Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ 3 Ties That Bind ❯ Seven ( Chapter 7 )

“Hey, Quatre.”

I looked to the vid, raising my eyebrows at Sally.

“Just wanted to tell you it was a false lead,” she muttered tiredly, rubbing at her eyes.

“Another one?”

She nodded, covering her eyes with her hand.

“So you have no idea where he is?” I asked, raising an eyebrow slightly. “He’s just…gone?”

“Yes, sir,” she agreed, swallowing.

“No information on him what-so-ever?”

“None.”

“Did you at least figure out why he was trained?”

“Just an assassin,” she returned, raising her eyes to mine again. “I’m sorry, Quatre.”

“Don’t apologize,” I sighed, shifting back. “If he is just an assassin, then there’s no real reason for us to all be up in arms.” I started messing with the cap of my pen. “Assassins are very good at slipping through nets, and chances are he’s no actual threat to any of us…just some syndicate lackey. It means that that chase was more apt to be a waste of our time and effort.”

She flinched at that.

“Talk to my men,” I ordered, meeting her eyes. “If they want to keep hunting our blue-boy, then let them. If not, send them home. I’m sure I can find something for them to do.”

“That was…three months…wasted effort,” she protested.

“Three months works better than three years,” I reminded her, shaking my head. “It’s pointless to worry about it now.”

“But his training…” she protested, frowning at me. “Just like you boys.”

“Boys?” I demanded archly, cocking an eyebrow at her. “We’ll never be men to you, will we?”

She laughed weakly at that, shaking her head.

“You did what I asked you to do,” I reminded her. “No harm, no foul. If my guys care to keep chasing the shadow let them. I trust individual instincts more than bare-facts with this sort of thing.”

“Yes, sir,” she sighed.

“What else have you gotten for me?”

“Just the usual bullshit and breakfast menus.”

“Wonderful,” I smiled sweetly at her. “What did you have for breakfast?”

She raised an eyebrow at me.

“Oh, come on,” I protested. “It’s all in good fun...”

“And if I lie to you, will you know the difference?”

“Is your breakfast meal worth the man-power?”

She grinned at that and gave me a look. “I had eggs benedict with hash browns.”

“Wrong!” I bounced happily. “You had a bowl of cereal.”

She raised an eyebrow at me.

“No?” I protested, grinning more. “You strike me as a cereal with bad milk sorta person.”

“Except that I pay enough attention to realize my milk is bad and get the eggs out.”

I started laughing.

She shook her head at me…and disconnected.

“She hung up on me,” I protested, looking up to Jacob. “Can you believe it?”

“Blue-boy?” he returned.

“It’s a state secret, if I told you, I’d have to kill you…”

“Sally doesn’t work for the state,” he reminded me pleasantly.

I grinned in return.

- -

Things moved on.

I took Quatre’s advice and found stuff to distract myself, because I knew on some level I was just being a baby. It wasn’t fair of me to take it out on my staff, and least of all Ryu, who seemed to have enough father-figure issues without adding me being an asshole to the list. Shit, it wasn’t his fault he was attractive, or his fault that my wife was pregnant.

Heheh, that was all me.

I grinned to myself.

“Sir?”

I looked up to the guy, who I’d had typing up reports for me.

“You were smiling,” he shrugged, looking back to the keyboard.

“Why were you watching me?” I retorted.

“I paused to think and looked up,” he shrugged almost uncomfortably.

“Okay, fine. Why couldn’t you have waited until October to join?”

He looked away from me with a frown.

“Answer me, and I’ll answer you,” I noted, smiling happily at him before looking back to the paper I was reading.

“Can…you tell me why you didn’t assume your position when the queen retook her throne?” he asked quietly.

“My fiancé was killed,” I returned darkly, not looking up.

“I’m…sorry,” he muttered, startled.

I figured he’d let the matter drop and get on with his work. He’d been perfectly content to keep his mouth shut before. Considering that Mikhail was only a month old when the celebration of Faye’s birthday came up, on September seventeenth, I’d been informed that I got to change places with Hilde. She’d take care of the kids and I could sit pretty.

Actually, I still wasn’t sure why Ro had made Ryu sit through the thing with us…

I grinned again at the comparisons of the name. Sure, Ro was the end of Heero’s name and Ryu was Som’s last name, but…it still amused me.

“You’re smiling again,” he muttered, glancing at me with his eyes.

I grinned even more.

He studied me a moment, then nodded. “I thought you married Mrs. Maxwell a year after you took your position.”

“Only a year?” I mused, sitting back as I considered it. “It seemed like an eternity to me.”

He blinked at me.

I shook my head, shifting forward again. Delaying my grief through hard avoidance had made the matter a severe issue for me. Sure, it’d been while we were getting Wufei from Jun that I’d finally started to grieve, but that hadn’t been a complete process. It didn’t mean I wouldn’t daydream about the girl from time to time, and I had a wife and a daughter I wouldn’t give up for the world, so then it made me guilty.

Not exactly the most pleasant of circles.

“You were alone at the queen’s wedding,” he noted.

I set my pen down and focused on him pointedly.

“Sorry,” he muttered, going back to his work.

“If you must know, my fiancé died two years before I resumed my position, and as a matter of fact, the only time my friends did see me was the day of their wedding.”

He raised his eyes to mine, blinking.

“I wasn’t available, to resume my position,” I smirked slightly and went back to my work.

It wasn’t until he was standing at the corner of the desk near me that I realized he’d moved, and that made me jump hard, staring at him in disbelief.

He kneeled down in front of me, staring up into my eyes. “That look means…” he glanced away. “You…ran, didn’t you?”

I stared down at him in complete disbelief as my very helpful brain offered me several interesting options for him being where he was.

“How…did she die?”

I looked away as that image of blood on the sliding-glass door came to my mind, then Wufei’s blood in the breezeway between the parking garage and the clubs in town.

Som’s hand rested on mine, and considering that I had them both at the point where my lap started, the action got my instant attention.

“She was…shot,” I returned, looking away from his eyes.

“Shot?” he whispered.

“She’d been…the girlfriend of someone with power,” I noted, narrowing my eyes at him. “He hired an assassin.”

He focused on my hand, moving his thumb gently over my knuckles, and I stared at the top of his head, not moving as I repressed the anger and grief once again.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered.

“Aren’t we all,” I agreed darkly, sighing slightly as the moment moved beyond our conversation without him so much as meeting my eyes.

His hand moved up my wrist slowly, gently, then down onto my leg. The pace gave me time to protest as it moved across my leg…and between my thighs.

My cell phone rang sharply and we both jumped hard as I grabbed it quickly from the desktop. “Maxwell.”

“Sir Maxwell?” a polite sounding woman asked quietly as Ryu sat back.

“Speaking,” I agreed, swallowing slightly and avoiding the guy’s eyes as he started to stand.

“This is Sandra from Caracal elementary, and your daughter, Ashley?”

“Yeah?”

“She has a fever of about…thirty-eight Celsius…”

“Thirty-eight?” I repeated, doing the mental conversion. We tended to use Fahrenheit for fevers because it sounded more alarming when it got up there.

“Um…a hundred and one,” she agreed.

“Damn,” I grabbed my car keys and still refused to look at Ryu as I started around him for the door. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“All right. She’s laying down now, but you’ll definitely want to get her checked on.”

“Of course,” I agreed, hesitating in the door, feeling his eyes on me as I closed the phone. “I’m done for the day.”

“Sir,” he started, moving to follow me, but I pulled the door shut behind myself and moved toward the closest hall that led toward an exit as I heard my office door open again.

I really had a death-wish…honest and truly I wanted my wife to kill me.

- -

Considering that Duo’s job was more of the never-ending sort, and Selena couldn’t very well care for the child when we kinda doubted she could see her own feet, it wasn’t too surprising to find out that Duo’d gone to work and taken his daughter with him.

It was a little odd, sure, but not too surprising.

I moved into his office without knocking, since the five of us never knocked on any other’s door unless they were with someone, and blinked as I realized he had the girl on his lap.

Ryu rose to his feet, saluting me instantly.

“As you were,” I muttered quietly.

The thing about it was that Ashley was sleeping in Duo’s arms.

“What’d the doctor say?” I asked, dropping into a seat across from my friend.

“Just a flu, probably a forty-eight hour bug.”

“That’s too bad…is she okay?” I studied the little girl’s flushed cheek as best I could.

“She really likes that I’m holding her,” he returned with a pleased little smile as typing started to my right. I glanced at Ryu a moment, studying him before looking back to Duo.

“What?” he asked, blinking at me.

“What?” I repeated, blinking back.

“He’s just typing,” Duo noted in Cantonese.

“I’m doing reports,” Ryu noted in kind, looking to me again.

I grinned at him, then looked back to Duo.

Duo shook his head. “What’s up?”

“If you got Alex a puppy Trowa would just kill you,” I replied, smirking slightly at him.

“Probably, yeah,” he smirked some. “I’m pretty sure her cat is fine though.”

“It’s healthy, I was just in there bothering Hilde and it was rubbing all over me…it doesn’t mind Blackie in the slightest.”

“I’m thinking another pet with the infant in the place is a bad idea.”

“Ah, second thoughts now that your own baby is coming of age?”

“Of age?” Ryu asked blankly.

Duo gave him a look.

“So how does this go? If you’re not pissy you’re disapproving?” I asked him blankly.

“Sorry, sir,” Ryu muttered, looking away.

“He got Marlea Winner a kitten for her eighth birthday,” I explained to the recruit. “That actually happened during the Deniel campaign…we owed Marlea a real birthday party when we’d finished, and he got Alex a cat, since she’s actually older than Lea.”

Ryu nodded, not looking at us.

“He promised Trowa back then that he’d get the new one a puppy when it turned seven…the new one being Dustin Barton.”

He nodded his acknowledgement.

Duo’d probably been bitching at him before I got in, considering his mood, so I let it pass, looking back to the knight.

“I shouldn’t have gotten Dust the puppy,” Duo noted with a sigh. “I didn’t think how close to her due date Hilde was when I did it.”

I nodded, frowning as I realized that. “But I want to get her a puppy.”

“Do it for her seventeenth,” he suggested with a grin. “Some girls get cars, but our girls get pets.”

I laughed at that…which made Ash’s eyes open and she focused on me. She blinked once or twice, then sat up to look at me properly.

“Hey, love,” I greeted her.

“Uncle,” she muttered, thinking about it, then looked back to Duo. “I’m cold, Daddy.”

“I had you covered,” he retorted, pulling her blanket back up around her.

“Uncle, hold me?” she muttered.

I sniggered at Duo, moving around the desk to take the girl from him. “I’m expecting a call,” I noted, pulling her to me as she shifted herself to be comfortable. “She have any medicine?”

“She needs two tablespoons of this at noon,” he returned, picking up a small purple bottle and tucking it into my pocket. “Wake her up if she’s sleeping. She’s still fighting the fever. If she wants me then just call me.”

I nodded at that, shifting her around as I felt her eyelashes against my throat and grinned.

“Just like that?” Ryu asked blankly.

“What?” I asked, focusing on him. “Just like what?”

“You’re just going to walk out of here with her?”

“I don’t know if you noticed or not,” Duo noted dryly, “but she called him uncle. If she wants him, she can have him.” He smirked, meeting my eyes. “Lord knows, I don’t want him.”

I laughed at him. “Fuck you…later, Ryu, don’t let him get under your skin.”

“Ha,” Duo retorted. “Fei, don’t get her a puppy…they have enough of a handful with Dusty’s.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I agreed wryly. “What should I get her, then?”

“Kidnap her and take her shopping. I’m sure with the baby and Dust she’s getting a little neglected.”

That worked. I nodded at him and headed out the door.

- -

“Listen…sir,” Ryu muttered a few minutes after Wufei left. “Yesterday…I…”

“Leave it,” I ordered, focusing on the papers I should have been typing up all morning. My daughter worked as a perfect procrastination device.

Som fell quiet for a long moment before sighing. “I’m sorry for prying.”

I looked up at him, blinking as I remembered he’d been asking me about Kayla.

“I know it’s none of my business…your personal life…but…”

“Let’s work this as something along the lines of ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies, huh? Let well enough alone.”

“I said I was sorry.”

I shook my head at him, starting to type.

“You can’t deny it,” he snapped, starting to type a little harder than was necessary.

I really doubted that had anything to do with his apology.

“What?” I asked levelly.

“Nothing,” he snapped. “Never mind.”

- -

“Hello, Majesty.”

“Hey, Tomé,” I muttered, narrowing my eyes at the guy. “What do you need?”

“I reworked my request,” he explained, setting a folder in front of me. “I took into account what Maxwell had been saying and tried to work with that.”

I narrowed my eyes slightly as I remembered he’d half attempted to get Duo in trouble for not having me guarded. Of course, he’d tempered this with meeting with Jun and talking about getting Duo out of power by scandal. It’d been a few months since that had happened, and I’d all but forgotten it.

“Can you read it now?” he asked, pursing his lips. “I don’t mean to intrude, but…” he trailed off and shrugged slightly.

“But you want me to read it before Duo comes around?” I asked, grinning at him. “That’s a novel conceit. Why are you so intent on making him hate you?”

He frowned at me.

“Seriously, you don’t want Duo as an enemy,” I set the folder on top of a large pile I already had to work through for the day. “He’s in a bad enough mood without you adding to it. I’ll read it as soon as I can, but,” I indicated the stack.

He didn’t meet my eyes, and I could see him thinking some very unpleasant things before he nodded and met my eyes, nodding his head in a sort of bow before rising to his feet.

I was going to let Duo read that damn file unless I absolutely had nothing better to do, and the fact that I held half the power of the country meant that I had plenty to do, and it’d be a miracle if I got it all done.

Tomé walked from the room.

I considered the door a moment, then shifted back in my seat.

Sometimes, it bothered me how petty I could get…and sometimes I decided it wasn’t really worth the effort.