SHIN KIDOU SENKI GUNDAM WING

SAINAN NO KEKKA
ACT X, PART II

 
 
Scene V: Ties Never Binding

 
When the knock sounded on his door, he was still half asleep, and his only response to the insistent rapping was to pull his bedcover up over his head and mumble, "Go away."

"Hey, open up!"

He was instantly awake, old reflexes coming to the fore before he could help himself, sitting bolt upright in his belt and fingers groping for a gun when he realized two things.

One, he was in the Preventers Headquarters, no longer in the Breaks, and an attacker was unlikely to try to break into his room by knocking and requesting entry.

And two, that the voice at the door sounded very familiar.

Too familiar.

He rose stealthily to his feet, throwing on a pair of pants and slipping his gun into one pocket before padding towards the door, knowing what he'd find on the other side even before he opened it.

The pair of dark cobalt-blue eyes on the other side had barely even time to blink at him before he growled a grated, "Leave," and slammed the door in Wing's face, bolting it and leaning against it firmly as if he could stop the other from entering just with the force of his body. He realized he was breathing hard, as if he had just sprinted up a flight of stairs in pursuit of some target.

"Darkflight!" Wing's voice was muffled, but his words were clear. "Come on, dammit!"

"I'm not opening the door for you, you fucking asshole, so you can waste your time somewhere else!"

"Hey! Hey, listen to me, just open the door, all right?"

He pretended he didn't hear the voice on the other side, pretended he couldn't hear the hurt and anger that it carried. His heart was still beating fast and he pressed one hand to his chest, trying to calm it, as he stared at the far wall, trying not to think of her.

She's dead. You killed her.

Atsuki was dead, and it was all because of the boy on the other side of the door.

He didn't understand how she could have died for him. For the unforgiving, lying, cheating son of a bitch that he had once known as his partner, Wing. The same boy who had worked faithfully side by side with him, the same boy who had left him as soon as fame and fortune came his way. It had all been a joke to him, hadn't it? All that he, Darkflight, had sweated and worked and killed for, had been a game to Wing.

Some friend.

He shouldn't even call him Wing anymore, because Wing was the silent, haunted boy of his past, strangely noble even in the midst of his sin. He didn't know the boy on the other side of the door. Heero Yuy. The name stuck on his tongue as he tried to whisper it, to see how it sounded, and he let it die unspoken. It was funny how names had a way of clinging to a person's identity, and how they could never be shed without renouncing the person you had once been.

He had always been Darkflight, as far back as he could remember. He had never needed to be anyone else.

"Darkflight! Open the damn door!"

"Why should I?" he countered harshly, pressing his palms against the smooth wood, wishing there would be a splinter or two to jolt him back to reality with the stinging pain.

"Because I want to talk to you."

"Oh, so it's all about you is it?" Darkflight spat sarcastically, idly wondering if there was anyone in the hallway outside besides Wing. He had a feeling that anyone passing by would be a little alarmed at this conversation. "All about you. Always been about you. I don't matter unless you acknowledge me, and then I exist to do your every bidding. Since you've gotten here you haven't even as much as said two words to me, and now you need to talk to me. Sorry. Not happening."

"It's not-"

"I'm not listening to any of your damn lies!" he shouted, kicking the door. It rattled on its hinges. "I'm no longer part of your private world, so why don't you just get the hell out of here and get your ass back to your fancy new friends, where it belongs?"

There was a silence and Darkflight thought for a moment that Wing had simply left. The thought weighed down his heart strangely, and he cursed under his breath, ashamed of himself for being so weak. Wing meant nothing to him. Nothing...

"They're not my new friends, Darkflight. I might have known them once but I don't anymore. Not now. They don't...you know me better."

"I thought I knew you."

"Come on, Darkflight. You're one of the only friends I have in this fucking place."

"If you think I'll suddenly break down in sobs and open the door, you're wrong," he growled.

"Look, give me five minutes. Just five."

It was the pleading note in Wing's voice that made him open the door more than anything else, because he'd never heard Wing sound that desperate before, and it weirded him out. Reluctantly, he unbolted the door and swung it open.

The first thing he noticed was that his former partner had cut his hair. It was a bit ragged, as if he'd done it himself with a blunt knife, but it hung loosely around his ears. Wing saw him looking.

"Yeah, did that a couple of days ago. I think I might need a mirror next time..."

Darkflight rolled his eyes and he saw Wing raise his eyebrows slightly. In any other person, that might have been a smile. They'd never smiled, in the Breaks. He didn't ever think he'd seen Wing smile. He moved aside from the entrance and let the other boy walk cautiously into the room, surreptitiously scanning the walls as if searching for traps.

"If I'd wanted to kill you, I'd have done it by now," Darkflight said, turning to lock the door.

"Sorry."

"You've a lot to be sorry for."

He saw Wing clench his fists once, tightly, then relax his hands at his sides. "Darkflight, I'm sorry about Atsuki."

"No you're not."

Wing sighed heavily. His voice was bitter, laced with heavy sorrow. "I know it's hard for you to imagine me being sorry for anything, but you can't imagine the shit I went through after it happened, all right? I've done penance twenty times over and it'll never be enough. Not for me, not for you, not for Quatre. So...just drop it, all right? I don't need you on my ass hounding me about her too."

Darkflight swallowed. "I just-"

"You loved her too." At Darkflight's slight look of shock, Wing hurried on. "I know. We all loved her."

"How's her-" his throat stuck on the word. "-brother?"

"I don't think he's hasn't forgiven me yet." Wing sounded strangely gentle, his eyes old and sad. "I don't know if he ever will. He's changed. A lot."

Darkflight shrugged. There was an uncomfortable moment of silence.

Then Wing said: "I'm just...sorry." Looking at Darkflight as if he would understand.

And in a moment of clarity, it came to Darkflight what Wing meant about not knowing his old friends anymore. He'd assumed - naively - that it had been Wing that had gone running to them, abandoning his old life and responsibilities. But it hadn't been, after all. In fact it had been they who had gone running to Wing. Because there was something about the boy that drew people to him like a magnet, no matter how hard he tried to stop them.

Atsuki had been one of those unlucky enough to be drawn close enough that she would never be unable to escape no matter how hard she tried. Just like the other four Gundam pilots. General Une. The girl Relena, Queen of the Cinq Kingdom.

And Darkflight.

"It's all right," he said after a moment. "I understand."

And with that, it was all right. It was how things were sometimes - a long period of enmity banished by just a look and a word. There were no long, drawn-out apologies, no embracings and no explicitly stated bonds of friendship. They hadn't needed that when they had started.

Perhaps Wing hadn't changed as much as he had thought.

Wing's mouth drew back in a shadow of a smile, as much as Darkflight had ever seen him smile, and he offered an awkward smile in return. It felt strange, so he dropped it after a few seconds and jerked his head towards the other boy.

"What'd you come for? Just for that?"

Wing shrugged. "I...I'm leaving."

Darkflight blinked. "No one's stopping you. Door's that way. You just came through it two seconds ago."

"No, you fucking moron, I'm leaving. Leaving Geneva."

He stared. "What?"

Wing shrugged apologetically and a little uncomfortably. "I'm not even supposed to be telling you this, but I didn't want to leave again and not tell you where I was going. Duo and I are going on a special operations mission. We won't be back for...a while."

Darkflight felt a chill of fear slide down his back. It was a new and rather frightening experience in itself. He'd watched Wing leave for a hundred missions and never felt any fear - knew that his partner might die and accepted it as a fact of life. But now...it was different. Somehow.

"Darkflight?"

"Don't go," he said.

Wing was watching him with a strange look, a look he imagined he might have if he'd seen Darkflight in the middle of the street doing a stripshow. "What did you just say?"

"Nothing," he muttered, feeling stupid. "Forget it."

"It's not..." Wing began, and he knew that the other boy would now be trying to comfort him. He felt like a child being lectured by a parent. "It's not like you haven't seen me go on missions before, in the Breaks. It's the same, right?"

"No it's not!" he bit out. "It's not..."

Wing frowned.

"In the Breaks," Darkflight said, then stopped, trying to collect his fragmented thoughts that seemed to skip out of his grasp the more he reached for them. "In the Breaks...we were never...alive."

The look on Wing's face was unreadable, and Darkflight was afraid he might have gone too far, made his former partner think he was trying to persuade him to go back with him, but then he realized that wasn't it at all. Wing looked strangely reluctant, as if there was something he wanted to say but didn't want to.

"Stop that," Darkflight said at last. "You're creeping me out."

"There's something I need to tell you...something about the Breaks," Wing said. He seemed to be struggling with the words. "Promise me...you won't hate me."

"Why would I hate you?" he said, feeling a strange sense of foreboding.

"I went to see General Etille," Wing continued in a rush, as if to get this all out in the open. "And after he'd finished telling me about my mission, he told me that General Brown had been asking about you."

"Me?"

"Apparently a kid named Shinobu has been talking about you...trying to get some information." Wing paused. "One of Duo's friends. I think you've...met." Raised eyebrow.

"Yeah," Darkflight muttered. "We've met. Pity I didn't kill him when that happened."

Wing raised the other eyebrow. It was rather disconcerting to see him acting this calm and composed, like a rational human being, but he supposed that with the drugs out of his system, Wing could be as rational as anyone else. "He then asked me if I knew anything about your past. I said no. I told him you didn't even know anything."

"I don't."

"Well, anyway, he found that pretty interesting and took me over to the computer and started pulling up files."

Darkflight realized where this was leading. He realized that he didn't want to hear it.

"Stop," he said.

Wing's eyes were haunted. "You need to know this. Brown is apparently better connected than I thought, because I saw what Etille was pulling - all these files on the Breaks and Operation Meteor and this thing called Operation Ares that I'd only heard of briefly, a long time ago when I was a kid."

"When you were a kid?" Darkflight wondered, curious in spite of himself.

"Yeah. Doctor J...my uh, mentor," Wing said, fishing around for a word, "told me that I'd been engineered by scientists from some Operation Ares. He didn't say much more than that...I figured there wasn't more, but I guess I was wrong."

His mind briefly reached back into himself, and he saw the flashes of light and bits of voices that had been haunting him since he could remember. He shook his head slightly and they vanished.

"Anyway, the files that Etille had drawn up...they were all records. Of the Breaks. Of one family in the Breaks..." Wing held Darkflight's gaze for a moment before looking away. "The Shionji cartel."

Darkflight gave a bitter laugh. "Don't tell me that that fucking kid's got you believing it too."

"What?"

"Don't lie," he snapped. "The day he saw me he swore up and down that I was one of the heirs to the Shionji Cartel. Which is ridiculous because it fell ages ago. No children or anything left. Any heirs would have to be more than forty years old by now."

Wing hesitated. "Etille showed me the files...they were some records. Really old ones. Spoke of a preliminary experiment to Operation Ares. An experiment which failed and in which the subjects had been placed in stasis, but the facility was believed to have been destroyed by the Black Diamond Cartel...33 years before the War."

Darkflight's throat was dry, and he put up a hand, as if to ward off the words coming out of his friend's mouth. "That's not true. You're making it up."

"The kid's name that they did this experiment on was Shionji Hideki," went on Wing almost ruthlessly. "This experiment was the first one of its kind, the one that pioneered genetic testing experiments on all the subjects that followed. Including many of the Gundam pilots. Including me."

"I don't understand," Darkflight said hoarsely. He remembered the hands out of the fog. He heard his own voice shouting, Niisan! And he heard the voice responding, calling out something, though he could never hear what.

"There's no way to be sure," Wing said, in a voice that was a little too gentle, "There weren't any genetic samples and the rest of the cartel is long gone...but if you really are Shionji Hideki, that means...we're the same. You and I. You'd be my 'older brother' so to speak. You were the prototype experiment for me."

No.

He looked at Wing. He could see it in Wing's eyes - that he terribly wanted to believe it. That he terribly wanted Darkflight to believe it.

Prototype experiment.

So now he wasn't a friend, not even a person...he was a thing. Words on a computer screen.

Wing was glancing at him with a kind of hopeful, yet uneasy expression, and he just couldn't bring himself to touch him, though all he wanted to do was beat his former partner's face in. His hands were trembling and he locked them together behind his back.

"Prototype experiment," he said, his expression wooden. "So that's it. Why you came to see me. Is that all I am? An experiment?"

"That's not what I meant-"

"You never cared about me, did you? Don't lie to me, Wing. Don't give me your fucking shit."

"I've never lied to you!" Wing ground out. He was getting angry. Good. "I'm trying to tell you that we have something in common...that the only reason I'm here is because of you! I thought you'd like that. I thought-"

"Well, damn," said Darkflight in mock surprise. "It's not enough for you to want me to fulfill your every wish, but you want me to acknowledge that between the two of us, you're the better copy. The better experiment. Isn't that what you want?"

"We were both exp-"

"I AM NOT A FUCKING EXPERIMENT!" he roared. "I. AM. A. PERSON!"

"If you would just fucking LISTEN to me instead of-"

"I don't even know why I listened to you in the first place!" Darkflight cried. "Talk all you want, but I'm not listening to your bullshit anymore!"

He sprang across the carpet, flinging open the door, didn't stop as it slammed into the wall but kept running, down the hallway out the door. He was going to find Shinobu. He was going to have some words with the boy.

Some very strong words, because whoever said that the pen was mightier than the sword had another think coming.

He'd just gotten back from lunch with Helena and had half a mind to go look for Duo just to check up on him. There was a stack of papers sitting on his bed, forms he had been given to fill out for a security clearance. He didn't know what to do with them. He picked them up, glanced once more at the blank spaces on the sheet.

Father's name. Mother's name. Mother's maiden name. Hometown.

What was that? Black Diamond Cartel, the Breaks, L1?

No, they wouldn't be giving him any kind of clearance any time soon.

Since the attacks, Duo had been around more, with Hilde tagging along by his side, but usually it was just a smile and a half-hearted wave and a "we'll be back later" before they would disappear again. He'd mentioned to Helena today how Duo always seemed to have a look of desperation about him these days, and she had nodded.

He looks old, she said. Very old.

They'd been watching the trial on the vidscreen whenever they could. Helena had been close by lately, ever since he had heard of his grandfather's death. It shocked him sometimes that he wasn't more upset by the news. It had certainly shocked Helena two days ago when he'd come back from being called into General Etille's office and she had asked him what was wrong, and he had replied calmly, oh, my grandfather was murdered yesterday.

Just like that.

The bastard had had it coming to him, and it was hard for Shinobu to even remember his grandfather as anything else but a conniving, cunning drug lord who didn't give a damn about anybody or anything except his own hide. But still, he had been family. Pretty much the only family Shinobu had had.

And the more troubling side of this was that he didn't know where that put him now.

General Etille had mentioned something about no clear line of succession and how the cartel was probably going to go down just like the Shionji cartel had, years ago. He'd stood there while the general had put one hand on his shoulder, murmuring consoling words about how he knew it was hard to lose a family member, and wondering if he needed any help.

He'd wanted to laugh in Etille's face, but the man meant well, and he didn't need to know about the confusing mass of Breaks politics that the Black Diamond Cartel was. He certainly didn't know who Seki Hikaru had named as his successor before he died. Shinobu had wondered why General Po wasn't the one to break the news to him, seeing as she seemed to have been most interested in his past and his grandfather's past involvement with the Breaks, but Etille had merely shrugged and looked away when he had mentioned it.

Shinobu hadn't asked further.

He knew two things right now: one, that the war of succession was likely to be going on a very long time, and two, the only way to stop it was for him to go back to the Breaks.

Because he was the rightful heir, no matter what Etille had been told. He had been appointed the next successor in line to the seat of power if anything should happen to Seki Hikaru. His grandfather had always been planning for the worst. It had been a cheap deal, but it was done, and he could not hide and pretend to be Matsuura Shinobu for much longer.

It was the last thing he wanted to do, go back to the Breaks.

He didn't want the cartel.

Family pride and his sense of what was right warred within him for a moment, and he threw the security clearance papers back on his bed, gritting his teeth and turning to head outside to look for Duo. He needed some advice.

He'd gotten about two paces towards the door when pounding footsteps outside made him pause, and then before he even realized what had happened, a figure raced through the doorway.

"What-" Shinobu began.

He felt something grab his right wrist and force him against the wall. A flash of pain numbed his right hand for a second and he struggled, but the other was strong, too strong for him. The door slammed. He felt something cold next to his temple.

If the moment hadn't been so unexpected, Shinobu might have laughed.

I'd wondered how I was going to die, but it never played out quite like this before.

"Don't say a word," a voice growled in his ear and he decided it was best to play by his captor's rules by now. He let his arms hang down to his sides, relaxing his muscles. The touch of cold metal on his temple did not waver.

"You told them."

His captor thrust his face close, and Shinobu's heart stopped for a second.

It was the boy Darkflight.

"You - what are you-"

"You told them," Darkflight said again, growling low and dangerously in his throat. The strange mixed features of his face, so Asian and yet so not, were twisted, almost unrecognizable in their predatory hatred. He'd known Darkflight was an assassin, had known that Shadowwing had been just about the best assassin group there was on L1, but he'd never come face to face with an assassin before. His grandfather had used them, of course. But that was his grandfather. And when he'd faced Darkflight before, the boy hadn't seemed anything that he couldn't have taken on, given a moment's notice. A threat, yes. Something to be afraid of, no.

Now he understood just dangerous a fully-trained and lethal assassin could be. In that last encounter, Darkflight had been angry, heated, in motion, but now all that active hatred had seemed to seep back into his muscles, coiled rigidly along his naked shoulders and back, leaving him cold, calm. Like death. Looking into Darkflight's eyes, into the cold, empty irises that stared into his with unblinking malice, Shinobu felt a shiver of pure terror crawl up his back.

"I told them what?" he said, struggling to keep his voice calm. Damned if he was going to show fear in front of this boy, assassin or not.

I am the heir to the Black Diamond Cartel. I am.

"You told them about the operation," Darkflight whispered, pressing the gun more firmly along Shinobu's temple. "You told them about me."

Shinobu stared as boldly as he could back into those eyes. "I did."

"Why?" For the first time, the mask cracked, and Shinobu felt a leap of hope. Darkflight hadn't come to kill him...he'd come for answers. He'd been troubled by this as much as Shinobu had; his very presence in this room now was proof of that.

Could Shinobu give him answers?

"Who told you that?" he said simply.

"Wing." The word was a low crackle of sound in the other boy's throat. Something had happened, Shinobu realized, looking into those black eyes. Wing...Heero...had...

It clicked into place.

"He went to see General Etille, didn't he?" Shinobu pressed. "Etille got the files from somewhere. The bastard."

"I won't become a part of your game," Darkflight said, and for the first time Shinobu noticed that he was breathing heavily. "I'm not an experiment. I won't be."

"I never said-"

"Wing did," Darkflight said, eyes cold once again. "He said that we were both experiments. He said that I was his prototype. He used me. I won't be used!"

Shinobu stared at him, sure that something had snapped and the former assassin was now raving mad. And the last thing he needed was to be killed by an insane assassin - that would help no one's cause right now. He took a deep breath.

"Darkflight. I never said you were an experiment."

"You said-"

"It was merely conjecture. I knew you were from the Breaks. I was lonely here, and I need some company, and I thought you and I could perhaps get along. I meant no harm."

"Bullshit," Darkflight spat. "You were out to get me from the beginning. You and your high and mighty 'I am the heir to the Black Diamond Cartel" fucking manipulations. You want me dead, but I'll kill you first, and there will be no one left to tell the tale. I'll put an end to your cartel!"

That was too much. For a brief flash, Shinobu saw his grandfather in front of him again, speaking to him. Rage welled up in his heart, rage and grief and pity that he never knew he had towards the family he had disowned. He moved, too quickly for Darkflight, who wasn't expecting his catch to struggle. The gun felt to the ground with a clatter, and Shinobu was pinning Darkflight to the floor, one knee in the assassin's throat.

"Never speak of my family like that again," he ground out, resisting the urge to jab his knee into the other boy's throat repeatedly until he'd rid himself of the gaze of those accusing eyes. "Do you understand?!" This time he did jab, but Darkflight simply smirked.

"Empty threats, Seki, empty threats. I'll say whatever I like about your damned cartel, because it doesn't mean anything to me, and I'll see it overthrown, if it's the last thing I do."

"Well, you're too late!" Shinobu shot back before he realized what he was saying. The reality of his words sunk in as he felt Darkflight tense, narrowing his eyes.

"Too late?"

"My grandfather is dead," Shinobu muttered, looking away. "The cartel's as good as gone. Sorry about your stupid revenge...you'll have to find it somewhere else, because getting rid of me isn't going to do any good."

"I thought you were-"

He laughed sarcastically. "The 'heir'? As much as anyone can be, I suppose. Who knows? As far as my family's concerned, I'm dead. Good for them."

"But don't you want the cartel?"

He suddenly felt sick and he jerked himself to his feet, wanting to rid himself of the sight of the boy on the ground, who reminded him too much of his past. "I don't want a damned thing. I want to be happy, that's what I want. I wanted to help Duo, and I went too far. I made a promise I couldn't keep."

"Those are the worst," Darkflight said, and it took Shinobu a moment to realize that the other boy didn't sound angry anymore. He turned around slowly.

"You don't want to kill me anymore?"

Darkflight shrugged. "I was mad. I'm not mad anymore. I'll just go kill Wing instead." He got to his feet, bending down to pick up the gun and disarmed it, slipping it back into one pants pocket. "I'll quit bothering you."

The changes of pace were bewildering. One second, Darkflight had been out for blood, the next, his stance and expression were almost peaceful, nonchalant. For another second Shinobu almost gave in to his earlier assessment that this boy was indeed insane.

And then he saw that Darkflight was struggling not to cry.

"Um..." he said, feeling very stupid. He hated it when people cried, men or women, and having this stranger in his room trying not to break down into tears was disconcerting, to say the least. "I'll leave, if you want..."

"It's your room," Darkflight said, his voice thick. "Do what you like."

"I'm sorry," he offered lamely. Darkflight shrugged.

"Not your fault. You weren't an experiment."

"Maybe...you should talk to Hee-Wing?"

Darkflight gave a bitter chuckle. "Why should I? He'd just laugh at me. Call me stupid. Say I told you so."

"I don't think so," Shinobu said, and was rewarded by a piercing death glare, one that was made a little less effective by the tears that were leaking out of the corners of one eye. "I don't think he would ever do that to anyone."

"I've been his partner for the last year, Seki," the assassin grunted. "I think I know him a little better than you."

"And I've been friends with Duo Maxwell for the past year, and if there's just one thing that I have noticed about the Gundam pilots is that they have a genuine love for people."

"Bullshit," Darkflight said. He sounded hurt and lost.

"Listen to me," Shinobu said quietly. "I've never met Heero Yuy. I don't even know much about him from Duo. But I know they were best friends, and a boy like Duo Maxwell doesn't give his friendship easily. There must have been something - must be something - very special about Heero. Wing. Whatever you want to call him. People like you and me - we become so mired down in our problems and our little differences, but people like Duo and Heero - they can't. Because they have a bigger vision. They see things in color on the scale of the universe, and sometimes we can't understand that."

"Bullshit," Darkflight said again, turning to face him. "I don't know what you're talking about."

But his face told a different story, and Shinobu shook his head. "You're not stupid, Darkflight. If whatever program you came out of was the one that produced Heero Yuy, I know you can put this together. Wing isn't leaving you. He'll always be there - but he has a more important mission to take care of, as does Duo. That's what he said, and I believe him. You should too."

There was desperation in Darkflight's eyes. "He left me. When I needed him. He left."

So that was it. Shinobu felt a stab of pity for this boy who had come all the way from L1 just to believe himself left behind in the drama that was unfolding. He hesitated, wondering how to put this. He didn't want to risk being shot again, and trying to comfort someone he'd known for less than two minutes was not the world's easiest task.

"He didn't leave," Shinobu said. "You have to believe me. He didn't forget you."

Darkflight shook his head, and a lock of hair fell free from his ear. He pushed it back. He was no longer crying, but his face was pained. "I didn't want this, when I came here. I was on a mission. Just a mission...I don't know the first thing about Gundams."

"I bet you could have piloted one of those Gundams if they'd asked you to," Shinobu said.

A snort. "I don't want to pilot. I like my assassin missions just fine."

"Well," Shinobu countered, "think of it this way. Wing - Heero - is on a mission. And when this mission is complete, he'll be right there, as he always was. No matter how far away he might seem right now."

"You sound so sure," Darkflight said. A shadow crossed his face. "How can you be so sure?"

He sounded like a small child, and Shinobu wondered how old Darkflight really was. The Breaks did that to you, he knew, trapped you in a un-aging cocoon and didn't let you go, a desperate, deadly game in which people were left wandering forever in the ruins of their youth. Darkflight had been one of those people. He had grown up physically, but mentally, he was still a bewildered child that had been roughly pulled out of the twilight zone in which he had existed and forced to adapt or die. Kill or be killed.

It wasn't that Darkflight was insane, after all. He was just a child, hurt and lost, apparently abandoned by the people in this world who he'd tried to love, who he thought had loved him.

"Sometimes," he said gently, "you just have to trust that the people you love will do the right thing."

There was a moment of silence, then Darkflight blinked, swallowed slowly twice, and shuffled towards him a few steps. "I think-" he began.

But what he thought, Shinobu never knew, because at that moment there was a knock at the door, and a voice sounded.

"Darkflight?"

Shinobu looked back, saw the other boy's frozen stance, and knew immediately who it must be. He smiled.

"Go on," he said. "I believe that's your friend."

  Scene VI: Luck and a Vow Half-Forgotten

 
There had been no warning when ten of her mobile suits had appeared out of nowhere and crippled a Preventers scout party along the banks of the Indus River just outside Kashmir, and he had been expecting something of the sort, but it was still a shock. Because it was Sally Po. Etille hadn't known her that long, but she was a fixture in the history of the Preventers and the new World Nation, an icon on the side of peace.

Her betrayal had been...unsettling, to say the least.

He knew Une had taken it the worst. Sally had been her second-in-command, and to have that suddenly wrenched away from her, to know that the woman she had been confiding in for almost two years had been plotting treachery all this time, was a feeling that Etille could almost not imagine.

Almost, because he'd seen it time and time again during the little skirmishes that had led up to the great One Year War. Petty betrayals of underlings, fed up with their commanders' excesses and desiring to strike out for themselves. OZ and Federation, battling for power. Money, fame, fortune...

But Sally wasn't like that.

He couldn't believe she was like that.

His desk was littered with paperwork and empty, scattered styrofoam cups that had once held instant coffee. He hated instant coffee. He hated paperwork. He hated this office, with its smart, bleak white walls and the huge glass window which looked out onto the base proper and was the perfect target for a sniper who wanted to take him out. If there were any such people with such thoughts. He didn't know if he was important enough for that.

He was a general, but only by association. He'd wanted to keep the Lieutenant Commander rank he'd held on A007, because he'd been a commander in White Fang and in the Federation and that didn't exactly translate to general no matter what lens they used to look through. But Une had insisted. Sally was gone, and she needed someone competent by her side. Someone she trusted.

He found it somewhat amusing that she trusted him because he was a war hero. Or, at least, a symbol of war.

Sweeping all the cups onto the floor, he turned back to his computer, paging through the reports of that skirmish in Kashmir. No one had been killed - Sally obviously had something in mind, because her troops had appeared, engaged, and then fled. The Preventers troops had pursued but had lost them in heavy weather somewhere north of the Kenya border. He didn't think Sally was based in Kenya.

China would be the logical answer, but he didn't even know if she was that predictable. For all any of them knew, she could be at the bottom of the sea. Or on a colony, hidden. Perhaps even in the Breaks.

No, not in the Breaks, because Seki Hikaru was dead.

Etille pushed back from his desk, heaving a silent sigh, glancing at the clock. It was 1700 hours...past time for Lopez to check in from Bern, but they had a lot of things going on down there.

He was so absorbed in staring at the wall that he didn't hear the door creak open.

"General?"

He blinked, then focused. The young man standing a few paces from his desk bowed politely, the foreign Chinese eyes shuttered as they came back up first to Etille's eyes, then settling somewhere on his forehead.

"If I am intruding, I will come back later."

Etille laughed. "I was obviously doing nothing."

The young man's glance returned to his eyes, direct, unfazed. "I thought that perhaps you were meditating. Many people do so."

Etille said nothing, looked at him for a minute. "What can I do for you, Wufei?"

Wufei looked at him again, then looked away, scanning the walls as if searching for something that wasn't there. "General, I have something to ask you."

Etille waited patiently, folding his hands in front of him. The boy looked tired and pale, the dark bags under his eyes out of place for someone so young. Chang Wufei was only...17? But at that moment he looked old enough to carry the world on his shoulders. He felt a sudden need to reach out to the boy, to put one hand on his shoulder gently and to say, it'll be all right. We'll make it through.

He thought of Dorothy, her voice cracking as she stared at him with bitter eyes after Noin's death. Just leave me alone, you relic. Don't you remember what it's like to hurt? Or are you merely a puppet, a man who fights because he knows nothing else?

"I've come to ask for something and to give you something in return," Wufei said finally, decisively, as if having settled on a definite course of action. A battle plan. Etille raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

"I would like to borrow a mobile suit."

He had thought it would be something like that. "Straightforward, I see," he said, pressing his hands together. "Where are you going?"

"Greece." The slanted eyes narrowed in concentration. "I have some...unfinished business there."

Etille smiled. "I had expected something like this." He turned to the computer, punched in a short note to the combat crew chief. "You may take a mobile suit. Take someone with you as well."

Wufei bowed. "Thank you, General." He turned to go, but Etille raised a hand. He paused.

"Please...stay a moment. You promised me something in return. What is that?"

Wufei stared straight at him with those bold Chinese eyes and he had to steel himself to not look away. "My Gundam. Shenlong."

Etille blinked.

"At the end of the war I sunk it in the waters off the shores of Greece. I have a feeling that we might need it in the near future. I think it would be best if I go retrieve it myself before it falls into the wrong hands."

"You think Gener-" he realized his slip and stopped. "You think that Po knows where it is?"

Wufei winced a little at the name. "Sally doesn't know where it is. But she knows it still exists. She knows me too well."

"Ah." He didn't say anything else, just the simple noise of acknowledgment.

"I'm not a traitor," Wufei said.

"I'm not saying you are," he replied mildly. "In fact, I admire your courage. There are many who could not stand up to her. You obviously are stronger than most."

The Chinese boy didn't look away. "That courage was paid for with blood, General."

"Most courage is. It doesn't come cheap, Wufei. I know you know that."

Wufei squeezed his hands into fists at his sides, once again staring at the wall as if he could break it with his eyes, looking beyond it to something far away. "General, do you believe....in luck?"

The question caught him by surprise again. He blinked. "Luck?"

"The Chinese believe in luck," Wufei said, his voice soft and questioning. "Lucky talismans, lucky findings, lucky numbers. Lucky stars. Do you believe in luck?"

"I've never really thought about the question before," Etille said, frowning. He would have been amused if not for the fact that Wufei's voice was so deadly serious, his black brows drawn together in a thin, worried line across his forehead.

"Someone once told me," Wufei continued, "that luck isn't something that's given. It's something that's earned." His stare bored into Etille's forehead. "In other words, luck really isn't luck at all. It's what you deserve. Isn't that right?"

"I suppose so." He cocked his head to the side. "I'm not quite sure what you're getting at."

"This war," the Shenlong pilot said steadily. "This war has all been a matter of luck, as people see it. I suppose all wars are. However, you Westerners...you view luck as something that comes to you whether you deserve it or not. You believe that if you wait, maybe your chance will appear and all you have to do is reach out and grab it."

"Some people do, yes."

Wufei's mouth twisted. "They are too blinded by their own narrow views to look to the world around them to see that there are some things that are too valuable for their kind of luck. Some things must be earned. Some things, like courage, General, which you said does not come cheap. Some things, like loyalty and courage and love, which cannot be simply plucked from thin air."

Etille stood up. He'd forgotten how tall Wufei was - no longer a child, but a man. They stood eye to eye for a moment. "I must confess," he said at last, "that I don't understand what you're trying to say."

"You, General," Wufei said. "You asked me if I was a traitor. I am no traitor. I believe in the World Nation's cause and their mission. No matter what Sally says, it is what I fought for during the war and I will fight for to the end. But I also believe in my Chinese blood, my heritage, which tells me that in order to prevail in this kind of desperate conflict, there must be sacrifices made."

"We have made sacrifices," Etille said. He felt uncomfortable, as if he were defending himself from an accusation unvoiced. "We're sacrificing troops right now as you speak - young men and women who are out on the field."

"If the leader is not willing to sacrifice himself," Wufei said softly, "the people die in vain."

Etille said nothing. The silence stretched.

Wufei bowed suddenly, shattering the moment. "Thank you, General. I will be leaving tomorrow."

The door swung shut behind him and Etille leaned on the desk, troubled. It wasn't the first time since the war started that he had heard those words, but Dorothy's accusations he had managed to dismiss. She had been tired, strained, broken by Noin's death and Milliard Peacecraft's apparent betrayal.

Don't you remember what it's like to hurt? Or are you merely a puppet, a man who fights because he knows nothing else?

He'd been a soldier all his life, first because it was a way out, then because it was what he had been trained to do, then because he could not imagine anything else. He couldn't imagine himself as a bright-eyed boy at the seat of a giant machine, filled with battle fervor, screaming down from the sky upon his enemies. Wasn't that what Wufei had been? He had seen the boy fight like a demon in that Gundam of his, screaming out words of retribution and demanding justice.

But that had been then.

The Wufei that he had seen now had grown up. His eyes were no longer bright, his sword was seared by fire and dirtied with blood, and his memory filled with the names of the men that he had killed. And yet...

And yet he had come today with the same unwavering ideals. Justice. Truth. Peace. And...luck?

Etille's lip twisted in a small smile and he sat back down at his desk. He'd never thought about it that way before, that luck would be a factor in the equation of the battle. It was interesting how different people brought different perspectives to the same table, laid them all out and put the puzzle pieces together to form a perfect whole.

Luck isn't something that's given. It's something that's earned.

He wondered if there was still luck in the world for him. He wondered if it was too late.

The computer pinged and he jerked his eyes back to it with a start before realizing that it was Lopez's transmission. The screen saver flicked off as he keyed in the password to access, and the screen shivered and reformed into the face of Brown's aide.

"Sir," Lopez said, saluting. He looked as crisp and prepared as always. Etille returned the salute, waved him at ease.

"What's the report?"

"We have no leads on any of Po's accomplices right now, though there is still a large possibility that she might have left a rather large fish in the organization to pick up any dredges after she left." Lopez sifted through his notes offscreen. "General Brown was actually going to ask you if you knew of a competent field commander who you could send to Asia Minor."

Etille frowned. "Why?"

"We have some intelligence that she might be planning something there shortly. Those nuclear missiles that we have over there are prime targets. I have a feeling she wants them."

Etille thought for a moment as Lopez watched him, thumbing through his notes absent-mindedly. There wasn't anyone that he thought was particularly competent, given the lack of experience in the Preventers as a whole of active combat experience. He didn't trust any of the greenhorns to command a full fighting force, not in a sensitive spot like that, and there were no seasoned commanders.

"If you don't-" Lopez began.

Etille shook his head. "I don't think-"

If the leader is not willing to sacrifice himself, the people die in vain.

He stopped in mid-sentence.

No, that was absurd...he couldn't go. They needed him here. If he went, the Geneva base would be without a commander.

And yet...

Forty years of military service had given Dermand Etille the ability to make quick, decisive decisions, and he knew that there were times and places in which to make them. He knew that this was one of them. He would have liked to deliberate on it for a few days, perhaps a week, to make his rounds and see if there were any alternatives. But there was no time.

And so he decided.

It was that simple, really.

Just like luck.

"Tell General Brown to send me," he informed the puzzled captain, smiling. "I'm going to Asia Minor."

 
Scene VII: The Strength of Man

 
Sylvia Noventa had been a nobody, and she had been happy that way.

It was true that she had been the granddaughter of one the Federation leaders, but she did not bask in his light. She was just a girl... until the day Heero Yuy chose to show up, and presented her with the chance to kill her to avenge her grandfather. She hadn't realized it then, but that moment, when he had offered her the gun, had thrust her onto the world stage.

People did not choose to be great, her grandfather had told her. Greatness was forced upon them, and they had to choose whether or not they wanted to live up to it. Sylvia had thought him silly, but after seeing what had happened to Relena, and then having it happen to herself, she was willing to reconsider... to a certain extent.

Some people were forced into it. Others chose it. And some people kind of fell into it, landed up to their neck, and were made to deal with the consequences. Sylvia considered herself a member of the last group, but she felt she had dealt with the curveball life had thrown her rather well.

Still, as she watched her "cousin" scribble a note on handmade paper, she realized that Dorothy was one of the people who defied all categories. Dorothy had been born to it, and she had seized onto it and run, risking everything and losing so much. Now the blonde was poised on the verge of immortality, and Sylvia wondered if Dorothy knew it.

It was late evening after the trial, but Relena was at the latest in a series of meetings that they had taken to arranging with other members of the World Nation to consolidate power. They met alone and in groups, but all three knew that Relena was their powerhouse. Still, Relena was beginning to wear down, and Sylvia was beginning to wonder how much more the young queen could push herself before breaking. The two girls were waiting in Dorothy's private study, decorated in rich shades of red crushed velvet, for her to return. The old-fashioned walnut furniture should have been at odds with Dorothy's cutting-edge personality, but the blonde seemed as comfortable here as anywhere else. Dorothy had the ability to belong wherever she was.

The Catalonia heir was a complex person, and Sylvia, ever one of the world's observers, felt herself drawn to the girl's odd magnetism. Dorothy seemed to pull the world along with her, and some people wanted to embrace the flame with which the cold blue-gray eyes burned. Dorothy was one of the most unusual individuals in the European nobility. "Dorothy?" Sylvia said quietly, disrupting the other girl's concentration after a moment.

"Hmm?" Dorothy said, shaking her pen, and cursing when a heavy blob of ink squirted all over the ivory paper. With a sigh she crumpled the note and carelessly tossed it into the nearest trash can. "I'll have to rewrite that. These little formalities are so irritating."

"You could have a servant do it, or just send an email," Sylvia suggested.

Dorothy laughed lightly. "You've been in this game how long?"

Sylvia sighed, and pushed a lock of stray hair behind her ear. "I hate how people take offense over the slightest things. How the heck can they tell if you wrote it yourself?"

Dorothy looked over at her, an amused smile on her lips. "Sometimes I think they dust notes for fingerprints. But if I slight them in any way, they won't come... we have to follow the steps when possible, so that when we become unconventional, we're more likely to be forgiven." She leaned back in the chair, stretching, the tips of her fingers brushing the expensive carpet in a stretch a cat would have envied. "There are rules, and we play by them when it's not too inconvenient."

Sylvia sighed and curled her legs underneath her. "I know... but sometimes I wish I'd never gotten into politics."

"Any politician with any ounce of sanity wishes that. I know I think that at least four times a day, and I think Relena thinks it every other moment. It's when you start to enjoy it that people start questioning your sanity," Dorothy said. With a sigh, she looked on the pile of notes she had completed and apparently made a decision, kicking off her high heels and grabbed her long blonde hair, knotting it into a rude bun at the nape of her neck without the aid of any ties or pins. "That's it, I'm done for today. I'm going to raid the kitchen... want to come?"

Sylvia couldn't help giggling as they made their way down the hallway, not bothering to turn any of the lights on to aid them. "Why don't we just ask your chef to fix something?" Sylvia whispered.

"Because Rosalie, my lady's maid, would get it into her head to see that we eat something nourishing for mind and body. She's been after me over taking care of myself, and frankly, I'm not in the mood. I have a craving for chocolate, and I'll be damned if I'm going to eat any spinach to get it," Dorothy hissed back, wearing a ferocious scowl.

Sylvia almost blew their cover by bursting into loud peals of laughter. The idea that her servants intimidated Lady Dorothy Catalonia was just... hysterical.

The kitchen was dark that late in the evening. No one had actually eaten dinner there, so the place seemed sadly empty of servants repairing the usual damage from dinner. Dorothy, Sylvia, Relena and even Catherine were keeping busy social schedules, playing political games. The trial was eating their lives, and on top of that, there was the usual business of governance. It was like being made of taffy and seeing how far they would stretch before they would break.

Still, the large kitchen was much like the ones she used to raid in her youth. Dorothy seemed to be familiar with it, and automatically went to a large cupboard in the far right-hand corner. "What do you like?" she asked Sylvia. "They keep just about everything under the sun here, not that I get to eat much of it, being away as often as I am."

"Do you regret that?" Sylvia asked. "I hate being away from home." That was true; she loved nothing more than to be in her English manor, Ivywalls, especially during the winter months.

"This isn't home. It's merely a place I live sometimes," Dorothy answered easily. "I'm in the mood for chocolate... I might make a brownie sundae with chocolate ice cream..." she pronounced. "What's your poison?"

"Ice cream?" Sylvia said, perking up. "Brownie sundae?" It'd been far too long since she'd had anything of the sort- all of the desserts she tended to be served were obscure delicacies she couldn't even name.

Dorothy's grin turned devilish. "We'll have an ice-cream party. The ice-cream is in the freezer- grab a few flavors, but make sure one of them is chocolate- I'll get everything else."

Sylvia answering smile was equally wicked.

It took fifteen minutes for the girls to assemble every condiment under the sun, but by the time they were done, they were both laughing and stealing tastes of the treats. "This is so childish," Sylvia said as she took the large bowl Dorothy handed her and scooped ice cream into it.

"No... it's being a teenager," Dorothy corrected her. "When's the last time you just acted your age?"

Sylvia had to think on that one. "I can't remember. I'm too busy being 'Lady Sylvia' to do anything fun," she said as she took two brownies to form a base, watching in awe as Dorothy started out with four.

Dorothy raised an eyebrow, silently challenging Sylvia to say anything. "We had to grow up too fast... sometimes I wonder how we're suppose to represent the common man if we don't understand them," Dorothy said as she scooped out a variety of flavors of ice cream, all with chocolate in common. "You have to try this triple chocolate chunk," she said, handing the carton over before attacking the hot fudge.

Sylvia took it and added a scoop to the mess in her dish, wondering how she'd eat even half of this. "I'm not going to be able to fit in any of my clothes for a week," she laughed, adding macadamia nuts and sprinkles. Dorothy started throwing chocolate chips on her confection, and Sylvia realized she couldn't even see the brownie base anymore. "Are you really going to eat all that?"

"Every bite!" Dorothy vowed. She raised a spoon and waved it playfully. "Tonight we're going to indulge... tomorrow the fight on the floor begins again, and we'll need the energy."

Sylvia sighed softly, regretting the reminder. After adding three cherries, she picked up a spoon and silently vowed to eat everything as well. At least if she had a stomachache the next day, she'd have something to think on besides the pointless yammering that Fatima bint Narish would be orchestrating. "How much longer do you think this can be dragged on?" Sylvia asked softly, shivering slightly as the cold dessert hit her throat. It was almost too sweet, but she shut her eyes, indulging in the unaccustomed sensation.

"Months. And then Quatre will have to mount his defense, and if he doesn't counter everything she's thrown at him...." Dorothy let the thought trail off, knowing Sylvia understood the ramifications.

Sylvia grabbed one of the cherries by the stems with her finger, raised it to her mouth, and used her teeth to bite it off savagely. The fruit tasted pleasant after all the chocolate Dorothy had brought out, and she found herself grabbing the bottle of cherries again, and adding another five to the top of her sundae. "Yaminah Winner and Carrington have done a brilliant job on cross-examinations, but he needs to be able to call his own witnesses," she said. "Do you know if he'll take the stand?"

Dorothy shrugged. "It's chancy. It's dangerous for them to, but it may be even more dangerous for them not to let him speak on his own behalf. Quatre's one of the most charming and sincere people you'll ever meet; he means everything he says, and he's sweet. People like him instinctively. Still, it'd give the prosecution a chance to cross-examine... I really don't know if it'd be the right move or not."

Sylvia wondered if it was her place to ask the next question, but knew it had to be done. "Will he break on stand?"

Dorothy started to laugh, and it rolled out of her in waves. "Quatre? Break? That's not something that would break him... I don't know if he can break... if any of the pilots can break. They may look like your average teenage heartthrobs, but underneath, they've got souls of titanium. They may get a little bit beat up, but they'll always survive whatever you throw at them."

The amusement in the other girl's blue-gray eyes reassured Sylvia. She hadn't known Quatre; Heero was the only pilot she'd ever encountered before. Still... "I've heard that Heero Yuy isn't in that great a shape."

Dorothy's spoon paused. "That may be true... but my sources say he's bouncing back at an astonishing rate. He's needed again. He's not some weapon the World Nation can just shelve whenever there's not a crisis, and they need to learn that. He's one of the best resources we have- they all are. We're fools if we don't make use of them."

"Make use of?" Sylvia echoed, feeling uncomfortable. She didn't like having to think of people like machines, but it was clear that Dorothy could, and did, have that capability.

Dorothy seemed to follow the cause for her unease. "Don't get me wrong. I wish to heaven we didn't have to send them out; but it's what they've been trained for. Casting them aside like relics we no longer need is more disrespectful than anything else that can be done. They are my friends, Sylvia, or as close to friends as I will ever have. I'm not a comforting person, and had the Scientists decided that female candidates would have done, I might have very well ended up in their ranks." There was no boastfulness in her voice, only a statement of fact.

Sylvia nodded slowly, setting her spoon down. "So... you're saying that we should keep assassins?"

Dorothy shook her head. "Most people don't understand what a Gundam pilot is... I guess you don't, either. A pilot is a soldier... but more. He's trained to be ready for any situation that can happen during a war, and react to it. He's trained to prevent conflict, and how to incite it. He's a balance, Sylvia... each of them are geniuses, and for us to ignore the contributions they could make to our world, now... well, it's foolish. If someone knows how to fight, that must translate into knowing how to keep peace, at least when you consider how advanced they are. They're scholars, tacticians, assassins, warriors, strategists, soldiers, and friends."

Sylvia blinked. She'd been listening to Quatre's trial for weeks now, but not really comprehending it. She'd understood that the pilots hadn't been villains, but until now, had only been listening to Quatre's trial with a bit of interest and fascinated horror as she realized exactly what he'd done during the war... and what his capabilities were. Now Dorothy was saying she didn't understand a thing... and she was right.

Very few people would ever have anyone like Dorothy explain the pilots to them.

"Dorothy..." Sylvia said after a moment.

"Hmm?" Dorothy was busy sopping up fudge with her brownie.

"There's something we need to do... for Quatre's trial. We need to make people understand what a pilot is. We need to take the bogeyman mystique off of them."

Dorothy smiled slightly. "We need people to get out of the 'It's a Gundam!' mindset, I agree. But that's just the beginning. We need Relena to start acting like the Queen of the World, again, rather than a second-rate politician."

Sylvia almost gasped at the insult to the Queen of Cinq. Then she looked at Dorothy's eyes and realized she was deadly serious. "What do you mean?"

"Relena's been waiting for someone to save her. She's not playing the game on her own merits- she's letting you and me support her... and that's okay, but she needs to stand on her own. Relena needs to remember what the real world is- she needs to stop obsessing over how many times she's been betrayed by those she loves, and just start walking forward."

Sylvia shuddered a bit at how cruel Dorothy was being. "But..."

"You and I need to play a different game, but Relena had power that we can only dream of. She was once the Queen of the World, and people will always subconsciously bow to her. She needs to manipulate them... if Fatima is playing, then Relena needs to step up to her level. Relena still hasn't called in many favors she's owed, and they're favors I can't touch, and people who don't know you."

Sylvia stared at the melting sundae before picking up her spoon again. "It does seem a bit cruel, when you put it like that."

"Politics are cruel. Relena needs to understand the game she's playing... she's survived this long because people have either protected her, natural talent, or sheer dumb luck. Now it's time for her to use some skill and play with the adults."

Sylvia's eyes hardened as she ate her last cherry. "Is she strong enough? Will she break?"

She had hoped Dorothy would rush in with immediate reassurances, but the other woman considered the question first. "Relena has been tempered by war and peace, and by losing those she loves. My instincts say that yes, she is strong enough, but I can't promise anything. Relena... there's something weak in her right now. There's a flaw in her casting, and I wonder if she's going to shatter under this stress. She's one of the people I cherish most in this world, but..." Dorothy sighed as she idly stabbed at her dessert, "even the strongest tree can be struck by lightning."

 
Scene VIII: Joy and Sorrow, Peace and War

 
Duo wasn't surprised when Heero came for him.

He had been expecting something like it, actually.

Duo's specialty had always been listening, despite what people thought about him and his big mouth. He heard the unease within the Preventers, and it was less than a day after Sally's departure when he went to Etille's door and pounded on it, demanding to know if the rumors were true... if Sally really had been a traitor. Etille half had been expecting him. He had quietly granted him second-level security clearance, and confirmed.

He didn't know this Etille, who had appeared from nowhere, but he instinctively liked him. He was a soldier, and he fought for the people. And he had thought Sally had been the same, but after discovering that she was a traitor... well, that had rocked his foundations.

Who could he trust?

Ilene... Sally.... Who would be the next to betray him?

Would he betray those he loved?

Still, it wasn't Duo's nature to wallow for too long. He left the wallowing to the others; he was the happy-go-lucky one. Hilde was somewhat disturbed by his amazingly manic mood and his sudden surge of energy after getting him to climb out of Deathscythe. He had been all over the base, poking his nose into business that frankly wasn't his, and trying his best to prove that life was "kitto ok."

Still, Heero coming for him that evening was something that he'd been expecting, and half-hoping for, even though he knew that it would truly signal his return to the life of a soldier. He wasn't looking forward to what would come with it, but anything would be better than being powerless.

The scab on his thumb had just healed enough not to hurt, but Heero had been illusive, tinkering with his Gundam. They'd only seen each other briefly since Quatre's trial had begun... but now things had come full-circle.

When Heero showed up at his door, lurking in the shadows, he knew that the new mission had been granted. The doctors were dead; someone else had finally realized the valuable tool the pilots were. They had been discarded once, when the war had ended, but now that the war had begun again, they were remembered.

Duo wasn't bitter; he understood how the game worked. Still, he knew he had something to be done before Heero and he could take off. There was closure to be sought...

"Where are they sending us?" he demanded of Heero as the pilot of Zero leaned in the frame of his door.

"After Sally. She's got a damn good hacker covering her steps... but I'm still better," Heero's blue eyes displayed no pride, merely fact. "She was in China a day ago... she's probably moved since then. She's going to be going after Shenlong- thing is, we know where it is, and she doesn't. We'll get there first, lay an ambush..."

"You're rusty. It's been a while since you've played with the big boys," Duo returned. He thought for a second before correcting his statement, "Since we've played with the big boys..."

Heero nodded. "You're leaving Hilde behind," he said, stating a fact instead of asking a question.

Duo nodded, glancing back into the room. "She's damn good... better than most. Maybe even as good as I am with some things... but combat? No... that's her weak part. She's an intelligence officer, not a fighter. She'll get hurt."

The other pilot seemed to understand Duo's dilemma; he had dealt with stubborn women more than once. "She'll be angry when you leave without saying goodbye."

"I can't say goodbye- you know what she'd do... I'll leave a letter."

"Which will just make her even angrier."

"I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. I leave a letter, she throws a fit; I leave without saying goodbye, she kills me when she sees me again..."

"And saying goodbye in person is impossible," Heero finished. "How about giving a message to someone you both trust?"

"Like who?"

Heero seemed thoughtful. "Quatre. Wufei is leaving soon, and Helena isn't a pilot. She wouldn't understand, and Shinobu just isn't empathetic enough..."

"She barely knows Quatre."

"But he's a pilot." There eyes met each other, and the meaning was so multi-layered that it transcended spoken language.

"He has enough on his plate," Duo argued.

Heero smiled slightly. "I think this would be something he'd gladly take on. Just knowing he was helping a friend..."

Duo's lips quirked slightly in response to Heero's smile, which seemed even more rare than they had been during the war. "Quatre would do anything for a friend. I... I think I want to see them all, just before we leave. Maybe we should call a convention or something, and make plans."

Heero's eyes widened almost imperceptibly, but Duo had long since learned to be aware of every nuance of the other man's body language. "What do you mean?"

"We are the ones who shape the world, Heero. It's been proven by this latest crisis- whatever path we chose is what the world will follow. We need to communicate... and we need to know what the others are thinking." His eyes hardened as he thought of the pilot of 03. "We need to clear up the conflict between us- we need to be united again, because if we're battling each other, they'll destroy us. They want us to fall, and you know one of the basic precepts of war: divide and conquer."

"United we stand, divided we fall," Heero answered, and he stepped back. "Give me an hour, and we'll all meet an Quatre's rooms. The others will be able to slip away, I'm sure. Even with all the security on them, no one has yet stopped a pilot from being where they want to."

The lavender in Duo's eyes was predominant as his face hardened. "Put it under security clearance zero-million."

Heero went rigid. He hadn't heard that clearance since the end of the war... "Understood. An hour, Quatre's room. Do what you need to... we leave directly from there."

When Duo arrived at the door to Quatre's room, he took a deep breath, wondering. His life had come full circle, and it was odd to think that these people, who would soon join him, were the incarnations of that truth. While he had taken Heero as his blood brother, it could have just as easily been any of them.

And soon, he'd be confronting Ilene's killer, who had killed her for him. Duo hadn't wanted to think about that aspect, but he knew he needed to face Trowa again before he left. He needed to trust him again, because Trowa would most likely be at his back.

He needed to see if Trowa had been right to kill her.

The room he entered was dim, the lighting at only forty percent intensity, and Duo smiled in spite of himself. Back to the days of lurking in the shadows.... It seemed appropriate. There was only one other person present, sitting in a large armchair that looked black in the poor light, but could have easily been dark green or blue instead. The faint glow from the lamps reflected off blond hair, and Duo smiled at the man who was idly flipping through a pile of papers. "Yo, Quatre! Long time, no see!" he said cheerfully.

Quatre looked up at him, and Duo was taken aback at how much older the former Sandrock pilot looked. He had seen him on the news, of course, but the vid feeds hadn't prepared him for the intensity of the gaze that was directed at him, or how the smooth features had refined into those of a man, losing the childishness that had made him seem so innocent. Duo still thought him boyish, but there was a wisdom and a bit of world weariness in Quatre's eyes that didn't seem to belong there.

"It has been a while, Duo... too long," Quatre said softly, before dropping his eyes back to his papers. "There's so much to be done, and just not enough time."

"You'll need glasses if you read in lights like this!" Duo chided playfully, feeling awkward and off-balance. Something about Quatre's manner was cold and unwelcoming, and Duo had the feeling it wasn't directed at him; at least, no him, personally. He was the target of something larger than he knew.

"I wear them, occasionally." Quatre sighed as he straightened the papers on his lap and set them on the floor to the right of his chair. "I'd get a servant or one of my sisters to bring you something, but I was informed this is code zero-million." His eyes studied Duo again, and Duo reflected on how the normally sapphire blue color could look nearly black when the lights were bad.

"No one but pilots, what we say, stays here," Duo said easily, rocking back on his heels and crossing his arms over his chest. "Still... where are the others? Am I that early?"

"You're on time. Trowa was with his sister, so he might be a little late. Wufei... well, I don't know... Heero was doing something." Quatre's voice lost all expression, and Duo picked up on it instantly.

"Heero's always up to something."

"He is," Quatre said even more quietly, and his gaze shifted away, over to the door. "Wufei's here."

Duo didn't even bother to wonder how Quatre knew; Quatre had always had an instinct for where his friends were. The door swung open after a tap, and Wufei entered.

"Hey, Wufei!" Duo said cheerfully, bouncing over to give him a clout on the shoulder. "How are you doing?"

"I am surviving, which is the best that can be hoped for."

Duo pulled back, his smile fading slightly. "Isn't it?" he asked wistfully.

Wufei, too, had changed. His hair had grown much longer and he was taller. There was a serenity to him that the solitary dragon had always lacked before, and even though he was due to enter the war, there was a confidence that Duo envied.

Wufei had found his peace, though, and Duo wanted to ask him how.

Quatre watched them from his chair without rising, like a prince holding court. His eyes regained their focus on them and he sighed under his breath, unheard.

A minute later the door opened again, and the final two pilots entered. Duo's eyes flicked to Heero and then to the silent boy beside him. He hadn't seen Trowa since the day of the attack, and he wasn't surprised to find that his feelings still hadn't changed. He forced himself to meet Trowa's eyes, to sign a silent hello. Trowa returned his gaze with a nod, the green eyes shifting to the Arabian boy in the armchair. Duo followed his gaze, then blinked with surprise.

Quatre's tired expression had changed to one of...not hostility, but there was definitely dislike in those eyes. Duo frowned. There was something going on here with Quatre and...Heero?

Before Duo could open his mouth to ask what was wrong, Quatre stood gracefully, folding his hands in front of him.

"Since we're all here, we might as well get started," he said softly, letting his gaze travel around the room, though he did not, Duo noticed, look at Heero.

He saw Wufei look around, shrug, and sit down on the floor. Trowa and Heero followed suit. There was one empty armchair to Quatre's left, and Duo wasn't about to sit on the floor when there was a perfectly good chair available. He plunked down in it, letting his head fall against the soft chair back.

Silence.

Quatre looked hostile. Trowa and Heero looked carefully blank, and Wufei's expression was unreadable. Duo coughed.

"So...uh. What's up?"

Wufei laughed.

It was such an unexpected sound that everyone turned to look at him, the Chinese boy who they had never known to laugh at anything, much less in the middle of inexplicable tension. Duo couldn't help but grin.

"It's certainly been a while," Wufei said calmly. A trace of a smile still lingered around the corners of his mouth. "I suppose we should all talk about what we've been up to before we talk about where we're going?"

Duo shrugged. "Easy here. I was in school." He saw Quatre raise an eyebrow. "I was! I figured I was a teenager, I should act like one. I went back to the States...got into Cliffside...." He trailed off, trying not to look at Trowa.

The other boy decided to take up the slack. "I went back to the circus." He looked around the room, and Duo could feel those intense eyes on him, but he didn't meet Trowa's gaze. "I left when the Gundam news broke and went into hiding."

"It seems such a long time ago, doesn't it?" Quatre said softly. "Everyone knows what I've been doing - no surprise. Wufei?"

The Chinese pilot shrugged. "I was in China. Basically doing nothing...though I suppose I could say that my life changed when Heero tried to kill me."

Duo snorted. "I'll never understand that."

Heero smirked. "Wufei had a price on his head from one of the cartels. Why do you think I came back to Earth?"

Quatre started to say something but stopped. Duo looked at him. Quatre scowled.

"Dude-" he began, but Wufei cut him off with a sharp gesture.

"We all have our histories. It's been two years. I'd like us to put aside whatever problems we have with the past or with each other...because we can't win a war like this."

"So it is a war, then," Trowa murmured, looking down. "I was afraid of that."

Duo narrowed his eyes. "What else would it be? People don't go around murdering innocent civilians in peacetime, do they?"

"I could say I was sorry," Trowa replied. "But that wouldn't change anything, would it?"

"No," Duo said bitterly. "It wouldn't. God dammit, it wouldn't."

"You know," Trowa said, "I still don't understand why I did it." He sounded regretful but wondering at the same time. Duo wanted to punch him. "I don't...it was like I was staring down two roads. I didn't know where either of them led, but I had to make a choice." His head came up, fixing Duo's gaze. "She was beautiful. I am sorry. Even though it doesn't change anything, I'm sorry."

"Fuck you," Duo said sharply, feeling the pricks of grief and guilt rising up from a deep, dark place inside his soul. He grasped at the arms of the chair until his fingers hurt, digging his nails into the fabric. "You had no right. You-"

"Duo!" Quatre said sharply. "Leave him alone." Duo swung around, fist raised, but before he could act or speak, a voice rang out from the other side of the room.

"You're one to talk."

That cold voice sent a shiver of familiarity up his spine, and Duo swung his gaze back to Heero. The scarred face was impassive, set in stone, the blue eyes devoid of all the emotion he'd seen in his best friend in the past few days. He felt a tightening in his gut. This was Heero Yuy. Not the other, friendlier, haunted stranger he had known since the attack, but a side of Heero that Duo had always known existed, and would always exist, but seemed to have been intensified by two years of living in the slums of L1.

"Leave me alone, Heero," Quatre said, turning away from him. "Let's all leave each other alone. There are some things that shouldn't be spoken of here."

"Oh?" Heero raised an eyebrow. "I thought we were all friends. Aren't friends supposed to share these things?"

"Were friends," Quatre snapped. "I'm not sure if we are anymore."

There was another uncomfortable silence. Duo swallowed and fiddled with one of the buttons on his shirt, looking sideways at Wufei, who had his eyes closed. Meditating? He had always meditated at the oddest times.

"Wufei?" Trowa said, softly.

Wufei opened his eyes. In the dimness they were dark pools of nothing which caught the light and held it, sparkling, like lakes in the moonlight, resting on Duo for a moment in a liquid gaze, then shifting across the room. "Heero," Wufei said quietly.

Just one word. Heero tensed, the muscles in his shoulders and arms stiffening and then relaxing. The scarred face looked away. Duo looked from one to the other, hearing unspoken words echoing in the air around him, but not being able to make them out. He waited for a few seconds, then shrugged.

"Well, shit, if it's going to be like this...I don't want it to be like this. We were friends, right? Like Quatre said. There's no reason we shouldn't be friends again." He got up from his chair, sticking his hand out awkwardly. "Trowa...for what it's worth. I don't want this to get in the way, all right?"

For a moment he thought that Trowa would remain seated, ignoring him, but after a long pause, the former Heavyarms pilot rose to his feet to grasp Duo's hand. "I agree," he said simply, shaking it gently and releasing his grip. "For the sake of the team," he intoned, and Duo saw him look towards Quatre.

Quatre said nothing.

Wufei crossed his arms over his chest and stood up as Duo retreated back to the safety of his chair and out of the crossfire of Quatre's icy stare. "Quatre," he said. "I know you're under a lot of strain right now, and perhaps now isn't the best time. However, I also know that you know how much is at stake right now and that we cannot afford to argue. If you can't put your quarrel aside...at least don't bring it up. Got it?"

"Who died and made you leader?" Quatre said harshly.

Wufei's mouth twisted. "More people than I can count. And I don't want to have any more people dying on my behalf. This is why I'm here." He looked around the room. "This is why we've all been called here. Please, let's just do what we need to get done."

"The show must go on," Trowa murmured from the side of the room. Quatre's gaze faltered for a moment, and Duo could see him gathering himself as he shifted in his chair.

"Fine," the Arabian said, and sighed. "Let's get on with it." He did not look at Heero, but the Wing Zero pilot cast an unreadable look in his direction, then favored Wufei with a tight smile.

"Sorry," Heero said. He actually sounded apologetic. "It won't happen again."

Duo snorted. Heero gave him a small smirk.

"With that settled and out of the way," Wufei continued, "I assume that we all know why we're on this base and what exactly is going on in the world."

"Gundams," Duo said. "We won war. World hates us. Happy times for all."

Wufei sighed. "Thank you, Duo. I was actually going to say that the Preventers need our help more than ever, which sounds contradictory at first. But...they have given all their resources to protect us, and I feel that we should give them something back in return. Which is why I am leaving tomorrow to retrieve Shenlong."

Trowa looked up. "You still have it?"

"Nataku is alive. Functional, hopefully. We need to move quickly before Sally gets ahead of us, because if we don't, not only will the Preventers and the World Nation be wiped out, we will as well."

"Sally's not like that," Duo said. "She wouldn't." He cast a helpless look at Wufei. "Would she?"

"I don't know. And I don't want to wait to find out." Wufei's voice was tight, and Duo felt a pang of sympathy for him. He knew that Sally and Wufei had been close. How close, he didn't know, but their friendship had never seemed to him the sort of friendship which would develop into romance. It was a deeper, more sacred sort of bond, a joining of kindred spirits. And now she was gone.

Quatre looked surprised. "Tomorrow, you said?"

"Tomorrow. I would have given you more notice, but...Sally contacted me last night via special codes that we didn't know were built into the Preventers comm system. Tried to convince me to join her." Wufei sighed, and Duo was struck by how calm but weary he seemed, as if all the fight had been taken out of him in the past few days. "I almost gave in. I knew she wasn't right...but she knew all the right buttons to push. And if she knows me that well, sooner or later she'll figure out where Shenlong is. I can't let that happen."

Quatre nodded, looking faintly unsettled. "I had no idea. I'm sorry."

Wufei shook his head, smiling. "The past is the past. It's time to move on." Duo stared at him, and he frowned. "What?"

"Nothing...you're just...different. From how I remembered you."

"I hope so," Wufei said. "If just to show that even someone like me can change and become a better person."

"Who said anything about better?" Duo returned, and Wufei laughed, then quickly turned serious.

"Trowa, how is your sister?"

"She's fine. She's staying with Dorothy and Relena in town right now just until things calm down. I'm sure she's plotting something."

"Knowing her, probably," Quatre said. "You know that Dorothy and Relena are up to something. They've been sitting in my trial but I haven't heard them say anything. I wonder if they're waiting to make a big entrance."

"They'd better make it soon," Trowa said. "It's getting rather touchy in there."

"Yes," Quatre said tightly. "I know."

The room quieted for a moment, but the tense silence of before had faded into a more weary one that Duo was familiar with - the tired silence of the period just after a mission, when the shock and lack of sleep finally hit and the adrenalin was all ebbed away. That was the period in which the faces of those he had killed would pass before his eyes and he would count them out, one by one, even the ones he didn't know who had just been faceless, voiceless creations inside a mobile suit. Because he couldn't forget that they had been people too.

"Heero?" Wufei questioned. "I believe you have something to say."

Duo jerked himself out of his semi-daze and focused his attention on the Japanese boy, who was leaning against the wall and apparently looking for the right words. He knew it was hard. He had thought that it would be a cinch to fall back into the old pattern, but it had been two years and he was used to being a civilian whose biggest worry was what he made on the government test a week ago.

Saying the words would mean that he was leaving that life behind, perhaps for good.

"Duo and I are going out on assignment for the Preventers," Heero announced finally.

As he expected, no one in the room was surprised. Trowa nodded slightly from where he was leaning against the wall, while Wufei relaxed slightly, hoping that his comrades had finally come to their senses. He wasn't easy with how they seemed to be verging on tearing each other's throats out... the war was outside, and if they couldn't unite, they would fall to the World Nation's manipulations.

"What's the assignment?" Quatre asked, directing the question at Duo, without bothering to cast a look at Heero, even though the Wing pilot was the one who had spoken.

"Heero knows more of the details than I do," Duo said, neatly deflecting the question back to his partner.

Heero didn't give a sign of his obvious unease. "We're to find Po, and take her out if we can't bring her in," Heero said, summing it up.

The others, even Quatre, sighed slightly in sympathy, understanding. It was one of the things they had hated most about being pilots. The word no one quite dared say aloud, but all of them understood to be a tacit part of their training. Duo and Heero had undertaken many of the jobs that came their way, and with the possible exception of Trowa, were the best at it.

Assassination.

"Sally's violated all the oaths she swore to uphold," Wufei said quietly, trying to still the disquiet he knew they all were feeling. "She may have once been our ally, but by turning against her honor, all promises to her are void. She's forfeited all right to our friendship."

Duo nodded slowly, and Heero seemed to relax slightly. "We're going to try to bring her in, first, and recover Heavyarms. That's mission priority. The... elimination is only if she doesn't come willingly."

None of the others needed to say what they thought the changes of her coming willingly were. Sally had never given up, especially not where China was concerned. Duo and Heero exchanged grim glances, knowing that chances were that they'd have to kill Sally.

"Are you leaving soon?" Quatre asked.

"As soon as we're done here," Duo replied. "Quatre? Do you think... you could possibly bring a message to Hilde from me?"

"You didn't tell her goodbye, did you? Have you ever heard the saying 'don't shoot the messenger?' I have the feeling that Hilde will forget it..." Quatre said. "You should tell her yourself."

Duo clenched his fist, wondering if he'd have to go back. "I-"

"I'll do it," a quiet voice said. "I didn't say goodbye once, and it hurt the person I love most in the world. The least I can do is help you say goodbye... consider it part of my penance," Trowa offered.

Duo looked over at the pilot of Heavyarms, realizing how much it had cost him to make that offer. Trowa was not an expressive person, and he tended to shut down in emotionally charged situation. He smiled over at the green-eyed pilot. "Thanks, Trowa. I'd appreciate it... but there's no need for penance. You did what you had to do," Duo admitted, flashing back to the maddened look in Ilene's eyes and the shriek of sirens on the base. "You acted as a pilot should."

The others were silent as Duo looked around the room. The tension between Heero and Quatre was thick enough to cut with a knife, and Wufei seemed to be mourning for the loss of a friend who wasn't yet dead. The meeting had healed the breech between Trowa and Duo, but Duo wondered if seeing his old friends together had been worth it. They had grown in the time since he'd known them, and he half-wished he could just remember them as they had been- perfect Heero, silent Trowa, cheerful Quatre and driven Wufei...

He preferred those memories to the grim reality before him

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