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This is my first try posting here, so if I do something wrong, please let me know. This is a sequel to another story I wrote awhile back. If anyone wants to read the first one, I'll put up the addy for it. Just don't want to post too much at once.
Title: Reflections in a Broken Mirror (Sequel to Falling Shards)
Part: 6/?
Pairings: 1x3x4, 2x5
Disclaimer : Last time I slapped a yaoi warning on a story, no one got laid in it. Just for safety’s sake though, call it a yaoi one. I might never get them finally in the bed, but there’s usually lots of groping, kissing, and so on. This takes place one year after Falling Shards. As always, I rarely respond to feedback since I don’t know what to say outside of storytelling, but I do love and crave it.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
((Just a refresher here since it’s been awhile since I wrote on this. The evil clone Heero (named Heeron) is with Treize, Une, Quatre, Zech, and Noin’s group. The evil Quatre clone is with Trowa, Wufei, and Heero who are currently out in one of the old safehouses. Just which Duo is the evil Duo (Duoron) is currently unknown. Quatron thinks he’s with Heero’s group and Heeron thinks he’s with Quatron’s group. Either way, there’s one Duo Maxwell too many running around.))
“Bit of a shock to me too that he was still around,” Duo spoke up from behind Heeron. The Deathscythe pilot lurked at the doorway, shooting Kushrenada a look that would have melted Gundanium.
Heeron’s mind scrabbled like a rat in a cage for someone his other half would have said when faced with this. All he could muster was a ‘Hn’ that came out choked.
“02, feel free to join us if you wish,” Treize said, waving to the sofa as he studied the pair with a critical eye. It had never failed to be a hard jolt to him that children had faced the force he’d sent against them and came out victorious.
“My name is Duo Maxwell, not ‘02’,” Duo snapped at him as he plunked down on the sofa with all the grace of a falling rhino. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
“I get that a lot,” Treize said, his gaze still on Heeron. He was undisturbed by the animosity from 02, calm as he faced the pair. It probably helped that he had a gun under the desk before him.
The barely detectable roll of the shuttle to the left brought Heeron back to himself, straightening and facing Kushrenada. This was the bastard responsible for him and his team being trapped in their sleep for so long. Now, he somehow had to get a message to Quatron that the man was alive and a new plan for action. “Where are we going?”
“We are returning to my home in Luxemburg. From there, we will figure out where the clones have gone and how to set about destroying them. Chances are that they are hiding out at one of the old safehouses that you all used during the war. What we need is for you two as well as Quatre to inform us of where they are.”
“Why?” Heeron asked, already knowing the answer but deciding that the real Heero was probably too slow and stupid to catch what was going on.
Treize took a deep breath before explaining all that he could, offering the pair folders of data on Project Falling Meteor. He watched their faces, wanting to see whatever might be there for him to pick up. Yuy looked bored and uncaring as he methodically flipped through the loose sheets. Maxwell was reading through each one although there was a careless slump to him. Treize was interested in that, the American not as tightly wound as he’d though he would be. There was hostility, no doubt about that, but not tenseness.
Almost as if he was used to Treize’s presence.
A string of curses went through Treize’s mind although he kept his face carefully neutral. Showing surprise wouldn’t be a good idea. Most of the others except for the former OZ soldiers had been edgy in his presence, Relena still seeming uncomfortable. Yuy mirrored that, the set of his shoulders and the grip of his fingers on the folder showing the same signs. Maxwell was not. Sally had scanned them all while they were out and found nothing though.
What if they removed them?
That would be right in with Quatron’s style. There would still have to be a mark though. Even the best of laser surgeries would have left a mark of some sort. Berating himself for not thinking of it earlier, he rose to his feet, pacing around the room while they read. Yuy’s eyes flicked up immediately, narrowing on him in suspicion. Treize pretended not to watch Yuy as the pilot moved so that his back was to the wall, shifting between watching the man and reading. Maxwell, on the other hand, ignored them both and hummed to himself as he flipped another page. Circling around behind Maxwell, Treize glanced down at the back of the boy’s neck. Where the hairline ended, across the vertebrae, was a fresh pink scar no bigger than an inch long. It could have only happened a week or two ago at most.
“Pardon me a minute. If you two wish, feel free to have some of the tea.”
Waving a hand towards the tea service, Treize stepped out of the compartment and headed towards sick bay. He wanted to check Quatre as well as have Sally call on someone to check the dead bodies of Fei and Barton to check for marks like that. The two dead men had been clear of any sign of the small chips either, but if Quatron had removed them or had one of the other clones do it…
He didn’t want to think about that. The ZERO system was a cage of sorts, keeping them on certain directives, focusing their attentions. Without that, who knew what would happen.
---------
Quatron was of the opinion that if one more of these people touched him, patted his shoulder, or gave him another pitying look, he should not be held responsible for the massive massacre that would follow. Damn it all, why did the original Quatre have to be such a sappy weakling? It simply wasn’t fair! No one should have this much fluff stuffed into them and not be a teddy bear. He was brooding on this still when Trowa’s hand slid onto his shoulder.
Under the shield of the jacket’s too long sleeve, Quatron’s fingers curled up into a tight fist.
“Hey Trowa,” he said, the smile coming easily as he turned his eyes up to the pilot, making his teeth unclench.
“Heero managed to hack into their database. One of the shuttles is off where it shouldn’t be. Look like it’s heading for Luxembourg,” Trowa said as he took a seat beside his lover. They had ‘borrowed’ a shuttle of their own, ignoring the ground crew who had been readying the ship for another flight. Tracking the clone had proved harder than any of them would have guess but not impossible. Hours had been lost tracking down where Millardo had gone, the man good at covering his tracks.
“Why would they be going there?” Quatron asked, enjoying the game some still. It confirmed his suspicion that Krushrenada was still alive. Bastard. He’d never believed the report they’d read on awakening about the man perishing, especially not in that noble of a way. Treize was as wily as a fox, and when hunted to ground, a fox was quite good at outwitting the pursuing dogs. You will wish you had died when I finish with you he mentally promised the man.
“Records indicate that they went to Corsica before mistakenly rescuing that clone.”
Quatron nodded, pieces falling together for him. What he missed while lost in his thoughts was the sharp look Heero gave him when the other pilot came to the door or that Heero’s and Trowa’s eyes had met over his head, a shared look there. Making himself concentrate on the conversation, Quatron shook his head. “Corsica? But why? What could be there? It was destroyed.”
“I don’t know, but we have the choice now of going there and looking around or going directly after them. Given what Heero has been able to pick up, Relena, Sally, and Une are with him still. Millardo and Noin probably are as well, but they’re being searched for by the Preventers right now for that little jailbreak.”
It took Quatron a few minutes to realize that they were looking to him for a decision. He hadn’t considered the possibility that the person he had been made from would ever be a leader. True, the reports listed 04 as such, but he’d never put much stock in OZ’s so called intelligence department. He noticed Heero then, giving him a smile that felt false and wasn’t returned. I’ll need to arrange an accident for him shortly. He’s too suspicious, and I don’t have time for this.
One of Quatron’s greatest weaknesses was his tunnel vision, something Treize could have warned them about. Quatron tended to get focused on a single goal and drive towards it no matter what the loss. The ZERO system was most likely to blame for that, but it destroyed his common sense in some matters such as it not being one of his better ideas to decide on killing Heero.
“I would say that we should go after them. They can tell us why they were at Corsica. We need to make sure that psychotic thing doesn’t hurt anyone,” Quatron said slowly, watching Trowa and Heero’s faces intently. Corsica would have been easier for an accident, but he wanted Treize now, not later. There was plenty of time to kill Heero before he became suspicion enough to act. For now, he wished that man would just leave so he could work on Trowa instead of lingering there at the doorway.
Trowa nodded, his hand sliding across Quatron’s shoulders in a gentle massage. “You’re too tense.”
Quatron uttered a short bark of laughter, hands scrubbing across his face. “We’re tracking down an insane version of Heero! You didn’t see him there at the asylum. He was… it was bad. Very bad.” Cue start of tears with slight tremble in voice.
Trowa nodded, fingers pressing more into Quatron’s shoulders as he turned the Arab’s back to him. Again, his eyes met with Heero’s. Agile fingers pushed at the muscles, trying to get them to relax. His thumb brushed against the base of Quatron’s neck, sliding over a tiny ridge of scar tissue. The next instant, those strong fingers were wrapped around the clone’s throat, choking him and a gun was being cocked in his face.
Quatron had enough time to wonder how the hell Heero crossed the room that fast before he was thrown head-first into the side of the shuttle. Jerked around and pushed down, he found himself pinned down. Trowa had finally let go of his stranglehold and was straddling him, holding his hands at his sides. Heero dropped hard onto him, the pilot’s knee crushing down on the clone’s shoulder.
“We found something else too,” Heero said.
“There was a report there by Sally Po that asked if the dead bodies of Chang Wufei and Trowa Barton had any tiny scars at the backs of their necks, as if from a recent surgery. They did,” Trowa continued.
The cold circle of the gun in Heero’s hand nudged against Quatron’s temple. “There was also the physical condition of Quatre Winner and Duo Maxwell who were found under the floor of the crypt. At the time of transmission, the Quatre there didn’t have a scar, but you do. You’re one of them.”
Quatron’s lips skinned back from his teeth, baring them at the pair. He shrieked at the top of his lungs, fighting the pair as best he could. Two more sets of hands fastened about his ankles, one on each leg. The cold eyes of Duo and Wufei watched him from over Trowa’s shoulder.
“You sure he isn’t rabid?” Duo asked, all the laughter gone from his voice.
“No, but he’s going to have a few broken bones soon if he doesn’t begin talking,” Heero said, nudging the clone’s temple with the gun again when he’d stopped struggling.
“It was stupid of you to think we wouldn’t notice, to not see the hundred wrong things you did in an hour that Quatre would never do. He doesn’t cry all the time for one. He’s strong where you’re weak,” Trowa spoke directly to Quatron, wanting to fasten his hand around the thing’s throat again. After all four of them had read the report and checked each other for the little scar, he had known without looking that this thing wasn’t Quatre. He could easily destroy it if he had to. Any of them could.
“Fuck you,” Quatron spat. Another bout of struggling accomplished nothing but wearing him out. A cold smile came to his lips as his eyes moved over all four of them. “You’re so pathetic. All of you. By now, Heeron and Duoron have done what they had to. When that shuttle lands, a load of corpses are going to fall out. That is, unless Heeron and Duoron keep one or two alive to fuck a few more times.”
Quatron gave them a leering wink.
“And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“You would think that, wouldn’t you?” Duo said cheerfully. Oddly enough, the other four pilots had expressions of equal amusement. It suddenly wasn’t as funny anymore to the clone.
“What did you do?” Quatron asked, unsure eyes flicking from on to the next.
Title: Reflections in a Broken Mirror (Sequel to Falling Shards)
Part: 6/?
Pairings: 1x3x4, 2x5
Disclaimer : Last time I slapped a yaoi warning on a story, no one got laid in it. Just for safety’s sake though, call it a yaoi one. I might never get them finally in the bed, but there’s usually lots of groping, kissing, and so on. This takes place one year after Falling Shards. As always, I rarely respond to feedback since I don’t know what to say outside of storytelling, but I do love and crave it.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
((Just a refresher here since it’s been awhile since I wrote on this. The evil clone Heero (named Heeron) is with Treize, Une, Quatre, Zech, and Noin’s group. The evil Quatre clone is with Trowa, Wufei, and Heero who are currently out in one of the old safehouses. Just which Duo is the evil Duo (Duoron) is currently unknown. Quatron thinks he’s with Heero’s group and Heeron thinks he’s with Quatron’s group. Either way, there’s one Duo Maxwell too many running around.))
“Bit of a shock to me too that he was still around,” Duo spoke up from behind Heeron. The Deathscythe pilot lurked at the doorway, shooting Kushrenada a look that would have melted Gundanium.
Heeron’s mind scrabbled like a rat in a cage for someone his other half would have said when faced with this. All he could muster was a ‘Hn’ that came out choked.
“02, feel free to join us if you wish,” Treize said, waving to the sofa as he studied the pair with a critical eye. It had never failed to be a hard jolt to him that children had faced the force he’d sent against them and came out victorious.
“My name is Duo Maxwell, not ‘02’,” Duo snapped at him as he plunked down on the sofa with all the grace of a falling rhino. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
“I get that a lot,” Treize said, his gaze still on Heeron. He was undisturbed by the animosity from 02, calm as he faced the pair. It probably helped that he had a gun under the desk before him.
The barely detectable roll of the shuttle to the left brought Heeron back to himself, straightening and facing Kushrenada. This was the bastard responsible for him and his team being trapped in their sleep for so long. Now, he somehow had to get a message to Quatron that the man was alive and a new plan for action. “Where are we going?”
“We are returning to my home in Luxemburg. From there, we will figure out where the clones have gone and how to set about destroying them. Chances are that they are hiding out at one of the old safehouses that you all used during the war. What we need is for you two as well as Quatre to inform us of where they are.”
“Why?” Heeron asked, already knowing the answer but deciding that the real Heero was probably too slow and stupid to catch what was going on.
Treize took a deep breath before explaining all that he could, offering the pair folders of data on Project Falling Meteor. He watched their faces, wanting to see whatever might be there for him to pick up. Yuy looked bored and uncaring as he methodically flipped through the loose sheets. Maxwell was reading through each one although there was a careless slump to him. Treize was interested in that, the American not as tightly wound as he’d though he would be. There was hostility, no doubt about that, but not tenseness.
Almost as if he was used to Treize’s presence.
A string of curses went through Treize’s mind although he kept his face carefully neutral. Showing surprise wouldn’t be a good idea. Most of the others except for the former OZ soldiers had been edgy in his presence, Relena still seeming uncomfortable. Yuy mirrored that, the set of his shoulders and the grip of his fingers on the folder showing the same signs. Maxwell was not. Sally had scanned them all while they were out and found nothing though.
What if they removed them?
That would be right in with Quatron’s style. There would still have to be a mark though. Even the best of laser surgeries would have left a mark of some sort. Berating himself for not thinking of it earlier, he rose to his feet, pacing around the room while they read. Yuy’s eyes flicked up immediately, narrowing on him in suspicion. Treize pretended not to watch Yuy as the pilot moved so that his back was to the wall, shifting between watching the man and reading. Maxwell, on the other hand, ignored them both and hummed to himself as he flipped another page. Circling around behind Maxwell, Treize glanced down at the back of the boy’s neck. Where the hairline ended, across the vertebrae, was a fresh pink scar no bigger than an inch long. It could have only happened a week or two ago at most.
“Pardon me a minute. If you two wish, feel free to have some of the tea.”
Waving a hand towards the tea service, Treize stepped out of the compartment and headed towards sick bay. He wanted to check Quatre as well as have Sally call on someone to check the dead bodies of Fei and Barton to check for marks like that. The two dead men had been clear of any sign of the small chips either, but if Quatron had removed them or had one of the other clones do it…
He didn’t want to think about that. The ZERO system was a cage of sorts, keeping them on certain directives, focusing their attentions. Without that, who knew what would happen.
---------
Quatron was of the opinion that if one more of these people touched him, patted his shoulder, or gave him another pitying look, he should not be held responsible for the massive massacre that would follow. Damn it all, why did the original Quatre have to be such a sappy weakling? It simply wasn’t fair! No one should have this much fluff stuffed into them and not be a teddy bear. He was brooding on this still when Trowa’s hand slid onto his shoulder.
Under the shield of the jacket’s too long sleeve, Quatron’s fingers curled up into a tight fist.
“Hey Trowa,” he said, the smile coming easily as he turned his eyes up to the pilot, making his teeth unclench.
“Heero managed to hack into their database. One of the shuttles is off where it shouldn’t be. Look like it’s heading for Luxembourg,” Trowa said as he took a seat beside his lover. They had ‘borrowed’ a shuttle of their own, ignoring the ground crew who had been readying the ship for another flight. Tracking the clone had proved harder than any of them would have guess but not impossible. Hours had been lost tracking down where Millardo had gone, the man good at covering his tracks.
“Why would they be going there?” Quatron asked, enjoying the game some still. It confirmed his suspicion that Krushrenada was still alive. Bastard. He’d never believed the report they’d read on awakening about the man perishing, especially not in that noble of a way. Treize was as wily as a fox, and when hunted to ground, a fox was quite good at outwitting the pursuing dogs. You will wish you had died when I finish with you he mentally promised the man.
“Records indicate that they went to Corsica before mistakenly rescuing that clone.”
Quatron nodded, pieces falling together for him. What he missed while lost in his thoughts was the sharp look Heero gave him when the other pilot came to the door or that Heero’s and Trowa’s eyes had met over his head, a shared look there. Making himself concentrate on the conversation, Quatron shook his head. “Corsica? But why? What could be there? It was destroyed.”
“I don’t know, but we have the choice now of going there and looking around or going directly after them. Given what Heero has been able to pick up, Relena, Sally, and Une are with him still. Millardo and Noin probably are as well, but they’re being searched for by the Preventers right now for that little jailbreak.”
It took Quatron a few minutes to realize that they were looking to him for a decision. He hadn’t considered the possibility that the person he had been made from would ever be a leader. True, the reports listed 04 as such, but he’d never put much stock in OZ’s so called intelligence department. He noticed Heero then, giving him a smile that felt false and wasn’t returned. I’ll need to arrange an accident for him shortly. He’s too suspicious, and I don’t have time for this.
One of Quatron’s greatest weaknesses was his tunnel vision, something Treize could have warned them about. Quatron tended to get focused on a single goal and drive towards it no matter what the loss. The ZERO system was most likely to blame for that, but it destroyed his common sense in some matters such as it not being one of his better ideas to decide on killing Heero.
“I would say that we should go after them. They can tell us why they were at Corsica. We need to make sure that psychotic thing doesn’t hurt anyone,” Quatron said slowly, watching Trowa and Heero’s faces intently. Corsica would have been easier for an accident, but he wanted Treize now, not later. There was plenty of time to kill Heero before he became suspicion enough to act. For now, he wished that man would just leave so he could work on Trowa instead of lingering there at the doorway.
Trowa nodded, his hand sliding across Quatron’s shoulders in a gentle massage. “You’re too tense.”
Quatron uttered a short bark of laughter, hands scrubbing across his face. “We’re tracking down an insane version of Heero! You didn’t see him there at the asylum. He was… it was bad. Very bad.” Cue start of tears with slight tremble in voice.
Trowa nodded, fingers pressing more into Quatron’s shoulders as he turned the Arab’s back to him. Again, his eyes met with Heero’s. Agile fingers pushed at the muscles, trying to get them to relax. His thumb brushed against the base of Quatron’s neck, sliding over a tiny ridge of scar tissue. The next instant, those strong fingers were wrapped around the clone’s throat, choking him and a gun was being cocked in his face.
Quatron had enough time to wonder how the hell Heero crossed the room that fast before he was thrown head-first into the side of the shuttle. Jerked around and pushed down, he found himself pinned down. Trowa had finally let go of his stranglehold and was straddling him, holding his hands at his sides. Heero dropped hard onto him, the pilot’s knee crushing down on the clone’s shoulder.
“We found something else too,” Heero said.
“There was a report there by Sally Po that asked if the dead bodies of Chang Wufei and Trowa Barton had any tiny scars at the backs of their necks, as if from a recent surgery. They did,” Trowa continued.
The cold circle of the gun in Heero’s hand nudged against Quatron’s temple. “There was also the physical condition of Quatre Winner and Duo Maxwell who were found under the floor of the crypt. At the time of transmission, the Quatre there didn’t have a scar, but you do. You’re one of them.”
Quatron’s lips skinned back from his teeth, baring them at the pair. He shrieked at the top of his lungs, fighting the pair as best he could. Two more sets of hands fastened about his ankles, one on each leg. The cold eyes of Duo and Wufei watched him from over Trowa’s shoulder.
“You sure he isn’t rabid?” Duo asked, all the laughter gone from his voice.
“No, but he’s going to have a few broken bones soon if he doesn’t begin talking,” Heero said, nudging the clone’s temple with the gun again when he’d stopped struggling.
“It was stupid of you to think we wouldn’t notice, to not see the hundred wrong things you did in an hour that Quatre would never do. He doesn’t cry all the time for one. He’s strong where you’re weak,” Trowa spoke directly to Quatron, wanting to fasten his hand around the thing’s throat again. After all four of them had read the report and checked each other for the little scar, he had known without looking that this thing wasn’t Quatre. He could easily destroy it if he had to. Any of them could.
“Fuck you,” Quatron spat. Another bout of struggling accomplished nothing but wearing him out. A cold smile came to his lips as his eyes moved over all four of them. “You’re so pathetic. All of you. By now, Heeron and Duoron have done what they had to. When that shuttle lands, a load of corpses are going to fall out. That is, unless Heeron and Duoron keep one or two alive to fuck a few more times.”
Quatron gave them a leering wink.
“And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“You would think that, wouldn’t you?” Duo said cheerfully. Oddly enough, the other four pilots had expressions of equal amusement. It suddenly wasn’t as funny anymore to the clone.
“What did you do?” Quatron asked, unsure eyes flicking from on to the next.