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"Alternative Directions: Options "Written By: Karina Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or the lovely
boys and their girls in the series. Wish I did. Please don't sue me.
I haven't even got a brass razoo to give you. Rating: Deffinately PG in Australia, at the moment,
but probably safer to say R for later chapters. Not sure about international
ratings Warnings: It will be 6x2, even though it does
not start out that way. After all, Zechs and Duo never met in Gundam
Wing and only spoke briefly over a com line in Endless Waltz. I've
tried to keep them in character as I saw them in the series. A bit
of language creeping in under stressful conditions. Pairings: eventual 6x2, past 2xH, 2+H,6x9, 1+R
Summary: Directions is set post Endless Waltz
and roughly 2 years have passed. Zechs and Noin are on Mars and Duo,
after spending some time with Hilde in a relationship leaves L2 to
join Preventers. Hilde was not happy about his decision. I guess enough
said. Here t'is, and I hope you like it. This is also AU for the standard
setting, as well as the series and Endless Waltz. Spoilers: Gundam Wing Series and Endless Waltz Many thanks to Dulin for volunteering to beta this. //... // thoughts
"Alternative Directions: Options"
Chapter 116 2nd March AC 198 Colony L1 - 0025 B [La Grange point 1. Serial number 0025 B ] Time: 00: 10 [approx Sanc time 23:00] Trowa The silence, while it usually would not have bothered him now sent chills through him. It was not the cooling of the temperature or even the fact that he was alone in a dark alley that bothered him. He had been alone for much of his life and with the exception of the last few years there had been no one with whom he was comfortable enough for him to even consider spending time with. Nor was the bite of fear a stranger to him. He had known solitude and fear for as long as he could recall and now that he had something to lose he felt the fear more keenly than ever before. It was not fear for himself that worried him now but fear for his partner and what would befall him should anything separate them. It placed a totally new perspective on how he viewed the world. // I would far prefer to be with Quatre than standing here looking at a corpse. // The silence was not one of peaceful contemplation which at one time had been his sanctuary from a world that simply did not care that he was alive. It was not that he had had no family that had sent him into this state but the fact that he now did have someone who cared about him and for whom he in turn cared. It was still new to him. It was still wonderful and his lover was a very long way away. // I wonder what he is doing now? Considering the time of day he is most likely to be curled asleep in that wonderfully big bed we share. I wonder if he will dream tonight and if he does, will he dream of me? I hope he does. I hate being separated from him though it has not been so long this time. Still, I will be very glad to return to Earth and I only wish that I could do so today. I am tired, but there are still things that need doing before I can rest and now I will need to type up a report on this. // For an instant he felt a spear of sorrow and misery. At any time in his life it could have been him coughing out his life in some dark alley. No one would have cared, just as no one would likely care that this cooling body had been a living breathing human being. If his suspicions were true then he had never known a caring touch or the love of a parent and perhaps not even the care of a friend. This one had probably been even more alone than he had been at the same age. //After seeing this it makes the memories return and I would probably not sleep so well anyway. Not without the peace Quatre generates. // Dreams were more frequently pleasant when they shared a bed or even the presence of each other. The dreams of blood and destruction, in Quatre's case amplified by the Zero systems lingering effects, were best dealt with in each other's presence. It would be no surprise to him this night, if he was lucky enough to find his solitary bed, to be surrounded by the visions of hopelessness, destruction and death from the war. Following this discovery of so young a victim of murder it was pretty much a certainty that he would dream, and there would be no Quatre to comfort him and aid him from the cloying tendrils of the nightmare. Deep green eyes watched the slow trickle of rich crimson, thick and dark and slowly thinning in the first cascade of the nightly rain that flushed the colony streets. It was raining in space, a steady soaking rain that cleaned the streets so effectively, flushing away the debris of the colony's day, and taking it down into the recycling systems to be sorted, processed and used for the stability and betterment of the colony. There was a complex system of use and re use on all of the colonies that made them a viable economic expenditure. Literally nothing was wasted in space and the designers of the habitats worked on the philosophy that if you looked hard enough you would find a use for everything. The older colonies were not so efficient as the more modern space habitats but they worked in this time of peace to modernize outdated systems and become more economically viable. He shook his head slightly, casting a glance about him as the rain began to strengthen. //There is no way to stop the rain from washing away possibly vital clues, but there is nothing that I can do about that now. We will simply have to do the best that we can. A little rain will not defeat Preventers.// There was not much that could be described as being unique to the colonies. Everything that you would find in the precincts of the colonies you could find on Earth and certainly death was unique to nowhere. For any organism that experienced birth, whether it was a plant born from a seed or an animal born from an egg or a mammals womb there was the final inescapable experience that one simply could not deny. Death. Everyone died. Eventually. It was also true that so many people did not live to die a natural death but experienced the premature ending of that unique 'something' that defined life. In an ideal world one would be born, grow through childhood and into adolescence and thence develop into an adult and in the fullness of time one night, in sleep, one could pass quietly and peacefully into whatever followed this reality. In an ideal world people would live to the full extent of their life expectancy, having experienced every day of their lives to the full, be it good or bad. In an ideal world. //This, despite the end of war, is far from an ideal world. It takes more than ending wars to defeat the nature of man. We still obey the law of the jungle. The stronger kill the weaker, as is the way of nature and mankind is no exception to that rule. Ending wars will not bring about an end to murder.// Too many people died before their time. Coughing out their lives in back alleys or victims of a car crash or… There were too many ways to die. Many would say that that was just the way it was and that nothing could be done to change the base nature of man. How long before they would apply that pretty piece of doggerel to politics and began the subtle infighting that would result once again in conflict on a grand scale? War. It was ended, a time of total world peace had come where man embraced his fellow man and all was right and rosy with the Earth and the colonies. // As if. I don't think I was ever one to enjoy fairytales, although if Quatre loving me is not a fairytale then I don't know what is. I need Quatre to ground me. I think about death far too much and he surrounds me with life. He makes me see with eyes not so jaded by the past. // It was hardly surprising considering his past that he had developed an awareness of death and could almost smell it out. It was no exaggeration on his part to claim that death had always featured in his life from his earliest memories. He could not recall a time when he did not see death, smell death or hear death on a regular basis during his childhood years. It was simply a natural part of living the life of a mercenary, being a part of a team dedicated to fighting. Death was a part of that life, whether it was natural death or the end result of a clause within a contract. Being a member of a mercenary band meant that you very quickly learned to ignore death. //No. // he mused, // No, that is wrong. You do not learn to ignore death. When you are a mercenary you learn to live with the baser instincts of mankind. You learn to accept injury as a part of every day life, a hazard of employment and death … You learn to accept death for what it is. Death is a necessary part of life. Whether you bring death to someone by pushing a knife blade through their ribs or they die in a car accident, the end result is the same. They are still dead. It is the same end result though the means of death may be different. The mercenary group I was a part of were not fussy about who they worked for or about the jobs they contracted to do. It was their way. It was their life. It was my life. It is a lesson I learned before I was six and it is a lesson that Quatre still has to learn. Death can not be circumvented. It simply is. He will learn the lesson eventually, he must because life will teach it to him. He is an idealist and a pacifist and even now he does not understand my views on death.// Trowa ran a finger along the line of his nose, wiping the running moisture in a futile gesture and lifting his gaze to the buildings that fashioned this alley. Four windows, all dark overlooking this scene. Preventers would ask, of course, but no one would have seen anything of the murder. They never did witness anything in places like this. He was street wise and knew that there would be little help from the local inhabitants. //The Zero System showed him more than he ever wanted to know about people and death but sometimes I think he tries too hard to forget everything that the Zero system showed him. It is useless. He will not be able to forget it. I only used the system the once and I will never be able to forget. Zero was right though, even though it was wrong. Everyone has the potential to be your enemy, that is the way of human nature but Zero failed to show that they also have the potential to be your friend.// Emerald eyes dropped from the windows overlooking the alley and tracked the runnel of fading crimson as the flushing rain did its work. The investigators would arrive soon enough. He had reported the body to the local Preventer Agency and to the police force but he would make his own preliminary investigations before either of the agencies could arrive. He would begin the investigation in his capacity as a Preventer Special Agent, logging a report on his findings with the local branch of the Preventers and then leave the matter to be handled by the local authorities in conjunction with the local Preventer Agents. He hoped to, at any rate but it was very possible that this death could extend his stay in space. This particular death bothered him more than he would admit to any of the local agents of ether the Law Enforcement agency or the Preventers. It might only have been fantasy but it was gut instinct for him and that was something that he had long ago learned to trust. This death, this young man, barely more than a child, was going to lead to trouble and he wished that he had not heard the sounds of a struggle from the darkness of the night. //That is not right. I'm sorry. You deserve to be noticed. To have your death investigated. It's just … I'm sorry. You deserved better than I can give.// Those very distinctive sounds of nearing death had alerted him to trouble and drawn him to this dark and dirty alley. He had found a blood soaked form, fingers feebly clawing at the air, not yet dead but with that unmistakable look he recognized only too well that said death was only seconds away. He was too late to help the victim and there had been no one else in sight. He wondered if somehow his arrival had been noted, though he personally doubted that anyone could have heard him coming. He was very good at moving in silence when the occasion demanded and murders in back alleys demanded that care be taken. While he might not have been as silent as he thought, which he seriously doubted, he was more inclined to believe that the killers might have had a lookout posted and that they would have bolted when the Preventer jacket he was wearing had been recognized. One thing that he had cursed on his approach to the scene was that the approach to this alley was distinctive in its unusual lack of concealment opportunities, a factor that may have figured in the murderers choice of location for their dirty deed. He was almost certain that there had been more than one involved with this death and from signs he now saw in the alley he suspected that there had been at least three people involved. It was a lonely place to die, this alley. A lonely, impersonal brutal place to finish ones life and he wondered exactly what had been taking place here, but the victim was now beyond giving him any more help than he had already. There was nothing that he could do for the boy beyond perform his duties as a Preventer to the best of his abilities and promise that he would do all in his power to see that justice would be done. The boy was too far gone when he had arrived to question and there had been no time, death had been visible in those quiet eyes that had looked at him, the blood pooling around him and death seconds away. It was not much to go on but the man, youth really, had given him a clue to the source of his death. It was not much, just a single word whispered around a bubble of blood that marked the end of a young life, but it was a word that would definitely see the involvement of the Preventers in the investigation. //I have been privy to the reports from the last mission Duo and Heero were involved in together and on considering the look of him I admit that he has the right appearance. It is possible. It is enough to involve Preventers. With the last word he ever spoke he ensured that an investigation will be carried out into his death that will be intensive and performed not just by the local authorities searching for a gang of youths intent on mischief that went too far. If they bothered to really search at all. There are too many gangs in the back alleys of the colony and this could easily be dismissed as just another gang killing. // * “Romefeller.”* The last dying whisper of a young man, barely into his teens and who, if the disruption to the garbage in this alley was any indication had not gone down without a respectable fight. Short cropped brown hair of a rather nondescript shade, dirty bloody skin that surprisingly was very pale under the dirt and grime, suggesting that the child had not often seen the sun or taken advantage of the solariums available on the colony. With that pallid skin he was not Earthborn so he was definitely a product of the colonies. Leaning forward he carefully studied the youth's hands, noting the calluses that told him the young man was used to hard work but there were anomalies. The nails were well manicured and of reasonable length, not jagged, broken and dirty in the quicks so he was not one who had worked in the more fundamental and hands on jobs on offer in the colonies. One nail was broken but it was a fresh break and likely occurred during the fight that led to his death. Manicured nails meant that care had been taken in the past with his appearance and that he certainly had not been a product of the streets. The material and cut of the clothing worn suggested that what he wore was in actuality some kind of uniform. He carefully examined the clothing worn by the body and determined that the grey overalls and grey shirt, both of a heavy cotton weave and with a brand name you could find in any shopping mall on the colony were not likely to offer much of a source of information about the boy. Many workers on the colony wore this same unofficial uniform but the hands denied what the clothing suggested. The joggers he wore you would also find in any shopping mall for a cheap price and the shirt and overalls were also reasonably priced and purely functional. The entire outfit was the sort of thing worn by the labourers of lower standing of a hundred or more companies throughout the Earth Sphere, not just this particular colony. There was nothing obviously distinctive about the boy that he could see. // Overall you appear to be singularly unremarkable, but that is a cultivated appearance I believe. It will change when you are properly examined by a Preventer Medical Examiner. If I am correct and you are what I suspect you to be then you will be micro chipped and the Medical Examiner will find it during the autopsy. Romefeller. You could not have uttered anything more guaranteed to draw my interest. You could not be more than fourteen, perhaps thirteen? I know that there were children your age at the facility on Earth and I know that many of them had the same functional hair style as you. They wore the same generic clothing and they had the same pasty skin colour at that laboratory they raided months ago. On you that could be natural though it seems a little too pallid to me. You are enough like them that I have to ask the question. Is there another such facility here? You could not have escaped the Preventers net on Earth and made it to L1. I do not believe that the Preventers are that sloppy and Une took a great interest in that case. No, you are not from Earth. I will have to wait for the autopsy to determine if you are chipped, but I do not think there is much doubt. If you are what I think you are, I have to wonder why it is that they wanted you dead?// An escapee from an illegal genetic facility on the run and found by an overzealous search party, perhaps? A beating for punishment gone further than had been intended? He doubted that that was the case, something about the scene just seemed to deny it and when he carefully lifted the body and tilted it to one side he noted the knife wound that had been the fatal blow. Frowning he considered the battered body, noting each of the visible wounds that was clear sign of the struggle that had ensued before the death blow had been delivered. //Did they not want to kill you? The wounds that I can see suggest that they may have attempted to capture you and that you put up quite a resistance. Knuckles skinned and bruised … Possibly skin caught in the nails … We may get a DNA sample of at least one of your attackers. I think capture was the very last thing that you wanted to happen.// Again Trowa eyed the debris surrounding him and he sighed. // You put up quite a struggle before they took you down.// He searched the body quickly and efficiently in an attempt to discover further obvious information to be included in his report. He was hoping that this murder and his suspicions over the youths origins would not mean that his planned flight to the L2 Colony to chase down further clues as to who had issued a warning on the safety of Relena Peacecraft Darlian would not now be delayed. Considering the seriousness with which he knew Preventer Earth took the discovery of the Romefeller genetic laboratories on Earth he knew that it was possible she would place him on the investigation team when she learned of this incident. Admittedly there were many competent agents who could find the source of that warning but those who knew of the genetic experiments were not so common and he surmised that Lady Une would wish to keep it that way. His search revealed no means of electronic identification, no credit cards, no official colony identification, no transit pass, nothing that could be electronically scanned and provide even a false identification from which they might begin to work on establishing an identity. The pockets of the shirt and the overalls were empty accept for some very uninteresting lint balls and the hope that he might have had a palm top computer vanished, unless it lay somewhere amid the debris that littered the alley. A thorough search of the alley would glean anything that might be of interest here and it would be performed under Preventer supervision. “Well, whoever you are, I do not mean to belittle your death but I hope that finding you will not force a change of plans on me. The local authorities and the Preventer team should be arriving any time now and after writing up my report I am intending to hop a shuttle flight to L2. I have exhausted all contacts here and come up empty on who sent the warning to watch Relena and it is time I returned to Earth. L2 is my next stop and if that proves to be a dud then I want to go home to Quatre. I really need to immerse myself in the calm that Quatre generates. Maybe wherever you now exist or in your next life you will have a kinder fate.” Not that he had any great religious views on what came after death. There had been a couple of people within the mercenary band who had been religious but none of them had been strictly so and they seemed to forget those views easily enough when it suited them. Quatre was, perhaps arguably, the most religious man he had met and had had more than a passing acquaintance with to date and his sexuality clashed with the teachings of his religion. Their love and sexual attraction for each other was a source of conflict and confusion for Quatre. It was something that they still worked on trying to reconcile the two, religious need and physical but Quatre seem disinclined to even consider ending their partnership and of that he was extremely thankful. He did not want a return to the empty days. //I hope that he can find peace within himself over the conflict and that he does not find it by leaving me. I am selfish, I know, but I have been alone so long … I know that our trial separation before we decided to live together hurt him just as much as it hurt me, but his religion is very dear to him and how can you compare yourself to God? It is not something that he is going to be able to ignore, even when he does leave the Winner Corporation behind. I know that we have made great plans together for our future but … The Family, his family, will not leave us alone just because he leaves their circle. We will still exist and we will still be an embarrassment to them and a slur to the name of Winner. I am not certain how we are going to deal with that kind of pressure over time. // With a low sigh he returned his attention to scanning the alley, seeking some clue that might aid in identifying the attackers. Perhaps some clue dropped that might offer a lead on where the investigating team might begin the search. The rain was beginning to annoy him as it built steadily in strength. The force of the rainfall would continue to build to the stage where the streets would be awash with sufficient water to clean out all but the largest and heaviest refuse from the alleys and gutters of the colony. Everyone knew when it was due to rain and most people made themselves scarce at this time of night for the two hour long deluge. It was a relatively new feature of the colony this cleansing by rain. One of the newer innovations brought into being since the peace came into effect. Before the end of the wars the refuse had been permitted to build up in the poorer areas of the colony to be cleaned up on a monthly basis by refuse disposal crews. Peace time and an injection of funds and the need to find work for out of work soldiers had permitted the colony administration to employ the manpower needed to install the liquid flushing system and the refuse crews had been reassigned to the sorting rooms where the garbage was sorted and recycled. It was a system that the refuse crews had found to their liking as it eliminated the need for them to enter the less savoury areas of the colony. Bashings and killings in these dark alleys had been known to occur on a more than regular basis and the workers were pleased that they no longer needed to run the risk of meeting someone desperate enough to attack them for what little they carried on them. With the introduction of the nightly deluge the reports of crime in these areas had been reduced considerably which had pleased the colony administrators to no end but the law enforcement agency that policed the colony was less than impressed with all aspects of the deluge. Recently the more influential criminals, the Mr Bigs of crime on the Colony had discovered the joys of using the deluge to cover their crimes and the colony police had to adapt to this change in methods to properly investigate. While the police were less than thrilled with this aspect the health authorities of the colony were more than pleased with the improvement of conditions cleaner living environments presented to the citizens. They had called these back alleys breeding grounds for diseases and they had been right, though L1 had never been rocked by plagues the way L2 had been. The faintest swirl of colour in an eddy of gathering water caught up around a pile of refuse caught his eye and he moved quickly to sort through the refuse pile straightening in seconds with the blood covered blade of the murder weapon uncovered. He wished the investigators would get their butts down here soon or all chance of finding viable evidence would be gone. Producing a handkerchief he carefully covered the blade and wrapped it, touching it as little as possible before moving to place it on the body and out of danger of being carried away by the flood as he continued his survey of the alley. //I don't think it ever rained this hard on Earth when I was there. At least not where I needed to be. If this gets any heavier it will have bruising force. I thought when I heard they were installing these systems on the colonies that it would make them seem more Earthlike, but that just is not the case. It's wrong. The rain is just not right to be even considered natural. Too warm and too hard. If anything it just serves to emphasize one more difference between colony and planet to me.// Through the relentless pounding of the rain he heard the sound of an engine and grunted softly to himself, satisfied. That should be a Preventer or possibly a police crew arriving but until he was certain he was not inclined to present himself as a target. Not in these streets. He faded into the shadows, intent on not making himself a target if the perpetrators of the crime should have returned by some small chance to see about the disposal of the body. The shadows and the pounding deluge were enough to disguise his presence until he wished to reveal himself and while it hid him from view it also hid whoever was walking into the alley. He could hear them but he could not see them and obviously they were having trouble seeing as well as one of them cursed when they almost stumbled over the body. He shifted slightly, just enough to ease himself into a position where he could see the two Preventer jackets emerge into the dim light of the alley. Torches snapped on as the agents knelt by the body, one cursed the weather pulling his collar up higher in a useless attempt to keep the rain from running down his neck and the other stepped away from the corpse, aiming the torch light into the gloomy depths of the alley. “He's young. Barely more than a kid.” “They just seem to get younger all the time. I think the average life expectancy on L2 is about sixty on the wheel, thirty five in the hub of the colony and someone told me it had risen from nineteen to twenty five in the slums. Conditions here are a lot better.” “But far from ideal.” a tired sigh. “The call said that Agent Chameleon would remain on the scene. Any sign of him?” “I am here.” he called before he stepped cautiously into the light of the torch. He had recognized the pair of agents and the fact that they did not have a military past did not mean that they were not likely to be jumpy in this neighbourhood. He called first as a precaution, one he had learned in childhood that had seen him survive the wars of his formative years and hopefully would be a measure of living to survive perhaps to old age. He would hardly make so abrupt an entrance onto the scene if either man was the nervous sort and he was not of a mind to have to dodge bullets because he had startled them, not that Preventers did not give their ex-patriot soldiers adequate training to adapt to the more peaceful times. “We need to be quick or we will lose all chance of finding anything more than I have already found to assist us in the investigation.” “This bloody flushing system is a menace. There was a big robbery on the flip side of the colony that has gone wrong and now developed into a hostage situation. Most of the law enforcement agency operatives have been called there, so it looks like the initial investigation for this murder will be a Preventer operation.” Trowa nodded, wishing for nothing more than a dry change of clothes and the comfort of a hot cup of coffee away from this punishing storm of water. Both of which were luxuries he was not likely to enjoy for a few hours yet. Not if they were to thoroughly investigate this crime scene and hope to show something for their efforts. //It may become a Preventer investigation and never see a cop yet. If the boy is micro chipped that will no doubt be for the best.// t.b.c.
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