Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The One-Eared Neko ❯ EVIL-HEARTED YOU ( Chapter 20 )

Part 20 EVIL-HEARTED YOU

Adjusting his glasses, the judge cleared his throat with dignity and glanced through his spectacles at the assortments of papers on his stand and momentarily toward each of the respective benches. At the same time, one Heero Yuy was striding up the aisle, undeterred. "I think it's about time that court take a recess and-hey, excuse me, young man, but I'm going to have to ask you to remain in your seat, otherwise you will be removed by security. Excuse me… Excuse me!"

His dignity had slowly become indignant as the seemingly random young man reached the locked gate separating the courtroom where justice was decided in a legal dance, and where the audience quietly watched the justice form within the many steps.

He even scrambled for his gavel to knock it warningly to call attention to this strange young man, though he was looking straight into the justice's face continually as he walked. It seemed like he was completely absorbed within himself and in the task of walking toward the front of the courthouse. In a singular, determined movement he easily leapt the locked gate and continued his way toward the black-robed judge. That triggered the guards at the side of the stand to rush forward in mild alarm, the kind that takes root just before one can realize just how much of a threat there is. Heero knew that they were much stronger than himself, and thus it was futile to struggle against them without something like the bohemian's natural strength. Fighting the authorities would not aid his cause this time.

By now, the traveler found himself close enough to smell the stained wood of the Justice's stand, positioned neatly between the defendant and plaintiff benches. He was not surprised to see the secretly furious and disgruntled face of the Peacecraft's renowned attorney not sitting alone at his desk, and accompanied by none other than the eldest of the family, Relena's blood brother that he had only laid eyes on once before, during a lull in the constant uprisings and political turmoil that kept him away in the service. Heero looked quickly away from him, focusing again solely on the judge and being relieved that it was not Relena, sitting no more than a few feet from him. He steadied himself mentally, trying desperately not to look over to the defendant bench, though it pained him so.

He already knew Duo's eyes were searing holes into the side of his face. He could feel that.

As Heero glanced narrowly in each of the guards' directions, the judge sat stiffly in his seat and tried to order him away from the stand very calmly. "Take your seat, sir, or you will be escorted out of this courtroom. If you resist further, you may be arrested. This is a trial in progress, and you are not to-"

Just before the cross-looking guards could wrangle a strong hold on each of his arms, Heero whipped his arm out of reach of the nearest guard and reached swiftly into his pocket. Being trained to interpret that motion as one of reaching for a weapon, the guards lunged quickly at him, but not before Heero could pull out the shape in his pocket and raise it toward the judge. Instantly, he could hear the sharp, cursing inhalation from Duo behind him, saw the judge flinch backwards, and felt the guards violently knock the item out of his hand before they had time to even recognize it.

Heero keened out slightly when a sharp, policing hand on each side took his arms and pulled them forcefully backwards, pinning them to his back.

The rolled up, bended, and generally battered-looking notebook fell to the ground harmlessly and the cover flapped open to reveal pages upon pages of ink, all musings on the workings of a bohemian criminal. Jolted by the sudden movement, the other object jammed in his pocket also clattered to the floor. The two security guards were very startled to see not a gun, but a college-ruled notebook and tiny cassette tape lying on the floor at their feet. They didn't loosen their hold, though, and Heero was bent painfully forward from the force exerted on his arms.

It was quiet for only a second before that damned crowd again started up with the frantic murmuring, the contemplating out loud, but this time it was followed by the sudden uproar of the eldest Peacecraft brother, asking loudly what the hell his foster brother thought he was doing. His outburst was swiftly silenced by the authority of the judge, and as soon as the disgruntled brother settled reluctantly into his seat, his stern, analyzing stare transfixed unhappily on Heero.

"Your Honor-" Heero only managed out a few words before his arm was painfully twisted and the air in his lungs escaped in a hiss between his teeth.

"Interrupting a case in session and further defying my authority is serious, young man," the judge warned sharply. "I hope you understand what you are doing. This is not a time nor place for ridiculous behavior, especially with the times we're living in and the dangerous company in this courtroom today."

That dangerous company, of course, being the heavily guarded, handcuffed bohemian. Heero tried again to speak up, but the guards seemed to have none of that, and the judge's eyes were just as stern with him. "There will be time for you to explain yourself later. The police will escort you out and-"

"Please let me speak, Your Honor," Heero pleaded, actually started to beg, ignoring the sharp administrations meant to keep him quiet by the security guard on each of his arms. "I mean none of you any harm, I swear. I only want to-"

"You'll do well to keep quiet and stop defying my authority," was the forceful verdict, but it didn't have an effect on Heero. He'd been infected with Duo's stubbornness long ago and he wouldn't stop until he'd achieved what he'd worked so hard for.

"Forgive me, Your Honor, but I'm here in the defendant's defense, since he seems to have no just representation," Heero announced coldly, betraying nothing of the fear and anxiety he'd felt only a few minutes ago. "I have documentation of Duo Maxwell's actions from the eleventh of July until the assassination attempt that justify him of his actions against Senator Peacecraft and proves that he did not fabricate the charge of the Senator's ordering the slaughter of innocents, both human and Neko alike. Just as the defendant stated."

The courtroom came down in a hush, and even Duo remained quiet, watching the traveler's back intently with his heart resting neatly in his neck. The judge's intelligent eyes analyzed him quickly from behind the shine of his glasses, taking in what the unexpected interrupter had said. The guards still tried to restrain him, but Heero felt a mechanical confidence overwhelm him and push him to stand up straighter and add, "And if you do not believe that I'm telling, I have the video log from Duo Maxwell's vehicle to prove it."

"Then that would make you Senator Peacecraft's son, would it not?" the judge asked discerningly.

Heero swallowed dryly to himself and admitted it in a humble little croak. "Yes, Your Honor."

His eyes still giving no room, the judge leaned forward slightly, scrutinizing him carefully from the height of the stand. "Son, you must know you've done a very serious thing by interrupting a very important case while in progress without any authority to do so. And I do believe that you 'borrowed' that press pass hanging around your neck. The young gentleman McAllen happens to be my nephew, and I am still sharp enough in my old age to tell my beloved relative from a complete stranger."

"I apologize for doing any harm to one of your family, Your Honor," Heero amended genuinely, stiffening up between the guards and even giving an abbreviated bow. "But I was desperate to make sure I had a say in this trial. I do not apologize for interrupting."

"Well," the judge huffed, at the sound of the twenty-five year old's unwavering, stubborn tone, "while you're in front of the entire courtroom, would you care to explain why not, son? Otherwise, if you feel you have nothing else to say, I'll have you escorted out and to the police department where they will inform you of just how serious this defiance of court authority is."

When he looked back on his response, Heero thought he should have felt the tremendous pressure on his shoulders, the nervousness sweeping through his body, or at least been a little bit hesitant. After what he'd endured, he should have been tired, jaded, feeling anything but the absolute resolution he felt when he answered the judge. If he had known that with what he said, he was admitting to himself and to the bohemian in stone that they'd never really be rid of each other again, that he never wanted to be, he probably would have been a little less collected. "I have no regrets in following my emotions, Your Honor, and I'm not going to let you wrongfully prejudge my friend without me having something to say about it," he asserted firmly, almost in a threat, barely even aware of forming the words in his mind before they spilled out.

The judge looked back at him, silent and white-haired and sagacious and offended behind his glasses.

Heero, while being confident, almost headstrong, the second before, now could hardly breath as he waited, watching the evaluation turning ever so slowly in the eyes of the man who would be decided the fate of the bohemian, the one bohemian he had ever loved. Suddenly, he felt those nervous breaths for air come to a sudden halt, having nothing to do with anything external. He frantically reread his thoughts, and wondered what the hell he'd been thinking.

I don't love him, do I? Is that what this is? Love is going slowly mad and disregarding every rule standing in my way and throwing myself to the wolves I'm trying to keep him from? If that's so, wouldn't that mean I was once one of those wolves?

What had once been a concerned murmur running through the courthouse became a full-blown argument amongst the politically charged observers sitting in the audience. There was one voice Heero didn't hear raise itself, and he had a feeling that the owner of that voice may have already smoothed down her skirt indignantly and left the room. The overwhelming sound of outbursts and objections from the political leaders, many of them on the same page as Senator Peacecraft on the issue of Nekos. As might be expected, much of conservative America believed them to be a sub-sentient species, simply evolved animals, but not as sophisticated as humans. After all, to them God had cast them in his image, not in the image of his housecat. There was a sudden stab of fear in Heero's chest, just hearing the boisterous animosity directed at the bohemian, and now, inevitably, at himself.

The gavel pounded abruptly, one of the few times the simply ornamental object had been used. The unexpected sound cut through some of the complaints, as a few brazen Peacecraft supports were lashing out again, even going so far to yell slurs at the back of the bohemian's head. The judge called out authoritatively, "Order! Return to your seats, please!" He gave a scowl reserved for the rowdy crowd. "Since it is obvious that neither the supporters of the plaintiff nor the defendant can hold their tongues when it is not appropriate for them to speak, this trial will resume in two days' time, at promptly 8 o' clock A.M. I will announce my decision concerning these… new turns of events then. Good day. Court is adjourned."

The gavel sound rang out again, and the security guards took their nod from the justice in his regal black robe and started to drag Heero away from the stand and to the side door. Terror struck him again like a train crushing all the air out of his chest and even the most composed part of Heero had given into the shapeless fear overtaking him as he was being pulled away. He tried to cry out something, but found nothing in his mouth. He twisted his head over his shoulder painfully just to get a blurry glimpse of orange jumpsuit as Duo was led off in the other direction. One security guard appeared from somewhere behind a door to usher the somewhat rambunctious crowd out of the main doors at the opposite end of the court. The judge disappeared into his quarters.

Walking calmly with his captors, one of them being Right Guard, Duo tossed another dark, almost saddened look towards the other door where Heero was protesting in his stony-eyed manner all the way, demanding that they let him know if they were going to listen to him and even thrashing a little once when a guard roughed him once to quiet him down. He watched the sight of the traveler for only a few seconds, before resignedly lowering his head, and something grew within his chest.

The door shut behind him and he was greeted again with his old friend, the smell of cold, stark tiles and metal bars. He couldn't tell had swelled up inside of him, if it was an emotion or simply another black rift. It felt as if they had become one in the same.

It wasn't a surprise that a day later there would be a formation of footsteps creeping closer toward Duo's cell in an otherwise empty block.

In an eerie silent line three figures appeared and lined up in front of the bars that kept the one-eared Neko safely entrapped inside the police department, contained away from the rest of the paranoid and fragile hienn world. The aforementioned criminal retained his meditative silence, sitting cross-legged in the very center of the cold and silent cell. His face was stone, his eyes closed, and his persevering pride radiated off him in thick, dangerous aura like an unsaid ring of fire to keep his disturbers at a distance. Silent and calculating, he listened as the feet shuffled to a stop just beyond the steel bars, one of the encroachers on his solitude being the reliable Right Guard, followed by a new scent.

Duo sniffed distastefully at the unfamiliar hienn aroma for a second, eyes closed, while neither party moved or made a sound for an eternal second. There was no need for explanation; the bohemian knew there would be only one reason for their arrival and only one. The inevitable one.

A woman. Perfume was wafting off her, though it would only be a modest amount to the average human nose. He could smell the cold professionalism leaking out of her, and knew she'd promptly dry-cleaned her clothes that morning. She smelt like business; she wasn't like the other fools who'd come to his cell before. He opened one cold violet eye when she spoke. "There's someone here to see you."

He liked her. Her voice was naturally high-pitched, but it was precise, succinct, breathy, intense and seductive in a very no-bullshit manner. Had he not already established he didn't dig women, Duo probably would have found himself very drawn to her, maybe just as a fellow dark creature. She met his calculating, one-eyed stare with her own mythic version, one with icy blue eyes overshadowed by her distinct brows. She looked like a pale demon, and her long blonde hair was like a beautiful enticement to draw in unsuspecting victims. Her stare was invincible; she reeked of a dark confidence.

He did like her.

"Didn't you hear me?" She lifted one of her strong eyebrows, ones that looked like her demonic horns. This woman was a demon dressed to kill, with her arms staunchly behind her back, clad in a pressed black women's business suit, and her waist-length blonde hair held back in an all-business ponytail. "I said you have a guest waiting."

Duo snorted to himself complacently and straightened his back, closing his eye again. "I thought so. It's about time."

When the cryptic bohemian fell silent again, he felt the woman's stare run him over shamelessly, evaluating him completely, and somehow coming to find it amusing. She snorted and said steadfastly, "I'm sorry, you must not have been paying attention. There is a guest awaiting your arrival, and this visitor has come to see you specifically."

"Tell him I say no," was the immediate response. His Nekonese ear flattened humorlessly against his skull and the signal was widely understood.

But still, this strange woman continued to surprise him by snickering to herself in a worldly feminine way, the way a temptress might before taking her victim to the back room. He listened to her heels click as she shifted her weight slightly, leaning onto her right foot as she crossed her arms. It seemed she was very amused that he very obviously knew who the guest was, and flatly denied him anyway. "That's a shame. I don't really want to be the one to tell him you've declined, he might try to hurt me," she said, joking obscurely.

Duo smirked a little. "I guess it is a pity. But, micckhen suo im kube." [1]

"He is a very stubborn guest," the woman added smugly, lifting her chin slightly, so that the banal light from the bulbs above shone on her tight-drawn smirk and strangely colored lipstick.

That comment progressed his own smirk into a laugh. "I'll bet he is."

It spurred the woman on to laugh as well, and he heard her shift her weight back onto the other foot, the small movement sending another wave of scented perfume the bohemian's way, tickling his nose. Amongst her department store fragrance laid a tiny sliver of another, which was more familiar. Maybe from a handshake, or passing by in close proximity. For a second, he wished he were more wholly Nekonese so he could smell it better, wallow in the scent, and keep it in his nose, but he quickly restrained himself and cleansed his head again. He was not going to leave his convictions behind anymore. His one sign of weakness had cost him the assassination, and he would not commit one mistake twice. The one-eared Neko stiffened up slightly, his ear swiveling forward at the sudden sound, then flattening in defense as the keys were turned in the lock and the barred door swung open. The perfumed woman held it and smiled almost surreptitiously.

"I'm sorry, Duo Maxwell, but a human has come calling. You don't have the authority to deny anything right now, and if I were you, I'd learn to recognize when I was beat and just start nodding and smiling politely. Your guards will be escorting you there, as always. I thank you very much for your cooperation," she purred, then laughed in her phantasmal way and clicked away down the hall. Her trail of fragrance moved away, then slowly faded from the air and Duo's half-breed senses.

He opened his eyes to see Right Guard standing patiently, holding the cell door open and waiting for him to stand. Baring a lip unhappily, Duo lifted his hands from his crossed ankles and stood up, the metallic chain linking the handcuffs whispering as he moved.

Even though as he walked down the sterile white halls every light passing overhead seemed like another alarm glaring down at him silently, telling him to turn back or risk endangering his resolution and therefore endangering everything, Duo kept walking. Being handcuffed and flanked on either side by a pair of guards really left few options in the department of direction. His mind was rational, calculating, distant, but it was the nameless organ in his chest that was filling with anxiety as he drew closer and closer to the door at the end of the corridor. It pressed against the skin of his stomach, against his ribs, urging him to turn around, telling him it knew exactly what would happen if he did walk into that room. That anonymous fear told him it wasn't too late to fight back and return to the solitary confinement of his cell, but his mind told him no.

He wasn't going to hurt Right Guard. He wasn't going to turn tail and flee. He wasn't going to look as if he was weak in his resolve in the least. If he felt he looked weak, he would start to feel weak, and if he felt weak, his strength would splinter and he would completely fall apart. The game was not over yet; he still had to solemnly accept the checkmate against him; he was not immune to his own mistakes.

Before he knew it, his fears were realized and they already stood at the door. The sounds of the lock disengaging and the left security guard removing the key were crystal sharp to his exposed ikkunnoi, but they seemed so distant and unfairly muddled that Duo wondered if he'd fallen into some awkward nightmare. This definitely was not a good dream-and this definitely was not a dream, because he felt his legs moving mechanically to lead him along with Right Guard and a dull ache in his wrists from the handcuffs. An ache that was as real as the one in his chest as he looked around the room.

A row of several stalls were lined up from wall to wall, and at each end stood on silent statue of a guard, watch-dogging every slight move the one-eared Neko made. Each stall was equipped with a clean, empty table, a phone jack installed on the right wall, a thick sheet of bulletproof glass separating it from the identical side, and a single metal chair.

The chair from the second stall from the end was pulled out, awaiting him. It was an flat, steel-grey color that shone dully beneath the industrial lights strung in a militaristic line overhead, shone like it, too, had been imprisoned there and instead of washing laundry or pressing license plates for a life sentence, it had supported criminals, cons, and convicts while they sat down and had a bittersweet glance at the loved ones or in-depth reports who had come to see them. That chair was not alone. And oh-so-luckily for Duo, his visitor was a mixture of the two, with an emphasis on headstrong fool.

He felt that regret he'd felt walking in that door double, then triple in a knot in his stomach, and he stopped dead in his tracks. The hybrid sinew in his legs tensed instantly and braced him against the floor like a startled tomcat, so intensely that the guards flanking him could not drag him forward and tripped a little on either side. It took only a second for that sudden fear to choke up the smooth-running machine that had been Duo Maxwell until then, but it took a few more seconds for it to pass enough to allow his legs to unclench. The Right Guard, who seemed to have become the only person in the whole city of Cinq to side with him, however little it might have been, waited for the obvious tension in him to wane and released him one cell down from the awaiting chair. The other guard recoiled dutifully as well, and they took their places at the wall, carefully observing the con man, left to approach the chair himself. Had they had as keen senses as a Neko, they would have heard the briefly whispered Hail Mary as the criminal stoned his face and walked up to that chair, knowing that it was much more than a chair.

It was a test of his willpower-of how much could spill over the dam before it started to splinter, and how long could it last-because he knew seeing that hienn face was more dangerous to him now than anything any persecution could throw his way. He could die at peace with his sin without seeing that face again, but he knew that if he were reminded of the traveler, he'd never be at peace with himself again. And he feared that more than death.

Duo turned the corner of the partition and into the brightly lit stall, squinting momentarily at the light glare that obscured the thick glass of who sat on the opposite side. He had made it his habit not to start any false hopes, but for a split-second he wished, prayed, and hoped that maybe his instincts had been mistaken, that his senses were clogged from some unseen allergen circulating in his cell's ventilation, that it was not going to be the traveler sitting on the other side of that glass. The knot remained in his stomach, this time curling slowly and steadily. He took a step forward, almost ready to sit down, when the angle of the light shifted on the thick glass and the glare disappeared.

He was just as blue-eyed as always, Duo noted sullenly, just as baby-faced as he'd been that night, lying unconscious in his arms as the last indulgence of Maxwell's Demon. The lighting in the room did well to accentuate the dark shadows hung beneath those eyes and cast a shadow from his head of dark brown hair over those sleep-deprived eyes. Not only that, but the innocence he'd seen in him, yearned to feel himself once again if only for a second, had seemingly begun going around under a new name in a new town-it was almost gone from his level stare and in its place was a calm concentration and resolution that honestly surprised the one-eared Neko. He hesitated a moment, just staring and listening to the handcuff chain rustle, then sat himself down, never breaking eye contact.

The traveler: the nameless organ in Duo's chest laughed, groaned in defeat. Heero Yuy: his heart let out a little neglected meow despite himself at the thought of how an eternity ago it had been a few days past and they had been sitting in a park, eating Japanese food. And that he shouldn't have done any of it if it was going to affect him like this. He sat down silently, not bothering to slide the chair forward, and stared back into Heero's eyes as if he wasn't really there, trying to ignore what he knew he could not.

He was fucked, basically.

In a single, unflinching move, Heero reached up and picked up the glossy black telephone off the jack and pressed it to his hienn ear without another word. He didn't look away, either, and seemingly was working just as hard to keep his composure in the bohemian's presence. In an odd way, it felt like they had just awoken from a long, dreamy, and unrealistic one-night stand only to encounter each other in the office, the forbidden night distending their thoughts while they stared. While Duo thought these morbid thoughts and many others, Heero waited patiently, just breathing quietly into the receiver. But there were cheerless things whispering in his head, too, be sure. Eventually, Duo's eyes glazed over lifelessly in defense and he picked up his own receiver on the other side, listening to the rhythm of his breathing with both his hienn ear and his Nekonese one.

Heero lingered for a second, the greeting he gave obviously weary. "Hey," he said quietly.

"Hey, yourself," Duo parroted inertly. To hear his own wearied voice didn't seem quite worth the effort anymore. Honestly, he expected there to follow a long, drawn-out silence in which you could hear the tensions churning, but very quickly, the innocence in Heero's eyes returned for a moment in the form of concern.

"You don't look well," he said, still hovering in a tone of voice beneath normal speech and above a whisper so soothing that it took the bohemian by surprise. He was sure that he was just over-analyzing it, he told himself; he was just very worn in all aspects and the traveler had previously held many sources of comfort for him. The only mistake would be to indulge in them now.

Duo managed to get out a dark, husky little snicker. "You don't look too hot, either."

"You haven't been sleeping."

"What's it to you?" Duo grumbled unenthusiastically, shielding his eyes with another apathetic expression. "Doesn't look like you've been resting your eyes much, either."

The traveler, dressed in his typical white shirt but without the tie this time and a few buttons loosened at the collar tiredly, replied evenly, in that same whispery voice, "Well, unlike you, I've got a reason not to sleep. I'm trying to help you, and you should be getting your rest. You need it more than I do." Maybe that tone was from the telephone, Duo thought. It was horribly distracting-it was trying to lull him to sleep, lull him into hesitation, into regret. He wanted to believe him when he said it that way that he could still turn around on this path, mistake or not, and have a shot at redemption somewhere behind him.

Oh, but Traveler, that's a lie, Duo reminded himself, drawing his face up into a sneering smile. It was the only one that hadn't been depleted in the last day. "Makes sense. You're the one on outside of the bars, after all. Nothing can stop you, when you think about it," the bohemian said, his voice drifting off as if going into a pleasant nostalgia, the hidden poison masked by that vacant smile. "Yeah, I forget how good life is to be when you're rich, white, and one-hundred percent hienn."

However, the effect Duo had meant by that comment dissolved uselessly, because Heero remained as concerned and collected as always, ignoring his sour sarcasm for what it was: another defense-mechanism. He raked his eyes discerningly over the blaze orange jumpsuit that had taken the place of Duo's usual black garb and instantly could pick out where the skin was stretching tightly over his collarbones and shoulders. He could only imagine what they'd been feeding him, if at all, and he could definitely picture a very stubborn bohemian refusing whatever they may have given him anyway. "You're going to waste away, Duo, if you don't eat or get some sleep," he said sternly. "Not even you could go on for long without nourishment."

The one-eared Neko's ikkunnoi twitched apathetically against the cold phone receiver. "Hn," he snorted, grinning falsely. "You forget-not human. It doesn't bother me."

"Duo," Heero suddenly said, his voice twisting up with something odd, "what happened?"

"Obviously, nothing good since I came to this god-forsaken city," the con man grumbled back, that fact blatantly obvious in his voice.

Duo could hear the sound of the traveler swallowing tensely and wetting his lips in the phone in that nervousness as he continued, almost with difficulty. "No, I meant…When did you start lying like that, Duo? You told me you couldn't stand liars-"

A wearied voice cut him off, unapologetic. "I'm not lying," he ground out.

Now, that innocence had withdrawn deep into the traveler's eyes and coming to the front was that disgruntled wariness, that skeptical frowning that signified his frustrations. He seemed very upset about something the bohemian had said in a dark, brooding way, though he shouldn't have been surprised, Duo grumbled to himself, if he couldn't tell the venomous tone of voice meant just for him-to keep him at bay.

"Nekonese metabolism is five times that of a human being's. They process energy at a rate not even the most physically-fit Olympian could imagine, and in comparison to the amount of time a man could survive on water alone, they need to consume large or frequent meals to have a source of energy to refuel themselves. An average man can survive on water exclusively for almost two weeks-the healthiest Neko will collapse dead within three days," Heero listed off flatly, drilling the facts, cold, quick, and precise, hoping to get it through the bohemian's skull even as he scowled at him unhappily.

"No matter how slim the percentage of Nekonese heritage, the significant effect on metabolism is still there. And you do need to eat, Duo-you need to get something in your stomach soon."

"Yeah, so what? Maybe I do," the criminal relented begrudgingly, crossing his arms and eyes flickering disinterestedly, "but that's got nothing to do with the issue of lying."

"You know exactly what I meant, Duo. You could go on like you are now for a few more days, yes, but you'll probably just pass away in your sleep from starvation before Friday morning, if you choose to continue."

Goddamn, but were those eyes blue, the con man thought wearily, willing himself to focus on something else than his truths and his accusations. He needed nothing now that would expose his own weaknesses to himself, and the traveler seemed hell-bent on exposing those flaws. "You're lying to yourself if you think you'll survive much longer like this, Duo," Heero said softly, the frustration retreating in similar fashion to allow the concern to surface for another breath of air.

The electronic replica of the voice traveling through the phone line that connected each side of the glass was soothing, a hint of morning-gravelly, and altogether enticing, advertising something that Duo had never had the pennies for. His entire life had been this assassination; Heero fit nowhere in his plan. That brief flicker in his apathetic expression beneath the stark lights let a little of that misery shine through for a moment, giving Duo's face time to stretch in the horrible façade of a smile.

"You're lying to yourself, too, Traveler, if you think that's what I'm planning on doing," he purred darkly in reply. "As delusional as always, aren't you? Well, you wouldn't be the same if you weren't, I suppose. You wouldn't have that innocent, Wonder Boy quality to you. It's just the price you pay to believe you know everything."

The silence that followed quickly filled up the void created by Duo's alienating words, masked by a charming purr, and the young Japanese man remained quiet and groping for a response. He found none that would do anything before the bohemian would shoot them down and watch them burn from the safety of his stubborn mind and simply kept his mouth shut. Not even the guards ringing the perimeter on either side of the glass could escape the tensions that saturated the room, spawned from the first moment the two saw each other. And it was even worse for them.

Three, four, five knots were appearing in the center of the Neko's stomach, almost keening out in pain, keening out to the concern in the hienn's eye, keening out in hunger. Yeah, he was starving, but he knew that his body would be able to hold out long enough to serve its purpose, thanks, ironically, to his largely human heritage, and he'd be able to die with the honor of trying to avenge his family and the shame of failing at it-not of starvation. He didn't need anymore blame from the traveler. Neither broke that eye contact as the silence descended. Maybe they were just too weary to take their eyes off something so familiar, too afraid to lose that reluctant source of comfort they had in each other in the strange sense of partners-in-crime, comrades, exclusive witnesses to a horrible event. Neither admitted it.

Heero calmly cleared his throat and spoke up again, pursuing another string of query, hoping this one wouldn't stray as badly as the last. "Why did you plead guilty, Duo?" he tried, dark blue eyes unreadable.

"I am guilty," Duo said simply. "There's no reason to try and deny what everyone could see for themselves. There's no reason to naively believe that I had a chance of any kind of presumed innocence, either-there's no reason for any of it other than to just accept it."

"So, you'll just accept what they've done to you?"

"Just think about it, alright? I shot Peacecraft-I didn't kill him, but I damn well shot him. It's not just that I attempted an assassination of a Senator, which is enough to earn a death sentence in their eyes, but I've fooled them all. I've tricked them, lied to them, suckered them in, and robbed them blind on top of aiming to put hot led between the eyes of their precious Senator-I'd say general America is pretty pissed with me. That's fucking obvious, traveler," he hissed back. "The Peacecrafts will win. There's no way they'll believe anything I say. It's the word of a sick, bigoted, loathsome human against mine. No contest. There's no reason to fight it."

"Yes, there is," that hienn voice whispered back.

"Damn it, knock that off," Duo growled abruptly, unable to listen to Heero's slightly nasal cadence of warmth and commiseration unwittingly trying to seduce him into his weaknesses. His eyebrows knitted tightly together as dull, stressful throb formed in the center of his brain. "Just wonderful," he gritted out, closing his eyes for a moment and heaving a sharp sigh. "There's that fucking headache I ordered."

"You're going to die like this, you know." Still whispering like that, breathing oh-so-quietly like some goddamn seducer. When had the roles changed? Since when was the traveler's voice seducing the bohemian? And why the fuck did he let it get under his skin?

"I got that memo a long time ago, traveler. I wrote it." He refused to open his eyes again, instead forcing himself to focus on the blackness that the backs of his eyelids provided, the lack of light that prevented him from seeing that face of innocence and determination and humanity twisting up in concern for him.

"They're going to kill you," Heero reminded him redundantly. "If they get their chance, they won't hesitate. They might have killed you by now had I not been there yesterday. You could have been walking down that long corridor, headed for the electric chair."

"Or they might have just taken me out back and shot me. The proper way to dispose of strays, you know. Less expensive to kill 'em that way-the animals who've forgotten their place."

Setback in the Yuy system. Duo had once again thwarted his question into a dark, morbid territory more suited to himself, constantly sidestepping his sympathies and shooting it down with accusations and insincerity. Heero, however, would not let it remain that way and quickly rebooted his determination to get through to the bohemian before it was too late, before his head lay displayed on the Peacecraft mantle as a sick hunting trophy or something, and he started yet another train of thought. He ignored the fact that the bohemian still stared at the back of his eyelids in a very unnerving fashion and spoke softly into the phone he held to his face.

"I've been taken into the custody of the police, given a stern eye, and released twice in the last week, and that was even after you'd managed to shake me off," he told Duo, almost conversational and casual, though the small chuckle was obviously strained and tense.

"Becoming a delinquent?" Duo purred playfully, arching a brow over his closed eyes. "Well, one piece of advice from me to you-Never pick up hitchhikers. Only more trouble in the end."

"The Judge talked with me after I'd been released by the authorities again, on his request, and informed me of his decision on considering my notebook as a piece of evidence. He contacted me by phone-before the press could find and tap my room, thank God-and he told me that he would agree to it and reconsider your case in the new light. He said that my term paper would be regarded as part of my testimony in your defense," the traveler narrated almost lightly, feeling as if the only way to communicate with Duo now that he was at the height of his bullheaded nature was to play at his own game of grins and deceptive laughter. But it just wasn't in him to smile falsely. "Of course, it seems inevitable that I'll be called to the stand. The Peacecrafts will use me to combat my own evidence-try and convince the judge that your behavior has corrupted and tainted me, causing me to act this way. If they can convince him of that, they'll no doubt go after the death sentence."

"Duh," Duo muttered lifelessly, letting his head roll backwards and his closed eyes gazed up towards the stark industrial lights. "Of course they will. Like a bunch of rabid dogs. I know their methods."

Heero fell into silence, an ashamed silence, while the images of Duo's narrative from that night on the side of the road flickered around in his mind, reminding him with each thought of a humanoid kitten writhing beneath a butane lighter that it had been his family that had been the cause of Duo's sufferings. The blue eyes that had ailed the bohemian lowered a little, that determination momentarily exchanging for something else. "I'm sorry," he said automatically, glancing back up to the one-eared Neko's face.

Still reclined in the chair as if dying slowly, taking one last stare into the sun, Duo shrugged unemotionally. "You don't need to be," he grumbled flatly. Before that choking silence descended again, he took it upon himself to turn the conversation down another path; Heero seemed a little caught up. "You got the video log."

"Huh? Oh, yeah. From the Isuzu, you mean," Heero responded quietly, unable to shake off the regretful expression he felt. He wet his lips again as they had long gone dry and readjusted his grip on the glossy black phone receiver.

"Yeah," the con man grunted vaguely back, smirking into the light and the darkness of his eyelids. "I compliment you on that. It's a nice touch. I wouldn't have thought of it. I really should have remembered to erase it, come to think of it."

"How did you know?"

"Saw you drop it. And it's been circulating the gossip hotlines between the bars. But since there's nothing else going on around here, I hear it all," Duo drawled smoothly, his tone rehearsed, his intention insincere and morose, and the impression overall depressing. By now, it was getting to the point where bohemian charms were withering away and even the guard against the wall on Heero's side could see the desperation seeping into the one-eared Neko like a poison. Just knowing Heero was there was wearing him thin.

So when Heero opened his mouth again and asked almost forlornly, "What are you trying to accomplish with all this, Duo?" the bohemian's mood took a very dark swing.

"You know exactly what I was trying to do," he growled back, now frowning. "I wanted to shoot Peacecraft full of lead until no one would be able to get the brain fluid stains outta the cement, but guess what? I fucked it up. Lucky for the cleaning maids, though."

"That's not all of it, Duo. I just don't understand what the hell anybody's going get out of this."

That finally caused Duo's façade to splinter and he sat up like a metal coil, making a severe face like the traveler had never seen. No, he'd never been on the receiving end on this kind of hostility. "You know what my problem with you has always been?" he purred dangerously, his voice laced thick with poison as his fingers clenched around the phone.

"No," Heero answered plainly. "I never quite understood why you never trusted me."

"You always have to ask those questions, those fucking questions. Always playing the agitator-always seeing if you can mess with my mind. You're your our own little revolutionary in slacks and a tie, aren'tcha, traveler? Well, I'll tell you, you're not going to understand or comprehend what the hell makes everyone tick. You're not meant to know everything, so you'd better stop sticking your nose in places you shouldn't, or one day you'll find you've sniffed your way into a guillotine and your neck outstretched," he warned venomously. "And most of all, why don't you just fuck off and find yourself another criminal to chop up and stick under your little microscope? There must be another one as foolish as me to take you in. That way you can leave me alone, like we agreed."

"I never agreed to that," Heero cut in. "I never agreed to watch you die."

"Contractual obligation, traveler, contractual obligation," Duo sing-songed darkly. "It's a bitch."

"Yeah, it's a bitch. It's impossibly stubborn, pig-headed, and difficult. I know; I've experienced those qualities before."

The inhumanly tinted, cat-slitted eyes narrowed at him from across the glass. "Sorry. I'm not obliged to listen to your little head trips anymore."

A long, very tired sigh leaked through Heero's chest at the last comment, the last embittered snarl turned his way, and he let his eyelids slip closed for more than an instant. He was tired. He was hungry. He was emotionally and mentally drained and ready to have an eclipsing loss of sanity and going mad knowing that it was not an option for him. But he knew he'd never be rested, well-fed, or emotionally sound if he just let Duo have his way, let him tighten his own noose with a smile and a, "Oh, well, I screwed up." He'd never sleep another night without Duo's ghost lying next to him, the death of another person weighing down on his conscience and suffocating him while he slept.

The bohemian's stare didn't waste its time on him for long, seconds later he was staring off into space with that disgruntled-but-holding-it-back look Heero had never enjoyed being at the receiving end of. He blinked wearily. It was untrue that the world's weight rode on one's shoulders-it was like one angry gravity pulling him down, hoping to grind him in the dirt if it could. He let that sigh out tiredly and slumped a little in his chair. "Why don't you just tell me what I did to make you hate me, Duo? It'd be a lot easier on me."

"It's not my fault," the con man ground out, strained and almost shaky. "You should have just stayed there in the hotel, you should have gone back home where you should have been all along. You should have just listened to me in the car and you wouldn't be going through his now. I've given you all I can afford to give you, traveler-what more do you want? Now quit sucking my blood!"

Heero's eyes flickered and innocence returned, only this time in the form of hopelessness, and it cut Duo to a quick he'd never remembered having.

He continued, hoping to explain the guilt-inducing eyes away. "I just can't…I just-" Duo shut his eyes tightly and the stress lines came out to play. He wet his dry lips as if it could help him find the right words. "I just can't have you around anymore. You don't have to go back home, but you have to go."

He didn't open his eyes again, didn't sit up in his seat, and spoke no more after that. The silence was their only companion for what felt like a great while, human staring at Neko and Neko staring off into a far-off memory, until the unheard timer went off only a second later and Heero was asked to terminate his visit and leave.

At the time, he didn't recognize it as possibly the last time he'd ever see Duo, so he stood obediently, like he might have done so only a few days before all this had happened, and gave the bohemian one last look, still clutching the phone receiver to the side of his face. "Get something to eat," he reminded him firmly, before he letting the phone fall back on the jack. The loss of the sound of the traveler's breathing at Duo's end came with a quick, indifferent 'click,' and then he walked away, escorted out by the other non-descript guards. His footsteps echoed right, left, right, left, down the corridor leading to the outside long after the door had been shut and bolted, and he sat alone in a little metal chair.

When the blue-eyed hienn on the other side of the looking glass was gone, Duo cracked his eyes open into the stark hundred-watt glare of the lights overhead. "Yeah," he breathed. "Ciao."

The third time walking through the Cinq PD was definitely the least enjoyable. The air fussed with speculations and accusations as the officers were currently discussing their unescorted guest as he passed by, on top of working noisily, phones ringing, keyboards clacking, papers shuffling, printers chugging. Not that he was paying any mind to any of them. His feet guided him toward the front door that would release him back into the arms of the city and into uncertainty, though his mind was already there and beyond. Heero was inevitably forced to replay the conversation again and again because it was becoming more and more absurd as he tried to grasp what had happened. He may have cracked some of the math that made Duo Maxwell's mind tick, but the equation that created it still eluded him. And it left him dead on his feet.

He felt like he'd kill for an aspirin by the time he was almost through the lobby and his hand was mere inches from the door handle. He really didn't expect to see one of Duo's guards walking quickly after, him waving to him and asking him politely to wait up for him, but he was.

Heero stopped at the door and the exhaustion that had been tailing him caught up. The urge to just pass out and never wake up again came a-knocking-he needed to straighten out his head and his weariness wasn't helping. He recognized the young officer as the one that had stood against the wall on Duo's side of the glass, and he was mildly curious to know what he could have done now, and why there was a little gray container clutched in his hand. He turned to face the man Duo knew only as Right Guard and asked politely, "Is there something I can do for you?"

The Right Guard stopped and offered him the small gray container he held, a modest, almost sheepish smile spread on his face. "Duo asked me bring you something," he said quietly, making sure no one would hear that he was doing a favor for the most rabidly talked about inmate in the PD. A few did, nonetheless, and they made suspicious faces for a moment before looking away and continuing with their work. Even when Heero gave him his own skeptical version of that look, more curious than anything, he still did not flinch, holding out the container. From inside came faint scratching and high-pitched squeaking.

He took the offered parcel and squinted at it discerningly.

"He also asked you to take good care of them. There's not much he can do for them, sitting in a cell all day," the Right Guard informed him-though it was all strange and cryptic to the traveler until he felt how the weight scrambled back and forth in the container and saw ripples of white fur through the air holes that had been punched into the plastic lid by what looked like a pair of feline teeth. He smiled again, though low murmured rumors began circulating around them even as they spoke. "Chow and Mein. Those are their names."

Heero was fairly certain that Duo had not come by a pair of lab mice scampering about in a corner of his cell, and the vague concept of the two arriving at his cell didn't bode well. He could easily guess what the intention had been when he'd been given the pair of rodents, and the humor in their names brought back a little memento of Duo Maxwell that hadn't been filled with slow-acting poison, a piece that had shared sunlight on a roof with him and smiled at the little rabbit's foot strung around his neck.

"Thanks," Heero said, staring off into space while he looked at the container.

"It's the least I could do-I mean, if no one's gonna help a guy out when he's down, then it might as well be me," the anonymous guard offered in return, smiling pleasantly. There were a few hints of black hanging beneath his eyes as well.

"Very true," he murmured faintly. Heero immediately shook off the deep thought that had overtaken him momentarily to extend his hand out, cradling the box of mice carefully under the other arm. "Thank you," he repeated sincerely, eyes glowing approvingly at the lack of bigotry in all he did. "I suppose you know mine, but I never got yours."

"Yeah," Right Guard agreed, slapping his own hand into the Japanese man's congenially. "Deputy Vega. It's been nice speaking with you in person." His brown eyes glittered unnaturally for a stony-faced guard, more like a ragtag sandlot boy who was complimenting the local teenage slugger for the ball he'd hit over the fence. It was a strange sort of admiration, but Heero didn't mind whatever would lift his spirits at this point. "You did a very honorable thing in my opinion, Mr. Yuy, and I'm just ashamed that more people couldn't have taken heart to what you said in that courtroom."

"Let's just hope it was enough people," Heero answered in all solemnity, shaking the guard's hand in return. The lingering weariness lifted momentarily. "You're a good man, Vega."

"Thank you. I appreciate that."

"Keep an eye on him for me? Don't let him do anything stupid?" the traveler asked unexpectedly, as their hands formally parted. Normally, the vulnerable expression that seeped from those words and slowly came to infect his eyes with the same tragic appearance might have frightened another man, especially ones as unfamiliar as the tall, robust-built Chicano man and sleep-exhausted Japanese man standing in the lobby were, but Vega took heart to it.

"I'll see to it," he said, smiling reliably.

An undisclosed distance and short time later the Japanese man known as Heero Yuy could be seen taking a brisk walk up the rust-pocked, circling white-washed staircase leading up to a small, inexpensive room he'd rented in a very inconspicuous brick apartment building squeezed between two larger somewhere downtown. The rhythmic sounds of his sneakers scuffing against the metallic stairs echoed behind him endlessly until he came to the pinnacle of the rickety staircase and followed a vacant corridor down to the door at the end. Through the security cameras, the green, grainy image of the courteous but taciturn tenant could be seen on the displays in the lobby downstairs, over the engorged torso of the landlord lounging in the nearby chair, snoring soundly. Light gleamed off the rectangular glass object cradled beneath his arm, though the television monitoring the security system in the unnamed apartment building had seen better days and the image was obscured enough to keep the identity of that item concealed.

Should one have been following the newcomer to Floor 8, Room 2-1 {the number 3 in the middle had long fallen off and been lost}, they would have seen it was an aquarium with a box of rodent feed, a little white wheel, water bowl, and bag of shreddings stuffed inside. The traveler turn fugitive glanced once over his shoulder out of sheer routine before leaning the aquarium against the door, his hip acting as a brace, so that he could fish the key out of his pocket. Successfully digging it out, twisting it in the stubborn lock, and nudging the chipped wooden door open, he readjusted his grip on the glass cage and stepped inside to the cramped little apartment that had been his residence for the last few days. Once again, his blue eyes raked the empty corridor and once satisfied, he nudged the door shut behind him with a shoe.

He slid the locks shut in rapid succession, making sure the gold-chain and deadbolt would solidly serve their purpose. He'd needed them once before to keep away an unwanted Peacecraft, but now it would take a little more than just a lock or two to make certain they would not sniff him out again. It was wondrous that he'd slipped out of the Cinq PD three times without being detained long enough for Relena to pick up wind of his trail. In a way, the frenzy of Duo's trial had brought him that freedom, making sure all the attention of the officers had been focused on him, but he knew that the bohemian's life was never worth losing just to avoid his adoptive family.

Sickness threatened to drag him back into depression, at the thought of the con man who'd brought him here, to this cramped, ragged, cluttered drafty apartment with newspapers scattered wildly about, piled on the bed, the table, the erratic television, and the faint smell of past suicides that would not be remedied by any air freshener. The man who had opened his eyes with a cigarette in one hand and the other in a stranger's pocket, snatching out his wallet. Yes, he thought of it as a definite change for the better. The dust assaulted his eyes, the drafts haunted him at night, and the harsh static that came out of the TV's left channel had nearly deafened him, but it they were pains that came with freedom. Freedom that had never seemed fathomable in a fleabag hotel, in the grips of outrageous scandal and dismal odds, but was one of the best fucking sensations of his life.

Heero set the acquisitions down on the rumpled bed spread, beside the plastic container where the pair of white mice sat inside, cautiously poking their twitchy noses out of the breathing holes that had been poked by Duo's teeth while sitting in a dingy empty cell across town. Once he'd set up all that he'd purchased from a local pet shop, a modest glow came to his face in pride and he scooped Chow and Mein out of their former cramped prison and into their new playgrounds. He reveled secretly in watching them stretch their legs in the glass aquarium contentedly and sniff around curiously. The traveler smiled as he picked up the aquarium and set it on top of the dresser, the window beside it swimming with sunlight. Heero leaned against the wall beside the aquarium and his deep blue hienn eyes glazed over in a simple bliss while freedom swelled silently in his chest.

And it would feel so much better when Duo had a piece of that freedom with him.

But at that same time, somewhere far from the undisclosed location where Heero stood and tapped at the glass, doused in nostalgia, his sister was not enjoying the same kind of euphoria. Instead of reveling in the simple joy of freedom, the looming, gray threat that had entered her mind the day Heero had thrown the deadbolt was coming heavily down on her again. It was clouding the air around her, and every breath she drew was filling her with more and more anxiety. The fact that the investigator who also occupied the same space of that awful humidity did not seem to notice it and therefore only fueled it was not making her day, either. At the moment, she was en route to the hospital to make another check on her father's condition in person-she'd grown tired of the phone trying to reassure her that her father was still alive. Sitting in the back of the motorcaded limousine had lost its appeal greatly since Heero had last ridden inside it, and Relena sat at the far side of the seat from the investigator, much like her brother had only days before.

He seemed so far off, so ghostlike-he almost hadn't felt like he was real. Like he was a stranger she'd found, somehow mistaking him for the adopted brother she'd been searching for. She had her legs crossed, like any decent Peacecraft lady, and her baby blue heels were tapping idly as she sighed out the window. His skin had been warm, but she still couldn't shake off the feeling that it had been cold under her fingertips. He'd been surreal, that she knew for sure, and now he was gone, untraceable and invisible. The Peacecraft daughter's cornflower blue eyes trailed along the side of the road, wondering if Heero had really died in the hotel room and his ghost had remained there for her to find.

Meanwhile, the investigator, identified as Marcella Lain, sat rattling off a summary of their progress thus far into the search for Heero Yuy.

"It's only a matter of time before we can begin to track down his spending and use it to trace him to his current residence. It's most likely he's set up camp in a hotel. As you know, he interrupted the Maxwell trial yesterday, but after being taken into custody by the police and pardoned by the judge himself, he vanished again. And today, reappeared again at the police station. It seems that he has a few admirers high up that have been greasing the wheels for his routine escapes. I have a man down at the station at this very moment questioning the officers who authorized his visit with Maxwell, Ms. Peacecraft. All the hotels are being scanned as well and put on watch for anyone matching Mr. Yuy's description. There's going to be random sweeps of all the lodging providers within in the city tonight. I believe we'll have narrowed his possible locations in a few hours, and we'll be moving into investigate by the evening, if all goes smoothly." She removed her professional glasses, disturbing a lock of her auburn hair from its strict bun. "But I have faith my crew will work efficiently."

Slowly, the blonde girl managed to collect her mind from the window and shake off her reprieve, but the sweet smile she saved for negations did not appear. "Duo Maxwell, correct? You said he was visiting him while in custody?" She did not really need the answer, but to repeat it out loud, making sure she'd heard correctly. "Then he-never mind what I say. I must quit rambling on," she said, touching her hand to her forehead and smoothing her bangs down absently.

"Don't worry. We will find your brother, Ms. Peacecraft, and I assure you, we will not harm him."

"He may struggle, though," Relena said distantly, remembering the image of the guards strewn about the room, black-eyed, groaning, and utterly surprised. "He may not cooperate. It seems he's trying to avoid being found very resolutely."

"Yes," the investigator chuckled good-humoredly. "It does seem that way. But it's unhealthy. We'll be able to find and protect him. He may not realize it, but the city has grown considerably more dangerous since the trial on your father's attempted assassination, and the threat is tripling everyday it drags on."

Almost oblivious to the last statement, too involved in a plot forming in her mind, Relena straightened up in her seat and asked politely, "Would it be possible for me to pay a visit to Duo Maxwell?"

"I assume you would want total confidentiality, correct, Ms. Peacecraft? I'm not sure how well secured Mr. Maxwell's cell would be at this moment. It may be too dangerous for you to even step foot outside anywhere near the Cinq PD, I'm afraid. There's been a mob of rioters swarming the place for the last few hours, and many more are gathering in other locations to protest as we speak," Ms. Lain explained calmly, her hands clasped in her lap upon an immaculately organized clipboard. "There've been many reports of serious injury-these people are not to be taken as simple protesters, they are very vehement Anti-Neko groups that do not advocate peaceful action as your family does, Ms. Peacecraft. They're going so far as to try and infiltrate the police department to kill Mr. Maxwell themselves."

"Rioters?" Relena asked incredulously. "Haven't they been put under some restraint? Surely the police are aware of this situation around the city as well."

The investigator, a picturesque levelheaded woman, folded her glasses and held them with the same grace as a highbred debutante. The vacant reassurance that filled her face tirelessly seemed to match that image. She certainly did not let anything faze her as she answered politely, "They are, but I'm afraid not much can be done at the moment. But I'd give them a few days before they blow over. The trial will be sentenced by then, anyway. The police force has been so occupied with just protecting the Cinq PD from intrusion by the Anti-Neko radicals that there's been no way to settle the other agitators around the city. I advise you to stay safely away from them, Ms. Peacecraft."

"I don't see any reason I should fear them so much to change my schedule. I want to speak with Duo Maxwell myself," Relena stated firmly, turning her even blue-eyed gaze towards the window again. But as the distinct feeling of cold began forming beneath her fingertips, she clasped her hands together and the tenacity in her eyes faded a shade. "If anyone can tell us where Heero has gone, it'll be him. At any rate, I should meet this infamous con man." She did not speak out loud the ending of that thought-The con man who'd turned her brother into a passionate ghost she hardly recognized.

Outside the sun crawled between skyscrapers, almost as if searching for something it had lost.

It was 5:47 PM on the eve of Duo Maxwell's sentencing and the Peacecraft attorney was currently shuffling his papers in his high-rise work office.

At roughly 7 o'clock, Heero Yuy could not ignore the cavernous growl in his stomach and pulled himself from the retreat of his unseen apartment to take a stroll towards a cheap restaurant, leaving the pair of mice he'd been tending all afternoon while scanning the news channels to curl up in their respective corners and doze. Door locked and corridor patrolled and empty and apartment building generally idle, he felt safe enough to venture back out into the open air, where his scent might be thrown on the wind to the hired Peacecraft noses that kept low to the ground. He'd taken the black baseball cap he'd bought and when he strolled inconspicuously into a noodle shop, he discovered a small wad of bills in his back pocket. While still sitting at the counter in a Asian restaurant, the bowl once filled with udon emptied and steam rising from the kitchen in back, he unfolded the money and recognized it as the change from the gas station one-day's drive outside Cinq. He rubbed the green paper between his fingers, silently heartbroken, and finally laid down some to pay his bill. He left with a heavy sigh and stepped back out into the streets at 7:44, when the sun had bent down to pick up the coins it had dropped and the sky was a light haze of lavender gray.

It was very peaceful, very serene, and the sunset seemed so simplistically beautiful and right to Heero, even with the smoke of the rioters' bon fires rising against the skyline.

At 8:15, Miss Relena Peacecraft bent down and kissed her father's forehead before he was wheeled off to be escorted to a more secure recovery home in the country. Somewhere far from the angered cries and assassins of the city. The sound of her mother's heels clicking away, along with many other guards, pushing her father echoed down the hallways in a wheelchair, growing fainter and fainter until they were like the sighs of a ghost. She jumped slightly when Pagan told her quietly that it was time to go, nodded sweetly, and followed him in the opposite direction to the back parking lot, where she slid into the back of a low-profile vehicle and rolled up the tinted window.

At 8:56 PM (which in reality was 9:01; his wristwatch was a little slow), Heero Yuy, incognito, strolled back onto his desired street after spending some time wandering through the parks at sunset, now that the lavender light had solidified into a hard shell of night dotted with stars. They glowed dimly tonight. Maybe because the air was filled with more smoke than usual tonight, Heero thought hazily, watching his sneaker feet led him back to his hiding place. He trudged back up to his room, shook the keys in the defective doorknob, and again made sure the corridor remained empty while he shut door behind him. He brought Chow and Mein a few cold noodles and they quickly went to work nibbling it down, huddled together.

Time trudged along, and brother and sister on opposite sides of the same city in turmoil were no more the wiser to the other's activities or locations. Only one of them cared where the other was at the moment, and that one was walking primly down a sterile white cement brick hallway, quickly approaching the first of a series of many barred doors that would need to be unlocked by the police officer escorting her. Nearing 10 o'clock, all the necessary paperwork had been filled out and the Peacecraft daughter was approaching Duo Maxwell's cell in her pair of baby blue heels.

Meanwhile, Heero Yuy sat on the flimsy twin-sized bed shoved up to the window, the muted television's colors playing across his face without a noise. The lab mice were curled up again, grooming themselves and dozing intermittently. The traveler leaned up against the windowsill and the cold glass, watching the globes of color and headlights scintillate across the city. He thought of ice cream, of his first day of school, of linear equations-anything but the bohemian. And inevitably, he did anyway.

"Come on, Duo," he whispered against the glass, fogging the glow of city lights with a sigh. "How much do you want me to suffer?"

When no one answered, thankfully, he lifted his head from the glass to glance back at the television screen, expectant of the aforementioned con man's face displayed across the screen. It wasn't-unless he'd recently starred in a car commercial. Preparing to roll over and fall into a dismal pantomime of sleep, Heero almost missed the dim figure moving toward the speck of cigarette burning pink that meant his landlord was having a good evening smoke. He was decked out in a formal, pressed suit, and followed by a pair of associates, one a woman in a tight bun and the other concealed by a dark hat. The point of this formation stopped and started speaking with the rotund man leaning against the doorway to the apartment building. Heero leaned back against the glass, pressing his forehead tight to the window to make the awkward angle so that he'd be able to see the two discussing. The landlord pinched the cigarette between his pasty fingers and lifted it away to jab up in the direction of Heero's window. The strange man's eyes followed and he saw his stone-set face staring up into his window.

That almost made him want to vomit.

While Heero scrambled frantically out of bed, violently kicking off the sheet and launching himself towards his jeans lying on the floor with a surprised, strangled grunt, the formation of investigators and one plainclothes officer moved inside the door, leaving the landlord to lackadaisically finish his cheap Newport. Eight meager floors separated them, and Heero cursed loudly, lopsidedly chucking on his jacket and throwing the backpack strap over his shoulder. Dashing across the room in his sock-clad feet, he remembered to throw the dead bolt and once he'd picked up the aquarium, he threw the dresser down across the door. He was panting, heart drumming and picking up speed, and fully filled with adrenaline. He'd almost missed it, in a sick way. The last time he'd been filled with such a rush, so much anxiety it'd been on the side of the road, staring at Duo in the moonlight, but this time it was more serious. He was not going to get caught, not now! Any other week than this one, any other day! But not now!

Heero ran back to the window where he'd sat in reverie for the last half hour, completely weighed down, backpack over his shoulder, aquarium under one arm, toeing his shoes on as his other arm clawed at the window lock. "Fuck you, fuck you, open!" he hissed, much more panicked than he'd realized. His head whipped around at the sound of the calm rapping at his door.

"Mr. Yuy?"

The elevator wasn't supposed to be fixed. They shouldn't have been here for another four minutes.

"Open, you fucking piece of shit!" Heero growled under his breath, which was a miracle because he felt his entire chest caving in on him, closing around his frantic lungs. "Just this one time, could things just go the way I plan?!" he muttered harshly when the rusty lock turned but the window proved to be jammed shut.

Again, that calm, inquiring rhythm returned, a decibel louder. One, two, three warning knocks. "Mr. Yuy, are you there?" The television glowed and danced like colored flame silently beside the fallen dresser blockading the door. The voice of the encroacher came again, this time subtly more forceful. "I would like you to open the door, Mr. Yuy. There are some important things we need to discuss."

His short fingernails ached from clawing at the rusty metal lock and his arm strained against the window stuck fast, stomping his foot in frustration as it refused to budge.

"Mr. Yuy, are you there?"

He wanted to scream, "No, I'm not!" and get them to leave him the hell alone, but to stop one hired by a Peacecraft was the equivalent of trying to sway the Secret Service to neglect their duties.

While his heartbeat took a straight ladder up into the lump in his throat, Heero was forced to toss the aquarium back down onto the rumpled bedspread to free his other arm. The glass case flopped safely down, rattling the wood shavings to fly and the two sleeping creatures inside to stir. A hazy black and white clip played on the news. The knock came again, insincerely asking permission to come inside, and Heero lunged back at the window frame with all his weight focused on forcing the window open, knuckles whitening and his heart cheering him on in a scream of beats from within the top of his throat. His entire body was lunging beneath the stubborn window, bending like a bamboo reed under too much pressure. As he opened his mouth to suck in a breath, his fingers burning red from exertion and knuckles bone white, the window groaned and relented and jumped a foot, exposing open air. Open air that led to a metal fire escape balcony.

Heero narrowed his eyes over his shoulder at the door, catching his flighty breath, while the sound of the landlord's daughter, and practical indentured servant, muttering something under her disinterested teenage breath and a distinct metallic jangle that could only be a delivered pair of keys. Another growl rolled out of him as he frustratedly slammed his palms under the window until it finally cooperated and was thrown completely open.

Knock, knock, knock.

"He's not answering, but he's there. We'll have to move quickly," the man behind the door whispered, rattling the key forcefully in the lock.

"Yes, it's obvious he's not cooperating," the auburn-haired investigator Heero did not know muttered along side the other associate, eluding to the time she'd spent with Peacecraft's daughter that previous afternoon-something Heero was not aware of nor cared about as he lunged back and snatched up the aquarium under his arm and hurriedly climbed through the window frame. Moving quickly with a backpack and cradling a glass cage was not the easiest to do when your mind raced with adrenaline and your heart would not stop reminding you just how badly panicked you were.

The toe of his shoe caught on the windowsill as he passed through and he staggered toward the railing, but was already lunging down the winding staircases too quickly to register it, moving so fast the stream rising from his breath trailed behind him, rattling the sleeping rodents inside as he flew around another corner and down another flight of steep metal stairs. The sound of the door buckling loudly as it slammed against the dresser laid across it was fading into the haze of adrenaline and as Heero drew closer and closer to the bottom of the fire escape, his feet clamoring loudly on the rickety structure.

The landlord, who now was at the end of his Newport and just about to take a finishing draw while he mused vaguely on his future (what he would do tomorrow morning-glazed or powdered pastry 'twas the question), dimly turned his head toward the clattering noise descending toward the street. Like a disinterested cow, he simply grunted in acknowledgement as his newest tenant sprinted down the last flight on the fire escape. He slowly inhaled the last drag, hoping it'd last to serve as popcorn for his new found entertainment. The short, dark-haired kid had something hooked under his arm and distress etched in his face. Panting and gasping for breath out of sheer frenzy, his eyes ran dreadfully over the square hole in the floor that led to the sliding ladder at the end of the line. He knew it only reached so far, the landlord reveled grimily, he could tell from that gnarled-up face he made and he was deliberating how to jump down.

The landlord really didn't care whether he'd be paid-many a times the same situation had repeated itself. He smoked his cigarette until it was meaningless and let it drop, lifeless, to the cement and acquainted it with the toe of his shoe. If he'd chalked up all the times starched suits and police came walking up to his door and criminals had been chased out of his apartment building, well, he'd have a lot of chalk and not a lot of blackboard peeking through. Depended on the size of that blackboard though, he thought to himself as he strolled back inside, not bothering to finish the little drama show unfolding in the street.

Heero's momentum was enough to carry him through and he blindly gripped the aquarium tighter to his chest and hopped onto the sliding ladder with a fearful grunt of anticipation, knowing that the ladder would shoot out beneath him but doing it anyway. Duo owed him a lot for what he did for his sake-being afraid of heights, and all. He didn't acknowledge the splintering noise seven floors above as the door collapsed in over the boot of the third investigator and the locks ripped violently from their holdings and clattered to the floor. Only the horrible rhythm of the ladder clamoring and rattling beneath him bothered him much, and after a few seconds of what felt like horrible freefall, the ladder stuck fast and jolted him to the bone. Wasting no time, Heero's adrenaline made him let go of the rusted metal and he fell to the ground below. For a moment, his feet remained squarely planted on the cement, but the sheer momentum knocked him forward and he staggered onto his knees, still clutching the aquarium safely.

Heero groaned as he staggered back up, flushed red and white-knuckled, and started sprinting down the sidewalk with absolute abandon, one half-tied shoe flopping on his foot as he just ran like Duo had no tomorrow.

[1] "Such is life."