Between the Shadows Part 1 A Gundam Wing Fanfiction by Amet If any of you have read The Alienist, you'll notice that this part borrows pretty heavily from the first chapter of the book. This is pretty much the only part that follows the plotline so closely, but I couldn't resist the mental image of Quatre making his mad dash across town at two in the morning. ------------------------------------------------------------ November, 1896 Breezes that were a trifle too warm for November moved across the room, rustling the curtains surrounding the bed and slithering across the linens. Quatre burrowed deeper into the comforter, shoving his head as far into his pillows as he could without suffocating in downy softness. Damn Iria and her opulent taste. How was a man meant to get any sleep if he was in danger of drowning in his own bed? He shifted again, throwing himself onto his back, and stared up at the canopy above. Tapestry roses twined together in a hundred different directions, in every shade of pink imaginable. It was a conspiracy, he decided, Iria was trying to drive him insane. The price for disobeying father was to be saddled with a petulant shrew of a sister to ‘keep house’ for him until he either married or died, and neither option particularly appealed to him at the moment. Granted, he was barely twenty and striking out on his own, but surely she could allow him to manage with his menservants. Other men of his stature did quite well that way, he was told, and the Maguanac compliment he’d hired for the house was completely loyal. Of course if she allowed him to manage his own house how would father keep tabs on his errant son? The wind whispered over the sheets as he sat up, running a hand through tussled blond locks as he threw the covers aside, fumbling blindly for the robe he knew to be hanging on a chair by the wardrobe. Stepping into his slippers, he paused momentarily in front of a vanity and pushed his bangs out of his face. Wide blue eyes stared back at him, framed in a round, pert face; the face of a child. It was little wonder that no one took him seriously, he had been blessed with a visage that was downright cherubic, and was quite accustomed to being underestimated at every turn. His sister had insisted on moving in to look after her sweet, innocent brother. His patients often pegged him as the easy authority, the doctor’s naïve protégé who was all intention and little knowledge. Father had assumed that he would conveniently overlook the backs broken in the factories that earned their fortune. Had he been a little less sure of himself, or perhaps a lot more spoiled, he might have been bitter. But Quatre was no one’s golden idol, and refused to be his father’s figurehead. He had nearly made it to the door when he heard it, a frantic pummeling on the door of the estate that reverberated through the foyer. The floor beneath Quatre seemed to shudder in time with the ungodly noise, stilling his hand as he reached for the latch. In seconds, several doors opened in the hall and a handful of Maguanacs muttered softly to one another as he paused to rest a hand against the wooden paneling of the wall, bracing himself for the inevitable. “Rashid!” The shrill cry rang through the hall, more deafening than the first commotion, and Quatre forced himself to pull the door open, poking his head out as a gaggle of servants parted before an irate Iria Winner. The man in question was already in motion, maneuvering his giant frame through the crowd with a loping grace that seemed out of place on a man of his size, running his fingers through that odd winged beard of his as he came to rest in front of Iria and looked down on her with an amused smile. It was not long after Quatre had hired the Maguanacs that Rashid had asserted himself as their leader. Quatre had originally assumed that he had been chosen because of his size, Rashid was solidly built and impressively tall, but as time passed and the man’s grasp of proper English increased it became apparent that he was also possessed of a great intelligence and a kind and giving nature. It was that very nature that had endeared him to Quatre, the gentle seriousness with which he took his duty to the other Maguanacs, and indeed to Quatre himself. At the moment, he was dutifully inserting himself between Iria and the bulk of the servants, glancing peripherally at Quatre as the woman shook her head, flaxen curls bouncing, and demanded, “What is that frightful noise?” “I do not know mistress. It seems as though someone is knocking.” Rashid inclined his head in the direction of the noise and smiled. “Would you like me to check?” There was a flash of paternal amusement in his motions, the picture of a kindly uncle humoring a petulant child. It was all Quatre could do not to laugh outright. Rashid didn’t wait for an answer, silently moving down the stairs and across the foyer, pausing for an instant to glance up at Quatre for permission before flinging the door open at the confirming nod from his master. There was an explosion of movement as whatever -whomever- was leaning so heavily against the doorframe was wrenched inward in a blur of petticoats, curses, and flying hair. The figure, now most assuredly a woman, hurriedly disentangled herself from the cascade of gold blond hair, flying to her feet and halfheartedly straightening her skirts before facing Rashid and demanding, “I must speak to Quatre-san!” It was extremely presumptuous for a servant to make demands, let alone a woman demanding the audience of the head of an affluent household at -was it really two in the morning? The woman before him, the disheveled wraith in pink and white, distinctive forked eyebrows knit together in perpetual impatience, was the only woman he knew who would dare such an infraction. All that was said about her was true. Miss Dorothy Catalonia truly had no sense of propriety, and didn’t care to. Quatre sighed and made his way to the railing overlooking the foyer, ignoring the horrified look he was most assuredly earning from his sister as he leaned over to get a better look at his perplexed manservant and the messenger who continued to rail at him. “What is it Dorothy?” Her head snapped up with frightening speed, and her expression gave way to urgency as she took a few steps forward and shouted, “The doctor says you must come with me!” She left no room for argument, and Quatre had no intention of fighting her, merely nodding and retreating to his room, fumbling into his trousers as Iria shouted at him through the closed door. “Quatre! I am most certain that whatever you and that peculiar Dr. Yuy are up to at this ungodly hour of the night it is not respectable!” Having finished dressing, he grabbed a cap and flung the door open, pitching headlong into the throng of bewildered servants and nearly colliding with his sister as he headed toward the stairs. “I can not allow this! Father-” “Is not here, Iria. Heero would not have sent Dorothy if it were not an emergency, and I am not about to skirt the Doctor’s faith in me in the name of your overbearing sense of propriety. I came here to escape father’s didacticism, not to listen to you perpetuate it.” He gently pried her fingers from where she had fastened them on his upper arm, and smiled gratefully at Rashid, who appeared at the head of the stairs fully dressed and ready to go. He was certain that whatever business Dr. Yuy intended to pursue must have been grave indeed to force his friend to send Dorothy out alone into the streets to fetch him, and the solid support of the Maguanac calmed his flustered nerves as he wrestled with the possibilities of what might have spooked his normally unflappable friend so badly. And he did not relish the thought of traveling alone with Dorothy. Miss Dorothy Catalonia had blown into the Doctor’s, and subsequently Quatre’s, life amid an overwhelming mixture of confusion and violence that would forevermore be associated with her in his mind. The only child of shipping baron Frederick Catalonia, Dorothy seemed the picture of the perfect child - quiet, obedient, and ladylike to the extreme - seeming to outsiders to positively dote on her father. Her mother, it was said, had died giving birth to the girl, and he was hailed for his efforts in raising the child on his own. All that fell apart the day that Frederick Catalonia died, leaving a distraught and barely functional Dorothy to fend off a host of relatives and business partners intent on stealing her inheritance. It took hours of negotiation before she allowed a doctor near enough to confirm that the man had in fact died, and nearly a full day before she allowed anyone else to so much as cross the threshold of his room. The situation deteriorated as a mortician attempted to prepare the body while Dorothy slept huddled in a corner, prompting an assault so violent upon her waking it took three men to subdue her. Her relatives wasted no time in having Dorothy committed to a lunatics asylum ‘for her own safety’, subsequently gaining control of the Catalonia fortune for what Quatre assumed were their own nefarious purposes. Enter Doctor Heero Yuy, eminent physician and alienist, who stumbled upon Dorothy during his rounds at Bellevue. She was listed as a hysteric, one of innumerable women who suffered the ill effects of their environment with the loss of the use of a limb or a sense. Dorothy in fact had not uttered a single sound since her father’s death, coherent or otherwise, and though she had not shown signs of violence since before her internment, the Doctor found her chained to the wooden cot that sufficed as her bed, nearly catatonic from an unreasonable dosage of chloral. Something in Yuy snapped at that, the pathetic tableau of the frail mute abused by the very people who purported to help her, and he launched himself into a desperate attempt to restore her ability to speak before her internment papers were finalized. Quatre had thought the move ill advised, but deterring the Doctor from anything was nearly impossible, and predictably futile. If Doctor Yuy ordained that Dorothy would tell her story, she would tell her story. Yuy of course, succeeded, and what he eventually learned was enough to make Quatre empathetically ill. It seemed that what Frederick Catalonia wanted most of all was a son, and felt that Dorothy had somehow robbed him of the opportunity. She was forced into virtual servitude, allowed to speak only when directly addressed and savagely beaten for any behavior deemed unladylike by her father, locked in her room for days at a time until there were guests at the household and her presence was required to complete Frederick’s image as a family man. The result was a complete dependence on her father that shattered her psyche upon his death. It was a simple matter for Yuy to argue that her violent outburst was inevitable, sighting specific, suitably horrifying instances from Dorothy’s childhood, which moved a judge already reluctant to prosecute a member of such an influential family to dismiss the petition to commit the girl indefinitely. Provided of course that Yuy would see to her safety. Dorothy, for all her newfound wealth could not function on her own, no matter how many servants she hired, and in the end it was her own quiet suggestion that she might make an adequate house servant that seemed to satisfy the justice. Thus she was released into the Doctor’s custody, and entered into his employ. Even Yuy himself could not have foreseen the way her role shifted, as Dorothy took to the running of his household with almost fanatical determination, taking on more and more responsibility until she was virtually the only servant still required. Her quiet and unassuming nature seemed to evaporate into her work, and as time progressed she shifted into the antithesis of everything her father had trained her to be, a reactionary metamorphosis Quatre was certain Yuy actually encouraged, much to his dismay. The result was a surly, intolerant woman who was not above ordering men who were supposedly her superiors about, and who jealously guarded the Doctor’s household and everything in it. Quatre had been somewhat taken aback to note that he was included in that list. He had tried to make peace with the girl; after all, the Doctor was quite fond of Dorothy, even if she did tax his nerves at every turn simply to watch him flush in aggravation. But every effort Quatre made to soothe her riotous soul was met with the same sardonic disdain that invariably managed to shred his composure and bring him to anger. She seemed possessed of an uncanny ability to make one feel like a boy being admonished by his mother. He took comfort in the fact that Yuy himself had made little better progress, his attempts to teach her his native Japanese after she expressed an interest had gone as well as any of Quatre’s own attempts to civilize the girl, deteriorating quickly into an argument on the merits of multilingual education. From what Quatre had observed, the only discernable benefit she took from the lesson was a general understanding of honorifics - and had since insisted on mockingly referring to him as Quatre-san in imitation of the Doctor - and a host of swears that were, if the way Yuy visibly flinched whenever they were uttered was any measure, quite vulgar. The girl herself was already at the Doctor’s calash, swiftly taking hold of the reigns and tapping her foot in impatience as Quatre swung himself into the cab. He had barely seated himself before they were off with a lurch and a pounding of horse’s hooves. The Doctor’s single gelding, a massive white beast named Wing, threw himself to task and they were instantly hurtling along at breakneck speed, the posture of both animal and driver set in lines of grim determination. Quatre steadied himself with a firm grip on the back of the driver’s seat, motioning for Rashid to do the same, and shouted as best he could as the calash pitched around a corner. “Dorothy, what is all this about?” She barely turned to acknowledge him, pinning him with a halfhearted glare of reproach before hunching over the reigns as she shouted her answer into Wing’s flank. “It’s about the Peacecraft boy!” He glanced briefly at Rashid, watching the same mix of surprise and apprehension flicker across the other man’s features at the name. Milliardo Peacecraft was a restless soul, chafing under the weight of the Peacecraft fortune and the responsibility that came with his position as the sole male heir. He was subject to frequent bouts of depression, often disappearing for days at a time without an adequate explanation of his behavior upon his return. His sister Relena was one of Quatre’s oldest and dearest friends; a gentle, kind, and giving soul, if a bit naïve about the ways of the world beyond her sheltered high class existence. She doted on her elder brother, fretting terribly whenever he went missing and generally causing herself no end of worry even as Quatre reminded her that Milliardo had returned unharmed a dozen times before. Quatre thought he understood, after all he himself knew the responsibilities of wealth to be a burden like any other, and suspected that Milliardo needed his excursions to release some of the pressure of maintaining the massive shipping company that generated the income his sister depended on. He would always return, even at the expense of his own happiness, if only to insure that she was taken care of. Relena could never understand that, a quality that was alternately infuriating and endearing, and to protect that innocence Quatre was willing to do anything. So it hadn’t taken much thought to volunteer his services when Relena appeared nearly a week ago with news that Milliardo had once again disappeared. The Peacecraft had been missing for nearly a month before Relena finally came to him, certain that something terrible had happened to prevent him from returning. What frightened Quatre more than anything was the duration of this excursion, and Dr. Yuy agreed that the deviation from his usual pattern of behavior was an ominous sign. Hence, for the better part of the past week their time had been split between their regular rounds at the Institute and the search for Milliardo Peacecraft; interviewing friends and acquaintances, searching his things, and visiting places he was known to frequent in a desperate attempt to garner the information necessary to anticipate his next move before something terrible truly did find its way to the unhappy young man. With the hour and the urgency of Dr. Yuy’s summons he was only too certain that it already had. The calash lurched around another corner, momentum nearly capsizing it in Dorothy’s haste to arrive at their destination. Quatre tightened his grip on her seat and locked his knees against the backboard, sneaking a furtive glance at Rashid as the older man shook his head at the woman and smiled. He turned to meager scenery as the calash thundered along, absently watching as the silent brownstones of his own neighborhood gave way to the polluted, overcrowded streets of one of the less reputable of the city’s districts. A veritable ocean of pathetic shacks and crumbling tenements stretched in every direction, bearing silent testament to the poverty stricken residents of one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. The harbor glittered just beyond, the promise of wealth on board those incoming vessels, wealth that only those such as the Peacecrafts would ever see. “Certainly you didn’t find him in there!” Quatre shouted, motioning to a cluster of persons they were fast approaching, standing at the entrance to a large, well kept brownstone that in this neighborhood could only have been a house of ill repute. Dorothy ignored him, plowing into the crowd at breakneck speed, sending drunkards and tenement dwellers - as well as a few well-placed patrolmen - scattering in every direction before bringing the vehicle to an abrupt and shuddering stop. Quatre was nearly thrown from his seat, stayed only by the arm Rashid flung out to hold him in place, clinging to the large man gratefully and attempting to ignore the fact that his stomach was currently residing in his throat. He tumbled less than gracefully from the calash, balefully eyeing Dorothy as she traded curses with several roundsmen who were less than pleased at being forced to dive for cover. He straightened, leaning heavily on Rashid, brushing dust from his trousers and attempting to gain his bearings. Quatre felt his heart stop as he surveyed the scene before him. It was pandemonium. Several patrolmen were positioned at the mouth of a darkened alleyway, making a valiant effort to keep the crowd back from their crime scene as an overflowing throng of drunkards, prostitutes, and several shabbily dressed immigrants pushed at their ranks, yelling obscenities in several different languages and demanding to be appraised of the situation. Quatre found himself wondering why; judging by the putrid odor filtering from the depths of the alley itself, the situation was all too clear. A detached part of his mind focused idly on a girl at the fringes of the crowd, a scantily clad waif whose pale skin stood out in stark contrast to midnight hair, impossibly wide blue eyes puffy and spilling over with tears. She seemed the only one actually effected by the situation, safely ensconced in the arms of a tall, gangly man about Quatre’s age, most of whose face was covered by a ridiculous looking bang that swept across half his features, hiding the play of emotions there as he tenderly rocked the child whore. The man looked up, gaze locking with Quatre’s, and he was struck by the force of rage in those verdant eyes, sparing a glance at the mouth of the alleyway in wonder at what really lay within its depths. When he looked back nary an instant later, both the child and the man had vanished. The body, for it could no longer be referred to as Milliardo Peacecraft, was positioned at a peculiar angle in the back of a dingy alley like so many others in the tenements, made unique only by the rare fact that it bordered both a rather successful brothel and an equally thriving parish. Quatre spared himself a glance at the single spire of the Maxwell Church as he stepped past the first roundsman into the shadows, the acrid stench of urine and rotting food assailing his nostrils. He was immediately wrenched from his untenable detachment and cloaked in the suffocating destitution that prevailed the area, pausing to steady himself in the coolness of the grimy stone that was the brothel’s rear wall before continuing on. Dr. Yuy was as expected hunched over the body, studying it intently as he scribbled notes in an open leaf, pausing occasionally to prod at some article of clothing or indistinguishable lump of flesh. He turned at Quatre’s approach, sparing him a brief upturning of his lips that for Yuy constituted as an encouraging smile. “Ah, Quatre-san. I’ve been waiting.” Yuy was, as always, clothed entirely in black, cloak draping dramatically about his shoulders and fluttering at his calves in an early morning breeze that would have been pleasant had it not been wafting the carrion’s putrid odor towards the alley’s occupants. He shifted the notebook under one arm and hastily shoved a partition of perpetually tussled black-brown hair from uncannily blue, yet still Asiatic eyes. Hair too long to be fashionable, clothes too macabre to fit the taste of most upperclassmen, and generally as inscrutable as any Asiatic was expected to be, he carried himself with a fluid, leonine grace that afforded him the begrudging respect of patients and colleagues alike. The roundsmen looked especially wary, eyeing the Doctor with that familiar suspicion Quatre had seen so often whenever the commissioner’s subordinates were asked to follow the orders of the eccentric, albeit obviously brilliant foreigner. Had Yuy not somehow managed an air of imposition rivaling that of men twice his size, they would most certainly have revolted. As it were they merely chafed and afforded the Doctor a wide berth as he made his examination. “What happened?” Quatre ventured, hating the way his voice broke childishly on the question. Though if Yuy noticed, he did not see fit to mention it, his attention already riveted on his work yet again. “It seems that our search is at an end, Quatre-san. I am sorry.” The pallid glow of the roundsmen’s lanterns washed over the body, masking it in shade and muted color as Quatre struggled to slow his breathing against the pounding staccato of his heart. The meager light lent the scene a surreal aura and Quatre found himself struggling to remember that Milliardo, his childhood friend and cohort, was truly dead. Almighty God in Heaven. What would he tell Relena? The body declined to answer. It lay in unnerving stillness under Heero’s administrations, head lolling piteously to one side, pillowed on a mass of platinum white that had once been Milliardo’s hair. Chunks of the luxuriant mane were mercilessly shorn and scattered about the body, the white a stark contrast to the grime of the alley and the crimson that shrouded the figure where clothing did not. As it was, the corpse was barely clothed, chest bare and laid open through a long gash that ran flush from sternum to groin, baring a tangled mass of slimy, perversely incandescent intestine that glowed wetly in the lamplight. He had been eviscerated. There was no other way to describe it. Quatre stayed long enough for the Doctor to shift the body’s head to the side, noting that the base of the skull had done a fair job of caving in on itself, before calmly asking to be excused for a moment. Clenching his fists painfully at his sides, he headed for the mouth of the alley without a backward glance at Milliardo’s remains or the oblivious Doctor. Brushing past Rashid’s gentle concern and Dorothy’s half hidden disdain, he pushed through the throng of riotous bystanders, ducked behind a crumbling tenement building on the opposite side of the road and promptly vomited. It took Rashid all of three minutes to track him through the crowd, lifting him up off his shaking knees and swatting his hand away as he negligently wiped at his mouth with a coat sleeve. Dorothy followed, cleaning his face and hands with a gentleness that would have surprised him on any other night and in any other situation. As it was, he merely shook them both off, steeled himself against a second wave of nausea and plunged back into the alley without a word. It was the silence that had done it, the tainted stillness that lay thick and heavy over mutilated flesh as the Doctor calmly went about his business. Milliardo frozen, a distorted grimace forever marring familiar aristocratic features. Milliardo who had been in constant motion since the day he was born, a writhing mass of nervous energy and sardonic humor that swelled from within, threatening to tear the hands of those who kept him from freedom. The silence was deafening, filling him with abhorrence as he gazed down at the motionless figure. What had driven the man to this? What last desperate bid for freedom drove him here, to the squalor of the back alleys of the slums to meet his end like a common vagrant - crying out in vain against the cold, utterly alone as his body gave way beneath him? “Quatre-san, what do you make of this?” Quatre was startled from his reverie by the Doctor’s voice, turning sharply toward where his friend was carefully unclenching the fingers of the corpse’s hand to reveal an object clutched inside. He held up what had to be an extremely valuable rosary set, blood red garnets glinting wickedly in the lamplight from the roundsmen’s lanterns, an ornately detailed silver cross fitting precariously at its end. “That cross looks too large for the rest of it. Do you think it means something?” Quatre whispered, reverently taking the object from the Doctor for closer inspection - - at the precise moment a new voice shattered the respectful hush over the alley. “We’ve found them on all the bodies.” They each looked up at the statement, sharing a momentary glance before Yuy’s brow furrowed in thought and he demanded, “Bodies?” A man grinned at them from a doorway cut into the wall of the Maxwell Church, amethyst eyes alight with merriment as he regarded the perplexed Doctor with something suspiciously akin to patronization. His entire outfit was black, save a white strip of fabric set into a high collar, form fitting material betraying a lithe figure as he threw a blue-black cloak over his shoulders and stepped into the alleyway, giving rise to the briefest flicker of an obscenely long plait that for Quatre confirmed his identity. Father Maxwell, maverick pastor of the Maxwell Church, was barely older than Quatre himself. They had been introduced at one of Father’s parties nearly a year before, and Quatre had been immediately impressed by the man’s staunch refusal to be disparaged or brushed aside in the presence of gentlemen and debutants who believed him somehow contaminated by the work he did. They were all willing to talk of charity and bringing God to the immigrant populations of the slums, but anything beyond the actual funding of charity organizations was left to peasants like Maxwell and his coworkers. Quatre himself had long been struck by the perplexing irony that the people who were actually doing the Lord’s work were shunned for being base enough to bother. Maxwell knew that he was attending as a figurehead, the tangible proof that the upper echelons of society were doing their part, but he wasted no time in informing Quatre’s father that conditions in mills like the ones run by Winner Enterprises were a main proponent of the general poor health and destitution of the lower classes that made his work necessary. He’d never seen anyone stand up to Father before, and while the other guests traded rumors and exchanged suitably scandalized gestures, Quatre had found his way to the young pastor for what turned into one of the most stimulating and entertaining conversations he’d ever participated in at one of Father’s ghastly society functions. Father Maxwell was honest. He wasn’t caught up in the importance of his station or his own accomplishments the way most of the people that had surrounded Quatre all his life had been. He was honest about his work and his life, and spoke of sectors of society that most people staunchly refused to believe were in existence without condescension or an overbearing sense of pity, because to him they were people. People surviving in any way they could under horrible circumstances that he refused to begrudge them. He believed, in much the same way Quatre had heard Dr. Yuy speak, that some things in a man’s life were out of his control. In his eyes, the true measure of a man’s worth was how willing he was to bear discomfort himself to help others. Which was why, he supposed, that most of his society friends couldn’t stand the man. Not only did he administer to thieves and whores alike at the mission, he had a wicked tongue when it came to injustice and was not above pointing out the many ironies of society’s hypocritical behavior, whether his input was welcome or not. At the moment he was standing hands on hips with his head cocked to the side, visibly attempting to discern Dr. Yuy’s authority in the investigation. “Bodies,” he added, widening his smile and visibly attempting not to laugh, “Carrions. Carcasses. Dead things that were once people and are now indistinguishable lumps of human flesh.” Quatre swallowed past the bile in his throat at that, smiling weakly at Father Maxwell as the man’s gaze flickered to him with some concern. “I understand that,” Yuy replied impassively, returning his focus to the pitiable form of Milliardo Peacecraft, “I was referring to your use of the plural. Do you mean to say that there are more like this?” “They didn’t tell you?” Father Maxwell shook his head in disgust, scratching the back of his head and staring at the floor, muttering, “Of course they didn’t tell you, the imbeciles at headquarters probably don’t even realize the connection.” He paused, taking a deep breath and fixing the Doctor with a weighty stare. “Four more that I know of, all eviscerated in much the same fashion, though I suspect that it was the blow to the back of the head that did them in. The cutting is precise, looks to be done with surgical instruments rather than your common variety kitchen utensil, and a rosary much like the one young Mr. Winner is holding was found clutched in each victim’s hand. Hardly a bauble one could pick up at any corner dealer, the people in this neighborhood couldn’t afford a piece like that if they saved their salaries for a year, which I tried to explain to the roundsmen, but God forbid they listen to me.” Yuy arched a brow at the newcomer. “And you are?” Father Maxwell favored them both with a brilliant grin, half bowing to the Doctor with a flourish. “Father Maxwell, at your service, though I might as well be Death himself for all that I’ve seen recently. But call me Duo, I see no reason to adhere to the title where it’s not required and I doubt you’re here to confess your sins.” Yuy inclined his head politely, holding out his hand to the priest. “Heero Yuy. Doctor, actually, but as long as we’re forsaking convention we might as well be consistent. My companion,” he motioned to Quatre, “is Mr. Quatre Raberba Winner, as I assume you know.” “We’ve met,” Quatre offered, by way of explanation, watching the Doctor dismiss the newcomer as his attention turned back to the body. “So who was he?” Father Maxwell queried, smile fading slightly as he took a closer look at the mess that was once Milliardo Peacecraft. “Zechsy was entertaining, but I didn’t think he’d cause this much of a fuss when he finally managed to self destruct.” “Zechsy?” Quatre glanced at the body. “You mean Milliardo?” “Zechs Marquis, Mr. Winner, the mess the good Doctor is so dutifully prodding.” “Zechs Marquis,” the Doctor repeated, head snapping up and brow furrowing thoughtfully. “No, no, there must be some mistake,” Quatre stuttered, “this is the body of Milliardo Peacecraft.” “A Peacecraft?” Father Maxwell laughed, a short bark devoid of mirth. “Well that explains quite a bit. Let the commoners die in solitude, but for a Peacecraft the entire police force turns out.” He snorted, shaking his head. “These others, you found them?” Yuy inquired. “One,” Father Maxwell replied, “One of the neighborhood girls found the first and Triton Bloom, his sister Catherine owns the brothel there, was the first upon the last two. He called me as soon as he discovered them.” “He called you?” Yuy added, “Why?” “I am a priest after all, Doctor Yuy, these people are superstitious. They wanted the bodies blessed.” Father Maxwell paused and wrapped his cloak more tightly around his shoulders. “And none of my parishioners has been given much reason to trust the police.” “That,” He shivered slightly, and Quatre watched something indefinable shift in his eyes. “And he was well aware that the second victim was my brother.” return to splash page