Alone

AN: The return of regular updates! Whee!

CHAPTER TWELVE:

Five quiet figures sat waiting at the tiny shuttleport. The townspeople had told them three times that no shuttle was due for a week, but their spokesperson, a pretty blonde boy with big blue eyes, just shook his head and smiled. They’d given up, but kept watching curiously. The boys had come staggering up the road earlier that evening, gone straight to a hotel and took two rooms for about three hours. During the first hour the showers never turned off, and they appeared, one by one with damp hair and fresh clothes, on the little back balconies the rooms boasted, that jutted out over the river.

Visitors were rare here, and everyone in the tiny town was vastly interested in these five. They’d eavesdropped on their conversations as they’d called back and forth across the balconies - the blonde and the tall boy with hair hanging in his face had taken one room, while the boy with the beautiful chestnut braid and the boy with messy brown hair and piercing blue eyes had vanished into the other, dragging along a smaller boy who was muffled into a hooded sweatshirt.

He was the only one who hadn’t appeared on a balcony. Dora, who cleaned the rooms, had bent to peer pressure and gone to knock on their door, asking if they needed anything. The braided boy had answered, leaning casually against the doorframe as he asked about the possibility of ordering food. He’d blocked most of her view of the room, but she’d managed to get a glimpse of a young boy curled up on the bed, a ponytail like a spill of black ink laying across the pillow.

When Marty had delivered the burgers and fries he’d still been there. The other boy, with the stylishly messy hair and scary eyes, had taken the bags from him and given him a wordless warning glare. The boy with the braid had grinned cheerfully and rolled his eyes at the other, handing Marty some folded bills. The two from next door had been there, the taller one sprawled at the small table while the blond was sitting cross legged on the bed, watching the boy who was still sleeping, back to the door.

They’d had to wait through a few hours of silence before their curiosity over the last boy got a little ease. They’d come out, all five of them, the blonde asking where the shuttle port was, and the little black haired boy had turned out to be older than they’d thought, just small. Asian, with gorgeous tilted eyes and bronze skin, a face far too thin but with delicate bones like some exotic sculpture. All five of them were too attractive for their own good, even if the other four were caught at the gangly stage of their growth. The girls in town had been in flirt overdrive, and none too happy with being ignored.

The five boys had been zeroed in on one goal, reaching the shuttle port. Once there Donnie, in charge of the port that day, had smilingly explained that no shuttles were due. The blonde had smiled back, said they’d wait, and gone to sit with the others, ignoring the muttered comment, “you’ll be waiting a good long while.”

Quatre would have loved to have a camera when the mini shuttle touched down, just to have a picture of the look on Donnie’s face.

*

The flight back to the city was unbearably silent. They had expected Wufei to fall asleep again - his sloe eyes still had a glaze of exhaustion. But their Dragon was tense, sitting as far from them as he could get, arms wrapped defensively around his ribs and his eyes fixed on the ceiling. All efforts at starting conversation were ignored, Duo’s one attempt to sit closer to him was thwarted when Wufei got up for some water and sat back down somewhere else. Quatre had offered him a protein bar - it was a couple of hours since he’d eaten, surely he should be hungry? But Wufei had taken it, turned it over in his fingers a few times, and left it on a small table, his face distinctly green-tinged.

~What is going on?~ Duo wanted to scream at him, to make him talk to them, but Heero and Quatre had both sent him warning glances. He sat slumped in his chair, sulking, his eyes watching ‘Fei’s reflection in the shuttle’s round window. His face was slowly building up to its old arrogant mask - so Wufei was definitely hiding something from them. ~What?~

Wufei wanted to scream, break something, and beat his head against the shuttle wall until he was unconscious. Mainly the last - he didn’t want to be on this flight, didn’t want to go back to the city and face Hernbeck. He dreaded the return from missions the Major sent him on more than anything - the man would always be waiting, several large Agents in attendance, and drag him off to debriefing.

Hours and hours of debriefing, no matter how tired or dirty or hurt he was. Hours upon hours of sarcasm and disparaging what Wufei had done, listing every millimeter of difference between actions and what the plan had called for, screaming at him for disobeying orders that would have gotten him killed. Forcing him to stay awake and write reports detailing every minute of the mission, when all he wanted to do was collapse in a heap and sleep forever.

This mission - gods, this mission would be the worst. A full month of doing exactly everything wrong, contrary to Hernbeck’s little maneuverings, not reporting - *that* would get him an hour, at least, of screeching anger, even if he had requested a new transmitter. That would be his fault, somehow - never mind that the thing was old and substandard to begin with. Wufei should have taken better care of his equipment. He could almost hear the words.

He wondered if having his friends here would make a difference? According to regulations, they should be there for the debriefing - but none of his partners had ever been to one of his debriefings, not from the first one where he’d given back as good as he got, through to the last, where he’d just sat quietly and let it all wash over him.

He hoped his friends would object to being excluded. That was the one thin strand of hope he had, the only thing that was keeping him from howling. If the others were there, Hernbeck would *have* to do things by the book. No screaming, no instant reports, no keeping him so late that the med clinic would be closed, along with all the stores and restaurants and any chance of buying food. No walk home in the cold evening because all the cabs were in for the night.

He sighed. A normal, quick debriefing before he got back to his own apartment and the bed that was at least a little familiar, although he knew exactly how many times he’d slept in it - thirty-four. Sad, really... so many missions, so many *long* missions. Long, hard missions that left him drained physically and mentally - He came back to himself with a jerk. They were landing.

Time to face the music.