Merrillian Part 8

Heero gave a cry of surprise as the box tumbled from his grip. He hadn't meant to knock it from the shelf, he'd only meant to reach the stack of papers behind it. But as luck, or fate, would have it, his arms just weren't long enough. Flailing his arms in the attempt to reach the papers, he'd knocked the small box from the shelf and now all he could do was watch, in slow motion, as the box fell and hit the ground.

Hitting the ground, it landed on a corner and popped open, revealing the contents inside. He watched in horror as the large red jewel inside, barely even large as his young fist, popped out of the box and began rolling out of the room.

In a second, Heero snapped out of his state of shock and gave chase. His father would kill him if he lost something from this room, not to mention that the museum manager would never allow him in the back rooms again. His only chance was to chase after it and hopefully catch it before anyone noticed. So with that in mind, young Heero Yuy chased after the rock, following it into the hallway, looking much the same way as a child chasing a small bouncy ball. Except this ball didn't bounce, and it certainly wasn't something cheep enough to be bought at the local convenience store.

The stone rolled out into the hallway, meeting right up with a small platform holding some part of the current exhibit. Heero breathed a sigh of relief from the doorway as he watched it stop, knowing that he wouldn't have to chase it far. But then something strange happened.

It just so happened that at that exact time two boys about Heero's age were passing through that section of the museum, and one of them happened to notice the stone. Not even pausing to think about it, the slightly taller of the two boys knelt down and picked up the stone, gently turning it over in his hands.

"Wow!" said the blond who stood next to him. "What do you think it is, Duo?"

"It's not a ruby," the boy said as he turned it over in his hands. Then suddenly he turned to face Heero, his long braid swinging around to slap over his opposite shoulder at the sudden movement. He flashed Heero a bight smile. "This is yours, isn't it?"

Heero nodded numbly, stepping up to him. "I dropped it." He said quietly.

Duo's deep violet eyes met Heero's and for a moment they just stared at each other. "It says it wants to stay with me," Duo whispered softly.

Heero wasn't sure what to say to that one, had the boy actually meant that the stone was talking to him? That didn't make sense! And it also didn't matter. "It belongs to the museum," Heero responded in an equally quiet voice.

Duo glanced down at the stone in his hands, then slowly nodded. Smiling softly at Heero once more he extended his hand toward him, offering the stone.

Heero reached for it, to take it from Duo's hand.

In that moment, their young fingers touched and Heero felt a small shiver move down his spine. He could have sworn the stone flashed between their hands, giving off a light bright enough to illuminate the entire room. And in the back of his mind he heard Duo's voice whisper softly.

'Don't forget me, Heero.'

Then it was all gone, and the stone was in Heero's hand. Duo smirked at him and stepped back, turning to face his bewildered blond companion.

"Let's go look at the next exhibit, eh Quat?"

The blonde's eyes flickered between the two in confusion and he blinked. But then he seemed to blink it away and nodded, smiling happily. The two turned to leave the hall, leaving Heero to stand there, just watching them. As they walked away the blonde turned back to Heero and waved good-bye, then they stepped out of sight.

Only then did Heero wonder how the boy had seemed to know his name.

~*~

Heero watched in amazement as that same childhood scene was enacted right in front of him by the strange wispy apparitions. He could easily see the three boys standing in the exhibit hall, speaking to each other and holding the roughly cut red stone. How strange that it looked so small to him now, but he'd been much younger then.

As soon as the two boys had left the exhibit hall he watched the younger version of himself turn and fade into nothing, the stone along with him. In the end Heero was left standing in that same doorway, just watching silently as the memory faded. He had no idea how old the memory was, or why he hadn't thought of it until now. All he could do was judge by his younger self's age, guessing that it was nearly ten years ago. Taking a shaky step back he leaned against the doorframe and ran his hand through his hair, trying to calm down and think over things rationally.

"What was that?" Whispered a soft voice behind him.

Only then did Heero remember why he was in that area of the museum currently. And only then did he remember that Quatre was standing behind him. The blond was taking turns starring at him and the place where the illusion of memory had been. It took a second for Heero to realize something amazing.

"You saw that?" Heero asked.

The blond nodded. "And I remember it now too. Duo and I came to visit the museum that day, one of the few days that his father actually let him come to my side of town to play. I didn't even think of that memory until now. Was that other boy you?"

Heero nodded numbly.

Quatre stepped closer to him. "Have you ever had memories do that to you before? Become... solid and reenact themselves in your vision?" He seemed to stumble over the words slightly, as he struggled to put what they'd both seen into understandable terms.

Heero shook his head. "No, never."

"Hmm, very strange." Quatre stepped past Heero into the area where the three boys had been standing. He spent a few moments looking around, then he slowly turned back to Heero, a strange look in his eyes.

"The stone," Heero whispered softly. His mind was slowly starting to connect all the things he'd seen. The feeling of déjà vu, the memory of the three of them meeting, him and Duo touching the stone... and the red light that pushed him out of all of those dreams.

Heero's eyes widened in realization and Quatre gave a small nod.

"Could be."

~*~

Hours later, after work, found Heero in the cramped attic of his house amidst boxes and deep piles of papers. He didn't care about the dust, and he certainly didn't care about the spider webs, as he made his way through a thick pile of notebooks piled on a small shelf near the back of the area.

The attic was small, and nowhere near the size of Catherine's attic bedroom. Instead, this attic was meant purely for storage and in no way was it meant to be used as a living space. Now it had become a corridor of memories about the father who lived in the past. Hidden among locked and nailed boxes of his mother's things were his father's old teaching materials, notebooks and journals. It had only taken Heero a few minutes to realize just how much time his father took to journal, filling composition notebooks so quickly that they had to be labeled by the month they were started, if not the day. His current task would take him a good number of days... if not the next few years to accomplish.

But now he knew exactly what he was looking for, and he had a pretty good idea of where to look. So he started with the journals centering on when he was about nine years old and was slowly skimming them moving forward in time.

His father recorded everything... he had to have record of that stone somewhere. Maybe even its name and catalog number. Or at least a small tidbit about it. Something. Anything!

Beyond him, hours after the sun had set, the attic door was swept open and a figure stepped up into the cramped space with him. Heero glanced up and rubbed his eyes to focus them, only to find Catherine sitting at the top of the stairs with a smirk on her face.

"Tadaa!" She proclaimed in a singsong voice, but her tone dropped into a small amount of coughing from the dust, causing Heero to crack a smile and completely look away from the notebook in his lap.

He chuckled softly.

"Ha ha, very funny, Yuy. But you try breathing in this poor excuse for air."

"I don't know what you're talking about, I've been up here for the last few hours reading, and the air hasn't bothered me one bit."

Catherine made a face and moved across the floor to sit next to him, furiously fanning the air away from her nose with her hand. "What in the stars names would make you do such a silly thing? What are you reading anyway?" Reaching forward she took the notebook from Heero and squinted in the weak, dust filled light. "Your father's journals?"

Heero nodded.

"You know, Heero, if you're going through this heavy of textbook withdrawal after the end of classes all you had to do was tell me and I would have given you my textbooks to read."

Heero rolled his eyes and took the notebook back, paging through it for where he'd left off. "I'm looking for something."

"I couldn't tell," she said, deep in sarcasm. "So, should I leave you to be buried in your dust or do you want to know my good news?"

"You're done with finals, aren't you?"

Catherine made a sour face. "You, Mr. Heero Yuy, are no fun!"

Heero smirked at her. "You going to help me look, or what?"

She sighed softly and just shook her head. "You are, of course, assuming I have nothing better to do. How do you know I don't have some hot and wild date waiting for me down at your front door?"

Heero said nothing, just kept watching her with an amused expression.

After a very long moment she sighed and gave up pretending. "On one condition," she said, shaking her finger.

Heero nodded slowly.

"We move those to your room. Because I will not read in this light and I will not breathe this air, because I swear it's worse for my lungs then tear gas."

Heero laughed and closed the notebook in his lap. "You've got a deal."

~*~

Catherine fell back on the bed and gave an exaggerated sigh. From his place on the floor Heero glanced up to his bed where she was now sprawled out, looking at him as her head hung upside down.

"What's so important about this red stone anyway?" She asked.

Hours had passed since Catherine had shown up and now it was nearly noon. That was quite an accomplishment when one thought about the fact that she'd shown up the night before and had stayed the night just to help him search. Both looked like they needed sleep and neither had really gotten any since they'd started looking. He hadn't even realized how hungry he was until Catherine had spoken to him. But now his stomach grumbled about how empty it was and both found themselves starring at Heero's stomach.

Catherine smirked and rolled over on the bed so she was now lying on her stomach. "Your stomach makes a good argument, Heero."

He frowned and set down the journal he was looking through, after using a scrap of paper to mark the page. "I suppose we really should eat something."

"Great!" Catherine said, jumping off the bed. "Because I'm about to shrivel up and die if I don't get something. Race you to the kitchen, you slow poke!" With those words she was gone out the door.

Heero chuckled to himself and stood up. Taking a moment to stretch out his slightly numb legs, he glanced around the room. They'd moved all the journals down with them, which now all lay out in various piles across his floor. Lucky for both of them it was now Saturday so neither had to worry about work. Still, even with all the reading, they'd found nothing. Heero was starting to think he'd grossly misjudged his age in the memory.

He didn't even want to consider that his father might not have written anything down about the stone.

Grabbing the journal he was currently reading he headed down the stairs to get something to eat. Maybe if he stopped and thought for a while he'd come up with a better way to approach this. Because if the journals turned out to have nothing then... then he had no idea what they would do.

He was greeted at the door to the kitchen by a pillow in the face. Heero sputtered for a second and glanced from the pillow, now lying on the floor, to Catherine, who stood in the kitchen frowning at him.

"When someone says 'race you to the kitchen' that usually means you race. Honestly, Heero, you need to lighten up a bit." She frowned a bit. "This stone thing has really got you tied up and stuff, doesn't it?"

Heero blinked for a moment, trying to decide how much to tell her. All he'd really told her was the memory he had. He hadn't explained why the stone was important, hadn't even mentioned the dreams, Quatre or Duo. Now he wondered if he really should. How much of this would become even more complicated if Catherine was let in? How much was he even allowed to say about Duo?

Still having another mind in on this might actually provide them with some new ideas.

He frowned and set the notebook on the table. Walking over to the refrigerator, he opened it and rummaged around while she still leaned against the counter, waiting for an answer.

"It's a... long story." Heero said after a moment.

"Yeah, I figured."

Heero glanced at her over his shoulder and tried once again to decide how much to tell her.

She gave a small shrug and pulled herself up onto the counter, sitting there next to the stove. "Look, not that it really matters or anything. I mean I know you asked me to help and I agreed and you really have no reason to tell me why all of this is going on. But it might help if I knew a little bit more about stuff. A small childhood memory isn't much to go on." She paused for a moment and swung her legs, gently tapping the cupboard with her bare feet. "Did you ask your dad if he remembered the stone?"

Heero nodded as he pulled the fixing of a few sandwiches out of the fridge. "He said he remembered it, but he wasn't sure when he'd come across it." Heero set out the last of the fixings and went hunting for bread and a knife.

"What's the point of keeping all those journals if you don't remember where stuff is in them?"

Heero shrugged. "I asked him the same thing. I believe his exact words were 'I wrote it down so I wouldn't have to remember.'(1)"

Catherine snickered. "Yeah, that sounds like something your dad would say." Jumping off the counter she moved up next to him and began making her own sandwich as he worked on his.

The two went about making their small meal in silence as both seemed to be considering what they'd read. Both were almost done making their sandwiches when there was a knock on the door. Heero glanced toward it just as Mimir decided to saunter into the room. He couldn't help but laugh as the cat walked over to the door and waited there with its tail swinging back and forth in anticipation. Leave it up to his cat to be hiding in the corner sleeping, only to show up when there was action at the door.

"Coming," Heero called out, absentmindedly as he walked toward the door. In one practiced move he swept up the cat in his arms and turned the doorknob. The tabby didn't seem too pleased about her failed attempt to get outside, but she seemed to enjoy the sudden attention and decided to not jump out of his hands.

The door opened to reveal Quatre, who smiled brightly at him. "Morning." The blond said.

Heero smiled back and stepped back into the kitchen to let him in. From behind him he heard a knife drop on the counter. Heero glanced back to see Catherine fumble to catch it and blush for a split second, before she recovered and cast him a curious glance.

Heero suddenly realized that she'd never met Quatre before.

He shut the door and turned to the two. "Catherine, this is Quatre. Quatre, this is Catherine... Trowa's sister."

Catherine's jaw dropped in surprise and this time she didn't even attempt to hide her surprise. Instead she just turned completely to face the blond boy and stared at him in shock.

Quatre, on the other hand, smiled brightly at her and took a few steps forward. "I should have guessed. You two really do look a lot alike. It's nice to finally meet you."

"Yes... I... oh!" Catherine's eyes widened and Heero could have sworn he saw a light flick on above her head. "You were Trowa's..."

Quatre nodded.

That seemed to break the spell and Catherine blushed furiously. "I am such an idiot!" She bit her lip and smiled at him. "I need to... uhh... yeah. Sorry." She flashed another nervous smile and grabbed her sandwich, turning and racing up the stairs to Heero's room. Both boys watched after her quietly until they head her footsteps stop in Heero's room. Heero gave Quatre a slightly confused look and let Mimir down to the floor, where she padded around for a moment, before stealing off with a small piece of turkey that had fallen to the floor.

The blond smiled at Heero, looking a little embarrassed. "I guess I really surprised her. I should have called first, I didn't think you'd have company."

"No, it's all right. She probably would have reacted the same way if you'd called and given us warning first. We're both running on very little sleep at the moment." Heero flashed an apologetic look. "Would you like a sandwich?"

Quatre chuckled. "No, I think I'll pass. But I have an idea. I'll clean up your sandwich stuff if you go up and talk to her. I'll wait a few minutes to come up, so you can speak with her. I'm sure I really shocked her."

Heero nodded. "Thanks."

~*~

Catherine dropped onto the edge of Heero's bed and frowned deeply at herself. Her cheeks still felt incredibly hot and red and she swore she was still blushing brightly from her own actions. How silly of her to have rushed out of the room like that. Silly and very rude.

But she couldn't help it!

She hadn't expected to see him, she hadn't expected to meet him. It was completely unexpected and now she found herself sitting on Heero's bed, wanting nothing more then to walk over and slam her head up against the wall for her own actions. How stupid!

"Catherine?" Heero peeked into the room and watched her quietly, not moving toward her.

"I made a real fool of myself," she murmured, hugging her knees and glaring at the floor.

Heero stepped into the room. "Perfectly expectable. I felt really stupid when I went to speak to him for the first time too." He sat down next to her on the edge of the bed.

Catherine smirked. "Somehow, I have a hard time picturing you stuttering."

Heero smirked back. "It happens to everyone."

She took a deep breath and smiled. "I can see why Trowa liked him. He is actually really cute, exactly the type I can picture my twin with. Except... I guess the fact that he's a boy hasn't really sunk in for me yet." She shrugged and kicked at a non-existent pebble on the floor. "And I'm just making a real fool of myself right now. He still here?"

Heero nodded.

"Well, don't make your guest wait down stairs, Heero. That's just rude!" She smiled reassuringly. "I'm fine. I promise not to trip over my own feet when he comes up here. Least I'll try not to."

A few minutes later Quatre did come up to the room, carrying Heero's sandwich with him and the notebook Heero had left in the kitchen. Heero thanked him and took the sandwich as they all settled on the floor for a set of questions and explanations.

"So, any luck?" Quatre asked, glancing at the piles of composition notebooks.

"You know about all of this?" Catherine asked, finishing up what was left of her sandwich. He nodded and she glanced to Heero. "This has to do with Trowa then?"

Heero shook his head without looking up from scanning the notebook in his lap.

"Actually, it has to do with my missing cousin. I asked Heero if he would do me a huge favor in helping and he agreed." Quatre explained.

"Okay, so what does a red stone have to do with your missing cousin?"

This time Heero answered, marking his page with his finger as he closed the notebook. "In the memory I told you about, there were three boys. One was me, and the other two were Quatre and his cousin. I met them the day I chased the stone into the hallway, and just remembered that recently."

She shook her head. "That still doesn't explain why we're searching for this stone. Unless it has something to do with his disappearance."

Quatre frowned in thought. "It just might, actually."

Catherine's eyes widened at that. "Oh!"

The three sat there silently for a moment. Heero returned to scanning the journal in his lap while Quatre sat in thought. Catherine leaned back against the edge of the bed and frowned in thought herself.

"You've probably already looked for him with the police and stuff," she said softly as she watched the ceiling above them.

"Yes," Quatre said, even though she wasn't expecting an answer.

"What did he look like?"

Quatre shifted around a bit and pulled a photo out of his back pocket, handing it to Catherine. She looked down at it in surprise. In her hands she held a picture of two young boys next to a bicycle. A younger Quatre was sitting on the seat, while a boy about his age was holding the bike up and grinning with a smile that crossed his entire face and caused his eyes to squint shut. His face was covered with smudges of mud and his long braid was coming loose at the end. The picture was of two boys caught in the middle of playing on a wonderful summer day. And she knew there were similar pictures of her and Trowa in her own photo albums at home.

"He'd be about my age now."

Catherine blinked and turned the picture over to see if there was any writing on the back. "What did you say his name was?" She asked softly.

Heero glanced up in question at the tone of her voice. It almost sounded like she knew something.

"Duo Maxwell." Quatre said, echoing Heero's questioning look.

"Hmm, must be something else then." Catherine shrugged to herself and handed the photo back.

"What do you mean, something else?"

Catherine shrugged again. "Well, where I work at the hospital, there's a boy about the age he would be now, looks just like him. But his name isn't Duo Maxwell, he's registered as Solo Raymond."

Quatre's eyes widened and the photo slipped out of his hand to the floor. "Solo... Raymond?" He repeated in a breathy voice.

She nodded.

"Raymond is his father's name," Heero murmured.

Quatre nodded slowly. "And Solo is Duo's father's middle name. You said he's at the hospital, Catherine, where is he?"

"The Helen Maxwell Memorial Wing."

All three stared at each other as the pieces fell together and a smile crossed Quatre's lips.

"I should have known," the blond said, chuckling softly. "I never even guessed that he'd be in the hospital, under a fake name, in the same wing that his mother died in and that his father's money helped create. It all fits so perfectly, why didn't I see it before?"

Heero turned to Catherine. "Catherine, can you...?"

Catherine grinned. "Visiting hours are over, but I can get us in, if we hurry."

Quatre and Heero nodded.

They had found Duo.

TBC...

(1) Quote from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I couldn't resist.

 

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