AN: I've posted a few too many openings without follow-ups lately, but this is a first chapter that I felt sort of safe uploading because it's so expository and I've been working on this story for Halloween. I didn't finish nearly as much as I wanted to in time for the holiday, and I couldn't work any of the horror elements in yet, but I hope you enjoy anyway! It degenerates slowly, but ends in what I like to think of "classic" horror—bleeding walls and creepy happenings and slashers in the shadows and all. It was inspired in part by The Shining. Warnings for pseudo-science, violence, graphic 1x2 and 3x4 development, past 3x2, and GW boys on tenuous ground with each other (though in the end they're all buddy-buddy again). Thanks so much for your support!

Project: Paradise
By Jellybob

None of them could remember the toast. Absurdly, that's what did it for them. They'd been drinking to some smart, naughty rhyme Duo Maxwell had made up on the spot when the maître d' fired a round into the dining area, catching Heero Yuy's upraised cup of tea and the barest edge of Quatre Winner's cheek with the same bullet. Trowa Barton had Quatre pinned below him on the carpet in an instant. Duo hit the ground too, still groping for his service pistol despite the shard of porcelain embedded in his eye. And Heero swept a knife off someone's plate, hurled it, butter and all, and caught the gunman in the hollow of the throat with the dull end. It penetrated anyway. The man slipped to floor, gurgling up blood as he died in a patch of morning sunlight on Le Triomphe's opulent lozenge parquetry. And the boys—the men, Sally reminded herself grimly; she tended to forget that—were only upset because they'd forgotten the goddamn toast.

"It was a limerick or something," said Duo, looking very pissed off and Space Pirate in his medical eye patch. "Didn't it have to do with what we were eating, or—?"

"The tea service, I believe," said Heero.

Quatre wrinkled his nose delicately in disdain. "Oh, yes, that was dreadful. Whoever painted it should be shot. All those bathetic gymnocarpae—although I can't for the life of me think of any legitimate rhymes for 'gymnocarpae,' so maybe that's not helpful—"

"Are you kidding? There are tons!" Duo began ticking them off his fingers. "'I need a good lay,' 'Heero still doesn't know he's gay—'"

"'It takes attempted murder to see Wufei,'" Trowa offered, and the four of them laughed the creepy, not-quite-there laughs that they'd had for the last year and a half.

"What the fuck!" roared Chang Wufei. "What the fuck!"

And there he went. Sally shielded her face with her clipboard as Preventers' top agent finally snapped and heaved a full cart of medical equipment through the air, scattering swaged needles and hydrocodone tablets and bloodied cotton swabs across the room in a glorious clinic-style confetti. Wufei had collapsed to his knees at the scene before Une could assure him that the 'carnage' was mainly rooibos tea and strawberry jam. They'd been expecting Chang Wufei's breakdown. There was a betting pool and everything. It wasn't as heartless as it sounded—the money was already consolidated into check form, ready to be delivered to the best psychiatrist in the agency. Though it appeared now that sixty-four-hundred credits were barely going to scratch the surface of that debt.

"How can you joke about this?" Wufei shouted, still upending trays. "Maxwell, you lost an eye! The four of you were almost killed today—"

"Almost," Duo pointed out.

"—and you're worried about the fucking toast?"

Interesting how the guy pitching the tongue depressors was the sanest one of the lot. It seemed to put it into perspective for them, at least. "It was a very funny toast," Quatre said meekly—and winced away as Wufei whirled on him.

"I don't care if it was the fucking Carmina Burana of breakfasting discourse!" (They'd eventually quote that one around headquarters so copiously that O Fortuna became their annual office party theme.) "There was an attempt on your life today, Winner! The man was strapped with explosives! Do you understand that? You were lucky he only shot at you! If he'd hit his detonator instead, not only would the four of you be dead, so would everyone else in the establishment! If Yuy hadn't—"

"But I did," whispered Heero. "I threw the knife. I—I killed him."

His voice was so soft and abrupt that it carried in the noisy clinic. Everyone turned to stare at him. Wufei stopped throwing shit. Heero Yuy, who headed intel at HQ every day with the bland diligence of a WEI paper pusher, had turned sheet-white, the color gone from even his lips. His hands were trembling. He raised them palm up, imploring, as if they were filling steadily with blood that only he could see.

"I killed him," Heero said again.

"Heero," said Sally, finding her shaky voice. Four men made four distinct gestures to halt her, ranging in formality from Duo's quick throat slash to Trowa's crisply militaristic signal for 'freeze.'

"I haven't killed a man since the war," said Heero. "I don't even kill spiders."

"Heero." The Vicodin-addled joviality had evaporated from Duo's voice. "Listen to me: you saved hundreds of lives today. Wufei's right; the guy was a walking bomb. If I'd shot at him, it probably would've taken out the whole café."

Heero gulped in a deep, shuddering breath. "He didn't die instantly, Duo."

"Too bad," said Duo. "He deserved to."

"Deserved to? He deserved—"

And suddenly Heero was up on his feet. He must've palmed a scalpel sometime during Duo's procedure, because it appeared up against his own slender throat now, poised with a dangerous and expert pressure above his carotid artery. No one pulled so much as a pocketknife in response. Quatre, Trowa, and Wufei were up and backing away immediately, and Duo was off the exam table, both hands lifted in that terrified, universal gesture of holyfuckingshit-what-the-hell-do-you-think-you're-doing-buddy.

"Easy," said Duo, his voice wobbling. "Easy, Heero. Talk to me, baby."

"He was a maître d'," Heero said. He barked out a laugh. It was a horrible, sobbing sound, and Duo flinched, pausing in mid-step three feet from where Heero had inched himself against the far wall. "The worst thing on that man's record was a traffic ticket. He didn't deserve to die! Who's to say he wouldn't have come to his senses after he fired that first round? I robbed him of that chance. I did. I have killed hundreds, thousands of people in my lifetime, and I killed another today—thoughtlessly. Reflexively. I killed another innocent."

"He wasn't an innocent, and you know it," Duo protested. "He was guilty the moment he pulled that trigger! It didn't matter that he missed!"

"He didn't kill—"

"In his mind, Quatre was already dead. The only difference between you and him was aim!"

Heero closed his eyes, his breath escaping in short, hysterical bursts. His hand slipped a little. A dark trickle of blood slid down his neck and pooled in one collarbone. Quatre cried out. Trowa had to grab his wrist to keep him from going to him, and that—more than the scalpel itself, more than the horror in Chang Wufei's eyes—solidified it for Sally. That small, rare touch. Trowa Barton, infiltration lead at Preventers, never let anyone catch him initiating physical contact with his friends. Especially not with Quatre Winner.

Especially while he was dating Duo Maxwell.

"We are the same," said Heero. "All of us, and the assassin today. There is no difference."

"That's not what I meant," said Duo.

"We're not that noble, Duo! What separates us? Where does terrorism become heroism?"

Sally was speaking up before anyone could stop her, halt signals be damned: "Here, and now. In this time of peace. Heero, you killed to end a war. That coward was trying to start one."

"I don't know if it's worth it," said Heero.

He didn't mean peace. Never peace. The ongoing ceasefire between the colonies and earth was the only testament to who they had become as human beings, and they cradled their reconciliations of self with danger and purpose, like live hand grenades. They all had their causes now—Duo and Trowa's clean energy auto shop, Wufei's veteran support program—but they hadn't acclimated as well as Sally had hoped they would. They were stranger and more distant each year during their annual mental health checkups. Despite their professional triumphs, they were making no emotional progress at all. Were losing ground, even. Their recreational activities became increasingly perilous—skydiving one year, free wall climbing the next, then Duo managed to break three of his own bones and two of Quatre's when Sally ordered them to take a low-key fishing trip. They were at their happiest whilst reaffirming their lives through injury or potential injury. It wasn't healthy. They weren't healthy.

"Don't say that," Duo was saying. "Never say that, Heero—I can't take it. Not from you."

"Why? We're all thinking about it."

"Thinking about it," Wufei chimed in, his mouth a small, tense line. "Not verbalizing it, Yuy. This is no good. How long have you been feeling this way, and why haven't you talked to any of us?"

Heero screwed up his face and pressed his free hand across his eyes. "I'm not sure. I—I don't—"

"Heero, breathe," Duo snapped.

He was hyperventilating. He complied, or tried to, in short, trembling breaths. Sally did likewise. The pilots had never spoken to her about suicidal thoughts. They calmly denied possessing them when she asked them point blank. This—this was bad. "There are medications," she said, and it sounded pathetic even to her own ears. "I take many of them myself, and I only have a fraction of what the five of you have to work through. I can help you, Heero—I can help all of you—but you must be honest with me."

Now Trowa turned to her, speaking up for the first time since Heero had raised the scalpel. "Sally, you know how much we respect you, but you can't provide what we need."

"And what's that?" Sally asked.

Duo's voice was bitter. "Utopia. That's it, isn't it, Heero? We all want fuckin' paradise."

They turned to look at him now, all of them. Heero's grip loosened. His eyes were wide. Duo had deciphered his desperation the same way he read people at work, on the beat as a detective in the neighboring town's law enforcement bureau. It'd been a pretty public slap in the face to Preventers when he refused captaincy to be a flatfoot with East Marinville—a slap that still stung Sally to this day—but unlike them, Duo could list the lives he'd touched in the last year: Dale McCasland, the mechanic he'd lifted a car off of. Rupert Wells, who he had talked down from suicide. Carina Carter, the six-year-old kidnap victim he'd held for four hours after her abductor kicked her down a mine vent. Preventers was arms-length in its intentions, dealing with businesses, syndicates. Sally thought she preferred it that way until Duo showed up in the vids cradling that tiny little girl, damp-eyed, both of them filthy and shivering and locked protectively together.

"Being fifteen during the war was a bullshit tactic on the part of our mentors," said Duo into the silence. "They forgot to tell us that peace wasn't an easy fix. That we'd be fighting for it all our goddamn lives. And for all our training and world-weariness, we were still young enough to believe that someday we could just make all the monsters just—disappear."

Sally's vision blurred. Kids, damn it. They had been kids. And those same kids were the ones laughing off their traumas today after breakfast had ended with an attempt on their lives.

"Tell me what you're thinking right now, Heero," Duo said.

Heero dropped the scalpel. It clattered to the ground, and Duo kicked it under a cabinet with an almost-casual swipe of one foot. It alleviated none of the room's tension. Heero tucked himself into Duo's waiting arms and spoke against his neck, muffled. "I can't do it forever. I know that it's worth it. That the fighting is worth it, and that I should continue for as long as I'm capable. But it—it just—"

"That knowledge doesn't make it any easier to get up each morning," Trowa said.

Heero dipped his head in agreement.

"So what would make it better?" asked Duo, stroking his hair. "What can we do for you?"

"You can offer me utopia," said Heero. His voice was bitter.

It occurred to Quatre first. He blinked once, twice, then his aqua eyes widened and sought out Sally's from across the room. "Utopia," Quatre whispered. "I can give you that."

Duo turned to him, grimacing. "Quat, don't promise shit you can't—"

"I'm not. I wouldn't!" He turned to Sally for assistance.

And then it struck her too. Doctor J's only surviving brainchild, apart from a few incredibly un-ergonomic contributions to the science of artificial limbs. Howard had discovered the program's parameters encrypted in a pixel of what appeared to be a very primitive Wing's blueprints, and Sally had been a consultant since its inception. The project had needed revision, obviously. Compared to the need to stop Operation: Meteor, it was no surprise that it hadn't come to fruition. But life was different now. It'd taken many months of consideration, but Quatre eventually agreed that the Winner family—that civilization—was in a position to fund it. And fund it, he did: for three years now, he had donated billions of dollars to the self-contained bio-habitat attached to X18999. He was helping Howard build beauty. Build life. And now the territory needed test residents.

"Project: Paradise," Sally said.

Response was varied among the pilots, as it had always been. Wufei frowned deeply. Trowa and Heero kept their faces intentionally neutral, and Duo's one eye lit up with hope and excitement. "Howie told me they'd worked out most of the kinks, but I didn't know it was that close to being ready," he said. "He wants to start populating the place now? Really?"

"Well, only with a select few people who have the government clearance and the proper skill set," said Quatre.

"Which includes what? Gonads?"

Quatre couldn't fight a smile. "Survival instinct, good observation skills, scientific know-how, and, yes, the willingness to urinate behind trees. The plumbing is still a little erratic."

"Gonads," Duo translated. "Guess that leaves Wufei out."

Wufei was actually preoccupied enough to let Duo's teasing slide by without a rebuttal. "I didn't approve of Project: Paradise back then, and I don't approve of it now," he said. "It's a frivolous concern in times like these."

"Times like what?" asked Duo. "The war ended nine years ago."

"You lost an eye this morning," Heero reminded him softly, and Duo's smile slipped a notch.

"It's not frivolous," Quatre said firmly, covering the growing silence. "Colony beautification may operate as its tagline, but it's not its objective. An ecosystem teaches humans how to be humble. How to share space with other life. It transports humanity back to a time on earth when we weren't worried about our factories or trade routes failing because we could live off the land. We're not just talking apple trees and relief from mechanically-separated meat paste, here. I mean free oxygen. Water purification. Food production businesses thriving. We could end hunger in space, Wufei. There's nothing frivolous about that."

"Says you, with admitted eloquence," said Wufei. "But I guarantee Maxwell is thinking 'cute baby animals,' and I'm thinking that the money you're putting toward already self-sustaining space colonies would be better used improving their justice systems."

And instead of arguing on behalf of L2's starvation rate, as Sally expected, Duo snapped, "What the fuck do you have against baby animals?"

Trowa laughed out loud. It was a beautiful sound, and it lifted the growing pressure in the room. The men caught themselves, took deep breaths, and smiled at each other again, even Wufei, despite his obvious reluctance.

"What do you think about all of this, Heero?" asked Trowa.

For a long time, Heero was quiet. He'd finally pulled away from Duo. The blood was drying dark on his neck, making him look even paler. "As I understand it," he said at last, "these ecosystems begin as holographic images?"

"Yes, that's right," said Sally, "for gathering information. Take the image of a bird, for example. The computers are sensitive enough to pick up climates, predator proximities, electromagnetic fields—things like that—and tweak the species' preprogrammed codes to allow them to survive in the environment. After a week or two, tangent upon the lifeform's complexity, it births it from a biomimetic compound and releases the analog into the dome."

"Are these analogs edible?" asked Duo, wriggling his eyebrows.

"Well—yes, but—"

"I'm just kidding. Tro would never allow us to eat any animal he got to know personally," said Duo, giving his boyfriend the only sign of physical affection Sally had ever seen from him—a quick peck on the cheek. It made Quatre's eyes go soft with jealousy, but Heero, deep in thought, had thankfully missed the exchange.

"This just doesn't sound like a project Doctor J would be interested in," he said slowly. "It's too—idyllic."

"Right? Who knew the guy had a soft side?" said Duo.

"If it provides all it promises, I'm not going to question it," Quatre said—almost snapped. It made Sally wince. She'd been trying to get them in for a group session for ages, but they kept refusing to meet up for anything more serious than their traditional breakfast or beers. The poison between them was growing and none of them were acknowledging it.

"I'll submit your names," said Sally, "and perhaps you will consider using the time to work on some of the individual issues we've been discussing."

Duo's self-destruction and constant deflection. Wufei's tendencies toward avoidance and overworking. Trowa's submissive behavior, Quatre's uncharacteristic and mounting hostility—and, of course, the way they'd instantly drop all of these qualities or more to accommodate Heero, their heart, whose clinical depression was phasing him out of their reality entirely. For just a moment, Sally wasn't sure that even he could persuade them to go—then they held a silent conference with their eyes, the only movement a small shrug of Wufei's shoulders, and then she knew. It was their care for Heero that kept them from backing down. Self-improvement for Heero, they could do. Project: Paradise for Heero.

"So—when do we start packing?" asked Duo, and forced a grin.

In the two weeks it took Howard to get all the boys clearance to become Project: Paradise's first and only test residents, Duo Maxwell broke up with the handsome quiet one, got gut-wrenchingly heartsick over the handsome confused one, and rushed the little Winner kid into a vitriol-filled and premature relationship with his ex. Howard was pleased when Duo was the first to show up at the lab on X18999 on the morning of the move-in. It gave him time to slap him on the back and say, "Good job, ass pirate. You single-handedly turned a month-long vacation into a gay reality TV show pitch, with Chang as the fag hag."

"Thanks for the support, old man," said Duo morosely. He was wearing dark aviators and his dusty East Marinville Deputy jacket, service pistol gleaming in his belt holster. The missing eye added to his mystique in a backwater don't-fuck-with-me kinda way. He wore the disability with more style than anyone else could have, that was for sure. "No one else here yet?"

"Nope. That all you're bringing?"

"Ah, yeah." Duo gave his small suitcase a hoist. "Clothes, music, toothbrush, couple books I've been meaning to read—just the basics. No emotional baggage. This is supposed to be our fresh start."

Howard frowned. "For them, or for you?"

Duo hesitated for a long moment, then sighed. "Here's the truth: I'm not blameless. I violated the part of the Bro Code which states that you shouldn't initiate a fuck-buddy relationship with your best friend's childhood crush, regardless of the sexual tension between you too. I knew it was doomed from the start. I'm just trying to make things right now."

Howard sighed too. The kid was like a son to him, but damned if he wasn't the most cheerful little martyr in the world. "Duo, someday you gotta focus on making things right for yourself."

"Don't I know it," said Duo. Something glimmered in his eye. Then he broke into a grin and raised an arm. "Hey! Over here, Wufei!"

The other ex-pilots arrived in short order, looking young and unfamiliar in what passed as their casual clothes. Captain Chang was wearing formal black slacks and a blue button-up shirt. Agents Yuy and Barton were both in their Preventers hockey jerseys, the denim of their jeans stiff from disuse. Winner arrived last in an apricot cardigan and fitted brown trousers, struggling with more luggage than the other four of them combined. Duo got one good look at him and began pulling suitcases away. Howard chuckled. Took a certain type of guy to get Winner to squawk like that.

"Duo! Wait!"

"Nope," said Duo, yanking a briefcase from his arms. "Work, work, more work—and what's this? You hid a tablet under your toothpaste? Nice try!"

"I need this stuff! I'm responsible for sending biweekly updates to Howard and Dr. Po!" Winner protested.

"A sentence or two on Mondays and Thursdays," Howard clarified, when Duo glanced at him for confirmation.

"Geez, Howie. You couldn't have given that task to someone who wouldn't make it his life's calling?"

"Chang would've turned it into a commentary on our 'superfluous' expenses, Yuy would've given us a series of technical analyses, Barton would've gone on and on about animal care, and you would've blown it off completely," Howard said.

Four mouths opened in defense, and four mouths closed after a moment without argument. "Boy, do you know us," said Duo at last.

"It was in the job description," said Howard, opening a nearby locker. "Now, before we go down to the test dome: weapons inside."

The looks they gave him alone were enough to make him start wheezing with laughter. It was as if they'd just been asked to deposit their livers, which was telling, since none of them actually appeared armed. But Howard did know the boys—probably better than they knew themselves, for how fucked up they were these days—and he knew that they never left their apartments without packing heat. He was about to learn where Heero Yuy kept his guns. Honor of honors. Nine years of researching the camouflaging properties of spandex and Howard still hadn't figured that one out.

"No," said Captain Chang. "I refuse to go unarmed."

"Ditto," said Duo.

"It is simply not possible," agreed Yuy.

"You kids are going on vacation," Howard pointed out. "You don't need weapons for biking or swimming, do you?"

"Clearly, you've never seen us bike or swim," said Barton.

He had a point. There was that disastrous fishing trip a while back where Duo had managed to shoot Winner as the two of them "fell out of a boat." They were still close-lipped about how that one had gone down, but whatever, it was the principle of the thing. "Come on, now. You've agreed to leave your worries behind for one full month. You're going to be living in paradise. What use could you possibly have for whatever the hell it is you carry these days?"

"Survival," said Yuy.

"Horsefeathers. A few holographic chipmunks are hardly a threat."

"Utility," suggest Barton.

"I assure you, the dinnerware sets include the sharpest knives you'll need."

"Yeah, well, what if something goes wrong?" said Duo. "Say we get trapped down there or injured or whatever. There's only one way out. We'll need at least some form of weaponry to—to defend ourselves against—"

"Against what? Mosquitoes? Too much sunlight?" Howard was getting exasperated. "Maybe Sally's a little too polite to tell you this, but all of you use your weapons as crutches. You're so committed to this 'once a soldier, always a soldier' mindset that you've never figured out who you are behind the bulletproof vests. Never mind that you could still kill a guy with dental floss if you had to. Don't you ever get tired of being deadly all the time?"

The question was met with silence. Howard wondered for an instant if he'd spoken out of line. Something unknowable was shifting between their gazes now; the wordless communication of war comrades. Then Yuy looked up at him, uncertain, and Howard knew he had them if he gave it one last little push.

"We'll know right away if anything goes wrong," he said. "There is no chance of your lives being in danger. You'll have computer access 24/7 if you want to leave, or if the water's too cold, or if you run out of damn bread. We're not trying to protect the world from you, do you understand that? We're trying to protect you from the world. God knows you boys have earned thirty days of peace."

It did the trick. For a moment, no one moved, but then Yuy reached to the small of his back and deposited a pistol into the locker. It was a gorgeous Preventers-issue semi-automatic. Howard whistled.

"Oh, fine," said Duo, huffing, and everyone else followed suit.

Eighteen guns between the five of them. Six knives (three of them on Barton), five grenades, two throwing stars, a bottle of poison capsules, and one beautiful Chinese sword that Chang must've pulled out of his goddamn ass. Howard tried hard to hide how dumbfounded he was, but Duo was smirking as he slyly suggested opening a second locker to accommodate the larger rifles and things they'd brought in their suitcases. In the end, they filled four lockers, and Howard still wasn't convinced they'd given up all of their artillery. Yuy looked especially guilty. After wresting away the last of Winner's workload, they boarded the enormous elevator that took them to the bio-habitat.

It was a piece of engineering genius. Of course, tethering the test neighborhood to a colony by an oxygenated space elevator shaft hadn't been in J's original plans, but it was a good way to keep the environment under control without isolating it completely. Winner had made a few visits when it was in its initial construction phase, but the others were seeing it for the first time. They marveled quietly out the thick glass windows while the elevator made its slow descent. By the time it reached the dome, all five boys were silent with wonder.

"Welcome to Paradise," said Howard, when the doors swept open.

And it was.

The habitat could've been scooped directly out of a rural earthside town. At four square miles, it was large enough to host a populace of maybe a thousand people, and small bungalows with pastel paint jobs lined the freshly paved streets. The grocery store with its striped awnings was just visible to the east. The sound of gently running water trickled in from the west. Real sunlight flowed in through a holographically-rendered atmosphere, and as they stood motionless inside the elevator, a butterfly—old enough now to be actual—fluttered in and played across the cornflower blue of Chang's collar. The boys watched it, mesmerized. A green-veined white, one of the seventeen species programmed into Project: Paradise's parameters. Howard felt a soft swell of pride. They'd made this. Created it from the ground up. Nearly a decade ago all they were producing were war machines and widowers, but now they were making the promised lands.

"Howard," Agent Yuy breathed, forgetting in his awe to be formal. And that, above all else, was Howard's prize; the one thing he'd take away from this three year long venture if he had to choose: the sight of Heero Yuy, child soldier, with his eyes growing soft in serenity for the first time since birth.

It's why we do it, Howard thought. He sniffed once, loudly.

"Are you crying, old man?" Duo's voice shattered the silence. He sounded delighted.

"No, I'm not, you loudmouthed little runt!" Howard snapped, and all five boys laughed, even Barton and Yuy. Damn their united front routine. Weren't they supposed to be fighting or something now? Scowling, Howard pushed forward between them and out of the elevator.

"So this is your home for the next month," he announced, gesturing around without ceremony. "There're thirty or so finished houses on six blocks; you got your pick of 'em, just let each other know where you are in case there's an accident. We got the plumbing going so no need to worry about that. Grocery store's right over there, freezer fully stocked with a year's supply of food—and none of that military health food crap you kids like to eat. Real food. Chicken, steak, ribs, fresh fruit and veggies, soups, pies, ice cream—when's the last time any of you had ice cream? Sally says it's your mission to gain a collective twenty pounds while you're here; you're all too skinny. Weigh in's on the way out."

And suddenly they were uncertain again. Howard paused in front of the bungalows, resisting the urge to sigh.

"Don't look so worried, now. There are plenty of ways to stay fit here. The road that goes around the perimeter of town is about three and a half miles and paved for jogging. Drinking water gets sent through a filtration unit, so the swimming's good anywhere you can dip your feet in—long as you don't accidentally shoot each other in the process, that is."

Both Duo and Winner managed to keep their faces diplomatically neutral, but Barton spoke up calmly in their defense: "Didn't you take our weapons?"

"So you insist," said Howard, looking at them pointedly. Yuy avoided his gaze.

They stood there in silence for a long time. So long that a passing dragonfly alighted on Duo's shoulder. Duo waved it away with just the faintest tremble in his hand, indiscernible to anyone who didn't look upon the kid as the son they'd never had. Howard patted Duo's arm with one hand and the next closet boy's elbow with the other—Chang's. Chang startled at the touch, then relaxed into it all at once, like a child receiving a rare bedtime kiss. A captain in Preventers so starved for parental love that he'd take what he could get from an old coot like Howard. It made something in his chest ache. What had they done to these boys? And was it something that they could undo in thirty days?

"You're going to be all right, you know," said Howard at last. "All of you. Things may be shit now, but they're not going to be that way forever. This'll be good for you. It'll—" what was it Duo had said earlier? "It'll make things right."

And maybe it would. Chang was committing to time with his friends again, finally. Winner and Barton were standing close together, awkward and aware of each other, of all they had between them. And Yuy looked ready to open his heart up again. To open it to Duo, maybe, from the strange sideways glances he gave Duo whenever the kid's hand brushed his own. Well, now they had a month to work it out. Howard moved backwards into the elevator, swallowing past the emotion that was rising again in his throat.

"See you boys in thirty," he said, and gave them a jaunty little wave.

And wondered, watching them through the closing doors, what was making his hands so cold with dread.

End of part one

It all begins next chapter, slowly but surely. I'm excited. Thank you for reading!