Author's Note: I don't own Gundam Wing, if you happened to miss all my other disclaimers.

~ Skeletons in the Closet ~

Part 9

By Zero's Wings

Black-and-White Meat Locker

The limousine cut through fog and darkness like a sleek, black shark. It pulled up to a dimly lit warehouse on the outskirts of town. Heero, dressed as a chauffeur, took Relena forcibly by hand and led her into the building.

"Heero, where are you taking me?" Relena yelled as he dragged her down a rusty, metal corridor. His face was frozen in a bland expression. He didn't even turn as she spoke to him. They stopped in front of a large door made of layered sheet metal. Icicles hung from the door's hinges and the spaces between vein-like cracks had frozen over. Heero tugged on a large circular valve on the door, trying to force it open. The door creaked and groaned in protest, but the valve finally unscrewed in his hands, and the door swung back to reveal an old meat locker.

Relena shivered at the icy breeze coming from the room. Inside were old hunks of butchered cows. They hung in rows from bloodied hooks as if they were part of some nightmarish art gallery. Standing between two rows of cow meat was a tall, crooked man. He was wearing an all-black formal suit, something that looked suitable for a funeral. His slender figure and jaundiced, yellow eyes gave him a sickly appearance, yet he moved as Heero did, with a fluid, almost inhuman grace.

"You're Heero's father?" Relena said quietly, her voice muffled in shock and reverence. Heero pulled out a metal chair from behind one of the meat racks and put it down in front of Relena.

"Please have a seat Miss Darlian," the tall, thin man said. "Everything will be explained in due time." Relena did as she was told, and a wisp of a smile passed across the man's face. "My name is Octavian Culex Emulat, Miss Darlian, and it is a pleasure to finally meet you." Relena repeated the name under her breath, and all the color drained away from her face. She jumped in her seat as Heero slammed the door shut behind her.

"Heero, why have you taken me here?" Relena whispered in a mixture of fear and anger, but he didn't seem to hear her. His gaze was locked straight ahead as if he were some kind of robot.

"You have done well," Emulat said, patting Heero on the head as if he were a loyal watchdog. "Now, I want you to take that gun out of your pocket, and use it to kill Miss Darlian."

Without even a mutter of protest, Heero drew his gun and trained it on his lover. She looked up and her beautiful, blue eyes widened in fear and confusion. Heero didn't even flinch as he pulled the trigger.

A dry click hung in the stale air of the meat locker, and it took Relena a second to realize she was still alive. She had wet herself involuntarily, but she didn't care. All she could think about was how Heero could've possibly done that. He had meant to kill her; she had seen it in his eyes.

"Oh, no bullets!" Emulat said with an odd, mocking pout. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out an ammunition clip. "Here, my son." Heero ejected the empty clip from his gun and put in Emulat's fresh one. Emulat piped up again just as Heero was about to fire. "Better yet! Take your loaded gun, Heero, and use it on yourself instead. I'll have a splendid little hostage!"

Heero nodded and turned the gun on himself. Relena stared at him in disbelief, and as he placed the muzzle under his chin, she cried out desperately, "Heero, don't!" He pulled the trigger without even flinching. The noise of the gun exploded across the walls of the narrow meat locker. Heero stumbled backwards; everything above his eyes was caught in a red haze, a rose of death blossoming out over his forehead. As his life quickly drained away, Relena screamed and was forced to turn away from the horrible sight. She burst into tears. Emulat laughed uproariously.

*****

Duo Maxwell sat in a singles' bar. He was drowning his sorrows in hard liquor. Heero Yuy, a fellow Gundam pilot and friend, sat on the stool next to him. "You know," Duo said with a gravely chuckle, "I just turned 18 last month." He downed a shot of Vodka in one swallow.

"You certainly don't drink like it," Heero responded, finishing his Black and White and water in more conservative sips. He studied the effects of the alcohol upon his body, noting the slow softening of his mind and the spreading warmth in his chest and throat with a clinical detachment, even though these feelings pleased him. Duo ordered more drinks.

"What's going on, Duo?" Heero asked with a carefully veiled feeling of concern. "I know there are more constructive things you could be doing with a Saturday night.

"Ah, will ya turn off the fuckin' perfect soldier mode for a minute?" Duo yelled, no longer able to control the volume of his voice.

"I mean it, Duo. You said something was going on."

"Like we both don't have enough problems," Duo muttered. "Well, it just kinda got depressing, seein' everyone around me so happy, in love, whatever, while I'm stuck here alone. Even Quatre and Trowa are goin' at it like rabbits. I mean, who saw that one coming?" Heero shrugged.

"They seem very happy together, though."

"Yeah, and that's just my point. Everyone's got their special somebody, 'cept me. It's just weird because, sex was the worst thing that ever happened to Hilde and me. That's what started it. We both decided we didn't want children, so she wanted me to get a vasectomy."

"What was the problem?"

"Oh, come on, Heero! I won't let anyone trim my braid!" he shouted, giving the length of hair a tug. "There's no way I'm going through with something like that!"

"That's it?" Heero asked, sounding a bit ruder than he meant to.

"Well, that was just the first fight. And you know how it goes. Then we fight about money, then about marriage, then sex again, then money…and it just kept going around and around until I came home one night, shit-faced drunk, and called her some pretty awful things. She's been living with her mom on L4 since." What a Childish waste of a relationship, Heero thought to himself. I'll never let something like that happen with Relena. Duo looked up thankfully as another set of drinks arrived.

"Have mine," Heero said, pushing aside what would've been his fourth round. Duo took a sip of it and his face scrunched up in disgust.

"Yuck! How do you stand this stuff?" Heero was glad to inform him, although he might not have listened to all of Duo's self-pity and opened up himself had he not been just a little bit tipsy.

"A Black and White and water?" Heero asked. "Well, back when I was working as a sort of freelance assassin, I followed one of my targets to a bar. I talked with him, got him a little bit drunk, and then I ordered one of these. When the bartender got ready to mix it, I grabbed the Black and White and dunked it on the guy's head. Then, I lit his hair on fire and watched him go running and screaming around the room, looking like an oversized wax candle. Anyway, when he finally fainted from the trauma, I tossed the water on him to put out the flames, and dragged him back to my apartment to wait for further orders. True story." Duo laughed so hard at this, he nearly fell off his bar stool.

"Thanks, I needed that," Duo said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. "And the most fucked-up thing about this is, I know you really did it too." The bartender gave them both a weird look, shrugged, and went back to polishing a cold beer mug.

"Last call boys. Bottoms-up and hit the streets," the bartender said in a bored, monotonous tone. It was what he said every night.

"Well, if you didn't have Relena back home," Duo started, "this is where I'd take you out on the town and get both of us laid."

"I'll call a cab for both of us," Heero replied.

"Thanks, man." Duo said. "And I just want you to know, I've never raised a glass to a better friend."

*****

The soft sound of Relena weeping echoed off the metal walls of the freezing meat locker. Her lover was lying in a pool of blood. Emulat's raspy cackling had ended far earlier and he was growing tired of her. "Shut up!" he yelled, pistol-whipping her across her soft, left cheek. She continued to cry, just a little bit softer. "Here, maybe this will make you feel a bit better," Emulat said, defeated at last. "That pathetic sap over there? He's not your Heero Yuy." Emulat got up and kicked the bloody corpse over onto its back. He ripped open the back of Heero's shirt. Relena recognized the tattoo, the menacing upside-down cross that was emblazoned on the corpses' back.

"See? Fifteen marks on the cross. This is model 15. The one you know is model 18, and has that many marks on his tattoo. I kept 1-17 in cold storage rooms like this one for the past ten years. I never thought I'd use them again. They were all so inferior, they couldn't process complex emotions like yours can." Emulat kicked the body back over so that Relena could take in that horrible sight once again. The sight of her one love, eyes wide and glazed over; his pale face streaked with gore. Relena was hit by an overwhelming wave of nausea, and she was sure that she would throw up in the next five seconds. Somehow, she held it down and managed to turn away from Emulat and the corpse.

As Relena sat shivering in a corner, rocking back and hugging her knees, Emulat strolled up to her in a lackadaisical fashion. He held out a large, inviting hand and his eyes took on a milky, golden hue. "Come my dear," he rasped. "My prodigal son…your lover. He will come for you."

"Are you really his father?" Relena whispered.

"We share no genetic material, but I am the father of what he has become. I was responsible for his rebirth, as a soldier."

"I have seen him reborn again!" Relena argued fiercely. "He is no longer the heartless killing machine that you wished for. In fact, he never was."

"You don't know him the way I do," Emulat said. "I've been in his head."

"And you don't know him like I do," Relena countered. "I've been in his body." Relena would've never said something like that in public, or even amongst her friends, but she declared it to this vile man without so much as a blush. She was proud to be his lover.

"I can't compete with that," Emulat said chuckling. He grabbed Relena's wrist and pulled her up. His thin lips curled back in a fierce sneer. "Yet it doesn't matter," he spat. "I know how his mind works, and I know that by the time he comes after you, Ymir will have covered this world in ice. You should feel honored. You'll have a front row seat for the apocalypse."

End part 9