Merrillian Part 7
Footsteps moved up the stairs and Heero rolled over in his bed, turning away from the door. He heard his door squeak open and someone step into the room, but he didn't move. He didn't want to leave his warm bed, not any more. Classes were over and he'd just woken up from the latest dream with the boy. He'd been so close to learning more, he was sure of it. Just a few more minutes with him before that red light came and he could have learned something important! He was so sure! Keeping his eyes closed, he willed his body to fall back asleep, convinced that if he drifted off he might actually be able to end up in that dream again. He would fall back asleep... He would dream again...
"Heero."
Heero groaned softly and shifted farther under the covers.
"Heero, get up." Came the more insistent voice.
"Go away," Heero murmured venomously. Classes were over; he was allowed to sleep in now, wasn't he?
The voice didn't respond this time. Instead there was a sudden cold draft and Heero gave a very small cry of surprise as his thick and comfy quilt disappeared. Sitting up quickly, he fixed his father with one of his worst death glares... which lost its effectiveness as he gave a small yawn.
Odin Yuy smirked and chuckled.
"Let me sleep." Heero mumbled, dropping back on the bed and turning away from his father.
"Well, if you say so." Odin threw the quilt back so it landed on top of Heero and muffled out most bits of sound from the room. Turning toward the door, he gave a shrug. "But you might want to get up if you still want a job for the summer. Being late on your first day isn't a very good impression." And with those words Odin closed the door behind him.
Heero lay in the bed, snuggled tightly under the quilt for a moment, his father's muffled words running through his sleep-laced mind. What in the world was his father mumbling about? Job? What job?
Heero's eyes snapped open and he threw the quilt back until he was able to sit up and rubbed his eyes. Glancing to his bedside table, he noted the time and realized he wasn't late at all; in fact he was right on time. Sighing softly to himself, he finally admitted defeat and gave up on the idea of getting any more sleep. Tumbling out of bed, he sleepily made his way for the shower.
Odin Yuy had worked at the local museum nearly all his life. Once upon a time he'd actually tried to teach a few classes at the local college that Heero now attended, but that hadn't gone as well as he'd hoped. In the end everyone seemed to admit that Odin just wasn't a very social creature. He barely talked to his co-workers and he certainly wasn't the type to deal with an auditorium full of sleeping college students. Like his son, he was more of a listener and rememberer than a talker. So he'd retained his job at the museum ever since.
Seemingly following in his father's footsteps, Heero also worked at the museum during the summer. His full time temporary summer job there consisted of all the small menial tasks that none of the other workers really wanted to do. His job description was non-existent really and could be summed up best in a small phrase: an extra set of hands and legs. Whenever someone needed something done that they really didn't want to do themselves, it became part of Heero's job.
It wasn't the type of job he really enjoyed, but rather it was simply something to fill his summer. Granted, he did enjoyed the variety of jobs and there was never a shortage of things for him to help take care of, but it wasn't the type of job he planned on making his living out of. For the time being it was perfect, but he really had no intentions of staying at the museum as a life long endeavor.
Heero stepped down the stairs, straightening his shirt and tucking it into his black jeans. There wasn't a uniform for the workers, especially not for people like his father who rarely saw anything more living than a skeleton, much less a living visitor. But since Heero's job was so diverse, the management had provided him with a dark green polo shirt holding the museum's logo over the right pocket. Heero ended up looking much more dressed up then his father who normally wore old faded jeans and a button up shirt with some faded pattern, but it didn't matter really. Oddly, it did spark comments throughout their coworkers about who was the more grown-up of the two, bringing Odin no end of amusement.
"You all ready for the hard work of lifting and unpacking?" Odin asked as his son stepped into the kitchen.
Heero raised an eyebrow in question as he dug through the cupboard for a breakfast bar, having decided to skip a real breakfast that morning.
"I talked with Mrs. Markus today and it turns out that you've been assigned to help them set up the new children's exhibit in the south wing. Set up starts today, so you'll probably end up doing a good amount of hauling."
Heero nodded and leaned against the counter. "You mean you were actually in the office during normal enough hours to talk to the museum manager?" He asked.
Odin threw his son a look and found him smirking. "Ha ha, very funny. Contrary to popular belief, I do talk with my co-workers occasionally."
"Sure you do, dad."
The ride to the museum was very uneventful. Odin drove while his son sat in the front passenger seat staring out the window as the buildings and streetlights passed by. Watching the green lawns and neatly washed cars pass by, Heero felt a small bit of contentment. Something about watching things pass by so quickly out the window made him feel calm. He wasn't sure why and by the time they reached the museum, he'd figured it wasn't worth worrying about. After all, he'd have plenty of time to ponder the meanings of life while he was hauling boxes back and forth. Hauling, lifting and unpacking never required much brainwork, no matter how fragile the packages were.
~*~
Heero took a deep breath and grunted quietly as he pulled the last of the large wooden crates off the cart. Setting down the box, he gave a wave to the other volunteer driving the forklift, signaling that that was all he needed. The older man nodded and threw the noisy machine into reverse, disappearing down the blocked off hallway. Meanwhile, Heero picked up the box one last time and carried to where he'd stacked the others and sat down on top of it for a rest.
Every box around him bore the name of the museum; proudly stating it in block capitalized letters. The Museum of Natural Resources and Science. No, that wasn't right. Only the larger of the wooded crates and boxes bore the full words, all the others were stamped with the letters MNRS and some serial number that made sense to an unnamed warehouse worker. It wasn't Heero's job to care about what the serial numbers meant. Grabbing his clipboard, he flipped it to the back page and began marking off each of the boxes and crates, making sure he'd received the correct ones.
Due to the fact that his finals had finished in the middle of the week and most of the other students were still taking classes, he was the only volunteer working in the area at the moment. The museum considered the children's wing to be of little importance when other things entered the list of things to do, so this section was given very low priority and only one worker for the next few days. Heero didn't mind it much at all since he preferred to work by himself, and he had a feeling that the museum manager, Iria Markus, knew that. She also probably knew that Heero would get the job done much faster on his own when he was allowed to set his own pace.
The children's wing was setting up its newest exhibit centering on the workings of the mind over the world and how other cultures had viewed it over the centuries. Being that it was a children's exhibit it involved many strange things, like a large replica of a brain that children could crawl through, complete with tags marking which parts of the brain controlled what. Most of the larger parts like that were already set up, or scheduled to be set up by the more 'hauling' oriented workers later that week. Heero was simply left with large boxes of props that filled up the smaller places. Paintings, frames and information stations all had to be set up and that would take up the bulk of his week.
Finishing off his small checklist, he flipped back to the front of the clipboard which told him where all the pieces were to be placed. Grabbing a small crow bar, he began to carefully open the small wooden crates.
Opening the crate, he set the top aside to reveal what looked like shredded scrap paper, small and neatly printed letters covering the long strips. Reaching in, he began rummaging around for the contents.
Strangely enough, he'd spent a good portion of his life doing things like this. Even before he'd been old enough to legally work for the museum, he'd always come in with his father and helped in small ways. It'd been his father's idea of baby sitting when he was younger, after his mother died. His father had always insisted that paying for someone to watch him was too much of a hassle given his strange hours, and what better place for a kid to hang out but a museum? Thanks to that, Heero's childhood memories were filled with images of huge empty hallways, dark displays and strange objects on shelves or behind protective glass. One might think that such things would give a child the creeps, but Heero had always enjoyed it.
Now, opening the crate and digging through it, he allowed himself to drift back into some of those memories. Wandering down huge, empty hallways, looking at replicas of native people in hunting poses facing off mega-fauna long extinct. Large storage rooms filled with more books and pieces of 'junk' than he could have imagined at a thousand thrift stores. Crowds upon crowds of people passing by the doors to the back office areas as Heero watched through the slightly ajar door. Reaching up to take a small box from a shelf and watching something fall from beside it, clattering to the floor and rolling out of the room...
Heero blinked and pulled back, a strange feeling surrounding him.
Consciously, he tried to repeat that memory that had just flashed through his mind but he couldn't; it was gone. How strange. It was as if letting himself reminisce while digging through a wooden crate had reminded him of something from the past...
Déjà vu?
Frowning to himself, he leaned forward to dig through the box again, trying to stir up the memory once more, but it didn't seem to work that way. Frowning even more, he decided it was time to take a break. A look at the clock on the wall told him it was well past noon, but he didn't feel like eating lunch. Instead he opted to explore the rest of the exhibit he'd been assigned to work on.
Standing up, he brushed off his jeans and walked down one of the halls, not even bothering to flip on any of the lights. Around him the hallway was lined with various historical pictures of great thinkers, the generic ones that everyone heard of. Heero walked a little faster, intent on passing all the people to get to the more interesting stuff, and soon found himself in a larger room set up like a compass. On the floor, a huge ornate compass was painted and all around him displays were set up to reflect different area around the world. He scanned over a set up depicting Native Americans sitting around a campfire telling stories, to a convent style classroom, complete with a monk teaching a small group of boys. Beyond that was a temple set up of Buddhist monks and turning farther 'south' he found a display set up like a pyramid cut down the center and two small boys listening to an older man dressed in white robes.
Heero tilted his head a bit to the side and stepped toward the display until he could see the entire diorama. Upon closer inspection, he found it was more of a temple then a pyramid and the two boys appeared to be young Egyptian royalty thanks to their many ornaments and perfect posture. The man stood in a position that reminded Heero of any one of the many professors he'd had at the college. The man was obviously attempting to teach the boys something.
But beyond the life size models was something that really interested Heero. Behind them was a wall mural surrounded by hieroglyphics he couldn't read. The wall depicted a man in rich clothing sleeping on a bed, showing his profile as most Egyptian wall murals did, while a flurry of images surrounded and seemed to swirl toward his head. The smaller images were of birds, animals, gods, people, crops, buildings and numerous other things. It took a moment, but Heero finally realized what the picture was depicting.
The man was dreaming.
"I wonder, does it really look like that when our eyes are closed and we're lying in bed?"
Heero turned in surprise to find Quatre standing behind him, an innocent smile on his face. At first he didn't believe that the blond boy was actually standing behind him and all he could do was stare in bewilderment. The last thing he expected was to find someone in the room with him.
"I mean think about it," Quatre continued, stepping closer. "I can see how walking on someone tossing and turning in bed might cause one to think that a host of images was haunting them. It must have been a creepy thing to see when they didn't know what was going on."
Heero recovered from his shock and shook his head. "I think they knew, just had a different way of interpreting the information then we do."
Quatre grinned. "Spoken like a true scientist. And you're probably right."
"What are you doing here? Visitors aren't allowed to just walk into exhibits while they are in set up."
The blond flashed an innocent look. "I'm not a visitor. Iria is my aunt."
Heero blinked in surprise. "Your aunt is the museum manager?"
He chuckled softly. "And her husband, my uncle, owns it. That's the only reason why it's owned by Markus and not Winner. Different last names, same family."
"Does your family own everything in this town?" Heero asked, stepping away from the display.
Quatre responded with a slightly embarrassed look. "Just about."
Heero chuckled softly and the two turned away from the exhibit, heading back toward where the boxes awaited unpacking. "So did you find anything?" Heero asked. He didn't need to make the sentence any clearer because both knew exactly what he was talking about. He was asking if Quatre had found anymore information about Duo.
The blond shook his head. "No, the results are turning out to be just the same as last time I looked. Hardly anything new this time, and just a few more annoyed people that I just decided to call them again out of the blue." He shrugged lightly. "What about you? Did the photo album help any?"
"Nothing changed in the dreams, least not that I can tell." They entered the main room and Heero glanced at the crates with a slight frown. He really didn't want to start unpacking them now, he wanted to talk more with Quatre in the hopes that they might find something out. So instead of sitting down to unpack, he picked up the clipboard and double-checked the paperwork. "Want to come with me to drop this off?"
"Sure!"
The two left the children's wing and headed for the back work area of the museum where Heero's father was. Despite the fact that Heero wasn't doing a job for his dad at the moment, he still turned in all the paperwork to his father. This way, Odin could double check it and save museum management the extra steps of trying to find Heero and correct his mistakes. Not that he made any more then once, but it was still a nice precaution.
Both boys entered the back work area and Heero led them past the glass and shelf divided cubicles. Compared to what normal office space usually looked like, these desks were decidedly more claustrophobic. Books and papers covered nearly every flat space, with smaller objects, models and subjects of study scattered in between. If the main parts of the museum showed examples of the natural world, then the back rooms showed the natural habitat of the obsessed scientist. True, not everyone in the back rooms was as unsociable and obsessive as his father, but many came quite close, as their desks attested.
Quatre glanced around them with wide eyes, stopping many times to lean in closer to see something, then he would rush to catch up with Heero again. By the time they reached Odin Lowe-Yuy's office, Heero had a small smirk on his face. Quatre noticed.
"What? So sue me! I haven't been in the back rooms before."
Heero just smirked more and shook his head, knocking lightly on the doorframe to his father's office. Odin didn't look up but merely grunted them permission to enter. Heero walked over and placed the clipboard on the desk, directly on top of his father's current project, knowing that was the only way to really get his attention.
Odin looked up and blinked slightly, like he was coming out of a trance, and took the clipboard in his hands. Leaning back in his chair, he flipped through the papers and gave a nod.
"Looks like you covered everything. How goes the unpack- hello." Odin's sentence shifted course drastically and a smile crossed his face as he noticed someone else was in the room aside from Heero. "Who's this?"
"Quatre Winner," Quatre said, offering his hand and a bright smile.
Odin's eyes widened significantly and he placed his feet firmly on the floor, perhaps to make sure he didn't fall out of his chair from shock. "Winner?" He repeated in a thinner voice.
Quatre smiled brightly and nodded. "Don't worry, I'm not here for any real reason. Just stopped in to say hi to Heero and look around."
Odin blinked a few times then seemed to completely recover. Turning, he frowned at his son and spoke to Heero as if Quatre were no longer in the room, completely to the blonde's amusement.
"Why didn't you tell me you were friends with Winner's son?" Odin demanded in a quieter voice.
Heero shrugged. "Never came up in conversation."
Odin rolled his eyes and turned back to Quatre, smiling back at him this time. "Do you attend the same classes?"
Quatre shook his head. "I was a friend of Trowa's."
Odin's mouth opened to respond but somewhere along the line he lost the words and nothing came out. Instead, his mouth remained in an 'o' shape for a little too long as he struggled with what to say. Heero gave a soft sigh and decided to save him before he made a fool of himself.
"Well, I should head back to where I was working. Want to walk with me, Quatre?"
"Sure, I can even help a bit if you want, I don't mind. It probably gets lonely in that wing all by yourself."
Seeing that the two boys were now heading out of the room, Odin tossed them a farewell and turned back to his work. In a matter of moments he was back in his own little world, ruffling through paperwork and typing stuff into his computer as he researched whatever his current project was. Heero couldn't help but smile, his father's attention span worked much like a light switch, one thing at a time and that thing had his full attention. It was amusing, really.
The two started back for the hallway when Heero thought he heard a voice. Turing slightly he glanced toward an older storage closet which had its door slightly ajar. Stepping toward the door, he held his breath, watching quietly.
He wasn't sure why, but something about that room struck him as odd, but familiar. He knew he'd been in it millions of times before, but something about it this one time...
Heero forgot about Quatre and walked toward the room.
As he neared the door, there was a distinct sound of something crashing to the ground and tape snapping. A young voice cursed softly, sounding incredibly familiar, and there was a clicking sound as something rolled out of the room and through the door, out to the main part of the museum. Heero watched as a fist sized red stone rolled across the floor and out of sight.
Then he froze completely as he saw a young boy come running out of the room, racing after the stone.
It was...
Him!?
TBC...
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