Iia Disera Part 8
Quatre knocked hesitantly at Heero's door. It was his third try in the last half of a rotation, but Quatre was willing to be persistent until he could see Heero and talk to the Hydran.
"Give it up," Duo said as he walked by. "The Hydran believes his life is more superior to ours."
The door slid open as he spoke, revealing Heero by the door.
"Or maybe the superior one will finally grace you with his presence," Duo added softly, his eyes a flashing challenge to Heero.
"Only you consider yourself superior to others, Arian," Heero snapped. "How may I help you, Quatre?" Heero knew without a doubt that Quatre had been the one to knock; with Duo's sarcastic words he was sure the pure Arian would not have bothered with such a task as checking on him.
"Heero, why don't you come to the pantry to get some food?"
Heero nodded. "I will, shortly."
"See? Too superior to eat with you or me," Duo said, examining his nails. The very next moment, he found himself slammed against the opposite corridor, glittering blue eyes glaring in anger at him.
"Let me get this straight, Arian," Heero hissed. "Number one, I do not consider my life superior to yours, or Quatre's, Trowa's or Wufei's. If you had been captured no good would have come to me either."
"Who knows how you Hydrans think?" Duo tried to shove Heero back but was unsuccessful. "Since you came aboard Leo you've wanted to get off. That may have been your perfect chance!"
"Given what your hologram told me about the Zepras, I highly doubt I wouldn't have been killed, or held captive along with you. Since you share the same memories as your hologram, added to the fact that you know them better than I do, I think even you could have arrived at the same conclusion that my boarding a Zepra ship would not be wise."
Duo remained silent, glaring back at Heero before the other spoke.
"Number two. Only you consider your life superior to others, at least to mine."
"I thought no such thing!" Duo snapped, enraged. "Prove it!"
"Our technology may be different, but there is at least one commonality. That is the on and off switch. You could have simply turned the computer off but you chose to tear the drive away from the main panel. And if that wasn't enough, you went on to break it."
"So maybe I over reacted with the drive," Duo answered. "Doesn't prove that I think I am superior to you!"
"My entire life prior to boarding Leo, all that I have left, was in there. Maybe you didn't know that, but if it hadn't been important I would not have tried to stop you from breaking it." Heero released Duo and stepped back. "Those were my memories, my past, all that I had left, and you destroyed it without a single regard." Heero turned away. "Quatre, I appreciate your coming to ask me to join you to dine. I will stop by the pantry at a later time."
Quatre and Duo both understood that Heero meant he wanted to eat alone or at least without Duo's presence. Before either could utter another word, Heero had returned to his room, the door hissing shut him.
~*~
"You're an idiot."
Duo snorted. "Says you." He switched the overhead light to a brighter setting as he studied the object and its pieces on the table. Looking up, he furrowed his eyebrows at Wufei. "Well? Are you going to help me?"
"You're an idiot."
"Do you need a reboot? I don't remember you ever having the broken record syndrome. Quatre had it once remember? He just kept repeating himself over and over. What did he say?"
"Harder, Trowa," Wufei swallowed, remembering that scene. "If you didn't have the complete reboot key we would never have told you. Anyway, you're still an idiot."
"You know." Duo turned, waving a long, screwdriver-like tool at Wufei as he pretended to think before speaking. "Technically, you can consider me your creator. Why must you hurt me so?"
Wufei rolled his eyes. "Even creators can be idiots."
"I was under the impression that you loved to get Quatre to teach you a lot of the information stored in his database. Perhaps I should tell him to teach you synonyms?"
"You prefer to be called stupid?" Wufei deadpanned.
"So are you going to tell me why you believe I'm an idiot? Wait. Let me guess. I created you."
Wufei sighed. "Did it ever occur to you that you could have asked Heero if it was possible to turn off his computer? Or at least the drive?" Wufei gestured to the broken bits on the table.
"Did it ever occur to you," Duo mocked, "that he had intended to send out a signal?"
"Let me refresh your memory. Heero is not familiar with any other kind but his own prior to boarding Leo. Then, he learned of Arians and of my kind, the Eikelians. Do you think he would be stupid enough to send out signals to another unknown source?"
Duo opened his mouth then shut it, unable to come up with a witty retort. "Look," he sighed after a moment, ignoring Wufei's smug expression. "Will you help me with this? It's important to him."
"You realized it a little late, didn't you?" Wufei couldn't help rubbing it into Duo's face one last time. Duo glared, and Wufei relented. "Okay." He moved a little closer. "This is the external casing, all of this." He pointed to the thin casing. "So for now, we can discard that."
"Okay." Duo complied, carefully removing the casing in case it could be of further use.
"This here was the connecting port that transferred information to the main panel. Judging from what its looks, it seems that it's not damaged."
"Good."
"But the main part, consisting of the internal bits of this object, has been snapped into two along with a few fragments. The only lucky part about this is that you happen to have kept all of the fragments --"
"They were buried in my palm," Duo muttered.
"Serves you right," Wufei said. "Now, let's try to do a sync of the system. If we can connect the port back to a panel, we can try one of our Arian tricks and create a certain level of electro magnetism and cheat this device into believe that it's still whole. Once we cut the entire program onto a separate drive, even if it's one of our own, it should work."
"Okay." Duo nodded. "So...how do you make the main panel?"
Wufei sighed and resigned himself to staying in the backroom for the foreseeable future. He could only hope that his lovers would rescue him, even for a short period of time; he was fairly sure that only frequent reboots to his own system would let him survive the task of attempting to mentor Duo in the fixing of this Hydran bject.
~*~
"Trowa?"
"Hm?" Trowa idly shifted a game piece before turning the board around. His hand drifted from the board back to the head pillowed on his chest and he played with soft blond hair.
"We haven't seen much of Duo, or his cloned hologram. Or Heero."
"Or Wufei." Trowa watched as Quatre moved one of his own game pieces and turned the board around once more.
"Maybe I'll go talk to Heero now. It's been four rotations. I'm sure he's cooled down by now."
"If you really want to. Are you sure?" Trowa frowned at the game.
"I can only try to explain Duo's motives once more. And maybe Heero needs someone to talk to."
"Quatre, not everyone likes to talk things out."
"I meant Heero may not know that someone's really willing to listen."
Trowa shrugged. "Okay. You go find Heero and I'll go to the back room. I'll make sure that Duo isn't working Wufei too hard and that the two of them haven't killed each other yet."
Quatre chuckled as he turned his head up and kissed Trowa's chin. "All right." He got up and pulled Trowa up with him before they made their way towards the door of the recreational lounge. "And Trowa?"
"Hm?"
Mischievous aquamarine eyes twinkled up at him. "Don't think for a moment that I didn't realize I was winning."
Trowa chuckled as he watched Quatre head down the corridor opposite of him. Those eyes never missed a thing.
Quatre knocked on Heero's door and waited until the door opened. Heero was sitting on his bed, studying a panel in front of him.
"Hello Quatre," he greeted his guest.
"Hello Heero. What are you up to?" Quatre took the opening of the door as an invitation to enter, and he walked closer to Heero.
"Learning your language. Trying to, at least."
Quatre studied the basic vocabulary on the screen; he'd taught Heero the Arian alphabet and sounds not too long ago.
"Any progress?"
"I'm not sure. Working on it, a bit," Heero answered honestly. "I've heard some of it, when Duo and I played our vocabulary game."
The mentioning of Duo gave Quatre the perfect start to the conversation he had intended to have. "Heero? Are you still angry at Duo?"
Heero's eyebrows furrowed. "What he did was wrong."
Quatre sat down at the foot of Heero's bed. "Heero, it is Arian nature to be protective. Duo is very protective of Leo and of us. Added to the fact that Duo is the type to act and ask questions later, you have to understand that in his mind the priority had been to get rid of the source emitting the signal to the Zepras."
"Are those excuses?"
Quatre opened his mouth to defend his words, then shut it.
"The problem is, Quatre, that I was there screaming for him not to break the drive. He'd already unplugged it."
"Okay, so Duo likes to be extremely thorough and didn't want to take any risks," Quatre argued. "Could you fault him for that? He was still, ultimately, trying to protect Leo and us."
"That was all I had left, Quatre," Heero said quietly. "I'm...All of my life I never owned a lot. That object itself holds all of my memories ever since I knew how to encrypt it and hide it in that drive." Heero sighed as he looked away from Quatre, staring down at the panel he'd been reading from. "You won't understand."
"I can try," Quatre said softly.
Heero shook his head. "You have Trowa. And Wufei. You have this ship, this...free life. Me...All of my life, everything I've done has been dictated. This drive was the only outlet I had. It was...everything I really owned. Because of that, it's...hard to just forgive what Duo did."
Quatre nodded sadly. "But this wasn't all that I had, you know?"
Heero looked up again. "What...do you mean?"
"Trowa and Wufei had been empty shells when Duo picked them up. On the other hand, I had already been programmed to be a businessman. I wasn't happy doing that, but it was all that I knew."
"Happy?" Heero asked. "I was under the impression that Eikelians only operated by function."
Quatre shook his head. "We are programmed with life too. The program itself has a random variable which makes each of us unique."
Heero tried to understand that; to lead a chosen professional life and to have a pre-made personal life. It sounded suspiciously familiar.
"It scared me to leave that though, because it was all that I knew. Duo had docked Leo on Eikel for some time getting the papers and such for Trowa and Wufei. I met him because the docking company was where I worked and I had personally handled the transaction for his docking fees. Duo...convinced me that I could leave. That had been when I took his offer and escaped. I haven't been back to Eikel ever since.
"What I'm trying to say is, Heero, that maybe you should look at this in a different perspective."
"Like this is a completely new start for me. With no past and only the present a future," Heero murmured.
"I'll let you think about it. Just...try to remember that Duo's priority was Leo...and you are now a part of Leo. He was inadvertently also trying to protect you." Quatre stood and headed towards the door. "Have a good rest, Heero. I'll see you in the next rotation."
The door slid shut, leaving Heero to contemplate Quatre's words.
~*~
Trowa walked into the backroom and stood aside, watching the bent heads of Duo and Wufei as they muttered quietly and moved carefully. The way that they spoke made it seem like they were dealing with something extremely fragile, so fragile that even too loud a voice would harm it. Then again, the object was fairly fragile. After watching a while, he was just about to leave when he heard Duo yell gleefully.
"What's going on?" Trowa asked, backtracking curiously.
"It's fixed!" Duo shouted. "Fixed, Trowa, fixed!"
Wufei looked utterly relieved, and Trowa let his hands rest on the other system's shoulders, gently massaging the tense muscles.
"I love you, Wufei!"
Trowa's eyes flashed and he automatically reached out, stalling Duo's approaching hug. Duo chuckled.
"On second thought, I'll take that back. But I am extremely grateful to you!"
"You're welcome. Now, let me go and rest." Wufei let Trowa help to lever him up and the two walked quickly towards the door as if afraid that Duo would call them back, or at least, call Wufei back again. "And I'm taking Quatre with us. One rotation."
"Go ahead, I won't disturb you for anything that isn't an emergency!" Duo waved them away as he held up the precious new object. He looked back at the still-broken original, but he and Wufei had managed to transfer everything onto an Arian drive during the sync process they had done. It didn't look exactly the same, and Duo knew that Heero alone would know whether or not the data was complete, but at least he had managed to salvage something!
"I gotta go tell him," he muttered distractedly, dashing out of the back room and to Heero's room. He knocked, but when there was no reply, he only hesitated briefly before overriding the code and entering. "Hee..." He trailed off, looking at the sleeping Hydran who was barely visible in the dim lighting.
But the news was too important to let Heero continue sleeping. Duo shook Heero, then yelled in surprise when Heero jumped up, pushing him to the ground so that Duo couldn't move.
"What are you doing in here?" Heero asked. >"Hand! Hand, Heero!"
Heero released Duo and stood, watching as the Arian scrambled to his feet.
"Heero, I didn't mean to wake you up but I needed to..." Duo trailed off as he stared at Heero...
Standing in front of him in all his naked glory.
TBC...
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