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"Here We Go Again"Written By: Mookie
Disclaimer: I don't really need to be Captain Obvious here, do I? No ownership, no money being made. Written for fun, not profit. Pairing: Trowa/Quatre, others may be implied. Warnings: Slash, angst, language, plot contrivances*, possible liberties with canon based on faulty memory Rating: NC 17 *Let's just say that I think this would have qualified for the 2011 (or was it 2010?) Moments of Rapture contest, "everything old is new again". Notes: I heard the song Here We Go Again by Demi Levato many times on the Radio Disney CD, and it eventually spawned a fic idea. The more I listened to it, the more I pictured the protagonists just had to be Trowa and Quatre. While lyrics from the song precede each chapter, this is not a song fic, nor will the chapter content be forced to fit the lyrics exactly. Summary: It hadn't always been that way. In the beginning, they'd all been scrambling to put their lives back together...
April 15 AC 206 "Is he going to be OK?" Catherine asked, wringing her hands anxiously. Trowa didn't answer right away. He hadn't been able to get a good look at either eye and he was currently busy trying to pry Angus' mouth open without losing any body parts in the process. One of the foremost safety lessons of the circus was that a hurt animal was unpredictable. "I don't know," he admitted. "I know money is tight, but we're going to have to call in a vet." Catherine paced back and forth, counting on her fingers. "OK. Typical office visit, eighty credits just to look at him. Add the expense of a house call, probably one-fifty. If we're lucky, we won't need to pay for any diagnostic testing, but medication will be extra..." It was clear she no longer needed Trowa, at least not until she'd mentally balanced their budget and figured out which expenses to cut in order to have a doctor come take a look at their lion. Trowa sat down on a stool near the lion's cage and watched as Angus' sides heaved. The animal was older now and while that might have explained the lethargy, the suddenness it had come on was cause for concern, especially when combined with the shallow breathing. Trowa reached through the bars and stroked Angus' mane. It had always been rather coarse, but now that an increasing number of the hairs on the lion's head were gray, they felt more like wire than fur. One of Angus's paws came up to swipe at his nose as the animal slept, and Trowa slowly withdrew his hand lest the lion accidentally claw him. "Shit!" Catherine swore, drawing Trowa's attention away from the lion. It was rare to hear his sister swear. "It's a Sunday. Trowa, this is going to cost double what I initially thought!" She resumed her pacing, tapping her finger in the palm of her hand as if she could somehow conjure up money they didn't have. Trowa was beginning to have a bad feeling about their situation. Worse was the dawning realization that he might have a solution to their problem. He wouldn't say anything to Catherine just yet, though. He couldn't make any promises and truthfully, it would be a very last resort. A sneeze from Angus caused Trowa to turn his head toward the lion, and he wiped away the mucus with a towel. "I won't let you down, fella," he whispered to the animal. "I promise." Catherine stood behind him and gave his shoulder a squeeze. "I can't do it, Trowa. The money just isn't there, unless we can pay the vet in installments." He reached up to cover her hand with his. "We'll do whatever needs to be done." He turned around to look into her face, contorted with worry. "Let me make a few calls," she said. "Maybe, maybe we can-" she gestured helplessly, gave Trowa's shoulder another squeeze and walked toward her trailer. He watched her go, wishing he could take care of her the way she'd always taken care of him. When he'd quit working for Quatre, there weren't many options left for him. He could have joined Wufei in working for the Preventers, and he'd certainly been given enough implied invitations to join them, but it wasn't exactly how he wanted to rediscover himself. He could have easily become a mercenary, which would allow him the freedom to accept or decline work, not to mention decent pay, but there was also the risk of working for opposing sides. A merc had no loyalty and he didn't want to begin his life over as someone whose sole purpose in life was dictated by the prevailing currency of the era. The only other place he really felt he belonged was the circus. He'd thought a home was a place, but it wasn't. The time he'd spent with Quatre had proven that. Home was where family was, and the only family he'd ever known was Catherine, who called him Trowa but remained convinced that he was her long lost infant brother Triton. Whether they were linked by blood or not, Catherine was his sister, and she'd been overjoyed when he rejoined her. He kept his little studio apartment, although he was rarely around to use it. His home was in one of the trailers and by the time they'd traveled to their third city, it was as if he'd never left. If Catherine wasn't hurling her knives at him, he was performing overhead in some manner. Sometimes he was on the wire, sometimes on trapeze, and sometimes simple ropes hanging down from the ceiling. At twenty-six, he felt younger than he had at nineteen. At least he had, right up until today. He got to his feet when the door to Catherine's trailer opened and waited beside Angus for what he knew by her face was bad news. "The weekend clinic requires full payment for all services when the vet arrives," she choked out. He'd expected as much. He rubbed the back of his neck and took a deep breath. "I have an idea, but I'm not sure you're going to like it." She covered her mouth with her hand, and he shook his head. "Nothing illegal, nothing dangerous." At least not physically. He reached into his pocket for his phone. "I'll need to make a phone call, first, and I can't promise anything..." A glimmer of hope shone in her eyes and he knew he would beg if he had to. "After all this time, do you think he would?" That Catherine was so readily accepting of asking Quatre for help showed just how desperate she was to save Angus. She'd not liked the Sandrock pilot very much the first time she'd met him, blaming him for Trowa's amnesia, his involvement in the war, and anything else even remotely related to Operation Meteor. She'd warmed up to him after the Mariemaia uprising, and had welcomed him to the family when Trowa moved in to the mansion to be with him. Of course she'd automatically blamed Quatre when they broke up, and Trowa hadn't bothered to tell her the reasons behind it. Even if he thought she'd understand, he suspected she still would have made excuses for her little brother. She was overprotective in her ways, but she still allowed him to soar overhead. Circus life was something Catherine could relate to and the inherent dangers were, in Catherine's world, still safer than the outside world. It was partly why she'd never wanted to pursue any sort of career outside of the multi-colored tents. She was happy here, and so was he, at least most of the time. "I'll try," he promised, and was grateful when Catherine returned to her trailer, leaving him alone to make the call. He no longer had Quat's number saved, and he swallowed nervously as he dialed information. If he could reach Quatre's office number, the calls would automatically forward to his cell on the weekend. It had been an annoying, disruptive habit, but one Trowa was thankful for right now. His mouth was completely dry as the automated voice recited the number, and he pressed "1" to have the call connected. His fingers felt too clumsy to dial it himself. You have reached Winner Enterprises. Our office is now closed. If you know your party's extension, you may dial it at any time. To access the company directory, please press or say "1" now. He pressed the key again and gripped the front of his shirt, hoping he would not vomit now. He'd faced death and self-destruction with courage; he could handle a simple phone call to an old friend. Even if they weren't exactly friends anymore, and even if they'd once been much more. Connecting to...Nathan Burns. If this is correct, press 1. If not, press 2. Nate Burns. His old boss. He must have remembered the wrong extension. When prompted, he pressed the appropriate key to search by voice prompt. I'm sorry. I do not understand. Are you trying to reach Kate Warner? To connect to Kate Warner, press 1. If not, press 2. After three more unsuccessful attempts, he gave up and let the call go through to Nate's extension. This is Nate Burns. I'm either out of the office or another line. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you. Trowa gripped the phone hard. "Nate, this is Trowa Barton. I'm sorry I left you in a bind a while back, but I need to reach Quatre. I know you don't owe me anything, but it's urgent. If you're able to pass this message on to him, I'd appreciate it." He disconnected the call and walked back to Angus' cage. He was still breathing, but it was eating him up. Heero. He'd call Heero. If Heero didn't have the money, he could probably get it from Relena. The phone rang a few times, and Trowa half expected to get Heero's voice mail, but instead he heard something like a chair or a table being dragged across a floor, and a voice in the distance that sounded like it might be Heero. A second voice, this one much closer to the phone, yelled back "Cool your jets, I got it!" There was a clatter, as if the phone had been dropped. Trowa's grip on the phone tightened as he waited anxiously. "Heero Yuy's phone. Still there?" "Duo?" "The one and only. Who's this, Trowa?" "Yeah. Listen, is Heero there?" "Oh, he's here..." Duo pulled the phone away from his mouth. "The other side, Heero. No, not that side. Heero, not that side The other one. The other other - yes, there!" There was more noise in the background, and then Duo was back on the phone. "Sorry, Tro. Is there anything I can help you with, or do you want Heero to call you back when he's done?" He was almost desperate enough to ask Duo, but he didn't know him nearly as well. "Thanks, Duo, but can you have him call me back as soon as he can?" "Yeah, sure, no problem. The number you're calling from, right?" "Yes. Please." He was just about to end the call when Duo asked, "Trowa, everything OK?" "Sure," Trowa said, his voice rough with emotion. "What could possibly be wrong?" "OK. He'll call you back in about five minutes. Just hang in there in the meantime." Trowa ended the phone call before Duo could say anything more. He reached through the bars to stroke Angus' head again. "I'm trying," he said. "I swear, I'm trying." He pulled his hand back out and leaned his head against the bars. He knew Angus wasn't going to live forever, but he didn't want it to end this way. The ringing of his phone made him jump, and he couldn't answer it fast enough. "Heero, thanks for getting back to me." "Heero? Trowa, this is Nate Burns. You left me a message about ten minutes ago." The queasiness was back. "I'm sorry. I just really need to get in touch with Quatre." "I wish I could help you, Trowa, but Quatre resigned as CEO about six years ago." Trowa wanted to howl in frustration. "Do you know where he is now?" "Sorry, Trowa. All he told me was he'd left to 'pursue other interests'. I know what that usually means, but when it's the head honcho, all it tells me is that if Quatre wanted me to know, he would have told me." "OK Nate. Thanks for getting back to me. You didn't have to." "No, I didn't, but you said it was urgent. Just one word of advice, son." Trowa didn't have time for this, but he couldn't burn any bridges. If Heero couldn't help him, he might very well be groveling back to Nate Burns. "Next time you leave an urgent message and you want someone to call you back, you might want to leave your phone number. It's lucky for you our voice mail records the incoming number with the message." "I'll try to remember that next time." "Trowa," Burns said slowly. "It sounds like you don't have a lot of time to listen to me, but if it's as bad as it sounds, I want you call me back if you need anything." "Thanks, Nate, sure. I'll do that." "Good luck, son." It should have made him breathe easier, knowing that Nate seemed willing to help, but how could he ask the man he'd screwed over professionally for a loan, especially for an aging circus lion? The next time his phone rang, it was Heero, and he was so relieved when Heero called over his shoulder to Duo to wire the money immediately, he dropped to his knees. "Catherine!" he shouted. "Make the call!" He bent over, fighting the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. He hoped his sister heard him and was calling the emergency animal clinic right this second, because he felt very close to passing out.
"Trowa, you should try to eat something," Catherine urged, bringing him a cup of the same damn soup she always made. "The answering service said the doctor was at least half an hour away when they called him." That had been twenty minutes ago. There was always the chance the man would arrive sooner rather than later, and Trowa wanted to be here watching for him. Catherine patted him on the back, set the cup down on a crate next to him, and went back to her trailer where she could do whatever it was she did at a time like this. Maybe it was the same thing she'd done when he'd spent his time nursing Heero back from the brink of death. Heero hadn't owed him for that, but if he had, the debt was more than paid after this. Trowa wasn't much of a nail biter, but he began to gnaw on his thumbnail as he kept glancing at his phone. The digits hadn't changed since the last time he'd looked at it. How was it possible that sixty seconds could last so fucking long? He cast another worried glance at Angus. The animal hadn't stirred since that sneeze earlier. Rationally, that hadn't been all that long ago, but it felt like an eternity, and Trowa just knew that there was something seriously wrong with the lion. "Come on," he urged, bouncing his leg up and down. "Come on." "Trowa!" Catherine poked her head out the trailer window. "Is that him?" Trowa jumped up and scanned the road. He didn't see it at first, but then he did, the white ambulance coming around the bend. Because they were for animal emergencies, the vehicles weren't fitted with a siren, but now that the vet had gotten this far, it no longer mattered. He scratched one of the lion's ears. "Hang on, Angus, help is on the way." He waved his hands frantically as the ambulance approached to show the doctor where to bring the vehicle to a stop. He bounced on his heels while the doctor reached over for his medical bag, and he heard the crackle of the radio on the dashboard. "Doctor, what is your E.T.A.?" "Zero," the vet replied. "I'm here." All the blood drained from Trowa's face. He knew that voice, and knew exactly what "pursuing other interests" meant. He didn't need to see the white lab coat or the photo badge that identified him, in big block print, as Q R WINNER DVM. From the way Quatre froze in his tracks as he came around the ambulance, it seemed that their reunion had caught him by surprise, too. The past few years melted away and he could hardly breathe. Quatre looked much the same, except his hair was shorter and lighter in color and beneath the white coat he wore a T-shirt and jeans rather than a dress shirt and slacks. It could have been minutes or merely a heartbeat before reality came crashing back and Trowa gestured toward Angus frantically. "Please, Quat," he begged. "Take a look at him. He's been lethargic all morning, he's vomited once already, and I think he's having trouble breathing." Quatre put his stethoscope in his ears and moved toward the lion's cage. Trowa watched as Quatre's hands, steady as ever, ran over the lion's body before he pressed the chestpiece in the area where Trowa presumed the animal's lungs were located. He chewed on his lip when Quatre frowned, and he moved forward when it looked like Quatre was trying to get his hand beneath the lion's prone body. "Is there anything I can do to help?" "Can you help me roll him over?" Trowa nodded. It wasn't just the lion's weight, all three hundred thirty pounds of it, it was angle, not to mention there was always the danger Angus would misinterpret their actions and turn on them. Quatre slipped a muzzle over the lion's face and slid his arms beneath Angus's upper body, leaving Trowa to handle his hindquarters. "On three." Between the two of them, they managed, and the lack of response from Angus had Trowa biting his nail again. Quatre reached up and grabbed his wrist, yanking Trowa's hand away from his face. "If this is pathological, there's danger of cross contamination." He scowled at Trowa. Trowa wiped his thumb on his jeans. "Sorry. I wasn't thinking." Quatre listened to the animal's lungs again, and examined his eyes and ears. The animal stirred, opened his mouth to yawn, and sneezed again. Quatre slapped a surgical mask over his face with the hand not covered in mucus. "Who else has come into contact with this animal?" he asked as he searched through his bag with one hand. "Directly or indirectly?" "Either." Quatre must have found what he was looking for. The object he removed from the bag looked a little like a piercing gun, and it looked like he was obtaining a sample of blood from Angus' ear. "Mostly me. Catherine came by to bring me some soup once." Quatre looked at the device he'd used on Angus, swore under his breath, and wiped his hands off with a cloth he pulled from his coat pocket. "Is there a sink in there?" he gestured to the trailer. "Yeah. Why?" Quatre didn't answer the question; he merely picked up his bag and walked toward the trailer. "Come with me." He pulled out his cell phone, and spoke rapidly into it. At the word "quarantine", Trowa jerked his head up, and he felt sick to his stomach when Quatre stopped about ten feet from the trailer and yelled through the window. "Catherine! Do not poke your head out of this trailer until I tell you. Take only what you absolutely need. When you come out, I want you to walk past my ambulance, continue down the road about twenty feet, and wait there." Trowa had expected Catherine to ask a million questions, but it appeared that for now, she was taking this much better than he was. "Tell me when!" she shouted back. Quatre handed a second mask to Trowa and gestured for him to cover his mouth. When they were on the other side of the trailer, he bellowed loudly, "Go, now!" The door of the trailer banged open, but he couldn't see his sister until she had reached the spot where Quatre told her to wait. She hadn't taken a single thing with her from the trailer. "Stay there," Quat ordered. "Whatever you do, do not return to your trailer. I don't care if your phone, your purse, or your favorite set of knives is in there!" "OK," she called back. She sounded like she was going to cry, but she was trying to be brave. His big sister, needing to make everything OK even when it was impossible. The vet led Trowa back around the trailer and they went inside. Trowa sat down on the bed that ran along the back wall of the trailer. He glanced at the object Quat still had clutched in one hand. "Quat, what is wrong with Angus?" "I could be wrong," Quatre said, placing the tester on the table at his elbow. The grim expression on his face told Trowa the likelihood of that. "But it looks like pneumonic plague." Trowa felt dizzy. Anything with the word plague in it was usually fatal. Then Quatre's phone call, and his instructions to Catherine, took on new meaning. "This plague," he said shakily. "It can spread across species." "Yes, usually by respiratory droplets." "In other words, snot." Trowa ran his fingers through his hair. "Catherine?" "You and I have almost definitely been exposed, but it's impossible to for me to tell if Catherine has. The Center for Disease Control will come prepared for all of us, but they'll keep her separate, just in case, at least until they're able to test for signs of the infection." Trowa closed his eyes. There was at least a good chance for Catherine. Possibly a chance for him and Quat, too, assuming early treatment actually gave them one. His own prognosis aside, if anything happened to him, he couldn't bear the thought of leaving Catherine alone. She'd lost him twice already. "And Angus?" "Too soon to say." Quatre's voice came at his elbow. In this cramped space, he'd not realized the the other man had moved closer. Trowa opened his eyes. Quatre was leaning closer, a digital thermometer in hand. "I don't feel feverish." "Baseline," Quatre said briskly, jotting down a number when the thermometer beeped. He repeated the procedure on himself, and then sat down on the bench across from Trowa. "Any headaches, nausea?" Trowa laughed weakly. He'd felt that way for most of the past hour. Maybe it had been more than just nerves and guilt. "Yeah. Both." Quatre rubbed his index finger behind his right ear, a nervous habit that Trowa found suddenly endearing. "So all we can do now is wait," Trowa said, desperate to fill the silence. "All we can do is wait," Quatre confirmed,
and that was the last thing he said to Trowa before the infectious
disease team arrived.
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