Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Indifference ❯ 5 ( Chapter 5 )

5:

It was hard to say whether Heero was quiet all the way back to the ship because he was giving Duo some space, or because he was trying to find his own equilibrium and Duo didn't care enough to give it more thought than the initial realisation that Heero was being quiet. He was too grateful for the silence to question it.

He'd killed again. It was, he was afraid to admit, a common occurrence. But this time was different. He didn't consider it murder so much as release. He knew, if she'd had the sense to ask, she would have begged for it. He'd heard them beg before, and given them a similar kindness. It wasn't the knife that made his stomach churn and his skin itch, it was the fact Trowa had used her. Had left her there to deliver her message, knowing full well that Duo or Heero would have to kill her. To silence her, if she even needed silencing. But either way, he'd known Duo would do it, just to put her out of her misery. If she'd had sense to be miserable about it, which she hadn't.

“I'm going to kill him,” he snarled as soon as he was safely on board the Reincarnation. Heero left him to his mad pacing, let him stay in the cargo bay and scream insensibly at the walls. Where he went Duo neither knew or cared.

He found him hours later, sitting in the copilots chair, the folder in his lap, several pages from it spread out across the dash board, the computer on and a profile from Preventers database large on the screen.

“Georgio Sahar,” he whispered, reading the facts at the top of the screen. Businessman. Entrepreneur. Rich. Sadistic. Suspected involvement in human trafficking. Well, they could correct that one. He trusted Heero to find out what they needed to know and just sat heavily in the pilots seat.

“Are you okay?” It had nothing at all to do with the gig. Duo glared but Heero just waited patiently and it confused Duo.

“I'm fine.” It was none of his business. But he was still staring and Duo found himself staring back and wondering much the same thing. He'd never seen Heero, of all people, puke.

“Are you okay?”

“No.” Just like that. Duo gaped at him, fish mouth and all. Heero Yuy was not in the habit of admitting weakness, or he hadn't been. Duo didn't really believe it was possible for someone to change quite that much.

“Well...fine. No, I'm not okay.” He'd be damned if he let Heero better him at anything, even admissions, though he had to admit if Heero was going to beat him at something he'd picked a damn good thing to try with.

“You did the right thing.”

“I know that!” He didn't go around stabbing people when it was the wrong thing, he wasn't completely insane! It annoyed him that Heero thought he needed someone to tell him though, and frustrated him even more that Heero was right, and the words helped. They didn't help ease the desire to break Trowa's damn nose.

“You want to talk about it?”

“Fuck? No?” Duo wondered if Heero was trying to give him a heart attack. He shook his head vehemently and decided it was best to just pretend Heero hadn't asked. Heero never asked those sorts of questions, so yeah...definitely a hallucination or something. Hallucinations didn't mean you were losing your mind, so it was all good.

“Okay.”

Damnit. Not a hallucination, and Heero even looked a little hurt but not surprised. It occurred to Duo that maybe Heero had asked because he needed to talk about it. But Duo couldn't bring himself to talk about it at all, even for Heero's sake. Hell, definitely not for Heero's sake.

“So this Sahar guy, he's who we're looking for?”

“I think so,” Heero agreed, looking grateful to have something else to concentrate on. “There are a few things in the folder that link directly to him, including a few unexplained purchases in his bank records that match up to Sales in Mettle Valley.”

“How do you know when there were Sales in the Valley?”

“I don't, but there is a list of dates and large sums of money in the folder with no title and the dates and sums add up to amounts in Sahar's bank accounts.”

“And you got access to Sahar's accounts by...”

“Being the Hero of the World,” Heero replied flatly and even Duo had to just stare because that honest to God had sounded like a joke. Was, he was pretty sure, supposed to be a joke. Heero was even just sitting there, waiting for him to laugh because it was, apparently, a joke.

“That's not even funny.”

“Doesn't mean I'm going to tell you how I got his accounts,” Heero shrugged, looking let down that Duo hadn't laughed. The whole thing was just so surreal, hell being in the Valley at all was so surreal that Duo wanted to run and hide under his bed while the Reincarnation auto piloted him back to the Sweepers. If Howard would still have him, considering he would be rather empty handed.

Just who the hell was he supposed to take back now, anyway? Mariemaia was still supposed to be under house arrest, so she had to go. And there was still a warrant out for Heero's arrest, so he would have to go. And Wufei was, of all things, a damn victim, so he would have to go and at least guest checked into a rehab clinic or something, Duo didn't even know. And then Trowa...well, Trowa deserved a life sentence, and to be neutered so his creepy offspring couldn't populate the world with more drug mules, so he had to come in.

“My work will never be done,” he sighed dramatically and Heero just frowned at him, having no idea whatsoever what he was talking about.

“Okay. So, Sahar is selling Wufei, midnight tomorrow, for a billion.”

“That's what I'm thinking,” Heero agreed.

“Heero, honey, don't do that,” Duo admonished, reaching out to mess up Heero's already filthy, greasy hair. “I don't know what I'd tell Relena if you hurt yourself.”

Heero looked pissed, and Duo pulled his hand back. Fast. But he was grinning and Heero eventually backed off and took it for the joke it was instead of decking him and Duo was left floundering, wondering just who had cloned Heero Yuy.

“So, I can have the guns transferred to my ship at ten, send Marie to the auction and have Wufei on board by say...one, and be past the asteroid belt by say...three.” As long as he made it that far, it was smooth sailing. Nothing would find him, if anything dared give chase to begin with, in the belt and from there he knew several wayward slingshots he could use to go in just about any direction he pleased.

“Marie?”

“Yeah, you know...abrasive little shit, likes to flash gay men? Red hair?”

“You really don't have a high opinion of anyone...do you?” That seemed to offend Heero and Duo just shrugged, contemplating it in all seriousness.

“I have a high opinion of everyone. Doesn't mean it's a good opinion.”

“You want to send Marie to the auction?” His tone of voice told Duo just had badly he disapproved of that course of action, but Duo felt no guilt at all. Because the buying Wufei at auction part of their plan had nothing at all to do with him.

“No, Trowa wants Marie to buy Wufei at auction. That's why she's here...remember?” Duo, at least, hadn't forgotten. “Besides, I can't do it without risking my cover as a wannabe gunrunner. No one down on their luck enough to ask for an in to the trade goes out the night before their first run and buys a billion dollar slave. And what's with that price, anyway? I know of countries that don't cost that much to buy!”

“Alright,” Heero agreed, after thinking it over. “But you're going to have to teach her whatever she needs to know.”

“Are you kidding me? She's knows what to do better than I could fudge! She grew up drowning in money and deceit. Give the girl a little credit, when it comes to rich freaks she knows what to do.” Which was exactly why Trowa had commissioned her help. That, and she had a raging crush on their target and would do anything to undo the mistakes she made in her youth that had led to him being in his current predicament in the first place.

“You wouldn't know it, the way she carries on,” Heero muttered and Duo laughed because he could well imagine what their ride to Mettle Valley had been like, if Mariemaia had been as pushy the whole way as she'd been since Duo arrived. There were few people Heero put up with for an extended period of time, but he was willing to bet Mariemaia was on Heero's secret list of `people I am forbidden to cause grievous bodily harm to'. Duo knew first hand that he himself was not on that list. He had surgery scars to prove it.

“You know, I think you have a very skewed idea of my upbringing.” What gave Heero the impression he was any better at navigating a drug deal? Or buying a freaking slave? Did he have guttertrash tattooed on his forehead or something?

“I just...I mean you...how you grew up...”

Heero didn't know the half of how Duo had grown up, so it just pissed him off that Heero was even trying to make connections between what may or may not have happened back then and who he was now and what he could or couldn't do.

“Homeless does not equal criminal, bastard. I earned my keep, same as anyone.” Honestly, what did the guy think he was, some pick pocketing poor kid in a hessian sack? He'd lived in an orphanage, not a cardboard box, and if it had been creepy when the Doc came to `adopt' him so what? He got over it and accepted the awesomeness that was hot showers and three meals a day and no porridge.

“Sorry.”

“Will you stop apologising, it's creeping me out!”

“No.” Just like that. Duo sighed and slumped in his seat, spinning it lazily and wishing he wasn't docked and could take a short joyride just to clear his head. He suspected the dirty air in the Valley was getting to him, but refused to admit it while Heero was still apparently fine.

As if Heero even really understood what an apology was.

“So what's next?”

That had Heero looking at him like he had the two heads thing going on and Duo just shrugged. So he'd put her out of her misery, it wasn't like he hadn't known that was going to happen as soon as he'd seen it was a brothel they were headed for. It hadn't stopped him going in, he'd barely even hesitated, and if Heero hadn't realised the same thing as soon as they got there then more fool him. He had no business being in Mettle Valley if he couldn't find his balls.

“Are you sure...”

“What. Is. Next.” Could he make it any plainer? Apparently not.

“There's a note from a dealer saying he's in trouble...”

“No.”

“It's old,” Heero reasoned.

“I'm not helping a dealer.” Had Heero not been in that room, seen what they propagated first hand? But of course he had, he was just somehow able to put it out of his mind, just like that. As if it never happened. Had self destructing been like that? Had dumping Duo with his civilian doctors been that simple?

“I don't think we have to.” Meaning Trowa already did? It made Duo cold, inside and out. He honestly didn't believe Trowa could have a good enough excuse, for any of it. They were Gundam Pilots, for crying out loud, he could have just asked.

Or begged, he supposed. Begged Howard, since that was how people contacted him. And maybe something in him relented, just a tiny bit, because he, at least, hadn't really been open to a favour. And if he was honest he knew that was why Howard had insisted.

“Fine. Let's go.”

Heero looked him up and down, as if looking for an injury, or a sign of weakness but he must have approved of what he saw because he stood up and followed Duo. It was Heero who disappeared this time, and it rankled because Duo couldn't even say when the soft footfalls following him had disappeared. It had just sort of faded from importance at the front of his mind, and then his subconscious for some reason had decided it wasn't important. How Heero did that, Duo would never understand. It was like he got under your skin and changed things. It creeped him the hell out.

They converged on the address scrawled on the note they could only assume Trowa had received at some point and found themselves looking at a ship, docked on the seventh tube. It looked abandoned, but neither of them was stupid enough to take the chance and Duo went one way, leaving Heero to go the other while they searched for traps.

The ship was smothered in them. Duo disarmed seven wires and a security system through a checkpoint hanging just inside the vacuum guard, but if there was more outside the seal he had no way of checking. He managed to find a decayed seal on the roof of the ship and after checking it over for the hundredth time decided it was worth a try.

He slipped inside and just hung from the rafters while he tried to decide if it was safe to set down; if he was likely to trigger a laser or something else he couldn't see. He was still hanging there, frowning at a control panel he couldn't quite see from this distance when the door at the end of the corridor opened and Heero hurriedly punched in a code.

The lasers scattering the floor buzzed red for a moment, and disappeared. Disgruntled that he'd both been right, and that it had been Heero who figured it out, Duo dropped to the floor and walked over to meet him.

“Took your time,” Duo muttered and when all he got was a grunt he looked closer and realised Heero was bleeding. He reached out automatically and snatched up Heero's wounded bicep, shoving his shirt out of the way to get a better look. Laser, just a scratch, and cauterised. He must have grazed it.

Heero tugged his arm free, glaring at Duo but there was an emotion behind the frustration Duo couldn't quite place. Probably annoyance that he hadn't done something perfectly. Duo let him have his arm back, and made a mental note to treat it later. The last thing they needed was for it to get infected in Mettle Valley. That shit killed. Fast.

“Five bedrooms, Mess, Bridge, storage, cargo and a rec room,” Heero told him softly and it stung that he'd scoped out just what rooms there were before coming to get Duo down from the ceiling. He reminded himself Heero was injured and tried to convince himself he just hadn't been thinking right. Which was likely, since Heero was never thinking right.

“I'll take the bedrooms, you check the bridge.” Firstly, because Heero wouldn't know what to look for in the rooms, and secondly because Duo suspected he already knew what he might find. Heero didn't seem to jump to any of the same conclusions, and just decided the bridge was where he was most likely to find something and off he went, happy as...well, Heero with a mission. Duo waited until he was out of sight before wandering into the first room.

A spare, and he took in small details fast, not wanting to stay long. Everything was fixed firmly to the floor, but that was to be expected in any ship, but this was different. There were additional fixtures everywhere, to allow you to affix more things down in zero gravity. Like a slave or three. There was a blood stain on the doorframe, but it was old and had likely stained the brass. There was a small ensuite attached and he went in and checked the cabinet, not at all surprised to find it stocked with the wrong sort of drug.

He rummaged some more and found a diary stashed in a drawer compartment and collected it, moving on to the next room.

Less fixtures but they were still present. No diary, but a log of expenses and incomings. Duo took that as well and moved on. Each room was similar and each had him feeling colder than before. There were small pieces of evidence in each and Duo collected them dutifully, finding a duffel bag in the back of a closet and stashing it all inside. He even managed to find a captain's log, like the scum on this ship had needed one. Probably habit from the war. If he fought on the wrong side, it wasn't hard to imagine him ending up here. Duo tried not to think too hard on it, because he didn't want to admit just how many people he had likely sentenced to life in Mettle Valley.

“Duo?”

“Coming...” He grit his teeth on all the comebacks he felt rising at the impatient tone in Heero's voice and went to find him, but he'd moved on from the bridge and was in the rec room. Just standing there, staring at the wall.

Duo went to stand at his side and the Duffel fell from limp hands.

The mind map wasn't small; it took up the whole damn wall. It looked suspiciously familiar and Duo took in all the details. It was incredibly detailed, and there was a lot of evidence that should not have existed. There were things there that would send people to prison. For life. That would see them executed, at last.

“Holy shit...”

Heero was silent beside him, just looking at each small piece one at a time, going over the whole wall, and then the next. Duo let him, starting to pull it all down, in order, to be reassembled later if needed. He put it all away in his duffel and when Heero realised what he was doing he helped, meticulous in the way it was placed, memorising how it went because too much effort had gone into putting the pieces together to risk losing even a small piece of it.

“I told you he had his reasons.”

Duo was tight lipped and forced himself not to let loose with his initial responses because they were unfair and he knew he was still raw from going through the bedrooms. He wondered if any of those rooms had actually been Trowa's, and tried not to think about it.

“You can't still be mad at him?” Heero looked incredulous and Duo didn't bother to say anything because Heero didn't seem capable of understanding. His knife felt like it weighed a tonne in his boot. Heero would never understand.

“How spectacular does the end have to be, to justify the means?” Was this what it took, for Heero to turn a blind eye? Did he have any concept of the masses it affected? Did he understand how many planets you could smother in the pictures of those lost along the way?

“I didn't think you cared either way,” Heero said softly and Duo stood there, stunned, as Heero packed the last of the evidence. It stung, somewhere he hadn't thought it could, maybe because it was Heero who said it and maybe because if he stopped to really think about it, and he did take a minute to do just that, he realised it was maybe just a little bit true.

He'd blocked them, for years. It was why he was here; why Howard had tried to force him, had lured him with the only thing he knew Duo still responded to. Curiosity.

And Heero's name.

He could be that honest with himself, he was here because Heero's name had been on that warrant, and deep down he'd wanted to see him. Wanted to be in a position where he was in charge for once and could observe how he'd changed, evolved. See if it had all been worth it, being the Hero and of the World, instead of... Instead of what they had wanted together.

But while he'd been blocking, and maybe sulking just a little, Trowa had become a monster so he could destroy monsters. Which crime was greater?

He left the duffel with Heero, and he left the ship, trusting Heero to reinstate the security protocols that had been in place, just in case Trowa still needed it, later on. He left Heero entirely, and wandered for a long time. He didn't like what he saw, but that was the point.

Duo forced himself to walk every dark back alley, to look into every sordid corner. He made himself stare into the mouth of the Valley and fall in, sinking in the recesses of human profanity. He made himself comprehend just what he'd tried so hard to turn a blind eye to, because he hadn't believed it could be fixed. Because Relena's precious government hadn't been able to do a damn thing to stop it, no matter how many times they tried.

Because good couldn't conquer evil. Just like Peace hadn't conquered War. They'd sent Gundams to stop it instead; monstrous creations of destruction to make sure everyone had understood. You beat fire with bigger fire.

You couldn't go to the Valley and expect to cuff the culprit. But if you were the shark, the other fish were fair game. Duo might have fallen into the trap of Peace, but Trowa hadn't.

Could he really blame him for that?

It wasn't the Reincarnation he found himself standing in front of, but Heero's ship. He wandered in and found Mariemaia on her bed, sprawled out reading a magazine on guns. It was so out of place he just stared and wondered if maybe she didn't actually belong here.

“You look like shit.”

“I'm going to wash your mouth out soon if you don't stop that.”

She just smirked at him and waved her feet in his direction. He took the invitation and went to sit next to her, looking over her shoulder at the piece she was looking at and thinking about it, because he had to admit it would have been a good weapon for her. Discreet, but very effective. He would have to see what his new line of work could conjure up. If they were going to be here for a while, he wanted her to be able to defend herself and he doubted cuffing her to Heero would work.

“Tell me about Trowa?”

Stumped by the question, Mariemaia let the magazine fall open on the bed and just stared at him.

“What did you find?” Smart. He always forgot she was smart. Shrewd, he supposed was the right term.

“Evidence. Enough to bring down the whole human trafficking syndicate. All the heads.”

Even she gaped and then she frowned and he could almost hear her arguing with herself. He sighed because he was getting damn tired of them hiding things from him. He couldn't be effective if they didn't start giving him all the cards they were playing with. He poked her in the side and lay down next to her, messing up her hair on the way down like he would with Heero in the old days and he felt her shoulders loosen a little. Marginally.

“You found the ship?” She asked quietly and he wondered why he was still surprised she knew about it. That didn't stop him from asking, in his own way, poking her hard in the side and waiting with a very expectant look on his face. The kind that had made Oz officers wet their pants while they spilled what they knew.

“Trowa told me he found it. That it was...time to come. Now.” She took deep breaths and he could feel the remnants of her panic. Of the fear she'd felt being roped into Trowa's scheme, and he realised for the first time just how hard she was, inside. The kind of determination she possessed. He shouldn't have been surprised, she had tried to take over the world, after all, but that had just been a little girl being puppeted by the Bartons. Or so he had assumed. Now, it became evident it was just a part of who she was.

It was too easy, sometimes, to forget she was Treize's daughter.

“I can't help you, if you don't give me all the pieces, Marie.”

Trust came hard. He knew that better than most and he let her fight that internal struggle in silence because he couldn't make her choose. It was her choice and she must have decided in his favour because she relaxed and stroked the magazine pages, calming herself slowly.

“He came here looking for it. Knew it belonged to a dealer...Wufei had told him about it. He'd intercepted the ship in a drug run and made friends with the pilot, or something. I don't even know. So when Wufei went missing...”

It was the niggling, missing piece of information that made Trowa's entry into the drug trade make sense. Wufei being friends with drug traffickers didn't make sense at all, but he could deal with that later.

“Wait, so you flashed Wufei, Wufei got put on suspension, decides he may as well just keep working, so he goes and finds his old drug trafficking buddies and …” Actually that made a weird sort of sense, if you were Wufei and convinced everyone had to pay for their crimes, yourself included.

“He started gathering information.” Understatement! Duo let his head fall to the bed and started laughing because really, he should have known. It was Wufei, after all.

“So Trowa went in search of Wufei and his evidence, but by the time he found it Wufei was already long gone.”

“That pretty much covers it,” Mariemaia agreed and Duo just lay there for a while, letting it all sink in.

“You should have told us. That ship, the evidence we found, it's enough to stop the trade completely!”

“But it doesn't help Wufei,” she pointed out sternly and it was enough to make him pause. She loved him, still. She was out here, just to help find him. Girls, honestly, were insane.

“You know this isn't your fault, right?”

“I'm sorry, did you miss the part where I destroyed his career and reputation with a teenage crush?” She was starting to sound like him on a bad day. It was a sobering thought. No wonder Howard spent so much time glowering at him while he lazed on the deck. Moped, he could admit now. He'd been moping, on the deck.

“He would have done it eventually anyway. As soon as it got too hard for his stupid conscience to handle he would have been off after that ship and it all would have played out the same way.”

She was shaking her head and he knew there was no convincing her and just sighed, rolling over onto his back and staring at the ceiling. He couldn't believe what Wufei had done, it was downright insane, but that he'd succeeded was the truly exceptional part. As soon as they got that evidence back to Earth...

...Only he'd left the damn duffel with Heero. Sweepers had better still get paid, if Heero was the one delivering it! But if Heero brought it back, and he and Marie explained they had known where it was and went to collect it, it could save both of them. Heero's record would be clean again, and Marie might even be let off house arrest. That damn folder had a lot of secrets.

“Bastard thought of everything,” Duo muttered.

“Trowa?” Mariemaia just laughed. “You have no idea.”