Dark Silences

Warnings : Yaoi, angst, sap, OOC, Wufei POV, TWT. This one is 1+2+5… my first attempt, please be warned and be kind.

Thanks to Christy for beta reading and Aya for comments! Thanks guys!
Feed-back actually has a direct correlation with the urge to write.
I dreamed I owned them once… does that count?

The Romefeller goons left us sit for a good long time in our stone walled cell, letting us stew in our own frustration. Giving us amble time to snap and snarl at each other over how we had come to be here. It had been an infiltration mission, what Maxwell termed a ‘snatch and grab’. Our assignment had been to liberate a high-ranking official, a man who claimed to be loyal to Treize Khushrenada’s ‘true ideals’ and was promising to defect with all the specs on the new mobile dolls in his hand. It could have ended the war, had it been the truth. It had been an outright lie. A trap. A bold trap that had succeeded quite admirably in snaring three of us. Maxwell, Winner and myself. I suppose, when you got right down to it… this might very well end the war after all. Just not necessarily in our favor.

If we lived to get ourselves out of here, I would allow myself to think about what I intended to do to the leak the rebellion had to have. This mission had been checked, double-checked and cleared at the highest levels. Someone, somewhere had set us up. When we had carried out the first part of the mission, infiltrating the base and making our way to the quarters of General Bellows, all we had found waiting for us was a hidden canister of colorless, odorless knock-out gas. The good General had even allowed himself to be drugged along with us to insure that we took the bait. We had taken it, all right; hook, line, and sinker. And awakened in this spartan cell, cuffed in place, with raging headaches and nothing to do but speculate and think about what was ahead of us.

‘What do you mean a mole?’ Winner was quick to go on the defensive. ‘The General was drugged right along with us… What makes you think he was in on it?’

Sometimes his naiveté was enough to drive a wooden man crazy and I opened my mouth to tell him just that, but Maxwell, for about the fifth time, interjected himself between us.

‘Well, Quatre,’ he drawled with that damned ever-present grin fully intact. ‘The smirk on his face kind of gave him away.’

‘Oh,’ Winner backed down and I wanted to growl. He had been arguing the point with me for the last five minutes, but one word from Maxwell and it was ‘Oh’?

‘It’s ok, man,’ Maxwell reassured him. ‘I was in front; I got a better look at him.’ His voice went pensive then and he surprised me with, ‘Just wish I’d figured out faster that his expression wasn’t right. If I’d gotten a warning off…’

‘It happened too fast, Duo,’ Winner told him gently. ‘Whatever they used on us, it acted almost instantly.’

‘But Wufei was right by the door,’ he continued. ‘He might have made it out… they might not have all three of us.’

Having dropped out of the conversation when Winner had started arguing with me again, not wanting to believe that we had been compromised, I’d had a moment to calm myself a little. When I looked across the dim cell I could see just how frightened Winner was and just how much Maxwell was tearing himself up over his ‘failure’ to identify the danger.

‘I doubt I would have gotten far,’ I told him gruffly. ‘I imagine there was a large number of armed men just waiting for us to move into that room.’

Maxwell sighed heavily and I saw him try to work his shoulders. ‘Anybody else got a killer headache?’

Winner gave out with a groan and confirmed his with something muttered in Arabic. I grunted.

‘Bet the dear General got an aspirin…’ Maxwell began, then we heard the sound of footsteps outside the door. I had been looking right at Maxwell and saw his eyes get a calculated glitter to them; he seemed to be waiting for just the right moment, then he said, just a shade too loudly, ‘They can’t find out that I know all the troop locations… they’ll beat the crap out of me! I can’t… I can’t take that again!’

To my knowledge, Maxwell had never been captured before this screwed up mission. That made the likelihood of his having had ‘the crap beaten out of him’ a bit unlikely. Winner’s eyes flew wide and his mouth flew open, but Maxwell gave him a harsh glare and he shut it again.

The next part went rather quickly. The door opened. Maxwell managed to make a look come over his face that can only be described as… unnerved. Not terrified. Not babbling. Not weeping. Just this carefully constructed mask that plainly told anyone who was looking that he was the one who had spoken, without it being overplayed. The three men who appeared in our cell went right to him, unlocked his cuffs from the chains set in the wall and hauled him away. Just as he had intended, I had no doubt.

I was awed by the look he threw back at us. Had I not known him, I would have said he was on the verge of screaming for mercy and trying to cover it up with a stoic but crumbling front.

When the door was closed behind them, Winner and I sat and stared at each other, on opposite ends of the chamber, and tried not to look at the empty spot on the sidewall midway between us.

‘Why… why did he do that?’ Winner whispered to me and I wanted to roll my eyes.

‘To ensure that they took him and not one of us,’ I growled. ‘Why else?’

‘But…why?’ he persisted and I just shook my head. I didn’t have an answer and I didn’t really feel like talking about it. All I could think about was the look on Maxwell’s face as they had pulled him from the room. I knew it had been an act… but it had still been unsettling. I wondered how far away they would take him for the questioning. I wondered how long before they figured out that drugs didn’t work on us and got down to the ‘old fashioned’ method of interrogation. I pulled rather ineffectively at my cuffs again and glared at the door. Winner curled into a miserable ball and got quiet.

It was two hours before they hauled him back and dumped his limp body on the floor, not even bothering to reattach his cuffed hands to the wall.

We waited for the door to close and the sounds of movement outside to subside, then Winner called softly, ‘Duo… Duo can you hear me?’

The black-clad form shifted; rolling over onto his back and we very clearly heard him say, ‘Ouch.’

I let go of a breath I hadn’t really been aware I’d been holding and called, ‘Status, Maxwell.’

There was a bit of a silence and I saw him attempting to evaluate, he got as far as flexing his hands and arms before heaving a sigh and blurting, ‘Hell, Wufei… I dunno. Nothing broken, I don’t think.’

Irritation welled in my chest and I started to berate him for only half doing the job, but he rolled over onto his stomach then, and levering himself up on hands and knees, crawled toward Winner. I stifled the faint pang of… of jealousy that bit at me and forced myself to watch his movements. He was obviously in a deal of pain, favoring his right leg and hugging one arm around his middle as he moved. He settled next to Winner and they conversed in hushed tones for a few minutes. Something flashed in Winner’s eyes, some spark of hope, but it was strongly overshadowed by the unhappy expression that overtook him. Maxwell patted his leg reassuringly and then turned to make his slow way towards me. I ached to see him struggling so, and watched him closely, trying to judge the extent of his injuries. It seemed to take him forever to make his way the fourteen or fifteen feet across the cell. When he reached me, he fairly collapsed on the floor next to me, rolling over onto his back to grin up at me.

‘Hey there, buddy,’ he chuckled. ‘Did you have to get a seat so damn far away from the rest of us?’

His ability to wear that jester’s mask through everything that comes along never ceases to amaze me. ‘Are you all right, Maxwell?’ I asked, allowing some of my normal brusqueness to leave my voice.

His grin brightened, flaring into something almost real for a second before turning into something… a little cockier. ‘Ah… I’ve had worse. The important thing is, I got what I was after.’

All I could do was blink at him while he reached his cuffed hands down and those nimble fingers fished around in the top of his boot. It took a little work and I waited patiently to see what he would produce that was so important that he had deliberately endured a beating to obtain it. I was expecting a weapon of some sort, not the tiny little sliver of metal he finally pulled out with a triumphant air.

I couldn’t help the raised eyebrow. ‘And this helps us, how?’

He fairly smirked at me. ‘Put your cuffs down here where I can reach them, and I’ll show you.’

I shifted my bound wrists around and he settled close beside me, bending his attention to the locks on my cuffs. I felt a faint glimmer of hope try to catch light somewhere inside me. ‘You can really get these things off?’

‘Given enough time,’ he confirmed, obviously distracted by his work. ‘My somewhat… sordid youth taught me a few useful things that weren’t covered in Gundam training 101.’

I watched him work for a minute, his brow furrowed in concentration, and noted the faint tremble of his hands. He was clearly in some pain and ignoring it, I wanted to tell him to rest first, but knew we didn’t have that kind of time. ‘How long do you think this will take?’

‘Unfortunately,’ he muttered, ‘our buddies seem to have bought the best for us. These are Kodiak locks from the look of them… double sets… damned beveled drops… they’re so freakin’ easy to bind… got to be careful.’ All I could do was nod dumbly; it seemed he was speaking another language. He worked for a bit in silence, his lower lip caught between his teeth as he concentrated. Then, abruptly, he let his head fall forward onto his forearm with a straggled sigh.

‘Maxwell?’ I questioned softly, fear coiling around in my gut. Did this mean he had given up? He wasn’t going to be able to do it?

‘Sorry, man,’ he murmured. ‘Just give me a minute… I wasn’t counting on them getting so… energetic this early in the game.’

Damn. He was hurting too badly to truly concentrate on his task. I looked him over again; wishing I could evaluate his condition better, then tested the play in my restraints. The chain the cuffs were attached to was long enough to let me move fairly freely in place, if not long enough to allow me to move away from my seat by the wall. I shifted and he looked up at me.

‘Here,’ I said gruffly, ‘rest your head on my leg so you don’t have to hold it up. I’ll position the cuffs so they’re in front of you.’

I had expected some flippant, outrageous remark, but an expression crossed his face that I couldn’t understand at all, and when he moved to comply, it was with a bit of hesitation. ‘Thanks, Wufei,’ he murmured and if I hadn’t known Maxwell so well; I would have said he was embarrassed.

After a little more time had passed, he began to talk softly, explaining that he had fought with his captors, escaping their grasp long enough to palm his make-shift lock-pick and been royally ‘disciplined’ for his efforts. They had seemed to know that truth drugs were useless and had cut right to the chase; giving him that beating he had alluded to earlier.

‘I gave it long enough to be believable,’ he told me, ‘and then I broke down and spilled a bunch of shit I made up on the spot. It won’t take them forever to figure that out, and they’ll be back.’

Suddenly, the cuff around my right wrist sprang free and there was a tiny, exultant sound from Maxwell. It had probably taken him an hour. I could only hope that he would get faster as he went. He took the thing into his own bound hands and did some fiddling with it, now that it was open, before looking up at me almost apologetically. ‘You can’t get caught with it off,’ he told me. ‘I’ve jammed it so it won’t really lock back… but you need to put it back on.’

‘Of course,’ I replied and winced at the arch tone of my own voice. He only grinned at me. Then, on a sudden thought, he turned toward Winner and flashed him a number one sign and a thumbs up. Winner grinned back, losing some of the anxious look that had come over him.

Maxwell turned to me again, carefully letting his head rest back on my thigh. ‘Ok… now for number two.’ I dutifully shifted the second cuff into his range. He worked stolidly for several minutes before glancing up at me with an oddly pensive look. ‘Uhmm…’ he ventured, ‘you realize that there’s no way in hell I’m going to get done with both of you before they come back… right?’

I didn’t speak, only looked down at him and was surprised to find him blushing slightly. ‘I know I can count on you not to move too soon,’ he told me, eyes on his work. ‘I mean… that’s why I’m doing you first, and not Quatre.’

He was counting on me to sit idly, with my hands free, and do nothing while our jailers pounded him into the floor. It twisted in my gut, to hear him say it, but I knew he was right. I didn’t know what to say and only stared down at him, wide-eyed. I was left feeling completely flustered. Pleased that he trusted my control, that he trusted me to do what had to be done. But, at the same time… bothered that he might believe that I could sit here completely unmoved by his pain.

‘I can count on you, right?’ he prodded, looking nervous. ‘Unless Heero and Trowa come busting in here to rescue our asses… I think this is our only chance. But we all have to be free before we make our move or it’ll never work.’

‘I know,’ I told him and though I had meant for it to be curt, it came out a little… pained.

He blinked up at me and then smiled softly. ‘Just don’t watch,’ he quipped.

Heero and Trowa. If they had any way of knowing that this mission had gone bad, they might very well come busting in here after us. Or at least after the other two. Though they tried very hard to be discreet, we all knew that Barton and Winner were… involved. And though he wouldn’t have admitted it even if faced with a firing squad, I suspected that Yuy was more than a little fond of Maxwell. But we weren’t due to make any kind of report for days. The plan had been to get the General out and go to ground until the heat blew over and we could safely move him out of the area. Our other two partners wouldn’t even begin to worry for at least two days. We could be very dead by then.

Maxwell continued to work, though his hands were shaking even harder than they had been, and I could see his frustration mounting in his eyes.

‘Enough,’ I whispered after watching him struggle for almost another hour and seeming to make no progress. ‘Rest for a minute. You’re losing your patience.’

He snorted softly, but let his hands drop down to the floor. ‘Don’t have a ton of patience to begin with.’

It was my turn to snort at him. ‘You’re doing fine. Just give yourself a minute… your arms are so fatigued you’re shaking like a leaf. It can’t be making this any easier.’

He sighed and I felt him truly relax against me. ‘You’re right… you’re right… just for a minute though.’

‘Just for a minute,’ I confirmed, but was considering letting him take a short nap; he was showing all the signs of sleep creeping up on him. I wondered if I dared?

As if reading my mind, he murmured, ‘Don’t let me fall asleep. They can’t find me here… they could use you against me so easily…’ his words were slurred with fatigue, and I stared down at him, wondering.

‘Wufei!’ Quatre suddenly hissed at me. ‘They’re coming back!’

Maxwell heard, and I found his fingers shoving his little lock-pick into my hands for safekeeping. Then he rolled away, managing to force himself up to his feet long enough to stagger back to where they had dumped him before. When he got there, he just pitched forward onto the floor with a faint grunt of pain and was lying pretty much where he had been, just seconds before the door opened.

The first man into the room strode forward and grabbed Maxwell by the collar, dragging him to his feet. ‘Not too bright, Gundam-boy,’ he growled. ‘Lying to the General like that… you really pissed him off.’

Maxwell muttered something I couldn’t hear and the goon that had him dangling from his beefy hand laughed outright. ‘You’re a gutsy little guy… I’ll give you that.’ Then his tone darkened. ‘But the boss hates gutsy.’

Then they dragged him out, and the door was shut with an ominous clang.

I tucked the pick inside the waistband of my pants and sat for a moment feeling the rapidly cooling spot on my thigh where Maxwell had been resting his cheek just moments ago. I was… very afraid. And not just because he was the only hope we had at the moment, however slim.

‘Wufei?’ Winner ventured into the silence and the fear was a palpable thing in his voice.

I didn’t want to discuss things at the level we would have to, in order to hear each other across the cell. I didn’t think we were being monitored, but you never knew. ‘Trust him,’ was all I said and he subsided with an unhappy frown. I thanked God they were taking Maxwell away from here to do their questioning. I didn’t know how Winner would… hold up had they done it right here in front of us. Though his empathetic, kind-hearted nature was… admirable. It could be one hell of a liability in situations like this.

It was three hours. Three long, endless, insufferable hours, before they brought him back. Again, they just dumped him on the floor and walked out, without a word or backward glance. Winner hardly waited for the door to close before calling fearfully, ‘Duo? Oh Allah… Duo, are you all right?’

There was no response and Winner made a strangled noise.

‘Stop it!’ I snapped before he could truly work up to a panic. ‘He’s breathing; I can see it from here. Calm the hell down.’

I had expected him to get angry with me, to rant at me about my lack of feeling, but he only took a deep breath and said, ‘He is? You’re sure?’

‘Yes,’ I confirmed. ‘And though it’s hard to tell in that damn black outfit, I don’t see that he’s bleeding a lot.’

He settled down to dark mutterings then, something about ‘barbarians’, something else about ‘inhumane’. I stopped listening, my eyes focused on Maxwell’s unmoving form. After a few minutes, I thought I saw a twitch of involuntary movement and I called softly to him.

‘Maxwell? Can you hear me? You need to wake up. What’s your status?’

I saw his hands spasm open and then closed, I saw an arm twitch. When his voice came, it was rough and sounded thin. ‘Screwed over?’

‘Not good enough, mister!’ I snapped, heart in my throat. ‘You can do better than that!’

He chuckled dryly and rolled sluggishly over onto his stomach, wincing as he did it. I watched him try to push himself up onto hands and knees and I watched him not make it.

‘Duo?’ I whispered and saw him find some sort of resolve. He ended up dragging himself across the floor by virtue of his elbows.

‘You mind?’ he breathed when he got to my side, twitching his head in the direction of my lap.

‘Of course not,’ I growled, frustration getting the better of my temper.

He settled against me with a soft sigh that made me shiver. ‘How bad is it, damn it!’ I grumbled and couldn’t keep the fear out of my voice.

He smiled up at me and held his hand out for his little tool. ‘I honest to God don’t know, man. I roll with it as best I can… but they held me down this time. I think at the very least, I’ve got a couple of cracked ribs. I’m just tryin’ to make sure they don’t screw with my hands.’

I fished out his pick and slipped it to him, not able to stop myself from squeezing his fingers for a second. ‘Try to protect your damn head too, all right?’ I groused, suddenly embarrassed.

The grin slid away for a second and he let me see his pain and his fear, and there was something else in the back of those bright eyes of his that I couldn’t quite name. His fingers caught at mine as I made to slide free and he let himself clutch at me for a minute before he looked away, bending back to work.

‘General Bellows is a loon,’ he imparted after a few moments of his exploring the lock in silence. ‘He just about lost it that time… he wasn’t even asking me questions any more. I think he was about ready to pound me into paste, but there was this other guy there who got pissed at him, pulled rank and made him stop.’

Cold fear coiled around in my gut and I wanted to beg him to hurry the hell up, but knew better than to apply that kind of pressure. I wracked my brain trying to think of something that we might give them that would hold them off for longer than the few hours that Maxwell had been buying.

‘If there was just something you could tell them that would take them longer to verify,’ I pondered out loud and he snorted softly.

‘I don’t even know if it’s about information anymore,’ he sighed. ‘I think I’ve just gotten under the guy’s skin.’

‘Maxwell?’ I glared down at him. ‘What have you done?’

He glanced up at me and frowned darkly. ‘Son of a bitch wants to hear me scream and I won’t fucking give him the satisfaction.’ His face told me there was no arguing with him over it. It was… a petty victory, but one I could understand. I don’t know why, but I felt… oddly proud of him.

I had feared that he would have to start all over again with the lock, but some of his manipulations seemed to still be in effect, and after an endless fifteen or twenty minutes, the damn thing snapped open.

‘Yes!’ he hissed in victory and took the cuff to jam the mechanism the way he had with the first one, so the lock wouldn’t reengage.

I swiftly stripped myself of the other one and he looked up at me wide eyed. ‘What… what the hell are you doing?’ he blurted.

‘Taking a very small chance,’ I told him gruffly. ‘I’m not watching you drag yourself across the damn floor again.’

He reached for my hand, and tried to sit up, thinking I meant to help him to his feet. ‘Idiot,’ I murmured and shifted around to slip my arms under him, carefully lifting him. He gasped and I hesitated, ‘Am I hurting you?’ But he only shook his head.

I took him swiftly across the cell and settled him beside Winner, showing him how to sit so that Duo could use his leg to support his head. Once I verified that he had his lock pick safely in his hand, I started to go back to my own side of the room, but Duo stopped me with a look.

‘Listen to me, both of you,’ he said intently. ‘No matter what happens… we can not make our move until all three of us are completely free.’ He tried to temper the lecture with a small grin. ‘We’d just be throwing all my hard work away.’ He had said both of you, but somehow I knew this was mostly for Winner’s benefit.

To back him up, I solemnly told them, ‘Of course, Maxwell. Do you take me for an idiot?’

He flashed me a grin and a wink; it surprised me to see the private message and to be able to read it so plainly. His assurance that he knew I was only enforcing his message to Winner and wasn’t really angry with him. It was all I could do not to return the grin. I grunted and went back to my shackles, feeling strangely flustered.

After that, I could only watch them from across the room, not able to hear any of their whispered conversation. I felt like I was going to explode with frustration. I began to feel a bit more sympathy for Winner, who had been over there all by himself all this time, enduring.

I could see Duo struggling even from here; I could see Winner’s worried expression. I could feel time moving past us like a physical thing. I wanted to yell at him to hurry the damn hell up! It took him almost an hour to get the first cuff off of Winner’s arm. I knew it had given way when Winner’s face flashed with a grin and Duo all but collapsed on the floor. I had a moment of panic, thinking that he had fainted with the job half done, but Winner leaned down and spoke to him and Duo rose to make the adjustment that would let the cuff go back on without locking. He barely got it done before we heard footsteps in the hall.

Panic welled up in my chest. I saw the lock pick exchange hands and Duo, with some last reserve of strength, pitched himself out of Winner’s lap, managing to make it several feet away before the door opened.

I knew things had gone from bad to worse when I realized that the much-maligned General Bellows was actually with the squad of goons this time. I glanced at Duo and saw true unease written in his eyes. He was… a little afraid of this man. I wanted to curse out loud; one damn restraining cuff away from our shot at freedom. There was only Bellows and three men; we might have managed to overpower them if we had been free.

There was a long, still-as-death moment while Duo stared at Bellows, I stared at Bellows, Quatre stared at Bellows, and Bellows… took in the whole damn scene.

‘Bring that one,’ he suddenly commanded, and pointed at Winner.

My blood turned to ice in my veins. If they found the open cuff, we were as good as dead. I tried to think of something to do, but didn’t dare draw any attention to myself either. Then, the unthinkable happened.

Duo grinned cheerfully up at his tormentor and quipped lightly, ‘Bellows sweetie, I think I’m hurt! You’re giving up on me so easily?’

The General’s face suffused with rage, just that fast. In the short time Duo had been in this man’s company, he had learned all the buttons to push and he was pushing them now with wild abandon.

I wanted to close my eyes, I truly did, but it seemed a cowardly thing to do. If Duo could endure what was going to happen to him next, in order to save our escape plans, how could I not at least bear witness to his courage? I suspected that Duo had given Winner the same ‘don’t watch’ advice he had given me, because I saw our partner squeeze his eyes shut, his face looking as white as chalk even from where I sat.

Bellows reared back and lashed out at Duo with a booted foot. I thought I was about to see him die. Duo did indeed know something about ‘rolling with the punches’, if he hadn’t, Bellows would have caved the side of his head in, I have no doubt of it.

My muscles were bunched and taunt as a bowstring, wanting to spring across the cell and throttle the life from that bull of a man. But… Duo had been right. Alone, against armed men, I would stand no chance and we would be right back to square one, minus the lock pick Duo had bought with his own blood. Sitting there, knowing my hands were free, and also knowing I didn’t dare do a thing… was the hardest damn thing I have ever done. Bar nothing.

The General continued to rain kicks at Duo’s writhing body, some of them were evaded and some of them were not. Within minutes, the big man was sweating profusely and cursing like a longshoreman. But there wasn’t a damn sound from Duo, a thing that seemed to be driving Bellows insane.

‘I’ll hear you scream you little piece of shit!’ he snarled, landing a blow to Duo’s back that made me bite my own tongue to keep from crying out in sympathy. I glanced at Winner and was relieved as all hell to find him with his eyes still tightly shut; at least he knew his own limits. Then I noticed something else; Bellows’ own men were starting to look uncomfortable with the actions of their commanding officer. I started to feel a bit of hope when the two nearest the door exchanged a few whispered words. Duo was weakening rapidly, his evasive tactics working less and less well; Bellows had stopped for a moment, standing in the center of the room panting like a marathon runner, looking like he was contemplating a killing blow when one of his underlings spoke up.

‘Sir!’ the soldier called hesitantly. ‘Smith says that Commander Stark is on his way down!’

Bellows cursed resoundingly, but turned abruptly away from his handiwork, obviously not wanting to be found here. I had no doubt that this Stark was the man who had ‘pulled rank’ on Bellows during the last ‘session’.

I forced myself to stay where I was for a full count of twenty after the door shut, then stripped the damn cuffs off and flung myself across the room. I could hear the soft sound of weeping and it tore at my gut, but when I knelt by Duo’s side I realized the sound wasn’t coming from where I had thought. I spared Winner a glance, but he still had his eyes shut.

‘Pull yourself together,’ I snapped at him. ‘They’re gone!’

‘Oh Allah… they killed him didn’t they?’ he whispered and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Perhaps my decision to watch had been the better one; obviously, only listening to it had been far worse.

‘No,’ I told him firmly. ‘They did not.’ I turned Duo gently over and was surprised to find those outrageously colored eyes of his open and looking for me. I found myself compelled to smile down at him. ‘He is very much alive… though I doubt he is altogether happy about that fact right now.’

The small joke won me a dazzling, but wavering smile. I was moved to stroke his hair from his face and he gave me that look I couldn’t quite fathom again.

‘Damn it, Maxwell,’ I scolded him. ‘Just cry out… just once, and the son of a bitch will quit.’

His expression darkened and he rolled his eyes toward Winner’s end of the room. ‘I… I almost did. But I’m afraid to now… I’m afraid he’ll…’ He left the sentence hang, but I didn’t need him to say it out loud. He was afraid they would haul Winner out of here next. ‘I’m afraid I kinda have him worked into a feeding frenzy… I’m scared what he might do.’ To Winner.

I sighed, but saw the bed he had made for himself between the rock and the hard place. ‘Do I dare move you?’ I asked him softly, more than aware of the time ticking away from us.

‘Don’t have much choice, do we?’ he grinned up at me and couldn’t even raise his arm to aid me in lifting him. I had to adjust my grip three times before I could pick him up without him wincing in pain. ‘Just do it!’ he finally ground out and I did.

We did our best to make him comfortable when I got him there and he set to immediate work, though his hand shook so badly I doubted he would be able to do the job. I reluctantly left him there and went back to my own place, feeling isolated and helpless. I desperately wanted him where I could get him medical attention and could only sit and imagine what those vicious kicks had done to him. If he’d had fractured ribs before, I had little doubt that he had broken ones now. We’d be damn lucky if that was all the damage that had been done. I vowed that if I found myself in the same room with General Bellows and a gun, I would shoot the motherless bastard right between the eyes. Every time I let myself replay the scene in my mind, icy rage consumed a little more of my heart. How dare that slimy, God forsaken, son of a bitch lay his hands on Duo? Yes; I would kill him and it would only be a quick death because I didn’t have the time to make sure it was a lingering one.

‘Wufei?’ the uncertain, almost timid tone of Winner’s voice brought me out of my reverie. ‘He’s… he’s passed out.’

‘Shit!’ I snarled, cold fear kicking me with another burst of adrenaline that was doing me no damn good at all. ‘Can you wake him?’

‘Not… not so far,’ he murmured.

‘Keep trying,’ I commanded, afraid to chance leaving my spot. As long as it had been, our captors could be back any moment. Though… my heart wanted nothing more than to go to him.

I watched Winner whisper urgently to the limp form next to him. I saw him stroke tentative fingers over a bruised cheek. I watched him shake ineffectively at a shoulder.

Those wide blue eyes came up to meet mine again, and he looked completely shaken. Without Duo’s… abilities, we were… as he would say, ‘screwed’.

I found myself staring at the suddenly fragile seeming figure on the floor as though I could make him hear my thoughts, Don’t give up brave-spirit. I know you have the strength for this… I know you can do it. Wake up… come back to us. Don’t let that bastard win!

What answered me was the sound of footsteps in the hall.

I saw, with a certain amount of relief, Winner scrabble after the pick and shove it into his pocket. But there was nothing to be done with Duo.

The door swung open and I tried to adopt an uninterested expression and could only hope I didn’t look as panicked as I felt.

It was, of course, Bellows again, with his three goons in attendance. Though the man who had lied about the imminent arrival of Stark earlier, was not among them.

I watched Bellows taking in the picture of Duo with his head lying in Winner’s lap and winced. The man… smirked. It was an expression that reeked of… smug malice.

He gestured to his new henchman and the man walked over to haul Duo up by the front of his shirt, dangling him like a rag doll. He dragged him over and dumped him at Bellows feet, like any good trained dog would do. I sensed that there would be no help from that quarter and could only hope that the other two were as squeamish as their missing teammate had been.

I looked them over again; but four to one odds were still too damn stacked, and I was too far away. They would gun me down before I even got close enough to Bellows to do any good. And that would leave Duo without my meager assistance. Though Duo was not a huge person, he was still taller than Winner, and I doubted the Arabian could even begin to be able to carry him out of here. I had figured out some time ago that Duo wouldn’t be walking out under his own power.

Bellows toed at Duo’s inert form almost gently, his grin widening slightly as he got a little movement. He poked again and waited for that precise moment of awakening, the one before you have truly registered where you are, while you are still trying to remember what in the hell happened to you. Then he reared back and kicked Duo ruthlessly in the hip. The only sound was the rush of harshly exhaled air. I saw the General’s smirk turn to a snarl.

He squatted down and grabbed a handful of Duo’s hair, wrenching his head up sharply and backhanding him.

‘Wake up you little piece of filth!’ he growled low and menacing, before letting go. Duo dropped back to the floor, but made an effort to lever himself up to a sitting position.

‘Where are the funny remarks now, Gundam-pilot?’ The name was a curse on the man’s lips. ‘That bleeding-heart Stark is gone off to dinner… he won’t be showing up to save your ass this time!’

He stepped away from Duo and moved over near Winner. We all froze, watching the man to see what in the hell he was going to do now. I had no doubt that Winner would not hold up to half what Duo had endured. He didn’t know the tricks; the movements of the body that would help minimize the damage. I would fare better, with my training in the martial arts. Duo probably knew more than I did, from a life steeped in street fighting. But Winner… his forte was tactics and the grand scale, troop movements and the tediousness of equipment and supplies. He didn’t know hand-to-hand combat. Particularly not at this… level.

But, as Duo had feared, the enemy finding the two of them together had offered Bellows a wedge to attack Duo’s control with.

‘You’re so resolved not to cry out,’ Bellows said, his voice suddenly a sickening purr. ‘Think you can hold to that?’ He drew his sidearm and pointed it directly at Winner’s head. ‘One sound, my little piece of shit, and your… playmate here gets a bullet between the eyes. One cry. One moan. The slightest little sound.’

The General really was a sick son of a bitch. I wondered that we had ever thought that he could possibly have anything to do with the Treize faction. Treize would spit on this man.

Duo couldn’t contain a sudden shudder and the General grinned ferally at him, looking like a man about to enjoy a sumptuous meal.

My eyes sought Winner’s and I held his gaze, doing my best to bolster his courage. There was no color in his face at all and it crossed my mind that now would, perhaps, not be a bad time for him to faint.

Then Bellows gave a curt nod to his new lapdog and the beating began. This man, at least, seemed to be a little more familiar with how easily one could break ones toys. His blows were designed for pain more than damage, unlike Bellows uneducated, ruthless, near insane attacks.

After a very few minutes of this, Quatre again closed his eyes and I was free to turn my attention to Duo. Which was not necessarily a good thing. I was shaking with the need to put an end to this. I might well have turned over my Gundam to buy even a moments respite for Duo. I bit down on a string of curses that my brain told me would do no good, but my gut was churning to deliver.

Duo’s tormentor picked him up and delivered a series of stinging blows to his face before dropping him again. For a precious few seconds he lay still while his attacker circled his helpless body, and his eyes sought mine. Sought desperately for mine.

Our gaze locked for the space of a handful of pounding heartbeats.

‘Don’t watch,’ he mouthed at me.

‘Won’t leave you,’ I mouthed back, shocked to find my sight of him wavering before me.

He graced me with a soft smile until the next blow washed it away.

I thought it would never end. The slaps, the punches, the kicks; it seemed to go on forever. Bellows seemed only to be getting angrier, and he continued to taunt Duo with the gun to Winner’s head. Daring him to so much as breathe too loud.

‘Sooner or later you’re going to break, you little prick, and when you do… your friend here will eat a bullet for it! One sound, punk, that’s all it’ll take to make me pull the trigger! One whimper… one scream… How much can you take? How long can you last? His life is measured in your silence!’ There was more, much more. Constant mocking, sneering taunts. I was ready to scream in frustration myself just from listening to it.

This was absolutely a no-win situation; if Duo caved and gave the man what he wanted… he had promised to kill Winner. I had no doubt the man would carry through with it. But Duo not giving him what he wanted, despite the man’s making it impossible as long as Duo had any control left at all… was driving the man to a blood frenzy.

I spared a glance at the other two guards and was surprised to find only one of them standing there. I reevaluated the odds, but realized that with a gun to Winner’s head, I was as good as hamstrung.

Then Bellows gave out with a nasty string of epithets and pulled something out of his pocket. ‘Let’s see how you hold up to this, you shit,’ he snarled and tossed what proved to be a shock rod to his hired-thug.

Duo’s wide, horrified eyes came around to meet mine under the cover of his sweat-soaked hair. His expression was pleading and for a moment I couldn’t tell if it was for my help, or for my continued stillness.

‘Just hold on, I’m here.’ Faint comfort, but all I had.

But it did seem to comfort; his eyes hardened in the split second before he squeezed them shut in preparation.

I knew in the next half hour what hell was going to be like. I have never had to exert so much control in my entire life. If someone had handed me a gun and told me it would all stop if I blew my brains out, I would not have hesitated. Anything… anything at all; they could have my life if it would stop this brutal insanity. If it would just shut Bellows the hell up.

‘All you have to do to make it stop is scream, piece of shit. That’s all… cry out… beg me and I’ll stop.’ He laughed cruelly, tapping the barrel of the gun against Winner’s forehead. ‘Of course… that means your little buddy here buys the big one… but we’ll stop.’ Winner flinched when the gun touched him but held his tongue.

I wouldn’t let myself look away, watching intently, so that I could meet Duo’s eyes whenever possible. He made it happen more than once, that look, at the cost of taking a blow he might otherwise have evaded. It made my heart clench in my chest to realize how much he was relying on something he saw in my eyes, to get himself through this.

The shock rod was… devastating. His whole body would jerk and leap, his muscles wrenching themselves in painful contortions. The rod’s wielder was… inventive. I swear by all my ancestors… I truly thought I would break down and weep.

But through it all, Duo held his voice. Kept his silence. Held on to that scrap of dignity with all his will. Bought Winner’s life with his iron endurance. I felt that strange, twisted thrill of pride run through me again. But, dear God… what was it costing him? How was he managing?

So focused was I on Duo, that I missed it when that third man returned to his guard position by the door. He was just suddenly there again, looking vaguely green around the gills. Bellows never even noticed that he had been gone. The returning soldier exchanged a glance with his equally unhappy looking partner. I wanted to scream at them to put a damn stop to this madness. This was nothing but plain, pure viciousness. This was a vendetta, a personal attack on Duo, simply because he had defied this man.

The shock rod fell again and again, but not a whimper escaped Duo’s clamped jaw. Then I happened to look up at Bellows just in time to see something truly wicked cross his face. I saw him shift his aim and he suddenly fired his gun just past Winner’s ear. I had seen his intentions, but hadn’t had the time to warn them. Winner, already wound as tight as a main spring, let out with a straggled cry. Bits of flying concrete flew like shrapnel and cut his cheek. I couldn’t believe the moron had fired a sidearm in a concrete bunker like this… it was a damn miracle that the ricochet hadn’t hit someone.

Bellows objective had been to trick Duo into thinking he had shot Winner anyway. Then when Duo cried out against the action, the bastard would have shot Winner for real and then gloated in Duo’s face that he had broken, and caused his teammate’s death. I felt faintly ill that I could actually follow the devil’s own thinking.

But Duo didn’t fall for it; his body jerked as though he himself had taken that bullet, but there wasn’t a sound… not a blessed sound. That… failure seemed to push Bellows over some edge. His eyes lost all trace of sanity, his face twisting in a sadistic mask, a parody of something human. This was it… he was going to kill Duo; I could feel it like an electric current in the air. I felt my own muscles bunching and tensing, knew that I could not sit here and watch any more of this. I would not make it; they would shoot me long before I got across the damn cell… but at that point, I didn’t care any more. I’d rather die with Duo than survive a few more days without him, knowing I’d sat by and only watched. I knew he would curse me… but I didn’t care.

‘Bellows! Stand down!’ A new voice suddenly commanded. ‘What the hell is going on here?’

The entire scene froze, and we made quite the picture, I’m sure. The General, smoking gun still pointed unerringly at Winner’s head. Winner, eyes squeezed shut and visibly shaking. Duo sprawled on the floor, his entire body twitching violently. Bellows’ lapdog standing over him, shock rod dangling from his fingers and a look on his face like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The two guards by the door, looking oddly pleased and desperately trying to hide it. And me… I’m sure I looked as insane as the rest of them. Apparently chained to the wall, but crouching to make a leap straight into the face of the devil’s own court.

It had to be the infamous Stark. Bellows’ obvious nemesis and all around thorn in the side. I could have kissed the man. I could have shouted with joy. It was a difficult thing to remember that he, too, was our enemy. He seemed very like a white knight in that moment. The disgust on his face was plain.

‘Holster your weapon, Mister!’ snapped Stark when Bellows just continued to stand there, and I found myself afraid to breathe waiting to see if the General would comply.

Stark acted just as though he assumed that Bellows would do as he was told and turned his attention to the soldier who had been doing the actual… interrogation.

‘Bross! You’re on report!’ he barked. ‘Return to your unit and I expect to see you in my office at oh-eight hundred hours tomorrow!’

The soldier, Bross, visibly wilted, mumbled a ‘yes, sir’, and headed for the door. It seemed to signal something to Bellows and I remembered to breathe when he finally holstered his weapon.

Stark spared him a scathing glance, but only said, ‘Out!’ and the good General stalked from the room.

The two remaining guards visibly relaxed as soon as he was completely gone from both sight and hearing.

‘Good job, Pierce,’ Stark said when there was no doubt the other two were long gone. ‘This should finally be enough to make some charges stick.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Pierce said dutifully, though a touch of satisfaction tinged his voice.

The Commander moved closer to Duo, and just stood looking down for a minute, sighing in irritation and shaking his head. I lost a little bit of that ‘white knight’ feeling.

‘Take him down to the infirmary and have him treated,’ he said brusquely, his mind already on the next phase of his case against Bellows. ‘Be sure they document the damage.’

I was seething, and could only sit quietly in my unlocked cuffs and watch as they took Duo away for the third time.

I looked across at Winner and found him rocking gently to and fro, his eyes staring straight ahead but not really seeming to see much of anything.

‘Winner?’ I called softly and got nothing in response. I was truly afraid to risk slipping the cuffs off at this point. There was too much of a possibility that they could come back at any moment. We still stood a faint chance, if they brought Duo back to the cell. If he was still capable of using his hands, he might still get that last cuff off. We might still pull this off, especially now that Bellows wouldn’t be targeting us any more. We might actually get more than an hour to get ourselves out of here. I glanced at the door, wondering about a lock, wondering if Duo could pick that too, given the time.

‘Quatre?’ I called again but his eyes just seemed to be focused on that place on the floor where Duo had last been.

‘Oh-four… report!’ I snapped and was finally rewarded with a flick of those eyes in my direction.

‘That animal is dead,’ he ground out, in a voice that sent a shiver up my spine. ‘I will see to it.’

I couldn’t contain a bark of dark laughter. ‘Stand in line,’ I told him and his gaze finally focused and met mine. He gave me a tight nod.

The waiting wasn’t quite so bad this time, knowing that he wasn’t out there being tortured. Knowing that someone was actually helping him in some way. But I still felt like I was going to crawl out of my own skin with frustration. I had never been in a position before where I had to sit back and rely completely on someone else to get me out of a bad situation. I consoled myself with formulating plans for once Duo had us free from our restraints. It would be my turn then; mine and Winner’s. Duo would be in no shape to handle whatever came next. Getting the cuffs off wasn’t even half the battle; we still had to get out of the cell and off the damn base undetected. It would have to be done with stealth. Brute force would get us nowhere, we would be outnumbered several hundred to one if the base was put on alert and the troops mobilized. I did not allow myself to think about the possibility that Duo wouldn’t be able to finish his part.

I wondered idly how long it took for one to develop an ulcer.

I came out of my thoughts and looked again at our partner. ‘You need to get your head together, Winner,’ I said gruffly. ‘When we make our move, I’ll have to help Duo out of here. I’m going to need you.’

He gave me an odd look, almost shocked. ‘You think, after all that… you still think Duo is going to be able to help us?

‘I have no doubt of it,’ I told him firmly. ‘If he is conscious at all… he’ll do whatever has to be done.’

He stared across at me and didn’t speak for the longest time. ‘You have a lot of faith,’ he said doubtfully.

I snorted. ‘How can you have witnessed what we just did, and not have faith in him?’

He had stopped rocking and was looking at me intently. His eyes seeming to measure and weigh me where I sat. It was making me incredibly uncomfortable. ‘He’s my best friend, you know?’ he suddenly said and all I could do was blink at him. What was he on about, now?

‘I am aware of the fact that the two of you are… close,’ I said carefully, not sure where he was going, and not liking the scrutiny I was suddenly under. He didn’t speak for such a long time; I thought the conversation had ended.

‘He’s… lost a lot in his lifetime,’ he said softly, his eyes never leaving mine. ‘Don’t you hurt him… don’t you dare hurt him.’

‘Never!’ I ground out before I had a chance to think about it. Heat instantly flooded my face and I found myself almost angry. What the hell business was it of his? An oddly satisfied expression came over his face. I blushed all the harder.‘It will be a moot point if we don’t live to get out of here,’ I snarled. ‘Now mind your own damn business!’

He did shut up then, and we went back to waiting. It felt like forever, but was probably only a little over two hours. I was so tangled up in thought, that I never heard them coming. I jumped nervously when the door swung open and watched in silence as the two guards from earlier carried Duo back into the cell. I was surprised to see them almost gently lay him down on the floor before retreating and shutting the door behind them.

Again, I counted out a slow twenty before letting myself go to him.

His hair was loose; that was the first thing I noticed for some stupid reason, and his clothes were rumpled and twisted as though he had not put them on himself. His shirt hadn’t even been buttoned and I noted that his rib cage was tightly bound. I gently brushed the hair away from his face and called to him.

‘Duo? Come on… wake up… can you hear me?’ I checked his hands, and finding them without obvious signs of injury, took one in mine and squeezed gently. After a moment or two, there was a faint response. ‘That’s it… I know you’re in there.’ Eyes blinked open and sought mine, and I felt a shiver of fear; I could see the signs of drugs in his fevered look. I smiled warmly down at him though, pushing that aside for later, letting my fingers brush stray strands of hair from his brow. ‘Wake up, my fearless little idiot,’ I teased and was gifted with a cross-eyed look, and the ghost of his cocky grin.

‘Do you know what they found?’ I asked him, letting my eyes search over him. ‘What did they do? How badly are you hurt?’ I could see dark bruises all over the place, wherever his clothing didn’t cover it, and felt that cold rage building in me again. My eyes finished their sweep and returned to his face, only to find it contorted with a dark frown. I thought at first that he was overcome with the pain, but then I watched as he parted his lips and I realized he was trying to answer my questions. Was trying to speak and finding himself struggling with it. The impossible, desperate need to maintain absolute silence through… that, had left blocks in its wake. His conscious mind could not convince his sub-conscious mind that sound was all right now. ‘Never mind,’ I hastily assured him, hating to see that look on his face. ‘I’ll figure it out.’ I smiled again, trying to reassure and turned to the obvious things first. ‘Ribs… broken?’ I asked and he nodded, the pained frown fading from his face. ‘Did they actually do surgery to reposition them?’ Another nod and I muttered a curse. ‘They did that damn fast! Did they… did they put you under?’ He hesitated and I’m afraid my face must have taken on a horrified expression, because he quickly reached to pat my arm and then gestured around what must be the site of the incision under all the bandages, with a vague sweep of his hand. ‘Local?’ I guessed and he nodded vigorously. I couldn’t contain the heartfelt sigh of relief.

‘What is going on?’ Winner finally called in exasperation and I threw him a quick look.

‘I’m still trying to evaluate. He seems to be… mildly sedated.’

There was a tight growl from Winner’s quarter and I suppose I could understand his agitation. He was still staked to the wall like a gazelle at the watering hole.

I turned back to Duo to find him looking up at me with heavy-lidded eyes. I wanted to be able to sit here and just offer him some respite, let him sleep, but I knew we didn’t dare. ‘Your legs?’ I questioned, remembering how he was favoring the right one. ‘Anything broken?’ He frowned for a second, puzzling out a response, before raising one hand and wobbling it back and forth in that ‘maybe’ gesture. ‘Fractured?’ I guessed and got a tired nod. Damn. I felt the weight of time leaning on my shoulders and had to ask him; ‘If I move you over near Quatre can you get that last cuff off him?’

He gave me a somewhat wan attempt at a feral grin and I snorted at him. ‘We’ll see,’ I muttered as I bent to lift him in my arms, but his fingers touched my hand and stayed me a moment. I watched his face contort again as he struggled against his own mental defenses to force sound past his lips. I watched him swallow convulsively and squeeze his eyes tight shut, and I leaned close lest I miss whatever message he was working so hard to deliver. When it came, it was simply mouthed, but there was no real sound behind it.

‘You didn’t leave me.’

My heart felt like it swelled in my chest and I couldn’t help easing my arms around his shoulders. For the space of a handful of seconds, he allowed himself to press his face into my shoulder.

‘Of course not,’ I whispered gruffly, but then he started to feel heavy against my arm. ‘Come on,’ I had to tell him, feeling like a total jerk, but knowing we had to get started or this could all come to naught.

He nodded and let me lift him from the floor. Winner looked vastly relieved to finally see us moving in his direction. I had to be careful when I knelt to settle him against Winner, not to get tangled in that train of hair of his.

‘Oh Duo, I was so worried,’ Winner told him softly when Duo’s head was resting in his lap. ‘Are you all right?’

Duo only held out his hand, wiggling his fingers in that universal ‘give me’ gesture. Winner dutifully pulled the pick out of its hiding place, but gave me a questioning look.

‘Don’t… don’t push him to talk, Quatre,’ I said gently and hoped I didn’t need to explain more. Winner looked blank for only a second before I saw comprehension dawn in his eyes. Then he just looked down at Duo working as best he could on the locks, like he just might cry.

‘Oh Duo…’ he breathed. He got a dark glare for his trouble and then that glare snapped in my direction. Duo caught my eye and very deliberately jerked his head in the direction of my own place by the far wall.

I did need to get back there; it very definitely would not do to get caught out of my restraints. I looked at him for just a second, trying to assure myself that I had made him as comfortable as possible until I could get him the hell out of here. I brushed back an errant lock of his hair, and then on a sudden impulse, knowing how I would feel with my own hair down in front of strangers, smoothed my hands over the length of it and gathered it into a tail. I hesitated then, searching for something to tie it back with. Finding nothing, I slipped the tie from my own hair and bound his back with it.

He twisted painfully to look back at me with a watery expression that made me feel like we’d just exchanged rings. Oddly… I felt warmed. ‘Get back to work fearless baka,’ I chided and went quickly back to my lonely seat by the far wall.

I could read how the work was progressing by the level of anxiety on Winner’s face. Duo was obviously struggling, either with the drugs in his body, the residual effects of the shock rod on his nervous system, or just plain exhaustion. I suppose it didn’t really matter. I had just started to try to tell myself that we might have to change our half-baked plans, discounting Duo’s active participation, when there was a sound at the door. I saw Winner stiffen and grab the lock pick from Duo’s hand. I saw Duo slump in utter defeat. The door opened and damned if it wasn’t Bellows again. In a mood that can only be described as homicidal, and… alone. Which absolutely could not be a good thing.

I was caught between exultant and… really angry. On the one hand, I did not want that motherless animal in the same damn room with Duo. But on the other… if he had truly snuck down here on his own, he might well have handed us the other half of our escape on a silver platter. If we could manage to overpower him.

I saw Winner murmuring quietly to Duo, his eyes never leaving the General. I saw Bellows advancing on the two of them. I saw his hand slip into a pocket and out came that damn shock rod. I saw Duo register from Winner’s words that it was just Bellows, and he rolled away, trying to get between the Arabian and their attacker.

I slipped out of the first cuff, quiet as a ghost while Bellows had his attention on Duo. I was cursing in my head, having to move cautiously… having to make absolutely sure that Bellows didn’t know I was free until I was right on top of him. He hit Duo with the rod three times while I was slipping out of the second cuff. There wasn’t a sound from Duo, only Winner’s hoarse cries and Bellows maniacal taunting. Duo tried to kick out at the man, tried to force him back, but only succeeded in leaving Bellows an opening to shove the shock rod viciously into his crotch. I thought Duo would surely scream out at long last, his body was convulsed up off the floor, every muscle standing out in harsh relief. But there wasn’t a sound. Not a damn whimper. It was Bellows own curses that covered the sound of my movements as I came in behind him and took the bastard down.

There was nothing about this man that demanded mercy from me. And everything about him that demanded extreme caution. I approached him from his blind spot, but at the last minute swung around and hit him squarely in the side of the knee. I was gratified to hear bones snap. I was even more gratified to hear the son of a bitch scream like a baby. He went down like a sack of potatoes and I leaped instantly to kick the shock rod out of his reach. Duo was completely incapacitated, and Winner was still chained. I needed to leave the room to find the damn keys… find weapons, but I couldn’t leave Bellows where he might get at them. It wouldn’t hurt to shut him the hell up either. I struck him sharply in a pressure point on the back of the neck and he went limp, and just as important… he went silent.

I forgot him in the next heartbeat, moving to Duo’s shuddering form, curled into a fetal position on the floor. I knelt beside him and took him by the shoulders, intending to try to get him to uncurl, needing to evaluate his condition. But he shoved at me with a hand that was shaking like he had palsy, and he pointed toward the door, pantomiming the gesture for ‘key’. I didn’t need any more prompting to do what I knew I should be doing anyway.

The guard station area was, obviously, empty or we would have had company long before now. I could only assume that Bellows had bribed or gotten men loyal to him to go take a smoke break while he had made his little visit. I moved to the single desk and rummaged through the drawers. Two of them were locked but it didn’t take much to force them open. I was surprised to find the cache of our own personal items that had been stripped from us when we had been captured. Our three hand guns and Duo’s two throwing knives. I scooped them up with a delighted grin. The second locked drawer proved to hold a ring of keys. I took them and darted back into the cell, intent on freeing Winner and getting the hell out of there. I came through the door and stopped dead at the sight in front of me. Bellows was awake… more than awake; he had Duo by the throat and was trying to throttle the life out of him. But it was the sight of Winner that froze me in my tracks. He had slipped free of the manacle that Duo had gotten open and somehow retrieved the shock rod. He had it pressed to Bellows temple… and he wasn’t letting off the switch. His face… was a frightening, near-insane mask that I haven’t seen the like of since… the Zero System. It was Duo’s frantic clawing that broke my paralysis. I ran forward and broke Bellows grip on him with a harsh, downward blow to his forearms. I caught Duo before he hit the floor, lifting him and turning us away from the sight of Winner delivering his own brand of justice. The electric hiss of the rod continued for an eternity. My arms tingled with the lingering feel of it, where I had come in contact with Bellows. I imagined that Duo felt far more than that and I couldn’t help whispering softly, ‘It’ll be over in a minute. That spineless bastard will never lay a hand on you again. Not ever.’

The shock rod would fry his damn brain given enough time… and Winner was giving it amble time. He held it in place until I heard the body hit the floor and then some. I waited, hoping he would stop on his own, but when I turned back to face the scene, he didn’t look… all together there.

‘Winner,’ I spoke levelly and tried to sound authoritative. ‘That’s enough. Turn it off now.’

He did it, just like that. Turned the rod off and looked right at me with the most God awful blank look. ‘Make sure he’s dead,’ he said flatly.

I eased Duo down on the floor, where he could lean against the wall and went to check Bellows for a pulse. Not surprisingly, he didn’t have one.

‘Dead,’ I confirmed.

‘You are positive?’ Winner questioned, his voice still utterly emotionless.

‘Absolutely,’ I told him, watching him warily.

‘Get this cuff off me,’ he commanded and I moved to do so. I saw his eyes take note of the pistols I had stuck in the waistband of my pants and he reached to take one without a word, once I had his hand free. He automatically checked the load and moved toward the door. ‘Bring Duo,’ he told me tersely and I wondered when I had lost control of this situation. But one look at his face brooked no argument.

I stepped over Bellows with just a touch of regret; so much for the idea of using him for a hostage. I bent down for Duo and he, at least, used gestures to ask for his gun back. I let him have it, though I made sure the safety was on. He was shaking so badly still, that I doubted he would hit anything he was aiming at anyway. I quickly took his own cuffs off him, having to resist the urge to hurl them across the room. Then, as gently as I could, I lifted him in my arms. He frowned up at me suddenly, his eyes seeming to come clear of his fog bred of pain, drugs and trauma and he gestured for me to put him down.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I growled at him, following Winner through the guard station. ‘You can’t even walk.’

He shook his head emphatically and gestured again. I got it that time and I snapped at him angrily. ‘I’m not leaving you. Period… so just shut the hell…’ I broke that off with a sudden blush. His eyes sparkled with a hint of amusement for a split second but he subsided.

‘Cut the chatter,’ Winner hissed at us.

We slipped silently down the only corridor leading out of the cellblock, Winner in the point position. I wondered where Bellows had sent the guards. I wondered how long he had instructed them to stay gone. I imagined he had bought at least a little while; the man had acted as though he had every intention of killing Duo slowly with that shock rod. The guards would be in less trouble for leaving their post than they would be for witnessing a murder and doing nothing about it. I was getting furious again, just thinking about that asshole and what he had done to Duo. I realized, when Duo shifted uncomfortably against my chest, that I had unconsciously tightened my arms around him. I eased off instantly and breathed a tiny apology next to his ear. He shivered and his arm around my neck tightened.

We reached an intersection and Winner signaled a moment’s halt. I eased Duo to the ground while Winner came to squat next to us.

‘Do either of you remember the floor plan for this part of the base?’ he prompted in hushed tones.

I had memorized the areas in the officer’s building, where our supposed, original goal had been, and the surrounding sections. I was vaguely aware that the detention center was on the west side and that was it. I imparted that knowledge and got a grimace from Winner indicating that he knew nothing more.

‘I don’t know which way to go from here,’ Winner growled, looking around as though he might find signs on the wall showing him his route out of here.

‘It won’t be long before the guards come back,’ I warned him. ‘Bellows might have gotten the favor of a little quality time with us… but he couldn’t have bought much.’

Duo touched my hand to get my attention, and I saw him wrestling with getting words out again. His lips were trembling and his face was as white as chalk, but no sound was forth coming. He looked about to rupture something in his frustration.

‘Stop it,’ I chided gently. ‘It’s all right… later for that. We’ll worry with it later. Tell me with your hands.’

He stopped fighting and looked at me with the most confused mixture of gratitude and humiliation in his eyes. But his trembling hands began to move.

He pointed upward, over our heads and looked that way. I turned my eyes in that direction and saw an air vent shaft. He gestured with his fingers spread like a labyrinth of interconnecting lines and pointed to the side of his head. He stopped for a second and then made another gesture like a little kid driving a toy car.

‘This is ridiculous!’ Winner huffed in exasperation. ‘We don’t have time to be playing charades! Damn it Duo… you have to…’

Duo’s face did something awful. Guilt and pain rose up and I thought they would eat him whole. It was like watching him locked away behind a glass wall, through which sound only passed one way.

‘Leave him alone,’ I snarled and got the first spark of reaction I had seen from Winner since he’d killed Bellows. ‘I understood exactly what he meant. The airshaft leads from here down to the motor pool, and he knows the way. He obviously came on this mission better prepared than either of us… he memorized the whole damn base.’

Winner looked to Duo for confirmation and got a tiny little, sheepish grin in answer.

‘We don’t have much choice,’ I told him and got a curt nod in return. I bent over under the shaft and Winner climbed up on my back to work the cover open. It was a simple pressure fit and pulled loose in his hands without a lot of trouble. He hopped down and we turned our attention to Duo.

‘How in the devil…?’ Winner began, but Duo stretched his hand out to me, his face set in firm resolve. I helped him to his feet.

‘You sure you can do this?’ I asked him gently. ‘We can find another way.’

He glared at me and pointed for me to re-assume the position of stepping stool. I shook my head and turned to Winner.

‘You brace, so I can hold him,’ I commanded and he complied. I helped Duo climb unsteadily up and held his legs as gently as I could while he pulled himself into the dark shaft. I could feel him trembling with the effort. But he did it.

I gave him a few seconds to move out of the way and then climbed up to follow him. Winner was right behind us, his bootlaces undone and tied together to allow him to pull the grate up behind us. I didn’t breathe again until it was firmly in place. We moved a few feet away from the entrance and waited while Winner relaced his boots. Then I tapped Duo’s foot to tell him we were ready. He began to crawl forward.

That was a somewhat nightmarish trip. Duo had neglected, or lacked the means of imparting to us, that the trip must have amounted to a damn mile. He tracked our progress through the mechanism of counting side shafts by feel alone, it was pitch black in there unless we passed a grate that let a little light seep in. Within ten minutes, I doubted if I could have found our way back to the starting point.

Going was slow, not only due to the need to be quiet in the metal shaft, but by Duo’s injuries. The pain pills or whatever they had given him in the infirmary, had obviously worn off and I could tell from the way he dragged himself forward, that he was in a very lot of pain. It tore at me, but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do except follow him and give his leg the occasional pat when he seemed to be flagging.

At long last, the light at the end of one of those dozens and dozens of tunnels seemed to have our name on it. Duo stopped his crawling some twenty feet from it and tried to turn to look back at me. I wasn’t going to have him trying to go out that shaft first. I pushed against him gently, prodding him to roll up on his side and I began to inch my way forward, sliding up next to him. It was a fairly tight fit. It was a damn tight fit. It was… embarrassing. And… and… something else all together.

When I was nose to nose with him, I could see him a little bit from light coming through the grate. He looked done in.

I leaned even closer and barely breathed into his ear, ‘You going to make it?’

He hesitated for a moment before nodding and that told me more than his appearance how close he was to his limits.

‘Hold on a little longer, brave-spirit,’ I murmured. ‘We’ve come too far to give up now.’

He gave me an odd, wide-eyed look but only nodded faintly. I squeezed on by and was able to get in position to see out through the grate.

He had managed, somehow, to bring us right to where he had said he would, and I could clearly see that I was looking down on a motor pool full of vehicles. I had to shake my head in wonder; the base was a huge thing and those air shafts had to have been a virtual labyrinth. I still couldn’t believe he’d memorized the whole thing on the off chance that it might come in handy. Though, I suppose it was a damn good thing he had.

I lay still as a stone and watched for signs of movement in the bay, but it seemed quiet. The room had small windows around the top edge, open to the outside air for ventilation and I was finally able to discern that it was nighttime. Which was all to the good. I gave it a full five minutes of watching before deciding there truly was no one working this shift. I edged forward and wrapped my fingers in the lattice of the grate and pushed. It took more effort than the one in the corridor had, but eventually, it did pop loose. I crept forward and eased it free, looking around one more time before daring to slide out of the shaft and drop to the ground. I turned to help Duo down but he didn’t immediately appear. I waited; his injuries had probably stiffened up while he had lain still. I waited; perhaps Winner was trading places with him in the shaft so that we would both be on the ground to help him down.

Screw wait. I jumped for the edge of the opening and pulled myself up. Duo was out cold and Winner was having to shove his inert body forward from behind. Damn. I hauled myself up so that I was resting on my stomach on the edge of the shaft and caught hold of Duo’s shirt, pulling him toward me to aid Winner’s efforts. When we had him at the opening, his arms dangling down, Winner hissed, ‘I’ll do my best not to drop him.’ Which was small comfort.

I squirmed backward and dropped to the ground, sparing another quick glance around. Then Winner began to push Duo over the edge and it took all my concentration to catch hold of his shoulders and try not to let him hit the floor as he came tumbling down. I feared what we had done to his injuries but could do nothing about it now. I stepped to the side and stretched him carefully out on the floor behind a truck while Winner jumped down. Then I did the stepping stool maneuver so that Winner could press the grate back in place. We regrouped behind the truck with Duo.

‘Now what?’ I wondered out loud.

Winner glanced around the bay doubtfully. ‘I had thought that we might sabotage the majority of the vehicles and then steal one, but…’

‘Far too many, we don’t have the time,’ I finished for him. ‘I can’t believe we’ve come this far without them figuring out that we’re missing.’

He nodded his agreement, his eyes still scanning the area. ‘Maybe… those soldiers are loathe to report it because they know what kind of trouble they’re going to be in when their part in it is found out.’

It seemed the most likely source of our luck. Two or three green recruits, used to having someone tell them what to do, suddenly realizing that they had made a huge mistake and standing around arguing with each other over what to do next. It might have been funny if our lives weren’t riding on them continuing to debate the best way to cover their butts.

‘We have to move,’ he suddenly said. ‘Our luck is going to run out sooner or later.’ And he was up and moving. Since I didn’t have a plan of my own, I scooped Duo up and followed.

He led me across the bay in a roundabout way, keeping to the edges and staying behind vehicles. His first goal turned out to be a pile of dirty coveralls and he liberated two pair. His next goal was a row of cars among all the military trucks and jeeps. I stood quietly in the shadows; cradling Duo’s limp body in my arms and waited while he hunted down the line. He seemed to find what he was looking for and waved me over, opening the back door so I could ease Duo in and lay him on the seat.

‘Put this on,’ he told me tersely and handed me a pair of the coveralls. It reeked of oil and gasoline and the sleeves were just a hair two long, but I rolled them up and it didn’t fit half bad. Winner took a little more adjustment, as he had to fold up the pants legs as well.

Then I saw a thing I never dreamed I would ever witness; Quatre Raberba Winner hotwire a car.

I’m afraid I blinked at him in disbelief, and for a moment he smirked back. ‘Duo taught me,’ he said flippantly, but then pain started to fill those blue eyes. The smirk vanished and we were back to Winner the tactician. I climbed into the back seat and busied myself arranging the seatbelts to afford Duo a bit of protection if this should turn into a car chase, while Winner climbed behind the wheel and pulled sedately out of the hanger. No one saw us.

It was a relatively short drive to the front gate, less than a mile through a typical military base of Quonset huts and austere buildings. Winner drove as though sightseeing until he came within sight of the gatehouse.

‘You have Duo’s knives?’ Winner suddenly questioned me, and when I grunted an affirmative, he held his hand out for them. I passed them forward.

‘What are you planning?’ I growled.

‘Car trouble,’ he told me without elaboration. ‘Get ready to take over the driver’s seat when I wave you forward.’

Then he deliberately began to goose the accelerator, causing the car to jerk, killed the lights and then killed the engine.

He got out of the car, the very picture of a pissed off mechanic. He slammed the door and then kicked the front tire, cursing colorfully. I suppose he learned that from Duo as well. He had left the window down so that I could hear what was going on. He stood in the middle of the road for a minute, hands on hips and cursing resoundingly about damn senior officers pulling rank, and stupid cars that ought to be junked, and poor dumb mechanics who get called in on their off hours. He gave the tire another kick for good measure and then turned and started stalking toward the gatehouse. I pulled my gun and cautiously eased my head up between the headrest on the driver’s seat and the side door, where I could see what was going on.

Waving his arms and ranting about poor enlisted men, he hollered toward the shack as he went. ‘Hey… can I use the damn phone to call for the tow-truck? I really don’t wanna walk all the damn way back to the motor pool.’

The guy in the shack stepped out with a rueful grin, confirming that there was just one. Winner continued to walk toward the man and I held my breath waiting for the guy to get suspicious. Winner was ranting about people pulling rank, still waving his arms around as he closed on the poor unsuspecting soldier. It suddenly came to me that he was… doing Maxwell. The gestures, the wording, the swearing. It was like I was watching Duo. I reflected, as I saw Winner follow the guy back inside the shack, that we were going to owe this whole damn escape to Duo in one form or another. I spared a glance down at my unconscious charge. ‘You really are amazing,’ I murmured fondly.

Then Winner was raising the gate and waving me forward. I flipped myself into the front seat and pulled the car carefully up to the gatehouse, pausing only long enough for him to climb in beside me. It took a great deal of will power not to floor it and take off like a bat out of hell. I kept expecting alarms to go off. I kept expecting someone to start shooting at us. That spot between my shoulder blades was itching creepily as we drove a sedate thirty-five miles an hour out of there. I don’t think I caught a proper breath until we had switched cars two more times.

I wound us through the local town until we were both a hundred percent sure we were not being tailed, then I took us to the nearest secure emergency-contact point and we checked in with base. I gave the codes that got me directly through to Master O and I reported the possibility of a leak somewhere in the Alliance upper echelon. I unhappily reported the failed mission and then got somewhat insistent that I had wounded and needed to be allowed to meet up with the other pilots. I had a very bad feeling that not only were things going to get very ugly when Duo woke up, but Winner was on the edge of some kind of flaming break-down, and I wanted him in Barton’s hands before that happened. And Yuy was Duo’s best friend; if anyone could help me handle this mess, he could. I almost moaned with relief when permission was granted and Master O rattled off a set of encoded coordinates. I could have us there within the hour.

It was… a very quiet drive. Duo stirred once, which greatly relieved my mind, but he fell quickly back to sleep. Now that the job was done and we were out of that place, Winner seemed to be sinking into a silence as deep as Duo’s. I kept stealing glances at him, but he just sat rubbing his hands together and staring out the window at nothing. I couldn’t deal with either of them and drive… so I just drove.

I would have to judge that Master O contacted Dr. J, who in turn must have alerted Yuy; they were waiting for me when I pulled into the grounds. Yuy had the garage door open and ready for me, and Barton met me in the drive to guide me to it. I was so screamingly relieved to have finally reached help, that I really didn’t care that it was my two passengers they were waiting for and probably couldn’t have cared less if I had arrived in the trunk. I spared a glance in Winner’s direction and found him still staring off into space, so I got out of the car and waved my two teammates off, not allowing them what they wanted, and I was graced with a matching set of glares.

I held up my hands in a placating manner and growled, ‘This is going to require a little more than iodine and Band-Aids this time, gentlemen.’

‘Where’s Duo?’ snapped Yuy, a hint of panic in his voice, though he would have denied it to his dying breath.

‘Asleep in the back seat,’ I reassured him and saw him visibly relax, though his eyes kept flicking in that direction. Not for the first time, I wondered when he was going to admit to himself that he was in love. The man could give me lessons in denial. I almost smiled at him, the picture of my own face in the mirror in the morning, but thought better of it.

‘What is going on?’ Barton demanded and there was a warning edge to his voice.

I scrubbed my hands over suddenly very tired eyes and tried to think where to begin. ‘The mission went sour…’ seemed to be a good place and I launched into the damn tale, hitting the highlights, telling the pertinent parts. Like Duo’s being beat to hell and back and Winner having killed his first man in hand-to-hand combat. Duo’s self-imposed mental block keeping him from speech and Winner having killed his second man in hand-to-hand combat. Duo being operated on by parties unknown and Winner doing nothing but staring at the dead bug on the windshield for the last hour. And Chang Wufei was pretty darn near the end of his endurance too.

‘All in all,’ I concluded. ‘It’s been a pretty crappy couple of days.’

Barton had heard enough and started around the car after Winner.

‘I think it might be best to keep them apart for a little bit,’ I called after him. ‘Winner seems to be very upset over Duo’s… being quiet.’

He nodded curtly and I had to sigh; I had the vague feeling that he felt I had handled this badly, for some reason. I watched while he opened the passenger door and knelt down beside his partner. He spoke, but got no immediate response. Then he reached to still those hands that had been rubbing together almost nonstop since the moment we had decided we were ‘safe’. It had taken me five miles to figure out that he was trying to get the nonexistent blood off.

Winner seemed to focus for the first time in quite a while, and when his eyes came to register just who it was in front of him, he gave out with a little cry and pitched into Barton’s arms like a drowning man after a life-raft. They began to murmur softly to each other and I turned away, feeling vaguely like a voyeur. Well, that was one thing out of my hands.

I turned back to Yuy when I felt a hand under my arm. He was looking at me strangely. ‘What?’ I muttered.

‘You were… swaying,’ he informed me gruffly and I almost laughed at the rouge thought that we had a lot in common.

‘Maybe you should carry Duo then,’ I told him sheepishly and he only grunted. I moved to open the door for him and he climbed in to undo the makeshift harness I had made out of the three seat belts. ‘Watch his ribs and his right leg… at the very least.’ I muttered, realizing I honestly didn’t know the extent of Duo’s injuries. Yuy looked at me sharply and I couldn’t help glaring at him. I was damn tired and between the two of them, my temper was starting to fray. ‘We were lucky to get the hell out of there alive… If you two think you could have done a better job…’

‘No…’ Yuy cut me off as he slid gentle arms under Duo’s poor, battered self. ‘I didn’t mean to… imply anything.’ He climbed awkwardly out of the car and stopped to look me in the eyes for a minute. ‘We were just… worried after I heard from Dr. J.’

I could only grunt, too tired to deal with this oddly polite Heero Yuy. I shut the car door and walked ahead of him into the house, opening doors for him as we went. After the first couple of obvious direction choices, he guided me into a living room and up a flight of stairs. ‘I don’t think we should leave him alone,’ I ventured half way up, and could almost feel his eyes boring into my back.

‘I want some more details,’ he gritted after a moment and I nodded.

‘I just want to look him over first, Yuy,’ I sighed. ‘I have never seen anything quite as… brutal as what was done to him.’

‘Third door,’ he directed me tersely, and I went in. It was a large room, with two double beds. Yuy’s gear was sitting on the one bed, so I moved toward the other one, waiting for him to put our patient down. He did it… hesitantly, and again I had to stifle a smile. I remembered that feeling of not wanting to let go. Even when I had thought I couldn’t carry Duo one more step, there had been the strangest desire to keep him close and protected. We made quite the pair, Yuy and I, two blundering, ungainly moths dancing around Duo’s burning flame.

I bent to unlacing Duo’s heavy boots and glanced up to find Yuy staring down at him. He was getting his first good look here in the light and was very unhappy with what he saw. ‘Help me get him undressed,’ I prodded gently and he bent to the task.

‘Dear God,’ I muttered when we had him completely uncovered and I found Heero’s hand under my arm again.

‘Sit,’ he commanded sternly.

I shook my head, partly in the negative and partly to try and clear it. ‘I want those bandages off too… I want to see what they did to him.’

‘I’ll see to it,’ I was told in no uncertain terms. ‘Sit down.’

I complied, settling on the side of the bed, near the foot where I wouldn’t be in Yuy’s way. I couldn’t stop looking at the dark bruises that littered the pale flesh. Duo is not a dark complexioned person, his skills have him out at night more often than not, and he typically wears long sleeves anyway. It just made things look worse. I felt, suddenly, very damn weary.

Yuy came back with the medical supplies and bent to carefully cutting away the gauze wrapped around Duo’s rib cage.

‘He told me they performed surgery and set some ribs,’ I informed him as he worked. ‘And they told him his right leg is fractured.’

Yuy glanced at me, raising a quizzical eyebrow. ‘He told you? I thought you said…’

I waved my hands vaguely in the air. ‘He gestures… talks with his hands.’

‘He truly can’t…?’ he began, looking almost as shocked over the idea of a silent Duo Maxwell as anything else.

I sighed heavily and swept a hand through my hair. ‘Not… not so far. It’s painful to watch him try.’

He nodded, but then I caught him glancing at me and realized he’d been looking at me funny for some time.

‘What is it?’ I grumbled.

‘I’ve just never seen you with your hair down before,’ he commented and left it hang in the air. A question if I didn’t mind it, a statement if I didn’t want to answer.

‘For some reason, they unbraided Duo’s hair when they had him in the infirmary,’ I told him and knew I was frowning darkly. ‘It seemed… too intimate of a thing for that miscreant Bellows to see. So, I tied it back for him.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, surprising me. ‘Duo is very… sensitive about his hair.’ He gave me a look that told me he might understand that I was a little sensitive about mine as well. I found my face flushing slightly and I turned back to look at the stitching we had uncovered.

‘Three ribs, looks like,’ I said unnecessarily and watched while Yuy gently probed around the area.

‘A decent enough job,’ he murmured almost to himself. ‘Not a hack job at least… though I imagine they would have spent more time on one of their own to minimize scarring. There really wasn’t any need to make such a large incision.’

‘You…you don’t suppose…’ I said on a sudden thought and saw him grunt in understanding. He went immediately to his pack and came back with one of the hand-held scanning devices and held it over the incision.

‘No,’ he told me at last, since the device was turned where I couldn’t see the display. ‘No electronic output at all… he’s clean.’

I sighed in relief at the same time I was berating myself for not thinking of it sooner. What the hell was wrong with me? It would have been the perfect way to plant a tracking device. I shivered almost convulsively, thinking about having to cut that incision open to get at the damn thing.

A warm hand came to rest on my arm and I looked up, startled, into Yuy’s dark eyes. ‘It’s all right,’ he told me. ‘You did fine.’ And he gave my arm a squeeze.

I nodded tiredly and was almost sorry when the hand shifted away. Yuy’s fingers moved to brush over one of the places on Duo’s leg where the shock rod had left a network of angry looking broken blood vessels below the skin.

‘What caused these?’ he asked with a dark frown, puzzling over them. They were everywhere.

I found myself growing angry all over again. ‘Shock rod.’ I ground out and watched him get angry right along with me. I saw his fingers twitch convulsively, clenching into tight fists. I recognized the sudden rush of desire for retribution.

‘The bastard is dead,’ I told him. ‘Winner… executed him.’

‘How?’ he wanted to know and so I told him. He looked faintly shocked. ‘Quatre did that?’

I only nodded. He looked at me again; a slightly appraising stare that I found made me uncomfortable.

‘You look about done in yourself,’ he ventured and I snorted softly at the understatement. ‘You want to go get some sleep?’

I thought about it, thought about how sweet it would be to throw myself down on a flat surface somewhere and let all of this just go away for a little while. But then I heard the not-really-there whisper of Duo’s voice, the last words he had tried to speak to me.

You didn’t leave me.

‘I…I’d rather be here when he wakes up,’ I mumbled to Yuy and knew I was blushing darkly. ‘I… promised.’

I was expecting a certain amount of irritation over my infringement on his undeclared territory. I was expecting him to bristle like a wolf who finds another male skirting his boundaries. I was surprised by a gentle smile and a nod of understanding.

We decided we couldn’t do a proper job of wrapping Duo’s ribs again, until he woke up, so we just set the supplies by the bed for the time being. Yuy went and fetched a pair of his own soft, cotton workout shorts and we slipped those on Duo, not wanting him to wake up and find himself naked. He swam in the things, his waist a good three or four inches narrower than Yuy’s, but they weren’t going to bind on anything. Yuy checked him over otherwise, the best he could. Looking for signs of abnormal swelling, looking for sources of heat, checking his temperature in general. Then we tucked him in and sat back to wait.

I found myself wondering how Barton was doing with Winner, and felt a pang of guilt for just dumping the rattled pilot like that. I think Winner had just finally found that place inside where you locked your humanity sometimes, when you just had to get the job done. I don’t think he’d ever had to find that place before… most of his battles had been at the controls of a Gundam. He’d never had to look his enemy in the eye before.

‘So when did he become Duo?’ Yuy asked, breaking my train of thought, his voice holding an odd hint of amusement.

‘What?’ I frowned, completely lost.

‘You always used to call him Maxwell,’ he said, his lips trying not to quirk into a grin. ‘You came back from this mission calling him Duo.’

I blinked at him. I honestly hadn’t noticed. I found myself blushing again and it irritated me. I thought about it and couldn’t really recall the exact moment, but he was right; Maxwell wasn’t just Maxwell any more.

‘I guess he just responded to me more when I called him Duo,’ I temporized.

Yuy looked down, the tenderness plain on his face and brushed a strand of hair from Duo’s eyes. ‘Gets under your skin, doesn’t he?’

I stared at him, where he sat beside the bed, but he didn’t raise his eyes from Duo to look at me.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I grumbled and felt myself getting defensive.

He snorted softly, ‘I guess I just recognize the look in your eyes from seeing it in my own so often. I know how you feel.’ He gave a tiny little, almost self-deprecating shrug.

I stared at him in no little surprise, hearing the echo of my own thoughts. ‘You aren’t angry with me,’ I said, more a statement than a question, because I could see the truth of it in his demeanor.

He treated it like a question anyway. ‘Why should I be? I don’t own Duo… I wouldn’t want to. I’ve never told him how I feel… I have no more claim on him than you do.’

Now that was a question. Cloaked in a statement. He was unsure of what had passed between Duo and myself on this mission. He was a little nervous that the territory might have been claimed. I shook my head at the way my own thoughts were turning. Territory. What the hell was that kind of thinking all about?

‘No…’ I assured him. ‘No more claim than I do.’

I might have imagined the slight release of tension across his shoulders.

There was a sudden tightening in my stomach, an upwelling of emotion, the wolf of my earlier thoughts telling me quite suddenly that this was what I wanted. I wanted Duo, in my heart, in my life, in my damned arms. Heero was forcing me, perhaps unintentionally, to look into the mirror of his eyes. I could see as plain as the written word that Heero Yuy was in love with Duo Maxwell. And if logic was followed, if I admitted that I could see all the signs in myself that I saw in him… then it naturally stood to reason that Chang Wufei was in love with Duo Maxwell. Damn. When in the hell had that happened? When had simple attraction turned into so much more? But it was there as plain as day, right in front of me when I let myself think about it. Every primal instinct I owned wanted me to snap and snarl and drive away this rival for what I suddenly realized I wanted as much as I wanted to breathe. I shivered. Hard.

And looked up to find sad, understanding eyes on me. Heero had already worked this all through. I’m not sure when, but he’d already come to this place I was suddenly standing in.

‘Now is not the damn time for this,’ I blurted, before I had a chance to think about it.

‘No,’ he said softly. ‘It is not.’

I was astounded by this Heero who sat in front of me and brushed fingers as gentle as a mother’s over Duo’s sweat stiffened hair. You cannot hate a person if you can truly understand them. Understand what motivates them, understand what they want. In that moment of crystal clarity, I understood Heero Yuy as well as I understood myself.

The wolf, confused, slunk away. My heart was strangely divided. As much as I wanted to be able to say that Duo was mine, my heart, my love… I didn’t want to see Heero hurt.

I looked up to find his eyes on me again and I was a little shocked at the depth of understanding that greeted me there. I hadn’t really understood before how it was that Duo had gotten along so well with the hardened, stoic pilot of Wing Zero, but perhaps this was a side of Heero that Duo was more familiar with.

I snorted as I realized that he had arrived ahead of me once again. ‘You’re starting to make me feel slow.’ I muttered and heard him chuckle softly.

‘You’re just tired,’ he soothed, his voice that amused one again.

‘Well, how about saving me the effort,’ I quipped. ‘Anything else I haven’t figured out yet?’

‘It isn’t about us,’ he whispered, eyes dropping back to look at Duo’s sleeping form. ‘It’s what he wants.’

It was the next logical step, and I almost laughed thinking what Duo would say if he heard me thinking about ‘love’ in terms of logic. But I didn’t know another way to express it. It was just… reasonable. It made sense. I loved Duo – I shivered again, letting myself think that – and, therefore, his happiness was more important than mine. It was an odd feeling. A very odd feeling. I looked at Heero, unsure how important his happiness was to me, in the scale of things, but feeling somehow… that it was.

How very odd. This wasn’t at all how I thought things like this were supposed to be. Weren’t he and I supposed to be at each other’s throats now? Posturing and threatening and raising our hackles? I almost laughed at the mental picture that conjured.

‘What?’ he inquired, asking to be let in on the joke.

‘Just thinking about the whole… alpha male thing,’ I chuckled softly, unable to keep either the grin or the blush from my face.

He looked squarely at me and said, ‘Grrrrr.’

It surprised a bark of laughter from me that I quickly stifled, with a nervous glance down at Duo. Heero looked pleased with himself and I couldn’t help a rueful shake of my head. Heero Yuy had a sense of humor? Who would have thought?

Then Duo stirred and the entire conversation was forgotten.

He didn’t stir so much as he jerked. Then he began to writhe, fighting to evade blows that weren’t really landing. Struggling to get away from what now lived only in his mind. And I feared it was going to live there for a long time to come. I came very close to getting kicked in the side of the head, saved only by the rapidly tangling blankets. Heero did take a hard shot to the shoulder from a flailing arm. The twisted look of pain that overtook Duo’s face, the desperate way his body fought against his unseen attackers… they were horrific things. But the truly blood-chilling aspect was the utter quiet. The total silence in which he fought. His jaws were clamped so tightly, the muscles stood out like ropes beneath the skin.

‘Duo!’ I called, the first to recover from the sudden attack. ‘Wake up! It’s all right; I’m still here! Open your eyes! We got away… wake up, everything’s all right now!’

Heero let me spout my reassurances, remaining quiet until I broke through the nightmare and Duo finally woke to his surroundings.

Violet eyes, rimmed with white, cast about looking for something, and I felt my blood quicken with the realization that he was searching for me.

‘I’m here,’ I told him and watched him zero in on the sound of my voice. ‘I didn’t leave you.’ I said firmly, feeling strange about saying that in front of Heero… but needing that anchoring phrase that had grown up between us, to bring him back from the dark places.

He was fairly quivering with tension; body strung like a steel spring, and I held his gaze as reality slowly seeped back into his bones. ‘We got out… we got away. You’re safe now. I’m here…’ I hesitated, letting my eyes flick towards Heero, guiding his to look that way. ‘We’re both here.’

He registered Heero’s presence for the first time, and looking back and forth between us, seemed to finally begin to relax. I could see the pain overtake him as the fear ebbed away. Heero instantly had an arm behind his back, easing him down on the bed.

‘Take it easy,’ he told him sternly. ‘You need to lie still.’

Duo’s eyes were so full of tangled emotions, that I couldn’t begin sort it all out. There was an ocean’s worth of pain, laced with confusion and fear, frustration and exhaustion. And something else… some need that was going unanswered. I wasn’t sure what to do… what to offer to him.

All of it very much complicated by Heero’s presence beside me. I think, if Duo and I had been alone, I might have opened my arms to him and allowed him to shelter there if he was so moved. But I wasn’t sure whose place it was to make that offer.

Heero seemed as hesitant as I, hands hovering and brow furrowed, and I suddenly saw him switch over into ‘mission’ mode. ‘I’m going to get some pain medication and we need to rewrap those ribs,’ he said gruffly and got up to head, presumably, for a bathroom somewhere down the hall.

A bit of the odd almost-tension eased when he was out of the room and I was able to smile down at Duo, shifting further up the bed so that I was no longer sitting by his feet. ‘Hey there, fearless idiot,’ I grinned at him. ‘Feeling any better?’

The ghost of one of his grins crossed his face for a moment, but quickly faded. He raised a hand to give me the ‘sort of’ gesture and I caught it in mine, stilling the uncontrollable shaking.

‘You’re pretty liberally beat to a pulp,’ I smiled for him. ‘But… what’s bothering you the most? What can I… we do to help?’

His fingers tightened on mine and he grimaced lightly, his free hand moving to hover over his ribs.

‘We’ll get them rewrapped as soon as Heero comes back,’ I soothed. ‘That will help. I’m sorry we unwrapped them… but I wanted to see what they’d done.’

He nodded slightly, then the focus of his eyes told me that Heero was back. He came over and knelt beside the bed, giving Duo the pills with a mock scowl. Duo graced him with a sheepish grin and took them without complaint; medication was something he would usual fuss over taking.

We helped him sit up on the side of the bed and the two of us, working together, wrapped his torso tight with gauze. The support did seem to help; I knew from practical experience the strange feeling that cracked or broken ribs would give you, as though your own guts were going to spill from your body.

When we were done, Duo looked away from both of us, blushing slightly and made that universal, knees-together, hand-near-crotch gesture that told us he had to go to the bathroom. It must have been an awkward thing to convey in a sitting position, but he is nothing if not eloquent… even without his voice.

Heero and I both reached to lift him and take him to the restroom at the same time. I stopped. Heero stopped. Duo blushed crimson. I had a strange impulse to ask Duo which one of us he would prefer take him, but then I suddenly didn’t want to know the answer. It was becoming rather… uncomfortable.

Heero quirked a sudden grin and looked up at me, almost shyly, through the curtain of that mop of hair of his. ‘He needs to go to the bathroom and he needs to eat.’ He stuck his fist out and I snorted derisively, but played the damn round of rock-paper-scissors with him.

‘I win,’ he smirked at me when his rock broke my scissors. ‘I hate to cook… I’ll take him to the bathroom, you go make him something to eat.’

I glanced up at Duo and found an odd little grin on his face, some of his embarrassment faded. ‘Look Yuy,’ I teased. ‘We amuse him.’

Heero smiled as he bent to slip his arms under Duo, gently lifting him. ‘Don’t let it go to your head, he’s easily amused.’

I followed them out of the room, feeling a strange ache, watching Duo with his arm around Heero’s shoulders. But then they went to the right and I had to go to the left, downstairs to the kitchen.

It took a bit of poking around, but I found some canned soup and eventually a pot to heat it in. I looked in the refrigerator and thought about something more to go with it, but thinking about all the blows Duo had taken, I decided to stick with the soup and see how he handled that first. I could always make him something more later. While I worked, I kept an ear open for Barton and Winner, but heard nothing.

When the soup was hot, I poured a glass of milk, set it with the bowl in the middle of a large platter that I found, put some crackers on the side and headed back upstairs.

I hesitated when I stepped into the bedroom, finding Duo sitting sideways in a desk chair, leaning heavily against the back, while Heero almost reverently braided his hair for him. I felt as though I had caught them… doing something intimate. I was left floundering, standing in the doorway with Duo’s dinner in my hands and trying very hard not to stare at them. It was… ludicrous.

Heero seemed to sense some of my discomfort, though Duo was too preoccupied with simply sitting up to notice much of anything.

‘Set that down and help me get him back into bed,’ Heero called to me, wrapping my hair-tie around the end of the finished braid. I felt an absurd rush of warmth at the sight of the silly thing, and quickly turned away to set the platter down.

I brought the pillows from Heero’s bed to add to the ones already there and we got him settled in a position that would allow him to eat without putting too much strain on his ribs.

Heero deliberately moved off then, busying himself on the other side of the room, allowing me to sit down by Duo’s side with the soup. Almost as though he were taking turns with me… he had gotten to brush Duo’s hair for him, he would allow me to help him eat. If what Duo had just gone through had not been… what it had been, it might very well have been funny. I would not have thought Heero capable of this level of… thoughtfulness. Chivalry, apparently, was not entirely dead. A little confused maybe; but not dead. I had always held Heero in the highest regard as a warrior, but had not always thought much of him as a man. He had always seemed so very distant and cold. As emotionless as a fish. Not at all the kind of person I would have expected to end up partnered with Duo Maxwell. But it would seem that Duo was more astute than I had given him credit for; there was indeed more to pilot 01 than met the eye.

Duo’s hands were still shaking much too hard for him to manage the soup on his own, so I fed it to him. The look of utter humiliation that came over him was enough to break your heart.

‘Stop that,’ I chided gently. ‘There’s no shame in it… no shame at all. You earned whatever help you get from us. More than earned it.’

Heero came at the sound of the reprimand and sat in the chair next to the bed. He gave Duo a small, self-deprecating smile, ‘Come on… it’s not as bad as the month that Trowa spent taking care of me. It’s just karma; it’s my… our turn to repay the favor.’

I looked up from the soup bowl to find him regarding me carefully. I had that weird feeling in my gut again, the one I’d had when I had taken my own hair down in order to spare Duo the small indignity of his being loose. Like something more was passing between us than was immediately apparent. I thought about what he had just said to Duo and felt that same warmth spread through my chest, ‘our turn’, it sounded… odd.‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Just relax and let us take care of you.’

Heero gave me a small enigmatic smile and I found my face warming slightly, suddenly not so damn sure about all the undercurrents of this conversation. Duo looked back and forth between us and only seemed to be confused.

‘He likes to dunk the crackers,’ Heero murmured, with another of those unreadable looks, and then got up to go back to whatever the hell he had been doing across the room.

If nothing else, the interchange seemed to distract Duo enough that he forgot about being embarrassed and just ate his soup. He managed about half of it before giving me the ‘if I take one more bite, I will burst’ sign and I set the bowl aside.

‘Sleep?’ I queried gently, at the sloe-eyed look on his face and he only nodded. ‘Heero,’ I called. ‘Give me a hand here?’

Heero came at my call and we eased the extra pillows out, getting him back down flat on his back.

‘All right?’ Heero asked gently and Duo nodded again, blinking heavy eyelids. Then Heero chuckled softly, and jerking his head in my direction, said, ‘Tell Superman here to get some sleep… he’s running on empty but isn’t going to lay down until you give him permission.’

Duo looked up at me with wide, shocked eyes and I found myself blushing again. What was it with the damned blushing? ‘I… promised,’ I mumbled, feeling rather idiotic. There was the flash of something absolutely beautiful in Duo’s eyes, but then he frowned at me in mock reprimand and made the two-hands to the side of the head, sleep gesture, stabbing a finger at me for emphasis.

I grinned at him and gave him a snappy little salute. ‘Yes sir!’

I got a fairly honest grin from him, but then the soup and the pain-pills did their job and it was suddenly just too hard for him to keep his eyes open.

I heaved a sigh, the long hours suddenly catching up to me, and felt it turn into a jaw-popping yawn. Heero chuckled at me.

I raised an eyebrow. ‘So where’s my room, smart-ass?’

He only seemed to smirk harder. ‘It’s a two bedroom house. This is your room.’

‘Here?’ I asked, rather surprised that my voice didn’t squeak.

‘Unless you’d rather share with Trowa and Quatre,’ he confirmed. ‘Bearing in mind there’s only one bed in their room.’

He was finding my discomfort… amusing, so I tried to squelch it.

‘I laid out a pair of shorts for you,’ he told me, rather matter-of-factly. ‘Go ahead and change and go to bed, I’ll take the dirty dishes down and be right back.’

Well… as Duo was fond of saying, didn’t this just beat all hell?

I changed quickly and climbed under the covers of Heero’s bed, sliding toward the wall to leave room for him. I found myself at a loss as to which way to turn, back to him? Facing him? Neither seemed right, and I tossed back and forth several times before settling flat on my back… an uncomfortable compromise. Heero came back after a very short time, and turned the lights off so that there was only the light from the hall to lend a dim glow to the room. I watched him walk calmly over to the side of the bed and totally unselfconsciously, strip. He donned the second pair of shorts he’d laid out while I stared, wide-eyed in the damn dim light, and then he climbed in next to me. Things were very quiet for a few minutes, while I stared at the ceiling and tried to understand why my blood was pounding in my ears.

‘So…’ his voice came, very quietly, after a little bit. ‘When did I become Heero?’

I did everything but sputter. I thanked all the ancestors for the darkness that hid the dark flush of my cheeks and rolled very pointedly over to face the wall. ‘Good night… Yuy.’ I managed after a moment.

He chuckled in the most amused damn tone and replied, ‘Good night… Wufei.’

Had I not been so exhausted, the exchange might very well have kept me awake, it rattled me so. Again… I had not noticed, but somehow, in my head, Yuy had stopped being Yuy and become Heero.

But exhausted I was, and it wasn’t long despite the thoughts whirling in my head, before I fell asleep. But the dreams those thoughts generated saw to it that the sleep was not altogether… restful.

‘You should let your hair down more often,’ Heero whispered close to my ear. ‘You look so… severe with your hair pulled back. You have a very exotic… beauty. You shouldn’t hide it.’

I couldn’t answer him, my breath seeming to rush too fast through my suddenly tight throat. He rose above me, looking down with those steely blue eyes of his, dark with passion. I found my hand reaching out to touch that expanse of muscled chest… almost like chiseled stone, but warm… so warm.

He dipped down to bring his lips near my ear. ‘I could learn to love you too,’ he whispered, his breath washing hot across my cheek. I shivered convulsively and turned my head to seek his lips. I wanted to kiss him… of a harsh sudden; I wanted him to kiss me. Wanted it like I hadn’t wanted anything in a very long time. But when I turned to meet those blue eyes again… they weren’t the same shade of blue. And it was Duo leaning over me and he whispered low in his throat. ‘Touch me ‘Fei… why won’t you touch me?’

It was Heero’s rolling out of bed in a sudden rush that brought me up out of the damn dream. I sat up and blinked stupidly after him, my heart hammering in my chest, and having a very hard time figuring out just what the hell was going on. I realized after a few more befuddled moments, that Heero was calming Duo from the throes of a nightmare.

I heard Heero calling softly, until the silent thrashing slowed and then he was able to ease Duo into a gentle embrace. I could see Duo’s uncontrolled shaking from clear across the room. I got up and padded across the floor, sitting on the bed beside them. Duo was clinging to Heero for all he was worth, his body drawn up in a near fetal position, half in and half out of Heero’s lap, trembling like a newborn lamb. I reached to stroke a hand over his frazzled braid and joined my calming words with Heero’s.

‘We’re here,’ I told him. ‘We didn’t leave you.’

The tense-to-breaking feel of his muscles seemed to ease and he uncoiled somewhat, reaching a hand out for me. I took it in mine and held it tightly. His eyes met mine over Heero’s arm for a second and he looked very groggy and confused, through the pain and the fear. I smiled at him warmly, ‘You know you’re safe here with us, spirit… you have nothing to be afraid of.’

His trembling faded, almost as though his battered body could no longer maintain it.

A tension seemed to fill the air and I glanced up at Heero, shocked to find his face twisted into a mask of unbearable pain. It lasted just a moment before the old face was back, the one I hadn’t seen since I’d arrived here. The face with no emotion in it. He sat forward and eased Duo from his lap into mine. Duo went where he was placed without complaint, eyes half-closed in exhaustion. I frowned questioningly at Heero.

‘What are you…?’ I began but he cut me off with a sad little smile.

‘I told you…’ he said softly. ‘It’s about him and what he wants. You are obviously what he wants.’ His fingers seemed to have trouble leaving Duo behind, drawing slowly away as though it were painful to lose the contact. Then he turned to go back to his own bed.

In my arms, Duo began to tremble.

‘Heero,’ I called gently, and he made me say it twice before he turned back.

I got to see, in the dim light, the rebirth of hope in his eyes as he took in the scene before him.

‘It isn’t me,’ I told him. ‘It’s us.’

He came back towards us on hesitant feet, afraid to believe what he was seeing. When he got near enough, his hand reached out almost of its own volition and stroked down the side of Duo’s face. ‘I’m still here,’ he whispered.

In his near doze, Duo took a deep breath and… settled.

Heero’s eyes widened and met mine. ‘I… don’t understand.’

I gave him a sardonic grin, ‘What safer place in the world than between the Dragon and the Perfect Soldier?’

It surprised a rueful snort from him and he shook his head at the very notion. Or perhaps my use of the code names we had all grown to find so amusing.

I looked at the bed I was sitting on, measuring the space available and glanced up at him with a small smile. ‘Care to test my theory?’

He raised an eyebrow and made the same visual appraisal.

‘He needs the rest,’ I murmured. ‘If it brings him any comfort to have us here… why not?’

‘Why not?’ he echoed in a breathless tone.

I looked down to find Duo watching us through half lidded eyes, his expression very still, as though he had awoken to find wild deer in his room and was afraid of frightening them away. ‘Is that all right, Duo?’ I asked gently and got a very cautious nod.

We settled him in the center of the bed and then carefully crawled in on either side of him. I ended up next to the wall again and wondered how that kept happening. I stretched out facing them, one arm tucked under my head and the other draped across my hip. Heero was almost my mirror image. Duo lie flat on his back and suddenly seemed very awake, eyes wide and staring up at the dark ceiling. I found myself reconsidering the whole idea. He looked… scared.

‘Are you sure this is all right?’ I queried, trying to convey that it wouldn’t be a problem if he wanted us to leave. He reached out and took my hand, squeezing tightly, then with a sudden flinch, reached with his free hand to take Heero’s too.

‘Go to sleep,’ Heero told him gruffly and eventually he did as he was told. Heero and I were a little longer about it… though we did our best not to meet each other’s eyes. There was too much to talk about… too much that I don’t think either of us understood. Maybe we were all three just a little scared. If I had tried to sit down and explain to anyone just what in the hell was going on here… I don’t think I could have. There were too many layers. Too many things that might just be wishful thinking.

The fact that I am somewhat ambiguous about my sexuality is not a new thing to me. I had found that my attraction to other human beings seemed based more on something rather illusive… something not tied to gender. Something that allowed me to see both Duo and Lucrezia Noin as desirable people. Something that let me see both Heero and Sally Po as attractive. That came as no surprise.

The fact that I found Duo Maxwell incredibly… distracting was also not a surprise. He had, as Heero so aptly put it, gotten under my skin some time ago. He has that illusive… something. More than his fair share.

The fact that I truly loved him, wanted to be able to think of futures and lives together… that was a bit of a surprise. At least to most of me, I think my heart had known, somewhere underneath all the denial. But I did. There was nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice for him and it wasn’t contingent on how he felt for me. That, I think, is what told me as much as anything, just how deeply I felt for him. I loved Duo and I wanted him happy, even if that meant my own unhappiness.

Now, the fact that Heero loved Duo was not much of a surprise either. I had known it in some peripheral way for some time. It was there in his eyes if you caught him when he didn’t know you were looking. It was there in his actions… though, until this night, he would have denied any emotional attachment and insisted that it was ‘best for the mission’. Caring for Duo was only common sense; Duo was important to the war effort. It had nothing to do with personal feelings. And maybe he had made himself believe that in some small way. But, no, there were no surprises there either.

What was surprising were these strange feelings that wanted to find a way through this that would hurt no one. As much as I wanted to be able to answer Duo’s pain with my caresses and my love, wanted to be able to hold him in my arms and tell him how I felt… I couldn’t bear to see that dead look in Heero’s eyes again. It had surprised me that his pain had cut me every bit as much as Duo’s had.

And just what in the holy hell did that mean?

Duo’s sleep wasn’t what one would call restful. He just plain hurt too much. His total mental and physical exhaustion would take him under, but then the aches and the pains would bring him back to wakefulness and I would look to see his eyes, open and staring at whatever was in front of him. Heero got up in the wee hours and brought him another dose of pain medicine and he took it without any argument… a thing that told us both how very much he was hurting.

I heard whispered words of reassurance from Heero more than once, and delivered some of my own. Duo didn’t sleep well… but at least he didn’t have another nightmare. Though when I chanced to brush up against him, I could tell he was as tense and taut as if we were still in that damn cell. I didn’t know how to take that from his shoulders. I could only imagine what it had taken, mentally, for him to hold his silence through everything that Bellows had done to him. At the time, I had wished more than once that I could trade places with him… take the beating to save him from it. But… honestly? I don’t know if I could have done what he did. I don’t know that I could have kept from screaming when… when that damn shock rod… when that thrice-damned son-of-a-bitch Bellows had… had…

I found Duo’s fingers gently touching my cheek and I realized that I was almost panting in rage, my muscles bunched with the desire to pound the bastard into the floor. I raised my eyes to meet the glitter of Duo’s in the dim light.

‘I hope the mother-less bastard rots in hell,’ I managed through teeth I had to unclench.

Duo awkwardly patted my arm, his hand twisting around to reach me. I looked past him to find Heero watching us. ‘I’m… sorry,’ I said and knew that I was talking to Heero. I had been the point man. I was the one who should have kept Duo safe… for the both of us. And I failed. I sat idly by and watched while that… that… misbegotten inhuman son of a jackal had tortured Duo… had almost… almost… killed…

‘Oh God… Duo; I am so damn sorry,’ I blurted and suddenly had to be… elsewhere.

I untangled myself as carefully as I could, crawled to the end of the bed, climbed over the footboard and fled for the relative privacy of the hall. Once there, I found it wasn’t enough and continued my flight to the more secure bathroom where I could shut the door and hide. I turned on the water in the sink to drown out any noise because I was very afraid I was about to cry. I had not shed tears since I was a child, but I could feel them pricking at the backs of my eyes. I braced my hands on the sink and hung my head, fighting against them. I didn’t dare let them get started… I was afraid I might not get them stopped again.

He had come so close… so very damn close. Right in front of my eyes and I had sat and watched it play out without lifting a finger. My hands had been free. I might have stopped it. The two somewhat sympathetic guards might not have interfered. Bellows and his loyal lapdog alone, I might have been able to overpower. I might have spared Duo. I might have spared Winner. Duo had been so… damn courageous through the whole thing. He had done what he had to, to get us out of there. He had endured for us more than Winner and I together could have stood up to, and still managed to come through it with a comforting smile for us, an encouraging touch.

I felt so… useless. So damn… cowardly. I felt like I had failed them all. I felt ugly and weak and dishonorable and… I raised my head to meet my own eyes in the mirror and despised the person I found there.

In a sudden fit of self-loathing, I cursed at the image before me and drew my fists back to eradicate the spineless coward in the mirror.

Hands as strong as steel bands, closed around my wrists and Heero’s voice, very close behind me, said simply, ‘Don’t.’

‘Leave me alone!’ I snarled.

‘So you can hurt yourself?’ he asked gently, voice very calm. ‘No… never.’

He had the leverage and he had the strength; I quit struggling after it became apparent I wasn’t going to win anyway, not without escalating things to a brawl.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he told me firmly, still holding my wrists tightly, as though he were afraid I might still try to smash them into the glass if he let go.

‘I let them hurt Duo,’ I told him, surprised at how sick and twisted my own voice sounded. ‘My hands were free… my damn hands were free.’

He didn’t let go, but brought our hands down to my sides again and he was suddenly so close behind me, I could feel his body heat. ‘You didn’t have any choice. You know that. If you had moved too soon, you’d have only gotten yourself killed.’

I didn’t have the words for what was roiling around inside of me. There was a part of me that wanted to shout, I should have been dead before I ever allowed that to happen to him! There was a part that wanted to go into the other room and shower Duo with kisses and apologies until he found his voice again. There was a part of me that wanted to go out and get roaring drunk until I couldn’t hear Bellows voice in my damn head any more. And there was another part that only wanted to sit and weep.

I looked up and met his eyes in the mirror and whispered, ‘There isn’t even a mark on me.’ Somehow… that was the final insult, that Winner and I had escaped almost untouched while Duo had taken all the punishment… all the pain and suffering. For us. To win our freedom. I saw understanding in those bottomless blue eyes.

‘You brought them out alive,’ he consoled. ‘If you’d been killed… they’d have never made it on their own.’

I knew that. Somewhere deep down inside… but it didn’t help. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see Duo writhing on the floor, frantically trying to evade the blows. And in my heart I could feel his silent screams. Could see those beautiful eyes boring into mine.

I didn’t know I was shaking until Heero brought our hands, still joined, around me. He gave a tentative tug and I let myself fall back against him.

‘I let them…’ I whispered, not able to get more than that out. ‘I let it happen…’

‘You didn’t let anything happen,’ he reproached gently. ‘And Duo knows that. I know that.’

There wasn’t an answer and I didn’t try to make one. Just leaned stiffly into his strength.

‘Wufei,’ he breathed next to my cheek. ‘We both want so much to hold him right now… and we can’t. He’s too… fragile.’ I could feel him searching cautiously for words, like a man stepping carefully through a minefield. ‘Let me… hold you the way I can’t hold him?’

My breath caught in my throat and I know I tensed under his hands. What was he asking? What…? He was hesitant… uncertain, but having said it out loud, he seemed unable to back down, and I found him turning me around to face him. He finally let go of my wrists and stepped back a pace… opening his arms without another word. He couldn’t quite meet my eyes and his face was as red as fire. It was that, somehow, that let me… not flee the room. I am not altogether sure which one of us reached out first. I’m going to say that he took me into his arms because I am somewhat loath to say that I threw myself there.

We were suddenly just wrapped around each other so tight I couldn’t quite breathe properly. I knew I was hurting him, because he was hurting me. But… it was answering something that had been going unanswered for some time now. I wanted… we both wanted, nothing so much as to hold Duo close and protect him, to shelter him in my… our arms. But we couldn’t… didn’t dare. He was hurting so much… was so brittle right now. I felt course and clumsy next to him, I could hurt him so easily. I could feel in Heero’s embrace that he felt all those same things… and was trying to offer this substitute.

For a long time, we just hung on, and his strong arms made something inside me cry out until I found myself wrestling with the tears again.

‘You didn’t come out untouched,’ he whispered to me finally. ‘Don’t try to tell me you did. You may not have any broken bones… but you’re bleeding inside. You’re hurting as much as he is… now that you’ve let yourself slow down long enough to feel it.’

‘Heero…’ I began, not sure what I needed to tell him, not sure just what it was I suddenly needed him to know. I’m sorry danced on the tip of my tongue, but it seemed so inadequate, somehow. Help me played about in my head as well… but I had no explanation just what I wanted help with. So all that came out was a strangled, broken plea, ‘Heero…’

‘Hush,’ he told me. ‘Come back to bed… you’ve frightened Duo.’

That struck me like a dash of cold water in the face, and suddenly embarrassed, I drew away. I don’t think Heero had intended that reaction, because his expression looked pained. He started to speak, but then thought better of it, seeming to understand that the moment was broken. He reached around me to shut off the water that had been running all that time, then flicked off the lights and opened the door to lead me back to the bedroom. I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t know what to say to him. I felt terribly self-conscious at the same time that something inside me was crying out to return to his comfort. I felt cold wherever he wasn’t touching me anymore.

Of course, it was all swept under the rug when we got back and found Duo halfway across the room, limping heavily, bent almost double, trying to come after us.

Heero and I might well have been a damn stereo unit as we both gasped his name and demanded to know what in the hell he was doing. He stopped hobbling forward when he saw us, his eyes coming up and seeming vastly relieved. I moved to pick him up, to get him off the damn fractured leg, but he put his hands out to stop me. The movement almost toppled him over and Heero was there to steady him. I froze… unsure of what had just happened and watched Duo’s face twist in rabid frustration. He was trying to speak, was wrestling with trying to force sound out, but nothing would come. He looked about ready to implode. I didn’t know what to do… was smarting over the implied rejection, and just… did not know what to do.

Duo’s eyes were shining brightly, his face twisted painfully, and I thought for a moment he was going to burst into tears. His hands balled into fists and he was suddenly striking ineffectively at the air, unable to do more to vent his frustration. On an impulse, I stepped within range, suddenly wanting to feel his blows… wanting that tiny punishment from him. But all I received was Duo’s arm thrown around my neck and his head buried against my shoulder. He was shaking his head back and forth against me, almost frantically. I could feel him trembling. I met Heero’s eyes over Duo’s bent head and saw… sad understanding written there? I’m not altogether sure just what I saw.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Heero said then, echoing what he had told me in the bathroom and I frowned at him.

But Duo’s head jerked up and he was suddenly nodding emphatically, looking first at Heero and then at me.

‘Duo doesn’t blame you,’ Heero said softly and I realized he was trying to give Duo the voice he couldn’t find on his own. ‘He knows you did what you had to do… the same as he did.’

Wide almost-violet eyes stared into mine, willing me to accept what Heero was telling me. Willing me to believe it.

‘He trusted you to do exactly what you had to do… he trusted you to be strong for him,’ Heero whispered softly and Duo turned his wide-eyed gaze in his direction, looking almost shocked. But it was obvious that Heero was still getting it right, from the tiny, almost unconscious nods Duo was making.

‘He put his trust in you and you did not let him down. You kept your head and didn’t panic. You trusted him to keep himself alive until the time was right.’ Heero’s words were coming faster… seeming to slip from his throat without him half hearing them himself. It was almost as though he truly was channeling Duo’s voice. I shivered. ‘Duo understands what it is to be a soldier… he understands what it took for you to sit there and watch. He knows that doesn’t mean you didn’t care…’

Duo looked away from Heero and back at me, his gaze drawing my eyes away from Heero’s to meet his again. He gave me a very firm, deliberate nod, the ghost of a small, relieved smile playing around his lips.

But then he sagged and almost went to the floor. Heero swept him up with a gruff, ‘That’s enough of this for now.’

We put him back to bed and Heero checked him over quickly again, looking for hot spots, checking for swelling. It was too soon for more pain pills, for which I was sorry, because he had greatly taxed himself trying to leave the room on his own. I felt the bitter taste of guilt; understanding that it was my running away that had caused him to try.

I hesitated, after he was settled, unsure what to do. But Duo reached out for us at the same time that Heero nudged me toward the bed. ‘You need to get some more sleep,’ he commanded, managing to sound irritated and concerned all at the same time.

It was the hopeful look on Duo’s face though, that truly decided it for me. I wouldn’t deny that look for anything in the world. Apparently… neither would Heero. We climbed back into bed and Duo’s expression slid over into relieved.

Somehow, I did manage to fall asleep again. Truly asleep this time and not the damn dozing that I had been doing all night. And no more bizarre dreams.

I woke facing the wall and immediately registered a heat source at my back. There was a moment of mind-bending… confusion, before things clicked back into place and I remembered where I was. I couldn’t believe I had fallen so deeply asleep that I had been rolling around; I had gone to sleep facing the other way. Gingerly, I raised my head and cautiously looked behind me, worried that I might have bumped Duo in my sleep. I found him awake and looking at me, watching me actually, with a warm… almost happy light in his eyes. My heart… did something odd and I reflected that waking up to that look every morning would not be a difficult thing to get used to.

I noticed that the other side of the bed was vacant and looked questioningly at my… bedmate. Gooseflesh ran down my spine as I dared let that thought flit through my brain.

Duo made the hand to mouth, eating gesture and I understood that Heero had gone for breakfast.

I turned over to face him, still feeling relaxed and oddly… comfortable from sleep, and gave him a critical look. ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked, surprised to see my own hand reach to smooth a stubborn strand of hair from his eyes.

He quirked a tired grin and gave me a small shrug that only involved one shoulder.

‘Are you in a lot of pain?’ I frowned, my fingers reaching out to touch and then drawing back. There were so few places that the touch of a hand wouldn’t just cause more pain.

His face got that frustrated look again and I watched in rising concern as he tried to force sound out through a throat frozen by mental blocks that he had seared in place with his own iron control. The muscles in his throat were working almost convulsively; his face was darkening with effort. When he raised fisted hands to seemingly strike at the sides of his own head I couldn’t just lie and watch any more.

‘Stop it!’ I snapped, grabbing his wrists to pull his hands away and having a very surreal moment of flashback on my middle-of-the-night foray down the hall. ‘Stop fighting so hard… it will come on its own. Don’t… please don’t… you’re going to hurt yourself.’

He subsided, stopped fighting against me, and I was surprised to find myself hovering over him, his hands in both of mine, practically lying nose to nose. I could smell the sweet muskiness of his breath. I could see the sudden vulnerability that lie in the back of his eyes. He tested my grip on his wrists with a gentle tug and when I let go, his hand reached tentatively out to rest on my shoulder.

He looked at me long and hard for a moment before carefully mouthing, hold me? And the look in his eyes would have broken even Lady Une.

My breath went out in a shaky sigh and I could only open my arms to him, afraid to reach… afraid of hurting. His arms went around me, hard and tight and I was reminded of my desperate embrace with Heero. Reminded of that rush of need that had been answered by the almost-harshness of the moment. I think that need was filling Duo right then… but I didn’t know how to answer it. I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting him further. His right arm was tight around my neck, his left resting on my chest, as high as he seemed able to raise it. I allowed my own arms to encircle him, as cautious as though I were holding a creature formed of blown glass.

He clutching harder, trying to get me to tighten my grip. I balked and he butted his head against my shoulder. I hesitated and he squeezed harder… his hands pleading.

‘Damn it,’ I muttered against the top of his head. ‘Don’t let me hurt… I can’t hurt you.’

He didn’t relent until I was hugging him tight, then I felt his whole body release a heavy, silent sigh and he relaxed against me, molding against my chest.

I was near frantic wanting to let go, wanting to roll him back over and make sure he was all right. But he seemed… content and so I just lay and let him take what he needed. ‘Brave spirit,’ I whispered softly. ‘My brave damn spirit.’ I dared drop a kiss on the top of his head and I felt him shiver, but he didn’t pull away.

Then there was a… tingle in the air that told me we weren’t alone any more. I looked up and found Heero standing in the doorway, breakfast tray in hand and a look in his eyes that threatened to rip my heart from my chest. Duo must have felt me tense and he lifted his head to look at me, and followed my gaze to the door.

I had no doubt we looked like a couple of kids with our hands in the cookie jar.

Duo tensed and we both let go at the same time. I opened my mouth to… explain, I guess, but didn’t know what to say.

Heero only looked… very lonely. He stepped into the room and set the try on the desk near the door. ‘I brought breakfast,’ he said very softly and suddenly seemed to be trying to look anywhere else but at us.

‘Heero…’ I began, but he turned away without another word and left the room, his face was calm but his shoulders were slumped. I could have handled it better if he had lost his temper. If he had gotten mad and yelled. I didn’t know quite how to meet the misery that was coming off him in waves.

Duo broke out of the paralysis first and began rolling toward the side of the bed, intent on going after him.

‘Duo!’ I yelped and caught at him, trying to keep him from hurting himself further. I wished, not for the first time, that his fractured leg were in a cast.

He turned sharply, tugging at me. Not so much to get away, but to get me to come with him. To get me to help him. He has a very expressive face. Communicating with him had been easy, at least for me. As I have said… he is very eloquent even without words. His face told me… terrified. It told me… frantic. It told me… desperate and guilty. It told me self-loathing and pain beyond all the physical hurts he had endured.

What the hell else could I do? I bounded out of the bed, turned and scooped him into my arms and tore out of the room in search of Heero. This had to be made right.

He hadn’t gotten far; Duo’s looks don’t take long to convey their meaning. Heero was still on the stairs.

‘Heero!’ I called and saw his back stiffen. He hesitated but didn’t turn. ‘Heero…wait.’ I called again and he stopped completely, standing on the stairs with his back to us. I moved closer, stopping at the top of the stairs, a little unsure of trying to descend them with Duo in my arms. I wasn’t sure what to say to him. How in the hell do you apologize when you weren’t even positive what you’d done wrong? Damn it… that wasn’t quite right. I knew exactly what I’d done and what he was feeling… I had felt it myself the previous night when I had walked in to find him brushing Duo’s hair. I had felt left out. Stung by their closeness. Unsure of my place. Unsure of the whole damn situation. And I was still unsure even now. I didn’t know what was going on here… couldn’t half identify the feelings churning around in my gut. I didn’t know how to reassure him… when I could have used some of that reassurance myself.

His one arm wrapped tight around my neck, Duo reached out toward the figure on the stairs with his free hand. He was trembling. No… he was shaking. His whole body was taut as a spring strung out as far as it could go. Then… as soft as a sigh, as harsh as a crow’s call, as illusive as a flitting hummingbird… the sweetest sound I have ever heard;

‘Please…’

It hung on the air as full of portent and power, as a prayer. It was such a soft sound that I was afraid for a moment that Heero hadn’t heard, but then he whirled so suddenly on the stairs that he almost fell.

I couldn’t have torn my gaze from his face had the house fallen in. The wonder… the joy… were palpable things. Still wrapped around with hesitation… confusion… doubt. He began to slowly climb to meet us, as unable to take his eyes from Duo, as I was unable to take mine from him.

Duo tugged at me to get me to set him on his feet and I complied, keeping my arm around him for support. He left his own arm around my shoulders without being prompted. When Heero gained the top of the stairs, Duo reached out with his other arm, though I know it cost him to raise it that high, and slipped it around Heero’s neck. He looked from one of us to the other and what he was reading in our faces… I couldn’t say. He was brimming with frustration; unable to force out the words he seemed so desperate to deliver. It was painful to watch him, a man never at a loss for words, normally as articulate as a poet, as expressive as a Shakespearean actor… struggling with the smallest sound. Then, suddenly, he was drawing us toward him; bringing the three of us together… and he kissed us. Together. At the same time. It was… awkward. It was ungainly. Uncomfortable. Ridiculous. Achingly, painfully… sweet.

I understood then the delicate wire he felt he was on. The minefield he felt he was traveling through. He was… the center. He was the core we were wrapped around. The flame that drew us in. He had been trying so hard to keep us balanced, even when he was the one who should have been getting all the support he needed from us. Trying so hard not to hurt… not to injure fragile, newborn feelings. He had understood what a delicate thing it was, that was growing between us, when we had not. Had understood that it all, somehow, hinged around him. I tasted guilt again, putting that kind of pressure on him in the shape he was in.

He drew back, looking from one of us to the other. I felt his fingers snake into the hair at the nape of my neck and he grabbed hold tight. Then he turned toward Heero, tilting his head back and offering up a kiss that Heero accepted with hungry abandon. I watched it unabashedly. I watched it, feeling Duo’s fingers wrapped tight in my hair, making sure I stayed right there with them. I watched it and didn’t feel the sting of jealousy. Didn’t feel the bite of loneliness. I watched and… waited my turn.

And Duo gave it to me. He drew away from Heero, his face flushed and his breath quickened and he turned to me. I knew his other hand was locked tight on Heero somehow. Knew he was making every bit as sure that the Perfect Soldier stayed close beside us, as he had made sure the Dragon didn’t flee. I claimed my place. Taking the time to savor our first kiss, tasting him, exploring him, allowing him to explore me.

He had carefully taken away that awkward ‘first kiss’. Had forced the moment and removed the possibility that either of us would be stung if he chose to give his first kiss to the other. I couldn’t believe the strain we had unwittingly put him under.

When we drew apart, I found Heero’s eyes on us with much the same expression on his face that I suspected my own wore. Shell-shocked. Happy. Scared. Totally out of his depth.

Both of us turned, almost unconsciously, to Duo for guidance and I snorted in sudden derision. ‘He’s the one who’s wounded here,’ I grunted. ‘Do you think we can manage to make a decision without waiting for him to…’

Heero made a decision, suddenly and quite thoroughly. He leaned past Duo, slid his own fingers into my hair along with Duo’s and… kissed me.

It was a fierce kiss; very unlike the almost languid one I had shared with Duo. He tasted sharply of oranges and… something spicy. Our tongues warred as we struggled for dominance. It awoke something inside me that almost frightened me and we parted, both of us panting and flushed.

Duo looked… anxious. A little of that ‘out in the cold’ apprehension lurking in his eyes.

‘Baka,’ Heero murmured, tenderly brushing fingers lightly over his cheek. ‘Later… there’ll be time enough, later.’

‘When you’re healed,’ I joined my reassurances with Heero’s. ‘Until then, I’m not going anywhere.’ I glanced up and met warm blue eyes and found encouragement there. ‘We’re not going anywhere.’

Duo looked oddly… distressed, as though he had not expected the bear to wake when he poked it with the stick. It was a little disconcerting to see our true, magnetic north… falter.

‘Let’s get him back to bed,’ Heero frowned, looking hard at Duo’s pale face. ‘He looks about to pass out.’

I couldn’t have agreed more and helped ease Duo into Heero’s arms, moving ahead of them to prepare the bed with the extra pillows so that we could prop him up and feed him breakfast.

We settled him in his nest of pillows and did our best to make him comfortable, though there didn’t really seem to be a position he could lie in without pain. We were back to communication through nods and gestures, though it was a more hopeful silence… at least for me. He had broken past the barrier once, his fear of losing Heero greater than the fear that Bellows had beaten into him. Though the pain of losing the sound of his voice was… sharper for me now, having been graced with that single word.

And too… we were more aware of what we were doing, how we were acting around him and how he was reacting to us. If I touched him… held his hand or stroked my fingers over his hair, within minutes, he would seek Heero out and find some way to touch his arm or link their fingers. If Heero reached for him… Duo reached for me.

I felt… humbled by the care he took. Felt chagrin that we had made him feel he had to do this. Felt guilt that we had put this weight on his shoulders with our damn fragile egos.

Heero fed him another bit of sausage and Duo looked to me for a sip of his orange juice. I met Heero’s gaze over the breakfast tray and I saw the unhappy guilt in his eyes as well. One of us sighed softly and between us, Duo tensed.

Heero set aside the fork and gently cupped Duo’s face in his hands. I saw Duo’s eyes flick almost frantically in my direction, so I took his hand in mine, maintaining the balance for him.

‘Listen to me,’ Heero told him gently. ‘We’re sorry… we didn’t mean to frighten you. You need to stop worrying about us so much. We’re… we’re… ’ He let go of Duo’s face, turning to me, his eyes open and trusting… asking for my help.

‘You are what’s important right now,’ I told Duo, adding my reassurances to Heero’s. ‘This is all very…’ I waved my free hand vaguely in the air, ‘confusing right now. But you’ve shown us rather firmly how you feel. Trust us now. We promise not to be so… skittish, all right?’

He couldn’t help a smile and a tiny little snort, which caught him by surprise and made his eyes fly open wide in alarm.

‘It’s all right,’ I soothed, squeezing his fingers. ‘It’s safe here… don’t fight against it.’

He couldn’t quite hide the panic that welled up, though he tried, glancing away from us and looking at the wall.

‘No one is going to hurt you,’ I said firmly and he spared me only a flick of his eyes.

Heero and I sighed almost as one.

‘Are you still hungry?’ Heero asked gently, changing the subject and we got a negative shake of his head.

Duo was chewing on something, worrying it like a dog with a bone, but either didn’t know how to ask, or just wasn’t ready to bring it up.

‘What is it, spirit?’ I asked softly and only got another shake of his head.

Heero touched my arm, a bare brush of his fingers. ‘When he’s ready,’ he told me and I subsided.

It nagged at me, that vaguely unhappy look on his face, but I let it go; following Heero’s lead on this one and giving Duo the space to think through whatever was bothering him.

Heero found a roll of plastic wrap in the kitchen and we used it to cover Duo’s stitches so that we could help him take a shower. It took the three of us to manage all that hair, but I could tell he was grateful to be clean, even if we thought he would die of embarrassment in the process. Heero and I mutually agreed to leave our shorts on and just got in and got wet with him. I held him up while Heero gently washed and rinsed his hair. Then he gave me a break by holding him while I carefully did what I could to wash Duo’s battered body. I was heartsick by the time we were done.

Duo was plain exhausted before we were finished, almost lolling in our arms as we got him out and dried. We weren’t able to do much more with his hair than blot it dry and pull it back in a quick tail. Heero wouldn’t let him go completely to sleep without another dose of pain medication, then we tucked him in and watched him collapse almost instantly.

I found myself dropping into the chair Heero had drawn up to the side of the bed, feeling fairly damn exhausted myself. The act of bathing Duo had been a trial… only serving to draw to my attention each and every bruise and scrape, every cut and contusion. Whenever I chanced to close my eyes, I could see Bellows lashing out at Duo. His face twisted in an insane mask of hatred and raw fury. I shivered convulsively and not just from the dampness of my skin.

Emotional upheaval can be every bit as wearing as physical labor. And I felt about as ‘upheaved’ as I could get. I was very confused and unsure of my ground. One minute I was clear with what was happening here… between the three of us, and the next I only felt like a lost little kid.

Warm, strong hands came to rest on my shoulders and I flinched in surprise. I glanced up to find Heero looking down at me, his own face the very picture of hesitancy.

‘You’re very tense,’ he said softly and those rough hands of his began to knead across my shoulders.

‘I’m… very baffled, I guess,’ I told him, looking away, willing myself to relax and accept this gift.

‘Baffled?’ I could hear the smile in his voice, though I couldn’t see it.

‘Well how in the hell would you describe what you’re feeling right now?’ I grumbled, thinking he was amused at my description.

‘Scared?’ he said softly and I was moved to look up at him. ‘Damn scared,’ he reiterated and I could hear it straining at his voice.

‘Of what?’ I breathed, and reached my hands up to lie over his, stilling the gentle massage he had been giving me.

‘Messing this up,’ he promptly told me. ‘Hurting one of you… not… not being…’ he stopped abruptly and looked away. I could see the echo of my own fears and frustrations in his face.

‘Not being what?’ I prompted when he didn’t go on.

He was quiet for a little bit and I squeezed his hands encouragingly. ‘Not being good enough,’ suddenly popped out of his mouth and I blinked up at him, seeing more emotion wash over his face than I would have thought him capable of. ‘You two are so… beautiful… and graceful… and… and good. I feel so rough and… and… stained next to you.’

I rose to my feet and turned to face him, not truly believing he could possibly feel that way, but having to face the truth of it in his halting words.

It was my turn to take him into my arms and his turn to seek shelter there. ‘See yourself through our eyes, Heero,’ I told him simply.

We were all so full of doubts and fears, the three of us, and I wondered again just how this was supposed to work. Just how this could work. But then I remembered the gift of Duo’s kiss in the hallway. Rendered so bittersweet by his trying so hard to stand on the edge of the knife and balance it all in his own hands. He who needed our care and love more than he ever had, who could barely stand on his own, who was still wrestling demons that might yet prove too strong for him. But… there he had been for us, reaching out and doing his best to hold it all together. Even though his eyes told me he was just as scared as we were. Just as unsure. Just as confused and overwhelmed, just as lost. Where the hell were we? Where were we going? What could the future possibly hold for three war-weary soldiers clinging together? But when I thought about that kiss, remembered the ache in my heart when I heard that whispered plea, felt the arms around me now, strong and warm… I thought; God this could be… everything!

‘I love you both,’ I said, shocked at the sound of my own voice. I blinked for a minute, looking at the wall over Heero’s shoulder and waited for some sort of explanation as to just who had said that, because I was absolutely positive it hadn’t been me. Couldn’t have been me.

Heero stiffened and straightened away from me, catching at my shoulders as though he couldn’t believe I had spoken either. I kept waiting for him to ask me to repeat it. He looked at me long and hard, ‘Are you… sure?’

‘Yes,’ I told him resolutely. ‘No. I… think so…’ I found myself meeting his eyes, begging him for some sort of guidance. ‘I’m so damn confused,’ I finally confessed and cringed, waiting for the hurt to come into those beautiful blue eyes. But he only grinned at me sheepishly.

‘I think… I think I’m damned confused too.’

It surprised me a little, to hear him say it out loud, but perhaps my saying so first had made it easier for him. I was still reeling from both confessions, having blurted the second one almost as an explanation for the first. I felt the utter fool, and for one soul-weary moment wished I could go back in time and undo all these feelings, make it not be so. Stop it before it ever started. But… I wasn’t truly sure where in time I would have to go to erase these emotions. Back before we had ever met, I suspected. When I traced backward, I had to admit that I had felt a spark of… something; from the first moment I’d laid eyes on Duo. I remember thinking that no one who could pilot a Gundam as well as he did should be able to laugh and smile and lift the darkness from the hearts of his comrades the way he did. And Heero… he had impressed me with his strength and courage from our first mission together. Had won my respect with his steadfast dedication to peace and his unwillingness to accept defeat.

‘Have you…’ Heero ventured into the quiet that my musings had left, ‘ever been in love before?’

I shook my head even as I was saying, ‘Yes.’ I hesitated, comparing how I had felt then with how I felt now and had to amend it. ‘I thought I was. If you had asked me a week ago… I would have said yes. But now… what I felt then was nothing compared to what I’m feeling now.’ I met his eyes, trying to make him understand.

He looked almost desperate to fathom it, searching my face as though I were some oracle that he had sought, long and hard. He suddenly seemed to realize that his hands were still holding me by the shoulders and he hastily dropped them. ‘What… does it feel like?’ he whispered and looked supremely embarrassed. He wanted me to catalog it for him. With his programmer’s mind, he wanted me to give him a simple ‘if/then’ statement to guide him through this. If you feel this, then it must be love. He wanted a damn flow chart.

I scrubbed a hand over my face and sighed. How the hell should I know? I wanted to blurt out, but didn’t have the heart. He looked so… vulnerable and lost, asking me for direction. I wanted to laugh and tell him it was the blind leading the blind. ‘Scary?’ I smiled softly, trying to lighten his mood and he tried to smile for me, but it didn’t work. I sighed again. ‘I… hurt when he hurts. Hurt when you hurt. I would cut off my own arm if it would stop his pain.’ I blinked at him, afraid that I must sound like a lunatic. ‘You are both more important to me than I am… that’s as close as I can come to explaining it.’

He frowned at me darkly. ‘But… but Quatre and Trowa almost fit that category. Does that mean that…’

I snorted softly, more at Heero trying to fit ‘love’ into parameters to understand it, than anything. But I suppose it was no worse than my trying to approach it ‘logically’. ‘There are many kinds of love… and I suppose they do fit… in their own way.’

‘Then what makes how I feel about them different than how I feel about you and Duo?’ He ran a hand through his already tousled hair with no little frustration and I found myself reaching to smooth it as best I could with my fingers. I smiled at him suddenly, an answer of sorts coming clear in my mind at the feel of the damp, silky strands.

‘Do you want to touch them?’ I whispered. ‘Do you have the desire to know what every inch of their skin tastes like? Do you… ache with wanting to feel their hands on your body?’

It was… a joy to watch his eyes widen and his face flush, his breath quicken and his hands reach out without him seeming to notice. ‘No,’ he choked out.

‘I think,’ I told him huskily, ‘that’s the difference.’

‘Then… then…’ he stammered, his hands finding my waist and drawing us together. ‘I think that I might love you too.’

My heart faltered and I let myself feel how much it had been hurting that I had said those words and no one had said them back.

He found my lips with his own and there was no more room for words or hesitation. He was near frantic in his need, kissing me with a desperation that spoke to me of long, cold nights of loneliness. Echoed back to me my own nights of lying awake and thinking about what might have been. If I had let it go on, we would have ended up making love right there on the floor beside Duo’s bed. Heero’s hands were already grasping at my hips and I hated myself for pulling away and making him stop.

‘Please Heero,’ I panted out, pulling him to me and ghosting tiny kisses along his jaw to ease the sting of the rejection. ‘Not without Duo… We can’t. It would destroy everything. He’s right… about the balance. We have to be so careful or we’re going to lose this.’

He made a soft sound of distress near my ear and held me crushed against him until he trusted his voice again. ‘Forgive me,’ he whispered when he finally could. ‘I’m so sorry… you’re right. I know you’re right.’

Awkwardness was welling up between us again and I found myself kissing his cheek, his temple, the curve of his jaw… anything to keep us close, to keep that distance from forming again.

‘Don’t,’ he breathed. ‘You’re making me want things I can’t have.’

‘I never said you couldn’t have them,’ I was surprised to hear myself say. ‘I just said the time wasn’t right.’

He looked at me with eyes so wide, I almost laughed. I think I was shocking him. Hell; I was shocking myself. ‘I just feel like we’re… within sight of the damn Holy Grail. I’m afraid of making a mistake. And I think this would be a mistake,’ I told him. I found myself looking at the floor, embarrassed by all the damn bad analogies and emotional tripe.

But Heero smiled and raised my head with the touch of his fingers. ‘Does that make you Sir Lancelot?’

I couldn’t help a small chuckle, caught rather by surprise that Heero even knew the legend. ‘I don’t know… would that make you King Arthur?’

He snorted scornfully, then grinned with wicked glee. ‘Then it would naturally follow that Duo would be…’

I cut him off with a finger to the lips. ‘Oh… do not go there! He will kill you.’

He relented but still couldn’t stop the parting shot. ‘Well… I always thought the legend wouldn’t have been so tragic if the three of them had just learned to… get along.’

We drew apart, the moment ended, but a little less… uncomfortable with it.

‘Would you stay with him while I shower?’ I asked and he nodded ready agreement.

‘Of course,’ he told me in a tone that was almost reproving. I could hear the implied, do you have to ask?

I took my shower and when I was done, Heero took one of his own. I dressed while he was out of the room, in borrowed clothes and settled myself on the foot of Duo’s bed, leaning against the wall and watching over him. Heero returned, giving me an affectionate smile when he found me wearing his jeans and t-shirt. He dressed as well, and then took his place in the chair by the bed and we simply waited for Duo to wake up.

It crossed my mind, sitting there, that there were things I should be doing. I should be writing up a full mission report. Should be resupplying, since I had no clothes or weapons other than what I had walked out of that cell with. I should be contacting base and requesting my next assignment. But… somehow, none of it seemed as important in that moment, as caring for Duo.

We shouldn’t all be here together like this, I remember thinking. It was dangerous placing all of our eggs in one handy little basket, just waiting for Romefeller to come and pick it up. But… I couldn’t bring myself to care. I wouldn’t leave Duo right now without a damn better reason than vague caution. And I wouldn’t ask Heero to abandon him either. I suppose if I were ordered to go, I wouldn’t have much choice, but for the time being it wasn’t an issue and I wasn’t going to make it one.

I watched Heero watch Duo for a while, thinking about how much I had not understood about him. Thinking about how much deeper the man ran underneath the soldier. Understanding how much of a gift I had been given in being allowed inside the armor for a glimpse of what lie there. I realized that Duo had been given this gift some time ago, only I had not understood just what it was that was different between them. I had just noted one day that Duo suddenly seemed to know no fear around our normally somewhat volatile partner. Duo had always been a tactile soul, never failing to toss an arm around a shoulder or playfully punch an arm. Except with Heero. Heero had lived behind a stone wall that had excluded him from that kind of interaction. But apparently Duo had breached the wall when no one was looking. Suddenly Heero had become just as ready a target as the rest of us and had born it with surprisingly stoic grace. I almost grinned at him, thinking about what he must have been holding inside all that time.

Thinking about it, because I was more than familiar with holding feelings inside. Enduring Duo’s brotherly hugs with a frown and a put-upon sigh even while I ached to return the embraces with a little more than brotherly affection. Oh yes… I understood Heero Yuy all too well. And it was that understanding that was turning my vague attraction into something much stronger. Much deeper.

A small frown of worry creased the brow of the object of my observations and I shifted my gaze to Duo, to where Heero was looking.

The sheet had worked its way down and Duo was mostly exposed from the waist up. I bit back a heavy sigh, looking at him, and wished again that the bastard that had done this to him were still alive so that I might kill him with my own hands. So many bruises… so much pain. I was worried about internal injuries beyond the broken ribs and the fractured leg. His body was covered with horrendous black bruises and though I remembered what Duo had said about being good at ‘rolling with the punches’ I just couldn’t see how he could have escaped without more damage.

‘You’re worried,’ Heero accused in a soft whisper.

‘So are you,’ I rejoined and we looked at each other, neither of us seeing the point in disputing the obvious.

‘He took one hell of a beating,’ Heero said, rather pointlessly.

‘He took several damn beatings,’ I growled. ‘And not all of them where I could see what happened.’

Heero gnawed on his lower lip, a nervous gesture I had not seen him make before. ‘I wish there were some way to get him some medical attention.’

I didn’t reply, because I had been thinking the same thing. But how? We could hardly just walk into a hospital and not expect to be identified immediately. Sometimes this business of being out here on the front lines had some severe drawbacks.

There was the soft sound of a throat being cleared, and Heero and I both jumped, zeroing in on the doorway. I was put in mind of a pair of over-protective wolves who have had a den full of pups breached by an outsider. A comparison not far from the truth if the oddly startled look on Barton’s face was any indication.

‘How… is he,’ he ventured into the tense silence that greeted him.

Heero and I both relaxed when we realized who it was and how we were reacting to the new presence. I was… mildly embarrassed and Heero looked a little… discomfited.

‘As well as can be expected,’ Heero managed, after a moment. ‘Hurting. Exhausted.’

Barton moved a little further into the room, seeming cautious about it. I saw his eyes widen as he got close enough to get a good look at Duo. Those eyes immediately narrowed and he muttered something that sounded vaguely French. After a moment, he seemed to shake off his shock and he turned on me with an expression that was almost sullen. As though he were expecting some argument from me over whatever was on his mind. ‘Quatre needs to see Duo,’ he told me flatly, daring me to gainsay him.

‘Of course,’ I responded carefully. ‘If you think its best.’

He looked at me narrowly and I wondered what in the hell he was so angry with me for.

‘When Duo wakes up,’ Heero interjected gently, but in a tone of voice that would brook no argument.

Barton only nodded sharply, and with another lingering glance at Duo’s battered torso, left the room.

I exchanged a glance with Heero. ‘Do you have any idea why he’s so…’

‘Pissed off?’ Heero supplied with a grunt and I had to quirk a rueful grin his way.

‘That rather aptly describes it.’

He sighed, running his fingers through his hair again and looked down at Duo rather than at me. ‘I… think he feels that… you should have been the point man on the way out of that base. So that…’

‘So that Winner didn’t have to do the killing.’ I finished for him and got a tight little nod.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, feeling a little bit irritated… feeling a little bit guilty… feeling a little bit mournful for the loss of that part of Winner’s… innocence. I suppose if I were in Barton’s shoes, I would be… pissed off too. And thinking back… I’m not all together sure why things had fallen out the way they had.

I dropped my forehead down on my raised knees and sighed heavily. ‘It probably was the biggest cluster fuck I have ever been involved in.’ I blurted and felt my face flame when I heard Heero snort softly. It didn’t matter; he couldn’t really see me anyway.

‘You brought them out alive,’ Heero told me sternly.

I almost laughed out loud. ‘Duo brought us out alive. I wasn’t much more than a damn pack mule there at the last.’

I heard the creak of the chair and then his weight settled next to me on the bed, carefully away from Duo’s legs. I didn’t acknowledge him immediately, not at all sure what he expected of me. After a moment, a finger came and poked at my shin.

‘Hey…’ he said softly, his voice this odd combination of fearful and amused. ‘Isn’t this where you’re supposed to reap the benefits of… being in a… relationship?’

I couldn’t help but raise my head to look at him. ‘We’re… in a relationship?’

He quirked that sardonic little grin that I was coming to understand was something special that only Duo and I had probably ever seen. ‘Albeit a somewhat twisted, unique, damn complicated one… but, yeah… I think so.’

I smiled, shaking my head and he reached to take my hand, giving it a tug until I unwound myself and turned to sit next to him with my back to the footboard of the bed. We just sat with our shoulders touching and… it truly was something of a comforting feeling.

‘Talk to me?’ he whispered softly. ‘I don’t think I can take both of you going all silent on me.’

I sighed and found my head wanting to rest on his shoulder. I fought against it for a little bit and then let it fall. What the hell? I knew he wouldn’t care.

‘I thought Bellows was down for the count,’ I told him, feeling like I was in some sort of strange confessional. I had to repress the urge to say, bless me Father, for I have sinned. Or whatever the hell it was. ‘I shouldn’t have just left them alone with the man while I went to get the keys. I should have… hauled Bellows out or… cuffed him or something. I left the cell while Duo was completely helpless and Winner was still handcuffed to the damn wall.’

I felt Heero reach out and entwine our fingers together. I had to fight the urge to pull away, it felt… strange.

‘You made a split second decision in a tense situation,’ he told me softly.

‘And it was the wrong one,’ I growled.

His fingers squeezed mine gently. ‘But you didn’t know… you did your best.’

I closed my eyes and saw that mental image again, of Bellows with his hands wrapped around Duo’s throat, no real sanity left in his eyes. And Winner… his face lit with something damn close to the murderous rage that was consuming Bellows, stretched to the limits of his chains, pressing that infernal shock rod to Bellows head. I shivered convulsively and Heero shifted to slip an arm around my shoulders.

‘I know a thing or two about guilt,’ he told me in a voice laced with pain. ‘I know a little something about bad decisions. You can’t tear yourself apart over it. You all came out of it alive… that’s what matters.’

‘I know,’ I soothed, not wanting him dwelling on the things I knew he was remembering. ‘I know… I just keep replaying it in my head, trying to figure out what I could have done differently.’

‘A million things,’ he said in a voice that was a little husky. ‘A million damn things… but none of them happened, and you can’t go back. You have to let it go.’

New Edwards. I knew that’s what he was thinking about, knew he was picking at that scab with a vengeance.

He had released my hand when he had slid his arm around me and I reached up to catch his fingers in mine, griping firmly. ‘All right… that’s enough,’ I chided. ‘Stop thinking about it… it was not your fault.’

He snorted disdainfully at me. ‘You can wallow in guilt and I can’t? That’s hardly fair.’

‘I screwed up,’ I snapped before I had a chance to think better of it.

‘And I didn’t?’ he questioned with a raised eyebrow.

‘Oh… just shut up,’ I growled and gave his fingers a sharp squeeze.

‘Check mate,’ he whispered softly and kissed the top of my head where it still rested against him. I blinked in surprise, but made myself sit still. ‘As you told me…’ he fairly breathed against my hair, ‘I hurt when you hurt.’

That one got me. Blindsided me and took me down. I love you, he had just said to me. Voluntarily and unprompted and it ran through me more sharply than it had when he had actually said it.

‘I hurt for you too,’ I responded tentatively, hoping he understood.

I think that he did, for his arm tightened around me and he gruffly rubbed his cheek against the top of my head. ‘What’s really bothering you?’ he murmured after a moment of holding us tight together.

‘I’m scared,’ I breathed before I could stop it. This conversation had left me feeling stripped down to raw emotion and things were popping out of my mouth without official permission from my brain. ‘They hurt him so badly… I’m scared of losing him. I… have this awful feeling… this horrible foreboding. I… I…’ I didn’t know how to articulate the gut-wrenching fear that there was something wrong, something we didn’t know about… something that would slowly kill him while we sat and watched, not knowing what to do.

‘Hush,’ Heero sighed, stroking a hand over my hair. ‘I know… I know… you don’t have to tell me. I know.’

‘I want a Doctor, Heero,’ I blurted, raising my head to look at him intently. ‘I don’t care how… I want a Doctor. I need to have someone tell me he’s all right inside. I need someone to look at that incision and tell me they did a good job. I need someone to look at his leg. I need…’

I realized that my voice was rising when Heero caught me in a rather painful embrace and pressed my face into his neck. ‘Stop,’ he commanded gently. ‘I told you… I know. We’ll think of something. We won’t let anything take him away from us.’

‘We’ve not even properly told him what he means to us,’ I whispered, surprised and no little embarrassed to find that my hand was fisted in Heero’s shirt.

There was an odd little silence and then Heero softly said, ‘I think we just did.’

I blinked up at him, only to find him looking the other way. I followed his gaze and found a pair of very wide, blue-violet eyes staring at us.

Flustered, Heero and I separated and I assumed that my face was every bit as red as his was. Duo, meanwhile, was doing his deer-in-headlights impression; though he looked a little bit more like a raccoon than a deer, with the dark bruising on his face.

Heero recovered first and went back to sit on the chair beside the bed. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked gently and reached to take Duo’s hand almost automatically. I think he did it without any real conscious effort.

Duo nodded in a manner that meant, ‘ok’ and I saw Heero frown slightly, concerned with Duo’s continued silence.

‘Can we get you anything?’ I interjected before it had a chance to go farther than that. Duo shook his head, but moved to sit up. I’m sure he felt uncomfortable lying flat on his back with us hovering over him. Heero and I both quickly moved to help him. Duo managed to look… alarmed. I met Heero’s eyes and we couldn’t help laughing at each other.

‘I’ll get the extra pillows,’ Heero smirked at me and left Duo’s side.

Duo seemed relieved to be out from under our scrutiny for the minute it took Heero to fetch the pillows from the other bed. I helped him sit up while Heero arranged the pillows behind him and we settled him as comfortably as we could.

‘Do you need something for the pain?’ Heero asked him, watching carefully for signs of distress.

Duo raised a quizzical eyebrow and touched his wrist where his watch would have been if we hadn’t taken it off.

‘Heero,’ I scolded lightly, ‘its too soon. He can’t have anything for another couple of hours.’

Heero looked mildly embarrassed, but forged ahead anyway. ‘Are you hungry? Do you need to…’

But suddenly, Duo’s eyes weren’t on Heero any more and we turned as one to follow his gaze to the doorway.

Winner and Barton stood framed there, Barton with a hand lightly on his partner’s back, as though offering some kind of encouragement. I idly wondered if they’d been standing out in the hall waiting. That thought left me feeling rather… uncomfortable.

‘Duo?’ Winner fairly breathed and I glanced back to catch Duo’s reaction and found the most shocking expression of disbelief on his face. I heard a tiny little intake of air and then Duo threw his arms open wide. Winner all but ran to fling himself into them.

‘Ki o tsukete!’ Heero exclaimed, his reversion to Japanese showing me his extreme agitation.

I found my own hands frantically trying to stop Winner’s headlong flight, but Duo’s arms were reaching past me and before I could stop it, they were wrapped around each other and Heero and I couldn’t find purchase to separate them without further harming Duo.

‘Winner!’ I snapped angrily. ‘He’s hurt… watch out, damn it!’

I might as well have been calling to them from the moon.

At least Winner had his arms around Duo’s neck and not around his ribs, which was small comfort as we sat helplessly and watched Duo tremble and shake trying to hold on. When I let myself calm down and truly looked at them, I realized that Winner actually was being very careful and it was Duo who was doing all the frantic clinging.

Movement made me look past them to Heero, and his expression… was an odd study. I realized with a strange pang that I was seeing the face of the Perfect Soldier again… closed off and emotionless. Except I could see the emotion that was hiding behind the mask, I could see his fear and agitation, and knew that he was getting ready to work his way up to truly angry. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Barton tensing and easing forward. This was about to get extremely ugly.

‘Heero,’ I said softly, and saw his attention leave Winner and focus on me. ‘It’s all right.’ I told him firmly and watched doubt cloud his eyes. ‘He’s not hurting him.’

I could see muscles that had been tensing to drive him up on his feet to deal with this implied threat to our Duo, relax almost of their own volition. I saw him look to me for guidance and my heart gave a funny little thump in my chest at the very implication that he totally trusted my judgment. I saw him look a little closer, as I had, and realize that Winner was actually being very gentle. He settled back in his seat, but still managed to look… irritated. When I looked again, Barton was very close beside him but seemed to relax when Heero did. I sighed inwardly and had to resist the urge to shake my head. The wolf analogy came to mind again.

Winner was murmuring softly to Duo and I saw Duo’s hand come up to stroke over the blond head buried in his shoulder. I couldn’t hear everything. ‘… so sorry… thought they’d killed you… lost your knife… sorry… its all right… killed a man… Bellows…. So sorry…’

It just seemed to be tumbling out of Winner’s mouth as fast as he could talk, and it was such a strange, strange thing to see Duo Maxwell listening intently and remaining quiet. So damned quiet.

Winner was being very careful not to hurt, but I think Duo was hurting himself trying to sit up straight and hold Winner in his arms, trying to comfort. There was a subtle swaying motion and I realized that Duo was rocking him like a child. Then I saw his face get that distressed, strained look that told me he was trying to speak. It made my heart ache to watch it and I glanced down at the sheet under my curled legs, almost wishing that I had gotten the hell off the back side of the bed before this had gotten started. Duo’s head dropped wearily onto Winner’s shoulder and I could see him almost panting. Then Winner stiffened and stilled, and I realized that Duo had managed to speak to him.

‘No… oh no Duo,’ Winner murmured, drawing back to look into pained eyes. His fingers stroked over Duo’s face, gentle and soothing. ‘You didn’t fail. He never broke you… never. Not for an instant. I’m fine… I’m just fine.’

I realized in that moment that Duo had thought that Winner was dead. His memories somehow jumbled enough from the drugs and the pain that he had thought that Bellows had killed him.

Guilt was already welling in my chest as I realized that my decision had kept them apart and left Duo with that misconception, when Barton spoke up from beside the bed.

‘Real bright move, Chang,’ he muttered. ‘Not letting them see each other.’

I was very suddenly, very angry. I turned a dark glare in his direction and snarled, ‘You’ve been after a piece of me since I got here. Just what in the hell is your problem?’

He matched my glare with one of his own and snapped, ‘I want to know just what you did on that damn mission. Seems to me that you’re the only one who escaped without a scratch.’

I… saw red. Maybe it was too close to the guilt that was eating away at my own gut. I don’t know. I just know that between one blink and the next, I was off the bed and had him on the floor. I don’t remember moving. I don’t remember cocking my fist back to hit him. I don’t even remember how we ended up on the damn floor. I blinked and just found myself sitting on his stomach, pinning him to the ground and the only thing that kept me from drilling him with a hard right cross, was Heero.

There was yelling. There were curses. There was enough testosterone in that room to choke an elephant. None of it was really registering with me. I vaguely recall Winner shouting Barton’s name. I think I remember Heero yelling at me. But I couldn’t seem to make myself care. Barton had poked a stick into the middle of my anthill of frustration and come out with more than he could handle.

But then a voice rose above it all. Not necessarily with its volume… not even with the roughness of disuse, but with the sheer… power of the unexpected.

‘Stop it!’ Duo wailed and the entire damn room froze.

I forgot about Barton, my hands just letting him go as I turned to look toward the bed. The anger just bled out of me, and Heero finished the job of pulling me off our prone teammate. Later I would be humiliated. Later I would apologize. Later…

Duo was sitting up, alone in the middle of the bed, because Winner had abandoned him the minute that Heero had ripped me off Barton. His hands were clamped over his mouth and his eyes were wide and bordering on terrified. He was trembling so hard I could see it from where we stood. Heero and I seemed frozen, rooted to the floor, the echo of that beloved voice still ringing in our ears. Heero had not relinquished the grip he had on my arm and we just stood and stared like a couple of assholes.

Winner seemed the most unaffected and after seeing to his partner, started to return to Duo.

Duo stopped him with an up-flung hand and he was suddenly gesturing him away, frantically waving him completely out of the room. For a moment, Winner looked hurt, but then seemed to see something in Duo that made his face soften. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked gently and Duo, eyes squeezed shut, one hand still clapped to his mouth nodded vigorously.

‘All right,’ Winner soothed gently. ‘I… understand.’ Then, gathering Barton up from the floor, they both left. I spared them very little of my attention. I was too busy trying to figure out if the ‘go the hell away’ gesture included me.

Heero let go of me and made a tentative move toward the bed. Toward our… heart. I held my breath, waiting to see if he would be accepted there and could have wept when Duo stretched out the same hand that he had used to clear the room, in open entreaty. Heero fairly fell on him to gather him tenderly into his arms.

I hung back, uncertain if I was still welcome after my… pathetic display of childish temper, but Heero growled menacingly, ‘Get the hell over here.’ And I didn’t have to be prompted twice.

We bracketed him. Surrounded him. Embraced and engulfed him. Wrapped him up in that place between us that seemed to hold the soul of his security.

He tugged at us. Clutched at us. Clung and held on to us. Burrowed into what we offered as though his sanity depended on it.

And when he had himself hidden away in the tangle he had made of us… he began to weep.

Silent scalding tears at first, that seemed to be burning up from somewhere deep inside him. Boiling up out of his pain and grief, born of his frustration, confusion and… yes; fear. Eventually his breath began to hitch and finally he was being wracked with sobs that were devastating to hear… and a joy all at the same time. The blessed sound of his voice was utterly priceless… despite the sounds he was making. All that mattered was the fact that he was making those sounds.

We drew the tears from him with soft caresses and tender kisses, with gentle words of comfort. Until he was spent and exhausted and fell asleep with his hands still holding fast to us, making sure we stayed right where we were.

I felt… humbled. I had never in all the time I’d worked beside the God of Death, seen him break down. Had never seen him unable to dredge up one of those impish grins. Had sure as hell never seen him shed so much as a single tear. That he trusted us enough to let go of all his masks and barriers… was damn daunting. That he had somehow needed us to let himself give in to this release was… bittersweet, somehow. It did something to my gut that I can’t even begin to describe.

I met Heero’s eyes over the top of the cherished head and saw echoed there the same awe I felt. The same unsettling understanding that the three of us had started down a path that we suddenly realized had no way back. We were utterly committed. I don’t know that I would have had it any other way.

‘Ours,’ Heero whispered to me with a feral, protective gleam in his eye and I understood the overwhelming feelings that were churning around in him… churning around in the both of us.

‘Ours,’ I confirmed and I think we both knew a vow when we heard it. A promise that would bind us through the rest of our lives, though we hardly fathomed it then.

He stretched carefully across the few inches that separated us and kissed me, sealing the vow… making the promise. And I kissed him back.

Then we settled down to sleep, because it was an iron clad cinch that neither of us would do anything to disturb our Duo’s rest. He wanted us here. Felt safe and protected with us here. I wasn’t going anywhere.

In a few hours, when Duo woke, we would worry with medical treatment and missions, reports and orders. For now… more than one kind of barrier had come down and I, for one, was simply going to enjoy the feeling of being part of a greater whole.

End

 

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