like our mother, Relena, you know—"
"You see no resemblance to Quatre Winner?" she asked, cutting him off mid-sentence.
The pale eyes grew wide, naked surprise dominating Zechs' face as the significance of her words sunk in. "Only now that you mention it, but yes, it's unmistakable," he admitted wonderingly.
"That's the answers I mean," Relena explained softly. "I didn't mean to bother you with it—I know it hurts you to dwell on the past too much. But I need to know this, Quatre and I both do, if only for ourselves. That's why we went back, but we didn't find anything. Peygan, Miss Noin, Iria—nobody knows anything. But we're still looking."
"You talked to Noin?" he repeated, dismayed, shaking his head slowly. "She didn't mention it to me either...yes, Relena, it hurts, but I would have helped you if you'd asked...."
"Then why not help her now?" a new voice—Lucrezia Noin's strong, melodic alto—broke in from where the former Lieutenant herself leaned casually against the doorframe. "Since we've failed, as usual, to keep information from you."
Relena caught his hand again, her eyes hopeful. "Will you?"
Slowly, Zechs nodded. "Of course...of course I will." His sigh seemed to deflate him, his posture that of a soldier who finds one last battle still to be fought. He rose wearily, barely noticing when Noin slipped from her position by the door to take his arm.
He looks so tired. Relena regretted, for a moment, having troubled him with her mystery at all. But it was his mystery too, by birthright, so shouldn't he know about it?
After all, Quatre was his brother too. And he had suffered more from the fall of the Sanq kingdom than she ever could have.
Catherine and Heero sat side-by-side on the sofa, huddled around the laptop, clutching cups of tepid coffee and watching columns of insufficient information scroll down the screen. Several hours and two pots of Mills Bros, and all they had uncovered was that Philip Cressida--brother to Queen Katrina and schoolmate of one Haroun Winner--had been killed in a duel at the hands of Louis Catalonia.
And that said Haroun Winner had first met the adult Katrina at her brother's funeral.
Catherine's head drooped onto Heero's shoulder, and he caught the mug before it slipped from her fingers. He settled it onto the table, out of harm's way, and divided his attention between the data filling his screen and the exhilarating awkwardness of Catherine's cheek resting against him. By the time he had memorised all available statements regarding Philip's rather controversial death, he was beginning to lose interest in the former. His fingers, entirely of their own volition, had just twined gently around a dangling strand of auburn hair when the vidphone interrupted with a shrill cry.
Blearily, Catherine blinked awake, mumbling an incoherent apology as she lifted her head.
Heero smiled awkwardly. "I didn't mind."
Catherine returned the smile sleepily, rubbing at her eyes, and stifled a yawn. "Wanna get that...?"
Heero nodded, standing reluctantly and crossing the room to flip on the phone. Relena's face appeared on the screen, her eyes tired, her hair wrapped in a towel.
"Find anything?" she asked.
Heero shrugged. "A bit. I'll send it to you. Relena...are Trowa and Quatre still with you?"
She shook her head, only a little surprised. "No, we split up hours ago. They probably wanted to steal some time for themselves. They're not back yet?"
"Nope. Neither is Duo."
A ghost of a smile quirked at the corners of Relena's mouth. "So it's been just you and Cathy all night?" she asked, a little too pointedly for Heero's taste. He nodded slowly, hoping he had mistaken the glint in her eye. He couldn't be that transparent, could he?
"I'll send you what we found," he repeated.
Relena chuckled. "It can wait til morning, Heero, I'm going to bed. It's after two in the morning, I just wanted to check in, since we turned up nothing at all. Except...."
His head tilted, curious. "Except what?"
She shrugged, a careless ripple of cotton-clad shoulders, as if whatever she had to say was of no real consequence. "My brother caught on to things. He says he'll help us, if we let him forget about it after."
"That should help," Heero conceded. "He has more idea what to look for than we do."
Relena nodded. "Exactly. Anyway, I'm going to bed. I'll be over tomorrow around--oh, say eleven? Since nobody's gone to bed yet?"
"I"ll be up by seven," Heero reminded her, almost sternly, and she laughed.
"Yes, I know, but nobody else will. Talk to you tomo--no, today. In about nine hours." The phone clicked off and the screen went dark, and Heero turned back to the couch to resume his search.
Catherine had stretched out along it, her head pillowed on her hands, her breathing even and rhythmic. Heero sighed and shut the computer down. Relena was right, it could wait.
He carried his computer into the bedroom he was sharing with Duo. There was no sign his friend and roommate had even been there since that morning--bottles of haircare products were tossed haphazardly on the bed, which had never been made, and yesterday's dirty socks were scattered across the floor. Heero just shook his head fondly--once, Duo's cluttered habits had irritated him no end, but after prolonged exposure, he had learned to just accept that it was part of being Duo. When they'd gotten a house together, they'd just made sure it had three bedrooms, so that neither he, Duo, nor Hilde had to share, and could keep their particular section of their domicile in any shape they pleased.
Then Hilde had insisted on having her own bathroom, too, but somehow she had convinced them that was fair.
Heero tugged the duvet off his bed, and folded it in his arms. He padded silently back down the hall, and spread it gently over Catherine's sleeping form. He didn't need it anyway, and it gave him a pleasantly protective feeling to be doing this. Tucking the blanket around her, he let his fingers brush lightly down her cheek as he pulled away.
"Oyasumi," he murmured, and then hurried back to his room to get ready for bed and investigate these interesting new feelings he was having. And if he didn't figure it out, maybe he could ask Duo in the morning.
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