Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ 3 Ties That Bind ❯ Twenty-Eight ( Chapter 28 )

“Let me talk to my daughter! Jun!”

“I told you! You’ll have her back as soon as I get my money!” Jun shouted back at Trowa.

I prayed that Jun wouldn’t realize Duo hadn’t come running, because he would have if…if he were here. I wanted the man’s leash brought up short when he got to the end of it. I didn’t want him to know what was going on here.

Quatre was pacing agitatedly behind Trowa.

“No money until we see they’re alive and safe!” Trowa snapped.

“Do you want me to kill them?!” Jun shouted back.

“Show me my daughter!”

Jun disconnected.

Trowa turned and attacked the wall in a fashion so similar to Duo that I wondered if I might have to sedate him…

“Where are they?” Trowa demanded, settling himself.

“They could be almost anywhere,” Quatre returned.

“Where would they have gone? Where did they have to go?”

“On a hundred dollars?” I asked skeptically. “They won’t make it too far on that.”

“So why hasn’t he found them yet?” Quatre snapped back.

My phone started ringing.

“Yeah?” I asked, blinking at Duo’s number.

“It’s the damnedest thing, my Sovereign,” he returned in a completely pleasant tone. “I got a call from a certain Mr. Fallon of your acquaintance…”

Jesse?

“He informed me that two young ladies had accosted him, calling him uncle,” he extended happily.

“They’re with Jesse?” I demanded, standing up straighter.

Trowa and Quatre both focused on me.

“Yep,” he noted. “Wufei and’em are on their way over to a hotel called Log-Cabin in Garrison.”

“Garrison?” I breathed, looking to my friends.

How the hell had they gotten all the way over to Garrison?

“I’m going to be late, Majesty,” he added in a tone that sounded sincerely disappointed. “I do regret I will be late.”

“Wait,” I protested. “Duo…if…where are you?”

“They seemed to have forgotten me in Branton,” he explained.

My heart stopped.

“So, my King,” Duo added happily, “do express my regrets to my fellow knights…and be of a certainty that Keith is not left alone with my orange-boy, huh?”

“Duo…”

“I mean, he already tore him apart,” Duo explained on. “I don’t want to get back to the castle and find him huddled in the fetal position.”

“How late are you planning on being?” I demanded.

“I don’t want to do anything under my actual name,” he explained, losing that fake tone he’d been holding. “I’m gonna try to stay unrecognized. Wufei made me promise no carnage, so the less rumor the better.”

“Oh, Duo,” I sighed, starting to rub at my eyes. “You’re making my head hurt…at this rate you’ll give me a tic.”

“You can have mine,” he offered in that chipper tone. “I don’t think I use it right.”

I snorted at that.

“Tell Nira, for me?” he asked quietly. “Let her know I love her?”

“I will,” I returned just as quietly, feeling a kind of gnawing irritation.

Of course he’d make me tell Selena…what a jackass.

The line went dead and I lowered my phone, rubbing at my neck.

“He’s doing it?” Trowa asked quietly.

I nodded.

The vid started beeping.

“Let me talk to my daughter,” Trowa hissed at Jun before he could speak.

“I’m going to cut her,” Jun retorted.

“No money until I see her,” Trowa insisted.

Jun hung up again.

…this was just turning into one of those days…

- -

“Are you gonna be all right?” I muttered as I sat in the living room of Trowa’s apartment.

“I’ll be fine,” Quatre returned, the note of relief in his voice almost relaxing. “Wufei will be getting to them soon. We just have to keep arguing with Jun about the money.”

“Why don’t you tell him you know?”

He hesitated.

“Wait…where’s Duo?”

He laughed a little bit.

“You’re kidding, right? Duo’s not…”

I didn’t want to say that Duo was hunting down Jun, because our lives were excessively bogged down by the political process. I knew that saying the right key words would instantly trigger your conversation to be recorded, but I couldn’t remember what those triggers were.

“Duo’s not…” I sighed heavily. “Quatre…”

“I can’t control him anymore,” Quatre returned quietly.

I groaned, rubbing at my face.

“God willing, we’ll be home soon,” he noted in a tired voice. “Jacob? I’m getting too old for this…my life expectancy was sixteen, max…why am I in my thirties?”

“You know what, Q?” I asked quietly.

“Hm?”

“Wade keeps coming to ask about you.”

That made him hesitate.

“She said something about a real man at one point, but it might have been me she was talking about.”

He made an amused noise.

“I bet Marlea will be happy to get home,” I added, dropping back across the couch. “I miss you.”

“Hm,” he considered that. “Fine. You win.”

“I thought I might,” I noted, smiling slightly.

“But only because I know Wade meant me and feel bad that you’re so conceited you don’t realize it.”

I laughed at that.

“Vid,” he said sharply…and hung up.

I closed my phone and dropped it into my lap, staring at the ceiling.

I was always told I was going to self destruct by twenty-five…so didn’t I have him beat? Wait, no, that just meant five years or something…he had a good sixteen added.

Selena moved tiredly into the room and studied me a long moment before walking across the room and dropping next to me, laying her head in my lap.

“The girls escaped at three this morning,” I informed her, studying an interesting tile. “They got to Jesse around eight, so Wufei’s on his way to Garrison to pick them up. Jun keeps trying to pretend like he has them, though, so Heero and them are playing the game.”

She turned her head to look up at me.

“I guess Duo and Keith got into it,” I added. “Over Som, no less.”

“He’s the other boy,” she muttered, resting down again with a sigh. “Repeat that, please?”

I did so.

“That’s all you know?”

“It’s all they said,” I agreed.

“You didn’t mention where Duo was.”

“It’s all Quatre said,” I repeated.

She sighed heavily, turning her face into my thigh.

Relena came in, then, and looked at us with a curious expression.

“Have a seat, my Queen,” I suggested, patting my other leg.

She grinned at me, looking down the hall. Hilde had gone to take a nap, and the three babies were sleeping in their bassinettes beside me. Blackie and Fei were both sleeping by my feet, and the little ones were with a tutor in the back-most bedroom.

I’d been sleeping on the couch…

When the tutor’s voice was all there was to be heard, Relena moved over and dropped next to me on the other side…and laid her head on my leg like Selena had.

“Hi, Lena,” Selena muttered.

“Hi, Lena,” Relena agreed.

Selena almost laughed.

“What’s going on?” Hilde asked tiredly, moving into the room and dropping on the arm of the rocking chair.

I sighed, stroking Relena’s hair. “The girls escaped at three this morning. They’re with Jesse in Garrison now. Wufei is heading to get them…Heero and Trowa are keeping up the charade of refusing to send the money.”

“Huh,” Relena mused quietly.

“I noted the lack of notice myself,” Selena returned.

“Jacob…where’s Duo?” Hilde asked quietly.

“Keith tore Som a new asshole,” I suggested, looking to the woman again. “Something about Som going fetal and Duo getting pissed—I guess he and Keith went at it.”

“Damn,” Hilde muttered, rubbing at her temples. “He better not get himself killed.”

I made an amused noise. “The kinda funny thing here is that I was more worried about him getting caught.”

She partially giggled at that, looking to me.

I smiled in return.

“Mm, shut up and go to sleep,” Relena suggested.

“I have this nifty bed,” Hilde noted, rising to her feet and pointing to the room. “It might be empty without my husband…but it allows more leg-room than Jacob.”

I smiled at her.

She disappeared back down the hall.

. . .a nap sounded nice.

- -

I looked the room over with interest, hearing hasty arguing down the hall. I had a feeling Jun’d put the girls on the third floor, and this looked like his own personal bedroom.

I grinned slightly, dropping backwards onto his bed.

Everything that was ever his was now forever mine…all of it. The power to move people, the disposable income…the people. Both working for me and with me…shit, even Keith was mine, and I was pretty sure Keith was the only real friend he’d had.

The argument got louder.

I’d never thought I’d hate anyone anymore than I hated Keith—but I didn’t really hate Keith anymore, did I? The man had taken Kayla from me…and almost with the same motion gave me Selena. I didn’t mean to sell Kayla short in any way. She’d deserved better than she’d gotten…but at least she’d known love, true love…but Selena had given me children.

The duplicity of this thought process had kept me awake through the long hours of any given night...but it changed nothing. Selena was the mother of my children, and god willing, Kayla was in heaven…or at least at peace.

God?

Maybe Som had given me more than a good night’s rush in that chapel.

I pulled out one of my throwing knives, studying it over for chips or rust as the argument reached its crescendo and I heard a blow…then silence a long moment. Finally, footsteps.

I rose and moved to sit in the windowsill, looking to the door.

Jun stepped into the room and stopped, staring at me with slowly widening eyes.

“Mr. Martin,” I greeted him happily, pushing myself back up. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you.”