Punishing

XIII

A few days after Trixie's testimony and the subsequent start-up of the Quatre Winner legal team; they produced a well prepped line of witnesses, character and material. Now, finally, it was Quatre's turn to take the stand, and explain why-oh-why he'd ever found himself entangled with Trixie.

During all this time, Quatre didn't make any effort to contact Trowa. Even eye-wandering was kept to a bare minimum, and only when it was to his advantage. He wasn't thinking about people. The people-machine portion of his brain was on holiday. This whole trial, to him, was purely business. If there was anything that he could do well; it was business.

The long-awaited day had come, and he was wholly prepared to tear his marriage asunder.

He was sworn in without even batting an eyelash, and sat in the witness box as if it had been specially made for him.

His eyes made a quick sweep of the courtroom, stopping a moment on Trowa (and Taylor, being in the same general direction felt oh-so-flattered by the touch of those lovely eyes). Trowa imagined, with a hint of fear, that Quatre seemed a little too pleased to be gazing down on him from upon high. He was torn between falling in lust with Quatre all over again, and mourning the death of his better sensibilities.

Quatre ran his pink tongue cutely over his lower lip before delivering his opening thesis, "My marriage is a farce."

++

As any good story ought to, he began at the beginning:

'The Unlucky Number.'

He had been born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to his father's thirteenth wife.

For any man to have acquired so many wives, Mr. Winner Sr., had, ofcourse, been hideously rich. The Winner family had established itself as an oil dynasty far back in the 1950's thanks to good prospects and genes geared for big business. Winner Sr., though, wasn't the sole benefactor of the monstrous sums of money that the oil produced. It also went to his brothers and sisters and their families.

When Quatre was born, his mother's cervix hadn't dilated far enough. She'd insisted on a midwife for her labor, though finer facilities were always available to her. So, Mrs. Winner XIII, pushed and pushed with all of her might until Quatre came spilling out on a tide of vivid, dark blood.

She'd torn her vaginal walls giving birth to her only child, and, as a result, bled to death.

Four years after her death, when he was fed up with being in perpetual mourning, Mr. Winner proposed moving to the United States with his younger (unmarried) children.

He felt a change of scenery to be in order.

Attached to his decision was that he didn't plan to bring along his twelve remaining wives.

Polygamy was illegal where he intended to go, and he didn't feel a sufficient liking for his harem to tote it.

Plus, they were a touch too cruel to his only son, or so he'd been told by some very informative servants.

The extended Winner family was against him leaving behind his wives, and also, very much against his leaving for the United States. They threatened to cut him off, and were confident that with his lack of experience in performing in any capacity at an actual job that he'd be too afraid to leave and sever the green-lifeblood that he'd always lived by, always, since the moment of his first infant wails.

Despite his family's obvious objections, Winner Sr. packed up his things, gathered his children, and set off for American shores. They landed in North Carolina.

'They Called Me Katydid.'

"I never had the occasion, myself, to see a living katydid, but I accepted the nickname just the same," Quatre explained.

The new lands didn't frighten Quatre as much as they had rattled his sisters. He wasn't yet so pinioned by language as to find it a burden. He was young, and therefore easily adaptable.

Arabic was the primary language at home, and broken English was the primary language elsewhere. Mr. Winner studied with a posessed intensity, and worked hard at obliterating his accent (which would take many years to accomplish). The daughters of Mr. Winner ventured tentatively into English and made slow, but steady, strides into easier comfort with it. Quatre seemed to have a natural knack for language and blitzed past his other family members as far as that subject went.

His sisters were nothing short of estatic in their new western-style dresses. There were five of them, some of them the same age, though they weren't twins.

They lived in the suburbs in a nice neighborhood close to Mr. Winner's work, and Mr. Winner's co-workers.

After a month of settling-in, the Winner family was to attend their first public engagement in America, a neighborhood potluck. Mr. Winner was fixated on making a good impression. Nothing must be allowed to stand out or to look unnatural.

"At the time, I was gender-confused."

Quatre had new boy's clothes to change into, but he was very much against them. They made him different.

Out of thirty children, he felt it to be a mistake made by god that he should be the only boy. He insisted on a dress, which his most sympathetic sisters provided.

++

Quatre took a moment to glance at Trowa, who didn't seem to see just yet how all of this applied to him.

++

By the time that Quatre was dressed, his father and less accomodating sisters had already left the house.

Thus, his arrival at the potluck would be a complete surprise.

His father hadn't the slightest inkling that Quatre's feminizing tendencies even existed. For the four years that Quatre had existed in Arabia, his father had only visited him a few times, and most of them fleeting. All of the 'abuse' that he'd suffered at the hands of his father's concubines were nothing more than pride-injuring costume parties. And since he'd never been taught the importance of male pride, he'd never truly been harmed.

Even during the month-long move and settling, Mr. Winner Sr. rarely took the time to notice his children, and all of the good parenting and reinforcement that Quatre recieved were from his very womanly sisters.

There was little to wonder about how he became confused.

The party was in a neighbor's backyard about a block away. Quatre travelled there, hanging happily from the crooks of his sisters' arms. They indulged him, and led him towards the smell of grilled meats, the sound of amicable chatter, and the colorful decor that lined the trees around the yard.

One all of their feet touched the green turf of their destination, Quatre's sisters turned him loose. They had a faint inkling as to what their father's reaction to his son's state of dress would be, and decided to let their younger brother live it up a while until Winner Sr. remembered them.

"I tromped around for a while," Quatre recalled, "until I noticed a face in the sliding glass door."

It was the face of an older boy, Quatre could only guess, due to the stark contrast in their heights.

++

The nomad in Quatre's gaze travelled, once again, to Trowa.

Trowa's breath caught like a startled animal in his throat.

At last, the snares of Quatre's eyes had lashed out and caught him.

He knew those eyes and finally had the mind to put two and two together.

Katydid.

Katy-did.

"Katie," he whispered without sound.

Quatre had recognized him, too.

His expression grew a little more sullen, and he seemed to nod.

++

He'd never liked parties; and to be more precise, he didn't like the things associated with parties, including: people, bugs, bulk food, and incomprehensible chatter. There were very few children around his age that lived in the area. Usually, when his parents held functions, Trowa opted to remain inside the house and watch the commotion going on outside from a safe distance.

Catherine was much msocisocial, and, also, much more of a gabby teenager. Periodically, during the course of social functions, she would report back to Trowa all of the goings on of the gathering so far, and skip away as soon as she'd finished speaking.

Trowa had been engaged in a particularly pleasing episode of brood staring out at the noxious crowd beyond the safety of his sliding glass fortress. He'd seen Ms. Patterson's dress stained by a flipped burger, Allistaire caught eating roly polby hby his aunt, Mr. Smith make an ass of himself in front of a sizeable group of people, and some other trivial odds and ends. All together, he was glad to be where he was. Safe.

He allowed his face to set into its most aloof features, and continued his spectating.

His conceit often won him the disfavor and grumbling of his parents. He seldom smiled, and rarely spoke. At the age of seven, his mouth had assumed the grim needle-carved line of one who assumes that he has seen it all.

Needless to say, it was irritating.

His parents (and sister) often privately celebrated small victories against him. He was younger and thusly less knowledgable, which made his textbook intellect easy pickings. There was no denying, however, that he was sharp, and that the days of his intellectual inferiority were to be short-lived.

He watched the gaggle milling in his backyard.

There were a few new faces, but all of them belonging to older people. He had no use for older people.
He guessed that they must be the Winner family come from Arabia. His father had mentioned them once, maybe twice, over dinner. Mr. Winner was a smart man, or so they said.

Trowa was well-concentrated on his sister talking to Adam in the upper left corner of the yard by the fence when something candy-striped and frilly danced in the corner of his right eye. His attention was inexorably drawn.

And, though it may sound trite, he truly believed, despite all of his superiority in the realm of realism, that he was looking at an angel.

The world seemed to grow quiet and still. Conversations stopped, paces paused, and water stopped flowing.

The only thing that existed was Trowa's quavering breaths, each one a heresy against his most sacred religion, skepticism of the supernatural.

The angel was staring back at him, the eyes so deep an azure that they seemed to stretch all the way to heaven. The hair about its head was so blond, so nearly white, that it seemed to burn and emit its own glow (though the sun behind it might have been an important part of the glow factor). It was almost smiling, and Trowa felt the irresistable urge to almost smile with it.

As if shaken from a trance, the girl (from the evidence afforded to him) shivered and grinned, the tip of an azalea pink tongue slipping between the space of the upper and lower teeth artlessly. The girl waved at him, and after seeing no movement from the fixed figure behind the glass door, turned away to look for bigger and better things.

Panicked, Trowa ran to grab hold of the handle to the door and thrust it open. His weight dragged on the door's progress and forced an alarmed squeal from it, which, ofcourse, caught the girl's attention. Her lips puckered like cherry buds, and a spark lit both of her eyes, further accentuated by their excited wideness.
"Hello," the girl's sexless voice greeted him, "my name is --"

++

He never remembered the name.


TBC....


note(s):

mwhahahahahahaha...evil...

If anyone reading this has seen Ma Vie En Rose, you know where I got the idea from.

Sorry if the delivery seems a little slapdash ;>> It's still the school week.

I lived in N.C. for about seven years of my life (Raleigh, Durham), so, if anyone wants to correct my potrayal of it, they can keep their criticisms to themselves (or send me a private e-mail) ;>> My idea of N.C. might be a little romanticized, but I'm sure that even people who live there can deal with it.
And, as for Virginia, I've been there plenty of times, I went there during the winter, I found it to be friggin' freezing, and, there was snow on the ground. I considered (when writing West Elm) Viriginia to be a part of New England because it was one of the thirteen colonies. If my potrayal of Virginia is romanticized, well, then, please don't mind it much. If anyone reading has objections, then they can send me a private e-mail, and I'll make an effort to address their concerns.
If anyone ever objects to the way I potray Austin, TX; then they can just shove it ;>_> I LIVE here.

I'm sorry if I've pissed anyone off...but, I've just been dying to say that -_-; I don't want to be hostile. I've just been stewing over it for a while.

The next chapter of Punishing should be out by the end of the weekend. We'll see how things turn out.

thank you for reading~