Shattered Hearts

Chapter 4: A Blast from the Past

By: Liewe

Standard disclaimers apply, sadly these characters don’t belong to me, they belong to Sunrise and Bandai….

Arms suddenly encircled Sally’s quivering form, her blonde hair in wild disarray. As she began to struggle, soft words filtered into her brain, soft words uttered in Chinese by the man who would be her husband. She stopped struggling long enough to burry her face in his chest, to take solitude for a brief moment before a cold rage fell over her heart. She turned in his arms to face the direction from which the sounds of footsteps came. A gun magically appeared in her hand, the polished gray metal caressed by her long fingers.

“They know,” she said her voice wavering not in the slightest. She didn’t see Wufei stiffen or Duo and Quatre shake their heads.

Silence reigned in the aftermath of the shot, as nothing moved and no one crumpled to the ground, time seemingly frozen in place.  The shot originating from somewhere in the tree's the leaves now still as all eyes focused on Heero Yuy, as his gun fell from his hand to hit the ground with a muffled thud in the night air.  His eyes widened ever so slightly as the moonlight caught on the once polished metal of his revolver the dust settling to lightly coat it.

"Ice, leave," came a heavily accented voice as a man stepped from the shadows his body swathed in black cloth.  He gestured to the clearing beyond with his free hand while the other held a smoking gun.  His blue-gray eye's twinkled in the dark shining with malice and an air of protection.

Midii turned to glance at the Gundam pilots once more before sauntering in the direction her ally had waved her in.  The familiar and sleek form which greeted her lifted a heavy weight from her heart, someone was still looking out for her, lady luck had not yet deigned it time to end her stay with Midii.  She gunned the engine once before a trail of smoke announced her exit; Heero and Trowa were blinded by a similar smoke screen before finding themselves alone once more.  Heero moved over to the discarded motorcycle. His keen eyes spying a cross bearing a bullet hole directly through the center.

“What do you make of this,” he asked Trowa the pendent dangling from his fingertips. He catalogued the surprised look, which flashed across Trowa’s face before being hidden by the ever-present mask. So… he does know her then, Heero thought, a plan forming in his mind, the perfect soldier taking over once more.

“I don’t know,” Trowa, said softly, “I knew someone who had a cross like that once.” Midii, Midii Une, his mind offered, the spy who had betrayed him and the girl who had stolen his heart. He remembered leaving her in that field, the shock on her face as her cross fell to the ground a perfect circle in the middle of the junction.

“Do you remember her name,” Heero asked his voice once more monotonous. The information that Trowa held could bring them all the more closer to catching the girl who had humiliated the Gundam pilots.

Damien watched from the cover of the tree’s his clothing blending into the background, this was bad, it was time to finish what he had started. A sinister smile crept across his face at the thought of repaying Ice’s kindness to him throughout his childhood. It was odd to call her Ice, he remembered a kind and caring young girl, a girl he had called his sister. His blue-gray eyes sparkled with evil intent as he signaled his comrades, the cross needed to be returned to its rightful owner.

“We can’t Damien, we don’t have the resources to attack them,” came the gravely voice of his confidante.

“I owe it to my sister,” Damien argued as he turned to face the older man.

“She would not take it kindly if you were to be injured, and do you think she would take it kindly if the gentleman with the bangs were injured,” he asked his eyes shining with the wisdom of a man beyond his ears.

“No she wouldn’t, move out,” Damien said before lithely scrambling from tree to tree, his pale gold hair shining in the moonlight.

Midii raced through the night, the ice incasing her heart melting ever so slightly as she thought of him, the look on his face when Heero had pointed his gun at her heart. The rational part of her mind kept on insisting that it was a hallucination. A result of blood loss and wishful thinking.

“Came out with your hands up,” a booming voice echoed through the gardens, and footsteps came closer and closer.

“Take this,” Wufei said to Sally softly his hand offering her gun, as he released her from his embrace.

“Well, well if it isn’t the traitor and her friends,” Elise said stepping out of the shadows, her eyes glinting with malice, and an eerie glee. “I knew you couldn’t be trusted, but Ice, she trusted you, odd really, she was always the most wary out of the players in the game. She was your in, you do know that, don’t you? And now because of you, what was left of her heart is probably dead… I don’t know what made her like she is, all cold and aloof… But I bet it was something akin to what you’ve done…” Elise trailed off, her gun hanging limply from her fingers as the other players in the game came to stand beside her.

“I was doing my job,” Sally countered her voice steady and a guilty fire in her eyes.

“Your job, well I must say you’re very good at your job, you had all of us fooled, and we make this sort of deal our living,” Elise chuckled her eyes, a startling shade of green, shined with wry amusement. “But now I’m afraid you have to pay the penalty, Nikita, or should I say Sally Po! You know what the penalty is don’t you.”

“Yes, I do, but I will not pay it, you are under arrest for terrorist actions,” Sally said standing defiantly in the face of impending doom. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of her face, her sense hyper-alert, waiting for any sign of danger.

“That’s were you’re wrong, Ms. Po, I’m not going anywhere with you, neither will any of my comrades here. You see we outnumber you, 3 to 1, that’s odds are very favorable when you’re facing trained assassins and spies even for ex-Gundam pilots. You will be coming with us, and your friends will die, you’ll get to watch their demise’s before you too will suffer a slow and agonizing death.”

“I think you under estimate our ability’s,” Wufei said disdain dripping off each word as he measured the woman standing so insolently before him, a gun idly hanging from her fingertips. “3 to 1 odds are good for a Gundam pilot, even an ex one.”

“We’ll see about that,” Elise said before dropping into a crouch her gun smoking as a hail of bullets began to rain down on the four Preventers. “Make your shot’s count,” she bellowed to those who had followed her.

Midii saw the neon sign before the building came into view, a small bar and Inn she sometimes frequented, The White Horse. She winced slightly as her wounds once more reminded her of their presence, with a soft sigh she pulled into the parking lot. With stiff and jerky movements she entered the bar slash inn, her helmet tucker under her arm and her shirt clinging to her body. She patted the back pocket of the pants Alonzo had thrown her, shaking her head when she encountered the large wad of money. Always looking out for me, she though.

“A room please, and a shot of vodka,” her quiet voice pleaded with the bartender, someone she had never met before, obviously fresh meat. The look of absolute indifference in her eyes, shocked the young man to the core. He was taken aback by the beauty, which stood before him, the fading bruises and alarming him. But the resemblance to a woman from his past shocked him, the same fall of hair, though shorter now, and her eyes the same shade but without the spark of life. He moved about awkwardly trying to fulfill her order, his hands shaking as his mind reeled.

“Thank you,” Midii said before following a maid up to her room, a slight limp coming into play.

So familiar, so, so familiar, he looks like how I imagined Christof, her mind whispered. Christof, the middle brother, he would be the youngest living child in her family. She winced as she shrugged out of the deep crimson colored shirt, the soft fabric sliding against her skin. She grimaced when she saw the crimson splotches on her bandages, where her stitches had obviously split. Her hands moved of their own volition, expertly seeking the first aid kit she knew would be waiting for her, a smile of satisfaction gracing her lips. Some things never changed something for which she was glad.

She spied the small computer unit in the corner of her room, a keepsake from her last stay, and the disk was instantly remembered. A quick search of her pockets placed the disk in her hands, and within a few moments, the small computer was humming into life, the soft sound filling the room. A few quick keystrokes and she was sifting through the information she had pilfered from the Preventers computer. The pictures flashed before her eyes, each in succession, a wedding picture, family portrait, individual portraits, another family portrait… Her hands stilled over the keys as the portrait struck a chord in her heart, the angle of face, similar to the young man she knew, she glanced down at the caption, The Bloom Family, Don Bloom, Dona Bloom, Triton Bloom, and Catherine Bloom. Triton looked so familiar, her heart constricted at the picture of the happy family.

The hail of gunfire had stopped, and the majority of the spies lay in varying positions of defeat and their blood littered the small garden. Wufei, Sally, Duo and Quatre turned to look around, their eyes resting on the approaching forms of Trowa and Heero.

“Did you get her,” was Sally’s question, her face twisted in concern as she frantically glanced behind the ex-pilots.

“No we didn’t, is this hers,” Heero said holding the cross up for Sally’s inspection, she nodded in response to his question, her face pale. “Do you know her name?”

“No, only those in the inner circle know her name, a place I was unable to reach. Others, myself included, just knew her as Ice…”

“But that woman said she trusted you,” Wufei asked his voice dripping with hate as he considered the woman who had taken some much glee from her impending tasks, tasks which had been taken away from her.

“There are two kinds of trust, she trusted me to treat her wounds, and to tell me a little about her past, but I never knew her name. I always called her Ice, because that was what she was, the Ice Queen of the game, everyone looked up to her.”

“I see,” is there anyway to find her identity.

“Sally what did she say to you about her past, did she have three brothers and an ailing father,” Trowa asked.

“She told me once, that he had betrayed someone when she was a child, an act that had forever changed her life. She did speak of three younger brother and an ailing father, but one of her brothers died years ago and the other two disappeared. Her father’s whereabouts are also a mystery.”

“Midii, it was you,” Trowa whispered to himself, completely immersed in his thoughts to notice the shocked expressions of the other pilots.

“You know that woman,” Wufei asked incredulously.

“I’m the one she betrayed,” Trowa whispered his head hung in agony. He needed to find her, it was imperative that he find her. He couldn’t lose her again, he’d lost her once through his own ignorance he refused to do it again.

“Explain,” was Heero’s monotone, they had all become so wrapped up in their own discussion that they had forgotten the spies who still littered the grounds.

“My, my, my,” a deep voice said almost in reprimand. “ I expected more from the fabled Gundam pilots… tsk, tsk.”

“Who are you?”

“Me, I’m an inconsequential nobody,” he replied.

-To Be Continued…