The room's air felt thicker than normal as Heero entered the empty board room Une had designated for an emergency. There were no packets of information or laptops ready for a presentation on new mission specs that Heero was accustomed to seeing during the meetings of Une's elite squad. The pilots had become the leaders of severely difficult break operations once the undercurrent threat from Marcus's group became more main-stream. It was difficult to hide the fact that some resistance operation against the ESUN were now in control of a few mobile suits. Modern cameras and satellite surveillance made it much easier to capture what was happening and show it to the public. It was causing panic. Yes, the people still stood up for their peace, but this was a global weapons war of the Preventers organization against the black market dealers, while trying to stop new rebellions' recently surging attacks. There was tension mounting and the news seemed to display a higher body count daily due to violence instead of deaths from poor conditions in areas that had been fubar-ed from the many years of war.
Heero had still been up filing a report at 23:30 hours the previous night, when Une had sent an email, stating there would be a meeting with all the pilots. It contained no further information and was cryptic enough to agitate him to the point where his sleep had not been as restful as it could have been otherwise. Now they sat around the board room waiting for Quatre to arrive. Apparently another attack came to a senate member and he was coordinating the efforts of three teams to investigate, follow leads, and have damage control with the press coordinators of the Preventer offices.
Duo sat quiet and muted as he had been for many weeks; sitting far from Une and everyone else for that matter. The spark that he used to exude with every movement had become muted or non-existent for quite some time; since he had come back from his undercover operation and found the death toll had been high in the Preventer ranks. The body count had recently been exacerbated since the initial months because of the high rate of new recruits that were now being sent in the field with minimal training. Trowa was not in great condition either, but more physically then mentally. He had been on a team mission with other agents and a trap set with explosives sent shrapnel at him when he tried to push his team members that had unwittingly set it off out of the way. He had a broken arm in a sling per doctor's orders and a couple places on his legs and torso that were being held with stitches.
Une was acting unusual from her normal calm and composed state. Despite all the stress of managing a large peace-keeping organization she never seemed disordered. She never seemed unkempt. This morning she had bags under her eyes, her usually smooth hair, whether down or in a bun, had random hairs poking out at odd angles. And she was leaning her head in her hands and messaging her temples slowly. It almost looked like she had a bruise extending from her hair line but he couldn't be sure without approaching her more closely.
Heero did not like it. Her timing and the actions she was conducting this morning were adding up to something being extremely wrong, but Heero could not begin to extrapolate what it could be. He would have to wait to be informed and while a short break was probably a good idea from his exhaustion, he had never been one for patience
Quatre came in shaking his head and sat down less elegantly then he would have normally. "The senator's wife is dead. He is still in intensive care from the bomb in their house. The earliest possibilities are either he was hit because of the new trafficking enforcements he's trying to push or because the small rebellion forces in that region thought it would send a message. My alpha and delta teams are currently investigating." He looked around the room after his short, but no one moved either from disinterest or because this type of incident was becoming far too frequent to be shocking. Une nodded slightly and sat up more.
"I'm sure you are all wondering why I called you here this morning." She spoke quietly. "Last night, when I got home from work, I had an unexpected visitor. Wufei." Trowa sat up a little higher as did Heero and Trowa at this news. Quatre looked a little more focused but his overall demeanor of tired acceptance didn't seem to waiver. Duo did not take his eyes off the table, but his head tilted slightly. He was listening. Heero felt a little buzz of warmth; it was the first quirk of habit that was entirely Duo for a long time. "He waited in my house during the day for me to return home from work. He had searched my apartment hacked my computer to get files and updates the Preventers were working on, looked into files that I had brought home to work on." She cringed and continued grimly. "Needless to say I won't be taking more files home any time soon. And as a final surprise after the heart attack from seeing him waiting for me; he is offering to help the Preventers organization with the pressures we are finding ourselves under currently."
The room was silent under the announcement no one really knowing how to start especially when Une seemed to be hesitating in saying something. They could all read it in her body language and waited. Finally she exhaled a low breath and shot out, "He has demands. He won't work for us unless they are all fulfilled." Heero felt a swell of hope and the hesitant disbelief at the same time with her short briefing to them. The fact that Wufei suddenly seemed interested in the organization and assisting was strange and disorienting after the long stretch of time without him. They had made the initial decision to lock him away so that he would come out clean on the other side only to lose him in a corrupt system that was intending to keep him incarcerated indefinitely. That had been their fault and he had guilt for it. That he had worked out on his own in the many hours of waiting between missions.
But the time to think also left him wanting more affirmation that Wufei would actually work for them. He had not attempted to contact any of the pilots despite being free for so long. The initial break from the prison lead him to attempt to kill Trowa, work against the Preventers and work for Marcus as a gun procurer and an informant on many of the Preventer's agents and systems of operation. The only person he had contacted that was known to the Preventers and the pilots was Zechs and now Une. And despite efforts not to feel it, he was hurt by the lack of contact as Wufei seemed to continue to avoid them. No emails answered, no calls came in. It was tiring and maddening all at once.
"What are the conditions?" Quatre asked ever the master planner and the constant tempering force within the group.
Une attempted to compose herself slightly to her normal levels. She was far from it, but it was still improvement from the initial attempt at leadership that had been failing so miserably in the beginning of the meeting. "He requested that he got to select the missions that he went on. And who he works with."
"That seems reasonable." Trowa supported, "What else is he asking for?"
"Full immunity for any past present and future acts. He wants his file wiped from the system and he wants the immunity contract to be signed by all of the upper government and the head of the Preventers." She shook her head word caught in her throat. "It's impossible. We can't possibly give it to him. There's too much risk. He literally stated that he would want to be able to go in broad daylight and shoot Relena Peacecraft in the head and get away with no repercussions. It can't happen." The silence that followed was deafening as each individual drew into their own thoughts. Heero felt hollow. He never believed that Wufei would come back easily, but asking for that level of immunity was the most extreme thing he could request. He wasn't willing at all. He was attempting to hold them over a barrel bargaining his unbreakable freedom for the future lives of Preventer agents and what could be the break that they had been looking for to dismantle the problem that had been unleashed because of his initial break out.
This was what the warehouse had felt like all over again, the upsetting and complete disappointment that refused to give any form of reprieve from an onslaught of fights, explosives, and loss of life. It was war all over again, but they were a broken unit incapable functioning with any form of efficiency or victory. They needed him to cross over and their seemed to be no feasible way around his demands. But they needed him to be whole again, to work and function and be their normal selves. They needed him.
"We have to make the bargain." Quatre spoke assertively, no give in his voice.
"We can't. Une argued immediately, "It is impossible to get something that compromising signed. He'll be a loose cannon."
Quatre smiled, "He's already a loose cannon. We need him."
"What if he is simply trying to get access to our files and documents? What if he ends up being a double agent for Marcus?" Une protested. Her hands were compulsively running through her hair again in agitation. "We can't trust him!"
"We have to." Quatre argued. "The death toll this month alone is three hundred twenty nine politicians, agents, and civilians in the drug and weaponry related activities alone. That doesn't include the multiple uprising and the loss of the ninth colony in the L2 cluster to the drug market. They are running circles around us and we cannot get intelligence to save our own asses." Quatre let out a huff of frustration and shook his head. "We need to give him what he wants. It's the only way we will not eventually end up at war again. It will only be a matter of time before one group gets far too much momentum behind them to stop." Quatre insisted. He locked eyes with Une and willed her to understand. It was a blatant fact that she needed to face.
"We can't trust him alone." She said once more, but her resolve was dwindling, already forcing words of compromise out of her throat.
"We'll ask him to have a handler of sorts." Quatre insisted. "He should concede on that point and he knows it. There has to be some form of communication between him and us and it can't be him."
Une nodded, "Yes he had two more items he wanted that he had emailed to me this morning after he left last night. He requested that Duo be working with him permanently." Quatre looked over at Duo with Une's announcement. His eyes had gone wide and he sat up a little stiffer in his seat.
"We'll request that Heero also becomes a contact." Quatre resolved. "He can have Duo, but he needs Heero as well." Duo looked like he might protest, but decided against it and tucked himself down further into his chair and remained silent if a bit sullen.
"He also requested that judge Hadeling, the one that handled his pre-trial, is immediately removed from his position the day after he signs Wufei's papers for freedom." Une stated.
"That's easy." Quatre nodded, a dark look loomed on his face suddenly, "He should have been removed a lot sooner than this after we found out what he has been doing with some of his cases."
The room was quiet as Une and Quatre seemed to have worked out their logistics of working this deal. The other pilots knew that it was better for them to work out the details of these situations and to ask questions of execution after. Heero didn't really know what to think at this moment. Une was accepting the inevitability of needing the proposal that Wufei had suggested. She knew that the Preventers were cornered with Quatre's firm analysis and was accepting his idea.
Une sighed and spoke exasperated letting her head sink into her hands once more. The bruise on her head was more obvious at this angle. It looked as if Wufei had knocked her out the painful way. "It's going to be impossible to get the members of government to sign off on this. He's too much of a liability in their eyes. Many of them know what has happened."
Quatre nodded in agreement, but smiled somewhat serenely and stated, "Well then you have your work cut out for you. We need him."
