Warnings: Angst, violence, language, sex
Pairings: If you need to know, please PM me and I will be happy to tell you.
Chapter Nine
Trowa remembered the way he had felt when Une had called him into her office and informed him of Heero's death.
He had forgotten how to breathe, had staggered backwards as though he had been shot, and only Wufei's fingers digging into his shoulder, clawing at him, dragging him back to reality, had kept him from falling down.
Duo had been the one to tell him about Catharine's death. Duo had been walking past the intel bay he claimed, snooping more likely, looking for a juicy case he could get himself assigned to that didn't involve babysitting duty, and he had heard the call come in, the reports of the riots on L 3458. Duo had told him, had held him while Trowa struggled to piece together the words, the idea - Catharine. Dead.
Trowa had forgotten about that, had blocked out almost everything that had happened that week for the longest time - had chosen not to remember Duo's comfort or Duo's presence at the bar that night and the two nights after as Trowa drank himself into a blackout night after night. He had chosen not to remember the way Duo stood on one side of him during the funeral and Heero, still Trowa's lover then, on his other.
And then Heero had left, only two weeks later he and Duo had left on a mission and when they came back, two months later, Trowa knew something had changed. Heero lingered at the office every night, wandered to Duo's cubicle on his breaks to talk and started sparring with Duo in the gym, an activity they had avoided for at least three years, ever since Heero pulled on Duo's braid and Duo broke his wrist.
It wasn't until a month after that, however, that Trowa had known what precisely had changed, had seen Duo run his hand down the side of Heero's face in the locker room and watched Heero capture his hand and kiss it.
Trowa had packed his things that night and moved back on base. He had ignored Heero when he tried to talk to him about it, had punched Duo in the throat when he tried to talk to him about it and happily taken the two week leave of absence Une slapped him with for it.
Duo and Heero had been assigned to another mission together after that, a mission that Heero had never come back from. A mission that had ended with Duo putting a bullet through his skull.
