Author: Imo-chan
Title: The Witching Hour – DAWN: part 1
Archive/previous parts: @ a href "http://www.geocities.com/mienoumi_mu_rokuju/GWindex.html"m.i.r.a.i.z.o.u/a
Warnings: First and foremost, I have to say this. This story deals with terrorism. It was started before the 11th of September, and I tried to modify it during the re-vamp to be as tasteful as possible considering, but without taking away from the impact of the events of the story. Unfortunately, that is *very* hard to do, and if the subject is a sensitive one for you, please use caution when reading (or don't at all... ^_~).
Post EW (spoilers for series, EW and minor Ground Zero), drama, yaoi (or some weird variation of shounen-ai), some minor het-ness, complicated plot bunnies, limes/lemons (possibly), weird takes on relationships and characterization, major angst, death.
Main pairings: 1x2x1, 4and3involvedsomehow, 5 being his annoyingly loner self.
Secondary pairings: 6+9+6, 1+R+1 (mentioned)
Notes: ^-^ Yes, you've probably seen this fic before. But no, it's not the same one. I took it apart, changed relationships, added characters, and revamped the plot. It took a god-awful amount of time, especially considering what a writing slug I am, but here's part of one of the prologue!~ Yay! *fallsover*
The 'new' Witching Hour is divided into four sections:
1) DAWN
2) MIDDAY
3) DUSK
4) MIDNIGHT
Dawn, in itself, is pretty much done, and should be about 3 or 4 parts...
Alrighty, just a feeeeew more notes about the crazy relationships in this fic, and then I'll let you go... ^-^
The main pairing (if you can call it that) is 1x2 – but not like anything I've ever tried to do before. It sometimes fails even to make sense to me, and I'm supposed to know what's going on... x_X So please... don't be scared off by the strangeness of Heero and Duo in this fic... they're supposed to act that way towards each other. -_-
PS. Many thanks to Blue-sama – my beta wunnerful beta - who I love muchly despite the fact she's evil. *runsawayveryveryquickly*
Tis now the very witching time of night
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to the world-- Hamlet [III.ii]
i. Dawn
wide awake
and keeping distance from my soul
i am scared like you
-- Tool, Cold and Ugly
pt. 1
* * * * * * * *
He discovered, quite early on in their friendship, that Duo Maxwell was a very peculiar person. Well, perhaps peculiar was the wrong word – Duo was more quirky than strange, and more like a little bit on the wrong side of psychotic than outright insane. Duo was full of contradictions, little surprises that he thought no one else could see, because no one knew Duo Maxwell like him. He, being trained and being a naturally observant person, realized that he picked up on the little things that Duo did that set him apart, things others just didn't seem to notice.
Duo was a very physical person. He liked to touch people – embraces, playing with hair, slinging an arm over a shoulder – he showed fondness towards a person by being involved in their personal space. Duo was an outgoing individual, that sort of behavior seemed to be expected of people who enjoyed the company of others. Duo liked to talk, Duo liked to laugh, but to him, it seemed that what Duo really enjoyed was the contact and warmth generated by a close crowd of friends. Duo had a knack for attracting warm people, people who didn't mind his little hugs or touches; Duo was always surrounded by them. But he found it strange that Duo would sometimes express a deep dislike for them, calling them "annoying, spoiled brats," or other, similar insults - even when he observed Duo talking and laughing and interacting with them quite amicably. He had thought Duo prized honesty...
There were other things, too.
He also knew that Duo was a very self-conscious person, and didn't like to be alone for long periods of time. Duo thought the dorm room was too big – although //he// had thought it rather small – and Duo spent as little time as possible inside. He usually did his homework there, however, sitting on //top// of the desk, his knees pulled up to his chest and his books resting on his thighs. Duo never did his homework alone, he always had to be there for Duo to pull out his work – in fact, he always had to be there for Duo to be there at all. He found this strange at first, and a little annoying – every time he stood to leave Duo would be right there behind him with a bright, "Where ya goin', Heero?" – but he had come to accept it. He thought it better to leave the little things be. People had their own ways of doing things, probably for important reasons. He never thought it important to pry.
However, he did observe. And he found that Duo, in all his constant interactions and physicality, was a very insecure person. He noticed that Duo almost always wore long sleeves, he never changed for gym in the common area, and every time he showered, he would lock the bathroom door. He had noticed that some outgoing people, as a result of their extroversion, unconsciously flaunted their body as well. He had never seen Duo perform the slightest bit of provocation involving the build of his figure, and for all his natural grace, the only thing Duo flaunted was his personality. He almost seemed //ashamed// of his body in many ways. Duo always changed back into the priest outfit in their dorm; he was obviously uncomfortable in the tighter school uniforms. And Duo always changed for sleep in the //locked// bathroom. But once again, he knew that it was not his place to pry into matters such as these. Duo obviously had reasons for acting the way he did, just as he, himself, had his own for being impersonal at times, he assumed it wouldn't do their new friendship any good to involve himself in things that were not really his concern. After all, it was the only friendship he had.
And that was another thing about Duo. He had thought, at first, that Duo had 'befriended' him just because of their kindred mission. Perhaps this was the case in the beginning, but he noticed that, for all the time they spent together during the war, Duo rarely talked about the mission with him. They both knew what they had to do – they were getting separate instructions from different people, after all – and it seemed as though Duo didn't really //care// that he was a fellow pilot. Perhaps that was what had brought them together in the first place, but it seemed to take a backseat after a while. Duo acted as though he was just another friend – almost a 'best' friend. And he had to admit he liked that. He liked being included in the jokes Duo made, he liked being able to help him with problems, and he liked that special bond of camaraderie, the feeling that Duo understood.
The only thing he found annoying about Duo was that he talked. A lot. But even the excessive chatter that Duo spewed when he was in groups seemed to fade when it was just the two of them. It was interesting, that for all the words that came from Duo's mouth, one had to listen //very// hard to hear what Duo was saying. He discovered that Duo was actually quite bitter and sarcastic, extremely observant, blindingly intelligent. He could also be downright 'mean' at times. Part of this seemed to come hand-in-hand with an equally intense, softer, thoughtful side that balanced out the brightness of Duo's more 'public' personality. He noticed that Duo rarely showed this to anyone else that he knew, and it he found it very strange that he got a perverse surge of pride by being one of the few to see that different, saddening, part of Duo Maxwell.
"I think you're in trouble, Heero," Duo had muttered into his pillow one night, turning over with a sigh, darkening the edges of his voice.
What are you referring to?
"She's really dangerous," he said in that same tone, almost to himself, but with enough pull in his voice to make sure there was conversation in it.
Who?
"That girl. The one with the blond hair. She knows you."
Yes.
"She's really dangerous, man," Duo scooted up in the bed until his back was curled, resting against the headboard, the blankets draped over his knees. "She knows you."
Yes.
"She knows //you//. She knows who you are."
... yes.
Duo blinked. "She's too important to know something like that."
She knows who you are too.
"I'm not a big deal. She doesn't care about me," Duo's mouth tilted upwards in a soft smile; just his upper lip was visible in the glow of the hall light that slipped under the dorm room door; it made it look like he was sneering. "She's dangerous."
Why do you keep saying that? Relena can't hurt any of us. She's ju –
"Relena," he was testing the name.
Yes.
"Believe me, Heero, she's dangerous. She's already causing problems for you." His eyes had gone very dull, and his mouth was a flat, straight line.
She's just a –
"A girl. A civilian, fuck it. If they know that she knows, they'll hurt her," Duo snapped. "You don't want that."
No.
"So, be careful around her, is all. You can't keep slipping up where she's concerned. Obviously keeping her safe, in this case, would mean that the less she knows, the better, okay?"
How did you get the authority to give me orders?
He laughed. "These aren't //orders//, Heero. Call it advice. From whoever you would prefer to hear it from. She's dangerous to you, until this thing is over."
Feelings aren't dangerous.
Duo looked almost startled – a little heartbeat of time that hiccoughed over his face, and suddenly, he was different. He was softer. A long, rounded edge of eclipse blurred the definitions of his features, as if the humour and the bitter edge had drained out of him, leaving only something like a silhouette behind. His voice sounded very dry.
"Maybe not. But connections to feelings are dangerous. From connections you get impracticality, rashness, and self-sacrifice. You get revenge. You get hurt."
That is a feeling also. Therefore it is an acceptable risk.
"Risk, shmisk, Heero!" He growled, knotting the sheets in a fist and leaning his upper body towards the edge of the bed in an almost primal lunge, his face a crisp, bright challenge. That hiccough was gone, replaced somehow, by a whirlwind of bitterness laced with warning. "We're in a very delicate kinda war here... you can't go around just blowing shit up in the day and blowing kisses at night. You play the valiant hero like that and you'll be killed. Or she will. We can't afford your stupid risks! You've gotta be //careful//, man. You start messing around with people's feelings and you're gonna be dealing with more shit falling from the sky than you can shovel away. Ya got it?"
Control.
"I didn't say smother, Heero. I just meant you've got to be //smart// about it."
It was that little, tiny, brief, flash-glimpse at the 'other' Duo Maxwell that made him all that more interested in the way that Duo acted. It was those soft quirks that made his friendship that much more attractive. It was, after all, that ultimate human contact that he occasionally craved – the desire to feel a connection with someone wholly human, and yet, someone who would understand him and forgive his rougher edges. Duo Maxwell was that person; the one who was as human as anyone could be, and the one who empathized with what he had seen, what he knew and how he had become to be the way he was, someone who would tell him when he was too far out of place. Someone who was as 'strange' as he was. That, in itself, was a gift so rare he had never thought to wish it. And now that he had it, he prayed – for the first time in his life, he prayed – that nothing would ever deprive him of Duo Maxwell's company.
* * * * * * * * *
[AC 195 – pre Operation Daybreak]
The men were old. Their faces were lit with lines of endurance; their hair was salt-white, glinting like the metal ornaments on their uniforms as they walked under the morning sun. Their shiny, black boots made softly imprinted footsteps on the garden path; their weathered hands, formed like the pebbled skin of peach pits and walnut shells, were clasped behind their backs as they talked. Behind them were the shouts and screams of little children in play, and in front, the sweet lilt of two young girls in conversation as they sat perched back-to-back on the garden wall, one facing out, the other in.
They were old men faced with a new fight – with only their age to be both witness and weapon against the obstacles ahead.
"Can you see much opposition to your proposal, Marshal?" Asked one to the other, his eyes following a line of birds in the sky.
"From the majority? No," he replied. "We've borne witness to war too long to fail to see reason on this issue. The only seats I would be concerned about would be the Specials."
"Of course. Trieze is - "
"Trieze is a brilliant man, Vingte," Noventa interrupted sharply; not even age could take the whip out of his voice. "I have, on more than one occasion, been very grateful for his presence. He is very intelligent." The Marshal sighed. "And in that lies my worry. The Specials are young. Treize himself is young. Too young to understand how we must put an end to this seemingly endless era of war."
"They are a minority, Marshal."
"Perhaps in the safety of a conference, Vingte. But only there."
"Marshal?"
"Treize commands and receives respect from everyone. He reveres the lives of his soldiers; he makes them fight for a cause... even if they do not really believe his truth... there are many who would..." the old man paused, a sharp light splintered in his eyes as they moved over the garden wall. "Never mind, Vingte, leave that train of though for now... I do not want to spread seeds of suspicion. That will only lead to more violence, I think. We must, however, watch the Specials more carefully. They must understand our motives for wanting this peace."
"You will be able to convince them."
"There is that hope."
They walked on in silence; the marshal's eyes strayed to the wall where the two girls sat, soft blond hair and dark curls. A generational familiar smile in the young face; woolen socks on swinging legs. A whipping resilience in the strong back and a sharp, dark, Spartan jumper.
"I am beginning to feel old, Vingte."
"Marshal..."
"What is it that makes them want revenge for wars they were not alive for? What makes them so proud as to lose that sense of reverence for life?"
The other was silent. His eyes, too, were fixed upon the girls.
"We were like that once."
"We were."
"How old is Winifred, Vingte?" Noventa asked suddenly, turning to his friend.
"She is 16," the general replied, his eyes not leaving the silhouette of the dark-haired girl. "17 in December."
"Has your son returned from Lake Victoria, then? I know he likes to be home with Winifred for Christmas – especially since Simone passed away."
Vingte nodded slowly. "He does. He hasn't returned yet, and probably won't for a few weeks now, considering the circumstances... these fresh attacks... but Winifred wants to visit sometime before then."
"She hasn't changed her mind?"
"No," Vingte closed his eyes. "The army seems to be what she wants. I can remember when Claude would try to teach her cryptology, how to recognize the different parts of an MS control panel, when she was only 4!" The old man laughed gently. "But she was so interested."
"She's as bright as her father – the forces will have her in a second," Noventa agreed solemnly. "Silvia greatly enjoys it when she comes to visit."
"And Winifred the visits. She was worried she would not be able to see Silvia as often once they both left for school."
"//Will// she be joining the forces after exams?"
"She wants to. Claude thinks she should take more courses... specialize, prepare. Perhaps she would have, too… But, there are circumstances now... her resolve is heightened."
"I'm sure they will be able to organize more time. Besides, they wouldn't want to spend of all their vacation with a couple of old men like us."
Vingte laughed. "So true, Marshal..."
"Girls! Breakfast!" Came the call from the ivy-covered window of the house and Silvia Noventa and Winifred Vingte slid from the wall, ran along the path past their grandfathers, and into the house to wash their hands.
* * * * * * * * *
[AC 197, March 25th, near the ruins of the Presidential Complex]
From where they stood on a crest of the broken ground, they could see the silhouette hulking against the skyline. It rose out of the sandy ruins like an impulsive mountain, looking like a sinewy mound of flesh and feathers and wires and mechanics, like a half-decayed whale beached up onto an alien landscape. Duo could see the chest-hatch door jutting up from the mound, from where it still lay open and crooked, knocked from the bearings in the fall, or pulled from them by scavengers looking for parts. Even in the half-light of dusk, gaping holes in the structure were visible, where plates had been cut and removed, where wires had been extracted, where graffiti had been scrawled, where a leg used to be, where there had been a joint before, where that colossal symbol of their revolution and strength had once lain, and now was nothing more than another burnt-out memory.
"People can be real vultures, dammit," Duo muttered, turning to see Heero tip the bottle of water to his lips.
"The vandalism is understandable. Wing Zero contains many valuable materials in its structure," Heero replied softly, adjusting the straps of his pack.
"Understandable, my ass. You should have destroyed it with the rest," Duo spat fiercely. "If that was ever made to function again, you kn - "
"It is not possible to restore Zero again without the aid of the Doctors. They're gone; therefore there is no risk in letting it remain here. It is hard for people now, to find metals like these," he gestured with a flickering of his wrist towards the fallen Gundam. "There is no danger."
"Then for what, exactly, did we come here for?" Duo sing-singed, letting his head tilt sideways in a mocking posture.
"To collect the Zero System," Heero replied, starting down the hillside at a brisk trot.
"Hey, hey! Earth to Heero! //That's// exactly what I was talking about... you left that psychotic mess of wires and Madame Destiny in Wing for 3 months! Fully functional, I might add! I think that qualifies as considerable danger…!" Duo yelled into the dust after him. When no reply came, he sighed heavily and shouldered his own pack before sliding down after his friend.
The wind whipped violently around him, sending his braid snapping away from his head, and his long coat tangling around his legs. Raising his arm protectively to block the dust, he managed to catch up to Heero's measured strides, and only then did he raise his eyes to the mammoth they were approaching. For some reason - maybe because he hadn't seen a Gundam this close in a good 3 months - Wing Zero seemed to be incredibly daunting, ridiculously immense, even in its decrepit state.
"God," he muttered against the inside of his jacket sleeve as Heero examined the half-fallen hatch ladder and swung himself up onto the rungs, "did I really pilot one of these things?"
With only the bitter wind, full of sand and dirt, for an answer, Duo sighed and followed suit, two rungs behind Heero as they climbed, hand-over-hand to the open hatch.
"I can't believe you talked me into this!" Duo called over the increasing howl of the wind to the slightly blurred shape of Heero above him. "You know, if you had asked me five months ago, if I would ever set foot in this piece of crazy mother-fuck again, I would've laughed in your face – but god-dammit, here I am, climbing the sides, about to swing my sorry self into the – and I'm... talking to myself again, aren't I?" He trailed off as he realized he was standing at the crooked hatch, complaining to the wind.
Dropping down into the cold, dark, sheltered space of the cockpit, he swung his pack off his shoulders and pulled out a package of flares. "Man, this place stinks!" he muttered as he extracted one and lit it, flooding the interior with an icy blue glow. Swinging the flare around, he wrinkled his nose.
"Jeezus, what happened here? A generation of rats use it as a litter box? Eeeuch!"
Hopping down from the console where he had landed, he examined the state of the cockpit. The entire space was flipped on its back, the rear of the cockpit was now the floor, the seat and main controls were strange and half-intact protrusions. The console and switchboards now made and lined the walls, wires and screens hanging haphazardly from their previous fixtures. The hatch opening and the main view screen now loomed overhead, cracked and askew. Heero was already sitting down, having cleared a space for himself to the left of the main controls, and was unpacking his bag. Duo joined him, setting the flare down on a discarded switchboard panel that had fallen from the wall.
"So what's the plan?" He asked, propping one elbow up on crossed knees, and resting his cheek in his palm.
"I'm going to take out this panel," Heero placed one splayed hand on a dented, metal covering held in place by a series of screws, "And then hook up the laptop to the internal system."
"You think it's still functional?"
"The Zero System ran on an autonomous power supply that could only be shut down through the system itself – "
"Which is encrypted like the Dickens... got it."
"...correct," Heero snorted. "And can only be accessed through this port. It should be fine."
"You think you can get main power online while you're at it? This is fucking creepy," Duo muttered.
"I could, but it would take longer," Heero began to work at the screws, each one made a dull 'clink' as it fell from its place.
"Forget it, then," Duo sighed. "Anything I can do?"
Heero tugged at a difficult screw. "Pull out the disk pack and boot up the laptop."
"Gotcha."
They worked without speaking; their ears filled with the sound of the wind outside, which was still howling like a trapped animal. Duo pulled a large, black case from Heero's pack and snapped it open. Inside were meticulously organized plastic slips containing disks and CDs with numbers and letters scrawled in Heero's writing across their faces. Giving it a quick look-over, flipping the plastic pages back and forth to grasp some understanding of the organization, Duo slipped it over to his left and pulled the laptop onto his lap. He glanced over at Heero, who was pulling the last screw from the panel.
"You still using '13y15p9a'?" he asked, tapping a finger to the screen.
Heero paused, the screw falling into his hand and rolling back and forth in his palm.
"Yes," he said finally; he sounded uncomfortable and tense – as though the echo of the passcode in the dark and empty space was an embarrassment; an intrusion.
"Cool," Duo pursed his lips and typed nonchalantly at the keyboard; he didn't feel like raising his eyes to look at Heero. He hated seeing that weird, precariously confused expression that he //knew// would be there. It always happened. Whenever they talked about the war – about the way things had been before, it was there. What they did. How they did it. What they could have done instead. He was tired of that face. It was as though Heero sometimes took repression to a completely superior level – and was so confused by the past it hurt to think about it.
There was a sharp clatter of metal on metal as Heero raised the panel and let it fall to the cockpit floor. Duo hazarded a quick, sideways glance at Heero. His back was curved, the thin column of his spine rode up and into the dark shadow of the panel-less hole where his head was bent over the puzzle of untangling old wires.
"You in?" Duo asked, sliding the computer over to Heero's side and peering in over his shoulder. All he could see was a dark hole. Square-shaped and dank. Small.
"Preliminarily, yes," Heero replied, snapping together two wire ports and peering back to observe the laptop's status. Obviously approving, he pulled himself out of his crouch at the mouth of the hole and set about attaching the computer to the ambiguous snake of wires that emerged from dark opening.
Duo sat back on his heels, squinting into the black. "You need anything else?"
"Could you set up a flare in there?" Heero spoke without looking up from the blinking, whirring screen lights. "Please."
"Sure thing."
A new flare lit and Heero typing rapidly at the laptop, Duo scooted forward on his knees to examine the Zero System's home in better light. He set the flare down in an unobtrusive corner of the opening and ran his eyes over the interior.
"Huh." Duo sniffed. In truth, there wasn't that much to see. Three small walls literally spider webbed with coloured wires and one large panel fixed on the ceiling of the space. More heavy screws held it in place, and some foreign hand had scrawled something along the surface in thick black marker.
"Whaddas //that// say?" He asked, pulling his head from the opening.
Heero looked up.
"The writing," Duo explained. "On the panel inside." He jerked his head up and over to demonstrate the direction.
Heero looked genuinely confused. Setting the computer to the floor, he peered inside himself. It was a good ten seconds before he pulled his head out again and looked at Duo with that unnervingly calm gaze.
"'Hello, Heero'."
"What?"
"That's what it says," Heero elaborated, once more pulling himself into the opening, this time on his back, placing the laptop on his stomach. Sharp clicking of the keys and thrumming beeps of recalled information emanated from inside.
"To you?"
"Apparently," Heero said, slipping the curt word into a pause between keyboard taps.
"Who wrote it?" Duo asked, after a pause.
Heero's body, or what was visible of it, shifted minutely and a hand emerged from the hole. "I don't know," he said. "I need three disks – A-4154, A-1Z, A-2Z."
Duo, his knees pulled to his chest, his back against the cockpit wall, reached for the disk pack and found the appropriate ones. Handing them to Heero, he asked, "Whaddiya mean? Wasn't it for you?"
The hand accepted the items and withdrew. There was a whirring sound and a loud, long beep. "Probably," Heero replied. "It wasn't there on the Peacemillion."
"What?!"
"When I copied it for Quatre."
"The writing wasn't there?!"
"B-Z5. No."
Duo's body suddenly felt very cold. "You mean somebody broke into the..."
"Probably. B-Z5."
"Oh, sorry..." Duo reached numbly for the disk. "But, hey... doesn't that //worry// you, Heero?"
There was no response. The sharp clicking of the keyboard resumed and the wind roaring outside rose to such an intensity that any soft answer Heero might have uttered would have been lost.
A half-hour passed, another followed, and then an hour in its entirety. They said nothing more to each other. The air in the cockpit was quiet, stagnant; tense. Outside, the wind rose and fell in pitch, and deeper in, the sounds emanating from the flare-lit opening were steady, mechanical thrums, clicks and whirs.
"So why didn't you come here earlier?" Duo asked suddenly, the words tumbling out in the space between two heartbeats.
Heero didn't reply immediately, but the sound of the keyboard stopped. Duo shifted uncomfortably in the silence, running his fingers against the edge of some exposed wire that threaded along the underside of the cockpit control panel, intersecting and merging like metal-gray veins. He heard a soft sound, like a sigh, and there was a clatter as Heero shoved the laptop into the cockpit, crawling out of the hole afterwards.
"I don't know," he admitted finally, as he took two joined wires and unsnapped them from an out-port in the back of his laptop. "There were other things that were more important."
Duo watched as Heero slipped back into the dark space, lying on his back again, his legs visible and the laptop resting on his stomach.
"Like disappearing off the face of the planet for two months?"
"Watch it, Duo," Heero snapped. The slang sounded so foreign in that voice that Duo snorted, in spite of himself.
"I mean it," Heero tapped loudly on the keyboard, and the whirring sound of a disk was heard. "Take these disks back."
"Oh, okay... I see. Un-chartered territory, right? Not allowed access to the hallowed depths of Heero Yuy's thoughts. 'Password incorrect' and all that jazz," Duo muttered as he rummaged through the disk pack.
"Duo."
"Fine, fine," he said, trying not to be too huffy. Settling back against the wall, he noticed Heero pull the laptop from the opening and begin to disengage wires from the back.
"You done?"
"Yes." Heero closed the laptop, stood, and grabbed the panel from where it lay on the ground. Picking it up, he slid it gently inside the hole, but did not attempt to reseal the opening.
"Hey," Duo interjected. "That's probably not a good idea unless you – "
"It's gone."
Duo just blinked.
"It's not," he finally replied.
"It is," Heero rolled his shoulders and stuffed the laptop into its carrying case. "The sealing on the casing of the upper panel's been broken off and the wires have been severed and soldered together. The blueprints and plans hidden in the password-protected archives are gone."
"Gone?"
"All memory erased. That would suggest an intruder accessed Wing's archives."
"I TOLD you. I TOLD you, you shouldn't have left it."
Heero was silent. His eyes, fixed on the dark emptiness of the hole from which he had emerged, were narrowed, but the hazy light from Duo's flare made them glint wetly – as though they were full of tears.
Suddenly overcome by a need to sooth the desperate feeling of deception and helplessness in the air, Duo floundered for an excuse. "Hey, hey... Look, we can run a test, I'm sure – it might just be a mistake, like it got wiped out during some tinkering – the person who did it probably didn't even know it was there."
"You know that's not true." Heero's eyes narrowed.
"So we'll track the asshole. Who'ver left you that creepy note. We'll get it back."
"Duo, this was a clean job. As far as I can tell, it could have been Dr.J," Heero murmured. "But we know it wasn't him."
"So that's it?" Duo growled, half to himself. "We're leaving?"
"Do you want to stay?"
Duo shivered involuntarily as Heero stood and began to pack the various instruments and disks scattered around the cockpit.
"Shouldn't we? You know, run a few more tests – make sure it's really not there...?" he asked, not really sure why he was saying it.
"What do you think I've been doing for the last hour?" Heero snapped, his voice ringing in the metallic space.
Duo flinched. "God, man... relax."
Heero snorted, pulling his bag closed and swinging it over his shoulder. "Turn off that light," he said.
Duo sighed angrily, extinguishing the flare beside him; the cockpit was thrust into blinding darkness. Patting the sand-encrusted floor around him, Duo found the strap of his own pack, and raised himself to his feet. He heard the scuffling of Heero's movement on the opposite side of the cockpit, near the hatch opening and slowly felt his way along the wall towards the sound.
"Hey," he whispered as the sky and stars came into view in the hatch opening, Heero's silhouette blocking much of the outside, "You okay?"
"Okay."
"You cooled down? You're not gonna bite off my head again if I say something stupid?"
Heero made a soft sound in his throat.
"Hey, hey," Duo swung the pack over his shoulder. "We'll figure something out, okay? It's cool, right?"
"It's... cool."
"Good, good. Yanno, man – you have to relax. You fucki – "
"Duo..." The sound was a sharp sigh, and the shadow of Heero's figure moved in the hatch opening – backed away and slipped to the side, until Duo could feel the warmth of breath on the side of his face. Duo froze, his fingers closing tightly, tensely, around the handle of his pack.
"It's all right," Heero's voice was intensely quiet – driven, and almost breathless; Duo hated it when he spoke like that, all breathy, moist words that meant too much. The only other time he heard it was at night, when they shared a pillow, and Heero would run the pads of his fingers over the curve of Duo's neck and place his lips just beside Duo's ear and whisper...
"You know I wo – "
"So, let's go home!" Duo burst out, brushing past him, and up out into the whipping night air, the breath pulled from his lungs and the muscles in his legs and chest gone weak.
"This place gives me the creeps."
* * * * * * * *
"Here. The flowers for Grandfather."
"Winny…"
"…"
"Win..."
"You disgust me."
"I..."
"You should have killed him."
"You say that every year. You know there wasn't any p-"
"Don't you tell me there wasn't any POINT!!"
"But…"
"I have nothing to say to you."
"Winifred…"
"Goodbye."
[end part 1]
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