He'd been a Preventer agent for four years and a Gundam pilot in the war before that. He had survived his childhood on the streets and lived through a plague. His body was a collection of scars, burns, and knots from broken bones. Death had come knocking more times than Duo Maxwell could count. It had been a miracle, really, that he had managed to pretend that he hadn't been home up until then.
Duo chuckled at the idea as he tried to make Heero comfortable in his lap. Wholed up in a blasted out building, he could hear explosions in the distance, gun fire, the shouts of men, and the ever present rumble of heavy machinery rolling over debris in the streets. The smell of destruction was acrid in the air. It was chaos, but that chaos helped to hide them. It would take their enemies a long while to pinpoint two wounded Preventer agents in that destroyed city.
'Stay quiet," Duo whispered to his unconscious companion, "Maybe we can fool Death one more time."
The sunlight from the window beside them pooled on the shattered floor and on the lower half of Heero's body. Duo had bound gunshots on them both with ripped pieces of his shirt and a can of wound sealer, but they were stop gaps only. A belt pouch med kit wasn't going to allow Duo to operate like a field surgeon and bandaids and alcohol weren't going to save their lives once the sealer failed.
Duo smoothed Heero's unruly hair from his face and then checked his pulse when he found the man's skin clammy and pale. It wasn't good. The clock was winding down on them both and there wasn't even the hope of a rescue. They had been sent in to guard a mediator, trying to work out a compromise with the well heeled army, that had rolled into the city with a tank full of grievances. The negotiating hadn't lasted more than fifteen minutes before he was dead on the floor and Heero and Duo had found themselves in a full blown fire fight.
There had been a jump from a second floor window, glass flying and cutting skin, a hard landing on the top of a transport vehicle, covered in canvas, that had broken Duo's wrist, a mad scramble into the cab, and a wild ride down a street full of fighting men and bomb blasts, that had ended with them both shot, Heero concussed, and everything up to Duo. It had been agony, but Duo had used sheer force of will, that had blocked out everything, but the need to carry Heero to some semblance of safety.
A pigeon fluttered to the blasted out window. Duo blinked at it as it fluffed and cooed. The sharp report of a gunshot and the splatter of pigeon and blood had Duo blinking through a rain of feathers. Random shot, trigger happy soldier shooting at everything that moved, or thoughtless cruelty, Duo wasn't certain. He found himself holding his breath, waiting for some sound that would tell him whether they had been discovered. He dug fingers into Heero's Preventer jacket, tension making him tremble.
Nothing rose above the general noise of battle mayhem. A tank rolled close to their wall, crunching building debris and making the ground vibrate as it went. Soldiers didn't pour into the holed building after it. They were still safe against their bullet ridden wall, maybe no one ready to believe that he would have chosen such an indefensible position in the midst of the action.
Street savvy, Duo called it, knowing how to hide in plain sight, knowing that the best hiding places were the ones they always checked first when the bad guys were looking for victims. They would be pouring down basements, checking attics, searching third floor apartments, and opening every warehouse. Only bad luck would discover them in a building, with half a roof and four walls in various stages of falling down, on the main street of the city.
Heero twitched, once, but didn't wake, his hand opening and closing as if he longed to grasp the handle of a gun. Duo had them both, one in his belt and the other in his hand. Four shots left, three in one gun and one in the other. Their last stand was going to be very short.
"Don't worry, Heero," Duo whispered. "I got this."
Heero relaxed noticeably, as if, even unconsciously, Duo's words reassured him. Duo scoffed at himself for thinking it, for believing that he had that much sway over anything that Heero Yuy felt. When had they had the chance to even become friends? They had worked in different branches of Preventers, taking on missions on opposites ends of Earth and space. A few emails and some shared meetings, hadn't been enough to do more than nod and acknowledge each other's existence. Their guard detail had been their only team action, and that had ended in disaster.
A bomb exploded close and debris, smoke, and dirt showered them. Duo blinked, leaning over Heero to shield him as best he could. The sting of rocks through his uniform told him how close their wall had been to taking a direct hit.
Heero's eyes opened, mere slits that didn't tell Duo much about how conscious he really was.
"It's okay, Heero," Duo assured him. "I'll get us out of this."
"Hurts," Heero whispered, his voice so low that Duo had to read his lips.
"Tell me about it," Duo sighed. "Can't be helped, though. You just stay on this side of the living until I get us to a medic, all right?"
Heero frowned and tried to speak again. "You're... hurt?"
"Gunshot, broken wrist, glass cuts... the list is pretty long," Duo replied.
Heero focused a bit more, his dark eyes searching Duo's face. "You need... help."
Duo smiled at him despite the cut along his upper lip. "You might want to conserve energy, Heero, by not saying what's obvious."
"Go," Heero told him, ignoring his attempt to joke, his expression a mixture of pain and concern."Leave me."
Duo shook his head. "Not going to do that, buddy."
Heero pulled himself together with an effort. "We both... don't... have to die. Go."
Duo sighed, his good fingers working on the lapel of Heero's coat nervously. "I can't do that."
"Why not?" Heero wanted to know.
"Can't leave half of myself behind to die," Duo replied, as if it were another joke. "Maybe I could stand it being half a world away, but not... dead.... I'm not going to let that happen."
Heero looked at a loss, but Duo wasn't going to explain to Heero that he had been in love with him since the moment that he had first laid eyes on him during the war. That instant recognition, that moment of 'this is what I've been missing in my life', had been overwhelming. He'd never felt that feeling with anyone before or since. Knowing it, Duo hadn't been able to settle for anyone but Heero Yuy, even though he knew that the man wasn't going to ever reciprocate. Heero hadn't pulled out of suicidal fall, because of his cry. Relena Peacecraft had done that.
Heero was puzzling over Duo's words, but it was too much for him. His eyes slid closed and Duo felt the tension bleed out of him as he fell unconscious. Duo checked his pulse, not liking it at all.
"Come on, Duo," he muttered to himself. "Think of something. Heero needs help and he's not going to get it if these bastards find us."
Or maybe they could get help? Duo felt the seeds of a plan begin to sprout, but he wasn't sure if it was a weed or something that he should save and nurture. On the outside, it seemed ridiculous, half baked, and as likely to work as trying for liftoff with half a thruster. Still, options were nonexistent. He didn't have the strength to carry Heero out of there. He didn't even have the strength to get away himself, even if he had wanted to contemplate that sort of plan. That left sitting and waiting to bleed to death or getting help from an unlikely source.
Duo stroked his braid, ran fingers through his wild bangs, and poked at the plan with a sick realization of just how much sacrifice was required to give it even a ghost of a chance of working. His good hand lowered to Heero, then, and he gently caressed Heero's face. Leaning close to the man, Duo snaked an arm around him and just held him tightly, taking from Heero the only payment that he wanted for what he was about to do; a moment to be with the man he loved.
Straightening with resolve, afterward, Duo took out his knife. Cutting his hair took time, but his blade was razor sharp. He tried not to look at the hacked off braid that landed on the cracked concrete, or the following hunks of hair. He was brutal, knowing exactly how far he had to go to 'pass'. When he was done, he smoothed a hand over his new, rough, crew cut, and felt a shakiness that had nothing to do with his wounds. It was long minutes before he could turn his attention to Heero's hair and give him a better crew cut.
"Sorry," Duo whispered to him, but wasn't sure if he was talking to Heero or the ghost of the woman who had first tied his hair into a braid and had shown him what a mother's love was like.
"Get rid of the evidence," Duo said to motivate his body to perform the next step. He needed to hide their hair, change clothes, get ID... Duo took a shuddering breath. The mental list of impossible tasks needed one thing that he was unsure that he could provide; his strength.
"Let me go, please!" a woman begged, but her pleas were only met with masculine chuckles as two soldiers dragged her into the building. Their leers, and hands already working to open their clothing, despite the womans' struggles, told Duo their intent.
The woman was small and dark haired, a slip of a girl who should have only had to worry about first dates and what color nail polish to wear. Instead she was about to learn a very ugly side of life, a lesson she would probably relive her entire life. If these men didn't kill her afterward.
Knowing that the noise wouldn't be heard over the sounds of battle, it wasn't hard to lift a gun and shoot both men without a pause inbetween shots. They fell, twitching, and the girl shoved a hand into her mouth to stifle a scream as she staggered away. Her eyes found Duo, gun still aimed and she froze like a frightened rabbit.
"It's okay," Duo told her weakly and lowered the gun. "Get out of here before someone else shows up."
The girl knotted hands in her dress, her terror plain, but she didn't run. Instead, she took a few steps towards Duo. "Y-You're hurt."
Duo nodded, swallowed in a dry throat, and said, "You'll only get into more trouble, sticking around here. Go on."
The girl shivered visibly but took a few more steps closer. "You saved me. I can help you... somehow."
Duo almost denied that she could, but he thought about the tasks at hand and knew that he did need her help. Two uniforms, and fresh weapons, had been deposited at his doorstep. Death could be thwarted from visiting one more time, if he could manage to make use of it all.
"I need to hide this cut hair," Duo told her, "these Preventer uniforms, and the bodies of those men. I need their clothes, their ID tags, and their weapons. I'm going to try and pass me and my partner as the enemy to get out of here."
The girl became hopeful. "Preventers are coming? They'll stop the fighting?"
Duo wanted to reassure her, but he could only tell her the truth. "We tried and failed. I'm not sure what Preventers is going to do next."
"You saved me," she told him firmly as she began picking up the hair to hide it. "That's a start."
Duo felt haunted as he watched her pile rubble and concrete dust over the hair, over his braid. A proper burial for something that had meant so much to him. It was harder to coax her to pull the clothes off of dead would be rapists, but she managed it. Helping him change Heero and himself, she gasped at the extent of their wounds.
"Y-You can't possibly get away, like that," she realized.
"Not getting away," Duo told her. "I'm going to pass us off as the enemy. They're going to take care of us until we can escape, or Preventers can get us out. That's why those bodies have to go away along with our uniforms. Understand?"
She nodded, but looked as doubtful as Duo felt. He couldn't wait to supervise, couldn't waste any more time bleeding their lives out, to make certain that she hid everything beyond discovery. It was now or never and he felt it in the ragged beat of his own heart.
"Thanks," Duo told her as he forced himself to his feet, head reeling and wounds bursting the sealing foam with the effort. Pulling Heero into a firemen's carry and stumbling out into the war torn street, he imagined that he might just have hurt himself greater than any enemy medic could fix. For Heero it was worth it, he thought, as the enemy ran towards them and Duo yelled for a medic, his story about being attacked already coming from his lips.
______________________________
"You're lucky, Sergeant Hinamen," the medic told Duo as he checked Duo's wounds. "I'm the best in the field. Anyone else would have called the dead meat wagon for you and not bothered."
"Thanks," Duo told him, took a careful look around at the empty makeshift hospital ward, and then cold cocked the doctor in the face. As the man fell to the floor, unconscious, he added, "Thanks for everything, doc."
Duo shook his sore hand as he eased himself up into a sitting position. A week playing enemy wounded had seen them transported all over the countryside, one step behind the army that had been plaguing each city like locusts;destroying and moving on. Preventers had made several attempts to stop them, but politics was a nasty thing, and it seemed the government there was more afraid of another OZ like takeover to trust in any organization claiming to help them.
Heero had recovered first, not daring to say much during their convalescence, but obviously shocked by Duo's bold plan to hide among the enemy wounded. Duo hadn't been surprised when he had disappeared one night or that Heero had left him behind without a word. Duo could imagine that Heero trusted in his abilities to get himself out of a situation of his own making, but there was also the harsher reality that Heero simply hadn't cared enough about Duo to risk sticking around and trying to help him.
Duo forced himself to his feet. He was still shaky, but he couldn't afford to stay any longer. Things were heating up and a government, desperate to win a war, might resort to a scorched earth attack, that wouldn't discriminate between the enemy and one lone man pretending to be one.
Duo grabbed the medic's medical bag, checked it, and found a gruesome array of weapons to deal with severe injuries in the field. The man was ready to amputate, seal a wound, or inject a solution that could stop a heart in less than a second, if a man looked past all hope.He also had a fine array of pain killers with a pressure injector. Duo used one to numb his still healing wounds. He stuffed as many supplies as he could into a military pack and then made his limping way out of the building.
A cool wind brushed over Duo's short hair. He scrubbed the cinnamon stubble with his fingers, still not used to the feel of it. He didn't regret it, though, not when it had bought Heero his life. He remembered Heero's first sight of it, his wide, confused eyes, and the questions in them that he didn't dare to ask. Duo had only grinned and shrugged, making light of it. He didn't think Heero had been fooled, though. The man had looked pained, as if he could sense what Duo was really feeling inside.
It'll grow back, Duo told himself, as he slipped from one burned out building to another, trying to avoid the still fighting enemy troops. In about fifteen years, Duo's mind supplied, but he growled at himself to shut up about it. He would have given Heero his arm, if that would have saved him. Hell, he thought, he had been ready to give Heero his life.
He needed a place to hole up, Duo decided when his strength began to give out and not even another injection of painkillers would dull the pain of his abused wounds enough. Panting and sweating with the effort, he tucked himself into a dark space under the concrete floor of a collapsed building. Just like old times, he told himself ruefully, and settled himself to wait for the enemy to move out of the area.
He slept through the liberation of the city. When troops found him, he almost gutted one with his knife, before the man put a gun to his head and stopped all resistance. When Duo realized that they were government forces, he dropped his knife and went quietly. His explanation, that he was Preventers, fell on deaf ears, though. They put him with the enemy combatants in a lock up and Duo was forced to keep quiet or face their retaliation.
"What the fuck? You're not Hinamen!" was the first thing out of a soldier's mouth when Duo told them his fake name. "He was in my unit. I heard he was taken to the medics. You ain't him!"
Duo backed into a corner, smiling and holding out hands. "There are a lot of Hinamen's, buddy."
"You're full of shit!" the man snarled.
They closed on him, intent on taking their pound of flesh from someone they suspected of being put in with them as a spy. Duo didn't give himself very good odds of surviving the attack.
"Back off!" a voice shouted and men looked over their shoulders angrily. "I said back off! Wounded over here. Line up."
The mob parted and Duo saw an irritated man with a clipboard, flanked by armed soldiers, at the door to their holding cell. Several men slowly lined up. Duo moved to line up with them.
"Name, rank, injury," the man asked briskly. He went down the line and scribbled notes. When he reached Duo, he eyed him up and down.
"Duo Maxwell, Captain," Duo told him, taking a desperate chance. "Preventer agent. Gunshot wounds, broken wrist, and glass lacerations."
The man snorted. "I've seen Duo Maxwell, soldier. Hair down to here." He motioned to his ass."Try again."
Duo swallowed hard. "I had to hide among the enemy. I cut it."
"Sure, sure," the man growled and made notes, "and I'm Zechs Marquise."
Duo held up shaking fingers. "One way to find out for sure."
Fingerprints didn't lie. The man looked at Duo's fingers thoughtfully and then sighed in exasperation. "All right, but I don't see what you think this charade is going to get you. We're going to treat you the same as we treat our own men."
"I don't lie," Duo promised.
The man pointed his stylus at Duo and said warningly, "See that you obey orders and you won't die, soldier. That's all that you need to do, right now."
Duo followed the other men to the medical wing and took his turn being examined. They put him in a hospital bed afterward, amazed that he had been on his feet at all, and forgot to fingerprint him in the rush to treat him. His effort to remind them was cut short when they tapped an IV with painkiller and he slipped into unconsciousness.
"Well, you can't blame the staff," a man was saying irritably. "We've been overwhelmed with casualties. Everyone needs attention and a story like that, well, why believe it?"
Duo tried to force himself back to consciousness, but his eyes stubbornly refused to open. He felt as if lead weights held him down, his body unresponsive.
"If been looking for him," a familiar voice said angrily, "I posted his description, his Preventer file and photo, and his injuries. If I hadn't thought to look through file photos of enemy admittance to this hospital, he might have been returned to a holding cell with men who have good reason to want him dead."
"File a grievance if you want to, Captain Yuy, but I can only tell you that we've been overworked and that checking emails and reports has been last on my list for days."
There were footsteps, the sound of a door opening and closing, and then a light touch on Duo's arm.
"You should get a medal for this," Heero said softly. "I'm sorry that it took me so long to rescue you."
Duo licked dry lips and managed, finally, on the power of Heero's voice, to open his eyes a little. Heero seemed strange with his short hair, his eyes so much more intense without his wild chocolate bangs to cover them. His eyes were shadowed with weariness and his own pain. Duo doubted that he should have been out of a hospital bed.
"S-sit down," he managed raspily.
Heero grimaced and leaned on the bed. "I'm all right. How are you feeling?"
"L-like... crap," Duo replied.
Heero smiled slightly, but then his expression turned pensive as he looked at Duo's face and his hair. "I wish there had been another way. Your hair..."
Duo grunted sourly, trying for a joke, "If it's... If it's all... about the-the hair, Yuy..."
"No, it's not about the hair," Heero told him with more seriousness than it deserved. He seemed uncertain, as if choosing words with care. "It's never been just about the hair. Do you understand me?"
Duo blinked, trying to understand. "What?" was finally all that he could manage.
"We almost died," Heero told him, his hand caressing Duo's arm above the IV line. "Searching for you, I had time to think. I had time to regret avoiding you. I should have told you how I felt. I shouldn't have been afraid of your reaction. I thought that hope was better than no hope at all, even if we were apart. Can you understand that? I was wrong. Never trying is a failure in itself. I still had nothing. I still didn't have you." He smiled, but it was brittle, ready for condemnation. "Taking such a risk, by hiding us among the enemy wounded, you showed me how it was to act fearlessly, to take a chance, however remote the success."
Duo thought over that, his mind finding it almost impossible to figure out what Heero was trying to say to him. He wished, at that moment, that he had the pain instead of the drugs. He felt that he badly needed to understand Heero. "I... there wasn't any other way..."
Heero shook his head, denying that. "I would have stayed in hiding. I would have tried to hang on until help arrived. We would have both died."
"Can't know that," Duo protested.
"A person can't know anything for certain," Heero agreed. His hand left Duo's arm and touched his cheek tentatively, waiting for Duo to flinch away. Duo was stunned at the touch, staring at Heero with wider eyes, becoming more alert with the shock of Heero Yuy caressing his cheek.
"Heero?" Duo questioned.
Heero braced himself, closed his eyes to gather strength, and then met Duo's eyes squarely as he blurted out, "I'm gay. I love you. I've always loved you."
Duo blinked owlishly, lips slightly parted, but then he laughed. It was a harsh sound coming out of a dry throat. When Heero looked disappointed and turned to leave, Duo caught at him, closed fingers around his wrist, and tugged him back, ignoring the pain it caused him.
"Love you too," Duo croaked and Heero looked amazed. "Now...g-get into... a hospital bed... You look like... shit. Close... Close to me... so we can... talk."
It was too hard to stay awake as Heero made the arrangements, but when Duo woke the next time, he found Heero sleeping in a bed a few paces away. He smiled lovingly.
"Sorry," Duo whispered to the ghost of memory, "It was worth it... cutting it off.... for him... for his life... for the chance to be together. I'll... I'll remember you another way."
She had loved him like a mother, that nunn from his childhood, the one from the orphanage who had braided his hair, tucked him in at night, and showed him a gentler side of life. Duo didn't think that her ghost would begrudge him his happiness now, whatever it had cost.
End