Crossroads

A/U

Various pairings that will change along the way.

**let me know what you think so I know if I should continue this story**

Duo Maxwell fumbled with the picks in his hand. The door in front of him was crafted, but he was sure that he could break through the spell without much more of a problem. With one final sigil, the lock clicked and the door drifted open just a crack.

Inside was dark, too dark to see anything more than a foot in front of his face. He pulled out a small penlight from his shirt pocket, pushed the on button and put it between his teeth so that he could put the ring of sigils into his pocket. Duo looked behind him for good measure to make sure that nobody nor nothing was creeping up behind him. It would not do for him to get caught now.

Without a sound, he crossed the threshold and held his breath. He cursed out loud as a sharp red line went from his feet to the center of the room. It sizzled through the air and burned through the wooden floor. It reached the center of the room and split into four different directions. He knew what it would draw, he knew that he should not have stood there to watch it complete its run.

A pentagram complete with an outer circle glowed brightly in the gloom. He had figured that he had caught all of the traps before the doorway. Obviously not. Now it would play out and warn anybody nearby that he had entered the house. It would capture his psychic scent and trap it within the circle. Duo could turn and run, but they would eventually find him and wonder what the hell he was doing there. If the occupants didn't, then the police sure would. Neither party would care that he was on the job.

With a sigh, he sat on the front stoop, with the door open, and the pentagram glowing brightly behind him. Duo decided now was as good of a time as any to smoke a cigarette. He turned off his little penlight and traded it for the pack of cigarettes in the same pocket. He was half way through the first one when a car came screeching to a halt on the curb directly in front of the house. A woman jumped out of the car and ran up to the doorway.

"It would have to be you," she snarled into his face. She was not much taller standing up than he was sitting down, but she still somehow managed to sneer down her nose at him. "What do you think you were doing? And who taught you how to break through the shields?"

Duo took a last pull on the butt and through the remainder into the dew-wet grass off to the side. He looked over her from top to bottom and came to the conclusion that she was still as fit as ever in her small black dress. Dorothy would could never disappoint him in that department at least. There were plenty of other things that they had disappointed each other in the past with.

"Would it help to tell you that I am on assignment?" he asked with a drawn out drawl. He could see that she was pissed, but hopefully would not turn his rear end into grass.

"Says you. Who sent you out here?" she asked as she walked past him. The pentagram was a sort of alarm that many witches and warlocks used to secure their homes and their belongings. Whoever triggers it, would leave behind a stench particular to that specific person. The witch would then use a spell of some sort or another to track the said person down without much fuss on their end. Duo would not be able to cover his tracks in any magical way possible. He was born a null - without a single hint of magic. His father despised him because of it and his mother wasn't there to give her opinion on the matter.

"Chang sent me out," Duo told her. It was almost the whole truth, but if Chang found out that he had come out on this night instead of during the day, he would be furious. Dorothy probably new it too.

"Get the hell off my front porch before I fry your ass. You might as well come inside for the time being." Dorothy flipped a switch just inside the door and then swiped her hand through the red glow where the top point of the pentagram met the outer circle and just like that, it was gone. Duo shut the door behind himself as he stepped inside.

The house was tastefully done in muted tones. The living room was of a good size with a small chandelier that gave the room ambient light. Expensive pictures were spaced apart on the wall across from the front door. It was an open floor plan, so he could see the entire kitchen from where he stood.

"Well, come on now. You can't tell me that you didn't plan on coming on through here and snooping around. Tell me, what all did Chang send you out here for?" She was pulling out the makings for coffee, glancing over her shoulder to make sure that Duo would follow her into the kitchen.

"I was told to just make it inside," he replied, walking over to the small kitchen nook that sat in the far corner of the tiled kitchen. "There isn't much else. Get in and get out."

"Not much of an initiation rite, now is it?"

"Well, I have to start somewhere, and it was better to do it to somebody that we both knew rather than a witch that would fry me on site, no matter what the explanation was for me being there."

"I still don't understand why the city wants a null." She struck a nerve here as she watched Duo scowl. "Ah, I take it that they really don't? How does that work?"

"I'm supposed to be consulting," he practically growled in answer. It wasn't his fault that he couldn't tell one spell from another. Now, on one hand he could disarm most low level alarm systems and follow any trail that he could investigate the good old fashioned way. It happened about twenty-five years ago. Witches and warlocks came out of the so-called closet and they were mostly greeted with open arms except for a select few bad apples that are in every bunch in society.

"Talk about insulting," Dorothy stated. The coffee chirped, announcing that it was ready. She grabbed two mugs, the cream from the refridgerator, and the sugar from the cupboard. She could do him justice by remembering how he wanted his coffee, they both had drunk enough of it together in the past.

Dorothy was part of an investigative unit that was a branch of the local police station. She worked on a state level rather than the local city level, but was able to still stay close to home most of the time. She had already been hired when they found out she was a witch and was quickly promoted within the ranks.

"Insulting... Yeah, you could say that. But, what do you expect with so many witches still crawling out of the wood work as they reach their offering age? No offense to you, but you guys have us beat in most ways. Us puny natural humans have to scrape by these days."

"Natural humans? What are we then, Duo? Something unnatural, not real? We damn well are and you know it! How dare you try to call us anything else?" This is, and always had been, a point of contention between the two of them. Back when they first had gotten together he hadn't known that she was a witch, but when it came out it just made a bad situation worse.

"Hell Dorothy, I don't want to fight with you like this. I thought we agreed to disagree on this subject and had moved on." Duo really did not want to spend the rest of the night fighting like they used to. "I failed the assignment. I need to get back to the office and report to Chang." Dorothy still looked like she wanted to argue, but there was no use. They were too different from each other and that had been what caused them separating in the past.

"It is not like you failed miserably. I put the trigger for that alarm in a rather nasty place, so you would not be the only one to have not found it. Don't take it too hard." She was trying to reassure him, and he wasn't sure that it was going to work. If he could not do simple tasks such as getting through the front door of a rather low-level witch, then he would not be doing much consulting with the police in the coming months.

"How old are you now, Dorothy?" he asked her while carefully watching her expression.

"By humans or witches?"

"Both," he told her.

"By human years, I am 130 years old. For a witch, I've just turned twenty-six," she answered quietly, looking into her coffee as if it would tell her his next question.

"I'm twenty-two, Dorothy." She nodded her head. "You should have told me at the beginning." With that being said, he stood up and poured the remaining coffee into the sink. "I will show myself out. Thank you for the coffee." He didn't glance back to where she was sitting, so he did not see the pained look on her face. At the door, he stopped for a moment. He looked around the door-jam and the door knob. There it was, etched into the knob. He would know better if there was a next time. He opened the door, shut it quietly, and walked out into the night.

The half moon showed through the wispy clouds. The scent of rain was heavy in the air and he hoped that it would wait until he got home so he wouldn't get wet. It was only a couple of blocks to the bus stop, but he really did not want to be wet before the night was over. The night was quiet, a few bugs chirping and clicking along the way. He was almost there when a car pulled up beside him.

He glanced over and saw that it was Chang's little Fiat two seater. "Go ahead and get in," Chang, or rather Wufei Chang, called out to him. When the car came to a full stop, Duo climbed in after making sure he was not going to track anything into the neat little car.

"Why are you here, Chang?" He had a sinking feeling that Dorothy had called him, or that he was already in the area.

"Dorothy called." Duo nodded his head. "I thought I told you to be trying your little stunts during the day?" Chang practically yelled at him. He was looking at Duo and barely had enough time to stop for a stop sign. Duo slouched down further into his seat and shrugged his shoulders in answer.

"You are so damn lucky that it was just Dorothy. I hope she layed into you so I don't have to spend hours trying to drill it into your head that not all witches will be as accommodating."

"Will you just let me out already? It's not like I've had to walk this far to get home before." Duo was angry and it always seemed like he was in this state of mind. Chang had gone to bat for him at the police station. It was the only way that he had any chance at all of getting a job there. He didn't want to be working at some fast-food joint or general retail. This was, as many people would call it, a chance of a life time, and he was busy screwing it up as usual.

"No, I'm not going to let you out here. I drove all the way out here to get you. I'm not going to make you walk just because you have pissed me off." They had known each other for years, practically growing up next door to each other. Chang was extremely young for a witch. That did not keep him slowed down for very long within the ranks of the police. Chang knew that Duo had high potential, even thought he was not a witch. Duo was a damn good investigator, Chang just had to convince others of that fact.

"I just don't want to be yelled at again for screwing up," Duo told him, glaring out the window at the lights that they passed by.

"Dorothy told me where she put the trigger. If I didn't have a knack for sensing magic, I would have missed it, too."

"So, you're telling me that because I'm merely a human, that I suck at the job."

"Duo! You know that is not what I said," Chang said, exasperated with his friend's behavior.

"Oh shove off of it, Chang. I don't know what you want me to say or how to feel. It seems that everywhere I turn, you witches and warlocks have taken over everything and normal humans are just inferior." Another stop sign was coming up, and they were a lot closer to his apartment. When Chang stopped, Duo undid his seat belt and jumped out of the car.

"Duo, get back here!"

"Chang, go home. Have some sex with whoever is at your house this week and leave me alone for the time being." Duo crammed his hands into his pants pockets and started down the sidewalk at a brisk pace. He heard Chang take off, burning rubber, and basically ignored it all.