Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Hush ❯ Chapter 8

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.  Duo POV. 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.

Archive: http://www.xero-sky.com

http://www.templeofthegoddess.com

and ask!

Chapter 8

Trowa once told me a story about Quatre. 

The two of us – Trowa and I – had been holed up in an abandoned hotel, waiting for a chance to get back to our Gundams.  OZ had thrown up a cordon around the city not long after we'd trashed their local communications center, and we were stuck.  That wasn't the worst of it, though.  We'd meant to do more damage, but they'd gotten lucky.  Repeatedly.  We were photographed, Trowa was injured, and the local commander got off with a light maiming.

Heero would've had kittens if he'd known.

We hadn't been too happy about it all either. 

The OZies had searched five or six floors of the hotel before going on to the next building.  We were up on the twelfth, and we were lucky they'd been lazy bastards, because there wasn't much farther we could have gone. The place had been really nice once, but it had been deserted and left to rot for a long time, and it was none too stable. 

We'd set up our meager equipment and supplies in a room with a view, and we watched everything that went on at the checkpoint a few blocks down the street.  Other than that, there wasn't much to do but wait until some of the furor died.  Oh, and talk, because no one had taught me back then that I was even capable of keeping quiet for that long.

I hadn't known Trowa very well at the time.  He'd usually worked alone, or with Quatre, while I always seemed to end up with Wufei or, God help me, Heero.  Later on, Trowa and I became something like friends, but back then we only had the war in common.  Well, the war, our mutual embarrassment at how bad the mission had gone so far, and Quatre, who we both knew better than the other pilots.

Guess which one we talked about?  It turned out that Trowa had a lot to say about that subject.

Quatre bothered the hell out of him.  He'd never met anyone like him before.  He'd traveled a lot more than I had and seen all kinds of people, but Quatre was something else.

I don't think Trowa could get over how Q could be that rich and still be a Gundam pilot.  In Trowa's view of things, the Quatres of the world didn't get involved.  If they had interests that had to be protected, they hired mercenaries, of course.  They never got passionate, got personally involved, and threw themselves into the fight.  They never bled for a cause. That just never happened.  It bothered him that he couldn't place Quatre in his scheme of how things worked. 

Did I mention that we were still fifteen or so?  Yeah.  At that age it really sucks if something doesn't fit into your big picture of life, the universe, and why people were shooting at you.  He kept worrying at the Quatre problem like a kid messing with a loose tooth.

We were there for about three days together.  Trowa might not have talked as much as I did, but he talked a lot, and most of it was about Quatre.  Looking back, I suppose I should have read something into that.  At the time, I was just happy to have something to do, and someone I could understand.  I'm not saying he didn't eventually bore the shit out of me, but it took a while, and by then the OZies had moved their checkpoint, so other things were picking up.

Anyway, at some point during all of this, Trowa told me a story about his first mission with Q.  He had barely known Quatre at the time, and the background information he'd received before the mission hadn't reassured him. Not only was Quatre himself kind of dubious, but the Maganac thing was incomprehensible. Trowa had assumed they were simple mercenaries, but they weren't getting paid.  When he met them, their belief in Quatre and his leadership unsettled Trowa, and he was suspicious for a while that they might be a religious cult.

I'd laughed with him over that one.  The whole Maganac thing had weirded me out too.

The mission they'd been sent on wasn't really part of the story.  It was what happened later that Trowa wanted to tell me about. 

They'd retreated to a hiding place in China.  Both Gundams had needed repairs, and Trowa had been forced to accept Quatre's hospitality.  Although he'd been impressed with Q's pilot skills, he wasn't entirely happy about being stuck there. The base turned out to be in pretty good order, though, and the Maganac techs seemed to know what they were doing, so he'd relaxed a little. 

The next day he'd gone down to the mech bay to see to Heavyarms.  He was thinking about Q, and he saw him talking to some technicians at the far end of a row of Maganac suits under repair.  Sandrock stood on the far side of the hangar, next to Heavyarms, in the special repair bays that had been built to accommodate the size and special needs of the Gundams. Trowa was headed that way when he'd heard the special groan and shriek of metal giving way. 

The hangar was so crowded that even suits with damaged legs were being worked on where they stood. There was simply no place to lay them down flat and take the weight off the weak points, so they just worked as fast as they could on them.  Of course that was just asking for trouble, and that morning they got it.

The ankle joint on one suit failed suddenly, and the whole thing just fell over, crashing into its neighbor.  That suit had all of its systems shut down, and with no way to regain its balance, it crashed into the stacks of heavy machine parts next to it.  All of that came down in an avalanche right where Quatre was standing.

Later they would find a crater in the concrete floor almost six feet deep.  Eighteen people were killed and several injured.  Both mobile suits were eventually scrapped for parts.

Quatre, however, walked away without a scratch, and began directing the emergency crews as calmly as if he hadn't been a fraction away from death.

All he said to Trowa about it afterward was that he refused to die a worthless death like that.  He'd said it as if explaining one of the fundamentals of the universe to him, something he should have known already.  Then he gave him a pitying smile and left Trowa there to stare after him.

Trowa said a lot of things while we were hiding out in that hotel together, but I can't remember most of them clearly now, except for that story about Quatre.  That incident had changed his opinions of Quatre altogether, and the memory of it was precious to him.

Quatre, he said, was crazy.  Something had hurt him, somewhere down deep, and he hadn't come back quite right from it.  That was Trowa's way of understanding him.  It didn't diminish Quatre in his eyes.  It was just the man's condition.  It was what let him go to war.

Once Quatre fit into his view of the world, Trowa couldn't get over him at all.  He could work with him, respect him, and understand him in his own way, but he couldn't stop thinking about him.

I wish I had taken more time to talk with Trowa back then, but neither of us knew how little time there was left.  We were fifteen, and stupid, and immortal.

*****

I thought about dead friends as I watched the excavators pull slabs of concrete off the pile.  The building had been crushed.  I doubted that it was on Wufei's target list; if it had been, there wouldn't have been anything left but a crater. Still, the building hadn't been built to stand up to a mobile suit battle.  Part of a mobile doll had flattened the east end completely, and the rest of the building had come down in chunks and slabs of concrete and plastic and metal reinforcing rods.  The surrounding buildings had taken hits too, and a couple of them had been left to burn until someone had the resources to deal with them.  None of them had suffered anything quite as dramatic as the shitstorm that had come down on top of Quatre.

It's called collateral damage.  The fact that it's unintentional doesn't make it any better.  I've caused enough of it in my day to know.

They'd already found human remains, but it's hard to identify random chunks of meat.  Nobody was sure how many people had been in the building to start with.  It would take a couple of weeks to sort it all out into neat little boxes to send home to the families.

I wondered what Quatre's family would do with his little box.  Would they make a fuss over the family's black sheep, or just stick him in a memorial wall somewhere?

Yes, I *was* being morbid, thank you very much. 

In the two hours since Wufei's departure, nothing had happened to make me think there was any hope of seeing Quatre again.  Trowa's story was stuck in my head, but Tro himself was dead, and it did nothing to cheer me up.

I watched the rescue efforts from my seat on the hood of Heero's truck.  I don't know if he thought he was doing me a favor by taking me out to see it all up close and personal like that.  *He* certainly didn't have to be there.  Except for taking the occasional call on his small headset, he did nothing but lean up against the truck and watch with me.  We hadn't said a word to each other since leaving the command center.

Occasionally, I would glance over at him, actually hoping that he'd do something to provoke me, just to pass the time.  The bastard didn't help out at all.  Every once in awhile he'd check up on me, but mostly he just stood there, watching the excavation and giving me a headache just by existing.

I didn't get him. I'd never really gotten him, but it mattered a lot more now than it used to.  Back in the day, he'd just been homicidal and possibly psychotic, but I could work with that. Now he was my personal savior, getting me out of prison and, according to him, rescuing me from the executioner.  That was a lot harder to deal with, somehow.

He had betrayed us.  He'd been the one who'd fucked everything up.  Indirectly, he was the reason I'd been in prison in the first place, damnit.  What was he up to?

Then there had been that kiss. Yes, he'd been trying to make me look bad.  I was pretty damned sure of that.  At the time, though…  At the time, even though I'd ended it myself, it had felt genuine.  It had been a good kiss, one of the best I've ever had.

I really didn't get that.

I snatched another look at him, and saw that he was looking right at me.  I felt like blushing and looking away, but that isn't really my style.  We looked at each other long enough for me to start thinking about the way he'd laid his fingers on my mouth, and how his tongue had felt touching my own.  Anger and something a lot more confused made me want to hit him, or yell at him, or shake him until things made more sense.

At the moment, though, there wasn't much to do about it.  Heero Yuy never said anything until he was ready, and I didn't have the skills or the muscle mass to try and pry it out of him.

There was nothing, in fact, to do other than watch them dig up Quatre.

I wasn't letting myself feel it, but I knew the grief was lurking out there, waiting for me.  It was the story of my life, putting the emotions aside until I had the luxury to look at them.  I hardly ever got that luxury, but if a guy can't lie to himself, who can he lie to?

Fucking Wufei.  Nice job, man.  Yeah, I realize that you're still fighting the good fight while I'm not, but…

No, that was exactly it.  He'd been doing his job.  Collateral damage happened and casualties happened, and I wasn't the first person to lose someone I cared about to a Gundam.  I wouldn't be the last.  It was just another fucking day in a war that would never end.  It was pure chance that I was still here to see it.

Which led to another thought I wasn't all that happy with.  Why was I here, exactly, in Sanc?  Some whim of Heero's?  Someone else's bad idea to work me over for the greater good of the New Alliance, make me a model soldier like their prized traitor?  Heero had said my war was over, but that couldn't even be possible.  I had been at war for as long as I could remember.  I was a child of war, a son of this conflict.  There was nothing else for me.

What the hell did Heero think I was going to do with this gift of life he'd given me?  By any moral code I could still understand, I had to kill him eventually, didn't I?  Just to even the score?  To take the good fight back up and go on?

I caught my breath, realizing that he was still looking at me, and feeling suddenly like he'd just read all my thoughts.  That intense look, the one that weighed every option, was in his eyes again.  Funny how it seemed kind of comforting this time, as if that brilliant mind of his was calculating all my probable futures.  Why that should reassure me, I couldn't possibly begin to tell you.  Heero makes me crazy just by being nearby.  I can feel the madness seep into my bones.

"Duo," he said softly.  "I think they've found him."

I shut my eyes for a moment and shoved everything down as far into my chest as I could get it.

"Where?"  A steady and cool voice asked the question.  Yay me.

"Southwest corner.  There's a cluster of remains there.  Do you want to go down?"

He was being considerate, asking me if I wanted to go look at the corpses.  Had to keep that in mind.

"Yeah."

He watched me for a moment, and then nodded gently.  I had to wonder what conclusion he'd come to.

Maxwell the pilot, the soldier, the loser, going down among the dead men.  Maybe it just wasn't something that he saw every day.

*****

After that, there was a blur, when time slid past me without really meaning anything. 

Quatre Winner was indeed in the southwest corner, under a pile of bodies that were nearly unrecognizable.  Quatre should have been dead, but he was not.  Whatever pushed Quatre through life wasn't done with him yet.  I think Trowa would not have been surprised to see him pulled out of the pit, beaten and covered with other people's blood.  Everyone else was astonished. 

I wanted to go closer, to run up and see if it was true, to see the life in his eyes, but Heero had hold of my arm and wouldn't let me go.  I turned to yell at him, to make him let go, but there was something in his expression that stopped me. I swear to God he looked relieved when the word came up that Q was alive.  Why would he care? 

I'd spent years hating the man, and, honestly, I didn't fucking need him to be showing any redeeming features right now.  I fished around for something ugly and hostile to say, to get things back where they should be.

The sudden arrival of Epyon pretty much snapped my train of thought in two. That monster slammed down a few hundred yards away, making the ground shake.  More of the building came down, and, even over the sounds of the engines powering down, I could hear the med techs swearing as they tried to protect their patient.

Zechs nearly threw himself out of the cockpit, hanging onto the zipline for just long enough to keep from breaking his neck when he let go.  He clattered down the slope, sending stuff rolling in all directions, and slid to a stop next to Quatre.  A minute later, and he was helping to carry the stretcher out.

Such concern for his little prison prize. 

I turned around and watched the buildings burn.  Even with the smoke, it was easier on the eyes.

In my memory, it's all a melodramatic blur from then until Q got out of surgery. Heero didn't say a word; he just followed the ambulance, towing me behind him. The hospital was underground, part of the whole complex, and it was as spotlessly impersonal as a hospital could be. 

Heero stayed outside when I went into Q's room, sticking to the walls to keep out of the way as the medical staff went to work on Quatre.

Zechs was in there with him.  He didn't say a word, didn't hold Q's hand and implore him to live or any of that cheap shit.  He just stood there, never taking his eyes off my friend. The doctors and nurses sometimes asked him to move, and he would, but never more than a foot away.  They were smart people, and no one asked him to leave.  It would have been a waste of time.  And possibly dangerous. 

I understood the ugly little smile on his face. I can recognize extreme guilt when I see it, thank you very much, and I backed out of the room like it was contagious. There was no possible way in which Quatre's injuries could be my fault, but I knew all too well that guilt didn't require logic, and I fled back into the corridor, where Heero was conferring with the doctors.

I let them talk, listening to the damage being recited and evaluated.  Quatre was probably going to live.  His left hip would have to be replaced with a synthetic, though, and there were broken bones in both arms, plus a crushed vertebra that they'd replace.  There would be more scars, and more pain, but Quatre would come through it, like he always did. 

And like I always did, I felt like I'd let him down. He was no younger brother – he had always been a soldier, a fellow terrorist, a companion in arms – but I had always felt responsible for him in the same half-assed way I did about everyone I cared about.  It was stupid, and worse, it could be suicidal, because if I was responsible, there was going to have to be revenge for this.  It was just the way Shinigami operated.

Revenge against Wufei.  The only one of us who still had his shit together, even if part of it was MY shit, scavenged from MY Deathscythe.

Or revenge against Heero, for setting all this shit into motion by abandoning the cause.

Might as well add God to that list, since I had about the same shot at all of them.

Yeah.

I pushed off the wall and started off down the corridor, powered by a sudden torrent of frustration.  Fuck this situation.  Fuck Quatre and Wufei and Heero, and let's not forget dear Treize and his buddy the King of Guilt back there, brooding over shit he might not have been able to change.  Fuck prisons and cameras and public executions. 

I had to go somewhere.  Anywhere.

I hadn't paid as much attention as I should have when we'd come down, so I was only really sure of part of the way out.  Fucking inexcusable.  G would've kicked my ass back into the street for being so sloppy. 

It was alright, though.  No one was going to stop me, anyway.  My own personal angel was just a couple of steps behind me, scaring the lesser mortals out of my path with a simple look.  Fucking bastard.

Heero followed me up stairs and through hallways, and he must have known I didn't really know where I was going.  I could feel my face burning with humiliation, but he didn't say a word to me. More importantly, he didn't get in my way.  When I finally found an elevator again, he entered it behind me, standing on the far side and not looking at me.  He didn't even mention it wasn't the elevator we'd gone down in.  I appreciated that a little, I guess.

I heard him shift a little, moving his weight from one foot to the other, and I wanted to look up, to scan his face and find the answers he wouldn't give me.  He was always good at hiding, but no one is good enough to hide from me forever.  If there was time, I would find out everything I needed to know and more.  Right?

I kept my eyes on the little display, watching the floor numbers change as we went up.

At the moment, Heero wasn't really a puzzle I wanted to unlock.  I just wanted out.  To be specific, I wanted the hell away from him; I wanted to be outside of all the goddamned walls and fences again.  I wanted to disappear into a city somewhere and… and…

Yeah.

Even if I'd been fine with leaving Q behind, I had other issues. And I wasn't going to leave Quatre here, whether he liked it or not.  Q might be all about honor and obligation to Zechs, or whatever his deal was, but he couldn't stay here.  It was wrong.  Just freaking wrong.  I mean, look where it had gotten him so far!  Yeah, so fuck that too.

It was time to pay some serious attention to getting out of here for good.  So I might not have the skills anymore, and I might not be in shape anymore, and all it took to scare the shit out me was a security uniform and a stun stick, but I'd been in worse situations, right?

"Duo…"

And then there was Heero.

The elevator stopped, the door slid open, and I walked out without answering him. 

We were back in the palace.  Huh.  It was all cream-colored and clean and tasteful, and the antiseptic smells of the hospital were completely absent.  They had been replaced by the acrid stink of smoke.  There were still sirens going, and people were hurrying down the halls, carrying medkits or computer equipment, depending on the way they were going.  I saw a trio of men carrying out a cabinet full of antique swords, and my first thought was Hey, they're looting! but of course they weren't.

They were evacuating. 

"Come on," Heero said, taking charge of me again.  I pulled my arm out of his grasp, and my sleeve tore in his fingers.

"Awww, you ruined my shiny new uniform," I said, mocking him. 

"Duo, this wing of the palace is still on fire," he said, as if explaining it to someone not altogether in his right mind.  "We need to go."

As if the building was agreeing with him, smoke began pouring out of one of the air vents nearby.  That's really never a good sign.

Which meant that he had a point.  I hated that.

"You're not dragging me around like a dog on a leash," I said. 

"No," he agreed, and I got the sudden feeling that his next thought involved throwing me over his shoulder and just taking off with me.  That would not have ended well.  Fortunately, he did nothing of the kind.  He settled for surprising the shit out of me again.

He held his hand out to me.  "Duo, will you come with me?"

Oh, I knew that somewhere in the background was the fact that he really wasn't going to leave me there, and that I would be going wherever he wanted me to, one way or the other, but, to his credit, I didn't see any of that in his face.

"Where?"

"Your suite was demolished," he said.  "For now, you'll have to stay with me.  My quarters are at the far end of the north wing and are undamaged."

I was gonna stay with him now?  Right.  Excellent idea.  "I'll kill you in your sleep," I said, smiling really unpleasantly at him.

"I'll take my chances," he said, with the flicker of a much more genuine smile. Then he grew serious again.  "It's my quarters or the brig, Duo.  After Chang's attack, His Excellency wants you safe and secure."

I snorted.  "I wasn't the one Chang was after."

"No, but things have changed, haven't they?"

"Only because of you, you prick!" I yelled at him, loud enough to draw the attention of people fleeing from a fiery death all around us.  "And there's no proof his cameras even picked that up!"

A faint smirk.  "The fact remains that your rooms are demolished.  You can either have the couch in my quarters or a bunk in the cells.  Your choice, Duo."

Goddamn him.  Like I was ever, in a billion years, going to voluntarily walk back into a jail cell.  And the fucker knew it.

Just to spite him, I almost chose the brig.  Couldn't quite do it, though.  In the meantime, the smoke was getting thicker, and my options were dwindling.  I thought about trying to get away in the confusion, but he must have seen it in me somehow, and he tensed a little, his eyes narrowing by just a fraction:  just enough to let me know that he disapproved of my current train of thought.

Damnit, I used to have better control than that.

With as little grace as humanly possibly, I growled "Lead on, asshole."

"Good choice," he said briskly, and with that he caught my wrist in a grip that I couldn't have gotten out of with all of my bones intact.  Heero took off down the hall, cutting through the crowd like it wasn't even there, and I went with him.  There really wasn't anything else I could do, now was there?

Later on I found out that section of the palace was an almost complete loss.  The fires fed on all that history and good taste until there was almost nothing left to burn. Shame about that. It was an old building, part of Sanc's heritage, and it probably hadn't deserved what had happened to it.  What can I say? 

Luck follows me wherever I go.

*****

Heero's personal quarters were extremely neat.  Well, you knew they would be.

They were also really… personal.

I wasn't expecting that.

I understand the general point behind decorating the space you live in.  Human beings do that sort of thing, even when they don't have much in the way of personal possessions.  I'd tended to do it, even when I didn't own much.  It was nice to have something solid in your hands to remind you of things.  I haven't had a chance to do that for a long time, though.  I don't own anything. Sister Helen's cross is gone now, and DeathScythe is… well, you know what happened to him.  Goddamnit.  But anyway… I know for a fact that Heero hasn't ever had much either.  Hell, he doesn't even really own his name, does he?

Even if he did have stuff, though, he'd never give himself away by putting it out on display, right?  Right.

So the pictures, the photographs, the sword in its case, the awards and medals on his walls were a surprise to me.  I felt like an idiot standing there and staring, but since when had Heero had so much of a life that it spilled over to the outside world?

There was just…

Well, for one thing, there was a picture of Heero, Zechs, and some guy I didn't know on the wall right where I came in.  It was a photograph of them on top of a mountain someplace, from what I could tell.  They were all wearing thermal suits and carrying climbing equipment, and they looked like they'd just accomplished something major.  The sun was bright, but they'd pushed their goggles up for the picture, and you could see how the sun and wind had burned their faces.  They were really happy, though.  Heero had his arms crossed, while Zechs had his arm on the other guy's shoulder, but you could see that they were a team.  Heero was looking right at the camera and grinning.

For a moment, I had myself convinced it was a photo manip.  Heero didn't have friends; he had allies.  He didn't do pointless things like climb mountains when there was a mission somewhere out there with his name on it.  He had never once looked as proud of himself, or as comfortable around another person, as he did in that photograph.

A photo manip.  Yeah.

Except that the next picture was of him and Relena and Zechs, at her wedding, and he wasn't just in the picture, he was a part of it.  The train of her gown had been swirled out in front of them, and the two men were posed on either side of her, their uniforms a sharp contrast to all that white silk.  So, another standard wedding photo, big deal.  Except that it had been snapped at exactly the wrong time.  Zechs had apparently just said something to Relena – you could tell by the way his head was cocked – and Heero had clearly heard it.  Relena was trying heroically not to laugh, but she had blushed bright pink, and both men were grinning, at her or each other.  It was a public event, probably a state photo, turned into a private joke, a shared moment of laughter.

I got part of it.  I could understand why he'd kept the picture.  I just couldn't imagine him being there and doing anything like that.

There was another picture, of Heero and Treize this time.  I didn't like it, but it was hard to look away.  There was probably a million of that kind around: the soldier getting medals pinned on by his commanding officer.  Starched uniforms, gloves, Heero and Treize standing at attention, facing each other.   Treize was just pinning the medal on when the photographer took the picture, zooming in to catch them from the waist up.  It was all pretty standard, I guess. 

Except that it was Treize Kushrenada and Heero Yuy, and both of them looked proud enough to fucking burst.

That was ten thousand kinds of wrong, and I just stood there, hating it, until I felt Heero's hand on my arm and heard him say my name.

"What?" I snapped, feeling off-balance again.

"Let me show you around," he said mildly. 

I stared, suddenly acutely aware of how little I knew about him, and didn't answer. It didn't seem to bother him, though.  "I'll have to go out again soon," he said.  "We should get you settled in first."

"Going after Wufei?" I asked, following him down the hall.

"No point.  He's gone. He makes good use of DeathScythe's hyper-jammers," he said.

"Why didn't the fucker just take the whole suit?" I mumbled, totally incapable of keeping quiet about some things.

"If it makes you any happier, most of DeathScythe is in our hands now," he said, turning back to smile at me. "Wufei's good, but not perfect; we found one of his re-supply depots."

I snorted and would have walked away, but experience had eventually taught me not to turn my back on people I couldn't trust, so I just shoved my hands in my pockets and stood my ground.  "Somehow, Heero, it doesn't do a goddamned thing for me to know you bastards have had your hands all over him."

I heard the words come out of my mouth, and I couldn't keep myself from cringing. There was one of those fucking annoying little moments of panic again, when I was absolutely sure I was going to get smashed upside the head.  Experience had had lots and lots of lessons for me.

Nothing happened, of course.  He wasn't carrying a stun stick, and he wasn't part of a pack of grinning apes, all of them ready to show me my place. After a moment, I found myself looking at his feet and forced my eyes upward to his face.

Another lesson: Yuy and I may be the least empathic people in the solar system, because he obviously had no clue what had been going on in my head, and his expression boggled me. He looked sort of politely blank, as if he was waiting for me to come back to his reality.

I realized I was sweating. Profusely.  Fuck.

He waited.  Politely.  I had no idea what he was thinking.

"So, great," I blurted after a moment, throwing my hands up in the air.  "Wufei's gone but that's fine!  He blew up half your little palace here and set the fucker on fire, but that's okay too, I guess! Q's in pieces and maybe that bothers you a tiny bit, but nothing worth writing home about.  Life's pretty good for you these days, ain't it, Heero?"

That, my friends, is called over over-compensation.  Watch Duo cover up his anxiety by mouthing off even more. Three shows daily, no one under 21 admitted, absolutely no refunds.  Yeah.

"Duo," he said mildly. "Shut up."

I opened my mouth to say something, because of course I had to, but he laid a couple of fingers across my mouth for a second, and surprise hushed me right up.

Our eyes met for a moment, but I couldn't read anything there.

"This is my office," he said, moving right along and pointing at a closed door. Obviously he meant to take me on his little tour no matter what.  "Enter it without me and the security system will have you unconscious within 10 seconds."

Oh.  I eyed the door and then him again.  He was already moving on to the next room.  I didn't really have anything else to do, so I followed him.

The apartment was nice, I have to admit.  There was a fairly large living room, a small but efficient kitchen, a bathroom with a big-ass bathtub, a huge bedroom, and, of course, the Office of Doom.  An enormous video screen covered half of one wall, but most of the decorations were personal to him, like I mentioned before. It was all comfortable and even a little posh, and I had to wonder how much he made as Treize's minion.  It wasn't quite like any other place else in the palace; this was where Heero lived.

"Security is state of the art," he said as he finished showing me around.  "If you manage an override, I'll be impressed. Not surprised, though."

"Same old drill," I said, dismissively. 

"You are not my prisoner, Duo."

He was looking incredibly grave when he said that, and I couldn't help but smirk. 

"What am I, then?"

"Someone I owe a debt to," he said.  "I don't expect you to understand me, Duo.  I have no regrets about the past, but there are some debts that must be paid."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

He looked at himself in a mirror and straightened his cuffs before putting his headset back on.  "It means that you can sleep on the couch."

"What?" Heero was making my head hurt.

"For right now, this is where you live.  Sleep on the couch, raid the refrigerator, take a three-hour bath, watch porn all night, whatever you like.  No one will interfere with you. Right now, you are as safe as I can make you," he said, getting ready to go. 

"And then what?"

"No one can read the future."  He reached out and touched my face again, grazing my cheek with his fingertips.  It was a brief, strange moment, almost too quick to react to.  I backed away from him a couple of steps, and he turned to go.

"Why are you doing this, Heero?" I asked, somehow not really ready for him to leave.

He paused, but didn't look at me.

"Because I can," he said.

"That's it?"

"That's everything that matters," he said.  "I'll be back in a couple of hours.  If you need me, for anything, dial 0201 on the phone, and it'll go straight here," he said, tapping his headset.  

He left then, as if he'd answered every possible question I could have ever had.  I heard the triple clicks of locks being automatically engaged as the door shut behind him.

Feeling numb, I looked around at Heero's comfortable rooms, at Heero's things, and at the pictures, the little windows into his soul that he'd put on display there.  Un-freaking-believable. 

In another life, I might have been intrigued by all this, or maybe even a little turned on, seeing as how I've always been a perverse bastard.  I didn't get him, and that was a dangerous thing, because he could be lethal.  For a stoic, he was also damned moody, and, honestly, he'd never struck me as all that sane in the first place.  I doubted that Treize's magic touch had improved the state of Heero's head too much.

Aside from solving the Mysteries of Yuy, I was going to have to get out of this place.  Not just the apartment, of course, but the whole situation.  My chip was gone and I didn't even exist as a person anymore, as far as the government was concerned.  Outside the palace compound, back in the real world, being a complete nobody could have definite advantages.

With a little luck, maybe I could find Wufei and make him help me put DeathScythe back together.  Or maybe I could just wring his neck.  That would be good, too.

I could get back in the game.  I could be something more than a pawn again.  All I had to do was get out.

I had to get myself a plan, and have it ready by the time Q was back in one piece so I could take him with me.  His head was probably still fucked up – he probably still thought he had an obligation to Zechs – but I would deal with that when I got to it.  Or else Shinigami would, in which case Q would be pissed off at me for life.  Details, details…

In the meantime, I was alone again, and tired, and Heero's fridge beckoned.  I did a cursory check of the security system – windows, doors, ventilation, yeah, yeah, yeah… -- and it was all tight and nasty.  I wasn't overly impressed, though, because it was only a security system, whereas I was Duo Maxwell, devious bastard extraordinaire.  Right?

With enough time, I could get through it.  I could have even escaped from prison if they hadn't paid so much careful attention to making sure I was half-starved, constantly beaten, and afraid to say my own name without permission. 

But that was then, and this was now, and I was in a place where I could lean on the door and admire the simple beauty of a well-stocked refrigerator. 

I wondered how long it would take me to put some weight back on.  Even if Heero kept me locked up in here like a pet, I could still exercise and build up some muscle.  Hell, just being able to keep myself clean and sleep safely at night would help build me back up to something like my old self.  I was already in better shape than I'd been in the last year. 

And it wasn't like I'd lost all of my old skills.  I began to see possibilities.

Full of plans, I made a plate of food and settled back in front of the vid to see what was on.  Maybe there'd be news of the attack, and I could get an aerial view of the damage.

So that's what I did, while Heero was gone, and the other side of that huge, rambling old palace burned, and Q slept, with Zechs watching over him.

What I should have been doing was searching the place for clues about Heero and who he was now.  Most of the really important stuff was locked in his office, of course, but even so, there were little things I would have found that would have told me so much then that I needed to know.

But I sat and stuffed my face, and didn't make any discoveries, and didn't have any revelations.  At the time, I thought having a plan was all I needed.

What can I say? 

It had been a long-ass day.

~tbc~