I do not own Gundam Wing or any characters in it. Gundam Wing belongs to Sotsu, Sunrise, ANB, and other rich people. I do not own I Don't Know You Anymore, it's by Savage Garden. Mozart's K.626 Requiem belongs to Mozart. I am not making any money off of this, and I have no money so don't sue me. On the other hand, I do own whatever random side characters I come up with.
Warnings: Rated R for content. Contains lime, male/male pairings, violence, death, and some language. If any of this content offends you, your parents don't want you reading this, or you are not old enough to read this, please don't. If you choose to read on anyway, if you have been warned and I do not care to receive any content based complaints after said warning. Thank you.
Author's Notes: Words inside // indicate song lyrics. This part contains a lot of violence, blood shed, death, and betrayal.
Pairings: Heero/Duo, Quatre/Trowa, Relena/OC
Heero and I slept that night on my living room floor. I woke early, knowing that I had to leave for a few days. I was going to Scotland for Drew's birthday. I got up and slipped into the bathroom. I had a quick shower, and washed my hair, my thoughts dancing joyously over what had happened the night before.
Heero had said he loved me. He said he loved me.
I dressed, his words still repeating endlessly in my mind. I brushed and braided my hair to their refrain. I went out to the living room and found him still asleep. I went back in my room and fetched the alarm clock, which I then placed on the coffee table.
I wrote him a note saying I had to go, and he looked too peaceful to wake, but I'd see him on Tuesday. I left that under the alarm clock. I knelt down and kissed him softly. “I love you, Heero,” I whispered.
I grabbed my things and left, almost skipping at the words in my mind. The trip went quickly and Drew met me at the airport.
“Davin,” he called. I approached and he started laughing immediately. “Dav McDonnell, am I going to have to teach you how to dress in color again?”
I looked down and began to laugh with him. He'd spent most of college getting me out of my wardrobe of complete black, and now I was back to wearing it.
“No fears, Drew. I only wear it for them. I brought plenty of color to wear here.” We left the airport and headed for Drew's family's house. We talked about everything and nothing at all.
Our conversation culminated in a question just as we were pulling up to the house. “So, Dav, what's got you glowing brighter than the sun?”
“He loves me, Drew. Heero said he loves me,” I answered, a soft smile crossing my face. We got out of the car and walked into the house together.
“Does this mean you're going to stop mooning over him then?”
I reached out and swatted him in the back of the head, and a camera flash went off. Drew and I blinked and started laughing again as Daddy Rob, what Drew's father had ordered me to call him, vanished with the camera.
I stopped to look at Drew. “I'll stop dreaming of what could happen, Drew. But stop dreaming of him and the future I know we can have, never. I won't stop dreaming of that,” I told him, my voice completely serious.
“Sounds fair to me,” he replied, and then we had no time to talk because his mother and Adam descended upon us like a flock of very loving locusts.
We were stripped of coats and my bags. Mama Elena, she insisted I call her that, gave me a hug and a kiss and dragged me off to the kitchen to help her and to tell her “all about life in the Preventers.” She didn't really care that I wrote her weekly letter giving her all the news. She wanted it from my mouth and in person. It didn't bother me at all. She'd been like that all through school too.
Adam and Drew came along and after telling Mama Elena everything I could about life in the Preventers we sat there talking and eating chocolate chip cookies.
The entire weekend was similar to that. We ate, talked, laughed, failed to avoid Daddy Rob and his camera, and just spent it like a family. It was nothing spectacular, but it was something I hadn't had before them. And with the exception of Mama Elena asking about life in the Preventers, they didn't treat me as Duo Maxwell—an annoying, talkative, and manic ex-Gundam pilot. Instead they treated me like Davin McDonnell—a happy, hyperactive, and slightly psychotic unofficially adopted son.
It was a relief to drop the masks. It was a relief to be me as I fully was, not just me as a shadow of my past. I started dreaming of letting Heero behind the masks, and I talked it all out with Drew. He took it with good grace. After all, he'd heard all about the Eve wars, the Mariemaya incident, and everything from the last year. In college he'd become my older brother, my sounding board, and my best friend. After graduation nothing had changed in those regards, and frankly I think Drew enjoyed the job and hearing about it all. If nothing else, it gave him more ammunition to tease me with, and I was always willing to reciprocate with his life.
I flew back on Monday night. I let myself back into my apartment and found no sign of anything that occurred before I left. Heero wasn't there and although I hadn't expected him to be, he didn't even leave me a message.
However, there was a phone message from Lady Une. “Maxwell, you have a mission with the other pilots. You will be at work at 7:30 Tuesday morning to prepare. You'll all leave Wednesday morning. I hope you had a good trip.” Her face had been placid, and her eyes and voice completely calm.
I couldn't understand the rush on the mission because she had given me no clues. It was too late to call anybody, and knowing I'd have to get up extra early I just went to bed.
I barely arrived on time for work the next morning, and ran in the door breathless and completely unprepared.
“How kind of you to join us,” Wufei snidely said, looking at me with barely veiled disgust. “Have you looked over the mission profile?”
“Eh, Wufei, please, tell me when I was supposed to do that? I was out of town until really late last night only to get told there was an early meeting this morning and no information. I may be the God of Death, but I'm not a mind reader as of yet,” I laughed. I wanted to snarl it at him, but my masks had already gone back up, tighter and harder than my Gundam.
Heero walked in the door, and without even greeting me, he handed me a file folder full of papers. “Hey, Heero,” I chirped. “How was your weekend?” I asked as I flipped it open and saw, without surprise, it was the mission Lady Une had spoken of.
Heero ignored me and the silence was icy. I glanced at him and saw no emotion in his eyes. It frightened me. I could almost feel those hopeful dreams crumbling down around me. To hide my confusion I began to read the reports.
/Don't stop keep that chin up you'll be alright
Can you believe what a year it's been
Are you still the same?
Has your opinion changed?/
I read each and every word twice and I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe it. Dekim Barton still had supporters, who had formed a new group no less, and they were absolutely bound and determined to do two things. The first to remove Mariemaya from the care of Lady Une and retrain her as their empress, and the second to place her on the World throne as Imperial dictator. I briefly wondered how Une could have been so calm on the phone when she left that message, and then it didn't matter anymore.
“If you're ready now, Duo,” Quatre's voice cut into my thoughts and my reading, “we'd like to get started.” I looked up and waved him on before going back to the file.
“Duo, we'd like your attention please,” Trowa added.
I looked up again. “I'm listening. I can multi-task you know.” I'd gotten tired of it all, all of a sudden. I could listen to them talk while I finished absorbing the facts of the mission and then actively join the planning, but no, they had to have my attention then and there. I wanted to blow something up very badly.
“Duo,” Quatre started in on me again, “pay attention. If you hadn't disappeared over the weekend you'd have all the information down already.”
I looked up, and with a patient expression on my face I said, “Quatre, I hardly disappeared this weekend. I set the leave up over two months ago and I made sure that Lady Une knew I wasn't going to be back until very late last night. Furthermore, I left a contact number with her in case of emergencies. My lack of knowledge on this assignment is hardly my fault. Now, I can listen and read at the same time, or I can devote my sole and entire attention upon you and be next to useless in this planning session because I won't have all of the facts. Which would you prefer?”
They all, with the exception of Heero who was expressionless, stared at me in shock. I ignored it and went back to rereading the reports. I knew, I knew even then, that, that would be last mission with the Preventers. I couldn't take their attitudes anymore. I couldn't take having to hide who I was, or the rapid changes Heero was putting me through. I wanted him. I wanted him desperately. But the way he was treating me made me think that Friday had been a fluke, a wonderful fluke, but something that would never happen again. My heart cracked at the thought.
The silence left over from my outburst was only broken by the occasional flickering of paper as I turned a page, or moved them to correlate the data in my mind. Dekim's remnants were not small, and I could not see how they'd remained hidden for so long.
A half-hour passed, with their eyes burning into me. I eventually looked up again, as I finished—for the moment—the reports. “You guys could have started,” I said, flatly.
“We thought we'd wait for you, so we could have your undivided attention,” Wufei's tone was slightly acidic. I couldn't have cared less.
“As I was about to say, we have a problem here, in the steppes of Old Ukraine. That's where the enemy's base is, right in the middle of the Ural forest. Our best estimate of their forces is between 50 and 100. Our job is to get in there, blow them up, and get out.”
I stared at Quatre. Five of us, in the war, with our Gundams made this possible. It made it possible against much greater odds too. Five of us, now, with no back up, against a group that had to know we were coming was suicide. I tried to point this out and got overruled. The plan was even worse in my mind, but I got overruled on that too.
Just imagine my enthusiasm when the next day I found myself on a plane headed for Old Ukraine. We were going to drive through the forest till we were five miles from the base. We would then split up and hit the base from three sides. I would be by myself covering the east side. The side that had their main road, the side that was most heavily guarded. And our way of keeping in touch with each other? Walkie-Talkies. We were going to stay in contact on an open radio frequency in front of a group that knew, they had to know, we were coming.
I might as well have not been at the planning session for all the good it did me. I knew there had to be a better plan to go into this mess, but they didn't listen. Not one of them listened. Une didn't even review the plan, she just sent us out, trusting us to do our work. I could understand this coming from her. This was her adopted daughter they were trying to take away, and it was also the daughter of the only man she'd ever loved. Yes, I could understand Une's distraction, especially after seeing her up close. That calmness that she'd projected over the phone was as good a mask as my own until you got close to her. She was close to coming unglued. Especially since she'd found out that they planned to take Mariemaya away from her in less than a week.
I couldn't understand it from my partners. We had never done anything this badly planned ever before. It was like they were trying to find a way to mass suicide, but they were determined to take me out first. To say I had a bad feeling about the mission was putting it mildly.
I was still muttering about the foolhardiness of it all when we arrived. Quatre was looking at me as if I'd lost my mind. During the war I probably wouldn't have blinked twice at their plan. I was doing more than blinking; I was thinking and pointing out every single flaw. They didn't know what to do with it or me.
Heero finally got tired of listening to me. “Shut up, Baka,” he snapped. There was no warmth in his tone.
I shut up and stared out of the car window. I was fighting off tears. My heart cracked a little more as I wondered what had happened to ai shiteru? Heero never struck me as the type to say anything in the heat, or the aftermath, of passion that he didn't mean. Yet he'd done it. All the evidence pointed that way.
I started blocking it out, smothering it under the facts of the mission and what I'd have to do to survive. I reviewed what they called a plan and mentally winced, again. My survival was going to count on luck, a prayer, and Death's continued refusal to take me. I started planning my own contingency plans and began praying. The fact that I started with the 23rd psalm meant nothing at all, really it didn't.
We left the car, separated, and disappeared into the woods. I turned the radio down as low as I could and I quietly, and carefully, snuck through the woods. I couldn't help but wish for Deathscythe.
I made no effort to go quickly. I wanted to get out of this alive and I wanted to find out what was going on with Heero. I found an outlying sentry and calmly broke his neck. I needed his uniform. After stripping his corpse I stuffed the clothing in my bag.
I drifted closer over the damp ground, weaving my way through their front lines. They were out in force. I killed as many as I could on my way in. I wanted fewer enemies blocking my way out.
I reached my main position, and looked at the gate and walls of the compound from the edge of the tree line. The trees had been cut down around the walls making sneaking impossible. Sentries stalked the walls and more soldiers blocked the front gates.
And we had to get into this place to blow it up. Sure, it was really going to happen.
I knew my partners' plan was foolish and had more holes than a block of Swiss cheese, but even I was stumped at how they expected me to get in there in broad daylight. I couldn't even see how they expected to get in, forget about me. Even the uniform I'd stolen wasn't going to do the job.
I hesitated, trying to think my way through the problem. I failed to come up with a solution, but I concluded that they'd under estimated the number of troops the enemy had by quite a lot.
Then the plan came tumbling down in a way I'd predicted. My radio squawked to life just as a sentry was passing me by. And to top it all off they were yelling because all four of them had managed to be seen and were in a fire fight. I wanted to kill them. Just because they'd fucked up it didn't mean that they had to put me in the same situation.
I threw my bag up into the tree, making sure it caught and held where it wouldn't be obvious. I'd need my things if I got out alive, and people never remembered to look up.
The sentry charged the noise and found me, gun drawn and waiting. We shot simultaneously, and found out that I had better aim. The bullet went through his head. His went through my shoulder. He dropped to the ground and I retreated from my spot as the noise attracted the guards towards me.
I listened to the guards snapping orders at each other and watched as fifty plus of them converged on me.
“Our intelligence was off,” Quatre gasped over the radio. “There's too many of them.”
“Duh,” I said to myself as I retreated.
“What now?” he asked.
“We die, Quatre, we die,” I growled. I dodged in between the black trees as shots were fired towards me. Dirt flew up into the air as bullets thunked into the ground and wood chips and bark came off of the trees when they were struck. A half dozen bullets grazed me and two buried themselves in my body. I was in more danger from the flying wood. All the same I cried out in pain with each strike, but let the adrenaline rush carry me through it.
I returned fire, with a bit more accuracy and watched several of them stumble, fall, cry out, or ignore the shots as much as I was. They continued after me, and I continued to run, limping slightly and forcing myself to concentrate, pushing back anything that would remind me that I'd been hurt.
“Retreat, this mission has been aborted,” Heero's voice echoed coldly over the radio.
I hit the send button and snapped, “Some help would be nice on your way out.” Fear and anger thrummed through my veins. Air gasped in my lungs and my wounds burned.
All air vanished with what I heard next.
“He says he's Shinigami. Well, if he's so close to death, or is death, let him get himself out of this mess,” Trowa stated coldly. “Retreating now.”
Shock echoed through my system. My mind stopped thinking, stopped processing anything except that Trowa had said to abandon me. And then my body exploded with pain.
My mind wasn't the only thing that had stopped at Trowa's words. So had my body. They had shot me, several times, and at decent range. The shots weren't fatal, yet, but I could tell that they looked like they were.
I made a snap decision. My body slowly crumpled to the ground and I smiled slowly and bit back a snicker. I knew this was going to happen.
Right before I lost touch with the world I heard one of them say, “He's dead, Sir.”
Copyright 2005