Disclaimer: I don't own them and I don't make any money off of them.
Warnings: Male/Male sex, graphic, language, violence, gore, torture, explicit
scenes.
"You look like Preventers," Wu Fei sighed.
"And you don't?" Heero wondered sourly.
Dressed in a button down, white shirt, and dark pants, Wu Fei looked as official as Heero did in his khaki pants, black dress shirt, and dark sunglasses. Heero reached out and tugged the shirt out of Wu Fei's pants. He then rolled the sleeves up to the man's elbows. Wu Fei responded by jerking Heero's shirt out of his pants, unbuttoning it, and leaving it open to reveal Heero's undershirt.
"Better," Heero said sourly, but then shrugged. "It won't really matter, not in a place like this."
The map of the city was spread out over one of the hotel beds, along with a gun, a scope, and their packs. An area was marked in red and notes were scrawled next to it.
"Duo won't be fooled, but casual observers won't see anything out of the ordinary," Wu Fei assured him. He tossed a khaki ball cap at Heero. "They won't, that is, as long as you hide your too famous face."
Heero grunted as he put on the cap and pulled the brim down low. When he picked up his gun and checked it, he felt that cold sickness, in the pit of his stomach, that hadn't abated since taking the assignment, grow.
"You are being sloppy on purpose," Wu Fei observed.
He had never held back his judgment. He wasn't going to start now, when they would be facing their greatest target.
"So are you," Heero countered. "We are both reluctant to face Duo. We're both hoping that he gets away."
"We understand that we can't allow that, though." Wu Fei rolled up the map and slipped a rubber band around it. He let it fall to the table. "You do, don't you?"
"Yes." Heero turned away, the sick feeling growing. "He's turned away from everything that we've given blood for. He's prepared to kill innocents. That isn't the man that we knew."
Those words seemed to catch hold and stay, latched into Heero's mind, long after he had said them. It wasn't like Duo at all, not like the man who had always been so careful of civilians. The psychologists had all talked about post war syndrome, paranoia, and a nervous breakdown, but Duo had seemed very lucid when he had ripped at the very foundation of Heero's world. If the man could think that clearly about his delusions of a corrupt government, and the danger of yet another dictatorship, then how much more was it to justify the killing of non combatants?
"You will fall back, when we make contact," Wu Fei reminded him, as if he needed to, despite Heero's unfailing professionalism. "I will approach the target and terminate."
The plans had been gone over, time and time again, and every eventuality vetted, during the long trip there. Wu Fei was repeating them, only to confirm that Heero's feelings were still locked down tightly, whether they were urges for revenge or urges to protect the man that he had once loved more than life.
"And if you fail, I will finish the job," Heero added grimly.
"You will, for the safety of the citizens that we have sworn to protect," Wu Fei said, as if it was a mantra to make them both strong.
Heero nodded, but his mind was replaying images of blood and bruised flesh under his hands and the sensation of acute fury, beyond anything that he had ever felt before, made him tremble and go hot and cold. He remembered Une saying, 'The betrayal of the one you most love, can be more devastating than anything else." She had looked too knowing, as if she had known that kind of pain, too. Heero hadn't asked her about it, unable to bear anything but his own agony, then, and too far gone in despair to care.
Duo probably suspected that Wu Fei had been chosen as his judge and executioner, but he wouldn't expect that Une would send a man so emotionally involved with the target. It was her trump card, and an indication of the faith that she placed in Heero as an agent. It was also an indication of her fear. Knowing that Heero might be damaged goods, if he was forced to kill Duo, and that she might lose her best agent, was a risk that she was willing to take.
"Let's move out," Wu Fei said sharply, to bring Heero back into focus.
Heero nodded, numbly, and followed his partner to the place of execution.
________________________________________________
"Not too good, are you?" Grainer tisked as he confronted Duo. "I was expecting more... resistance? You've grown soft."
Duo was plastered into a corner of his cell, hair wild and in his face, as he closed his eyes tightly and tried to stop the panic attacks that racked his body with tremors. They hadn't bothered with anything other than handcuffs locking his arms behind his back, and a length of chain attached to his one ankle. That ankle was raw from his repeated attempts to get away from their torments.
Everything seemed too loud and to bright. When Duo dared to open his eyes, every shadow seemed to jump at him, his mind thinking spider, or bug, and sending him flinching and shuddering to get away from them. The men who had abused him had seemed larger than life, every touch monstrously exaggerated by his warped senses, and every pain they had inflicted, endless in the way that it had fired along every nerve and synapses, of his drugged brain, long after they had stopped.
Duo had talked, babbled, and screamed. He didn't know if he had told them what they had wanted to hear. There wasn't any past, and no thoughts of the future, just the now, and his mind trying to hold itself together.
"If only you hadn't tried to make that call," Grainer was saying. "I was going to give you time. I was going to slowly bring you into our operation, so that you could appreciate the importance of our having those suits. It was wonderful the way everyone's moral rose when you came. You would have been the perfect leader. They might even have voted you in as the head of our new republic. Too late now. They all feel betrayed. Duo Maxwell was going to rat on them, and get them all killed. That's why they've been rather over zealous in getting information out of you."
Duo shook his head, but that motion made the room spin even behind his closed eyes. Tears leaked out and ran down his cheeks. He had been doing a lot of that, the hormone and chemical concoctions, they had pumped him full of, reeking havoc with his psyche.
Grainer unfolded a note, smoothed it out, and held it before Duo's face, even though Duo refused to look. The number was written in ink, dark and harsh, as if the person, who had written it, had been furious. "Heero Yuy's work number," Grainer said. "Were you going to beg him to forgive you? Were you going to tell him all our plans?"
Grainer smashed the note into Duo's face. The impact sent Duo's mind into a panic. He cried out and curled up tightly, the world shattering. His body lost control and Grainer straightened and stepped back in disgust.
"You can't be squeamish when it comes to a war for freedom," Grainer told him. "There will be acceptable civilian casualties. There always is. Military targets have to be eliminated no matter the cost. The end result-"
Duo shook his head again and whimpered, "No."
"You were ready to kill, when we were talking about military targets," Grainer reminded him. "Blood is blood, or don't you think they're innocents, too, the agents, like your Heero, who follow a despot blindly?"
It had seemed so clear, at first, but Grainer was right, Duo thought blearily. He had been thinking in the same black and white reality as the war. Uniforms were targets. Civilians were not. It had been bad timing to come to an epiphany when he had been surrounded by terrorists, to consider that Heero was in uniform, and little Hilde, and everyone that he knew as a friend. Putting faces on those uniforms, on those innocents who thought that they were fighting for the good, had made him falter. That call to Heero had been an act of desperation. He had needed reassurance that he was doing the right thing. The busy signal had been instantly followed by his imprisonment by his fellow rebels. It seemed that they had never really trusted him, and had been ready for his betrayal all along. It was the codes in his head, after all, that Grainer really wanted, not the skills of an ex Gundam pilot. He had plenty of ex soldiers who could man suits.
"We have the codes, now, thanks to you," Grainer told him, confirming that Duo had been confused enough by the drugs to say whatever they wanted, "and you don't have to worry about spilling innocent blood. All you have to do, is sit in your own piss, and tell me whatever else I need to know, while we wait for my men to acquire the suits."
A booted foot suddenly slammed Duo's face against the cold wall of his prison, holding it there brutally.
"Now, about the basement entrance," Grainer said calmly as Duo panicked and struggled, sobbing. "We don't have certain parts on our maps. We need you to fill in the blanks."
__________________________________
"Damn!" Wu Fei turned in a circle, staring at the empty room, bare of everything. Their targets were gone.
Heero kicked open a door and nosed his gun at a dark stairwell. "Down here. I smell something."
Wu Fei wrinkled his nose, distastefully. "Dead body?"
"No... piss... other things... not anything dead..." Heero flicked on a light and cautiously went down the stairs. Empty crates, a few used ration tins, and a crushed soda can were strewn around a basement. An attempt had been made to scrub down an area, but cleaners hadn't covered up, or erased everything. The smell and the stains were too strong.
"Needles," Wu Fei grunted as he toed at several discarded ones that had rolled into cracks in the floor.
Heero bent and scowled at holes in the wall. "Someone was shackled here."
Wu Fei grunted, not convinced. "That's a leap. They have earthquakes here. They bolt equipment down. As for the smell and the needles, drug users are known to pass out and piss themselves."
"Drug using rebels?" Heero said with a scowl as he paced the room. "How likely is that?"
"I know what you want to believe," Wu Fei replied. "Duo wasn't shackled here. Duo is leading them, Yuy. It took skill to fool surveillance into thinking that they were still here. Renting the front out to a delivery service was genius. Trucks and crates going in and out kept their bug out from our radar."
Heero felt his heart pounding. The stress of going in, expecting to kill Duo, had been harder than he wanted to admit. He had almost lost his professionalism, and stayed behind. He hadn't wanted to see Duo die. He hadn't wanted to see the reports confirmed, that his former lover had turned into a cold killer of innocents.
Images of the past played out in the shadows as Heero waited while Wu Fei called in their report. Duo shouting, Duo pushing at him, braid swinging wildly as he tried to make Heero believe that everything he had killed for, and given his life for, had been a lie, a ruse by higher ups, by Relena Peacecraft, to seize power. The swinging of a hard knuckled fist. The dull thud of it connecting with Heero's flesh. The shocked and then furious purple eyes as Heero had replied in kind far more violently. The dawning betrayal. The sudden fear that Heero meant to kill him.They were sick images among the cracks and spider webs.
Heero bent and teased out two, long strands of chestnut hair, from a crack in the wall, between the holes, as the images scattered. He held them up to the light. "Duo."
"What?" Wu Fei snapped his cell closed and pocketed it as he joined Heero.
Heero showed Wu Fei the strands.
Wu Fei refused Heero's 'proof'. "He's taking drugs, it seems. That may explain many things."
Heero winced and gathered the strands into one, hard fist. "Evidence bags," he ordered.
Wu Fei scowled and then nodded, seeing the wisdom in it, whatever the theory. He dug them out of his pocket and handed them over. Heero deposited the hairs into one, the needles into another, and scraped evidence from the floor with a small knife.
"If you're done," Wu Fei told him at last, "Then we should try tracking down our targets, again, before they carry out their objective. Lives are depending on us, Yuy."
"I know," Heero replied. "I want to make sure that we have the right targets, though."
"Are you trying to prove that Duo may have changed his mind?" Wu Fei wanted to know, confronting Heero. "Are you thinking that he isn't leading the rebels into mass destruction?"
"I can't help thinking that it isn't like him," Heero admitted as he held the bags, gingerly, and looked at them through the clear plastic."Even at his worst..."
Wu Fei nodded at the bag of needles. "Sometimes, a soldier can't live with the past, and they resort to drugs. Drugs can make a man do many things he might never have done.It can change him, make him paranoid. You must face the possibility that Duo's altered personality, his paranoia, may spring from this."
Heero nodded, but it was a comfort, almost, to know that Duo might not have been hiding a psychotic alter ego, a man playing at being the kind and gentle lover that he had known. "We should inform Une," he suggested.
"It won't change her mind," Wu Fei warned. "She won't risk so many lives in an attempt to bring him in."
That was the hard truth. Duo's death sentence had been signed. There wouldn't be any stay of execution.
"Have everything tested anyway," Heero told his partner. "At least I will know, for certain then. "
"If it gives you some peace, my friend," Wu Fei agreed.
"I think it will," Heero replied.
_________________________________
"Almost ready for game time," Grainer crooned as he straightened Duo's jacket and smoothed a hand along his neat braid. Hanging from the ceiling, his wrists red from their restraints, Duo's face was bruised and shadowed with exhaustion and pain. He rolled eyes at Grainer, but his throat was too dry from lack of water and screaming. The drugs were out of his system, but that wasn't any mercy. He was left with the pain, and the knowledge, of his utter failure.
"I used to want you," Grainer mused, as he circled Duo in the bare room. "I would have given anything to have you tied up like this, and ready for anything that I wanted to do." His hands teased Duo's crotch and rubbed at his ass. He sneered in the next moment at Duo's shudder and look of trepidation. "I don't want you now. You're too pathetic and you stink. I have my standards."
Grainer suddenly yanked Duo's jeans down to his knees. "That'll make a nice picture. Maybe I won't touch you, but that doesn't mean that we can't let people think that I did... or maybe some of my men? Hmm? All nice and pretty for their grand entrance. I wonder how many will want to cut you down right away? Maybe they'll want to take some revenge for the bombing that's about to happen? I don't think they'll take time, at first, to read the proof that I'm leaving behind. The messages that tell everyone that you went chicken shit, at the last minute, and we strung you up and took over the operation. Maybe they'll take advantage of your position?"
Duo frowned and Grainer snickered. "Don't understand my logic? You get all the blame, but none of the glory. You're our distraction while we get away."
A man came into the room, glanced in sick fascination at Duo and then said something in Grainer's ear. Grainer's face went purple with fury and he grabbed a short club from a strap at his belt.
"You lied! I didn't think you were capable of it, under those drugs that we gave you, but you managed it!" Grainer snarled as he faced Duo.
Duo managed a grin, though it hurt his busted lips.
Grainer brought his club hard into Duo's genitals and Duo strangled on a scream. "Let's try this again, shall we?" Grainer said. "If you want to keep those, let's have the truth this time."
Duo gathered up what spit he had left and let it fly into Grainer's face. The next blow that followed sent him under.
"Goddamned Gundam pilot!" Grainer snarled as he paced around Duo's limp form. "What's our status now?" he asked the man waiting white and nervous behind him.
"All stop," the man replied. "We're no go until we have the correct combo to the security door on level c."
Grainer glared at him. The man licked nervous lips, glancing at Duo. "Is there something else?" Grainer demanded.
"I'm not sure," the man replied. "We picked up some chatter from inside. Nothing's certain, but we may have a mole."
Grainer swore, turned to Duo, and hit him several times on different points on his body. The limp form didn't even twitch. Tossing the bloody club aside, he snarled at the man, "Find that mole, now!"
Grainer began to leave the room. The man dared and asked, "What about him?"
Grainer glared. "Do what you want. When he wakes up, he's going to wish that he hadn't."
Grainer strode from the room and slammed the door. The man smiled at Duo and said, "We won't cut you down, just yet."
______________________________________
"Selling information?" Wu Fei looked offended. "We don't buy information, Heero. We're supposed to be working together, in peace, with every nation."
"They could have something important," Heero argued as he sifted through aerial photos.
Wu Fei shook his head firmly. "That nation has always insisted on autonomy, but they have just as much at stake, if rebels go unchallenged, as we do. If their operatives have found something out, then they need to know that putting a price tag on it, won't further their peace."
"And if that information stops something horrible from happening?" Heero insisted.
"Then aren't they, just as bad as the terrorists, for holding it back for payment?" Wu Fei pointed out."Being a poor nation is not an excuse for extortion."
"You are so black and white," Heero sighed. "Sometimes, lines have to be crossed to save lives."
"May I remind you, that our target used that same philosophy?" Wu Fei pointed out brutally as he tapped keys on his laptop rapidly. "These kind of concessions only lead to more extortion. What will they demand of us next, Yuy?"
"Une has already turned them down,"Heero growled as he leaned close to study a building in one of the aerials. "The decision was never mine."
"My friend, what ever information they have, we can gather as well," Wu Fei told him.
Heero looked up from his maps, a feral smile on his lips. "You have something?"
Wu Fei turned his screen so that Heero could see it. Security, classified, and access granted, flashed on the screen. "We are in our current positions for a reason, Yuy. We are better than they are."
TBC
TBC
on to chapter three