Disclaimer: I don't own nuttin', cept maybe some root beer....okaaay. Nor will I ever own GW. I accept my fate and move on. *SHOUNEN-AI*, suicidal contemplation, masochistic actions, Wufei's road rage, the author cutting Relena too much slack (ack!)...etc. Has happy ending, though!

I think this is the conclusion, though I would like to write an epilogue. It won't happen unless you guys tell me to! So I better get at LEAST 10 to 15 reviews/e-mails telling me you guys want an epilogue! People, it's NOT THAT HARD TO WRITE A REVIEW!!!! Two words is FINE!!!! PLEASE REVIEW!!!!! That being said, read on, have fun!

Matchmaker Part 3: To Rescue Sanity

By Ms. Zoogami

A very, very tired Wufei was driving through blackness, along a highway. For miles around him there was nothing, just highway, and highway trees, signs, nothing else. Just darkness.

White Styrofoam mugs were littered around the dashboard and the front seat, almost obscuring his view. He had been going like this the whole night, clear through one AM, which had been hours ago itself. But he couldn't give up now. He couldn't fail Duo the one promise he had ever made to him. Even if that braided baka didn't know about it.

Wufei had checked the last few hotels and towns; no Heero, just strange looks. Faces whirled in the pilot's mind, but he only saw one.

" I have failed you Nataku." He thought. " I will not fail anyone, ever again." Now it wasn't only a matter of saving his friend's personal health, but it had become a measure of honor as well. " Not ever again."

Drooping eyes glanced at the clock and barely saw it. Hints of pink and gold were breaking through the sky's edge, the dawn coming to claim the night. He didn't want to give up....his eyelids started to fall once again. He snapped his head back up to the road. Discipline he might have in spades, but even dragons needed sleep sometimes. And if he didn't stop soon he would fall asleep at the wheel.

" Alright, just a quick rest....a quick rest." Five minutes later he pulled into the parking lot of the Samurai Inn.

***

A weakened angel lay on a messy, white motel bed, his wings no where to be found. The shades were still drawn, but he raised a hand to the bulb hanging above him like it was the sun. Slowly, delicately, his thin limb gracefully ascending above his self-starved body. And at the same speed that life seemed to him, the hand unfolded almost of its own accord, revealing a metal pellet held between its thumb and forefinger.

" Just one." Heero thought to himself, chapped lips unmoving, as they had for so many days. " One is all I need. Shinigami, God of Desperation, you found me another way." The Perfect Soldier was so gone that he no longer felt the tears that slid down his cheeks, blue as his eyes.

***

The tall, plump man stood behind the bar, cleaning glasses, his beard serving as much a scrubber as the clean rag in his hand. He was staring at a solitary figure who sat on the other side.

After running a motel and cafe for most of his life, Wan Hui had grown accustomed to the strange travelers that wandered through his establishment. But none had intrigued him for such a long time, as much as the silent young Chinese man who was seated at the counter. The boy had a shaggy black ponytail and a stern face, stubborn and commanding. And he had barely touched the food that had been served to him. He sighed a deep, angry sigh, and Wan decided the time for verbal engagement was now.

" So, what brings you here, all alone?" The older man shuddered as he was regarded with icy eyes, as black as the youth's hair.

His voice was dangerously low. " It's none of your business."

" Oh, really?"

" Leave me alone,..or else."

The man laughed to himself. " That's two death threats in three days! I must be a wanted man!"

Wufei's head snapped up. " W-what?"

" Yeah, you...and this other guy, about your age now that I think... about...it....." His sentence trailed off as Wufei stood up, looking like a panther ready to pounce.

" What. Did. He. Say?" The voice was questioning, but still dangerous.

" Uh..I..uh.."

" WHAT DID HE SAY?" It was practically screamed as Wufei grabbed the man by the front of his shirt, pulling him almost over the counter. Other people looked at them, but turned away when they were met with the Chinese's glare.

Wan looked the younger boy daringly in the face.

" Just three words," He replied quietly. " Omae o korosou."

***

He gathered strength from the part of him he'd thought lost, moving as though time had no consequence, at least, none for him. Then the familiar cold, smooth metal was in his hand, the grip worn to his touch from so much use. His finger slid over the grooves and flat parts, as familiar to him as himself, a mirror of life, his life.

" To think, this symbol of destruction is such a fitting symbol of myself...I am a gun, always to be fired, used, then tossed away until needed again. That was all I was. But you...you were the one thing that made me feel real, made me feel human." Laughing purple eyes loomed in his memory, the shadows of what might have been ripping him up within. "..and made me a fool in the end."

***

" That's Heero." Wufei's mind was going into overdrive. " He was here, he was here.....where is he now?" He hardly realized he had spoken the last few words aloud, until he was given an answer.

" He checked in and hasn-" Wan was cut off as the youth released him, but didn't move away. "..hasn't come out of the room..."

It was too good to be true. But Wufei's inner joy was marred by the man's words. He hasn't come out......

" Which room is he in?" When he didn't get an answer right away he grabbed the motel owner's shirt front again, scaring him to no end. He continued in a calm, sedate voice.

" You are going to tell me where he is or I am going to scorch you with some nice plumes of fire before ripping your head off." His captor was more than happy to oblige.

***

Hilde paced through the hallways nervously; everything was starkly quiet in the early morning. Big as Quatre's house might be, there didn't seem to be enough places to run to, to hide in, to pace in.

As she passed by a certain door she listened, her mind almost reeling from not having been concentrated into doing something for so long. Silence. An uneasy one at that. The sobs were slower, and muffled so it was a strain to pick them up. Yet, at the same time, you couldn't miss them.

Feeling as though her senses were sharper she bent down to inspect the food tray that was outside of Duo's quarters. It looked like it had been nibbled upon by a mouse.

Hilde hoped with all her soul that the mouse had a long, chestnut-colored braid.

***

Wufei jogged through dirty corridors, thoughts and images sliding through his mind like his fingers through a silk cloth. Seconds....would he get there in time? Seconds....he felt the motel owner's jacket slip through his hands; the old man slumping to the floor changed to Heero falling out of Zero, Heero collapsing after a battle, Heero....fainting to the floor, a crimson-tinged hole in his skull.

Wufei was running, running, but no matter how fast he ran, it seemed that Heero still died, kept dying, over and over...in his mind. It felt like he would never be there quick enough. " Who knows, I may already be too late..." The hallway turned into oblivion, with the Shenlong pilot endlessly spinning through it.

***

The metal appeared to get colder as he held it. Not warmer like it should have been. Practiced hands opened the chamber and placed his single death inside. A coward's death. He probably would have thought that to himself. But to him it wasn't. He had no reason to live. He was lost, as once before, and now once again.

***

The glass, pure, clear, a shard of himself running over the palm. Scarlet seeped slowly from it. He watched with a kind of horrible fascination as it dripped along his life line, small branches of the wound going to all the lines in his hand.

" You were my blood....why did you leave? All gone...they're all dead...Shinigami you're dying now...the angel can't save you...you destroyed even him..."

The stinging was in his eyes again.

A flash.

" Duo! It's midnight, what are you doing up?" Concerned voice, kind voice.

" Couldn't sleep." A smaller one mumbled, long bangs falling into his eyes, the way they always would.

" Go to bed."

He shrunk away from the offered hand. " But Sista' Helen, I just wanted to look at the angel." Silver and white moon rays flitted through the window in the dusty chapel light, illuminating like an aura around the lanky, stained-glass angel, giant white wings folded around him.

" He's beautiful isn't he?"

A flash.

The scythe struck out, slashed, cut through the mobile suits standing in front of it. The green blade shimmered in the fiery explosions, its speed and grace seemingly unmatched in the universe of its pilot. The swish of Shenlong's dragons, and Heavyarms' missiles filled the air, melding with the screams of the dying and dead, burning metal, blood. The world of the Destroyer.

Suddenly surrounded by enemies. He sliced each one, but two others got up to take its place. He yelled for some backup over the intercom, but it was obvious that the others couldn't help. A formidable Taurus came at him from above, where he hadn't noticed.....a streak of white echoed across his vision. Wing beats sounded through the battlefield, and when he looked back the Taurus was merely ash.

A flash.

The explosions sounded through the city, the sound itself seeming to reduce the church to rubble. Hair unbound, coming out of the band, black clothes clinging to his lithe frame as it began to rain, he ran towards the debris.

" SISTER HELEN!! FATHER MAXWELL!!" He saw their bodies even as the words left his young lips.

" Duo..." He ran to her, tears blurring his vision. A bloody, bruised hand raised itself to his face, then fell as she passed on. " Goodbye..."

" No...NO!!" He choked out. He bent his little form over the corpse of the woman who had been like a mother to him, and let his crying soak into the ground. Somewhere behind them, the angel lay, shattered into a thousand pieces.

Running.

Breath. Breath.

Mission Accepted.

All my fault.

Please be quick.

Why can't time be slow?

Where are you?

Ai shiteru.

Goodbye.

Heero?

" Huh?" He had been ready, eyes closed, the trigger pull about to happen, the pain and release of an end he felt he deserved so near when...something made him hesitate. He'd thought he'd heard...something.....

" D-Duo...?"

And it was in that second of hesitation that a yell of rage sounded through the building, and Wufei kicked his door in.

***

Wufei had been running so fast that he almost ran right past the very room he had been looking for. He knocked furiously, praying out loud and in his head that he wasn't too late, he wasn't too late...then he got fed up. Stepping back, he let out all his force in a shout, and blasted Heero's door practically off its hinges with one strong, deft kick.

Heero, who was completely taken by surprise for once in his life, reacted in the appropriate manner: pointed the weapon at his intruder.

" What do you want." It wasn't a question, more like a demand of why the Chinese pilot had interrupted his suicide.

Wufei himself was a cold as ever, not even flinching at the gun barrel aimed at his chest. He saw how horrible the other boy looked; pale, and much thinner even than usual, his lips so chapped they seemed about to bleed, obvious lines in his face where tears had met with skin that had probably never felt them before. He looked, for lack of a better word, terrible.

" I do not think it wise to shoot me, Yuy." Heero didn't respond, but didn't shoot him either. Slowly, so Heero wouldn't think it was a threat, Wufei reached into his pocket and drew out what Quatre had given to him back at the mansion. He tossed it at the stoic pilot's feet.

Heero stepped back, and let his gaze fall to where the object lay on the floor....and felt his heart in his throat. He unconsciously dropped the gun, the usual hard, unfeeling look melting from his features as he fell to his knees. Gently, as if he was afraid it would disappear with a touch, he unwrapped Duo's necklace from around a folded picture of himself.

" No..." He whispered it to himself.

***

Even from just watching the very out of character display before him, Wufei knew immediately how much Heero was in love with Duo. It almost shocked him to see this much emotion coming from the normally mechanical-seeming Wing Zero operator.

" He isn't dead, yet." The last was added with a note of uncertainty. At those words, Heero pulled himself together, getting to his feet and sweeping the cross and picture off the floor in one definite motion. His face again set in its usual grim expression he grabbed his jacket and gun from a chair and started to walk past Wufei, calling back to him in a familiar, commanding voice.

" Let's go."

***

Relena sat against the wall, not even her regal manner disguising the heavy bags under her eyes. She hadn't slept in well...days. And, tired as she was, she wasn't going to now.

" Face it, isn't Quatre's fault. It's yours." It had been racing through her head all these nights, and not even Hilde could make it go away. " You were the one who was always hanging on to him, practically stalking him! No wonder he could never show any of his true emotions, he was too busy trying to pry you off his arm!!"

She'd really loved him too, but had always known that he didn't exactly feel the same way. It could have been the fact that he'd threatened to kill her several times during the war, or that he showed that he would gladly shoot her the first chance he got, that had triggered that thinking. Who knows, right?

Either way, she shouldn't have been so heartlessly stubborn. She just wished he'd come back to all of them. She thought to whoever ran the universe; " If you bring him back to Duo before Duo kills himself I will never, ever stalk anyone, ever again! God, I'll even destroy that atrocity of a pink limo I ride in!" She felt like laughing at herself. And she meant it, too. Besides, since when had she become so materialistic and annoying? Well, she'd redeem herself, alright...once she got the chance.

***

For the umpteenth time, Wufei leaned on the horn, bellowing in Chinese about injustice, a few unprintable things, and anything else unpleasant he could think up at the moment. Finally, he gave up on it, when the traffic started to move again.

Heero sat next to him in the passenger's seat, not saying a word, not moving except to breath. His fingers were still clutched around the cross. Inwardly he cursed to himself about being so blind. He had been taught to act on his emotions, and here it was, backfiring on him.

" No...you loved him that much, even though you didn't deserve him...and now he's going to die for your fear. Coward. You're the Perfect Soldier, huh? But you were afraid of your own humanity."

Wufei stole a quick glance at his silent seat mate. And, although he didn't speak, you couldn't miss the pain clouding eyes that never showed anything, never revealed anything. But just for a moment there....and then it was gone. He turned back to the road.

***

" We're here." The sound pierced through the abyss of silence that had dominated the automobile the entire trip back. It was so unfamiliar to Heero's drifting state of mind, that it took a minute for the words to register.

" Alright." But he didn't move.

Wufei was frustrated. He needed to get the Wing pilot to Duo as soon as possible. He needed to find a way to get Heero moving. " I never knew you were such a weakling, Yuy."

" If you're trying to make me move, it won't work."

" Stop being such a woman."

" Hn."

The Chinese boy felt like banging his head against the steering wheel. But he was always one who showed incredible amounts of self-discipline, so he resorted to a slightly more honorable tactic.

" You love him, right?"

The spandex wearing passenger didn't budge.

" So go stop him before he kills himself. It would be a real shame, after I went and got you and everything if Maxwell died now. Besides," He added in a last-ditch attempt to move his stubborn comrade. " Quatre would really hate to have to clean up all that blood off of the white rug."

Heero turned and punched him square in the jaw.

***

When Wufei had recovered from the initial shock, he realized that Heero had gotten out of the car and was waiting under the overhang of the door for Wufei to come with the keys. The Altron pilot stepped out of the car, and started walking through the misty rain, rubbing his jaw.

" Well," He thought in consolation to the sore artifice. " It worked, did it not?" The sheets of water striking him did not help the conclusion.

Heero stood, the space barely giving him any protection from the elements that practically tore at his poorly clad body. He hardly noticed. His mind was completely on one thing, and one thing only.

A body brushed roughly past him, and Heero recognized it as Wufei, even in the dim lights of the porch. If Heero had been the type of person who apologized for rash actions, he would have said sorry. He wasn't.

His fellow Gundam pilot hadn't expected anything, though. He simply opened the door with a swift turn of the key, and stepped over the barrier to the inside. Heero followed him.

***

The first thing that caught Heero's focused attention was how quiet it was. The whole house seemed so still, dark. As soon as his eyes adjusted, however, he realized that it was not empty. Abdul, Rashid, and who knew how many other Magunacs lay in the front hall, below and around the staircase, fast asleep. Wufei felt like joining them. He hadn't slept since he had began searching. Then he noticed Heero heading up the stairs.

" Yuy....?" He whispered hoarsely, as if asking if Heero wished him to follow. But the Zero pilot shook his head and continued, as Wufei had expected. Besides, that couch in the parlor looked so comfortable right then.........

Heero continued onward, passing around Noin and Zechs on the landing seat. Not far from them Trowa lay with one arsm around his sister, and the other around his angelic lover, across from them were Relena and Hilde. Even in sleep their faces all showed the same signs of worry.

He paused in front of the white door edged in gold. Journey's end. He tried the knob, fearlessness that he showed in battle taking over his nerves. No good. That had never stopped him before. Reaching into a pocket he took out the little gold object, and used it to pick the lock. The chain fell around his hand, and disappeared from sight. Slowly, this time, he opened the door enough to slip through, then closed it soundlessly behind him.

The room was bathed in darkness, the only light coming from the moon outside, the luminous white giving some of the velvety shadows an unearthly glow. He searched with his gaze, across the shimmering pieces of glass on the floor, across the blackness of the floor itself, until it rested upon the shivering ball in the window. It looked like a large lump of shadow, but for the braid emitting from the curled-up form. Small, muffled sobs escaped from Duo, his head hidden in black-clothed folded arms, which were balanced on top of his knees.

" Who are you?" The voice wasn't like anything Heero had ever heard from him, utterly without joy, without hope. A voice of someone who's heart has been broken, pieces scattered like the fragments of a mirror. " Who's there!?" The head lifted, the beautiful face edged in silver light, the indigo eyes full of a deep sadness. " Y-you...."

Heero stepped closer.

" Wh-hat? W-what are you doing here?" He almost sounded afraid. And he was. Afraid that this was like the dreams he had been having of Heero every night, only to wake up and realize they weren't real, only to cry himself back to sleep again.

In one swift movement the formerly Perfect Soldier moved forward wrapping his arms around Duo's sobbing form, scooping him up and holding him safe, stroking his hair. " Baka...stupid beautiful baka...."

" Oh god....Heero..." Duo held on to him with all of the force he had left in his weakened form, let Heero hold him as he had always wished, let his tears soak into Heero's already damp tank top. Heero, in turn, craddled his slim form gently. If he had had wings, truely, he would have wrapped them around Duo. To protect him, to make sure no one ever hurt this gorgeous being who was the one happy thing in his whole life, who didn't deserve to be hurt. " ...it's you....is it really...it's you...."

Heero leaned down and tilted Duo's face towards his with a hand that was already half twined around him. He traced the line of his jawbone with a soft touch, and when he reached Duo's chin he pressed his lips to Duo's, bringing Duo into a full, passionate, and gentle kiss. Duo kissed him back with all of his heart, and Heero felt warm, salty tears slide into both of their mouths. Reluctantly almost, Heero broke the kiss, and moved back a bit so he could look Duo straight in the face.

" Why...why are you crying?" He lifted a hand and brushed away the tears from his koi's eyes.

" Because..." For the first time the American seemed at a loss for words. " Because I love you more than anything in the world, and I've dreamed about you ever since you left, and haven't stopped thinking about you since the first time we met...." He was interrupted as Heero kissed him again, softer this time.

" Why?" Asked Duo, echoing Heero's question from before.

" Because." Heero whispered in his ear softly. " I am in love with you more than anything in the world."

" Ne, it's settled then." Despite it's waivery quality, Heero could sense a hint of Duo's old joking manner in the statement. He decided the best course of action was to kiss him again. Then he held his braided lover in his arms until he felt his chest rise and fall with sleep, and heard him snoring quietly. Heero swept Duo up in his arms and carried him over to the bed, where he pulled the covers up until they touched below his chin. Then he took off his shoes and lay down next to him.

" Heero?" The sleepy boy asked.

" Hn?"

" Will...will you hold me?"

" Of course." Duo couldn't even ask nani?' before he felt warm forearms encircling his waist and torso.

" Ai shiteru, Duo."

" Ai shiteru, Heero." He managed to reply, before slipping into a peaceful rest, smiling for the first time in days, dreaming with Heero's arms around him, safe. Heero smiled back to the audience of moonlight and bedsheets, and pulled Duo closer as he drifted off as well.

~Owari~

Author's note: About Heero's hesitation before shooting himself, you can believe that he heard Duo, or that Wufei's noise stopped him. Believe whatever you want to, although us hopeless romantics of the world will choose the first option!

So, what'd you guys think???? R&R PLEEEEASSSSEEEEE!!!!!!! I would also like to thank everyone who has reviewed this, and everyone who has supported me while I wrote it. Arigato from the bottom of my heart.

-Zoogami