Title: Green With It

Pairings: 1x2, mentioned 3x4

Warnings: a bit dark, language, possibly OOC Heero towards the end

Disclaimer: Don't own it. Could have, should have, would have, if only I hadn't been born me.

Note: This was my entry to the Moments of Rapture 07 contest, but I did it in a bit of a hurry and there were a million typos and some of the grammar was appalling, so I cleaned it up a bit and chopped it into three bits. The main point of this is some feedback, because it was my first ever attempt at a GW fic and I want to know if I did anything right.

"Maxwell! Maxwell, why didn't the third charge blow?"

"I don't fucking know!" I scream down my radio, trying desperately to exit the compound before the second charge, that did blow, brings the whole thing down on my head. "Maybe the fact that I was about to get my head shot off distracted me?"

"I don't have time for your excuses, Maxwell! You messed up your execution, now we've got the whole damn security force bearing down on us!"

"Well, what do you want me to do?" I retort, a plan already forming in my head. "Go back and do it right?"

"No!" comes the reply, distorted by static and gunfire but still recognizable as my lover. "But we need a distraction out here. Just do something!"

I hate my partner sometimes. Really, I do. He constantly requires me to take whatever plan I have formed in my head, smash it into tiny pieces and put them all back together in a different order. Unfortunately, he's usually right, too. Whatever he comes up with will most probably be more agreeable with Preventer regulations than my bodged, seat-of-your-pants method. But, then again, that's just Heero. It's in his genes.

"Johnson's down!"

Shit, agents are starting to drop like flies. Things must be bad down there, meaning I should really get my ass moving. Even Heero ain't made of gundanium. In fact, he's more like Humpty Dumpty; every so often, he needs someone to pick him up and stick him back together again and this King's Man will do that any day of the week.

I get to the stairwell, look down and, lo and behold, I see a load of soldiers running up to greet me. Motherfuckers. I suppose my little stunt alerted them to my presence, but at least they're stupid enough not to have looked up and seen me. The only way is up, but I'll have to be fast, or they'll corner me on the roof like last time and I really don't want a repeat of last week on my hands.

The door to the roof is unlocked, not that it would have posed much of a challenge if it had been, and I can finally see what's going on below. The car park is littered with agents, bad-guys, dead, injured and still-alive-and-kicking. I catch sight of Heero straight away, crouched behind a van, but I don't try and attract his attention. If this were the good old days, I would just lob a grenade into the middle of the enemy and wait for the body parts to fall to the ground, but my superior wouldn't be happy with that. No, she'd probably scalp me and wear it as a victory wig, and after last week's fluff-up... Say hello to night shifts for the next millennium.

"Winters' down!"

Fuck, it looks bad down there. At last count, there were four dead agents and a couple of injured, but that chart's rackin' up tallies every second that goes by. I'm only lightly armoured, just a flak vest, because clanky armour doesn't do much good for stealth, so it's not in my best interests to get down there myself. They'd spot me and shoot me dead before I reached the bottom of the ladder. I'm also not heavily armed enough to hold up a good sniper position up here. I don't particularly want to stay on this roof for much longer either, since those goons from downstairs are eventually going to realise I've flown the coop. It's time for one of those snap decisions that I'm famous for. Hopefully, it'll be remembered as the 'Duo saved our lives' kind, instead of 'Fuck, Duo, you just went and killed us all'. It'll alert every soldier in the surrounding area that I'm here, but hell, I always liked a grand entrance.

I chuck a smoke grenade into the middle of the bad-guys on the ground and wait for it to activate before pulling the pins on two flashbangs, one of which I throw down the stairwell behind me, which is singing the sound of boots on stairs, and the other into the smoke. When it blows, it looks like a cloud with a lightning storm inside it, and I can tell from the yells that the uglies inside are both blinded and disorientated. Even better, backup has finally arrived on the scene and I can see Wufei, leading the charge. Good old Wuffers, even if he is late.

Unfortunately, since I'm too busy admiring Wufei's shiny new helmet and wondering where I can get one, I fail to realise that one of the stairwell soldiers might have had the sense to put his hands over his eyes, and therefore am not prepared when he clubs me over the head with the butt of his rifle.

"Duo Maxwell, what on earth possessed you?"

Okay, so maybe I didn't kill them all in a hideous, paperwork-inducing bloodbath, but my plan wasn't exactly of Heero standard, either. It caused a lot of confusion for the backup squadlings, which Wuffles has already given me an earful for, and I left myself open to an attack from behind – thus explaining why I'm sporting a hat o' nine stitches on my head. And I got an earful from Heero for that, too. Bless him, sitting through Medical with me and lecturing me the whole way through. It's just his way of saying 'I love you, you stupid, fucking idiot'.

So, now I'm in Une's office, practically strapped to my chair with that look she's giving me, and I'm not alone. Heero's here with me, so I know that this meeting isn't just about me. No matter how much Heero loves me, Une would still never let him sit in on a confidential debriefing.

"Couldn't you have waited for backup to arrive? They were just around the corner, you must have seen them."

"Uh, nope," I reply, flashing what I hope is a disarming smile at her. "Too wrapped up in being a show-off?"

"Clearly." Her tone is droll for the moment, but I sense things will turn frosty soon enough. "But this meeting isn't about your unorthodox wrap-up. It's about the outcome as a whole."

Bingo.

"Seven agents are dead as a result of that mission and four are too seriously injured to work in the field again, not including another five in the hospital right now. You two were in charge and are responsible for those fatalities. I'm afraid that, since this is the latest in a string of poor exercises, action must be taken."

Heero is holding his breath next to me and I realise I am too. I let it out in a whoosh that sounds too loud.

"After the incident last week, I feared something like this would happen but gave you the benefit of the doubt. Now I can only see one sensible course of action. I have come to the conclusion that you are not working together as well as you used to. I don't know what it is, but it is clear you are not achieving the results I have come to expect from you."

"...No..." My whispered protest is either too quiet or she pretends not to hear me. I know that it is probably the latter.

"I have decided to separate you indefinitely. You will be assigned new partners tomorrow, but I warn you, if this poor record continues, it will lead to suspension, demotion and possible discharge from the Preventers. Do I make myself clear?"

I hear Heero say, in this horrible robotic voice, "Perfectly clear," before he moves for the door, though I don't remember Une dismissing us. He holds it open for me, but I'm still transfixed to my chair. Une decides for me.

"You may go, Yuy," she says in that no-nonsense tone of hers. "You're needed in Forensics and I want to have a word with Maxwell."

If I were Heero, I would hesitate and perhaps even make a bit of a scene as to why I was being told, none too subtly, to go away, but instead I'm frozen like a ready-meal and Heero is still the regulation-fearing ironing board he always has been. He closes the door with a quiet 'click', whereas I would have slammed it.

"Duo?"

I am startled out of my reverie by her use of my first name. She's only done that once before - it followed a painful incident and preceded an agonising one.

"Duo, is everything all right?"

Again with the name. What is with you, Une? Isn't it enough that you're separating me from my lover and long-time partner of four years because you don't think we're working together as well as we used to? Do you have to try and dredge it all up again in a painful reliving of the past, made even more so by the fact that you're a stern woman not much older than me and I'm a guy that likes talking about his most hidden feelings about as much as getting a root canal without anaesthetic? Don't you remember how hard it was last time? Or have you conveniently forgotten?

It's so tempting to lie. To just say 'Yes, everything's fine', but I don't do that. Run, hide, never lie and all that jazz. So I try to sidestep her question and hope she doesn't notice, though I know she will.

"I don't understand."

Utter truth. I can't say I have no idea where she's coming from, 'cause that would be another lie, but I still don't understand why.

"I have to, Duo."

There you go. There's Une, right there. Anyone else, I can guarantee you, would have asked, 'Understand what?'. Une doesn't do that, she's too clever. She knows full well I just danced a pretty jig around her too-close-to-home question, and yet also knows, instantly, exactly what I'm talking about. That's why she's such a powerful woman; nothing fazes her.

"But why?" I'm desperate and we can both hear it in my voice. It's pathetic, really. "Heero and I have worked together for years, why split us now?"

"Have you not been listening?" I look up from where I'm been examining my shoelaces. She's got that voice on – the one that promises a good bollocking. "You are not the same. It's plain to see, Duo! You always used to be this incredible team and now you're not! Something happened to change that and either you figure what that is or you will not work with Heero ever again. You are too much of a danger to your co-workers."

I am dismissed from the meeting soon after, because I am unresponsive after that last statement. I don't go and see Heero in Forensics like I usually would. I get a lift home with Wufei because I know he won't pick my brain apart like Quatre would and I fill the car ride with inane chatter about his new helmet and a billboard about Bosch washing machines. I take the elevator instead of the stairs and stumble into the apartment, remembering feed the fish and I stare at them for long minutes.

A danger to my co-workers. I have killed people, sure. Two wars and a career trying to keep a planet from blowing itself up don't exactly leave my hands clean of blood, but having my partner taken away and threatened with discharge for being responsible for a crap mission record that killed dozens?

Yeah, dozens. Things haven't been peachy for a while now, and the numbers are starting to pile up along with the bodies. Really, it's no wonder Une did what she did. If I were my superior, I would be sending me back to basic training. The only thing stopping me from dropping ranks like a stone in a bathtub is my status as a Gundam Pilot, and even that doesn't grant me automatic safety. There are plenty of Pilot Haters out there, even in my own organisation. My own corridor, even. Lots of Preventers are ex-Oz officers and most of them find it embarrassing that they lost so many troops to teenagers in the wars.

There were a blissful couple of weeks when we first started and no one knew who we were. We were just some high-achieving kids transferred in by The Higher Powers That Be. There was some initial friction – my hair wasn't regulation length, we were immediately placed in higher ranking positions, we were sixteen and we knew more and got better results than people double our age. Then someone with an interest in Gundam Pilots put two and two together, trawled up the few, blurred CCTV photos of us there were in the world and spread the word. I had never before, and have never since, experienced so many people go from friendly to disgusted at the sight of me. I think they find it offensive when they see how short we are. Thankfully, back then, me and Heero only did two-men missions. We didn't have teams to suffer with. Or kill.

That whole 'world peace' thing didn't work out, either. Total disarmament? You've got to be joking. I'm not the only one who doesn't feel safe without a gun in the bedside cabinet and a knife under my pillow. Yeah, the borders are starting to creep up again; we couldn't even make three years without trying to kill each other. That's why I'm in the Preventers, trying to 'prevent' Italy from deciding that it can govern itself very well, thank you very much, and 'preventing' a bunch of Gobian warlords from wiping each other out. The island nations went first. Tahiti is now the most heavily fortified island in the world and, thanks to it being in the middle of fucking nowhere and the rest of French Polynesia hopping on the bandwagon, we can't do a thing about it.

I don't blame them, no siree. Dissolving the borders did nothing good for the economy, that's for sure. Some people are still stinkin' rich and others are still dirt poor. It's just that half of the dirt poor ones are cluttering up space and the others are still stuck in Africa. That's a messed up continent, Africa. I swear, if it merged itself into one huge super-country, nothing could touch it. Bits of Europe got the idea instead and formed the largest Socialist nation there has ever been. Northern Ireland resumed its segregation of Protestant and Catholic, and you still don't want to walk around without a bulletproof vest in the Middle East. You can't take down the fences and expect Israel to make up with itself, that's just stupid.

But Relena's still trying to make things work, bless her, and her loyal band of Preventers, that would much rather go home for a night of uninterrupted sleep than track a wayward minister through the back streets of Cairo, are there to help her achieve that goal. Honestly, I haven't had a holiday in years and, since the Shanghai Drugs Outburst, I haven't had an entire weekend to myself either. It's enough to drive a gun-toting teenage maniac to tears, only this time I have to fill out a bucket load of paperwork every time I shoot someone.

Yup, that's what I'll be doing on Monday morning. Filling out reams of paperwork dealing with today, yesterday, last week and, of course, my new partner. Not looking forward to that. I haven't worked without Heero since I gatecrashed this joint back in AC 196, a beat-up kid with a whole load of issues, no money and only a vague idea about where I lived. I did try other stuff at first, don't get me wrong. That scrap yard thing was so boring I could have died under an aviation engine and it wouldn't have made the place less interesting. Plus, Hilde suddenly got all touchy-feely and that got me out of there quicker than if she told me there was a skunk in our bathroom. My résumé wasn't exactly encouraging – 'occupation: part-time terrorist, past two years spent intermittently blowing up and saving the world' – so no one was in a particular rush to recruit me. Apart from the Preventers. Apparently, Heero's not that easy to work with. I've never seen eye to eye with the kind of people who think that, but it was clear he was going through partners quicker than supermarket bread. Then, I bounced into the scene and everything was hunky-dory again. We clicked just like that; we already knew exactly how the other worked and previous experience told us our combination was a deadly one. The Perfect Soldier and Shinigami. The perfect team. The best of the best.

So what went wrong? Why are Heero and I suddenly unable to keep the body count low, let alone get decent results?

During this lengthy inner monologue, the fish have eaten my liberal sprinkling of dead skin cells, or whatever fish-food actually is, and are pressed against the glass in a bid for more food. Stupid fish. I go to bed but lie awake for a long time. Heero doesn't come home before I fall asleep and I worry that he's avoiding me.

End Part One

Again, PLEASE can I have some feedback? Particularly: does the starting sequence make sense? And is the end too wordy? And can the story carry 1st person, present tense Duo?

Danke