Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Survival ❯ Try ( Chapter 10 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Try

Alright, there's been a few questions that I'm going to halfway answer here. People keep asking me if this is a yaoi or het story… and the truth is, I honestly don't know. I've never written yaoi personally, so I think it's less likely, but I'm also dealing with a bunch of extremely traumatized, stressed, freaked out sixteen-year-olds… and that's hardly a recipe for normalcy and/or stability. I've only got something like two of the relationships in this story figured out (and no, I'm not going to say which) and they are anything but the usual. One of them, well, it's common enough to set someone up with an OC, but I don't think I've ever seen the other one done in any fic anywhere.

Also, I am trying to shift the characters here, develop them into something else… they are growing up, and in a lot of ways I'm going to try continuing the stages they were starting to go through during the show, especially with concern to Relena, Dorothy and Heero's personalities. Feel free to tell me if you think I'm going out of bounds here.

Insofar as plot twists and where the hell people are… If you know me from way back when, you know my old tricks. If you don't… I'm really going out of my way to make this fun and keep you on your toes. So, right… Yay for a long chapter?

April 31st 197 - Monday - Brussels

Dorothy tilted her head as she debated whether or not her coffee was cool enough to sip at as she leaned in the doorway of the office Relena had assigned herself, watching the other girl slam on her keyboard. She was too far away to read the words, but Relena's temper was generally more mild than this… which meant it was likely something major. So she was trying to decide if she really cared to meet the kraken or find a more pleasant way to spend her time, such as sifting through the reports of possible rebellions that she'd been avoiding for the past week. It would take at least two hours to get through the main of it, and by the time she got through the first ten or twenty her morning addiction might be cool enough to actually taste…

“What?” Relena growled, spinning her chair around to glare at her.

“What, what?” Dorothy returned. Innocence was worth a shot, at the very least.

“You've been standing there for ten minutes, what?”

There's always tomorrow… Most of those reports were absolute nonsense anyhow. And by now, someone else would have noticed if there was a situation to be snatched up in them; she wasn't the only one assigned to these things. She considered Relena for a moment, then asked, “Is everything quite alright?”

“Everyone here is too damn stupid to pull off ruling the damn world,” she growled. “And…” she dropped her head on her desk. “And that actually makes this harder than easier…” she mumbled through the shield of her hair. “This is going to take forever…”

Dorothy nodded a little, stepping fully into the room… and blinked at the pile of papers she hadn't noticed on the floor. Deciding that the angry red marks all over the top sheet indicated this might be the source of her friend's ire, she kneeled down to read it… and blinked again. “You know…” she started, trying to choose her words. Finally, she just settled for, “You were really just asking for it, picking that up.”

“Oh, go to hell…”

“There's a reason that's been sitting on my desk for five days,” she noted, picking up the top inch of papers to see that the ones below were just as heavily marked. She set them back down, and picked up the top two inches; same result. She decided the nearly five inch stack could be dismissed as thoroughly gone through… and noticed the two other similarly stacked piles along the wall. With their top sheets again thoroughly covered, she didn't even bother flipping through the reports. “How early did you come in this morning?” she asked after a moment.

“I didn't,” the other girl growled, still not lifting her head.

Well… there wasn't a whole lot to say to that one. She stood back up. The urge to point and laugh just didn't seem appropriate. “Did you find anything useful?”

“No.”

…Why did I ask that one? It wasn't like the answer wasn't fairly obvious…

“Anything entertaining?” she asked hopefully.

That finally got her to look up, though still through her hair, and Dorothy offered her the cup of coffee before remembering that it was too hot and retracted the offer to cradle it in her hands a while longer. That got her a stranger look than before, but she decided it was high time to look busily out the window until the other girl started talking. That generally worked with Relena, she had found.

After a moment, she sighed. “Just stupid shit… Like snatching teenagers off the street because someone gets the idea it might be one of the boys, and then we have furious parents coming in to reclaim them… I thought the idea was to make the population like us. They snatched up some poor kid they said was Trowa a few weeks back because he was outside his house late one night, and his mother went into a fit of hysteria and filed a missing person's report before the whole mess got straightened out, and is threatening to sue for how her boy was treated, says he has psychological problems now because of it…” She shook her head. “And I swear to God, the next time someone sees an Asian teenager without his parents and decides it's Wufei, I'm ordering them drawn and quartered…”

Dorothy smiled a little, rolling her eyes. “Yeah… it's something of a problem, but your brother still wants them caught, so we can't take down the alerts posted everywhere. Unfortunately, the public seems to have realized that it's been a fifteen months or longer since we took any pictures of them, and fifteen-year-old boys have this habit of growing, not to mention the fact that they'll be trying to not look like their pictures, which means any male between the ages of thirteen and twenty-five is suspect.”

“It's stupid.”

She shrugged. “It's less of an issue than it was even just three months ago. That nonsense will keep going down from here; everyone's slowly settling into something akin to apathy, regarding the boys. I mean, it's obviously not like they're causing trouble right now. Well,” she rolled her eyes again. “they're not doing anything that draws attention to themselves, at any rate. The best we have to go off of is the last time Jake got a lock on Heero's IP, and that was more than six months ago.”

Relena frowned. “You didn't mention that.”

“It was over six months ago, Lena, and he bolted before we got within an hour of his location. You try finding a guy who looks like he could be your average Macedonian Greek in the middle of downtown Athens.”

“You still could've told me,” she muttered irritably.

“It hardly seemed relevant. Now come on, you need to eat.”

“Go on without me, I need to finish this e-mail.”

“Stand up right now or I'll go tell your brother you've been up for over thirty hours.”

“It's only been something like twenty-six,” she returned moodily.

“Yes, but thirty has more push behind it for the overprotective brother. Maybe you'll be worth talking to once you have some food in you.”

“Oh, thank-you,” Relena snapped, standing up and grabbing her purse, stalking past her out the door. “You're just a ball of sunshine yourself!”

Dorothy just shook her head and shut the door before beginning to follow after her. Correcting Relena's phrasing would probably just make her bitchier. As the other girl whipped around the corner, she stopped and hazarded a sip of coffee…

Just barely below scalding. Perfect.

Smiling happily to herself, she continued at a slow walk, sipping gingerly as she went. Maybe her princess's mood would improve with a latte.

***

Jerusalem

“Thank-you… for everything…”

Moira frowned. “I still don't know that you're ready for this.”

“I can't lose him,” he replied simply. “If I lose him I don't know if I'll ever get another chance to find him again. I have to go now.” He looked to the doctor. “I'll take the crutches and the cane both, and won't do anything to draw attention. The main reason they kept catching us before was either my trying to hack into government files, or someone spotting Quatre's face.”

“What about your face?” Moira asked pointedly.

He found himself smiling slightly at her. He was pleased with himself about this, and he reacted to her more than he ever had for anyone else, for some reason… maybe this was what it was like to have a mother. “During the war, I erased any files of myself as soon as I left. The times I wasn't able to, someone else managed it… probably the man who gave me my gundam. The only one they managed to keep was when I was at a dance, and that was mostly the back of my head.” The girl had been trying to get a picture of her precious Relena with that blissful expression on her face, not him.

He wasn't sure why this was so important, in all reality… it wasn't like he and Wufei had ever been close. He really hadn't ever been close to anybody… but they understood each other. They had both been through things that would cause most of the populace to gasp in horror and had come out as tempered steel instead of pitiful wretches.

He hadn't realized how sane Quatre's presence had kept him until the other had gone missing. Some days he honestly started to think his name was Yukio… Not that it had ever really been Heero Yuy, but he'd abandoned the name Odin had given him the day he stumbled across J in that alley. His memory had never extended far enough for him to know if that had actually been his birth name or not… though he was fairly sure he and Odin had shared blood, even though he had always claimed not to be his birth father. You wouldn't be a father to a boy in all the ways he needed while telling him you hadn't physically sired him when you actually had.

…Or would you?

He mentally shook himself. Blood didn't matter; Odin had raised him, however oddly, until his death. He had always kept him well-clothed, well-fed and well-exercised… well-trained and quite ready to support himself if push came to shove. He doubted he'd come out of some random encounter because Odin had never given a damn about strangers, be they man, woman, or babe in arms. He'd already been putting half the money for their jobs into a separate account for Heero for the last year before it had all crashed down about their heads…

…How much interest would that have built up by now? He hadn't ever cared much about the money factor, so he didn't know how much an assassin of Odin's caliber generally made on a job… And a thought he'd really never considered popped into his head.

What if Odin left me enough to take care of me, had I not started wandering and met J? He had always been very responsible for his son… What if he'd made arrangements for who would take me in the event of his death? Odin hadn't thought himself so invincible as to not consider the possibility of his death… but, while covert operation tactics and all the weaponry under the sun had been the perfect education for a small child, he would have been offended by the idea that he discuss the contents of his will with his son. That was morbid.

Food for thought… food for another day. Right now, he needed to find Wufei. He could look into it when he was running low on funds, and could stay in one place for more than a day at a time. He couldn't have done it while staying with the Sronas because claiming he'd been picked up by a rebel group on L3 an hour or two after his father had died, and giving over his name and prints to prove he was who Odin had carefully recorded him as when he was five, would have kinda blown the whole “I'm an exchange student from Kyoto” cover. He'd been drawing money here and there out of this or that account he had hacked into for the past several months… out of accounts big enough, taking little enough, that it should have moved under the radar just fine. He'd taken his favorite components out of his old laptop and ditched the rest weeks before Quatre had brought him to the clinic in Jerusalem, in an attempt to lose the guy Zechs had tailing him every time he gave the slightest opportunity. He had built up this trip's cache in the most roundabout ways he could concoct, and it had worked.

Wufei had come from the south, which suggested he might be moving north… or that he would be for the next day or so, at least. If he was wrong, he'd have to backtrack… but what were instincts for? North seemed right… and if it wasn't, it wasn't like he had anything better to work off of. Then, once he was far enough away that he was sure he couldn't be linked back to the Sronas, he'd dye his hair so he looked a little more Caucasian and less Asian, and see what he could do to get himself a gun.

Quatre had been packing the one that had served Heero through the war when he disappeared.

“I'll take the bus at first, until I get a solid lead,” he went on when Moira continued to frown at him. “Then once I'm closer, I'll take whatever route he does.”

“You'll run out of pain meds in a month,” Moira argued.

“I've only taken three of them over the past two months anyhow,” he admitted. “It's not pain I'm worried about, it's making sure it heals right.”

Samuel moved back to the door, picking his tote up off the table. “I'll go get a brace.”

“You're just letting him go?” cried his wife, staring at him in shock.

“I know that look,” he returned dryly, stepping out the door; his clinic was within walking distance. “We can help him, or he'll sneak out the back door once we're asleep. I'll only be fifteen minutes or so.”

Moira spluttered after him for a moment before turning back to Heero. Her eyes showed her conflicting emotions, and for a second, he thought she might slap him. Trowa had said Catherine had done that to him once for `acting stupid.'

Then… she started to cry.

He stood there awkwardly for a moment, unsure of what to do. She was just standing there balling her eyes out… About what? She was worried about him, she was always worried about him, but this… He swallowed. Odin had always said to follow his heart, but J and his colleagues had spent so long trying to grind his emotions out of him entirely that it was hard to remember sometimes… “Mrs. Srona… I…”

She pulled him into a fierce hug. “Don't you get yourself killed, you hear me?” she choked out. “When this is all over and done, I want you to come back and see me, alright?”

The awkwardness lasted for a moment longer… but then he gave in and relaxed, really allowing her to hug him… and hugged her back. It felt… good. “Alright,” he muttered softly. Her hair smelled nice… not the same way Relena's had, not an almost heady rush, just… comforting.

“You're like one of my own boys to me,” she went on, pulling back and cupping his cheek in one hand. Her eyes were still watery, but she wasn't outright crying now. “And you're always welcome, whether you're in trouble or not. We can always work it out, we'll get out of the neutral zone if we have to.”

She couldn't mean it… That would mean giving up her home, her communication with her children and sisters, everything about her life that she loved… but with the way she was looking at him, he realized that she really did mean it, every word. He really wasn't sure how, or why… but she meant it. He swallowed hard and nodded mutely. He… didn't trust his voice right then.

She smiled brightly. “That's a good boy.” She sniffed and turned away from him, bustling off to the kitchen. “Now, you're not going anywhere without a full stomach, so you go ahead and pack up your things while I get something on the table.”

He stared at the entry to the kitchen for a while, listening to the sounds of her moving about with pots and pans… from the sound of it, he wasn't leaving without a few sweets either. Moira never did anything halfway. He did need to pack… But the last bus heading in the direction he wanted didn't leave for another five hours. She just…

What would I have grown up to be, if Moira had been my mother?

And he was just leaving her… he'd made her cry…

Coming to a decision, he limped over to the kitchen and smiled when she turned to look at him. “Can I help you with anything?”

Maybe it wasn't too late to try.

***

May 2nd 197 - Tuesday - Amsterdam

“How long are we going to stay here?”

I winced inwardly. I had been avoiding having this conversation for as long as possible, but Hilde had always been straight to the point. I could only pass the idea that I was waiting for the trail to go cold on her for so long. In some ways, I didn't want her to go… I'd missed her, and she was a true friend, but she would bring danger to the Devils just by her presence, and that was assuming I could talk her into staying in the first place. She would want me to come with her, but…

“Duo?”

“You should probably give it another day or so, then head back out,” I muttered eventually.

She turned to look at me in surprise and something akin to horror. “But…” She must have seen something in my eyes that confirmed what she was going to ask, because she rose stiffly and moved to walk out of the room.

“Hilde…” I didn't want it to just end like this. I wasn't sure exactly what I did want, but it wasn't this.

“Why don't you want to come with me?” she demanded heatedly.

“It's not that I don't want to come with you,” I started to explain.

“Then why?”

We were staring to draw a crowd… We'd been relatively alone in one of the smaller living room areas, but Hilde's voice was rising with every word. She was about to go into an all-out panic.

You'd think Sally would have ground that reaction out of her by now. Then again, she didn't do it under physical or even mental pressure… just emotional. She was too confident in her abilities, warranted or not, to be dissuaded unless someone was actively kicking her ass, and even then it she might not give over.

She really would have made a good gundam pilot.

“Because my place is here, now,” I muttered, more to myself than her. I was trying to figure out exactly what I meant by that, so I could put it into better words.

“Duo,” she practically growled, getting up in his face so she could whisper at him. “This place is a dump.”

That wasn't the point… But at least she'd had the forethought not to let the rest hear her say that. “And our old place during the war was a dump,” I whispered back. “Well, scrap yard, whatever.”

She backed down, looking hurt. “Why, Duo?”

Shit, like it was simple enough to explain… “It's…” None of your business. Well, shit, that wouldn't be too helpful, even if it was true. “It's a little complicated.” I may run and hide, but I'll never tell a lie… and this would be a prime example of running. “It's complicated. Just trust me, alright?”

I don't want to fight again. I don't want to be Shinigami again… This life was a second chance, a chance at redemption… and some old buddy from the war was not going to take that away from me.

“How complicated can it be?!” she demanded. She still looked hurt, but her voice was picking up its same angry volume.

I snorted. “Very.” The mess with Karina, and the healing I knew had to be happening on some level with the rest… the comfort of the gang, of the church, the children, of being a provider instead of a destroyer… I didn't really understand it all that well myself, beyond the fact that I didn't want it to stop.

“You pop out of the blue to save me, and now you're just going to melt away into the shadows again? I thought you were dead, Duo, dead!”

I turned away from her. “I'm not going to get involved again.”

“And what do you call stealing a high priority prisoner?”

Something in me broke, at that. Why didn't she get it? “You expected me to leave a friend to interrogation and execution?” I practically screamed. “You remember how you met me, don't you? You remember how beat to shit I was when you were transporting me to the damn chopping block? You almost shot me yourself! It was pure dumb luck that I had the rookie who didn't understand her own zealousness that I could turn around to my way of thinking! If you had been anybody else, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to get out of my cell, or even if I had, I would've been shot down in fucking vacuum instead of helped to escape! Would you rather I condemn you to that?”

“Yet I don't even matter to you?” she screeched right back. “You save me from an awful fate, you kiss me like you used to, then you tip your hat and say `tata'? You asshole, you're just a hypocrite, you always cared more about your job than anybody you knew!”

Again, she'd just hit the point right on the head, yet missed it entirely. I didn't want to be who I was during the war. “I didn't want you to go do anything because you were still fresh as hell and I didn't want you getting yourself killed! It would have been my fault if I let anything happen to you, you would have still been with OZ if it hadn't been for me!” I snapped. Considering the issues during the last battle, I added, “And when you went behind my back to play spy, you just about did anyhow!” She'd far overshot any of my expectations for her in battle, taking down the Vayeate that had Trowa's tactics programmed in, but her life support had literally been about five minutes from dying once I finished off the battle.

“You're a chauvinistic pig who was just worried about getting more blood on his hands,” she snarled. “You've never really given a damn, or else you would have realized what else was all going on, and you'd be out there with me now!”

I stopped dead at that, realizing the truth behind her words. Not what she was saying… what she was trying to do. I scowled, letting the coldness I'd been feeling deep in my chest for a while now rise… and crossed my arms. “Oh really?”

***

Luc put a hand over Sin's as her grip on his arm tightened, but kept his eyes on the fighting couple. Chaos was doing what he did when he actually went into a fight… and Sin hadn't ever seen that side of him before. They hadn't gotten here that long ago, and since English wasn't his first language, and they were talking so fast with thickening colony accents, he could hardly make out what they saying… but he caught the mood just fine.

“Oh really?”

Well, at least he's going to let her finish picking it, and not take the first blow… Chaos fought dirty, generally speaking.

Her mood changed just as suddenly as his. She narrowed her eyes. “Don't,” she growled at him, her fists clenching.

Oh, so she knew what this was… maybe better than he did, from that glimmer in her eye.

“Don't what?” Chaos returned playfully, cheerfully even… at least, if you weren't looking at his eyes.

“You know damn well what I mean, don't you use your fucking battle persona on me.”

Luc supposed that was a good name for it.

He laughed… and it was almost genuine. There was something cold about it, though, a definitive edge. “Oh, but this is what you want, isn't it? You don't want me back, you want the old Shinigami to help you fight your new war.”

“Shinigami…” Sin muttered, pursing her lips. Looking up at her boyfriend, she asked, “Doesn't that mean, like, `Satan', or something?”

“It wouldn't surprise me,” he returned softly, pulling her tighter against him and taking a step back. They both fought incredibly well… but he didn't know that either of them was aware enough of their surroundings to keep it confined to the space they already had, once it started. He saw a few others stepping back too, and motioned at the rest to do so as well.

“If you weren't verging on a split personality,” she spat back, changing her stance to be ready for an onslaught, “then you'd realize that saying one is asking the other.”

And… something changed in Chaos again. He completely dropped the `persona' and seemed to slump over. “Why don't you get it?” he demanded suddenly, his voice half choked with coming tears.

Sin started to move like she was going to go to him, but Luc grabbed her shoulder and shook his head. The two of them needed to resolve this somehow… whatever `this' was. She gave him a scathing look, but stayed where she was; she wasn't happy about it, but she understood.

Hilde had completely dropped her stance, and was staring at Chaos in shock. “Duo…”

***

“I don't want to be Duo anymore,” I cried, my face starting to go numb. “I don't want to fight a war I don't even understand anymore… Why don't you get it?!”

I had told her my past… at least some of it… after I came back from my experience with Zero. I had broken down like this, and she had held me as I tried to explain what had happened that day, how I couldn't stand the thought of losing her, that it would be my fault all over again the same way it was with Solo, with everyone at the church… how I thought I was doomed and damned to have everyone I ever cared about die because of what I did…

Why didn't she understand?

“Hey, hey, shh…” she soothed, pulling me into her arms… When had I sat down? We were sitting on the floor, and I guess it didn't matter, but still… “I'm sorry, I just misunderstood, huh? I just…”

“It's like Solo never died, here,” I tried to explain. “Like the plagues still wiped out most everybody, but like I snagged the cure in time and saved him… he kept growing up and taking care of everybody, and shit, he's got a kid on the way. Only real difference is he cut all his hair off…” I pulled away from her some and wiped at my eyes. I didn't remember when I'd started crying, but there it was again. “And there's a church here, with war orphans… it's like the old church never got firebombed. It's, like… like none of the stuff that made me into the desperate shit I was when I broke into G's ship… It's like none of it ever happened, Hilde. I'm getting a second chance, to do it all right this time… And even if it doesn't work in the end… I've gotta try, you know? Else I'll never really know, and I'll always be wondering… I get to help people now, I'm important here…”

Duo died almost a year ago, when he saw Libra crashing into Earth, when he was so cold he couldn't feel anything but pain, even though he was sweating and gasping for more air… and maybe that should have been the end… but the issue is, I'm still breathing.

I really looked at her again, and felt more tears fall down my face as I tried to wipe hers away. “Hey, don't cry just because I'm a fuck-up, huh? I'll figure it out, you know me… I've just gotta put my back into it, give it everything I've got…” I sighed. “And I know you have to too, huh? That's why you have to go.” That and if anyone around here sees her face, all the Devils will end up in jail, and I can't let that happen…

“But I want you to come with me,” she whispered, starting to cry harder.

On some level I wanted to go with her too… It'd be like old times, only twice the kickass because Heero wasn't around to be Mr. Antisocial and Hilde was all sweetness and light `till you made her bite… But I didn't believe in all that anymore. I'd tried so hard to make things right, before, and it had all failed anyway… I wasn't so foolish as to keep trying the same gig and hoping for better results. I was going to try something else… and damnit, I wasn't going to lose this time.

“I'm sorry… but I can't.” I ducked in closer and whispered in her ear, “I'd tell you where my old buddy was, but I don't even know where the pieces might be, at this point.” Taking a deep breath, I asked the question I'd been trying not to ask since I'd saved her. “Are any of the other guys still around?”

She shook her head, letting out another tiny little sob. “I don't know…”

“Hey, calm down, they're probably up to the same kind of shit as me.” I didn't believe it, but hey, it was entirely possible, wasn't it? I leaned back to give her a little personal space, then reached over to cup her face in my hands. “Hilde, listen to me… You can't tell anyone that I'm here. If you do, people might get as upset as you were that I'm hiding out, and they might come after me to try to make me change my mind, but that'd be too much traffic coming through here, and Zechs' people will notice, and then it'll all be over for me. Can you do that for me? If you find one of the other guys, go ahead and tell them, that's okay, but… not Sally or anybody else, huh?”

She stared at me for a while, and for a minute I thought she was going to refuse… but then she nodded. I couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief. Without really thinking about it, I leaned forward to kiss her, and couldn't have said how glad I was when she kissed me back fiercely instead of pushing me away or just letting me. “When this is all over,” I told her sincerely, “whether you're right and you guys can win this, or whether it all goes to hell and you need to run, need someone you can trust… try to find me again, and I'll find you, okay? Whatever you've been thinking all this time… I care alright? I always will.” I offered her a wink. “And even if you end up falling for some other guy, I'm still your friend, huh?”

She threw herself into my arms and hugged me tight. “Yeah,” she sniffed, hiding her face in my neck and shoulder. “Of course you are.”

I smiled and held her as tight as I could, while doing my damndest to glare everyone in the room away before Hilde really remembered they were all there. My life lately was everyone's favorite soap opera, but come on, they could at least offer me a little decency on this one… The girls all looked about ready to cry themselves and turned to leave without hesitation, though a few made a point to drag some of the guys with them. Most of them looked amused, and gave up a surrendering expression with a grin before ducking back out of the room quietly… Shov was outright gaping at us, but Sin smacked him hard upside the head while Luc shoved him in the direction of the door.

Hilde sniffed again. “I made a pretty big scene, huh?”

I grinned at her, rubbing her back. “Yeah, well, I get the feeling that's what they all keep me around for these days anyhow.”

Out of curiosity, how am I doing on Hilde, Relena, and Dorothy? I've never written any of them until I started on this fic, and I'm trying to keep them realistic, and tracks they might well have followed if the series had ended differently… but like I said, I have absolutely no experience writing them, or even reading them, for the most part. I watched most of the show again back before I wrote chapter six, but… yeah, opinions?

Lady Cyllan, thank-you so much for the in depth reviews. I really do look forward to them. Also, Ophelia, thank-you so much for the-email. ^_^ You guys both totally made my day…

And I'm not one of those authors that's going to say I'll write more when I get whatever amount of reviews, because I'm going to write it anyhow, I rather like this story… but reviewing has this tendency to boost the ego and make me want to bounce around ideas about it more, which means it gets written faster. Lol, I wrote a decent part of the last scene while I was sitting in genetics…

Ja!