Cages

Zechs was supposed to go back to bed after lunch. Really, he wasn’t supposed to get up before lunch, but his venture downstairs for a cinnamon roll wasn’t an intolerable deviation. However, it was essential to my plan that Zechs return to bed after lunch, sleep until dinner, and then come down to eat and, perhaps, to watch a movie with the rest of us. Then he would return upstairs for a full, hopefully dreamless night’s sleep that would leave him feeling refreshed and energized for some mild activities on Sunday.
No part of my plan had me banging on Zechs’ door and yelling for him to get his ass back into bed before I throttled him.
“Zechs? Zechs, open this damn door right now! I’m not going to ask you again, you idiot! What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I think I’d be doing some paperwork if someone weren’t being so distracting,” came a calm voice from behind the solidly locked door.
“This is ridiculous! You should be in bed, not working!”
“Wufei,” Zechs said in an even voice, “ I thank you for the concern, but I’m not a child. I’ve just got to do a few things here, and then I’ll come relax a little more, alright? I’ll be fine,” he said, and since there was really nothing I could do I huffed and sat down on the floor. Really, what else could I do? I could yell and make a fuss, but only because Zechs allowed me to. If Zechs had been stricter, I wouldn’t even be allowed that.
It was a sick paradox, I realized. If Zechs weren’t a master, I never would have met him. I never would have learned about his kindness and compassion, and so I wouldn’t care if he worked himself to death or not. And yet, as a master, Zechs could never be a person I could really fall in love with. My personality was not well-disposed toward being anyone’s underling. I couldn’t stand to be coddled or patronized, and I didn’t like to obey without question, or at all really. It was one of things that had made my training so… difficult, and it was one of the reasons the Owner took an interest in me. He liked a… challenge. And Zechs, although different from the Owner in almost every way, was still a master. It was depressing, because of easy I knew it would be to fall for a man like Zechs, but I could never give my heart to someone who wouldn’t take it seriously.
In about half an hour, the sounds of typing stopped. I waited about ten more minutes to see if there would be any more, but the typing did not resume and all sounds of movement had stopped. I quietly got up and went to the kitchen, returning with a piece of wire. Like most slaves, I had rudimentary knowledge of lock-picking, but I was fairly inept as far as my skills in that area went. I was lucky the lock Zechs’ door was old and simple; otherwise I would have been going to Duo for help. Then again, after what I’d heard upstairs earlier, I might not risk it even for Zechs’ sake.
After a moment of fiddling with the lock there was a clicking noise and the door slipped open. As expected, Zechs was asleep, passed out with his head on a pile of papers and his laptop still open in front of him. I rolled my eyes, holding back on an “I told you so” only because it would wake him. I did bask in my rightness, though, as I gently took Zechs’ shoulders and pulled him into a sitting position. He stirred, but was too exhausted to wake up. Once he had settled again, I rolled the chair over to the nearby sofa and gently managed to get Zechs out of the chair and laid out on the couch. There was an afghan on the back that I tossed over him, then decided that there wasn’t much else I could do without waking him, even as exhausted as he was. I rolled the chair back over to the desk and prepared to leave.
If only I hadn’t brushed the mouse.
If not, everything would have been fine. The computer screen would have stayed on the screensaver. I would have left, read a book, perhaps, and come back down for dinner. There would have been pleasant teasing on my part about being right, and Zechs would have blushed and grumbled but let it go. The night would have been normal and pleasant, not tense and life-changing.
But I did brush the mouse, and the screen changed from its pleasantly rotating stars to a precise and accurate description of everything about Collar, along with plans and maps and diagrams about how best to infiltrate the satellite. I felt ill with the implications of it.
The first possibility was the least terrifying. Zechs was working with the Owner to assess and improve the security of Collar. But, while I had often seen the Owner watching Zechs, I’d never heard or seen them actually talking, so there was little chance of that option.
The second option was dangerous, but manageable. Zechs was working for a copycat organization that wanted to set up an imitation Collar. The Owner wouldn’t tolerate competition, but he would probably try to persuade Zechs to join his staff before killing him. Zechs was smart enough to know when he was beat, he’d probably switch sides. Still… Zechs didn’t strike me as a low-level spy. He was far too skilled for that.
The third possibility made my stomach turn. If this was what it looked like and Zechs was working for the military to take Collar down, it would be too horrible to imagine for any of us if it was discovered. Zechs would be killed. We would be tortured to the point of madness. Collar would go into a lockdown, which would make all the masters angry, annoyed, and prone to fits of aggression. There would be massive casualties in the slaves, and even more if the military tried to attack. In other, smaller raids and attack, masters had been known to incinerate their slaves so that there was no evidence when the authorities got there. And, once the old slaves were dead, there would be a tremendous influx of new slaves to be trained and subdued. It would all start anew. It would be… devastating.
I don’t know when I left the room. The next thing I knew, my hand was reaching for the play button my radio, and in the next moment I was lunging and leaping around the training room as the music began. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to feel. I just needed to let it all go.
A lot of people think that my martial arts training caused me to be stiff and strange in dance. They believed that the rigid, repetitive movements made me awkward, and advised the Owner to have me stop my training in martial arts to be more competitive in dance. Really, though, it was my meditation and martial arts training that made me such a good dancer. In front of all the accusing, lusting eyes of masters I was awkward and off balance, but without them I could relax into a meditative trance that allowed me to become one with the music. I forgot myself.
Which is what I needed right then. Not a thought crossed my mind other than the steps and the music. Two songs passed, then three, then five, all the time increasing in difficulty as my body warmed and stretched. I began to do more difficult moves. Twists and turns that I always fell on in competition passed like nothing, but they always did when I was alone. One flawless routine after another passed, until the song for my Collar routine began. Fluidly I switched my body to the rhythm, effortlessly moving through the practiced motions. A flip, a twist, a spin, a lunge. I moved through them all with a grace I never revealed at Collar. The masters always thought I was tense and clumsy, but really I was just a good actor. Having practiced this routine six times a day for a year, I could do it in my sleep.
It came time for my big, finale jump. Never in all my routines at Collar had I ever landed the jump perfectly. I leapt, spinning and twirling through the air, my feet more often above my head than below. I felt the moment come where I could spin just the tiniest bit to the side and let my legs fall beneath me, landing on my side with a thud that sounded more painful than it was. I felt the moment, and I let it pass. My feet came down together, my knees bending with the impact, and I didn’t so much as step to the side. It was an immaculate routine.
“Wufei,” I heard a voice call from the doorway, and turned to find Zechs staring intently at me, the afghan still wrapped around his shoulders. “I think we need to talk.”
I stilled and wondered if my gasping breaths were from the exercise or from anxiety. It was hard to tell, with Zechs staring evenly at me, never hinting at his current mood. If I had actually stumbled onto plans to invade Collar, it was very possible he would have to kill me to keep it secret. And even if I was overreacting to this, I was sure Zechs had seen my dance. I’m sure he wouldn’t be too pleased about my deception.
“Come,” he said, reaching out to take my hand. I hesitated, then gave it, and he led me over to the benches. His grip was firm and his hand was warm in my own. It was a reassurance that I had craved, but hadn’t dared to ask for. Regardless of anything else, this was still Zechs.
We sat down on one of the benches that surrounded the room. We sat a polite distance away from each other, but it seemed awkward with how close we normally were. I had just slept in the man’s bed last night, why would I need so much space now? But I did, as silly as it seemed. Things were changing rapidly, and I couldn’t guarantee that Zechs was the same person I’d known only hours before. On the other hand, he was probably thinking the same thing about me.
Zechs was exhausted. I could see that in the very way he sat, with his shoulders slumped and his back pressed against the wall for support. His hands were clenched in the blanket around him and his eyes stared at the floor in a distant sort of way, as though he were seeing something entirely different from a thick layer of matting. There were bags under his eyes, and his jaw was clenched just enough for me to see it. It was a fairly good sign that he had a headache. Strangely enough, he hadn’t seemed that bad when I’d left him asleep in his office. He’d been tired, certainly, but he hadn’t seemed quite so high-strung. I wondered if I’d just missed it because he was sleeping, or if this was entirely my affect on him. I had the strong urge to tell him to go lay down, but under the current circumstances I didn’t dare.
“I need to know what that was,” Zechs said suddenly, his eyes finally lifting to meet mine. “Wha-… Why have you been faking your difficulty with dancing? Is this… Is this something the Owner asked you to do? Have you been… Have you been spying on me?”
I glared hotly at Zechs and growled, “You doubt my honor?”
“That’s not what I mean,” Zechs said, shaking his head and looking as though he, himself, were confused by what he was asking me. “I just… I mean that… I need to know what you’re doing. You belong to the Owner, Wufei, can you blame me for wanting to be sure of your alliances? Especially after I find that you’ve been lying to me from the very beginning.”
“I’ve been deceiving everyone from the very beginning, not just you,” I countered.
“But why?” he asked. “You have to know that I can’t just let this go. If you are spying it could endanger all the other boys, as well as me and even you. I will know what’s going on,” he said determinedly, and I sighed when I realized that I wasn’t going to deter him from knowing the whole sordid tale.
“It’s a long story. Do you want to go to the den?”
“That’s fine.”
We got up and I grabbed a towel to dry my face before we headed down the hall. The walk gave me at least a few seconds to prepare myself. It had been a long time since I let myself think about my past, and I was surprised to find that the wounds were as fresh and sore as ever. We arrived at the den and Zechs sat in the plush chair while I plopped down on the sofa.
We were silent for a moment. I think Zechs was hesitant to push me, and I was loath to begin. After a few minutes, though, Zechs cleared his throat and I sighed but began.
“My tale isn’t going to be long and filled with grief. I spent most of my childhood living quietly in a small, rural town. My parents were very strict and very proper, but they were never unkind and I wasn’t unhappy. There was a Buddhist monastery nearby, and I received a detailed education in languages, literature, and the marital arts. My father was a wealthy merchant, and my mother was the only daughter of a very ancient clan. I lived a quiet, sheltered life with little interaction with children my own age. I was expected to study hard and eventually enter a university. When I was twelve, as was customary in our clan, I was wed to a ten-year-old girl named Meilan. We didn’t get along well, but the adults all assumed it was because we were young and immature. It was not expected that we would have a relationship until we were older, and a few months later I went into a very private, exclusive university and we did not meet again until I was 20.”
I stopped a moment, lost in memory. I had not been a very social person and the university I had attended did not promote social activities outside of the academic realm, but it had still been a pleasant experience. The teachers there were relaxed and willing to help the students, and the students had all been hungry to knowledge, not grades. The classes were pass or fail by the teacher’s digression, so the kind of pressure that happened in other schools and even at the monastery was missing.
“I gained a degree in business to please my father, but I also pursued a degree in literature for myself. I took several teaching and psychology classes. I often put myself down for having such a hopeless dream, but I wanted to be a teacher,” I said, then glanced at Zechs, who seemed rather absorbed. “I thought you might like to know that I haven’t been teaching the other by trial and error. I am trained for this, even though I was never able to practice the skill.”
“I never doubted you, Wufei,” Zechs replied, and his compliment made me feel better despite myself. “But, go on. What happened? How did you… come to this?”
“It was really my own fault,” I sighed, staring at my hands. “I had never had much interaction with others, you see. I had lived my entire life in books… so I just didn’t know what to do when it came to socialization. And I’d lived a good portion of my life at an all boys school, so I was painfully unaware of how to deal with a female. When I returned home, I hadn’t even though about Meilan, but there she was. I had never truly understood, even though I knew it, that she’d be waiting for me when I returned from college. I had never thought about the end of school, so it hit me like a blow. I had spent my whole life studying… only to find out that nothing I had learned would help me.
“Meilan still hated me. She was… a typical teen, I believe. I had never been given the chance to be one, so I wasn’t really sure, but she did seem a hair… immature to me. When she had returned home, after our wedding, her mother hadn’t really cared what she did. Meilan was already married, so it didn’t matter if she went a little wild, and her mother had three more daughters to marry off. So Meilan was allowed to do whatever she wanted and her husband would just have to deal with her.
“Unfortunately, that husband was me, and Meilan knew it. It made her hate me, the fact that everyone expected me to come back and force her to behave. Meilan had such a strong will that sometimes… sometimes I think that she would have been an amazing woman with just a little guidance,” I said, pausing to remember the fire in her eyes. She was so beautiful, so full of life, that it had hurt more than I’d let on to see her eyes fill with hatred every time she’d looked at me. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want to make her do anything. I didn’t want to have anything to do with her. But everyone kept looking at me like I was the one dancing all night and drinking all day. I couldn’t let her do that, let her put that kind of reputation on my father’s business. I just… I just wanted her to stop.
I jumped when Zechs placed his hand on mine, then raised my eyes to meet his. Sometimes Zechs is far too observant, but I was relieved by his support anyway. “It was guidance from a parent she needed, not her husband. We were both just kids, really, and suddenly I show up and start telling her what to do? I knew why she hated me.
“My parents could see what a strain Meilan’s carousing was putting on our relationship, so they bought us a house near where I had grown up. It was too far for any of Meilan’s friends to visit, and even cell-phone service wouldn’t work out there. My parents thought it would give us time to talk and get to know each other, but it just made Meilan hate me even more. The fact that I liked being in the countryside drove Meilan insane. I was perfectly happy to read, meditate, do some katas, and perhaps even row out on the lake, but Meilan was bored out of her mind. The only thing she enjoyed doing at all was riding horses, and she rode all three of them lame in the first month of our stay. By the start of the second month all she did was storm through the house slamming doors and ignore me.
“It didn’t help matters,” I said, blushing at admitting this, but it was a somewhat crucial part of the story, “that we had tried having… physical relations only once, and the results of that one attempt were so disastrous that I didn’t dare try it again. I… was young, and innocent, with only a cursory knowledge of how sex was performed on a purely physical level. I… was not as gentle as I could have been.”
“Wufei,” Zechs gasped, shocked, and I went back over the words in my head and realized what it must have sounded like.
“I didn’t hurt her. I was not… unkind, but I was not romantic about it either. Meilan had been reading romance novels for years, and I fear she expected me to be able to do something as interesting and manly as that. What she got was a fumbling young boy who barely knew where to stick it. She was disappointed, embarrassed, and angry. I was terrified and ashamed. When it was finished, I practically ran back to my room, and she tore apart the entire left side of the cottage. It was the last time I was brave enough to make any kind of pass at her. I was too shy to try again, even though I did desperately want children.”
“You were so young,” Zechs mumbled. “Why did you want children already, especially with a woman who hated you?”
“There was, of course, the pressure of my family, who repeatedly told me that Meilan would settle down if I could just get her pregnant. I didn’t really believe them, and I couldn’t at all picture Meilan as a mother with that selfish attitude of hers. Still, I told you I wanted to teach, and I felt my only chance at that was to have children. The more Meilan hated me, the further away I saw that dream slip.
“After two months, my parents called us back from the cottage, only to find that our time together had made Meilan’s habits worse instead of better. Now she was constantly out with friends, never told anyone where she was going, and almost always returned home completely drunk. Cutting off her money never worked because all her friends were wealthy, and she was so determined that it was impossible to keep her from going out. She always managed to find some way to leave.
“I was miserable. My parents were angry at me for not being able to control Meilan, Meilan was angry at me for trying to control her, and I just wanted to go back into my books and be left alone. I couldn’t stop Meilan and leaving her would mean defaulting on a very expensive contract that our parents had set up. There was nothing I could do short of beating her into submission, and I could never bring myself to do that.
“Meilan always had numerous… male friends. She was a virgin when we were first together, but I doubt she waited long after me to find someone more experience in bed. Later that month I realized that she was cheating on me with my cousin. I should have known, then, what kind of person she was, but my lack of experience with people made me a rather poor judge of character. I thought she was just spoiled and selfish.
“I was caught totally by surprise when they captured me for Collar. I’ll spare you most of the details. It’s sufficient to say that I was captured on evening while walking to a business meeting. I often took back alleys from the train station to my office. I justified it by saying it was the shortest route, but it was really just my overconfidence in my fighting abilities. It’s rather difficult to fight after being shot with a tranquilizer, or so I’ve come to find out. I awoke hours later, chained and caged with a hundred other misfits. I went through all the classic stages of denial, rage, grief, and helplessness. I won’t bore you my pathetic theatrics at the time, but some of my ramblings did catch the ear of a guard, who deduced that I was well-educated.
“At Collar, I was put through a range of tests to find my intelligence level, but my stubbornness was what really attracted attention. They were so used to getting boys who understood doing anything for a hot meal that an idealist like myself was a novelty. I kept spouting the most ridiculous philosophies and quotations. I must have sounded like an angry puppy, yipping at the guards while boys were getting raped down the hall. It wasn’t until the Owner bought me that I realized how naïve I really was. But… you’ve heard about that already and… I’d rather not go into all the details.”
“It’s fine, Wufei,” Zechs said, patting my hand. He’d been so still before that I almost felt like I was talking to myself. It helped, somehow, for him to be so still that I barely recognized that he was there. His support, though, helped even more. “Tell me about your training. I’ve always been interested in how you managed to get so good so quickly.”
“There wasn’t a secret to it,” I defended. “It was the same thing I’d been doing all my life. I was… I was almost grateful when he told me that I’d be competing in these events. I knew how to study, I understood learning. I’d been so lost for so long, first at home and then as a slave… I finally had purpose again. I was ashamed of myself, but I wanted to bury my head in a book again.
“Of course, I wasn’t weak enough to just meekly obey his commands. The Owner sweetened the deal first, by promising to release me if I ever won all of Collar. He pointed out that even if I were rescued everyone would know where I’d been. He knew I wouldn’t be able to take the shame of letting my parents, my friends, and my teachers know the things I’d been doing and the things he’d done to me. He… he had taken pictures of me… vile pictures of me being humiliated… and he promised that he’d send them to everyone I knew if I ever managed to escape. I couldn’t have lived with that, so I gave up hoping for either of those options. Winning Collar by myself was the only way that I could get away.”
“And you trusted him?” Zechs asked me.
“He has always kept his word to me. He’s a deceiving, manipulative bastard, but he always keeps his word.”
“I see. Still… to put such a high goal in front of such a young boy. It must have been terribly stressful for you.”
“Oh, it was. At first, I hated all the pressure that I was under to do things right. Then, later, I started doing things right, and I found an incredibly competitive side of my personality that I’d never known before. I made leaps and bounds in my progress.”
“But it wasn’t enough to win?”
“Are you going to let me tell this story?” I asked him in mock-anger.
“Sorry, sorry. Please, continue.”
“I’m almost to the end. You see, the strain of all the practice and of all the Owner’s… needs was starting to get to me. A few days before the tournament, after a particularly rough night of satisfying the Owner’s many perverted demands, I broke and called home. I didn’t care who knew what I’d been through or even if I died for it, I needed to know that there was someone out there that cared for me.
“But Meilan answered the phone. She seemed surprised to hear me… but not happy.”
“She sold you,” Zechs commented quietly. I nodded, feeling tired and heavy despite the memory of my anger. My wife… the one person who was supposed to love me… and she had sold me to the devil.
“She said that she’d told my parents that I was gay and that I had run away with another man. Everyone knew my trouble with intimacy, so they fell easily into her lie. She said my father had disowned me and taken my cousin to be his heir. She said she’d have me killed if I ever dared to return, and then she hung up. That was when I realized that I had nowhere to go back to.”
It was quiet for a moment as I dealt with the emotions rolling in my stomach, surfacing and disappearing at odd times. Zechs pulled me into his lap and tuck my head under his chin as I struggled with the aching, bleeding hole in my chest.
“So that’s why you threw that event?” Zechs asked.
“Better to think that I wasn’t good enough than that no one wanted me,” I told him softly. “I think the Owner knew. I think he let me make that call, knowing what would happen. I don’t suppose it matters, though. The result is the same one way or another.”
“I see,” Zechs said, and we fell into silence for a few minutes. I think Zechs was trying to absorb everything, and my mind was so satiated with memories that I was glad for the second to clear it. After a moment Zechs turned to me and gave a tired smile. “In that case, I will assume that you understand the necessity of… discretion about what you saw on my computer screen. It is of vital importance that you do not say a word to the Owner or any other masters about this. You cannot tell the others. Put it out of your mind, do you understand? You didn’t see anything.”
“What did I see, though?” I asked, and I could see Zechs getting irritated.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It most certainly does matter,” I hissed, narrowing my eyes. “You could get us all killed. And for what? If this is some stupid take-over scheme…”
“It’s not, I assure. What I’m doing is of the utmost importance. Beyond that, though, I’m not at liberty to say.”
“You mean you won’t say.”
“I know you realize just how dangerous this is. If something should go wrong… it’s better if you don’t know anything.”
“So you don’t trust me,” I growled, glaring angrily at him.
“It’s not that…”
“You don’t trust me to be able to stay silent under torture. And yet every day of my life is torture. Do you think I don’t know how to deal with pain? That I don’t know the feeling of burns, bruises, and broken bones? That I haven’t been cut before just so someone can watch my blood run? I know more about how to stay silent under torture than any soldier, Zechs.”
“I don’t want to put this burden on you. I don’t want you to be thinking about this all the time. The less you know, the more easily you can put it from your mind.”
“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said. The less I know, the more I’ll worry about it. I’ll worry the situation with my mind all the time, and if something happens I’ll be completely unprepared for it. I’ll be completely unable to help the others.”
“You won’t have to help the others. I won’t let it come to that. I’ll keep you all safe…”
“You aren’t a god, Zechs! You’re a human being, damn you! You can’t just wrap us all in plastic and stick us inside your chest for safekeeping! It doesn’t work like that!”
“This is my burden!” he said, jumping to his feet. He stared at me unblinkingly, and there was a light in his eyes that was not altogether rational. His eyes looked feverish and fanatical, and I was… unnerved. “I brought you all into this and I will keep you all safe, do you understand? I won’t let anything happen to any of you! I won’t!” he shouted, and then stopped, as though he didn’t quite know what he was doing. He stood there before me, looking small and frail in his blanket, swaying slightly on his feet, and I realized there wasn’t any point in arguing with him. There was something in his mind going on that had nothing to do with myself or the other boys, but that was telling him to keep us wrapped up in a safe little bubble and never let us out. It was stupid and illogical, and would probably get someone killed, but I was, yet again, helpless to do anything to stop it.
“Master,” I said softly, rising to my feet and taking his hand, “Let’s get you to bed.”
I started to pull him gently toward the door, but Zechs shook himself and shrugged me off.
“There’s still some business that I have to do. I’m sorry, Wufei. I’ll be in my office if you need me.”
“You fool,” I whispered, watching his retreating back in helplessness. There was nothing I could do.
For the rest of the afternoon, I buried myself in books. The other boys awoke within an hour of my retreat. Trowa and Quatre went into the music room and worked on some new songs. Heero and Duo went into the yard and played basketball. Zechs, as far as I could tell, never moved from his office. And I was grateful to have the top floor to myself. In the quiet, I let myself drift away in the poetry. Eventually the churning in my stomach stopped, but the roiling of my mind did not. I tried to read, but eventually all the lines began to blur together, and then the words, and then there was nothing.
I awoke with my cheek pressed against a page of my book. I sat up and was glad to find that the pages were unharmed by my slumber. The book I had slept on was particularly old and difficult to find.
I became aware of sounds far downstairs, in the kitchen. It seemed that Quatre and Trowa must be making dinner. I yawned and stretched. My back was aching from sleeping in a hard, straight-backed chair, but I knew it was my own fault for falling asleep. Rubbing my eyes, I stood and padded downstairs.
Quatre and Trowa, as expected, were in the kitchen. Heero and Duo were sitting on the bar, watching the other two. I wasn’t surprised by this, since both Heero and Duo had been banned from the kitchen. Duo was dangerous in the kitchen and Heero was hopeless when it came to taste. So Heero and Duo generally helped with the cleanup of meals more than the preparation.
It was getting dark outside. I noticed the darkening sky through the windows behind the sink and glanced around the room.
“Any signs of Zechs?”
“Not since this morning,” Heero said. “He’s been in his office all afternoon.”
“If we couldn’t hear the typing, I’d assume he was dead,” Duo put in. Heero elbowed him in the ribs as Quatre looked up concernedly.
“You don’t think there’s anything wrong with him, do you?” he wondered, his voice soft and frightened. Quatre was such a soft touch that I felt the need to smile at him reassuringly. Quatre cried pretty easily and… well… I found that I was generally completely baffled about what to do in situations including tears. Quatre frightened me a little for that reason.
“I’m sure it’s nothing more than a severe case of stubbornness,” I told him, keeping my voice far lighter than what I was truly feeling.
“He’s not the only one suffering from that affliction,” Duo commented, jerking his head in Heero’s direction. Heero glared at him.
“Wanting to play a full game of basketball is not being stubborn. You’re just lazy.”
“Lazy? You had fifty points when we quit!”
“While you had forty-five, and wouldn’t stop complaining about losing. I assumed that it meant you wanted to continue.”
“You’re so full of…”
I let the voices fade into the background as Heero and Duo retreated into the dining room. Quatre and Trowa were talking quietly as the finished cooking, and I could hear Duo and Heero setting the table in the other room. I stood at the bar, watching each of them enjoy the domesticity that they’d never experienced before, and I felt a sick feeling rise in my stomach as I wondered how much longer this could possibly last.
But… we all knew it wasn’t going to last, right? We all knew how quickly things could change and go sour. I was frightened for what the future would hold for them, but I knew that Zechs would never purposefully put us in harm’s way, and I would not ruin what little happiness the others could gain by poisoning it with the threat of the unknown. I would hate them for doing it to me, and so I could not do it to them.
It might have been how deeply I was engrossed in my ethical dilemma, or it might have been how quietly he walked, but regardless when I looked up Zechs was standing in the doorway, staring sightlessly at the kitchen.
I held very still, feeling that something just wasn’t quite right. Zechs didn’t look severely worse than he had that morning, but he did look worse, with darker bags under his eyes and a coloring to his skin that was pale and yellowish. His jaw was clenched, a sure sign of a headache, and he seemed somehow unbalanced and shaky. Even with on hand on the wall to steady him, he swayed back and forth, like the floor was rocking beneath him.
In another moment, Heero and Duo walked back in and I glanced at them just in time to see Quatre look up and smile at Zechs. I turned my attention back to Zechs, taking a few steps toward him. It was possible he was still upset with me, but I couldn’t ignore that something was wrong with him, and I had some notion of leading him out of the kitchen and lecturing him again about resting.
“Master,” I heard Quatre say behind me as I moved toward Zechs. “You’re just in time for…”
“Fuck!” I yelped as I saw Zechs’ eyes roll back in his head and his knees buckle, dropping him toward the floor. I just barely managed to get under him quickly enough to cushion his fall, but there was no way I could stop him and I found myself falling toward the floor and desperately trying to guard Zechs’ head from hitting anything. I landed hard and felt Zechs’ skull smack into my shoulder hard enough to bruise, but I was fairly sure I’d managed to keep either of us from breaking anything.
There was total silence for a moment as I lay still, cradling Zechs’ head against my shoulder and feeling his warm breath on my neck. My heart was pounding in my chest, but I forced myself to calm down and think logically. His breathing seemed normal and unstrained, which was a good sign. My hand had come up to brace his neck in the fall, and my finger sought out his pulse. His heart was beating in time with mine, which meant that it was going a little faster than normal, but not fast to be dangerous. It seemed, then, that he had merely passed out and was in no immediate danger of death.
A fact of which none of the others were aware. There was a chorus of “Master!” from Quatre and Trowa, and a matching pair of “Shit!”s from Heero and Duo. Quatre dropped the pan he was dropping to rush over, but Heero and Duo were closer and reached us first.
“Heero, I need you and Trowa to help me carry Zechs to the medical room,” I said, sitting up and cradling Zechs against my chest. As the oldest slave, I felt that I had to take control before everyone panicked. “Duo, call Sally. Quatre, run ahead and open the door,” I instructed. Trowa lifted Zechs’ head and Heero lifted his legs, pulling the heavy body off of me as Quatre and Duo ran to their tasks.
“Sally wants to know if he’s breathing!” Duo shouted from the kitchen, the phone still clutched in his hand as he peered around the corner.
“Tell her that he’s breathing normally, but his heart-rate is slightly elevated,” I called back to him as I followed the others into the medical room.
Once inside the medical room, I found that Heero and Trowa has already placed Zechs onto the cot. Zechs was pretty much still in pajamas, so Trowa fetched a blanket from the shelf to lay over him while Heero placed a pillow under his head.
“Is he going to be okay?” Quatre asked anxiously.
“He doesn’t seem to be in any immediate danger,” I told him, trying to be as reassuring as I could.
“Sally says she’ll be here in twenty minutes, and that if anything else happens to call 911,” Duo said, darting into the room. “She said we should watch to make sure he’s breathing and not to leave him alone until she arrives. She said if he wakes up we should try to keep him awake.”
“I’ll watch him, then,” I said. “Quatre, you need to go take dinner off the stove. It isn’t going to help the situation any if the house burns down.”
Quatre nodded and, with a worried look at Zechs’ still form, walked back out the door. Trowa gave me a questioning look, and followed after I’d nodded to assure him that he wasn’t needed. Then I turned to Heero and Duo.
“I want you two to go out front and wait for Sally. She always brings extra medical supplies and I don’t want her slowing down to get them, alright? Just make sure she comes straight here,” I said. Heero nodded while Duo saluted, but they both left the room as well.
And then it was just me and Zechs. I glanced down at his still, pale form and sighed.
“What have you done now?” I wondered helplessly, but Zechs couldn’t tell me.