Disclaimer: I own nothin'

Pairings: 1x2x1

Warnings: implied m/m sexual relations, death fic that isn't a death fic (bear with me peeps) mission related violence and gore, angst, language, eventual sap

A/N: Please suspend belief for this scenario… I am not going to explain "why" Duo is repeating his day – let's just say karma's kicking his ass for all that mass murdering, okay?! Inspired by the song Far too Young to Die by Panic! At the Disco.

This was the last Gundam Wing multipart I completed and it's been sat on my hard drive for a long time so I figured as I'm probably not going to write another multipart in this fandom apart from some collabs, I might as well post it! (though never say never...)

Prologue

Too Young to Die

It was the fourth time I watched Heero die that I realised that my day was well and truly fucked. I'd seen him blown to pieces, shot in the femoral artery, caught in the debris of a building falling on him and then knocked over by a fleeing Jeep. It was four times I'd held him in my arms, four times I'd tried to stop the damn bleeding, four times he'd pinned me with a blank eyed stare and I knew I was losing him. Four times I pleaded for him not to die – moved his hair from his eyes, kissed his temple, told him he was an asshole and he wasn't going to die on me. Four times I'd woken up in the same damn military bunk in the same old Alliance base in the same Middle Eastern country.

In each of these times, I'd been too slow, too dumb, too stupid, my reaction half a second off. Like when the kid blew himself up, when Heero hesitated and didn't shoot, he'd been too close in the blast radius and I was shouting at him, having seen the bomb moments before he did from my angle and then I saw the devastation. The kid was nothing more than red mist and Heero was… not good. I was dragging him away from the damage, blood trailing across the sand staining it red and his leg was torn to shit. The other was not much better.

Only Heero could still be alive as I was calling in "man down" and trying to create a tourniquet but then he was murmuring stop and my bloody hands stilled.

"Fuck you," I shot back at him. "I am not losing you, asshole"

I would try. Goddamn it, I would try. We were nineteen. Too fucking young for this to be it – for Heero to be bleeding out, for me to be holding him, for my lips to brush across his one last time but I'd regretted the last words he'd heard me say were damn swearing. As then, he faded, even the Perfect Soldier unable to withstand the intense blood loss and there was a retreat and me carrying his body back. There was me calling the guys in a haze. There was a sound on the other end of the hazy vidphone line that sounded in so much fucking pain. There was me being given a sedative as I became inconsolable. There was me not being given enough for me to calm the fuck down and being restrained and pumped with more drugs. There was me, falling into oblivion, remembering only hours before I'd snuck into his room and I imagined his fingers still on my skin. His mouth on my throat. His eyes looking into mine. And it was black.

Then I woke up in the bunk. For the second time. The time he got shot and I was staunching the bleeding with parts of my shirt, ripped to shit in my impatience, and he was going into shock.

"Stop," he told me again, the words soft from his lips as he knew he was done for – I was in denial that time – I was in denial every time as Heero was Heero. Not supposed to die. Always so goddamn perfect.

"No, I'm not watching you die, goddamn it," I ground out through gritted teeth.

"Duo," he said, low, slow, the syllables drawn out, and I felt my heart clench again as his head lolled and my rudimentary medical care did no fucking good.

His breathing stopped. His body went limp. I was covered in his blood. I held him close that second time, kissed his cooling skin and that time his body was taken from my arms, me fighting to keep hold of him as he was mine and I was in the back of the Jeep before I fucking knew – back at the base, dead eyed and blank.

The second time I figured I'd probably dreamt the first thing as I slammed my fists into a mirror in a bathroom and was taken to the medical bay – put on suicide watch, drugged and slept without dreams. The third time I started to figure that something was not okay.

The explosions rippled and the building collapsed. Blood poured from a head wound. I tried. I damn pleaded. Called in "man down". He told me to stop again. Whispered my name. Head in my lap, I moved his heavy bangs to the side, and I felt his chest heave and his breathing laboured.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"'Ro…" my voice cracked and faltered as his chest stopped moving, my head dropping to my chest and I held him like that for what seemed like hours – in the debris of a crumbling building, holding him and my own chest constricting, my own breathing fucked, and I was found there – them letting me sit with his body on the journey back, my hand holding his.

I refused to leave his bodies side – the medical team for some reason letting me as I sat all night with him, as I talked to him. Told him those things we never got to do. And I fell asleep there, calm, my fingers in touching distance.

The fourth time the Jeep sped to hit me and he pushed me outta the way. The collision was hard and I told him he was the asshole for saving me as we repeated the previous days dialogue – his remaining unchanged, mine altered as he coughed blood and I wiped it away. I knew the bleeding was internal this time, that nothing I could do would change that but I had to do something – got out my knife and was told to stop, again, heard my name from his bloody lips, again, and he damn apologised, again.

"I should've been better…"

"No, Heero," I whispered, knowing he was thinking about his damn training and that driving need to be better, to be stronger, to be the damn hero and I felt myself shake, grief and knowing that this was happening fucking again making something like a choked back sob come outta my mouth.

The fourth time he died, the fourth time I watched him stop breathing, I felt too fucking much that I entirely shut down – oh, hell, I felt the devastation of his corpse, of the vidcall to the guys, of the memory of him as he had been the last night we had together. They offered me the sedatives and I refused, seeking comfort in a bottle of cheap booze and I snuck into the room Heero had used, breathed in the scent of him from his t-shirt and sat on his bed and remembered him as I wanted to – hot mouth, deep eyes and strong hands – rather than as the bloody damaged body. I started to fall asleep on his bed, the burn and headiness of bad alcohol making me talk to my damn self as I succumbed to the inevitable shit – that when I woke up, I'd be in my bunk and Heero would be alive again only for him to die.

"Tomorrow it ain't gonna happen," I said, talking to the four blank walls, "tomorrow I'm gonna save your ass."

I dropped the bottle to the floor and slid into the thin blankets that smelt of him and murmured into his pillows.

"'Cause I love you, asshole."