Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Reasons to be Queen ❯ the goal ( Chapter 3 )

Reasons 3

Relena stared at the spinning lift handle. She'd seen it lift Duo up and away a dozen times. Never having been superstitious, she found it odd that she was afraid to touch it. It was Deathsythe. She'd argued over comics with Duo, woken up next to him, pretended she was Heero while they were playing together. They were maybe best of friends and she'd thought she was going to die when she saw those photos. Touching his gundam though felt like a deeper intimacy, felt like a violation almost.

"Now, Miss Relena," Dorothy cooed, one arm on Relena's elbow, "Don't have second thoughts. I know how sad you were when you thought he was dead. No one will ever need to know you did this, only you and Duo. There aren't even any people to die fighting you. They're all mobile dolls."

"I want to talk to Duo again," Relena said, feeling awkward in clothes that could have been Duo's. Black space suit, her hair pulled back and held with a black ribbon, she hardly felt the equal of the god of death.

"Well, I thought you might like that. I am always thinking of your good, Miss Relena," Dorothy smirked, holding out a small ear piece. "It's two way, but just between you and Mr. Maxwell. There is a time limit. You will have half an hour, or so, to reach him. If you fail to reach him before that all of the mobile dolls will ignite, boom.. And this part of space will be so radioactive that Deathscythe himself will need a new coat of paint to keep from glowing."

At every turn, there was a road block, a thick prison wall that forced her into this. Fighting wasn't right. The grief that she'd felt over Duo's death was unbearable. "They're only mobile dolls."

"That's right, Miss Relena. I wouldn't want you to be a killer, a plain old solider."

"Dorothy, I may kill you when this is done."

"Tsk tsk, the thanks I get for saving your lover. You don't have to do this, you know. He would have died any way, from the wounds he foolishly provoked. No one will ever know about this, so you could just walk away. He's nothing more than a psychotic boy anyway."

Relena's hand snapped out so quickly, the fury behind it welting Dorothy's face. "Duo Maxwell is a pure and heroic soul!"

The idea that Relena might need anti- psychotic meds as well passed over Dorothy's face. "He is a warrior. Vibrant and vicious, and if you stood between him and his goal he would kill you. He is honorable because he fights so purely, like Heero Yuy, but his soul is not pure as you understand it. You think the world can live at peace, but you know nothing of battle. Stretch out your wings, innocent angel, Death needs you."

"How fucking poetic." Relena spat, imitating Duo again.

Some message came through on Relena's comlink and she pressed the button on her stop watch. "I'd hurry, angel girl."

Relena pressed the comlink that Dorothy had given her into her own hear and grabbed the handle that would lift her up to the cockpit of Duo's gundam. As her feet left the ground an emotional chill wrapped around her, and she knew. She would kill to save Duo, Heero, and even her country.

----

Aboard Howard's ship, Quatre and Trowa worked on interpreting satellite images. The project started, at two in the morning, because Quatre's space heart had nearly exploded on him. When Duo had been reported killed, Quatre refused to believe it. Duo was his friend, a close friend. It had been Duo that had helped Quatre believe it was okay for him to love Trowa, to tell Trowa. He'd known Duo wasn't dead, even if the look in Trowa's eyes suggested Trowa thought Quatre was in denial. "There, do you see, Trowa, there, that's Deathscythe. That is defiantly the energy signature from Deathscythe."

Trowa scratched his throat, ran his tongue over the inside edge of his teeth. "Deathscythe does not leave an energy signature, Quatre." Having said that, Trowa thought desperately for some way to comfort his mate. Almost nervously, he reached out and ran the top of his fingers down Quatre's arm. "That's what makes it Deathscythe."

"Yeah," Quatre patted Trowa's hand, and smiled, that angelic tolerant smile that made Trowa's stomach churn, both attracted him and scared the hell out of him. "The code to engage stealth mode is something Duo never let out of his mind. Whoever is piloting Deathscythe does not know how to turn it on. Oh my. He have to tell Heero. Duo's just turned on the stealth mode. He's alive."

On another screen, Trowa sat down and ran the data clip back and forwards. Fingers moving furiously, face impassive, he did the impossible and got a video link. Deathscythe tilted to the side, and rolled over the ground like a broken doll. If it had been Duo, he would have extended the wings, lifted off. "Quatre. That can't be Duo… Whoever is piloting Deathscythe is not… not a good pilot."

Quatre touched the tips of his fingers to Trowa's cheek and the impassive mask released, a movement so small that only Quatre would see it really, just a slight movement to eyebrow, the edge of Trowa's mouth. "We're too far away to help."

"I have sent the information to Heero and Wufei." Trowa turned and kissed the tips of Quatre's fingers. "Heero is in love with Duo."

"I know."

---

Relena Peacecraft did not fit well in Duo's cockpit. It was a little too large for her, but her fingers mostly closed around the main gyro controls. In her ear, Duo was singing.

"'Lena, honey, I'm stoned, you know that?"

"I suspected as much. How do I see where I'm going?"

"Oh.. open your eyes?"

"Duo!" She screamed as something rocked Deathscthye to the side, making her feel like a rubber ducky in a bathtub. "Duo, help me! I don't know how to do this!"

"Oh, well, first things first.. hit the blue X on the upper left of the cockpit… looks like a mark on wall, not a button."

Clumsily, she got one hand out of the straps that held her hand to the gryro control and pressed the button. The shock of sound rocked almost as badly as the explosion had… and 'Don't Fear the Reaper' blasted out over the battlefield. "Duo!"

"Just one time through, baby, okay? But look to your right. See the screen now. Touch the right upper corner and you can draw it to the center of the cockpit, if you like, but I like it to the side."

"Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my GOD! Duo! There are hundreds of them! OH dear god!"

Another blast actually knocked Deathscythe off it's feet, making it roll. Relena rolled inside of it, the seat of the cockpit suspended so that the it felt like she was rolling, that the gundam's body was her body. Even the impact on Deathscythe's shoulder felt like it left a bruise on hers.

"FUCKING Hell Relena! You're busting up my gundam!"

"I am sooooo sorry!" She said, crying. "I can't do this! You're going to die because I can't do this!"

"Oh shut up, 'Lena! My death is just one of those war things. You're going to die cuz you're stupid enough not to listen to me. Now close your pretty eyes and think. You got your feet and hands in the gyro controls, right? Listen to the fucking music! You're the Reaper today! You're gonna kick Leo ass! Now, imagine, with your eyes closed, that Deathscythe is you. Get onto your hands and knees."

"I can think of better times to hear you say that!" She snarled through their com link, but she was moving, the straps holding her as she seemed to hang there, a small girl soul in a giant sculpture of death.

Duo chuckled, "All you think about is sex, 'Lena. No, wait that's me.. I can just see you and me and Heero all kissing each other at the same time. Yeah, I like that image!"

The image was sooo striking, the blush so hot up her cheeks that she didn't even notice the next blasts, and therefore didn't respond to them. "At the same time! Duo! Have you ever kissed Heero? Really? Tell the truth?"

"Get up on your feet! I have you on my view screen. Man, you pilot, you fix… You're gonna have so much polishing to do on Deathscythe when this is over!"

"I am not polishing Deathscythe!" She found herself up on her feet though, almost felt like she fit in the gundam. "You're coming to a dinner party, in a tux, and taking to people about peace!"

"Think it'll do any good? Reach behind you, to the left, three buttons, kinda.. try real hard to pretend that 'Scythe is you, press them in order 2, 3, 1, 2, 1. The scythe'll drop down into your hands, then uh… move your heel, your left heel in the ground, and it should turn on."

"Who came up with these controls? This is insane!"

"I kinda," Duo started, then lost his words in a fit of coughing, small moans in between and it all came so clearly through the comlink. To Relena it was as if she could feel every stab of his ribs.

"Duo. Don't you die. We have that convention to go to."

"Little kid stuff," he wheezed. "'Lena, you always get me to be such a kid. I fixed up 'Scythe. It's mine. No one pilots it, but me, and uh, you. Feel the staff in your hands?"

"Yes," she said, surprised at how easily her hands seemed to control the huge gundam hands, to hold the slender staff of the scythe.

"Feel the three oval buttons? Press the middle, and jam the whole thing behind you to the left on the count of five. Count with me, don't fuck it up. Two, three, FIVE!"

Relena did, feeling the vibrating energy of the spike at the end of the scythe meet resistance. She looked over her shoulder. There like a yellow marshmallow was a leo on the end of the scythe, green energy bleeding around the wound in it's cockpit. She screamed, stumbling away from the man she just killed. "NO NO! NO! Duo! No! I can't! Oh, Duo! I killed him! They were supposed to be mobile Dolls! Dolls!"

"RELENA PEACECRAFT!" Duo shouted, a verbal slap through her comlink. "You didn't do it! I did. I did it! He was going to kill you and *I* killed him. Now, I'm gonna tell you how to release the wings, turn on the thrusters.. you can auto pilot back to somewhere safe. So shut the fuck up Relena, I did it, not you!"

Coughing took him again though and she turned, seeing the falling hull of the ruined leo as … as someone who made Duo cough and hurt. If she left, Duo would die. Worse. If she left, she'd never face her own ideals again. She'd never speak of peace again. Queen of the World. Duo shouldn't die. No one should have to die for freedom. Freedom should just be. Feeling an ice colder than space wrap around her heart, she gave up herself for a moment, for an infinity. Right was right. It didn't matter. She would save Duo. She would stop the killers, the oppressors. "Duo."

"'Lena?" He replied, but this time his voice was so weak, and she looked at her count down. She'd had 30 minutes, only 16 were left.

"Love is the root of peace. Without love and the hope of Heero kisses, people will hold onto any insane thing. How do I disable them? I see you. The screen says you're three miles distant. Best way to reach you?"

"I ain't sharing Heero with no body, but you." He said, but she could tell that there was something worse wrong with him, his voice was more raspy now, as if he couldn't quite get enough air. "Can I give him a blow job as he's marrying you?"

"Only if I can do him as you marry him," she said, swinging the dual beams at the other end of the scythe, laying leo parts over the field until she could get an opening, enough of an opening to run. Power, this she understood so much more clearly as she ran, in the gundam, one of the most powerful weapons humanity had ever created. The ground shook under her feet and she felt the loneliness that must sit in Heero's soul, in Duo's soul, as they rode such a powerful sword, the distance that made power and loneliness into a lack of humanity. "I love you."

"Love you too," he whispered. "Think you could name a kid after me? Duo Yuy, Duo Peacecraft?" He laughed then, an abrupt, cut off laugh. "The hatch, don't open it with the handle. Explodes. Photo of you & Heero. Black diamond in corner."

"Don't talk, Duo." She said, having reached him finally, reached the broken leo hull that housed him like some obscene crypt. The remaining leos, only about ten of them. There had only been about twenty to begin with. Relena didn't know why there were there, why they were still trying to stop her from saving her friend when she'd killed so many of them already. "LEAVE me alone you fuckers! Just leave me alone!"

They didn't though, and she fought, sobbing and kicking like a proper girl. The scythe got dropped some where in the scuffle and functionality of Deathscythe started to fail. Soon she couldn't move her left arm. She'd never been so furious as one of them kicked Duo's leo, rolling him over, making him scream inside the cockpit prison. Punching with her remaining fist she couldn't stop herself from rolling back, going right over helpless leo. 5 minutes left and she hit the black diamond on the photo that released the hatch on Deathscythe.

Scrambling over dirt to where Duo was, gunfire and blasts rocked around her, knocking her back as she clawed her way over the burning metal of the leo. She didn't care as the remaining leos surrounded them. She just wanted the hatch open! She'd get Duo out and they'd.. she didn't know what they'd do! But she had to touch him! Had to see him again. "Duo! Talk to me! Please! Anything!"

"I've never kissed Heero. You wanted to know, right? Damn, Relena, I didn't mean to get you killed. Why didn't you listen to me?"

"How do I open this!"

"Relena. Incoming."

She turned then, looking at her watch.. two minutes left. Her palms were burned too, from climbing on the burning metal. It was odd, she thought, how she could look at that, see the blisters, but not feel the pain, not feel the tears on her face until they landed in her hands. And then, from right above them, white wings out like some angel, Wing descended. The leos didn't move, but Relena went back to banging on the hatch of Duo's leo. Heero. She couldn't process it. Heero. Heero would save her! But she wasn't leaving without Duo!

The giant energy blade slashed over her, close enough to leave the scent of burning hair in her face. Leo parts flew and then one white leg was on either side of them and with two minutes left, one huge hand reached down and picked up the broken, armless, legless hull of the leo, with her clinging to the top, cradled them close to the gundanium chest and lifted off. A sort of jump that took them up, away from the 45 seconds left until the remaining fighters detonated.

"'Lena? I'm floating. I'm gonna puke."

"Heero's here," Relena sobbed, holding to the metal of the leo, burned fingers gripping any where there was room to hold. The Com link when dead when the blast ignited, sending heat and radiation up around them, around the feet of the gundanium angel carrying them. Then Relena felt like she was floating too, floating in between the men she loved. A warrior for peace, an angel of death and the bridge between them.

Author's Notes:

One more chapter, I fear…. Next chapter on Howard's ship… and Relena tells Heero how Duo feels.. and Duo tells Heero how Relena feels and.. Relena comes to terms with what it means to be Queen.. And the sacrifices one makes. And the rewards as well….