Kracken
Disclaimer: I don't own them and I don't make any money off of this.
Warning: Male/male sex. Violence, graphic, rough sex, language, attempted NCS,
abuse. While my stories always end happily, the getting there is dark and turbulent.
Heero has issues. Not a deathfic. ^_^
1x2, 3x4, 5x Sally.
Burning Candles
Under the Skin
Heero rubbed at his forehead as he stared at the blinking curser on his computer
screen. His email was empty. He should have had at least a dozen emails pertaining
to his cases, but... the empty inbox was a mystery his aching head and depressed
psyche weren't ready to deal with.
"Andrews!" Heero snapped and a heavy set, older man sat up abruptly at his desk nearby. "Find out where my email is."
"Yes, sir," Andrews replied quickly.
As the tech scrambled to obey, Heero pushed away from his desk and walked away. He needed tea, a fact that he had tried to ignore for most of the morning while he tried to obey his own orders and solve cases. It had always been his first contact with Duo every morning. His partner would sit down at his desk and offer him tea. Having that chair remain empty, and not having his usual back and forth exchange , had made Heero's gut clench and had seemed as wrong as the sun not coming up in the morning. He remembered how he had almost stopped Duo and had almost engaged him in conversation... everything might have been different now if he had just followed that impulse.
Heero entered the lounge, ignored the other agents there, and fumbled to find the hot tea selection on the bank of refreshment machines. A prickle between his shoulders alerted him to the fact that he was being stared at. Agents lost their partners far too often. Sympathies were usually delivered in those situations, but Heero hoped that no one would approach him. He didn't want that validation of Duo's demise, had, in the case of the tea, refused to do anything to bring that fact to mind.
"Heero, watch out," an agent warned.
Heero turned quickly, reaching for his gun as he spotted a distraught boy coming towards him in civilian clothes. Heero knew the other agents were on the alert too, so he felt safe enough to allow the boy to approach him.
"Are you Heero Yuy, Duo's partner?" The boy demanded.
Heero narrowed eyes at him. The boy was short and his hair was long, rough cut, and blonde. His rail thin body swam in his loose street clothes and over large tennis shoes. Heero estimated that he was probably only fourteen years old.
"How do you know that?" Heero wondered.
"Duo has pictures," the boy replied, but swept that away by demanding, "Where is he? He didn't come home and, when I call here, they tell me it's 'classified'."
Heero jumped to an immediate conclusion about who was facing him and he felt an unexpected anger that had only a little to do with the boy's age. He wasn't sure how to deliver the news to someone that their lover was dead, especially when the survivor was an underage boy. The older agent saw his hesitation and took over.
"He's dead, son," the grizzled agent told him bluntly. "He was the victim of a murder."
The boy went white, his mouth hanging open. He finally choked out, "W-Where's his... body?"
The older agent sighed and scrubbed at a crew cut. "There isn't one, yet."
The boy grasped at that, " Then you don't know for sure!" he retorted. "He's a goddam Gundam Pilot. He doesn't get dead, man!"
He took a step towards Heero, demanding," You're looking for him, right?"
Heero shook his head. "Other agents are working on the case."
The boy snarled, "Don't you care?! He talked all the time about you! Said you were skin to skin, man! Now, you're letting him get jumped and you're not making any shit about it?"
"Who are you son?" The older agent asked, trying to come to Heero's rescue.
"Nobody," the boy shot back. "Seems Duo's nobody, too, if you won't help him!" He made a rude gesture and turned away. As he strode back to the door, he shot over his shoulder, "Fuck all of you! You wanna give up on him, go ahead, but we won't! We'll look for him!"
Everyone watched him go, but then the older agent turned to Heero, confused. "We?" he repeated.
"Unknown," Heero replied, unsure how to admit that he knew so little about his deceased partner.
Heero left the lounge and returned to his desk, forgetting about his tea. He was met by Andrews. The man took one look at Heero's dark expression and swallowed as he moved to keep some space between them.
"Uh,"Andrews cleared his throat and tried again as Heero sat down
and stared at the still blank inbox on his computer screen. "Does someone
else have access to your emails?" he asked. "Someone gave an access
code, but I don't have clearance to find out who it belongs to."
"Une," Heero grunted, and Peacecraft." He picked up his phone,
while Andrews made a hasty retreat, and called Une's office. She answered without
turning on her vid feed.
"Une." There was a tone to her voice, expectant.
"Yuy," he responded. "My emails have been diverted."
"Necessary," she replied shortly.
"Explanation?" he prodded.
"Classified," she replied and crisply, "Get back to work, agent."
"Acknowledged."
Heero hung up his phone and sat very still. The anger that had started when he had made the assumption that the boy and Duo might have been lovers, grew into another kind of anger all together. He smelled conspiracy in the air and it was his experience that nations fell when that happened. He had given up far too much for peace to sit back and refuse to defend it when he smelled danger in the air.
_____________________________________
"Your partner hasn't answered our little email," Revenant told Duo as he stood over him in his cell.
"What a surprise," Duo responded sarcastically. He tried to make himself comfortable in his awkward position and then gave it up as he twisted to glare at Revenant. "Do you think I can get a pillow or something?"
Revenant sighed. "I think I'm going to see the end of your bravado very shortly. Time to expand on our threat." He motioned to his thugs and they moved towards Duo with eager grins.
___________________________________________
"Where is Duo?"
Heero stared at Quatre Winner standing outside of his apartment door. Two of his men were ranged behind him, one watching the hallway and another watching Heero.
"He's dead," Heero told him in a flat tone.
Quatre shuddered and his eyes filled with intense pain. "Dead?" he whispered back. "How can that....." He composed himself with an effort. Despite the fact that he had grown taller over the years, he still seemed like a very young man in his expensive business suit. He motioned shakily towards Heero's apartment. "May I come in?"
"Yes," Heero stepped aside.
Quatre signaled for his guards to wait outside and he closed the door on them before he let his emotions have free rein again. He touched Heero's arm, his blue eyes swimming with grief as he asked, "How did it happen?"
Heero moved to his computer on a nearby table and shut it down, blocking Quatre's view of it as he did so. Then he turned to face Quatre again. "He was targeted, and killed, after work. Une's investigating the crime. I don't have any other information. She told me that the case was classified."
"Classified?" Quatre repeated as he sat heavily in a wooden chair.
Heero perched on the edge of the table containing his computer and nodded. "Une seemed very certain that Duo was dead. We received part of his braid." Quatre gasped at that. "His badge," Heero continued, "and several notes. The braid was stained with Duo's blood."
Quatre let out a shuddering breath, finding some hope as he asked, "Then you don't know that he's dead for certain?"
"No,"Heero admitted and his pessimism was strong enough for Quatre to sense.
"But you think he is?" Quatre pressed. "Why?"
"Une was very certain," Heero replied and felt troubled by that. It was as if she had known it was going to happen; inevitable. He narrowed his eyes at Quatre. "How did you find out that Duo was missing?" Missing. He kept from wincing at that slip. It was as if some part of him, deep down, wasn't as pessimistic as the rest of him.
"I was called by Duo's landlord," Quatre admitted hesitantly. "Did he ever tell you... about our arrangement?"
Arrangement. Heero felt that anger rise again. It confused him, that he wanted to believe the worst of Duo. The worst? It was hard to understand why he was feeling that Duo having a relationship was somehow wrong.
"Heero?" Quatre raised eyebrows, not understanding Heero's sudden tenseness.
Heero stood up and paced to a window. He admitted slowly, "I don't know anything about Duo."
"But...." Quatre replied, confused, "You were partners..."
"Partners," Heero stressed. "We didn't interact outside of work." That sounded cold, mechanical, unfeeling, but Heero knew that their working relationship had not been any of those things. They had been there for each other, solid, dependable, reliable... like clockwork. Heero knew he wasn't wrong in believing that they had both felt comfortable with that, with order in their lives where there had never been any before.
"Duo didn't talk about you very much," Quatre told him. His eyes roved the small apartment. "He did have photos, though.... I thought..." He decided not to voice what he had thought and returned to the question at hand. "Well.... He had problems with handling money," Quatre told Heero. He smiled slightly at the memory, but it didn't touch the pain in his blue eyes."I made certain that you were all given large trust funds, that you were taken care of if you so desired. Duo repeatedly asked for more money, though. He couldn't stop buying things." The smile contained a bit more humor, but then it faded as he said, "I gave him a money manager, and a budget, and then I made certain that his landlord was paid out of a bank account that Duo couldn't access. I was also paying the landlord to keep an eye on Duo. He was the one who reported to me when Duo failed to return home. Duo's young and single, that might not be notable in most circumstances, but he had always come home before, when not on a case. When the Landlord checked with Preventer headquarters, he was told that Duo was not at work, nothing more."
"And you were told the same?" Heero guessed.
Quatre nodded. "That's why I came to your apartment, to find out what is going on. When a war hero, and one of the top agents in the Preventers goes missing, and no one has an explanation, I find that highly suspicious."
"Une said she would make a statement to the press," Heero replied carefully.
"I have no doubt that she will," Quatre responded in a way that told him exactly what he thought of that. "Now tell me, Heero Yuy," Quatre demanded, blue eyes looking at Heero sternly, "What do you know and what do you suspect?"
Heero tensed. "I've already told you what I-"
"You turned your computer off when I arrived," Quatre replied impatiently. "You were doing something that you didn't want me to see. Now, stop the evasive maneuvers, Heero, and tell me what you suspect has happened to Duo."
"I didn't retrieve any information," Heero replied, feeling odd, feeling as if he had just returned to the war and that Quatre was someone he could trust, someone who was a comrade in arms.
"Because I interrupted you," Quatre surmised. He stood and walked over to Heero's computer. He turned it on. "Proceed."
Heero felt that he was at a crossroads, that he could tell Quatre to leave and return to his routine, his solitary work, or he could break the rules, risk his job, risk his new life, to find out what had happened to his partner. It wouldn't bring him back, knowing, but if his kidnaping was part of something larger, if Une was conspiring to keep Duo's murderer's hidden...
"It could be much larger than Duo," Quatre said, echoing Heero's own thoughts. "We both sacrificed too much not to find out."
"And if it was a simple murder?" Heero wondered in a subdued voice. "If Une is only keeping the details under wraps because of an ongoing case against his murderer?"
"The case won't be compromised by our investigation," Quatre assured him."But sacrifices might have to be made."
Heero nodded, accepting that there might be harsh consequences for him if he as discovered. He sat down at his computer and began hacking into the Preventer database. Quatre stood at his shoulder, glancing from the screen to Heero. Finally he said, "You are upset by his death."
Hero's typing paused, his frown deepened, and then he replied as he continued typing, "He was a good partner."
"Ah." Quatre was silent for long minutes and then he said, "I worried about you both. I was glad when you were assigned together. I think that you gave Duo some discipline and that he gave you-"
Heero grunted, interrupting, "Une's diverted my emails again. I'll search for backlogs."
"Again?" Quatre mulled that over. "Why would Une take your emails?"
"The suspects contacted me, personally, leaving me a note," Heero told him as he hacked deeper into the system. "I suspect that they may have attempted to email me as well."
"Why?" Quatre wondered.
Heero replied, "They said that it was me they wanted, not Duo."
"They want to kill you?" Quatre's eyes widened. "Is Une concerned about that?"
"She took the items that were sent to me and once again informed me that the case did not concern me," Heero replied. He paused in his typing and Quatre leaned in to read the screen.
"Deleted. " Quatre frowned, confused. "Why would she delete emails that might be important to her case?"
"They are tagged as having been opened," Heero pointed out. "Perhaps there was nothing important in them?"
"Here." Quatre pointed to a string of deleted files. "Pictures? Were you expecting evidence photos of any kind?"
"No," Heero tried to make sense out of the codes and jumbled file names. The delete backups looked as if someone had tried to burn them as well as delete. What it had left in it's wake were bits and pieces. He chased a small string of code and found it's source unexpectedly. "I may be able to open this pic, but it's corrupted."
Quatre was startled. "A virus trap? She must have suspected that you would try to access them."
"It's very sophisticated," Heero told him. "We may have only seconds before it destroys my system.
"Backup all of your data," Quatre suggested. "I'll buy you a new laptop."
"Already backed up," Heero replied and Quatre chuckled at Heero's efficiency. "Ready to deploy?"
"Ready," Quatre affirmed.
"Deploying," Heero announced and opened the file.
Very slowly, the picture opened. Quatre's hand slammed down on Heero's shoulder and squeezed hard as he swore in choked Arabic. They had just enough time to realize that the figure hanging from restraints, naked to the waist, covered in blood and obvious shock gun burns, was Duo, before the screen flickered, flashed, and then began scrolling virus.