Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The One-Eared Neko ❯ THE WALKING MAN ( Chapter 22 )

Part 22 THE WALKING MAN

But the cat came back, the very next day

They thought he was a goner

But the cat came back, the very next day

He just couldn't stay away

The man around the corner swore he'd kill the cat on sight.

He loaded up his shotgun with nails and dynamite

He waited and he waited for the cat to come around

Ninety-seven pieces of the man is all they found.

But the cat came back, the very next day

They thought he was a goner

But the cat came back, the very next day.

He just couldn't stay away

Away, away, yea, yea, yea

-- Excerpt from "The Cat Came Back", folk song by Harry S. Miller

By barely five minutes past seven in the morning the protestors had found their way back to the courthouse, toting their homemade signs promoting a conservative, good, segregated America along with them en masse. At that time, the city of Cinq was still sleeping in the cool, drowsy grey warmth that proceeded the vibrant color painting of sunrise on the gleaming buildings, the masses of commuters, and, on this particular day, the indignant expression written across the face of each rioter shaking a rallying fist at the police station, each protestor now standing outside the blocked-off doors of the courthouse. It was a chill morning while the sun slept in beneath a high, smoky layer of clouds and only patches of bright orange sunlight peered through, giving the illusion light was being swallowed slowly by the haze. The streets continued to bustle with the usual lifeblood of cars passing this way and that, coffee shops opening up to drowsy workers, and teenagers loitering their Peace Commemoration holiday away on the street corners and in the parks.

Heero watched all this, across the street from the courthouse, without the same distant exhaustion he'd had before, the wounds of Duo's claws from pushing him away still fresh back then. But they'd scarred over a little and now everything seemed all the more electric and decisive-he could sense every second of Duo's life ticking away as he watched this man hail a taxicab, then that couple deliberate at a newsstand, then that woman dialing her cellphone as she navigated through the sidewalk crowds. The sense of time passing in such a substantial way was as painful as it was necessary, and it was what he would have to deal with if he wanted to spend any more of that fleeting time with the bohemian. He'd never felt this while he'd been back home, writing dully and walking the same sheltered path on the same quiet streets; he'd never had the distinct sensation of a noose tightening around him a little every second, the sensation of Duo's mortality and, now, the disturbing awareness his own. He'd never wondered before how'd he be able to live from one day to the next, or if he'd want to anymore, should something drastic happen. But he had thought of the possibility he wouldn't succeed and envisioned sickly how devastating it would be to turn on the television and find a headline declaring Duo Maxwell executed, dead and gone, and good riddance to him.

It hadn't been the most uplifting thought, either.

He moved forward with that sense of mortality pushing him along the ground, his head no longer in the despairing haze it'd been before, but painfully counting the seconds off, sharply aware of everything, of every disparaging word that floated over the din of voices. His shoes were turning tattered and worn, and the knees of his jeans had unraveled a little, and he pushed along through the crowd with his head held up almost completely unnoticed. The mass of people was completely dumfounding, to realize just how many had gotten up earlier to come chant damnation and curses upon a man than they would have had they gone to work that day. While signs bore their painted messages of bigotry and the arms of the people continued to wave them in the air, Heero Yuy nudged his way inconspicuously through the mass, his hands loose and ready at his side.

Past the lights and microphones and cameramen scattered through the crowd that hadn't made it in time to secure a spot inside, past the clusters of officers trying to police the crowd out of the street, past the middle-aged cheerleaders of hate as they opened up their mouth. To the tune of "Hey, no, we won't go," someone was chanting, "Maxwell, go to hell!" and somewhere in the crowd someone had started clapping along.

He moved through the crowd, and up and away from it. From overhead, perhaps from the viewpoint of the office workers, who stood at the windows on the twentieth, thirtieth floor, watching the crowd fill the entire street, cutting off traffic like a suffocating fist, you could see the figure of one man walking up the steps. He'd gotten through the police line holding the crowd back from rushing the doors with a nod to one of the officers and a reassuring hand on his shoulder in return. A few seconds later, a ripple of recognition went through the crowd and a low noise of disapproval came hurtling at Heero's back. They called him a traitor to the honorable line of Peacecrafts, an advocate of bestiality, and a criminal just as loathsome as Duo Maxwell himself, you hear?-as despicable as Maxwell's Demon himself! And the men at the edge of this crowd, held back by the police, began to taunt him. From somewhere someone threw a bottle at his feet and it burst against his heel with the inciting sound of shattering glass.

Heero kept walking.

Inside, the courthouse was seemingly just as chaotic as outside. All along the rim of the room the black hulks of cameras loomed, sleeping on their tripods while they waited and while their operators scrambled back and forth, coffee cups in hand and constantly stepping on other cameramen's toes. The seats were impossible to see through the masses of people occupying them in the relatively large courtroom and they were constantly shifting, moving, turning, talking, making it one ocean-like mass. The Peacecraft attorney, Mr. Monsett, could be talking with the rest of the Peacecraft family, assembled in a group near to the plaintiff desk, and discussing something cheerfully with Mrs. Peacecraft herself, while a pair of young nieces sat beside her and played with a doll one had taken with.

The oldest brother stood beside Mr. Monsett on the opposite side of the gate and listened quietly. Heero had rarely ever seen him in all the time he'd been taken care of by the Peacecraft family-he had already gone off to military school when Heero's parents had died and spent a few years overseas. Photographs and family stories were all that he'd ever heard of the eldest brother, aside from the day he'd been dragged along to his college graduation. He was the first to notice Heero's entrance and gave him a look, recognizing him very slowly and only from images from newscasts. His eyes followed him as he quietly took a seat and sat waiting, without a word, and then turned to the attorney with inaudible words on his lips.

A moment later Mr. Monsett's eyes found the disowned Peacecraft and gave him a professional smile that almost seemed to bid him good day and good luck trying anything. Sitting down on the defendant side, the Japanese man tried to ignore it for a few moments, before he impulsively turned his head toward the attorney. Heero gave him his best Duo impersonation and shot him a sneering grin to spite that expression off his face. It worked well enough to make the attorney pause uncertainly, very unprepared to see the sarcastic smile on such a normally stoic face, and turned back to chatting with the Peacecrafts on the other side of the room.

"My, that was a very unfriendly gesture," someone scolded playfully from behind, with a very musical lilt to her mischievous tone. "I didn't think you were capable of such hostility. You seemed so mild and soft most of the time, but you must truly have a little criminal in you, too. It appears war does bring out the best and the worst in the people."

Heero didn't need to turn his head to identify the voice and simply let a sigh go through his body, calming him as he asked plainly, "You know we're not in a war, Dorothy. We haven't been for over seventy-five years." He didn't turn to look at her, and the sound of her velvet laughter set to the tattoo of her shoes could be heard as she walked around the end of the pew were Heero sat and down the row a little ways to sit down calmly beside him.

She appeared as she had outside the bohemian's cell, hair tightly bound back into a precise ponytail an accenting her brows and glowing powder blue eyes, and straightened the hem of her business suit skirt once she had settled, sitting regally. Heero had only seen her in the dim illumination of Vega's kitchen, clad in nondescript sweats, but this image of Dorothy more accurately portrayed the cunning accuracy of her mind and tongue. She parted her lips with a little conspiratory laugh and a dark choice in lipstick color.

"Of course not. It just hasn't started yet," Dorothy said confidently, glancing over to him to meet his gaze.

"There will be no war," Heero replied, calculating with his eyes in return to hers which constantly seemed to sweeping him over, picking out flaws and strengths indiscriminately and smirking at each of them.

"If the Peacecrafts win, no." Her lips played softly into a smile as if he were so simply idealistic it was almost laughable.

Where the traveler normally would have made a face, perhaps a scowl or frown, he just leaned back into his seat and let it go, forcing himself not to let anything else crawl beneath his skin at a time like this. "What are you doing here anyway, Dorothy? And how did you get here before me?"

"Most people in this city drive, Heero Yuy. You're oddly one of the very few I've ever seen give the effort to actually walk somewhere. And to answer your other question, we're both here for the same reason. I may not be involved with the subject as you are, but I share a mutual interest in Maxwell's Demon with you." She arched an eyebrow and glanced over at him, noticing his stare remained on the side of her face. Mostly because it was the only way for him to completely block out the snippets of conversations directed at himself collecting from all corners of the room. "I am not here for personal reasons, though I would be, were I not already here for a few business affairs."

"And what would that be? Ambulance-chasing?" Heero drawled flatly. "Waiting for me to try and 'bite the bullet', Dorothy?"

"My, I never thought you were capable of such cynical humor, either. You must be spending too much time around Duo," she said with a laugh. "People say he's a bad influence, you must know."

"Know, and don't care," he answered curtly, but sharply enough to make sure anyone listening into his conversation would distinctly hear it. "They don't know him as I do, therefore they don't know what they're talking about when they try to patronize me. If there's any example that people are born hypocrites, it's them."

"You behave more and more like him with every word," Dorothy marveled quietly, simply giving a little sigh of admiration and slinging one of her legs over the other in a very poised manner. "You either must be really determined about your situation, or just so stubborn you won't change your course. From the way Duo spoke of you, I believe it's probably the latter of the two." She drummed her black-tipped fingers on her thigh after she folded her hands politely on it, her pale blue eyes positively glowing. She seemed highly entertained by everything Heero had to say and the disgruntled face he often made when he said it.

He snorted and turned his attention back towards the brightly illuminated front of the courthouse, the polish on the looming Judge's bench and witness stand gleaming especially radiantly and ominously that day. He did what had become natural to him lately when he found himself in precarious company: he asked a question and took the attention off himself. "What kind of business would send you here, Dorothy?"

"A special interest group," she answered vaguely, turning her eyes also towards the front of the crowded, clamorous room and watching the crisscrossing paths of the attorney and a few of the security guards. "They've asked me to do a little reconnaissance work, if you will, on your little troublemaker and I couldn't have missed the poor man's trial, now could I have?"

"He's not my troublemaker," Heero answered plainly, his weariness shining through his groomed appearance for a moment. "He's my ordeal, my tribulation."

The pale-skinned Catalonia woman smiled to herself with a soft purr. "What a way to prove oneself."

Again, Heero didn't exactly appreciate the direction in the conversation Dorothy's voice intoned and fended it off with his questioning. "And what purpose exactly does this 'reconnaissance work' of yours serve?"

"I'm afraid I'm not disposed to tell you that Heero Yuy. But I might reconsider if you would be so kind as to what purpose you believe that little notebook of yours will serve here, during the mistrial of the century? As a final memoir, perhaps? Or a posthumous account of the finest criminal of our time? Tell me when I guess correctly."

He turned an unforgiving eye on her, staring harshly, almost daring her to challenge his word before he even spoke it. "Duo will not die, I'll make sure of it. He'll come through this alive and kicking like he always does."

This time she did not laugh glowingly, smirk knowingly, or even give that mischievous purring lilt to her voice, and turned solemn blue eyes to his own in return, almost pupil-less and vacant. "That'll depend mostly on you, then, Heero Yuy-won't it?"

"Ti-i-i-ime is on my side… yes, it is," sang the tragic mockingbird. Through the entire empty cellblock, the entire cold stone cavity that held the once untouchable, once elusive and free bohemian, the sound of the cheerless songbird echoed off the sterile whitewashed concrete. "Ti-i-i-ime is on my side-Oh, yes, it is."

Slowly, the unanswered voice faded off into exhaustion and plain disinterest, as even the notes of the music that had before been his escape from the problematic life he led started to turn sour in his mouth and taste like little bits of his the corpse he was to become very soon.

Barefooted and boots kicked off into some corner-did it matter where anymore, really?-Duo shifted his weight forward in a tired slump, resting his forehead against the cold metal of the bars without concern that they were only nurturing the dull headache lurking low in his brain. It wasn't really a stir-crazy insanity just yet-he had to yet start babbling and scratching at the walls before he sunk to that particular low-but it was a madness of its own. The bars would only hold him if he wanted them to and undoubtedly ten or twenty minutes of tugging would have provided him a neat, bohemian-sized gap, but it wasn't the police force just down the corridor and through the door that kept him there; they posed no threat to him aside from a bullet wound or two that would heal in little under a single day. It was not a pair of handcuffs or a gun pointed at his head, it was his own goddamn conscience that made the bohemian dwell in imprisonment, until he would be dragged away to meet his maker. And he considered that being to be a very sick man, giving him such a strong dissenting, criminal inclination and then endowing him with a stonewalled conscience and watching him swing agonizingly between the two. Giving him the claws to kill with, and then the soft, bleeding heart to regret with.

Eight o'clock morning sunlight eventually made its way across the city of Cinq and, yes, even into the cell of the infamous Maxwell's Demon, and Duo wished he hadn't used up his stash of cigarettes so early on. Wonderful. He could count the minutes off oh-so-joyously now, like picking thorns out of his eyes, he thought sullenly, slinging his arms through the bar again and letting them fall limp and his face pinion between the steel bars. A long, lackluster sigh breezed up from the pit of his belly and he tiredly let it out, his eyelids drooping wearily. He curled back his lip unhappily, baring a canine.

"I know now there are definitely some things worse than sitting in a stuffy schoolroom," Duo grumbled, his feline ear flicking idly back and forth against the bars. "Hell, and this place. And lucky me, I'll get to see both of them."

Click.

It took a moment for the far-off sound of a knob twisting on and the humming whine of a television heating up and voices from the screen coming through the speakers to make it through the bolted door at the end of the corridor, past the empty cells, and through Duo's overwhelming boredom and misery to his ears. And even then, he took a few seconds to actually recognize the noise. His ikkunnoi flashed up at attention and he could feel the mild ache in the scar tissue where the other had once been attached that came occasionally, but barely paid it any attention as he lunged to the side of the cell nearest to the door, trying to hear more clearly. Distant, muffled sounds of chairs scraping, maybe being gathered around the television, and voices of officers melding together in an indecipherable babble frustrated him more than anything. He pressed his face against the bar, his Nekonese ear twitching out in the corridor, trying to pick up the electronic voices from the television nearly two hundred feet away, beyond a heavy, bolted door, and started hissing curses under his breath.

"Fucking hienn," he snapped, "Just break out the goddamn popcorn and shut up already! Can't hear a damn thing they're saying, and it's my trial, for Christ's sakes!"

Then, in what seemed like the most impatient few seconds he'd ever experienced, the voices settled down and the tinny voice of the newscaster became faint, but comprehensible over the din, giving a quick narration of the scene outside the courthouse. Biting his lip, he craned against the wall, the steel metal bars that held him, almost holding his breath as he listened. So when he heard a doorknob noisily, obnoxiously clanking and twisting open on the opposite end of the corridor, he snapped his head toward the sound and gave it a venomous sneer, promising a violent and painful death. A low, visceral growl rolled out of his mouth at the sound of the footsteps drawing closer until a familiar scent finally came to him, easy to pick out between the dull smell of cement and white paint.

He flattened his ear cautiously as he watched the Right Guard, the man Heero Yuy knew as Vega, come to a halt just outside his cell. Automatic defense mechanisms told him to be wary anyway and he tensed himself out of instinct, taking a small step back away from the bars. His eyes, weighed down physically by dark circles and mentally by a wounded, broken pride, swept over the only deputy in the entire department he'd grown to trust, the one that wasn't supposed to arrive for his shift for another twelve hours.

His face was darkened with the traces of morning stubble and his dark hair was a little out of place. The fragrance of thick, black coffee was coming off him in droves and the jacket and pair of old jeans he wore made him look so much like an average hienn in the morning that early in the morning that he was almost reluctant to recognize him. But the sympathetic brown eyes were the same and that was enough to make Duo loosen up a little, though he still stared bizarrely at him. Vega silently smiled at the criminal and shoved the keys he'd used to sneak in the back way before his shift into his pant pocket. Beneath his zipped up jacket there was an awkward lump that even Maxwell's Demon's heightened senses couldn't identify. Without the exchange of one word, Vega unzipped the beat up jacket and pulled out the small, boxy radio and stuck it between the bars.

Duo took it out of his hands without a second's thought, bit around the top of the antenna and pulled the radio to extend it, and started twisting the dial so furiously he might have unintentionally twisted it clean off if he hadn't found the news broadcast in a few seconds. The one-eared Neko remembered to breath sometime between hunkering down on the floor where the reception was best, turning the antenna back and forth, and hunching over the radio in absolute concentration. The tragic mockingbird sat with the tiny, almost dated radio crackling in his lap, the sounds from inside the distant Cinq Court of Law distorted but just as powerful coming from miles away over the wavelengths. It seemed so strange that the little tinny, artificial voices pouring from that radio could decide his fate in a deadly real way.

It was almost like an inescapable dream and the tragic mockingbird became lost in that dream, real or not, staring into the radio dial and almost into the courtroom itself, scanning the audience on bated breath.

The reporter's detailing voice hushed suddenly as the sound of a gavel took command over the noisy room.

"Good morning. Now, order, order-and please try and refrain from any picture taking, also. I will allow the cameras to be rolling at all times, but I request that every one please keep as quiet as possible. Now, Mr. Monsett, if you have anything else you would like to say before the prosecution rests, do it now, otherwise I'll announce the verdict and sentencing for Mr. Maxwell and this ordeal can be over and we can go home before things get out of hand outside, as you're all aware of, I'm sure…"

The Peacecraft attorney folded his hands with assurance on the table, giving a companionable smile as he nodded a, "Yes, Your Honor," before standing up, displaying the finely groomed business suit he wore. "I'd like to call one final witness, but first would you care to tell us about your decision on Mr. Yuy's accusations?"

"Yes, well," the judge started, sagely adjusting his glasses while he seemingly squinted at some papers on his desk, "I decided to accept the manuscript he presented to this court two days ago, though it was presented in a very inappropriate manner, and since that time I've reviewed it many times over. I've also taken the time to view the video log he brought forth, and, keeping in mind this is an unprecedented case, I can see no reason they shouldn't be considered as relevant to this case and used to the defense of Mr. Maxwell. I understand that the circumstances do not provide Mr. Maxwell with the benefits of an American citizen in court, and in a normal situation I might have discarded the new evidence, but there indeed is some valuable insight in what Mr. Yuy presented, and this is no run of the mill trial, so I have taken it into careful consideration. So the prosecution must understand Mr. Maxwell now has an interesting argument for his defense. You may call your witness now, Mr. Monsett."

The attorney's eyes hardened a hair's breadth. He nodded despite it, still smiling pleasantly, and said graciously, "Yes, your Honor." His head turned back towards the overfull crowd, followed in turn by tens of cameras each sending live broadcasts to the public the image of the prim and neat attorney twisting to face them, and his eyes settled on one audience member at the end of one of the rows, his eyes matching his in return with an unreadable blue stare. Beside him sat the relatively unknown Catalonia woman, who smiled enigmatically when the attorney called out, "The prosecution calls Heero Yuy to the stand," and the Japanese man stood from his seat without hesitation. The heat of every gaze, of every glaring light bulb, of every scorning former family member in the room fell on him for one very heavy moment while he let out a slow breath, feeling the weight on his shoulder start digging in for the first real time. Meanwhile the silence made the ticking dual clock of mortality all the louder in his head.

Before he moved away from his seat, Dorothy tilted her head at the traveler with that same quiet smirk on her face, and whispered to him. "Remember, Heero Yuy, even the ordeals of ordinary men have their repercussions. What you do today will not be contained just in this room," she purred, only loudly enough to carry to the ears that she chose. "It will reverberate for years and years to come."

When he peered at her from the corner of her eye before moving, the grin widened inexplicably. "So do your best," she added with a furtive slight winking, almost taunting him on. He looked at her for another fraction of a second, warning her in no uncertain terms that if she threatened his attempt to save Duo or the con man himself in any way, he'd consider her equal to the Peacecrafts and deal with her as well. Dorothy got the message, and her wry grin only grew in response. He wasted no more time on her and turned back toward the aisle. As it did in all of the most important events of his life, Heero felt like he was moving in a slow eddy of time as he began to approach to the stand, like all the suspicions and bigoted thoughts had collected in the walkway like a quicksand sludge and the further he went, the more difficult it became to keep his calm.

If Heero Yuy could have been described in the past, during every gunshot being fired, every bounty hunter sending his boot into Duo's gut, during every assassination attempt and every investigator knocking on his door, as relatively collected and levelheaded, now he was as nervous as a caged bird. His heart was hammering without permission when he passed the point of no return. Once the gate swung shut behind him, the eyes of the judge and the attorney drew him forward, his motivation and his fear cheered him on, and every eye focused on his back shoved him forward as well until the man presenting the Bible obstructed his path. He stopped and put his hand obediently on it, while the courtroom reached an unimaginable level of silence.

It was almost like a movie, it felt that laughable cliché and surreal to be sworn in. It was almost like a movie, and he could almost feel a room full of scornful Ewell eyes burning on his back as he stared at the officer's face. "You solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god?" he asked in a flat, disinterested drawl.

"I do," he parroted, and as he lifted his hand and the officer bid him to take a seat, Heero pinned a very pointed look into the face of the attorney waiting to sink his teeth into him, smiling only a few feet away. Once he had settled into the stand, with an empty glass sitting beside the microphone and currently the attention of the city of Cinq spotlighted almost completely on him, the trim, confident attorney moved in to begin testing the waters, snapping at the heels of his new target, the new prey to see whether it would startle or stand its ground. You could tell with a little perception, even as the polished shoes made a poised, assertive line to the witness stand, even as the practiced smile came to play, that Duo had taken a significant bite out of his poise and made him a little more fearful of seemingly harmless witnesses-though he hid it well.

A thick white pile of paper came out of the attorney's hand and he waved it slightly to show the audience behind him before it was flopped down in front of Heero. He glanced down at it for a minute, the lawyer's fingers still gripped around it, and shot him a pointed stare with a neutral face.

"Your Honor," Mr. Monsett opened pleasantly, smiling into the cold eyes of the traveler, "I too have reviewed the manuscript Heero Yuy here was kind enough to present to us." He turned to face the Judge, holding up the thick white copy of his manuscript like presenting a piece of evidence to a Roman senate and making sure with a rotation that all got a plain view of what he was talking about. Flirting to the cameras in a way Heero was sure only a young or arrogant lawyer might. "This manuscript, which I have come to discover was written in only little over a week and a half, supposedly contains enough evidence, my fellow citizens, to prove that Duo Maxwell does not deserve just and equivalent punishment for the assassination attempt he made on Senator Peacecraft nearly a week ago, and each of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of accounts of theft and fraud we have been simply able to identify and count as Maxwell's work. That each of those people affected by his thoroughly illicit nature and vindictive will should not be able to see the man responsible for robbing them, swindling them of their money earned in good, honest American businesses, for disparaging them for their hardwork with a single slight of hand. Your Honor, I hope you too can see this manuscript for exactly what it is-a college term paper written by an inexperienced young man, not a man who has seen the true nature of a criminal of Maxwell's proclivity, otherwise he would know that he is a incorrigible thief and has no grasp for moral behavior. It is good, I confess-powerful, well-thought out, definitely an interesting account of a strange circumstance, and there are a decent amount of errors and typos considering the speed at which it was written-but it is nothing on which one can base a due acquittal."

The attorney casually flipped through mass of pages and when he reached the end, he turned to face the young Japanese man sitting in the stand and the unpleasant glow in his eyes soon to overtake his entire face. "It might be worth an A to your professor, Mr. Yuy, but here in a court of law, I do believe the evidence you present should be more verifiable than just your own words. Do believe this is an honest defense of Mr. Maxwell's actions?"

If the expression "Looks can kill," were true, the one in Heero's eyes could have sent Mr. Monsett toppling over backwards, instantly dead, when he opened up his mouth to answer.

"I can't defend what he did because he doesn't deny anything that he did. You know that; he admits to everything you accuse him off, whether it is as serious as attempted murder or pick pocketing loose change. I can't defend those actions. They are crimes, and they were wrong," Heero returned, his impassive mouth and face betrayed by a pair of harsh eyes that were saved solely for the Peacecraft attorney standing before him.

"What I wanted to defend was his character," Heero continued. "I wanted everyone else to finally understand that no one is naturally incriminating. If you just look for it, there's a reason for everything. And if you had looked at Duo Maxwell and taken time to listen him, instead of looking at his pedigree and instantly stamping him with an execution order, you would have seen what I saw-he has a reason for this assassination, just like all the others. No one shoots a President just to test their accuracy, and Senator Peacecraft had done something equally brutal to Duo to earn his gun pointed at his head."

"Yes, yes," Mr. Monsett interrupted, thumbing lightly through to one of the small colored tabs marking certain passages in the manuscript, "that's one of the most interesting of the sections, I must say. I, as any truth respecting man, read it many times over and tried to decide for myself if it was factual." When he came near to the end, he flipped it open. "For the opening line of this particular section, you wrote: 'The Peacecrafts only have themselves to blame in the end for starting this cycle and only have themselves to blame for what may happen when things take their natural course and that cycle completes itself.' What is this mysterious 'cycle,' Mr. Yuy?"

"A cycle of murders that would only end with more killing, Mr. Monsett," Heero stated, drilling that fact into him with his stare. "Duo would probably tell the story of his family being slaughtered better than I could, seeing how he was the only one to survive it."

"Senator Peacecraft murdered Duo Maxwell's family?"

"Yes."

"Then where did this slaughter take place?"

"Duo's village."

"Pardon me, but could you give an answer that's a little less imprecise? I don't believe "Duo's Village" is written on a map anywhere."

"Nekos are semi-nomadic; it could have been any place within a large region."

"Uh-huh. Conveniently open-ended response, isn't it, Mr. Yuy? It doesn't allow a chance for being disproved."

"You're right. No, it doesn't, because it's the truth."

An amused chuckle rolled out of the Peacecraft attorney and from his stance leaning against the rail of the witness stand, manuscript open in hand and calculating what to counteract Heero's words with, a generic pleasant smile spread across his face to hid the gears turning. He lifted the stack of papers and tapped it again on the rail, almost subliminally trying to intimidate the hard-eyed traveler.

"And is there a scrap of evidence that can prove this happened? Because I have been allowed complete access to the files entailing all of Senator Peacecrafts political actions and personal memos, and nothing of the vicious caliber you are describing was found. How can you be so sure it wasn't someone else, and Mr. Maxwell simply fabricated this sob story to corrupt you, the Senator's son?"

"He said so."

"Did he tell you specifically that this event took place, and that he himself had done it?"

"I remember him bragging about it over dinner."

"I've spoken with the Peacecrafts myself about that dinner where this information was allegedly disclosed, and none of them remember hearing anything like that."

"Senator Peacecraft didn't know the real gory details of his work, you couldn't really unless you experienced it, and he wasn't about to spoil their appetites with tales of children being sliced open and burned alive," Heero explained flatly, still giving the attorney an unending loathing stare. "Besides, they could just be lying about it, couldn't they?"

"And what about you? Couldn't you be lying, also?"

"I'm not a politician-it doesn't come naturally to me to lie."

Monsett gave a scoffing laugh at the remark, outwardly not intimidated.

"Alright, how about another question, then? Can you tell me, Mr. Yuy, what happened to make two wrongs a right? How does-" Monsett began flipping through the pages until another marker stopped him a little ways past the last. "-being intruded upon, assaulted, and cruelly slain, by any horrible method you could image, give anyone the right to kill another to get their revenge? How do you overlook what Mr. Maxwell did because of what happened to him, when this incident may or may not even have taken place?"

"It shouldn't be held against Duo for trying to kill the man who issued the order to kill him and succeeded in killing his entire village, his entire world at such a young age, and doing so in sick, tortuous, ridiculing way. None of us, no human or Neko, could deny we'd be angry to lose loving parents and younger siblings and we'd all want to kill the person responsible for their horrible murders. Not all of us could go through it without losing hope and giving up, not all of us could be resourceful enough as Duo to actually make a chance at retribution so we all automatically label him a hateful, worthless being, a violent, mindless animal."

Heero wanted to look around the room to see if he had finally instilled a little realization in this ignorant city, this population that was as sheltered and unknowing as he had once been but was polluted by a distinct bigotry cultivated by myth, bloody legend, and careless rumor. But his glare had dug too deeply into the attorney smiling dully before him and it was infuriating, that expression.

"And he is not? A man who is half-beast and has stolen thousands or even millions of dollars from thousands of people through sham and thievery is not a hateful, and violent person?"

"He is not an animal, and he is not perfect," Heero hissed back, "but neither am I, and neither are you, Mr. Monsett, nor any one else. And especially not those who choose to continuously believe that a background can determine you a monster or determine you an automatic saint, no matter what you do."

"We're all familiar with the phrase, "No one is perfect," Mr. Yuy. And Mr. Maxwell, indeed is not perfect, and neither are you. His fault is his irreversible criminal nature and your foolish infatuation with such a being."

"That's not true," Heero growled, narrowing his eyes at the insinuations.

"You must be, otherwise why would you defend a man you admit is a criminal, who he himself admits he's guilty of all charges?"

"Because I don't think Duo deserves the punishment you want to give him, he was doing what was right to him and if you saw it from his point of view, you'd agree with him-I think that if there's any good in the general people they'd be willing to give him a second chance, an opportunity to redemption."

"And why is that? Because you say Peacecraft ruined his life?"

"There were once a people similar to Senator Peacecraft, who believed that a certain heritage or affiliation with those of that heritage made you a second-class human being, of an inferior race, and they took actions to hunt down and exterminate those inferior to themselves in methods as cruel as the ones taken by Senator Peacecraft's soldiers, at his orders. I think everyone of us here knows what group I'm talking about."

"Are you accusing the Senator, the man who adopted you when your parents passed away, took you under his wing, and funded your college education, of being a Nazi?"

"No, not of being one, of behaving like one. What else is there to describe a person who selectively kills a certain race of people in such a cold-blooded, unremorseful way? Orders his men to kill every woman and child? What do you call a man would slaughter a village of Nekos and human beings who'd lived quietly to themselves until that point just for associating with each other?"

"You used to call that man your father, Mr. Yuy. Did you like him?"

"Before I met Duo, yes, he seemed like a decent, good-hearted pacifist. I liked him. He took me in, so there wasn't much of a choice if I wanted to get along."

"And did you get along with Senator Peacecraft?"

"Yes."

"You never had father and son scrabbles, not one fight, not even as a teenager trying to assert your individuality?"

"I never showed much individuality until two weeks or so ago," Heero answered a little grimly. "But no, we never had any big disagreements."

"So, there's no chance that this whole farce of alleged slaughters and brutality couldn't have been a fiction fabricated to give you a reason to hire Maxwell to shoot Peacecraft because of an ill will toward him?"

"Absolutely not."

"Maxwell never displayed signs, in his crime patterns or few notes to police or words to his victims or anything, for that matter, of actually targeting the Senator. Only when you had been in his presence did he actually go after Peacecrafts. Very easily it could have been you who wanted him to be shot, and everyone knows you had access to the Peacecraft funds as their son-you could have paid Maxwell any imaginable amount for his services, so it's not inconceivable."

"Though it's nothing but invented crap, Mr. Monsett," he retorted with a little smile, "it is hypothetically probable. But there's only one problem-if I had hired Duo to try to kill my father, do you think I'd be here, trying to defend him? Doing that would only increase suspicions and possibly unearth my scheme and earn me a cell beside Duo. I may still be a little naïve and I'm no strategist, but even I can see how foolish an action that would be."

The attorney smiled at the traveler with that same serpentine charm before he sauntered casually back to the plaintiff bench and set the manuscript on the table beside several other stacks of paper and his assistant sitting there with a yellow legal pad in hand. "You're right, Mr. Yuy, and it probably disproves that theory, but it also segways to my next point." He lifted a small blank black cassette tape from beside where he placed the copy of his manuscript, displaying the new evidence in the same showy manner he'd done before, the same mocking smile spread like a visible poison on his face. Turning quietly to his assistant, he asked him to roll in the television and once it had been put in place, a location where nearly all of the court could see, the Judge took off his glasses, leaned forward, and told the Peacecraft attorney to continue. The tape cassette was drawn into the jaws of the VCR with the sounds of teeth descending on it and starting to twist the reels inside, and a picture hissed to life on the screen. The copied tape was frothed with distortion and snow at the edges, crackling for a few moments before the silent image cleared.

"I was also given a copy of the video log you presented to the Judge, and reviewed it at length." He began to make a long sauntering pace back and forth before the audience, folding his hands behind his back and, for once, reigning in his flaunting gestures. "And I found once incident of interest that I will now show to you." He smirked and turned it for a second back on the traveler. "Come to your own conclusions, ladies and gentlemen," he said to the audience, Heero the only one privy to the smugness in his voice.

- The tragic mockingbird, sitting what seemed like almost an impossible ways away from the courtroom, felt those distinctive dreading knots forming in his stomach. Even though he could not see the television screen brightening and the image clearing up, he knew what it had to be, and he knew the traveler knew, probably with almost equal dread. "Shit," was all needed to summarize the situation, and the sound carried through the bare walls. -

"This occurred the night before the assassination attempt made on Senator Peacecraft, sometime around one A.M."

And so, with the collective eyes of the city and many, many more around the country watching, Heero was forced to relive the last night in the Isuzu, this time watching a slightly bleary view from the above the windshield and watching himself eventually stir and pause, staring down at Duo, who was sprawled over the front seat, seemingly in deep sleep. He had to relive it again, from the eye of a cold mechanical camera, and every eye that was on him was witnessing it as well, peering into a confusing, painful memory with their unwelcome attention. It was a horrible, surreal sensation to watch his own slightly blurred image lean over the seat and the bohemian twitch abruptly back to life, lashing out and snatching his wrist while his baseball hat fell into his lap and his secret falling into the light with it. Again, that harrowing moment, and now he could look back on it and see himself for the idiot he'd been; how naïve he must have been to miss something so vital and not even suspect it, how bewitched he must have been by that smile and disturbed by the violence he was capable of. What a fool.

From the safe distance of the camera he now watched the Duo's shoulders droop dishearteningly in a sigh and a few long seconds later he climbed into the front seat, staring dumbly, stunned.

And when the court watched Duo reach up and touch the back of his neck, the expression of sadness not accurately translated by the video screen and the hidden agenda hidden in the form of a drugged needle in his hand, and kiss him, they gave a collective gasp or scornful noise. Heero was no longer in that courtroom for a second, watching this incriminating clip with them, but he felt the rough fabric of the seat beneath him, a silence of night around him, and the bohemian against him. He could still remember how it had felt when his world had shifted with a sharp jab, a step up from the rapid unearthing it'd been taking over the time spent with the con man, and how his head had literally spun when Duo pulled away, giving him a contradicting sad grin.

But that's where Heero's emotional narrative ended, and it had just been black after that. The video log peered down all the while and when he had fallen unconscious to the tranquilizer drug Duo had favored so much, it had captured what Heero had not been awake to see. He watched his body go boneless and slump into Duo's arms as if shot dead through the back of the head with a certain surreal effect and a strangled pang in his chest. A heaving sigh left the blurred figure of the bohemian as he let himself slump against the window again, and while Heero watched himself lie unconscious, a lifeless mass cradled to a criminal's chest, Duo lifted the needle up into the light to frown at it, sigh again, and toss it to the floor. It was fortunate for him that the crowd made a low, noticeable sound a second later, to mask the stifled groan Heero almost let escape.

He watched Duo lay there for a moment, hesitating unnaturally with Heero's sleeping form, then reach up with a hand and cautiously brush a bit of hair from his face, exercising a shyness and tenderness that was strange to watch. He watched him lift his hand and do it again, letting his fingers trail over his jaw and trace over the edges of his hienn ear. He watched him and felt the fire on his skin as if he were experiencing it again, felt an impossible emotion rush him. He watched him use the hand of brutal, animalistic strength he'd used to kill angrily to gently turn Heero's head so that his cheek pressed against his chest, so slowly as if he might break him. For a few more agonizingly drawn-out seconds, he watched him tenderly touch his fingers over his own sleeping eyes, face, and lips, memorizing them tragically. Duo nestled the limp body of the traveler to him and nudged his foot back onto the seat with his leg when it slipped off, and put his arms around his back solemnly, burying his rueful frown into the top of his disheveled hair and trying to keep his emotions from breaking the wall that held them back. Even as emotion began rattling Heero thoroughly, shaking him in the witness stand, he glimpsed a little twitch of the bohemian's shoulders that may have been a trick of the light or the camera but looked dreadfully like a choked, unwanted sob to him.

He hated watching this.

Mr. Monsett's addressing voice cracked the air, bustling busy with the speculation, scorning, and fussing that came from the audience once they realized they'd just seen the son of the renowned, respected Senator Peacecraft kissing the infamous criminal miscreant that had terrorized the nation lately with his insidious cons. And just how immense it was to the issue of Heero's integrity, and how easily it could help solidify that guilty verdict that threatened Duo with a death sentence. "Now, ladies and gentlemen, I understand this is evidence may be distasteful, but please keep your restraint. It's very necessary to the validity of Mr. Yuy's case in Mr. Maxwell's defense." He used the remote his assistant had handed him to shamelessly pause the tape on the scandalous frame, strolling casually back up toward the stand once he put it down on the table.

Heero's eyes had a death threat awaiting the attorney when looked at him again, smiling so smugly it might have never left his face. "Now, if you'd please answer one more question, Mr. Yuy."

The glare didn't flinch. "Yes, sir," he ground out, holding his mouth back from a severe scowl as to not let the crowd see his anger. Anger that the Peacecraft attorney had the sheer gall to provoke him with such a clip and then ask nothing but civil cooperation with him a second later. Anger he'd stoop to such a shameless tactic, and anger at the pride with which he exploited that tactic, still sauntering casually up to the stand, feeling as if the case was tucked safely away in his pocket, already won.

"Are you or are you not infatuated with Mr. Maxwell?"

Miles from the courtroom, Vega was startled to stand straight against the wall when he heard the boxy little radio clatter roughly over the floor and take a devastating crash into the wall where the bunkbeds had been ripped from the wall and removed. Tiny fractured bits of black and grey plastic scattered back across the floor to come full circle and skitter to a stop before the tragic mockingbird, dispersing in front of the being that had created them, and the radio, half-broken and now hissing incoherently with static, lay as good as dead on the cement floor. The human deputy was a little unnerved-he'd only been able to see a brief flash of movement before Duo had flung the radio away from him with such disgust, unable to stand another utterance from the Peacecraft attorney's lying tongue. And when he jerked to his feet, all fists and nerves, he was moving faster, more fluidly than any hienn could imagine, moving with the coiled, prowling heritage in him and the contempt in his head. He snarled something hateful at the radio, at Monsett, in his north Nekonese dialect, slurring him ruthlessly. Instead of flinging the radio against the wall again, he slapped the palm of his bandaged hand against the wall and promptly started to claw two-foot long lacerations into the cement with one motion of his hand. He grunted fiercely as it went down and chalky white dust polluted the air. When he quit, blood started seeping out from the soft human fingertips beneath the sharp Nekoknese nail and down the wall.

From all his hissing, all his cursing he growled at the wall, imagining each face of the Peacecrafts painted on it, sneering at him, Vega could distinguish one prominent phrase again and again: "Ru eiym jaihirou vennes no-dymekke ce ri, hiennrou aisuhei. Aisurou!" [1]

While the battered radio sputtered to death on nothing but static and gargled noise, Duo curled his bleeding hand back into a fist and pressed it against the wall, letting his forehead fall against the cement. The walls echoed with the eerie, hollow sound of a machine dying for a long time, and silence lay beneath it, and slowly the one-eared Neko managed to calm himself enough to speak again, his throat dry and almost brittle from lack of water and his lungs weak over a failing stomach.

"Sorry about the radio," he muttered miserably in the direction of the human deputy, the puff of air from his lips blowing a knotted bit of hair from his face. "Sorry I can't pay for it, either. Fucking sorry for all of it." The tragic mockingbird had broken his wing against his cage, and, unlike most mindless birds, he knew in no indistinct terms that there would be no kindhearted caretaker to mend it. He knew it had all been lost from the beginning, and whatever foolish optimism he'd formed since then had just been dashed on the rocks, on the gilded bars of his cage.

Vega forgave him quietly, politely, and sensed that he needed time alone. So the footsteps of the hienn disappeared down the hall and the radio died and the distant murmurs of a television returned to haunt the only occupied cell. Duo blindly wandered back to a corner and slumped down to the floor in the way he'd done many times while in that cell, watching the sunrays illuminate dust on the ceiling overhead, the rosary beads around his neck suddenly cold as a corpse and as heavy as sin on his skin.

"You fucking fool, traveler," he muttered, closing his eyes. He let a long sigh run through him again, try in vain to scoop out the thick layers of dismay that had caked into the lining of his lungs, and in the end he only felt as hollow as before, letting his head tilt back and feeling sensations of pain and hunger return to him while his fingers knitted themselves, while his wounds licked themselves. After a long silence, the mockingbird's voice returned, but at only a whisper. "Fucking fool. Sometimes I wonder who the real fool is anymore."

Had the radio not been demolished in a fit of frustration, it would have broadcast the tense warring dialogue that continued between witness and counselor.

"Please answer the question, Mr. Yuy."

"It's a rather personal question that holds no relevance to this case," the witness overthrew coldly, icing over all of the emotion that troubled him with the anger that drove him. "I'd rather not."

"You're not one bit attracted to this young man? I have to admit, even though he is not a complete human being, he's a very striking face and if you can get around the murderous temperament, he would make for a very charming character. Certainly no lady could resist those kinds of charms, and maybe even a few of the men as well. I wouldn't doubt that Mr. Maxwell has enough persuasion to entice those of loose morals to aid him in his crimes, perhaps even defend him in a court of law if need be. So, are you attracted to Maxwell, Mr. Yuy?"

"Since when did this court become the Dating Game to you, Mr. Monsett?"

"Please, let me ask the questions. We don't want to waste His Honor's time on foolish conversation."

"Which brings us again to why such a question holds any meaning to an assassination case, Mr. Monsett."

"It's a very simple question. All I require is a yes or a no and we can move on."

"I refuse to answer such a ridiculous question. If you'll just ask a more appropriate one, I'd be more than happy too," he returned, his voice tightening like a razor wire, a wire he would like to imagine wrapped around the attorney's throat at that moment

"You were sworn to tell the truth, and nothing but that truth not even an hour ago, need I remind you? So please, allow us to get on with this hearing and answer the question, Mr. Yuy."

"I refuse, then," he almost growled, "on the grounds I may incriminate myself or the defendant."

Mr. Monsett gave a little dismissive shrug of his shoulders. "Very well. I don't believe you need to say anything to confirm it anyway; the evidence speaks for itself." He turned toward the Judge and addressed courteously, "Your Honor, that is all. I appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Yuy," he added at the end, purposely flourishing it with a smug, victorious smirk that he wore all the way back to the prosecution desk, where he sat down with the swagger of a vanquisher who'd just conquered something magnificent.

But Heero knew it was false victory-Duo had been the one to truly unnerve the Peacecraft attorney, it was Duo who had proven himself, at least to Heero, the keener of the two, and pinning Heero into a corner with his own words did not qualify as surmounting Maxwell's Demon himself. He saw the arrogance in the attorney's eyes and only could frown at him, wondering just how contemptibly absurd he could be, thinking he'd gotten back at the bohemian for the time he'd spent on the stand, mocking everything he said.

"Alright," the Judge acknowledged calmly, his glasses winking under the light as he shifted his head toward Heero in a collected little nod. "Thank you, Mr. Yuy. You may take your seat now."

Upon returning to his seat, he found that the unclassifiable woman who had occupied the one beside it had been filled instead with only hints of the strange perfume she'd worn and a distinctly indistinct suspicion stirring somewhere in him, but that vague worry was eclipsed by the only worry that had been on his mind of late and Heero sat down where he had originally been, her absence no great loss to him. She wouldn't be there to taunt him and simultaneously support him, wouldn't be there to distract him from what he was there for. When he sat, sometime later, after all the formality of the court had run its course, the Judge called for a recess in which he announced he would be deciding the verdict. He had seen enough evidence to make his impartial and fair decision and now only needed the time to determine to what fate of Duo Maxwell's that evidence would lead. He left the bench and, like a hermit carrying away something precious to be hidden away and tinkered with, disappeared into his quarters for a long time.

Heero stood up some time later, while the courtroom milled and chatted and some filled out for a breath of fresh air, and wandered vaguely toward the water fountain. His stomach churned with knots and his chest swelled against his ribs with burden and his head was distended with thoughts of the bohemian, but his mouth was dry, his stamina already threadbare, and his body independently ordered him out of the courtroom.

Long out of sight and of mind of the traveler, Relena Peacecraft had taken off that morning to be with her father while he was recovering from the severe bone damage the bullet of Maxwell's Demon had done to his shoulder, as well as generally weaken the Senator and open him up for disease caused by the smog and stress of the city. Not to mention his entire security force was practically insane with paranoia, even pointing their sights at leaves scattering on the ground as they escorted their employer, now very aware that another man could easily come to assassinate the pacifist. All parties involved agreed that the city of Cinq was not a healthy place for the Senator to be at the moment. His estate, location undisclosed, would be better suited for recovery, and notably less likely to house an assassin of any kind. The Peacecraft daughter had taken an early flight on the exclusive Peacecraft jet and just dismissed her chief investigator of the duty of looking for her adoptive brother. The direction had been received in a discrete, singular memo even earlier that morning, lying on the desk when she walked into her office, telling her gently that her services were no longer needed and that all her help had been greatly appreciated. The memo was typed and professional and just plain indifferent in its dismissal, so there was no real telling if Relena had been the one to write it-to Marcella Lain she had seemed much more concerned about finding her brother and making sure his safety was certain more than anything else, aside from her father's health. But she was a professional woman if nothing else and with that she sat down at her desk, filed the memo, wrote two to her colleagues, and began sifting through new requests with no signs of regret. The file concerning Heero Yuy's whearabouts was put away and forgotten.

Relena would be arriving at the lush, guarded estate sometime near midday and she would be to occupied sitting faithfully at her father's side, even pushing his wheelchair through the gardens at dusk and fetching his favorite books to read out loud to him, now that his shoulder had been debilitated from movement. She would be dining with her family, save for one brother, of course, and she would be too busy keeping that brother from her mind until she could fall asleep that she wouldn't pick up a newspaper until the next morning and see the results of the trial. And even then, she would already be in the process of pushing the entire incident from her mind and ridding herself of the terrible disease of worry caused by the ghost she'd found, lying in a hotel bed with his head stuffed beneath a pillow. She would already be slowly accepting Heero had separated himself from her, already slowly coming to terms with him-already beginning to believe that if he was meant to return to their family, to her, then he would, and if he wasn't, he wouldn't.

She was already making herself believe that he had really died at the hands of Duo Maxwell, spiritually, emotional, or whatever else which a man could be killed, and his ghost would follow him to the underworld. She however, was a Peacecraft, and she had to nobly lift her head and carry on, as was the tradition of the persevering pacifist.

But that didn't mean she had to enjoy it.

Other places on that day of sentencing, during that recess of decision, things would be carrying on as well. There's no reason to think that any of these happenings between only two people could ever stop the world from turning, stop things from proceed in their daily way. The markets and shops didn't close for Duo Maxwell while he slunk into dementia, staring at the bars for hours, simply watching the shadows from them shift on the far wall of the corridor and the sunlight darken and brighten as clouds pass. Children didn't cease to be born and elderly men and women didn't refrain from dying while Heero Yuy staggered toward the bathroom and tiredly twisted the knob on the last sinkbowl, dragging water ritualistically across his face while his mind churned, a cream of despair and resolve bickering amongst themselves while lumps of fear formed within it. Life didn't pause in her duties, didn't look up from her page to honor them-they were part of the words on the page, and their events were only a tiny article on a single page in the newspaper of happenings of the world that day.

Somewhere a carnival would be setting up its various attractions, throwing up various tents, and somewhere an impoverished child would be speaking a foreign tongue and giving fortunes to tourists. And somewhere there would be another man questioning himself and gilding it with alcohol. Life didn't wait for them, so it would not wait for Heero Yuy to find his feet, to sort through the layers of despair and hope that made his mind a warring place, before it called him back to the courtroom. He had been standing at the front of the building in a corner, away from the doors and hardly noticeable, staring out the window to the swarm of picketing and protest. This was his cell-barred in by devastating obligation to the "lying, swindling" criminal who'd shown him the truth, and Duo's was the police cell where he sat and bled and had occasionally smoked, but now he sat and dreamed instead, too weary to claw at the walls, too late to ask for another cigarette from Vega, and his hands too weak to hold the rosary.

It slipped out between his fingers and clattered to the floor while his mind folded in on itself with dream.

As for the mysterious Catalonia woman, she had disappeared from the courthouse without a single noise sometime during the traveler's testimony. When Vega returned home that night, after leaving the Cinq PD in secrecy and leaving Duo to brood alone, he would find her things had also liberated themselves from her room. She only left the war novel she had been reading, borrowed from her sister's finely organized shelf of books, and left it in a distinctly Dorothy manner: The book had been laid wide open on her otherwise barren desk and seemingly randomly opened to, and marked at with a slip of newspaper clipping, the scene in the book where the general charges into battle and takes not two steps before his horse stumbles and he falls to be crushed beneath his charging battalion. "And oh, how the peoples wept when they discovered they had trampled the life from him, standing victorious on the battleground, enacting the funeral service for their lord."

You might weep too, as you watched Heero stagger back to his seat when all had gathered back in the courtroom, moths converging, waiting for the fire to be lit beneath stake to which they had tied the bohemian, and sit among them, waiting for a completely different result. He was exhausted, and he had been for for what felt like days, weeks, years in his mind. The time he'd spent in the Isuzu was a eon ago and it was lost forever-even if he did manage to pull this off, what chance was there he'd have life any easier after Duo had been freed.

He would have the bohemian, yes, but no one would instantly forget everything he had done. He would be ridiculed and hunted and despised, probably for the rest of the life, but he had the imperishable instinct to stay with the con man and he would, no matter what the ignorant masses could bring. No matter how far he drifted from the Peacecrafts. Blood was thicker than water, but the Peacecrafts were not blood, and they were water of a polluted spring. They might question his clarity of mind, might try to undermine every dedication he had to the criminal, but none of it mattered.

He had never been more certain of a thing in his life than this.

He turned from the window, tearing his eyes from the image of rallying bigotry that swarmed the building, and began to follow the flow back through those large wooden doors, following the hienn in the stream they created.

So, knowing everything you do now, watching the figure of that spent man walking willingly toward the fire that had sucked the life from in the first place, knowing how his agony was only matched by the person he was trying to protect, knowing the truth of the incidents and accusations as you do, you would weep too, as you watched Heero's face when the verdict came out, a thick, black word.

When the judge returned and the mistrial continued regally, when all the formalities had been pushed aside and he could get to what everyone was really awaiting-the sentence. When his mouth opened and that curtain of despair that had been hanging overhead, sharpening itself into a guillotine, came crashing down with the word, "Guilty," and severed all hope, sending it to an oblivion forming in Heero's deadened eyes.

"The defendant is found guilty as charged and also of committing a thousand other various crimes against American citizens, which shall not be overlooked or without weight in his punishment. I hereby sentence Duo Maxwell to serve two consecutive life sentences imprisonment without opportunity for parole, the location as to where this sentence is to be served out is still not definite, pending a suitable penitentiary can be found. Keeping the invalidity of Mr. Maxwell's heritage in mind, all appeals and opportunities for retrial have been revoked by the Supreme Court and this decision shall not be challenged. This court," the elderly judge sighed, lifting the gavel dutifully and letting it fall like a final killing stroke, "is now dismissed."

Meanwhile, Duo slept, and in his dream, he was just hearing the gunshot that would begin the end of his life, sitting his mother's lap and blissfully skinning the potatoes to be put in the stew kettle for dinner that day.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

Luiem ce rwennos hoa ei qhui ne yiyren som ki-rwen romm.

A/N

[1] You're just making things worse for yourself, goddamn idiot human! You idiot!

(The last line was in Nekonese, also.The excerpt at the beginning is part of my all-time favorite childhood elementary music class song. The song Duo sings is the Rolling Stones song that never ever leaves my head.)

Every time I post, it's always been way too long since the last update. And every time I post, just like clockwork, I've gone over the limit for that chapter and spilled out into a new one. Y'all must be really sick of hearing me say that every time I finish a chapter to actually right the author's notes. Man, I am. Now… don't be rash. Before you all start hurling things at me to wound me and make me change the outcome, hear me out. I won't change it, but don't think Duo's already dead, alright? This story isn't over! It ain't over until the fat muse sings, and my muse is not fat and not ready to sing. I know, still dark as ever, and Heero is about as stable as a matchstick house at this point, but there are still two chapters left. I promise you, I promise you that these are the last two. Dead serious. I will not let my muses get away with me again. But, I don't know when they're gonna get posted. They will, of course, but the last most likely not until the beginning of next year. The next chapter, maybe before Christmas, maybe not. I'm hoping to. As to the foreign exchange program I talked about-no cigar. So, unforunately for my fantasy of a gypsy lifestyle, I won't be going away this summer, aside from my friend's cabin, most likely, so that just leaves more time for writing. That's good news for all my readers-and thank you for all your support, voiced and unvoiced alike. It sustains me.

(happy holidays.; go be with your loved ones and enjoy life)

~ Kaitsurinu