Hush

By Xero Sky

Pairing: 1x2, maybe others, maybe not

Warnings: (For the whole story) NC-17, AU, lemon, angst, violence, mention of NCS, and OOC with reasons for it. Lots of profanity. Possible humor and/or weirdness. (And please forgive my lack of a beta for this fandom!)

Summary: In an alternate timeline, Treize Kushrenada's New Alliance has won the day: the earth and the colonies enjoy an uneasy peace. And one Duo Maxwell, terrorist, Gundam pilot, and general pain in the ass, is unexpectedly out of prison. Now he only has to confront his future… and his past.

Disclaimer: All characters belong to their respective copyright holders. No profit is intended from this work of fan fiction.

Chapter Two

I couldn't seem to say anything to him.

He stood there in the middle of the room, watching as the uniformed servants finished arranging the things they'd brought with them. Clothes were hung in the closet and tucked into the dressers. The table was set with covered dishes. The linens were restocked. I saw all of it, and filed the information away, but my gaze kept going back to him. We were waiting until the strangers left and we had privacy, but I didn't know what I was going to say to him even then, if I could manage to speak at all.

I had a sharp, destabilizing sense of unreality. I've hallucinated before, when I was sick or wounded, and this vision before me lacked that soft, unfocused quality. I didn't really doubt that I was seeing him, but some part of my brain was refusing the whole situation.

He was wearing an OZ officer's uniform. Shiny black calf-high boots, white pants, a white shirt with a high collar, and over all, a red, waist-length jacket with gold braid down the sleeves and epaulets at each shoulder. His unruly hair was the same as ever, but I'd never seen anything like that detached look of authority on him before.

He hadn't had that scar on his face the last time I'd seen him, either. The wound had healed clean, without pulling at the flesh, but the scar was still there, darker than his skin, running down one side of his face from cheekbone to jaw. He'd been lucky to keep that eye.

Still, I'd always known that Quatre Raberba Winner was going to go from cute to stunning as he grew older, and the scar did nothing at all to prove me wrong. With those eyes and that hair, he looked like one of the angels in Maxwell Church's last unbroken stained glass window.

I could hardly believe it was him. But when the door closed and we were alone, those cold eyes lit up and I knew that grin as well as I knew my own face in the mirror.

"Duo!" he said, throwing his arms around me and squeezing - hard. "I couldn't believe it when Zechs said you were being brought here! I'm so glad to see you!"

One hundred percent pure Quatre: I felt welcomed from head to toes. I grinned like an idiot and hugged him back, not minding a bit that I was still dressed only in a towel, or even, for a minute, that I still had no idea what was going on.

For a few moments, it was okay just to be happy to see my friend.

The last time I'd seen him in the flesh, he'd been quietly bleeding to death on a sidewalk in St. Petersburg. I had nightmares about the blood in his hair for a long time after that.

I hadn't been able to get to him before the building I was taking cover in started to fall on top of me; someone had decided to simply level the whole damned block. All that firepower and destruction just to take down the two of us… and screw anyone else who might be trying to keep themselves or their families alive in those buildings. I made it out by accident; the concussion had blown me through a window, and the dust cloud had covered my escape. Quatre had been scraped off the sidewalk by the enemy. They had to put him back together.

I knew he'd survived. I'd seen the news coverage, and the same kind of video they'd taken of me. I hadn't thought he'd make it in prison, though. He was tough, but he was an idealist. Idealists didn't do well inside.

I pulled back and looked in his eyes, then noticed the scar again. I guess he'd hadn't gotten out exactly intact, but getting out at all was a victory for him.

Probably. I had to take in the uniform again.

He noticed and smiled, still looking me in the eye. I noticed the faint color in his cheeks, though.

"Must seem pretty strange, huh?" he said.

I nodded. I wasn't sure if I could talk or not. That is, I wasn't sure if words would come out if I opened my mouth. I didn't want him to see me gaping like a damned fish.

And he was standing there in an OZ uniform. I should have been kicking his ass, but, Jesus Christ... There was only so much I could process at once.

"Here," he said, going through the closet briefly and pulling out black pants and a red shirt. "Why don't you get dressed, and I'll tell you everything that's happened while you eat. Or at least everything I know."

He offered me the clothes and I hesitated, not knowing what the fuck to do, for once. I mean… Quatre?

My jaw was clenched tight, and I had to make myself relax. Zechs had said I wasn't under the silent regime anymore - I wasn't even a fucking person anymore, as far as the rest of the world was concerned. Might as well do what I could while I was still alive. Starting with the basics, I guess.

Right now, that translated into clothing and food. I pulled the clothes out of his hands and put them on right there, not concerned with dressing in front of him. I hadn't exactly had much privacy lately. The clothes were nice, easy on the skin, and they fit me just fine. Just my sizes, as a matter of fact. I looked at him, thinking about saying something about that, but he had turned away.

Stupid me. It took me a while to realize he was being polite.

Feeling awkward, I sat down at the table and just looked at him. Damn. I'd been able to swear like a street whore earlier, so why was it so hard to squeeze out a word for my friend?

Was he still my friend? I needed to know.

"Quatre…" I managed, then stopped as the most amazing smile appeared on his face. I mean, it was like seeing real sunlight for the first time.

"It's gonna be okay, Duo," he said, still beaming at me. "I know what it was like, but you should be safe here now. You can say whatever you need to."

My tired brain picked the words "should be safe" out of that string and filed them away, but I couldn't do much more than smile back at him and make a weak reply. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," he said, his smile and his eyes softening at the same time. "This must look pretty bad, though," he added, touching his sleeve.

I nodded after a moment, the words having jammed up in my throat again. As a distraction, I pulled the lid off one of the dishes and was treated to a warm rush of scented air. Christ, it was like some kind of orgasm, just smelling good food again. It was just bread, but, oh God, it was real bread: fresh, warm, and with a hint of something wonderful that my deprived senses eventually told me must be garlic.

Garlic. Heh.

All of a sudden, I couldn't deal with it all.

Too much information, too much information unknown. Everything had changed, and if I hated what I had woken up as this morning, I didn't know what I was now. A shower, clean hair, clean clothes, and food shouldn't make that much difference, but it was piled on top of being here, losing my chip, and being told that I could talk. A little human dignity, a touch of civilization, and an old friend in enemy colors…

I was lost. Just for a moment. Just for a small eternity.

Showing weakness like that was suicide, and so I just stopped moving, trying not to give myself away. Quatre must have known, however, because he moved his chair over and took hold of my hand. I didn't like being touched, but he had always made such comforting gestures so easy to accept that I didn't draw away.

"It's okay, Duo," he said quietly.

I stared at our hands clasped together, my eyes traveling over the calluses and then up to paler skin of our wrists, vivid against red sleeves. I saw his gold braid on the red cloth, with the edge of a perfect white cuff underneath. Perfect. Not a thread out of place.

Just like them.

Anger can be such a reliable focus.

I let go of him and grabbed his sleeve, jerking it and his arm up to eye level between us. "What is this shit?" I growled at him.

Quatre pulled free. It didn't take him much effort. I watched him smooth the fabric back into place, noting the coldness of his expression. Where had he learned that? Same place I'd learned mine, no doubt.

When he spoke, though, his voice was gentle and calm, like it always had been.

"This is the difference between me dead in prison and me here, Duo."

I just looked at him. Words could mean so many things.

"I was still injured when they sent me down, remember? I never made it out of the infirmary. A pretty boy terrorist who couldn't defend himself was easy meat."

Of course. I had fought almost constantly until the population had understood I wasn't a mark. But I hadn't been hurt, hadn't been hospitalized when I'd first shown up. I hadn't had anything to keep me from defending myself.

"After a couple of months I got sent into the general population, but I was already marked as an easy target. Took a lot of convincing to change that, and I picked up this along the way," he said, touching his scar gently. He grimaced, and I watched the scar twist.

"So one day a vid crew came to do a propaganda piece on the famous terrorist, and my face was swollen up, the wound was infected, and I was delirious."

He paused for a moment, eyes focusing on something not in the room with us. "We had to wait while they decided if they could shoot the footage. This big son of a bitch guard was getting off on slapping my face. It hurt so bad that I couldn't keep quiet, so then he would beat me for breaking silence. Then he'd slap me again. And it just kept going on and on…"

Blue-green eyes met mine unflinchingly. "I'm Officer Quatre Winner, OZ Elite Mobile Suit Forces, Adjutant to General Zechs Merquise. I don't fly anymore; I haven't piloted a suit since Sandrock. All I do is help him - schedules, appointments, communications, whatever. I wear the uniform, but I don't fight. And you want to know why? Because I owe him, Duo. I owe him my life."

I blinked at him, seeing the earnest, forceful Quatre I remembered, telling me things I didn't want to hear. My mouth opened. A few moments later, the words came out of it.

"Zechs? You mean you owe Zechs? For what? How could you owe him anything that cancels out what they did to us? What about Heero… you even remember Heero?" I asked, my hoarse voice rising and breaking with the strain. "What the fuck did you do, Quatre?"

Quatre flinched then, and I was glad of it. He was working for the enemy, practically *the* enemy, and he deserved to feel some goddamned shame for it. But I wasn't expecting to hear what he told me. He was perfectly straightforward. "I ripped the guard's throat out with my teeth. They beat me until I couldn't feel it anymore. Zechs had arrived to interrogate me, and he found me bleeding out on the floor. He took me into his custody and I woke up here, and this is what he offered me."

Quatre - my Quatre - did that? I believed him. I didn't want to, just like I didn't want the image of him with blood in his teeth that flashed into my head, but I did. Strip him down far enough, and he would turn out to be the same kind of animal as the rest of us. I just didn't want to know about it.

He'd risked his life so many times before. Had he decided it wasn't worth it anymore?

If that was true, what about me and my life? What about everything I'd gone through? Was *that* worth anything?

I've been trained for violent solutions. I suppose I would have killed him, or tried to, right then and there, but he was still Quatre. Anger and betrayal were only gonna take me so far down that road, and Quatre was never gonna be dead at the end of it. I couldn't.

But I had to say something, even if I thought I knew what the answer was. I felt the same hollow sickness in my throat that I had when I'd first seen the bed in here and thought…

"What?" I ground out finally. "What deal did you make?"

"Just what I told you. He pledged his honor to guarantee my parole. And he gave me a job."

It made me cold, the matter-of-fact way he said it. Like making a deal with a devil was a perfectly reasonable thing to do under the circumstances. And, Jesus, what kind of deal was it? And why Quatre, out of all of us?

Bile spilled out and became words.

"Honor, huh? He just happened to show up in time to rescue you, then pledges his *honor* that you'll be a good boy. Ain't that convenient," I said, sneering. "So how often does he make you suck him off?"

The passionate Quatre I knew would have said something indignant, would have yelled at me or blushed furiously and then yelled at me. But I guess time has passed. And we'd gotten too old for that game. This Quatre just snorted and sat back, looking more exasperated than angry, as if I was being deliberately stupid.

"You want the truth? Zechs could do anything he wanted, to me or you or almost anyone else, and no one would stop him. He hasn't laid a finger on me, hasn't asked for a goddamned thing except that I act like a soldier," Quatre said flatly. "You want to know how long it took me to decide when he offered me this job? About fifteen minutes. Because, like it or not, we lost the goddamned war, Duo! And there is peace now, and going back in the hole so I can get beaten to death for the cause isn't going to change anything."

Except for that little bit of emphasis, just to make sure I understood that my whole life so far had been a fucking waste of time, he laid it out for me like a mission briefing. Cool and collected, like he'd been towards the end, before prison, before here, when he'd had to tell me that Heero had been captured and Chang Wufei was missing. Just like I'd been when Trowa was killed and there hadn't been anyone left to tell Quatre but me.

And because of that, I believed him.

And because of that, all I could say was "Okay."

It didn't mean anything, except maybe that I wasn't going to force this particular fight on either one of us at the moment, but the tension drained out of him and he smiled at me a little. Just a curve of the lips, but it was enough.

There being nothing better to do now that I had called my best friend a traitor and he'd informed me that there was no cause left to betray, I tore apart a slice of bread and shoved half of it in my mouth. I didn't necessarily believe him. I was just freaking hungry.

The flesh turned out to be weak. I forgot about being pissed off altogether. I thought I was going to pass out right there. I swear to God, that bread was the best thing I'd ever eaten. Swallowing hurt my throat, but who cared?

Quatre laughed at me, but it was alright. While I uncovered the rest of the food and laid into the chicken, vegetables, and things I didn't even bother to identify first, he leaned back in his chair and watched, sipping at something I guessed must be tea. Typical Quatre. Always as civilized as he could manage, under the circumstances.

My life would have been a lot simpler if I could've just managed to hate him.

~tbc~