Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Indifference ❯ 8 ( Chapter 8 )

8:

He had just enough control to wait until he had permission to leave, had run his pre-flight checks, had launched and was back in open space with a course plotted and recorded before he stormed back in to find out just what the hell she was doing on his ship.

“Technically,” she pointed out before he even got his mouth open. “It's not your ship.” He froze, mouth agape, words gone and brain firing off too many thoughts at once for him to safely settle on one. She smirked and he slammed his mouth shut, eyeing her dubiously. The annoying thing was, he trusted Hilde. He didn't think she was up to no good, knew she wouldn't screw him over and even relied on her every now and then to help him out with work between L2 and L1, since she decided to move to L1 a few years back when it became clear he wasn't that interested in going into business together.

“What are you doing here?”

“I work in a Haze rehab clinic. I would have thought the reason for my presence here was obvious.”

“You...what?” Since when? Duo went and sat down at the desk, having a feeling this conversation was going to leave his brain hurting. Wufei already looked amused, and he didn't even have that many expressions he could make with only half his face visible.

“Who told you I was here?”

Hilde looked him up and down then, looking nervous for the first time since she came aboard and Duo slunk down in his chair, because her silence said everything, really.

“You...didn't mail me.”

“Nope.” But he had a pretty damn good idea who had, and he was insulted that Trowa had thought he could forge an email with Duo's name, and that Hilde had fallen for it. He thought he had taught her better than that, but he supposed they weren't in a war anymore and you didn't expect your friends friends to forge things...If, of course, Trowa could still be called their friend. Looking around the room, it was fifty fifty either way.

“Well. Your mail told me you needed help to get Wufei off Haze, which I admit I thought was a bad joke until you sent a second mail with pick up details and a very tight time frame.” She shrugged, looking from Wufei to Duo and back again. “He really is on Haze...”

“No shit,” Duo rolled his eyes but he was thinking through the facts, trying to find cause and effect and failing. He really wished Trowa had left clearer instructions, because none of this made any goddamned sense.

“Since when do you work in a rehab clinic?”

“Since my cousin got hooked on Haze and I had to help her out around the house while she did rehab?” Hilde shrugged as if it were common knowledge. Maybe it was, but Duo hadn't known and guilt sat heavy in his throat, limiting his words.

“It's just volunteer work on the weekends and the occasional night shift when they get a newbie in and they need extra eyes in the first stage?” She studied Wufei then, reaching out to touch his neck and apologising when Wufei recoiled harshly at the unexpected touch.

“Sorry, sorry, it's just...you seem to be through the first stage already?” She looked to Duo for confirmation but all he could do was shrug because he knew little about the process other than what he'd read and Wufei was pretty damn good at hiding things anyway so who really knew?

“I'm fine,” Wufei grumbled, clearly uncomfortable with Trowa sending him a babysitter. Duo thought it was sort of...cute. In a weird, Trowa Barton kind of way, because only Trowa would ever think Wufei, of all people, needed a babysitter. Though, he had needed a rescue team so maybe Trowa just knew things the rest of them didn't. Like...everything.

“He says that when the sheets are that colour,” Duo noted softly and he saw Hilde wince. “Yeah, they weren't always dark purple, but you know, blue and red makes...”

“That's just gross,” Hilde snapped and her beret flew into Duo's face. Unrepentant, he just pulled it off and tossed it back at her. He was a little hurt, if he was honest, that Trowa hadn't trusted him to care for Wufei. That he'd gone and arranged a damn carer. He'd been doing just fine! Wufei was already through stage 1 for crying out loud!

Unless, of course, Duo was going to be needed to do something else, and someone was going to have to stay with Wufei? That could make sense, but Duo had no idea what he was going to be needed for, that Heero couldn't do, and he was willing to bet Mariemaia would have paid money to stay by Wufei's bedside and nurse him back to health.

“What's your day job? You know, when you're not volunteering?”

“I'm a runner?” Runner, Duo forced his brain to acknowledge. Not trafficker. “Pharmaceuticals? They're manufactured here, so it's a good launch port, and a lot of it goes to L2, so …” So it was a job she enjoyed, because the people who needed it most were getting help, and she liked being a part of that.

“Pharmaceuticals?” Duo questioned immediately. “What kind?”

“The legal kind!” Hilde snapped in reply. He couldn't blame her, his brain had gone there.

“Ceuron?” Wufei asked softly and it shocked them both enough that they just stared at him, but he was waiting for a reply and he couldn't see Hilde nodding.

“Yeah...a few other brands but most our products are from Ceuron Pharmaceuticals. How did you know that?” She seemed disturbed by it, when Duo really thought she should have been expecting it. She'd been away from Gundam Pilots a little too long.

“Ceuron is owned primarily by Georgio Sahar,” Wufei noted softly and that made a lot more sense than Duo's other ideas about Hilde's presence.

“The man who just sold you owned the company Hilde works for...” How did that help them? Wufei just shrugged, because that was all he knew on the matter, or all he could remember for the moment, or some other mysterious reason of his own like maybe he just liked shrugging. Duo didn't care, the shrug didn't answer his questions.

“That's weird,” Hilde observed.

“No, really?” Honestly, what was with everyone stating the obvious. It annoyed the hell out of him. But they were doing it deliberately and her grin just pissed him off. He wanted answers, and the longer he went without them the more he just wanted to punch Trowa Barton in the gonads. Hard. With steel capped boots.

“You know my boss?” Hilde was asking and Duo just watched Wufei's mouth, that being the only real source of expression he had. That, and his hands which flinched but remained steady. His lips parted and Duo was almost sure he panted, sucking at the air a moment before his mouth closed and his jaw bulged, teeth grinding.

“I do,” Wufei agreed, but he didn't tell her anything more than that and Duo couldn't blame him. How did you tell someone that you were discussing the man who had owned you? Who had sold you? Who had done...Duo didn't want to think about what the man had done, or not done. Wufei could tell his therapist about it someday, if he decided he needed to talk, but he was confident Wufei would never choose to talk to him about it.

“And...you don't like him,” Hilde reasoned from the looks on both their faces.

“No,” Wufei agreed and it was clear he didn't want to say any more on the matter.

“You know, your boyfriend is a pain in the ass,” Duo grumbled and he got up and left them alone, going to the bridge to make sure they were on course, check their likely arrival time and then it was time for a nap so he could process the latest weird turn of events.

The problem was the whole thing was weird, and Duo wasn't all that fond of weird. He liked things to be in your face, up front and clear cut, in and out and over with. He liked to work alone because he knew all the variables and didn't have to trust someone else to pull their half of the weight. If you only had to trust yourself, life was a lot easier. When Heero was involved it was still pretty simple, you just had to watch your back in case the asshole decided to take you out of the picture and do everything himself, not that Duo could really blame him because they both knew things were easier to do solo. With Quatre they were just complicated because you were never sure if the guy would hug you for doing something or lecture you, and no one in their right mind wanted a lecture from Quatre Winner. The only person who gave a more fearsome tirade was Wufei, and he was another of the let me go solo kind of guys, so it wasn't usually that hard to avoid one of his mega rants. Unless you did something really, epically stupid and Duo had stopped adding epic to his stupid stunts after about seventeen.

But Trowa. Why did everything that man touched end up being weird? First, he had a Gundam that wasn't even evenly weighted; the damn thing damn near toppled to the side or flopped at the belly if you didn't know how to handle the weight distribution just so. That's just not a feasible way to fight! It was weird! Then there was the way the guy didn't really give you answers to anything, just these strange looks with one eye, as if he'd said something and you just missed it, and then you felt bad about not listening and couldn't ask what he'd said when really he hadn't said anything to begin with. Infuriating, and weird! And then he goes and shacks up with the richest guy in the universe, who by all accounts is his best friend and he adores as much as he adores breathing, but has trouble getting a hard on unless Chang Wufei, of all people, comes within telescopic sight and so he goes off and has an affair, and none of them seem to have a care in the world about the weird threeway going on between them. It was downright weird!

And then, the weirdest part of all. The way Trowa liked to do missions. He didn't like to infiltrate the enemy base, maybe lay down some charges, flee and watch the fireworks. No, Trowa liked to become the enemy, to make them his friends, then shoot the crap out of them and be the fireworks. And this mission in particular, if you could even call it a mission, though Trowa had likely dubbed it `Mission save my Lover and bring down all the Evils of the World Attempt Number 1'. Or something to that effect.

Wufei finds himself with time on his hands and chases up a lead on a drug trafficker he, for whatever reason, didn't arrest. They go to Mettle Valley together, because going to the most dangerous place in the universe is what you do when you're feeling butthurt and heartbroken, and accumulate a ridiculous amount of information on the heads of the human trafficking industry. Enough to destroy it, once and for all. But before completing their investigation, Wufei is captured by the enemy, drugged with Haze and put to work in the very industry he'd trying to put an end to. That part of it wasn't all that weird, apart from the bit where Wufei had likely been a sex slave. Maybe. Duo still didn't want to think about that.

The weird part was where Wufei had, for some unfathomable reason, contacted Mariemaia Kushrenada and had long, lengthy conversations with her. Wufei hadn't been in the habit of having deep and meaningfuls with pubescent girls the last time Duo had seen him, and they'd been teenagers then, so the idea of him taking it up as a hobby in adulthood was...weird! And it seemed Trowa knew about it? That wasn't helping any of them sound any saner. So Trowa tracks Wufei down, gets as far as Mettle Valley and realises Wufei's been sold, and the only way to find out who to is to get into the drug business? Duo didn't see how that was in any way a logical conclusion, but it was what he'd done. And in typical Trowa Barton style the guy becomes Kingpin of the drug overlords and finally tracks Wufei down to the ownership of one Georgio Sahar, but he can't just go off and rescue him, because for some reason he's not in the Valley. So he has Mariemaia agree to go buy Wufei at auction, telling her to take Heero as a bodyguard, promising they won't be imprisoned upon their return to Earth, and he has Marie send Howard the file he compiled to trick Duo into going after them, knowing full well Duo wouldn't be able to resist arresting Heero Yuy, Hero of the World. How had he known that anyway? Duo hadn't been having a mad three way relationship for everyone to gawk at. And then, once bought, Trowa somehow knows Duo will make a gun run to L1 and arranges for Hilde to get one board?

That part wasn't just weird. It made no logical sense at all, which meant it was wrong. He couldn't have known Duo would make a cover as a gunrunner, even if Mariemaia had known, hinting that Trowa had also known. He couldn't have known Duo would make a gun run to L1...unless he put in the order for the guns. The place he'd delivered it to had been pretty standard, and looked like they would be headed to a military facility on one of the other colonies. It hadn't looked like a bluff, but he hadn't been looking for signs that it might be a coverup for something else. Or, nothing at all?

And how had he known Hilde volunteered at a Haze rehab clinic, and that she would be on L1, and that she was a runner for a pharmaceuticals company partly, or mostly owned by the man who had caught and owned Wufei? Had Trowa and Hilde been friends? Duo barely spoke to Hilde anymore, he just couldn't imagine any of the others actually maintaining a friendship he himself hadn't bothered with, either because he hadn't had time or he hadn't felt obligated, it didn't even matter now. He couldn't see them getting along that well, anyway. Hilde preferred up front and honest, and those weren't exactly traits Trowa was good with.

Weird didn't begin to cover it. And Duo plain didn't like weird. He contemplated painting Trowa's face on his ceiling and practising his aim but drifted off to sleep before he could actually do it. He dreamt he was in a bar with Trowa and for every shot he drank he got to deck the guy. It was the best dream he'd had in a long time.

Thinking things through the night before had served to do little more than keep him up and leave him annoyed. Duo didn't shower, needing to re-filth before entry back into Mettle Valley, and he was going to need to dirty up Hilde as well. Maybe Wufei, but he didn't want to risk giving him some kind of illness until he was sure the man could at least function on his own. He did wash his face and then went to see what Hilde was doing.

Cooking, was not something that had come to mind. Last he knew, Hilde couldn't. Cook. He eyed whatever she had on the bench, mixing, dubiously and she just glared at him but after that bout of food poisoning she'd given him he didn't think she had any right to object to him questioning what she was doing.

“I took lessons, okay?” She grumbled at last. “Figured I nearly killed you, the least I could do was learn to do it right and someday cook you something that didn't leave you bedridden for a week.”

“I had cramps for months,” Duo ground out, but he had to admit it did smell good. He moved in closer and peeked in the bowl, surprised.

“Pancake batter?” That was the grand sum of her culinary lessons? But then, he hadn't had a lot of ingredients on board either.

“I figured everyone eats pancakes...”

“Heero doesn't,” Duo frowned, wondering how he even remembered that, or why since it was the most useless piece of information ever. Give the man creme brule and he was fine, give him pancakes and he damn near choked. He made no sense at all to Duo.

“There's no cream, but you've got syrup in the cupboard.” Duo fetched it obediently and got out plates, leaving her to the cooking because she did actually seem to be handling it and if something went wrong and sprinklers would take care of it.

Wufei was curled up in the far corner of the bed, cradling his injured arm and close to where the i.v was hooked up. The bag was almost empty so Duo changed it over while he stole glances at Wufei while he was asleep. He breathed through his nose, a wartime habit that didn't fade, mouth firmly closed so it couldn't make any noise. His chest rose in a slightly erratic pattern and his skin was still sweating pink, though it was less. Hilde had lain towels under him to absorb it, but even she hadn't changed the sheets. Another day and it should be fine.

It was his hands, ironically, that gave him away. His fingertips twitched in his sleep, fingers rolled into fists, wrung themselves out, twisted, twined, desperately grabbing at things that weren't there to grab. Nightmares, Duo recognised immediately and he moved in fast, squeezing Wufei's shoulder just light enough to wake him, and hard enough to hold him still if he woke swinging.

There were no punches, but Wufei stopped breathing for a moment and Duo knew he was awake, listening and then all the air left him in a rush and he started again. Breathing. In and out, slow and easy, deliberately so.

“Duo?”

“You were dreaming.”

“I know,” Wufei chuckled, sounding hoarse and tired. Duo got water from the desk and put the bottle in Wufei's hand, watching him drink it down greedily before putting it back. He didn't want to talk about it, and Duo didn't ask, not wanting to hear about it. They each had their own nightmares to live with, Wufei likely more than most now. They were things they had to deal with alone, or with a professional, which he most definitely wasn't.

“Hilde's making pancakes...”

“She said something about cooking. I...remember you being ill once?” Wufei actually looked nervous and Duo laughed hard, delighted, because it was almost like they shared an inside joke, something he never would have thought he had with Wufei.

“Yeah. I got those cramps for weeks, it was horrible! But she claims to have taken some lessons, so we can only hope she's either better or burns out the kitchen before getting anything on the plate.”

“I heard that!” She raged from the mess and Duo just grinned, unrepentant because Wufei was smiling, a brief but still present thing.

“How are you feeling?” It was very likely a stupid question, but one Duo felt he also needed an answer to.

Wufei just shrugged and Duo watched as he did their old wartime routine of very slowly cataloguing everything, testing each limb, focussing on anything wrong, deciding how bad it was. It was damn strange to see someone do it now, and it was a wake up call because it meant Wufei, on some level, still considered himself at war. Which made sense when Duo actually thought about it, but was still a shock.

“I'm fine,” Wufei summarised and Duo just snorted because Wufei was many things but he didn't think fine was really among them. Delusional, maybe.

“How are you still...you?” He hadn't meant to ask it, but once there it hung between them and Duo could see it was a question Wufei had been expecting but didn't particularly want to answer. He reached up with his good hand and stroked the beads in his hair, letting them tinkle against each other, just listening. Duo just watched and waited because if Wufei needed time, Duo could at least give him that. But he did want to know the answer, it being of the things on his long list of `weird'.

“Haze is...a strange drug. Instead of trying to dull your nervous system to make you feel good, it overloads it by making it feel bad. It's fire and agony and the more doses it just gets worse, until finally something in you just snaps and you lose the battle. You lose yourself and you exist in this haze that you don't want to come out of because if you do...” The pain was there, waiting. Which was why rehab hurt so much, the nervous system re-awoke and demanded your attention all over again. After losing the battle against that pain once, it wasn't any wonder that so many eventually gave up and died instead of living through it a second time.

But Wufei hadn't lost himself, Duo realised. Had just stayed in that no man's land of pain, struggling against the drug, refusing to let it beat him.

“I just...accepted it,” Wufei acknowledged. “Let it become `normal'. Embraced it as the core of who I was, knowing full well if I let it go for a even a moment I would become...” Like all the rest. And the way he floated somewhere in his own shell had certainly given the illusion he'd given in, but somewhere deep inside Wufei had still been Wufei, raging against the fire.

“That's...not normal,” Duo muttered, remembering the girl in the whore house and the way she had slipped in and out. Maybe it had been a side effect of the drug wearing off, that moment of lucidity where she was able to feel again, however briefly, and remember, or maybe she had been like Wufei and fought for as long as she could before slipping away completely and they'd simply found her in those last few moments before she gave it up entirely. Duo didn't know, and couldn't bring himself to think about her, because he hadn't been able to take her from there, or give her a chance to find herself again and the solution he had granted her had been the best one available to him at the time. He didn't want to know if there had been another way.

“So when you say you're fine, I really shouldn't believe you at all,” Duo surmised and Wufei frowned darkly at him, mouth a hard line on his face. It just made Duo grin, patting Wufei on the shoulder and then letting his hand slide down Wufei's broken arm to check on it. He cleaned the broken limb, put some more balm on it and rebandaged it before putting the hard cast back on, and ignored the way Wufei just looked in his direction without actually looking. Just his head turned as if he could see through the bandages and it creeped Duo out.

“I really am okay, Maxwell. This is the best I've felt in...a very long time.”

That didn't do a lot to make Duo feel any better, because Wufei shouldn't have to feel that shit to begin with. Duo had just been a shit friend, and hadn't even realised it. Had wanted to think it was the others, that it was their responsibility to call him and when they hadn't he'd felt justified in ignoring them back. But maybe they'd just been waiting for an invitation and he'd simply never offered?

“Yeah well, I'm not throwing a welcome back to life party until I know there won't be a thousand get well soon parties before it.”

“Please. No parties,” Wufei chuckled and Duo just felt bad, because he didn't think any of them threw parties, at least not that he knew of. Except Quatre but those dinner things he had did not count. At all. The odd birthday here and there would have been nice. Would have been normal. And those required invitations, right? Invitations bridged gaps... He wasn't sure anyone besides Quatre even knew when their birthday was, which was odd in itself.

“Pancakes?” Hilde interrupted, and Duo had to give her credit. He suspected she had been standing in the hallway, waiting for a good opportunity to break the quiet and she'd chosen her time well. She'd also managed not to blow the ship up, light the kitchen on fire, or just present charcoal on a plate. The pancakes were hot and creamy and delicious and he ate loudly and enthusiastically so she knew he was impressed.

But when he was full, and Wufei was buckling under the pressure of what was under his skin he left Hilde to deal with it and went to fly the ship, aware in the back of his mind that they were getting close and he would have to prepare for docking in a few hours.

A smooth run. Old Duke would be happy, but Duo was already worrying over what Old Duke might throw at him next. The best he could tell, Trowa had gotten in way over his head and Duo didn't want to do the same. It could happen too easily, and once you were that far in there wasn't a place to hide in the universe where someone couldn't find you and make sure you didn't blab and Valley's secrets to the wrong person.

Hilde came in an hour later and sat heavily in the co-pilot's seat and just spun lazily, a habit she had picked up from him. It made Duo smile, because maybe he hadn't ignored everyone after all, and maybe the impressions he'd left on people weren't all bad.

“He okay?”

“He thinks he is,” Hilde snorted but she was shaking her head and she looked tired. “Who knows. Give it a month and we'll see.”

Duo nodded, checking the distances and running through the few things left to do before then. There wasn't a lot, the Valley was pretty simplistic in its docking procedure. Very archaic. Just keep your ship pressurized, connect and open. Do not open your ship to open space and everyone would be fine. Easy.

“Are you okay?”

The question surprised them both and Duo wasn't even sure why he asked it. He found himself staring at her, watching her blink at him while she thought about it and then she just grinned and nodded.

“You know how it is. I make ends meet just fine. Been finding family and making friends, just...living life, you know?” Living it, instead of just trying to live. That had to be good, but the way she said it, with that small but bright smile made something in Duo pause, because he knew he hadn't been doing the same.

“Yeah...” He didn't know at all. He was still just trying to live, taking it a day at a time, a gig a piece and if he lived to see the next day doing it over again. Taking risks that weren't necessary, daring something to outdo him. And he couldn't begin to say why he'd stayed on that course.

Only he did know.

“I've talked to Howard a few times.”

“Whaaaat?” Duo fish-faced at her, mouth moving and inarticulate sound erupting. “Does he have some weird post-war harem I'm unaware of or something?”

She laughed but he was still unnerved by it. Howard was the closest thing he had to family and it hurt that there were apparently a few things he'd chosen to keep from him. Not that Duo had been in any frame of mind to listen, or would have shown any sign of caring if Howard had told him, but it still stung, in that place Duo tried not to think about.

“The first time, I just needed a reference. His name carries a lot of weight in the business, you know?”

Of course Duo knew, it was why he'd stuck to Howard after the war, but a lot of Howard's post-war reputation was directly linked to Duo's part in their operations. Take the Gig. The risks are irrelevant. Just do the Gig. Howard's Sweepers can do anything, you need something done ask a Sweeper. It felt a little weird that Hilde had gotten a recommendation from a man who owed his reputation to Duo's hard work. Not that he minded, it was just...weird. And he had a thing against weird things these days.

“That was smart,” he managed to acknowledge and she was smiling as if it was a normal response. As if Duo regularly told people their decisions were intelligent. Not.

“But after that, I tried to just have a chat.”

“You tried to chat up the old man?” That was just gross.

“No, I tried to call you, you jackass!” She was laughing at him this time, and somehow that was better. “But you were never there, so I'd just ask Howard if you were doing okay. He always said you were fine...”

He sighed, sitting back in his chair and staring out at space, wondering how it could be so massive and yet people from his past could still manage to find him and have awkward conversations.

“I'm fine, Hilde.” Better than fine, he was healthy and rich and fully employed. What more could you ask for?

“Funny,” she murmured, looking at him a little too closely. “That's what Wufei keeps saying.” And they both knew that was complete crap.