I shivered as I tilted Howard's mission log towards the light source so that I could read it; by common consensus we had left the blinding halogen lights off and were conducting our self-appointed investigation by the soft glow of one of Trowa's hand-held table lights. "Why is it so damn cold on this station?" I demanded of no-one in particular. "It can't be healthy."
"I do not know," Wufei said absently from the other side of the table, "but the environmental controls have not been functioning properly for some time."
"You get used to it," Trowa assured me as he scrolled through data on a computer link, setting the printer to spool something out. While he was doing that, Wufei and I were comparing dates of the disastrous mission of three months ago, and Wufei let out a slight sound of satisfaction as he found whatever he was looking for.
"Here." Wufei rested his finger on a blank square in the calendar, and glanced up at Trowa for confirmation. "November nineteenth, that's when Howard and his ships rejoined the main force."
Trowa nodded, and did a bit of mental arithmetic. "He'd been avoiding OZ ships in the area for about a week, so that places the date of Duo's capture on the twelfth." He looked across the room at me, a question in his eyes.
I pulled the calendar towards me and studied it, trying to remember what had been going on at that time. Nothing really came to mind, so I ran down several weeks into December, and stopped. "Several times during this week --" I waved my hand towards a line of dates -- "I woke up in the morning with a feeling of intense nausea. The doctors didn't find anything wrong, so I didn't think anything of it at the time, but..." I trailed off and frowned down at the calendar, running dates in my head.
A small stack of paper plopped onto the table in front of me, and I looked up into Trowa's closed expression. "The autopsy report," he said in a very quiet voice, and returned to his seat. For a moment I just stared at the paper in my hand like it was a loaded gun, then forced my shaking hands to pick up the paper. Forced my unwilling eyes to the page, and began to read. I didn't want to. I didn't want this cold uncaring evidence that told me my feelings were wrong, that Duo was really dead. More than anything, I didn't want to taint my good memories of Duo with this final and ultimate invasion of privacy. I didn't want to, but I read it anyway, because it was information that I would need if I was to figure any way out of this mess.
Re: Torn 2
Date: 2006-02-21 11:07 am (UTC)Part 2: Hiding
I shivered as I tilted Howard's mission log towards the light source so that I could read it; by common consensus we had left the blinding halogen lights off and were conducting our self-appointed investigation by the soft glow of one of Trowa's hand-held table lights. "Why is it so damn cold on this station?" I demanded of no-one in particular. "It can't be healthy."
"I do not know," Wufei said absently from the other side of the table, "but the environmental controls have not been functioning properly for some time."
"You get used to it," Trowa assured me as he scrolled through data on a computer link, setting the printer to spool something out. While he was doing that, Wufei and I were comparing dates of the disastrous mission of three months ago, and Wufei let out a slight sound of satisfaction as he found whatever he was looking for.
"Here." Wufei rested his finger on a blank square in the calendar, and glanced up at Trowa for confirmation. "November nineteenth, that's when Howard and his ships rejoined the main force."
Trowa nodded, and did a bit of mental arithmetic. "He'd been avoiding OZ ships in the area for about a week, so that places the date of Duo's capture on the twelfth." He looked across the room at me, a question in his eyes.
I pulled the calendar towards me and studied it, trying to remember what had been going on at that time. Nothing really came to mind, so I ran down several weeks into December, and stopped. "Several times during this week --" I waved my hand towards a line of dates -- "I woke up in the morning with a feeling of intense nausea. The doctors didn't find anything wrong, so I didn't think anything of it at the time, but..." I trailed off and frowned down at the calendar, running dates in my head.
A small stack of paper plopped onto the table in front of me, and I looked up into Trowa's closed expression. "The autopsy report," he said in a very quiet voice, and returned to his seat. For a moment I just stared at the paper in my hand like it was a loaded gun, then forced my shaking hands to pick up the paper. Forced my unwilling eyes to the page, and began to read. I didn't want to. I didn't want this cold uncaring evidence that told me my feelings were wrong, that Duo was really dead. More than anything, I didn't want to taint my good memories of Duo with this final and ultimate invasion of privacy. I didn't want to, but I read it anyway, because it was information that I would need if I was to figure any way out of this mess.