Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Deadly Beautiful ❯ Wufei's Motivations ( Chapter 49 )

Disclaimer: It's Christmas time yet again; I could ask for the ownership of Gundam Wing which I don't have, but I won't get it. Santa would rather deal out material goods than legal documents.

 

Deadly Beautiful - Chapter 49

 

by danse

 

~*~

 

Hilde may have had nearly infinite patience, but Duo was starting to wear it out. She marched out of his apartment and slammed the door sharply behind her, more than willing to put a few walls between them for the next little while. As she turned to her left to go down the stairs, grumpily lost in thought, she nearly ran right into a guy about her age. She stopped short, blushing, and blinked up at his face, but her apology froze on her lips. He was Chinese, and she knew him from somewhere. Given Hilde's colourful past as a prostitute, recognizing men from somewhere was not generally a good thing for her. She backed up a step, muscles tensing, and squinted at him. “Do I know you?” she asked warily, racking her brain.

 

He smiled and extended his hand for her to shake. “Chang Wufei,” he answered, his voice also familiar. “We met in the desert.”

 

Immediately, her memory of meeting him and the rest of Duo's... friends... in Saudi Arabia came back to her, and she pressed her palm against her forehead as she blushed with embarrassment. “Of course,” she giggled, “Wufei. Yes, of course I remember you! Sorry, I just wasn't thinking to associate... you guys... with, um, the real world.” She grinned sheepishly.

 

Wufei chuckled. “It's alright,” he said. “It's kind of rare for me to do this, but I was in town, and I decided to come see how Duo was doing.” He pointed towards Duo's door.

 

Hilde looked back at the closed door and frowned. It was highly probable that Duo was going to throw something at the next person through the door, considering the mood she'd left him in. He'd been extremely temperamental lately, and they'd started having arguments almost every time Hilde came to see him. On the plus side, he seemed to be sleeping again. She turned back to Wufei. “Well, um. I wouldn't recommend going in there right at the moment. Duo and I just had a bit of a disagreement, and he might try to kill you if you get on his bad side.” She smiled apologetically.

 

Wufei nodded once, slowly, in understanding. “I don't think I've ever been on his good side, so I'll heed your advice,” he said. As Hilde nodded and started to walk away, she heard him call after her again. “Hilde!”

 

She froze in surprise, schooled a smile onto her face, and turned around. “Yeah.”

 

He leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. “Where are you off to? I thought you lived with him.”

 

“Oh, no, I live downstairs,” she said. “I'm gonna go back there and get some lunch.” She paused, debating how intelligent it would be to voice her next thought. “Would you like to, um, join me? I can make coffee,” she said.

 

Wufei grinned and pushed away from the wall to walk towards her. He moved with the grace of a tiger. “Sure, that sounds good,” he said.

 

Feeling a little nervous about talking to one of Duo's group one-on-one, she turned and led him downstairs to her apartment for lunch.

 

***

 

Wufei surreptitiously checked his ever-present beeper again as he followed the girl down the dusty stairwell. Despite the fact that he hadn't wanted to come check up on that idiot Duo at all, this was turning out to be a better mission than he'd expected.

 

Wufei had gone off to France as soon as he could get away from Quatre's Nazi-doctor sister to pick up Treize's cold trail again, but just when he thought he might have had a solid lead, Master O had contacted him with an order to go to the US and meet one of his English-speaking underlings in Boston for a briefing on a new assignment.

 

It had been just his luck that Quatre would contact him on the same day to ask if he could possibly spare any time in the next couple of weeks to go check up on Duo, who Quatre apparently thought wasn't old enough to deal with life on his own without a caretaker. Wufei had been so close to saying no, he couldn't, but guilt had taken over at the last minute, and he'd agreed to visit that stupid American bastard and then give Quatre a full report on his condition. God only knew how Quatre had managed to obtain his home address, but Wufei was smart enough to realize by now that he shouldn't put anything past that boy.

 

But yes, it had definitely turned out better than he'd hoped. Not only did he have an excuse not to talk to Duo at all, but now he was also getting a free lunch with a cute girl who Quatre would no doubt consider a reliable source of information about how Duo was feeling. As if it really mattered.

 

Hilde stopped at the door to her floor with her hand on the doorknob, turning to him. “Hey, how did you find out where Duo lived, anyway? And how did you get in the building?”

 

Wufei raised his eyebrows. It shouldn't surprise me that she's asking me this, he thought. From the way Duo was singing her praises, it should surprise me that she didn't ask me this right after my name. Mentally cataloguing that for later, he shrugged and made up a more acceptable answer than, 'Quatre is all-knowing'. “We all know each other's locations, just in case. And I got in when I carried up some lady's groceries for her. I told her that I lived on the third floor.” He'd actually just climbed the fire escape at the back and jimmied open a window on the second floor landing, which beat the hell out of asking for anyone's help.

 

Hilde smirked. “I did that once, too,” she said, pulling the door open.

 

Say something charming, so she'll talk to you about Duo. “Must be fate,” he deadpanned as he followed her to her front door. She giggled.

 

***

 

“So how is Duo doing, anyway?” Wufei asked, shifting in his seat at Hilde's kitchen table, a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. His eyes tracked Hilde as she breezed around the kitchen between the fridge, counter, and cupboards, making sandwiches.

 

Hilde paused with the fridge door open, her hand frozen in the process of reaching for a head of lettuce. She backed out, shut the door, and leaned against it, the lettuce forgotten. “He's....” She chewed her lip thoughtfully, trying to think of a graceful way to express it. “He's been better,” she said finally. “Heero's death or disappearance or whatever—it hit him pretty hard,” she continued, striding back over to the bread and roast beef on the counter and fiddling absently with the knife as she frowned.

 

Wufei raised an eyebrow, not understanding at all. “What? I mean, sure, it's sad, but he hardly knew Heero anyway. People die all the time, and sometimes they die doing dangerous things. Life goes on.”

 

Hilde stared at him. “Wufei... do you really think that Heero is dead?” she asked quietly.

 

He fidgeted. He wanted to lie, but he felt like he had to be honest with her. “I know he had to be alive right after the accident, because he was nowhere anywhere close to the car. Forget being thrown clear—he was gone. But, did he survive after getting away? I'm not so sure. It's very possible that he died from his injuries.” Wufei cocked his head and raised his eyebrows bemusedly as he raised his coffee cup to his lips again. “Or, maybe he's just in hiding, for some asinine reason,” he said before taking a sip.

 

Hilde looked down at the half-finished sandwiches, remembered the lettuce, and went back to the fridge to get it. She put it down on the counter a little forcefully and then abandoned all of it to sink into the chair across from Wufei. “The problem, here,” she said finally, “is that Duo is--” she swallowed, “--in love with Heero.”

 

Wufei's jaw dropped, and he stared at her in shock. Realizing that his cup was still in his hand, he distractedly put it down on the table and stared some more. “I'm sorry,” he said. “Did I hear you correctly just now? Duo is... he loves Heero?”

 

Hilde nodded, and Wufei sat back in his chair, shaking his head at the ceiling in wonderment. Suddenly a lot of things made sense, including Duo's strange mood swing that had set in after his and Heero's failed mission (something had clearly happened there), and possibly also why Hilde now had her own, separate living space, after he'd gotten the impression that she lived with Duo. He flicked a glance at her out of the corner of his eye, as she got up to finish making their sandwiches. Yes, a lot of things were clearing up, now. But, goddammit, what was with these people and being gay? He'd ended up in a bad crowd. Unfortunately, he was more or less stuck, now.

 

Wufei's train of thought was interrupted when Hilde set down a tasty-looking sandwich in front of him, plopping back into the other seat with her own and a fresh cup of coffee. They ate in silence for a few moments, and then Wufei set down his sandwich, washing down his last bite with coffee, and steepled his chin on his fingers as he watched her. “So,” he said, “how did you end up here?”

 

His question startled her, but she hid it well as she swallowed her food. “Um, well... Duo and I just kind of ran into each other one day, and it went from there.” She gestured vaguely.

 

The young Chinese man gave her a nonplussed look. “That's a weak story,” he commented.

 

Hilde blushed. “Oh, come on.... It's a long story....” she tried.

 

He shrugged. “I have time.”

 

She frowned, and then sighed in defeat. What was the harm in it anyway? She didn't even know him; she shouldn't care what he might think about her. “Do you want me to start from the beginning?” she asked snappishly. When he gestured in the affirmative, she proceeded to tell him her life story, much in the same way she'd told it to Duo, looking down at the table and shredding a piece of lettuce sticking out of her sandwich as she spoke. “...And he let me stay at his place, and that was all well and good, but when I got a job and some money, I decided it was time for me to stop freeloading and move out of there. I moved in here about two weeks ago now, I guess,” she finished. She looked up at Wufei, afraid of what she'd see on his face. Orphan, runaway, petty thief, prostitute... she certainly had it all.

 

To her surprise, Wufei just smiled lightly at her when their eyes met. “Sounds like you've had a time of it,” he said softly.

 

She snorted, suddenly wanting to cry. She took a big gulp of her cooling coffee to give herself time to calm down, and then took another bite of her sandwich. Another period of slightly more comfortable silence stretched over them, and then she worked up the nerve to ask her strange guest a question. “So, Wufei, since you've just made me tell you my whole shameful life story, can I ask you an obnoxious question in return?” she said, smiling playfully.

 

He smirked around his coffee before getting up to refill his cup. “I suppose that's fair,” he said, turning to face her with the decanter in one hand and his mug in the other. “What would you like to know?”

 

“What's your motivation for working with Duo and the other three?”

 

Her question was at least as startling as his had been. He frowned at her as he returned to his chair. “That's classified information, you know,” he answered.

 

Hilde raised an eyebrow.

 

Wufei met her unimpressed gaze and they had a brief staring contest, a battle of wills. She won. Pushing his half-eaten sandwich away, Wufei put his face in his hands and rubbed it as if he was tired. “I'm after one specific man. I'm going to get revenge on him.”

 

“For what?” Hilde leaned forward excitedly; this kind of thing only happened in movies.

 

“For killing my wife,” he answered.

 

It was Hilde's turn to go slack-jawed with shock. “You were married?” she nearly screeched. “But—you can't be any older than me! How does that work?”

 

Wufei smiled tightly, looking at the middle of the table fixedly. “It was an arranged marriage; she and I were both from old, old warrior clans. They still do this kind of thing in China sometimes, believe it or not. Anyway, we weren't actually married yet, but we were officially engaged.” His expression became wistful, but he kept looking resolutely at the table. “Meilan had a warrior's heart, if anyone did. We were both stubborn as hell and we fought a lot, but underneath that... there was something more. In retrospect, it was a good match, it really was.” He cleared his throat, shifting awkwardly. Hilde thought she saw colour rising in his cheeks.

 

“So, when we were barely in our teens, OZ appeared in our home province, planning to install its presence there permanently with a base of some kind. I was more apathetic about it, but Meilan wanted them gone, like a lot of people. And she believed in violence for justice, if it came to that.

 

“An old shifu of mine, from when I was training in martial arts as a little kid, he was in this resistance movement that had started up against OZ. I really didn't want anything to do with it, but Meilan was all riled up about it, so we joined. I went with her to keep an eye on her; she had a tendency to risk her neck impulsively. This was when we were about thirteen. It was fine for a while, when we were just going to meetings of this resistance movement and meeting with Master O again. He taught us both how to use firearms and explosives and all that.” Wufei paused his story briefly and glanced up at Hilde, who was watching in rapt attention, ignoring her food. He looked back down at the table, playing with his fingernails.

 

“S-so she had just turned fourteen—she was eight months younger than me—when we went on this operation to sabotage the new OZ compound that was being built. We were all in disguise, our faces covered by black masks. Since we were the two smallest people in the group, she and I had to go in through some air ducts to set explosives, while everyone else kept watch for us. It went fine until we were ready to leave.” Wufei stopped again, taking a deep, shuddering breath.

 

“Long story short, we ended up having to run for it. There was this fence with barbed wire at the top, around the perimeter. O and another guy had cut a hole in it so that we could get in and out. But between our exit point from the building, and the fence, there was something like ten metres of open, unprotected ground. We just had to duck and run for it. OZ soldiers were everywhere with guns, there was a lot of shouting and gunfire.

 

“I was holding Meilan's hand and we were running full out for the hole in the fence. Just about everybody else was already on the other side, running away or beckoning to us. About halfway across the open space, she tripped and fell. I felt her let go of my hand and turned around to help her up, but she yelled at me to keep going, a-and I did. Just as she got to her feet, a lieutenant shot her in the back.” He squeezed his eyes shut, his hands clenching into fists in his lap as he remembered it. His voice was still composed, but barely. “I would have gone back and grabbed her, but O came back through the fence and dragged me out of there. We had to leave my fiancee behind. She was fourteen years old, and beautiful and fierce and smart, and she died because she got shot in the back at a military facility.”

 

Hilde let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. “What happened to the lieutenant who shot her?” she asked quietly.

 

“He rose fast through the ranks. He's a commander now,” Wufei said, his voice stony all of a sudden. “Commander Treize Kushrenada. I wanted to quit the resistance after that day, but O convinced me to stay and get revenge, to seek justice for her death. He helped me find out who shot Meilan, and he's helped me out a lot in my journey, these past couple of years.” He smiled grimly at his hostess. “That's my motivation,” he said.

 

Hilde couldn't think of anything to say to that.

 

***

 

After Hilde left his apartment in what he could tell was close to a royal fit of rage, Duo sank down wearily onto the couch. She was just being so... coddling, and it drove him insane. He was a big boy, he could look after himself just fine, and he had no idea anymore how many times he'd told her so. He was even sleeping again, so she had nothing to worry about. Of course, he hadn't mentioned how he'd gotten sleeping pills, and how those were really the only reason he was sleeping at all.

 

Sweet, sweet sleep. When Duo slept, especially with those drugs to knock him out, it was a beautiful oblivion. He didn't think, he didn't feel—he barely existed. It was an ideal state to be in, in his opinion. Breathing out a deep sigh, he got off the couch to go take another pill and settle down for an afternoon nap. Maybe this time, when he woke up, it would all have been a dream. He was going to keep hoping so.

 

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A/N: Yay, new chapter. Christmas is a time for slacking off and seeing family and friends, rather than being on the computer, so my beta and I wish you all a Merry Christmas while neither of us bother with getting Chapter 50 out before Christmas. I'll work on it for before New Year's, but it kinda depends on how busy she is. :D So with that in mind, later days, folks!