Disclaimer: Gundam Wing isn't mine. Duh.

Warning: I don't actually know dick-all about science. Creative liberties have most certainly been taken.

"Choices are the hinges of destiny." - Pythagoras

Summary: In a world where everything has gone horribly wrong, Duo busies himself with a last-ditch effort to escape – and perhaps prevent. But Duo's last-ditch effort pulls him to a different dimension, and he finds that everything he knew no longer exists.


The Hinge of Destiny

Chapter 9

Broken Hinges


It actually took forever for Duo to charter a flight, which did nothing but make him frantic and irritable and made paranoia spike horribly in his chest. By now, Wufei would have already made it out to space. By now, Quatre could very easily have found Sloan's home and chosen to infiltrate on his own. By now, Sloan could have begun to recover from his defeat at Sanc and started incorporating Trowa into his next strategy. And if he did get Trowa, things would go to hell in an instant. Trowa could distract Wufei and the Preventers, and Sloan likely had enough left to keep Quatre and the Maguanacs busy. If Sloan had anyone left on Earth, he could mount a second offense. And while Heero was bad-ass as all hell, he might not be able to stop it all.

The other him was out for the count. He himself was on a useless mission to the middle of nowhere on the vague hope that he could save this dimension's Trowa. Even if he was back there, his ankles were in just enough pain to make him more a liability than a help (again).

Of course, Heero was the one most likely to hold off a horde of assassins and soldiers. If anyone could keep Relena safe, it was him. And they were with Howard, on his ship. Heero would never leave his Gundam vulnerable, so he likely had Howard go pick it up. Duo would be surprised if they were even still with the Preventers; Heero could easily have used the excuse to get away from them. Duo wondered how Relena was taking that.

Probably not well. He was going to have to calm a few fires when he got back.

He sighed. If he got back. If everything was well when he returned. If the other him wasn't in such dire straits that continuing to live was putting him in danger. If Trowa wasn't an enemy and everything went well, or if he was an enemy and Duo could find it in himself to kill him, or to at least let one of the others do it. If. If. If.

He sighed. He wished he had his music.

He wasn't quite on a civilian craft, but there were a few others onboard. Apparently it was some technician job for the colony beside Sloan's station, scheduled to specifically not interact with any of the ships coming or going from that man's home. It meant getting over would be difficult, but not impossible. Only a few hundred miles separated them. Apparently you could watch the nearby station float right next to you from almost any window in either station. The men were busy talking about the sight when Duo decided to get some shut-eye.

When they finally landed, Duo quickly slunk away from the crew and made his way to the repair suits. They were short and squat and orange, horribly, horribly orange, and like crabs, but with only one hook and a tractor beam that looked like a tadpole's tail on its back. Stealing one was a million times easier than not getting caught afterward; he managed to cut off the alarms beforehand, but he couldn't stop the shouting or the people running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to stop him from escaping out the hatch. A beam rifle would have been nice by then, but he made do with the unwieldy hook.

He expected some sort of greeting when he got near to Sloan's station, but he tried to keep beneath the radar, anyway. He was surprised when no one came to meet with him – until he realized that any proximity alarms would go off twenty-four seven due to the closeness of the two stations to the other. Wow. Talk about a weakness in the ranks.

And then, as he made to land out the outer walls of the station, he found out why it could still work. There were robotic sentries all over the outer walls with turrets stationed along the borders. The things whirred to life, and Duo lost the hook in his escape. His main concern was the other station, but a quick dance with the beams showed them locking and shutting down if their shots could come in range of the civilian station. Well, that made sense, at least; nothing like shooting a hole in a nearby station to get Preventers and regular police on your tail. Which wouldn't be too good if he was making weapons and smuggling in Gundams.

Duo kept his suit close to the civilian colony after that, until he found an airlock unfortunately a good few miles out of range of the colony. But as he got close, he found all the turrets had already been taken down.

His heart hammered. Well. Maybe that was also a reason as to why he wasn't being attacked. But if that was the case, then he had to assume the worst-case scenario. Quatre, almost certainly, and likely the Preventers. And every last one of them might very well be after Trowa.

Duo didn't know if he should try to stop them or help them. Should he assume the worst about Trowa, as well? Should he admit he had no idea who this particular man might be?

He reached up and clutched his necklace. The rings, the cross, all dug into his fingers. He took a deep breath. No. No, not yet. He couldn't just give up on the man simply because things looked bad. How many times had Trowa infiltrated an organization? How many times had he seemed like the enemy, to the point where even Wufei gave up on him, even though he was an ally to the very end? Even when he'd lost his memory, he'd chosen to do the right thing. Trowa might have been a mercenary, and he might have lived a different life in this universe. But that didn't automatically make him a complete stranger. And it certainly didn't make him Duo's enemy.

For the next fifteen minutes, Duo maneuvered his sad little vehicle over to an already-broken into hatch and headed into Sloan's home base.

It wasn't a colony. It was hardly a station. Like a floating mansion, it was little more than an ostentatious show of Sloan's previous power. The tiny thing orbited one of the larger colonies just to keep its orbit from decaying. The halls were small, thinner than larger colonies'. And though Duo did his best to keep cover, he knew the only reason he wasn't caught as soon as he landed his repair vehicle was because the place was already under attack. Duo saw Quatre's hand in the cleanliness of it all; the exits had been swept clean of both enemies and weapons. He managed only two halls before a handful of Maguanacs grabbed him up. Duo threw his hands into the air. "I'm a friend of Quatre's!" he said. Then, a mere second after that, "well, I say friend, but we only met maybe a day or so ago. Including my trip here." He held up a finger. "Actually, how long has it been?"

The Maguanacs at least were mature enough to keep their weapons up, even as one of them said, "give us your name."

"Duo Maxwell," he said. And as if it was some sort of magic password, they slowly lowered their weapons. He put his hands down. He was certain it had been over a day. If it hadn't been over a day, something was horribly wrong with his luck. Well. He'd already known that.

It was more like two days. Or three? It was so hard to keep track of those things when you were traveling all over the world and system besides. He started counting again.

"Why are you here?" one of the Maguanacs asked, and Duo sighed and gave up for the moment.

"For Quatre, obviously," he said, being deliberately vague. It was vaguely true that part of the reason Duo wanted to find Trowa was for Quatre's sake. And that was close enough, wasn't it? Sure it was. It counted. Definitely. "So if you're not going to shoot me, I'm gonna head out." He made it about two more steps before one of the men held up a hand.

"We're in the middle of an operation," the man said. He pushed his glasses up on his nose, and Duo wondered if it was Harim or not. He couldn't be sure. Maybe that was for the best? He could treat the man as the stranger he was. "Lord Quatre is out there taking care of the newest threat. The last thing we need is a wild card on the field."

"Bullshit," Duo said. He gave the guy his biggest shit-eating grin. "That's the best card in the damn deck."

And he brushed past the men, ducking away as soon as he rounded the next corner, just in case they realized they probably should have stopped him.

If Quatre was out there, at that moment, hunting down Trowa, things could be even worse than he feared. The old Quatre had fought Trowa, as well. But the old Quatre wasn't as bitter and jaded. No. He'd been so ridiculously hopeful and naïve Duo had felt like some sleazy old man next to him. This Quatre was completely different. This Quatre would never surrender to an enemy, no matter that he was a Gundam pilot or not. And this Quatre perceived threats quickly – perhaps even threats that weren't there. If Quatre thought Trowa was an enemy – well. There was no 'if' about it. He definitely thought of Trowa as an enemy. He was, after all – presumably – with Sloan. And this Quatre likely wouldn't give Trowa the chance to explain himself.

The corridors followed a painfully linear pattern. Duo could have followed it even without the stark emptiness of them – the dark, blood-stained walls, the faux marble flooring that looked nothing less than tacky. None of it hid the military precision with which this place had been built. Likely Romefeller, or Oz, or whomever had been in charge all that time in this dimension, had had a direct hand in creating the blueprints for the place. Heating and coolant rooms sat in the exact same places they had in Romefeller bases on Earth, as did waste disposal. Only instead of a incinerator, there was both an incinerator and a chute. Duo ducked into the waste room when he heard footsteps behind him. He hid against the wall beside the door. The doors were thick, thicker than he thought; they were heavy metal disguised to look hollow. No window in the door sat for him to peek through, and he was forced to merely wait for the sound of footsteps to retreat on down the hall.

He looked around the room, more from habit than from the hope of finding anything, and stopped. The room was a disaster area, with scraps and trash everywhere. It looked like someone came in here and searched the place already. But then something stood out, something that didn't fit. By the chute, sitting slightly apart from the wreckage and gently along the floor, was a space suit. He blinked at it. A space suit beside that which would provide an escape – one that included dealing with explosive decompression. The force alone would be dangerous, even if the other colony wasn't so close that anyone trying to alter their flight risked a quick slam into its walls. Even if moving too far away from the colony meant getting shot by this station's own outer defenses. Only one person, of course, would have ever tried for such a thing on this station. Only one psycho, with the crazy acrobatics necessary to keep himself alive...

He barely turned back to the door in time for it to slide soundlessly open. Duo just stared at Trowa as he entered. An annoying, buzzing thought sounded in the back of his head: he didn't make any sound. But Trowa never made a sound. And then, right after that: he looks like hell. And that one actually had merit. Gaunt cheeks. Sallow skin. Pale. Eyes made large by loss of weight. Hair nearly oily.

Alone. Broken. Tired. Nearly dead. This was not how Duo pictured finding Trowa.

The man saw him at the same instant Duo did. But while Duo just stared, Trowa leaped into the room and pulled his gun from the holster he likely kept hidden in the same place, at the small of his back. Duo didn't even bother reaching for his. Trowa would shoot him far faster than he would be able to so much as aim, and he didn't want to fight, anyway. He raised his hands. "I'm already dying; there's no point in shooting me."

The old Trowa might have hesitated, if only because Duo did something outside of the usual rulebook. For all that Trowa could adjust on the fly arguably faster than Duo or even Quatre, the man had expectations. He also had a curiosity that usually meant he was willing to listen to people. To gain information. To learn. But this Trowa just looked feral. Tired and angry and – oh. The man's hands were trembling slightly. Trowa never trembled. He'd been on his last leg, hadn't he? And for quite a while.

"I'm not your enemy, I swear it," Duo said. "I'm not with Sloan. I don't know what you're doing here with him, but I'm not against you. Sloan, yeah, any day of the week. But not you. Because you're not really his ally, are you? He bought you, or you decided to use him, or to pretend. Right?"

Trowa hand wavered a bit more noticeably. "Who are you?" he growled. Growled. Duo's breath hitched. Oh, Trowa. The man was scared.

"My name is Duo. Duo Maxwell. I may run and hide, but I never tell a lie. And I'm telling you, Trowa – I'm not your enemy. I – It's not even that I don't want to fight you. It's that I won't." Because there was no way, no way, Trowa would have come to Sloan willingly and ended up looking like this. He almost looked shorter somehow than the Trowa Duo had known. It took Duo several seconds to realize that the change was due to Trowa slouching. For the first time in the entirety of the time Duo had known the man, he was actually, for once, seeing Trowa slouch. "Shoot me if you want, just to be sure. I won't even move."

Trowa glared at him. Shook. More people ran by outside, and both Trowa and Duo tensed. Someone banged against the door, and Duo, on instinct, shouted out, "I'm busy farting around in here! Don't piss off the wild card!" And after a second, footsteps retreated once more down the hall.

Trowa lowered his weapon, his gaze still wary but the rest of his body beginning to slump in something that looked an awful lot like relief. Or maybe just resignation. "What do you want?"

"I'm not some sort of evil dictator," Duo said, and then realized he was saying so in an evil dictator's home. He grinned at the thought. "I don't want anything big from you. I want to get you looked at. I want to ask you what the hell happened to you these past five years. I want to ask if you'll help me babysit these four idiots I know. They pilot Gundams, too, you know."

Trowa tensed and raised his gun again at that.

"Oh. Right." Because Quatre had come here, and what were the chances the man hadn't used his Gundam in preparation for Trowa doing the same? But Trowa was a tactician and a merc and even a thief, and he knew, like Duo did, that stealth and the right opportunity were far more important. And apparently the Gundams can't be piloted by anyone but the pilots. There was absolutely no reason for the man to go to Heavyarms and every reason for him to escape and regroup. "Quatre's jumping without thinking. He usually doesn't do that, I swear. This is why they need babysitters." Trowa did not look impressed. And the 'wild' part of that wild card looked like it suited him more at the moment than it did Duo. "As I said. You can shoot me if you want. I won't move. You can even kill me. But that would literally just be a waste of time – in a few days, I'll be dead, anyway." He waved slightly. "Dying man, remember?"

And if he wasn't dying anymore, he would fix the problem himself.

Trowa's grip on the gun didn't loosen, but he didn't move to shoot, either. "You asked what happened in the past five years, but I don't know you."

"No. You don't. And it's going to sound insane, but I'm not from this dimension." He sighed. Maybe he should just make a card, or record this explanation. Just to make sure he never had to say it again. "I'm from a different one, where Operation M started five years before it did here. I know you from there. Which means, obviously, that I don't really know the you that you are at all anymore."

Trowa's hands were really shaking now. "Run off if you need to," Duo said, nodding toward the chute. "Head out. Regroup. But come see me? When you feel like you're on a more even keel, or whatever it's called. And look me up. Check out who's been in the hospital in the Preventers' flying HQ. It's the other me, by the way. Spoilers. And then you can come talk to me again. If you want. You look like you could use a friend. And a few good meals." He smiled. "If you don't want me talking to the others about you, I won't. Even though I think it might do you and them some good. Okay?"

Trowa's gaze finally emptied. Duo was actually happy to see it; it reminded him of the Trowa he'd known at the start of the war. And that Trowa, as different and unapproachable as he'd been, was infinitely better than this half-crazed, desperate animal before him.

Duo took a deep breath. For all his talk, he was not suicidal. He was banking on the parts of Trowa he thought probably couldn't change, the parts born of their shitty pasts and yet desire to pilot a damn Gundam. The desire to give when they'd never gotten. It was something that made them strong, stronger than most. People who had no one, nothing, who were hunted and attacked and vilified, but yet who gave of themselves, anyway. (Not to say he was a hero; he would be forced to laugh himself comatose if he ever heard that. Maybe just stupid.)

He closed his eyes.

Everything went dark, even as he continued standing there, hands open and out down at his sides, almost as if asking to be shot. (He was not actually asking to be shot.) The moment stretched interminably, a dark silence that pulled itself long, out, until the tension curled around him and started suffocating him. His chest seized. For a moment, he thought he'd been shot. For a second, he wondered if Death's Hand had finally returned to crush him to death. But it passed. It was nothing. And still Trowa did not tell him he could open his eyes. Still he did not hear the long double-click of the safety being put on a gun.

But then he did hear something – the sound of clothing, cloth rustling. Over to his side. Toward the chute.

Toward the space suit.

And as he listened, he heard Trowa seal himself safely inside, then heard the tiniest of scuffling sounds as he entered the chute. Duo wondered what kind of override was necessary to get the chute to work from inside. Short-circuited wires, assuredly. But the pressure of the decompression would inevitably cause more harm to those wires. There had to be some sort of emergency override beyond just messing with the damn wires. This soon, however, after Trowa likely joined (or pretend-joined) Sloan – well, there was no guarantee that it would work.

And if that was the case, then there was the oh-so-fun chance that Duo either dealt with horrible pain or a much worse death than being shot for hoping a part of his old friend remained in someone completely different.

But the alarm blared, the loud shuff of air shooting from the chute could be heard, and then the alarm changed and the decompressed air suddenly got shut off from space. The sound of the chute was replaced by the hiss of equilization.

Someone banged on the door. "Stop 'farting around,' wild card!" a man shouted, and Duo could almost swear it was definitely Harim this time. The man opened the door. His glasses glinted sharply off the reflections of the scrap metal strewn all over the room. The man glared at him. "I would ask if you suddenly took an interest in cleaning messes, Mr. Maxwell, but since the only thing missing is the suit we found earlier, I can only assume you let the pilot go instead of beating him to the ground like you were supposed to."

Duo grinned. "I guess that's why I'm the wild card."


"It was completely irresponsible of you! Let alone the reckless behavior of someone in your condition doing anything like what you've done even by coming up here, but to let him go!" The sudden mother-henning distracted Duo from counting the number of turns Quatre made as he paced in front of him. The blond had shoved him into a chair the instant potentially-Harim and three other Maguanacs escorted him – more like a recalcitrant child than a prisoner – onto the bridge. The men now stood off toward the entrance while Quatre skulked and glowered.

"Wow, Qat. Didn't know you cared." He gave the man a giant grin when Quatre shot a soul-searing glare his way. "That look doesn't suit you."

"Then you shouldn't have angered me to the point that I'm using it!" Which was a hilarious statement, because if Quatre was truly that angered, he would have cursed.

But then again, that would have been his Quatre, and Duo really needed to learn how to differentiate.

"Well, maybe you shouldn't have barged in here on a mission to kill?" Duo said, lilting the sentence at the end like it was a question, even though it clearly wasn't. He'd meant to do it to lower the sting of his words, but it didn't seem to work. Quatre looked vaguely affronted as Duo spoke, as if it was an insult to try to involve Quatre in it. But by the time the sentence was over, the blond's face was pulled back in a horrible shape, lips and skin pale, mouth hanging slightly open. As if he'd only just then realized his first reaction had been violence.

"I told you before, right?" Duo said, deliberately gentling his voice. The Maguanacs scattered around the edges of the room, who had been watching Quatre's verbal flaying with gusto, now looked away, trying to at least give Quatre a vague feeling of privacy. The blond grabbed his head. "I want to try to get all of you together. Because even if you're different people now – here – something's still wrong. You're a good man, Quatre. You're able to see the goodness in others better than anyone I've ever seen. But now it's like you think only the darkest of them."

Quatre almost flinched, but he raised his head. "My father was murdered for the colonies I'd chosen to protect. Before I'd even had the chance to try, they turned on themselves. There is darkness in every heart."

"Of course there is," Duo said, his mouth moving on autopilot while his brain tried to keep up with what Quatre had just told him. The man's father – Duo well remembered the grief that had pulled Quatre away from them. The grief Quatre had, to his dying day, refused to speak of, merely calling what he did afterward 'an unpardonable sin.' And this had happened before he'd even sat in Sandrock? Why had he even gone through with Operation Meteor? After the civilians had turned on them, Duo had given up on them. His fight had turned to doing what would help them, irregardless of what they wanted, or thought they wanted.

"I knew what was right," Quatre said, and Duo jumped as he realized he'd actually asked the question in his mind out loud. He grimaced. Stupid autopilot mouth. "Even if others acted out of the darkness in their hearts... if I did nothing – if I let the colonies continue on their path of self-destruction – things would never change. The slaughter of my family would become normal. Accepted."

Duo sucked in a breath. He was afraid to ask how many of Quatre's sisters yet survived. "Well," he said. But he had no idea where to go from there. Quatre gave him a grim smile. It did not suit that face at all. "I guess that's an even bigger reason why I have to get you all together. That – this world may hopefully have a more lasting peace than mine did, but it seems to have left even bigger scars." And not just the physical ones on the other him. That blank hatred in Heero, the willingness of Wufei to be led by untrustworthy people, the darkness in Quatre, the desperation in Trowa. Every last one of them was struggling. "Look. Even though the five of you never met, you were all instrumental in ending the war, right? You can't do this alone. Fighting. Living in peace. You need each other. You'll drive each other crazy, don't get me wrong. But even though you're all very, very different, having companions makes everything a bit easier to go through."

Quatre's gaze flickered to the Maguanacs. Surely the man had to know Duo was speaking the truth. Without the Maguanacs, things would have been even tougher for him. They would have held him up, supported him – kept him from doing anything crazy. So what if there were those who had sacrificed the same as him? Those who had seen the worst of the people they were trying to protect and had still chosen to give their lives for them?

"It will help," he said, his voice lowering to little more than a murmur without conscious thought. "Do you really think we didn't feel that darkness within ourselves, too?"

Quatre leaned down, taking his weight on the balls of his feet and crouching until he was at eye level with Duo. His gaze wavered for a moment before steadying. "And this last one? He was working with Sloan, Junior."

The damn name slipped out like it was normal! He was going to punch the other him when he got better. "Not willingly, if he ever was at all. Trowa's specialty is infiltration. He can fit in anywhere, like a shadow."

Now Quatre looked nearly stricken. "You mean... he may have..."

"Been on our side from the start, yes." Duo couldn't do anything for the look of horror that washed over Quatre's face. There was no way to gentle that blow. Because whether or not Duo was right, whether or not Trowa had been an ally, all that would have been needed to find out was an attempt at conversation.

Quatre stood abruptly and turned away. "Do you have any idea..." the blond choked out, then cleared his throat and tried again. "Where he might have gone?"

"No clue," Duo said. And he'd promised Trowa that he wouldn't tell the others about him, so he couldn't even give Quatre that chance. "But at least we know where he's not." He looked over the room in Sloan's station. It was tiny, likely once used for storage. It had been cleared out some time ago. Duo had thought the mess in the waste disposal room had been to hide the space suit, but now he wondered if maybe it had been left by Sloan and his men when they'd packed up and left. Oh, there had been men left on the base, but it had been, according to Quatre, a skeleton crew, centered around Trowa, apparently. With him gone, whatever pithy resistance had remained had dropped like flies.

"We also have his Gundam," Quatre said, with that soft, faraway voice that said he was planning something. He drifted away from Duo.

Sweet. He'd gotten out from the rest of the lecture.

He waited until Quatre and a couple of the Maguanacs left the room before he stood and stretched. The man with the glasses, whose name Duo still had not gotten, cocked a brow as he moved. It could be for a million things without the man's lips moving and his eyes covered, so Duo just ignored him and left the room, as well. Harim Wannabe hurried after him. Not that Duo cared. He had to get away from the Maguanacs, from Quatre, to be able to await Trowa, who would never come near them willingly now.

The best place to wait would be at Preventers HQ, where he'd told Trowa to go check out the other him. The man could attack and kill him, if he had the desire, and Duo felt slightly uneasy about that fact. But why go out there for anything, if not to check, as Duo insisted? Why go to HQ at all otherwise, unless he was being blackmailed or manipulated by Sloan to attack them? (But Duo dismissed that thought, because he couldn't imagine Trowa being okay with being manipulated, and what the hell would Trowa care enough about to get blackmailed for?)

He'd put a lot of faith, once again, in who a person had been, instead of who they were. But seeing Trowa like that had made his damn mind go blank. The man had been practically scrawny. Under the shirt Trowa had worn, Duo could bet the edges of his ribs were showing. What the hell had happened to him?

And Duo couldn't wait around to find out. While he could go back to HQ and watch over the other him and wait for Trowa and try to help Heero watch over Relena and ask Wufei just what the hell was going on (and why wasn't Wufei at the base yet? He should have beaten Duo there; that was another question to ask him), none of it mattered if he was draining the life from the other him. He covered his mouth with his hand, feeling suddenly nauseous. There was so much to do here, and he had no time for any of it at all. Really, he might be making matters worse. Giving too much trust to a veritable stranger. Forcing the world to alter around his wants when he would just disappear soon. Continuing to live when it was clear the other him was in trouble.

But if he left? The other him might recover immediately, or he might still need time to recuperate. They would be one fighter down. Heck, even with his potentially-almost-definitely-fractured ankle, he could still move around with little issue, so long as he popped in a few painkillers. His leg was in far better shape than his counterpart's. And Sloan had picked up and moved out while they'd been recovering, likely as soon as he heard the mission had failed.

Excuses. He was making excuses for himself. Because he didn't want to die. And he sure as hell didn't want to kill himself.

He'd learned long ago that he was selfish. He'd needed to be simply to stay alive. Charitable street rats couldn't exist. Neither could charitable soldiers. But while he'd known he would always be willing to take another's life to sustain his own, he hadn't thought he'd be so cruel as to have that other be a friend. And not just any friend, but another him. As awkward and weird and slightly creepy as it was, Duo Senior was someone he cared about. How could he be willing to let the man suffer simply because Duo wanted to hold on a little longer?

He took a deep breath. This whole thing was pointless. Berating himself for living, continuing on, anyway, this ridiculous back and forth between should and would. He should just act.

He reached for a gun, even though he didn't have one; the one he'd brought to the fight had been confiscated by Quatre in an act of what Duo could only describe as indignant petulance. Like if he didn't feel like using one, then he shouldn't have one, at all.

The glint of dark shine made him pause. His gaze was drawn to it, even though he already knew what it was. The stupid ring on his finger. He touched it with his thumb, then covered it with his other hand. He mentally apologized for calling it stupid, even though he knew it had only been in his head, and it wasn't like the ring could hear or anything. The cool hardness somehow comforted him, even as he felt like he was splitting into pieces. And yet it was worse, because the calm was heavy, gray, broken. There was nothing to actually speak to. No one to go to and listen as he gave sound advice like Duo should damn well have been capable of figuring it out for himself. There would be no strong back, no steady clacking of keys, no small huff of exasperation when Duo leaned on those shoulders. There would be no feel of muscles rippling as someone leaned back in their chair and tilted their head up until their lips nearly touched. There would be no smirk as that person showed they knew exactly what they were doing to him. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Duo clenched his eyes shut. When he'd been dying, obviously dying, in a way he couldn't stop and couldn't fight, he'd been able to fight through this feeling. He'd thought he was being strong, or just numbing himself to it. He'd thought, 'oh, well,' and moved on, taking comfort in the memories.

Because he was strong? Ha. Because he was weak. And he'd thought he wouldn't have to bear it for much longer.

The thought of going on, an endless stretch of nothing, of trying to fix up a world he didn't even belong in while his own world fell apart and no one survived and nothing remained and everyone he cared about was gone, gone, gone, never coming back, and even if he went back, there would be nothing for him to salvage. Just this endless stretch of time. He'd always thought those who thought like this were ridiculous, or melodramatic. And maybe he was being both of those things. He'd certainly never thought he would ever be one of those who considered death a good alternative to living without a loved one, but here he was. Actually considering it.

He rebelled against it immediately, instinctively. He wasn't the type to give up. How many times had his Wufei mocked him for his inability to stay down? How many times had the man likened him to a bull or a mule? And if Wufei, of all people, actually thought of him like that, then it had to be true, right? He didn't lie down and wait for death to take him. If he had, he would be dead a million times over. No. Every single time, every single day, he'd fought and shoved and clawed his way forward. He wouldn't stop now simply because everything was falling apart around him.

But maybe he needed to. To save the life of someone who never should have been in danger to begin with.

He clenched his fingers around his hand, hiding the ring from view. Hadn't there been a time, one single solitary time, when he'd stared death in the face and, instead of mocking it, he'd dared it? Hadn't there been a time when he'd taken his life and placed it wholly in another person's hands?

This wasn't the same person. Of course he wasn't. This one didn't have any memories of coming to kill Duo and instead making an impromptu getaway plan for the two of them. This wasn't... this wasn't the one who had met Duo on a dock. Duo had never shot at this man. Had never rescued him. Had never bantered with him over repairs. Had never watched him explode from a cockpit and land in a puddle of his own blood. He did not know this man.

But he was as close as Duo was going to get.

Duo raised his gaze from the shitty faux marble flooring and stared down the empty hall. While he was safe, alone, he raised his hand to his lips and kissed the ring. Don't be mad at me for this, okay, Heero? I can only do what I think is best.

He hurried down the hall.