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"Without Virtue"Written By: Clara Barton Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing. The following
is an intellectual exercise with no intention of profit. That said,
these characterizations, words, and situations are mine. Please ask
before reprinting. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: Drama, angst, Character Death, violence,
gore, language, drug use, language, yaoi sex, het sex, language, AU Pairings: 2xSolo, 6x3, 1x2x3, 5xM, 5x H, 4x S,
4x R, 13x 6, 13x?, probably a few more as well. Summary: "When virtue has slept it arises invigorated." - Nietzsche. A darktale of violence, lust, and vengeance in a city without justice.
" Without Virtue"
He still had trouble mastering the balance between buzzed and blitzed out of his mind. Six months of dedicated practice meant that Quatre could pass for sober even when he was ready to black out from doing ten back to back shots of Jaeger. But unless he found that precious balance… if he was just buzzed then it was too easy to remember his father and to hear the disappointment in people's voices; if he was full on smashed then it was far too easy to hear the shrill disdain in Relena's voice whenever she spoke to him. He had hoped that his drinking would drive her away and encourage her not to speak to him – but she was just as stubborn as he was and seemed hell bent on sticking by his side during this 'dark time,' as she called it. Even before their fathers' deaths Quatre had thought he and Relena were a poor match, but their engagement had boosted stock revenue for Winner Inc. eight percent and given the illusion of Relena's father having an 'in' with the L4 elite. The morning after Quatre buried his father – two days after Relena's father's funeral – he had called her to break off their engagement. There didn't seem any point to it, he had started to say only to have her interrupt him in a grief stricken voice and tell him that they must stick together, for the memory of their fathers and for the future of Sanc. As soon as Quatre hung up the phone he found a bottle of Scotch and tried to drown himself in it. Of course Relena wouldn't let him escape her pretty pink clutches that easily. Of course, even after Zayeed's death, Quatre would still be constrained to follow his every demand. Of course the city of Sanc expected its two golden children to hold up their heads and bravely suffer through. Fuck it, had been Quatre's motto ever since he had read the initial coroner's report. The Sanc police claimed that his father had been killed in a mugging gone wrong – but Zayeed must have been mugged by a blind man with a clairvoyant sense of aim: he had been shot directly in the heart and while his wallet was empty none of his jewelry – his rings, the golden locket with a curl of Quatre's mother's hair inside, even his nearly three million dollar Rolex watch – had been taken. It was obviously a cover-up and it was just as obvious that Zayeed had been enough of a political threat in the mayoral election that OZ and Romefeller decided to take him out of the running altogether. Quatre had spent years telling his father to watch his back and tone down his pacifist rhetoric and his demands that corruption be eliminated from Sanc. But Zayeed had never listened to him – he had always viewed Quatre as a disappointment: instead of being a politician like Zayeed or a doctor like most of his sisters, Quatre had a natural gift for making money and he used it to ensure that Winner Inc., even during the worst recession Sanc had ever experienced, continued to show record profits every quarter. Being a businessman was, in Zayeed's eyes, something for a minion to do. The Winners made money because they had to, but the real goal of any member of the family was to change the world and make it a better place. Quatre's goal had been to make enough money to buy out as many Romefeller and Barton controlled businesses as he could and try to take over Sanc by financial force. None of that mattered now, of course. Zayeed was dead and Thomas Darlian – his closest friend and political partner – was just as dead. There was no one to take over, even if Quatre did manage to succeed. So he drank, trying to drown out the knowledge that he had failed and that Sanc's last two chances for redemption were buried in marble mausoleums littered with gaudy, plastic flowers.
It was important to Relena that they keep up appearances. No matter how disgusted she might be with Quatre's slide into drunken oblivion, she never gave up on him and insisted that he be her escort for all public events. He had tried, early on, to tell her no. But she had cried. Growing up with a dozen sisters had taught Quatre many lessons, but more than that, it had instilled in him an absolute terror of women crying. He would do anything to make a woman stop crying – even if it meant putting on a tux and waltzing all night with Relena for a damned charity fundraiser. The night of Relena's twenty-fifth birthday was no exception: she insisted that he be her date, insisted that he wear a pink boutonniere and a pink bow tie with his black tuxedo, just so they could match. Just so, in case someone without the mental capacity to put two and two together was watching, it would be obvious that Quatre belonged to her. It was incredibly petty of him, but he showed up to the party at her near palatial town home half an hour late, already drunk, and without a birthday present for her. She took it all in stride – her damned impenetrable mask of innocence intact as she steered him away from the champagne and dragged him from prominent guest to prominent guest. The favorite topic of conversation seemed to be offering condolences on their fathers' deaths and digging for gossip on just how tragic life was for them now. Relena rose above it, holding her chin at that arrogant angle that made Quatre want to punch her, and insisting that things were difficult, but together – she would lean over and kiss Quatre on the cheek – they were managing. Quatre, on the other hand, played to their absolute lowest expectations. He managed to sniffle a bit and went so far as to bury his head in Relena's pink organza covered cleavage while he mumbled something about it just being too hard to get out of bed every day… how easy it was to think about ending his misery and joining his father in the afterlife. It eventually forced Relena to knee him in the groin and pull him into a side corridor. "What the hell is the matter with you?" She shrieked once they were alone. "There's Relena Darlian," Quatre said with a chuckle. "That's the girl I grew up with – shrill and bossy and so damned –" "Don't even start, Quatre," she snapped. "I'm trying – at least I'm doing that much! Who cares that I'm faking it, at least I'm not a disappointment to my name! I'm glad your father is dead! He always suspected you were useless, but at least he doesn't have to live with the proof of it!" As soon as she said the words she clapped both hands over her mouth and started to shake her head. "No, I'm so sorry, Quatre. I didn't mean it. I'm so sorry. I –" she reached out to him but he shook off her pink gloved hands. "By all means, let it out," he gestured for her to continue. "Do it now in private so that your adoring fans don't see you crack, so they don't see the real you." Tears started to form in her eyes. "Don't you dare cry!" He shouted at her, perhaps the first time he had ever yelled at a woman who wasn't one of his sisters trying to paint his toenails. She sniffed back the tears. "I won't," she promised. "I'm sorry." "They're just playing with you, Relena! Don't you see that no one out there even cares that the only two decent men in Sanc are dead? This is all just a game to them – we're just their damned entertainment! Romefeller was never going to let either of our fathers win the election, you have to know that. Change will never come to Sanc – no matter how many speeches you give about loving each other or how many fucking pink balloons you release in the sky or –" "I know that!" She shouted back at him – and from the look on her face Quatre was positive it was the only time Relena had ever shouted at anyone in her life. "I know it," she continued in a softer but no less fierce voice. "Then why do you –" "Because I'm not going to let them win, Quatre. I can't. You can't." She sighed and shook her head. "I know you never believed in it – never believed in pacifism or the ability for man to change simply by believing in each other – but you used to believe that things could be better. I know you did!" "Yeah, well, beliefs have a way of dying here in Sanc," he muttered. "How dare you give up this easily! You owe Zayeed the courtesy of at least trying to –" "I owe him nothing," Quatre interrupted her angrily. "I tried to make him see reason – I tried to make all of you understand that you were going to get yourselves killed and none of you listened. I don't owe Zayeed anything, I don't owe you anything, and I sure as hell don't owe the people out there anything." "You're wrong," Relena insisted. "You owe yourself the chance to get justice for their deaths." Quatre glared at her. "You are un-fucking believable," he muttered. "Just let me go, Relena. Just let me go." "No." She held her chin back at that angle he hated. "I will save you, Quatre Winner. Regardless of what you want." Without another word she swept past him and rejoined her party. He debated just finding a side door and leaving, but ultimately decided that he had made the effort to get here – had actually shaved for this – and he would be damned if he didn't at least have a few drinks before he stumbled back to his empty home and gave in to the nightmares of having his father's blood on his own hands.
He had moved on from the champagne after finding a servant willing to risk Relena's wrath and keep him supplied with her father's best bourbon, when Treize Khushrenada decided to speak to him. The urbane DA was the public face of Romefeller – prettier, younger, and more charismatic than Duke Dermail – and Quatre could happily rip his throat out just for daring to show up here, let alone having the lack of self-preservation to actually try to have a conversation with Quatre. "I haven't yet had the opportunity to offer my condolence on your father's passing," Khushrenada opened. Quatre tossed back the last of the bourbon and passed his empty glass off to a waiter. He furiously crunched on the ice in his mouth, hoping that his silence would make the ever polite Khushrenada leave him alone. "Then again, with the state you've been in, I doubt it means much in any case." There was the hint of a smug smirk on the corners of Khushrenada's mouth. "The state I've been in?" Quatre couldn't help but rise to the bait. "You smell like a distillery," Khushrenada said with a disdainful sniff. "And poor Relena… trying her best to write off your behavior as a charming, eccentric devotion to your dearly departed father. But you and I both know this has nothing to do with that… you hardly respected the man, let alone loved him. All of your life he was just a pillar standing in your way, wasn't he?" Khushrenada smirked openly now. "Honestly, you should be thanking me. With him out of the picture you're free to run Winner Inc. however you see fit. I must say, I'm impressed that you can still function well enough to keep turning a profit. Shame you didn't accept my offer to become City Treasurer after Ken's tragic death." Quatre snorted. The news scrolls had insisted that Tsubarov had died at home, of a heart attack, in the arms of his wife. Quatre's informants had quickly uncovered the truth: Tsubarov had been assassinated while visiting his favorite brothel. "But then, your father didn't really give you the chance to consider it, did he?" That much, at least, was true. When Khushrenada had first approached him Quatre had been hesitant, but intrigued. Quatre had never openly supported his father's pacifism, but he had also never shown Romefeller even a modicum of respect. If Khushrenada was inviting him into the bastion of power then perhaps things could change in Sanc. Zayeed had immediately demanded that he turn down the offer – no son of his would ever work for a murderer like Dermail or accept the handouts of a smug bastard like Khushrenada. "Shame you didn't have him killed sooner then, isn't it?" Quatre suggested. Khushrenada arched one eyebrow, clearly unprepared for Quatre to fight back. "Well, in any case, I'm delighted that your sister Iria is now a member of the City Council. Such a lovely woman and so… spirited. It's good to know that not every Winner is so easily broken. She might actually provide some amusement before I –" With an outraged snarl Quatre drew back his fist and punched Khushrenada squarely in the jaw, snapping his head around and making him stumble backwards a few feet. "Son of a bitch," Quatre muttered and cradled his hand. He'd never actually punched someone before and he was pretty confident he might have broken something. Khushrenada regarded him through narrowed eyes. "You just assaulted a public official… in front of a ballroom of witnesses," the older man said mildly. He worked his jaw a few times, wincing in pain and making Quatre smirk in triumph. "If you so much as look at my sister then I'll kill you in front of a ballroom of witnesses," Quatre promised him. "Sir, is there a problem?" Quatre turned to see Khushrenada's unctuous assistant, Midii Une, appear at his side. "Yes. Call the police," he said in a bored tone. "I'm afraid young Mr. Winner has disturbed the peace, assaulted a public official, and threatened the District Attorney…" Une had her cell phone out so fast it defied physics. Relena approached them, and Quatre was suddenly very aware of the deafening silence around them. The music had stopped and every one of Relena's guests were looking at them. "Quatre?" Relena asked in a tone that suggested both irritation and resignation. He rolled his eyes. "Relena?" he echoed her tone. "Miss Darlian, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid your fiancé is going to have to come down to the police station." Khushrenada looked anything but sorry. Relena sighed and shook her head. "I knew this would happen. Oh, Quatre, don't you see what you've become? You've got to stop drinking and remember who you are." She turned to Khushrenada. "Honestly, maybe a night in prison will do him some good – clear his head." Both men looked at her in shock. "What?" she demanded. "I cannot condone violence, in my house, on my birthday, by my fiancé of all people." Quatre couldn't help but laugh. He was sure that the footage of him being escorted from Relena's house in handcuffs, laughing his head off as the police shoved him into the back of a squad car, would be replayed for months to come.
Quatre was thrown into a holding cell for three hours. His attire earned hostile looks from the men already occupying the cell – two well muscled thugs who looked like they could rip Quatre limb from limb without even trying; a transvestite who Quatre ultimately decided might be even more dangerous than the thugs; two drunken college students; and a teenage boy sporting two black eyes and a split lip. After several pointed looks from the transvestite, Quatre ripped off both the boutonniere and the bow tie and gave them to her – him. Her. Part of him – the cowardly upper-class life spent in prep schools part – was convinced that he wouldn't make it out of the cell without his face looking at least as damaged as the kid's. Another part of him was disgusted at the very assumption that just because the police of Sanc were treating these people like criminals he should agree with them. A female officer with short, dark hair appeared in front of the holding cell. "Alex Smith?" The boy stepped forward. "Who's asking?" The two thugs chuckled and even the cop smiled slightly at his attitude. "I'm Hilde. I know your… uncle Duo," she said. "My –oh, yeah. Uncle Duo." The kid nodded. "He sent Howard Parker to pick you up and told me to tell you that you're an idiot, but he's proud of you." The kid grinned and then winced when he reopened the cut on his lips. Quatre frowned as he recognized the name of Howard Parker – that was the newly elected City Councilmen from L2. He had been unanimously elected, as all L2 representatives were, since the natives of that quarter believed in drawing the name of their representative at random instead of participating in a democratic process. He wondered what Howard, who was the representative of nearly one million L2 residents, was doing taking the time out of his life to pick up some bruised kid at the direction of… uncle Duo. The woman escorted the boy from the cell. "What are you in for?" One of the thugs asked Quatre. He sighed. "I punched Treize Khushrenada." The two thugs exchanged looks. "Bullshit," the first one decided. "If you don't believe me, watch the news scrolls tomorrow – I'm sure they'll show it. Again and again and again." "Quatre Winner." He looked up to see a tall, auburn haired male officer on the other side of the bars. "Yes?" "Come with me, there's some paperwork to fill out regarding your assault." Quatre gave the two thugs a significant look, as if to say see, I told you so. The officer opened the cell and Quatre stepped out. "This way," the officer said and started to walk down a corridor. Quatre followed him into an interrogation room and instantly felt suspicious. "Why are we talking in an interrogation room?" Quatre had to ask. The officer frowned. "You're a high profile arrest. The Chief thought you would appreciate a little anonymity." That surprised Quatre. He would have assumed that Catalonia would have relished the opportunity to humiliate Quatre in front of Sanc's finest. "So, Mr. Winner, it –" "Quatre, please. My father – I'm not Mr. Winner." The officer nodded. "Of course. Quatre. It –" "What's your name?" The officer looked a little exasperated. "Officer Barton." "Barton? As in –" "Trowa. Call me Trowa," the officer interrupted, definitely exasperated now. "Sure thing, Trowa," Quatre said, earning a shake of the other man's head. "Now," Trowa continued in a calm, even tone, "the report I have from Mr. Khushrenada – or would you rather I call him Treize?" Quatre rolled his eyes. "-says that you assaulted him and threatened to kill him at Ms. Darlian's birthday party." "Sounds about right," Quatre agreed with a nod. Trowa arched one eyebrow. "You're admitting to threatening the life of the District Attorney?" "Sure. No point in prolonging this. Either way I'll be convicted of it, right?" "I'm not a lawyer," Trowa demurred. "But you aren't an idiot either," Quatre couldn't help but mutter. He sighed. "What's my bail set at? And don't I get a phone call?" "Your bail is set at five million dollars," Trowa said. "Five – five million dollars?" "You're a flight risk," Trowa said in that same calm, even tone. "I'm a flight – Did I fucking fly when you bastards murdered my father?" Quatre shouted at the video camera mounted in the far corner of the room. "You think an assault charge is going to scare me?" Trowa looked amused. "We only turn the cameras on during actual interrogations," he pointed out. "Oh." "And that phone call…" Trowa passed a cell phone to him across the table. Quatre frowned at it. "I have to stay in the room," Trowa said, a slight note of apology in his voice. "Right." Quatre picked up the phone and dialed his home number. "Winner residence, this is Rashid. How –" "Rashid, it's Quatre." "Master Quatre! The news scrolls said you've been arrested." "Yeah, for once they aren't lying," Quatre muttered. "Listen, my bail is posted at five million dollars. There's no way in hell I'm paying these bastards," he covered the phone and looked over at Trowa, "sorry," the other man shrugged, "a cent of my money," he continued to Rashid. "I'll just stay here until the trial begins. But call Kat and let her know I need her to be my lawyer and let Iria know she'll be acting as CEO for a while and –" There was a sound at the door to the room and Trowa grabbed the phone back from Quatre, snapping it closed and shoving it inside a pocket as he stood up in one smooth motion. "What the –" Trowa gave him a warning look and Quatre shut his mouth just as the door opened. "Oh fuck, just kill me now," he begged Trowa when Dorothy Catalonia walked into the room. She gave him a toothy smile before turning to Trowa with a hard look. "I think you're done here, rookie," she bit out. "I can take over." A muscle in Trowa's jaw bunched. "Detective Merquise –" Dorothy rolled her eyes. "Honestly, as if I care. Run along." She made a shooing motion with her hand and Trowa reluctantly left the room. "Hello, darling," Dorothy said to him and perched on the edge of the interrogation table once Trowa was gone. "Darling? Last time we spoke you called me a dickless monkey. How did we wind back up at darling?" Dorothy reached out and brushed his hair from his eyes and Quatre couldn't help but flinch under her touch. "You have such a good memory, Quatre," she murmured. "Do you happen to remember what I said I would do if I ever saw you again? After you dumped me for that heinous cow Relena Darlian?" "It was hard to understand you," Quatre said, "your habit of using colorful insults tends to complicate whatever you say when you're angry." "Then let me give you a refresher. I told you that if I ever set eyes on your cowardly, puss filled dick blistered face again I would rip your heart out." "Now I remember," Quatre said and struggled to keep a straight face. He honestly never could have forgotten someone calling him a puss filled dick blister but it was – now just as then – so inappropriately funny coming from her mouth that he just had to hear it one more time. "And here you are…" He scooted backwards in his chair when she leaned forward. "You can't honestly hold it against me that I was arrested while you were on duty," he pointed out. "It's not like you provided me of an advance schedule so I knew when I could and couldn't go around picking fights with city officials." "How strange. All I've been hearing about you for months now is what a sniveling little drunk you've become ever since dear old Daddy died. But look at you, sitting there, mouthing off to a police officer and the granddaughter of the mayor of Sanc. Not to mention the fact that you punched my cousin in a room full of witnesses and threatened his life…" "I'm very, very drunk," Quatre assured her even as he realized that he felt completely, dangerously sober. "Hm. You're not worth my time right now, anyway," Dorothy finally decided. She stood up and Quatre let out a sigh of relief. Instead of leaving, however, Dorothy stepped closer to his chair and backhanded him, five times, hard enough that Quatre felt his lips split and blood fill his mouth. "I love you too," he called out to her as she slammed out of the room. A moment later the door opened and Trowa stepped back in. He shook his head and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at the blood on Quatre's lips. "If you're going to act like an impotent drunk," Trowa murmured as he dabbed at the blood, "you shouldn't break character in a police station when you're at the mercy of people who want you dead." Before Quatre could ask him what he was talking about, Trowa hauled him to his feet and dragged him back to the holding cell. "Sweet dreams Officer Fine Ass," the transvestite called after Trowa as he left. While he had been gone the two college boys had made bail, leaving Quatre, the thugs, and the transvestite alone for the evening. Quatre was surprised by just how quickly he fell asleep.
"Winner." Quatre snapped awake at the sound of his name being shouted. At some point in the night he had started to cuddle with the transvestite, and he had to work hard to free himself from her grasp without cutting himself on her scarily long red finger nails. Trowa was holding open the cell door. "What?" Quatre asked. "Your bail was posted." "No, I told Rashid not to –" "Ms. Noventa posted it about an hour ago," Trowa interrupted him. "Ms – damnit." Quatre got to his feet and followed Trowa to the main entrance of the police station. Sure enough, waiting by the large glass doors, Sylvia Noventa stood waiting. "Fuck my life," Quatre muttered and ran his hands over his face. Trowa regarded him with amusement. "Are there any blue eyed blonde haired women in Sanc you aren't involved with?" Quatre glared at him. "Why don't they just call you Officer Smart Mouth?" Trowa just chuckled and held out a clipboard. "Sign here, here, and here." Quatre did as instructed and passed the clipboard back to him. "Take care of yourself," Trowa instructed. Quatre could only nod, thinking about what Trowa had said to him – what he had done for him, since it was clear that the phone call he had made to Rashid was against protocol – and wondered just who the man was and why he had bothered to help him. He cautiously approached Sylvia, taking the time to look her over and take in just how pretty and… honest she looked. "Hey," he greeted her. She arched one perfectly manicured eyebrow at him. "Hey? You don't speak to me for six months, I bail you out of jail, and all you can say is hey?" He had to smile at the irritation in her voice, but then he winced at the pain the gesture caused. "Oh my god, what happened to you?" She stepped forward. "Dorothy wasn't too happy to see me," he informed her. Sylvia's mouth tightened into a flat, grim line. "Come on, let's get you home." He followed her from the station and wasn't even a little surprised to see that Rashid was waiting outside with the limo. "I should have you fired," he told the man who had practically raised him. "I told you to call Kat, not Sylvia." "Oh? I'm so sorry, Master Quatre. It must be my old age – my hearing isn't what it used to be." Quatre glared at the man, but he showed no signs of repenting. "Fine. Thank you," he added. Quatre joined Sylvia in the backseat of the limo. "Doesn't it look bad, you bailing me out?" Quatre asked Sylvia. Like Quatre, she came from a family that had lost count of its fortune generations ago, so it wasn't as if the five million dollars put a dent in her funds, but she was the daughter of the City Manager. "No worse than you acting like a drunken fool for the last six months," she informed him tartly. "Sylvia." "Promise me you'll stop drinking so much." Quatre sighed. "Sylvia, I –" "I'll cry," she interrupted. "I will. If you don't promise me right now to never drink again I will cry." Quatre couldn't help but laugh. "Sylvia, you've never cried a tear in your life! Do you even know how to cry?" It was one of the things that had made them such close friends – she knew that he couldn't resist tears and he knew she couldn't actually shed any. She sat there glaring at him, her blue eyes painfully wide and a look of concentration on her face. "Damnit!" She snapped a moment later and stomped one foot on the floorboard of the car. "I can't do it." "God, I've missed you," Quatre said before laughing again. "Then why have you ignored me?" She asked once he had gained control of himself. He sighed. "Look, Sylvia, now isn't –" "Quatre Winner, I am your best friend. If you dare put me off with that 'now isn't the best time' bullshit again I will punch you in the face." "I'm with Relena. She's… there for me." It was such a painful lie to tell, but it was also the only thing guaranteed to make Sylvia back off. "If she was there for you then why did Rashid call me?" "Because Rashid has always liked you best, you know that." She glared at him. "Sylvia, you need to move on. Forget about me. I'm just a drunken fool, remember?" "But you're my drunken fool," she stubbornly insisted. It took every ounce of Quatre's self-control not to reach out to her, not to touch her or spill all of the dark, gnawing fears that had plagued him for the last six months. But Sylvia was the last good thing in Quatre's life – golden and pure and untouched by the corruption around her. He couldn't expose her to it. "No, I'm not," he assured her. There had always been something between them – some ghost of physical attraction and affection that went beyond friendship – but Quatre had never acted on it. The timing had never seemed right – too often Sylvia was dating athletic, upstanding young men of Sanc while Quatre had been pulled between Dorothy and Relena for years before his father finally made the decision of who he would marry. Sylvia nodded. "You're right," she agreed. "You're Relena's problem now." She leaned forward and tapped on the glass barrier. "Rashid, let me out here, I'll call a cab." "Sylvia, don't –" "Good bye, Quatre," she said and opened the door, jumping out before the car had even come to a stop. "Damnit!" Quatre punched the empty seat beside him. "Master Quatre?" Rashid asked from the front seat. "Take us home," he glumly instructed the man. He slept most of the afternoon – nursing a killer hangover and giving into a fatalistic depression now that Sylvia, his last chance for happiness, was finally out of his life. Relena called and he didn't even bother pretending to listen to her but instead let the receiver balance on the pillow two feet from his head while she read him the riot act. Eventually he grew bored of the sound of her voice and got up. He found Rashid in the library, organizing a stack of papers on his father's desk. "What are those?" Quatre asked. "These? Nothing that would interest you, Master Quatre." He couldn't help but roll his eyes – Rashid had played this game with him for years, decades even. When Quatre had refused to eat peas as a child, Rashid had made a big show of eating a bowl full of them one day, exclaiming how delicious they were, but when Quatre asked for some he had turned him down, saying "these wouldn't interest you, Master Quatre." Of course, Quatre had demanded them and eaten the entire bowl. "I'm not a child anymore, Rashid, I'm not going to fall for that again." The butler shrugged. "Very well. I'll just put them with the others to be shredded." That caught Quatre's attention. "Shredded? You're shredding my father's papers?" "Per his instructions." "But – what papers could my father possibly have wanted shredded?" Rashid regarded him with a frank, assessing gaze. "You seem sober," he eventually decided. "Depressingly sober," Quatre agreed. Rashid held out the papers and Quatre accepted them. He leafed through them, more and more confused with each new page he read. "You said there were more?" Rashid nodded and lead Quatre down a corridor to the wine cellar. Before his father's death Quatre had avoided almost all alcoholic beverages – a holdover from a brief commitment to traditional Islam in his youth as a means of rebelling against his father – and even during his recent foray into all things fermented he had avoided wine. This was the first time Quatre had even been in the wine cellar since his father's death. "What are we doing in –" he cut himself short when Rashid opened the stone wall in front of them. Only it wasn't stone – it was a hollow door that was painted and even perfectly textured to resemble a wooden door. Rashid stepped inside the doorway and flipped a light switch, illuminating a long stone corridor. Quatre followed him down the corridor, judging from the dampness and coolness in the air that they were descending far below the grounds of the estate house. As they neared the end of the corridor Quatre could make out a watery, greenish blue light illuminating a large room. They stepped into the room and Quatre looked up. It took him a moment, but he realized that he was looking up, at the bottom of the reflection pool on the south lawn of the estate. He turned and looked around the inside of the room, taking in the high tech computer panels, the array of weapons, and safes, and the five suits of black Kevlar armor. "Holy shit. My father was Batman?" Rashid laughed. "Hardly. Your father was a pacifist through and through." "Then what was he doing with a cache of AK-47s?" Quatre demanded. "They were for you." Quatre's jaw dropped and he looked at Rashid. "For me?"
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