Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Twelve ❯ The Guns of Brixton ( Chapter 10 )

Chapter 10

"The Guns of Brixton"

He could not remember if he’d ever taken the time to pass on the words of advice from his childhood, the ones that he had ridden in cramped cockpits and walked killing grounds and defended pacifists with, to Duo, but even if he had, he probably wouldn’t have needed them. He was already acting on his emotions; hell, it was nothing but the wrath and rage that drove him out here, now, where they were forced at gunpoint to settle in with the rest of the captive audience. Heero hoped that his comrade wouldn’t do something foolish to endanger himself in the midst of such strong emotions, but as a gun barrel bossed him down to his knees and he glanced over to the American, that hope diminished a little in probability. Duo’s face may have appeared to be the picture of confused, mild fear and timid demeanor, able to take on whatever shape his mind willed, but beneath it there was a horrible expression of fury that could only wait to get its hands around the addict’s neck. Aforementioned twenty-something quickly whipped the weapon towards Duo again, demanding he get all the way down when he failed to.

Failed, as in with intentions of ripping the gun from his hands and ending this unnecessary and tormenting event. Heero watched out of the corner of his eye as a tiny hint of that anger inevitably slipped through his innocent bystander mask and burned in his violet-colored gaze. He held back a hiss of frustration when the addict picked up on that slip of composure and kept the weapon on Duo, the safety off with a harsh click as it pointed at him. "You, what’s your name?" the young man asked, staring down at Duo while he stared back, on his knees, his hands behind his head just as he’d been ordered.

"Duo Maxwell," he answered plainly, innocently, trying to recover what parts of his façade he’d lost with that single, fiery look.

But as well as he could act that he was simply mixed up and frightened, the underlying expression was one of furious frustration—the gun safety had been on; he’d missed his first chance and the odds of another were slimming by the moment and doubling in difficulty. And Heero could feel that frustration radiating off him. They’d been separated from one another by the addict, and whether he’d done it on instinct or just dumb luck, it was what had saved him. Had he forced the two at gunpoint close enough, they would have already gotten him. Heero kept replaying the scenario in his head that might have ended there and then: Duo would have lunged off suddenly to the side, drawing the attention and the gun after him, and Heero would have been on the addict in a second, putting his fist into his stomach and putting him out like a pinched candle wick. It was something he vaguely remembered they had executed from their war days; it would come back to them like riding a bike. But the distance between them ruined that particular prospect and Heero kept his scowl while his tactical mind was racing behind a backdrop of concern directed to his left, settling on the other pilot.

The punk readjusted his grip on his gun and was cautious enough, and perhaps rattled enough by the look that had slipped through onto the American’s face, to keep it locked on him. Obviously, he didn’t recognize the name he’d been given, otherwise he might have had the insight to turn tail and run. "What were you doing? Don’t give me any bullshit, either," he demanded impatiently.

"I wouldn’t dream of it," Duo drawled, rolling his eyes.

"Well, answer up!"

His face soured and wrinkled unappreciatively, giving the young man a sideways look. "You’re being rather rude, you know? Didn’t your mother ever teach you to respect your elders? You’d go a long ways if you just remembered that. Might even get out of the second grade!"

"Huh," the punk sneered mockingly, jabbing the gun in the direction of his knees nastily. "You’re some asshole, I tell you. How old are you, then, geezer? Like I have to take any of this shit from you! You look like you could be my kid brother! Please," he scoffed. His defenses had lessened considerably, now indulging in a jeering laugh at Duo’s expense, feeling an awfully false sense of security behind the grip of his gun.

"I could be," Duo purred darkly, "but, luckily, I’m not, am I?"

Any relatively perceptive soldier might have read that low remark as a subtle death sentence, declaring that he would have no problem trashing him past any point of recognition. But he was not, and he didn’t, so Duo’s veiled threat was wasted on the twentysomething. Heero’s eyes did not move from the side of the Deathscythe pilot’s face, his mind churning and watching each expression with guarded analysis. He was looking for a signal, even the most minute of innuendoes or calculated moves that could hint him in the direction Duo intended, and follow. The only problem was he wasn’t sure if it was towards a furious, fighting death, and he would not glance back at Heero for the life of him, too busy staring down the punk.

"That’s enough out of you," the young man said, his uncertainty with the strange captive coated by his false confidence with the firearm and therefore a little easier to conquer. Duo’s sublimely defiant look didn’t buy it, though the punk couldn’t see past the actor’s worried façade. "Either tell me what I asked, or shut up."

"Under penalty of death?" he asked sarcastically, letting enough to the surface to rattle the kid sufficiently. "Would that be yours, or mine?"

For a moment, his voice stripped down to its true sentiment, and was stonily dark. Even for Shinigami, it was a menacing threat, without hint of his usual devilish laugh and its matching smirk. He’d dropped all the courtesy of his grinning façade, knowing it was wasted on this foolish child and he should have a chance to know what he’d gotten himself into. "You should make sure, because I highly doubt the latter, kid."

Heero shivered. He suddenly feared more for the civilian’s life more than he worried about Duo’s safety.

It seemed that it was inevitable that this frightening message ushered by a man who called himself the incarnation of Death was to be lost on this kid, for even as the flicker of a fear appeared in his eyes, bloodshot from the first tinges of withdrawal, he remedied it by simply readjusting the grip of his gun in his palm. Rather than listen to his justified anxiety, some stubborn part of him pushed on past it, unwilling to give up the whole endeavor because of some stranger’s voice. He told himself he did not fear it, and it worked. He simply scoffed again, and waited for the grave stare on Duo’s face to dishearten and fade. And when it didn’t, he scoffed again, this time angrily, and snapped back.

"You got a fucking problem? Then speak up!" he announced, jabbing the barrel forcefully toward the American, until the cold rim of metal rested against the skin between his eyes.

To see the gun nestle itself up to the face of his best friend, threatening to steal away the man he’d been unable to find for a decade after their time spent together fighting a bloody, long war, struck at Heero with an obscenity he hadn’t felt since that war. Needless to say, he had already begun to envision the myriad ways he’d make the punk regret ever touching his partner, regret ever underestimating any of the Gundam pilots and failing to give them the respect they deserved. And most of all, he’d make him regret ever endangering an innocent in front of him. And he meant really regret it.

Duo’s stare didn’t move from the twentysomething’s face, considering his haggard features, his bloodshot-eyes and the stubbornly foolish gleam in them. His face contorted a little, adding a hint of regretful smirk to it. "Too many to tell in a lifetime, brother," he remarked cryptically. "And none you’ll ever get to hear. Not sticking your neck into places it doesn’t belong like you are, anyway. You put that gun away and I might just grace you with a few grains of wisdom. Otherwise there’ll only be more pain to suffer."

"Bullshit. I don’t want any lofty talk from you. I’m not the one about to earn one between the eyes," the kid snarled back, provoked by Duo’s dark, resigned, and almost apocalyptic warning.

The American was stony and still. "Do it, then," he dared flatly. "Prove it to me. Send me to Hell if you can. Do it for all the men I’ve condemned to death—they’ll love you for it." He hissed the last line with a listlessness that was more frightening than malice.

"If you want it, I’d be happy to." His sincerity was a little faded and he was not so readily reckless with his words as he had been before the Gundam pilots had arrived. But he would do it if this guy pushed him to, with looming withdrawal symptoms and the weight of his friends’ imprisonment weighing on him, pressuring his good sense until it had been crushed to nothing. So, with little ado, the punk jabbed the barrel of the gun tight into the skin between his eyes in preparation. The grip suddenly seemed awfully sweaty and he had to readjust his grip.

Duo sighed, eyes closed and the angry furrow of his brow fading slightly. "Before you do that, bud, give this old geezer an answer to why you’re doing this. For god’s sake, why all these children? They’ve seen enough in their life it could make your head spin to think about it. They’re going to have hard lives as it is without having to play part to your sick little production. Why these kids?"

"It’s not their fault," he answered, gritting his teeth. "They just got in the way. I didn’t mean it to happen. I thought they had vacation today—I only wanted the teachers."

It didn't soothe Duo's expression. "Why them? Their lives are just as precious as a child's."

"They’re the ones who turned my friends in, and almost got me arrested with them. I live with them for thirteen years and that’s what I’m repaid with? That’s bullshit! All of a sudden, I’m worthless to them? If they wanna ruin me, then I’ll take them with me!"

For a moment, he felt his voice filling with an unnatural warble of weakness, instilled by the disturbingly peaceful expression the man beneath his gun suddenly wore. Only seconds before it had been hateful and righteous, filled with threat and protectiveness. Now, he kneeled in the damp Seattle dirt with a revolver to his head, appearing almost to doze while the barrel dug between his eyes. And his voice coaxed him into truth without recognition. For a second, the punk wondered if this guy would be truly happy to be proven wrong, if it was what he secretly wanted. His finger gently twitched around the trigger, unable to clear his head or suddenly even swallow.

He may have well gotten his chance to slay the infamous war veteran, inadvertently taking the life of a hated and hailed Gundam pilot, but it was interrupted by something. Whether it was fate or chance did not matter. Someone in the crowd of huddling, thoroughly shocked children and the single, frightened adult trying to herd them and curb their fearful emotions among them made a noise, which caught the attention of the addict long enough to cause his eyes to move from Duo’s face. It was enough for his peripheral vision to register nothing where there definitely should have been Heero Yuy.

Duo’s eyes flew open, staring up the cold barrel of the gun, watching his comrade come suddenly out of nowhere after slinking off during their involved conversation of death. He moved just as lethally fast as he’d always done before, eluding death and soldiers in the shadow with him, but it wasn’t enough. The addict was quick, also, though no where near that of a seasoned fighter. But if it was enough to bring the gun around, it could be enough to put a bullet through his comrade. In a sloppy, quick arc he whipped his arm around, trying to level the barrel in blind panic. Just before the violent blur that was Heero reached the twentysomething, Duo felt the butt of the gun buck suddenly into his face just below the eye and all the air in his lungs left him in one pained breath. The blurs of movement that was the Japanese pilot and the addict grappling all whirled away as he was thrown into the ground the by the force of the accidental pistol-whipping. His skin stung sharply and his jaw made an unpleasant noise, but Duo had felt much worse in his warring days.

But that doesn’t make it hurt any less right now, goddamn it, his thought to himself.

He lifted his head again, to see the weight of the young gunman, troubled by drugs and now troubled even more by the terrible power Heero was exercising on subduing him, fall flat to the ground. Pounced on and forceably thrown onto his stomach and having his face dug into the ground as Heero wrangled his gun out of his possession and his hands out of his control, the punk was spared the fiery expression Heero wore as he kept him pinned. Had he seen it face to face, he might have lost all conviction then and there and been spared this commotion. God knows it would have struck some sanity into him, to face the wrathful cold blue of the Wing pilot’s glare.

But, Duo mused darkly, it hadn’t. So it only remained a fantasized could-have-been in his head, and he raised himself onto his arms and rubbed at the stinging on his face absently. He watched the blur of movement and brutal muscle that was his comrade grappling against the young man.

"Fuck you, man! What is this—?!" The twentysomething barked out at him as soon as there was the slightest opportunity for him to wrench his face from the moist Seattle grass and exercise his reckless mouth. Considering how loathsome his cowardice was to the pilots, stooping to involving children in his own violent and selfish affairs, Heero was acting very agreeably with him when he stuffed his mouth full of dirt again and made him quiet. This time, when he bobbed his head back up, he kept begrudgingly quiet.

Duo wasted no time in getting up on his feet and going to the paled woman standing, shaking among the children and told her in his best compassionate tone to calm down and just get the children out front. The orphans, led by a few of the older ones nudging them along, were quick to comply and quickly left the scene.

"It’s alright, miss," he reassured her honestly. Though she was taller than him by a few lofty inches, making her gape down at him with her frightened eyes, he still felt like a comforting older brother as he put a hand on her shaking shoulder. "Please, just go with the kids. The cops should be here soon and they’ll help sort everything out."

Of course, his hand was still a little unsteady, while the adrenaline coursed his body with no outlet and threatened to make him tired to the bone. She hesitated before nodding and following the children. Duo had the distinct feeling that she’d been staring at the wound on his face from the butt of the gun, and with a little gritty smirk he reached up to touch it, watching her protectively as she reunited with her shaken class. Just as he mused how they would take this incident, probably just one of horrible things they should have never had to see, he felt the cold, sticky texture of blood on his skin.

Great, he thought with a grimace, I must be really losing my touch. Can’t wait ‘till Quatre gets sight of this. He’ll probably trip over himself going for the medicine cabinet.

Duo quickly turned back around, taking his nursing hand from the stinging side of his face. His eyes landed on his partner, still asserting himself in a very pissed manner over the twentysomething addict who had disrupted the day in such a dramatic way. And after a few moments of panic and violence, he had been subdued. Duo was a little disappointed. It was kind of anti-climatic; but then again, it may have just been him. War could desensitize you in the most unusual ways, he reminded himself, remembering how he had never been really able to watch another horror or action movie without finding himself incredibly bored with it. The real thing could not be topped, and the parts of him that had been killed by violence would be numb and simultaneously oversensitive forever.

Heero was holding both of the kid’s wrists tight with just his own left hand. They were nearly twice the size of his, but they were much more experienced, and the Japanese pilot was just much more angered with the addict than the addict was with him. With a severe expression, he carefully took his right hand away and began reciting the Miranda Warning with a growling enthusiasm. Meanwhile, he unbuckled his belt and pulled it from his waist in one flawless motion.

Still standing there, waiting for his partner, the American forced down a flush. Well, Duo thought, Relena must love that little move.

"Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law—" Heero continued. He used his leather belt to wrap around the addict’s hand as a makeshift set of handcuffs. Looping it once around each wrist, he then proceeded to make the tightest square knot Duo had seen, until the kid’s hands were practically burning red.

He lifted his head from the dirt to let out a fierce noise of pain and snap out, "Hey, watch what the fuck you’re doin’, man—That hurt!"

A hand then buried itself unapologetically into the young man’s hair and pulled it from the ground, yanking it back so that Heero had his undivided attention. The soft puffs of air rolling over his ear when the pilot spoke there were not what made him shiver a second later. It was what he growled at him in a perfect impassive monotone that was the most disconcerting.

"You’re a very lucky boy. I’m normally a very peaceful guy, but if you had done more than so much as move a hair on my partner’s head out of place, there wouldn’t have been enough of you left for even the Preventers to find." As he remained there, pinning the twentysomething to the ground and leaning forward to growl something off the record in his ear, he reached down with one hand and tightened the makeshift handcuff with a jerk.

"Now, I recommend you apologize whole-heartedly to Duo," he growled in a low voice. "I’ve still got three more levels of force I’m authorized to exercise, and I haven’t been in the best mood since you interrupted my day and my retirement. Threatening innocents doesn’t make me any happier, either."

When the fact that Heero Yuy meant each one of his words fully and passionately struck home, and struck home with a kick. The kid dryly swallowed and nodded. His whole body was now tense as a pinned hare, and not from the awkward position. His hair was released and he let his head slump back in the ground and there he remained for a few moments, simply catching his breath and staring at the grass, the white of his startled eyes visible from where Duo was standing. After that, the Japanese pilot continued on with Miranda-rizing the arrested punk.

Duo listened to Heero’s detached and cold voice with a little surrealism and had to fight off the somewhat erotic image of his best friend sitting on the back of another man and leaning down to hiss in his ear, back muscles tensing and accentuating the fine arch his body made as he did so.

Luckily, his mind was not left to linger on the thought, and he had not even begun to think about his actual words when sirens whooped once, then twice from out in the street. It was enough to draw Duo’s attention away and see the flickering red and blue light painting the nearest surface of the orphanage building an odd moving collage. Backup had arrived just in time to be a pain in the ass, but a great help simultaneously. Immediately, Duo was compelled to follow them out into the street and make sure that none of the children had been harmed and tend whoever might be, but his feet wouldn’t move until their work was finished.

With the erotic image of his partner safely placed in the side of his mind for the moment, the American turned his head back around to see that Heero had already managed to stand the larger twentysomething on his feet, though they were unsteady beneath him. And he saw that he was pretty much still functioning on a hair-trigger, with a sever expression warning the young man from out of his sight to behave himself. It was a condition triggered in turn by the placement of the gun to his head and aggravated only further with the endangerment of innocents. By now means was Heero a truly violent man, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a certain button that couldn’t be pushed, a certain line that could be crossed that would cause him to revoke his gentle nature for a few moments.

The twentysomething addict’s legs had taken to shaking, still terrorized by a flying heartbeat and adrenaline. His face, now drained pale from Heero’s onslaught, was turning pasty and round and submissive. It was this that made Duo walk tiredly over to the arrested young man and look upon him with a momentary pang of pity. He could only imagine what his face had looked like at times, judging from the sad and bloodied faces he’d seen during the war and even further before.

The pale face almost reminded him of the white of Sister Helen’s habit. And inevitably, her rosy, warm, thoughtful face came to mind as stood before the kid. Luckily, her memory also invoked a peaceable, wise mood and he looked over the young man’s face once, as if trying to physically look into his troubled life. He stood stock still beneath the pilot’s stare, though his shoulders slumped with exhaustion. He was inching toward a very unpleasant withdrawal, Duo could see and that scared him just as much as Heero Yuy was tensed behind him, ready to protect his partner should the addict behave irrationally toward him.

Instead of lecturing or reprimanding him, Duo simply looked him in the bloodshot, nervous eye and asked, "What’s your name?"

"Keller," he managed out in an unsteadied voice.

Duo smiled tiredly for the kid’s sake, though it barely reached his eyes. "Alright, listen up, Keller. I’m gonna tell you something, and if you really want to come away from this thing with any good advice, you’ll listen carefully. I'm still not a bit happy with the shit you tried to pull, and honestly, there's a part of me that would love nothing more than setting you straight. But I've been through too much and I'm getting far too old to get angry all the time, and so has Heero. I'll tell you this once, so pay attention."

With that, he clapped one hand onto his shoulder and took a deep sigh before continuing. "I never knew my parents, and I ended up stealing on the streets, getting shot at every day and watching plague victims drop right and left. I would have gotten into much worse shit if I hadn’t been taken in by people who were probably just as good-hearted as those teachers in there, whom you just tried to shoot. You understand?"

Keller nodded mutely, looking not so pale but now more emotionally nauseated.

"Anyway, I didn’t get along with them perfectly. Hell, the first week there all I did was argue, swear, spit and fight," Duo informed him, cracking a nostalgic grin. He remembered his stubborn antics during his first days at the Maxwell Church, and how flushed Sister Helen would become when she caught Duo trying to swindle the older orphans or use his extensive colorful language around the younger ears. "They put me in stuffy wool clothes, tried to cut my hair, and made me wash my face five times a day. I really thought I hated them for a while. But eventually, I grew out of my foolishness and realized they really meant the best for me, no matter what. And as soon as I had, I lost them."

The twentysomething’s face filled with something like shame and a growing respect when he watched Duo’s face lose its nostalgic soft edges and harden as he tried to drive his point across. "It doesn’t matter how much you disagreed or how badly you got along, as soon as there’s a death on your conscious, you’ll never live long enough to forget it or get rid of your guilt. So, as lame as this sounds, just heed my advice and think about what you’re doing before you go out and buy a Browning, alright?"

For a second, Duo swore the kid was trying to chuckle at that last statement, but either it wasn’t as funny as he hoped it would be, or the reality of the situation had finally come a-knocking and taken his voice away. He hoped it was the latter of the two.

"Oh, and Keller? I’d read over my history book again and make sure I wasn’t going to be fighting against the two of us, if I were you," he added lastly with a grin, just as another officer of the Seattle police department arrived at the back door, slid it open, and called out to the two and the handcuffed addict between them.

AN: Surprise! Hi, hello, and yes, I finally kicked myself in the ass to get to work and get out the next chapter of Twelve. Yes, I'm as lazy as I am, and I'm surprised this story didn't divorce me and demand child support or something. >~< I've got this bucket here to catch anybody's complaint on the time between updates (more like eons, Kait!) so fire away, if you feel you have to. I'm still not at peace with my muses, which take more frequent and deeper naps than my aging dog, so I can't promise I won't lag behind on future updates, but I'll sure as hell try to keep my lazy ass in check. Also, I've got my little good luck Buddha statue (which I also dropped on the floor twice, breaking off his foot and part of his robe and hand) sitting in my pocket, and I really hope I can juggle all these works in progress at once. (Yes, I am working on Shini, Barbarians, and Pedigree, as well!) So god willing, I'll conquer my writer's blocks, get a job, and find tickets for the Green Day concert in November. ._.; Yeah, dreaming big. Anyway, I'm missing North By Northwest. Ciao.