Unbroken 07/07 + Prologue & Epilogue
V of the "Chasing Down the Moon" Arc
Rating: pg13
Series: Gundam Wing
Genre: General/Romance
Pairings: 1+2+1
Spoilers: None
Warnings: Shounen Ai; Relena Bashing; Baiting of the Hee-chan; Duo-torture; Heero-torture; Humor; Language; Perverted YaoiFanGirls (like Little Shrimp); Tiny Cross-over
By Moon Faery

Archived: (eventually at) Moon Faery's Garden ); Kiss of Death ); Lev's Lair )

Disclaimer: A statement created solely to save one's ass from becoming lawn for the proverbial legal mower. I do not own Gundam Wing. All materials are used without the permission of their various owners. However, this story line, characters and plot are MINE. Holds fic close to her.) Grrrr....

Author Notes: YAY! Do you people realize that I've been working on this arc for over a year now? (pops the cork on some champagne) It's my longest-running work to date! ^_^ WOOHOO!

***

When the what was turning out to be one of Duo's least disliked teachers said something that ammounted to a request for assisted suicide, Duo did everything he could think of to avoid it. First he looked around him, hoping to find someone else who fit the name "Mr. Maxwell". Then he prayed for something to interfere. Finally he looked back at the teacher. "Are you talking to me?"

"Of course I'm talking to you!" Mr. F said sternly. "I'll need to borrow your horse to demonstrate the proper balancing technique. Now get off and hand me those..." His face went blank. "Hand me those leather strap things you use to steer."

Mud stamped a hoof and flicked his ears back slightly, not liking how that sounded one bit.

Deciding that stupidity was obviously the larger part of courage, Duo remained where he was. "Are you sure about that?" he asked Mr. F nervously. "This isn't exactly an easy horse to ride..."

"Of course I'm certain!" the poor, deluded man snapped, finally loosing his temper. "Dismount Maxwell, or I'll have you writen up!"

The Gundam pilot in question sighed and slid off his horse, trying not to listen to his classmates' horrified whispers.

"He's going to die!"

"Oh, man, Mud's got another victim!"

"Maybe he's mellowed... Duo was riding him..."

One enterprising student was even starting to write the speech she would give at the funeral.

Mr. F snatched the reins and dragged himself up onto Mud's back, looking absolutely ridiculous in a saddle at least ten inches too small for his bulk. At least he didn't stay there for long. Mud took one look at his new rider before his ears pinned back againt his skull and planting his rump solidly in the arena dirt.

Duo tugged on Heero's jacket and pointed. "Did that horse just sit?" he asked calmly, slightly surprised that nothing more explosive happened.

Heero nodded, not bothering to look away from the sputtering Mr. F as he heaved himself out of the sawdust for another try. "Yes."

"Good, I was afraid I had a concusion or something."

"Aa."

Once again, Mr. F was attempting to mount the horse. He was hindered by the fact the the Flight Instructor was still sitting down, looking very comfortable and unwilling to move. Somone pulled a camera out of somewhere and snapped a picture for the yearbook.

Mr. F turned his brown eyes on the culprit, glaring for all he was worth. "Put that camera away, Ms. Jenson! I'll expect a ten page essay from you on the proper time for photography on Friday morning!" Amy Jenson groaned and shoved her camera away. "The rest of you practice walking around the ring. I'll be right along in a moment."

"Um... Sir?" Duo asked tentatively, wiggling his fingers at the increasingly put-out older man. "What about me?"

"You ride double with Mr. Yuy," Mr. F replied without really looking away from Mud. "After I give the demonstartion you'll get your horse back."

Blue and violet eyes locked for a moment before both boys shrugged. Heero stuck out his hand from where he sat aboard his blood bay mare. "Use the back of Ruby's knee to help yourself up," he advised calmly. It took three tries before Duo managed to pull himself up without a stirrup, but soon he was perched securely behind Heero's saddle as they rode the horse around at a walk.

Fourty-five minutes later, Mr. F finally gave up and annoucned that the class was over, having never achieved his goal of mounting the Flight Instructor and staying mounted. He handed Duo back his reins and grumbled when Mud pricked his ears and stood up from his most recent tactic, which involved laying down and biting anything that came near the saddle.

Duo was going to miss that horse.

***

Lunch came upon them with all the abruptness of a speeding fangirl. Heero and Duo headed immediately to the cafeteria, half starved from the effort of not laughing at their hapless homeroom teacher. Elisia watched their progress from the food line to their usual table from her place by the door carefully, frowning when it became obvious that they weren't going to approach her. Turning, she vanished into the lunchroom crowd.

Duo poked at his pasta as Heero slid into the seat to his left, turning over to thoroughly mix the sauce with the noodles. "Heero, isn't spaghetti sauce supposed to be red? With mushrooms and stuff?" He poked his food again.

Looking up from his chicken dish, Heero's eyebrows both lifted. "Duo, that's vermicelli in a seafood sauce, not spaghetti."

"Oh." Duo managed to push down a blush by fiddling around with his food some more and refusing to look at Heero. "Sorry."

Heero frowned and pushed aside his own plate. "What's wrong?" He nearly managed to make himself sound unconcerned.

The braided boy shrugged and kept playing with his food, refusing to meet Heero's eyes. "Nothing, I just feel out of my league. I don't even know half of what we've been eating here is, besides the fact that half of what they spend on dinner could probably buy a small colony." He grinned. "Well, and half of it's disgusting. I don't care what they called 'em, but those were SNAILS they gave me last night, not food!"

"It's escargo, idiot. Of course it's snails." Heero resisted the urge to rub the bridge of his nose. "Stop changing the subject."

"I'm not changing the subject," Duo answered defensively, taking a large bite out of his pasta. "I'm trying to change the subject. There's a difference, you know."

Sighing, Heero absently placed his right hand on Duo's left one under the table. "Duo, just because these people are rich doesn't mean they know anything. None of them could calculate the timing for a launch window to the moon, much less do it as fast as you can."

Duo grimaced at himself and leaned into Heero's shoulder slightly. "I know. I'm just feeling a little weirded out Heero. I just never realized how much it must suck being normal, you know?"

"You still want to be normal though, don't you?" Heero asked quietly, twining his fingers with Duo's.

"Yeah. You too?"

"Sometimes," Heero stold him quietly, enjoying the warmth at his shoulder in the chilly room. "Usually not. There are somethings that make it worth everything."

Duo's presence at Heero's side pulled a way a bare inch as he looked at Heero curiously. "Worth everything?" he repeated, gravitating back towards Heero unconciously. "Like what?"

Heero shifted so that he was facing his partner at a more direct angle, still angling his body towards Duo. "Like seeing the moon rise over the Earth from orbit. Like..." Eyes locked onto Duo's, Heero leaned forward the last few inches until his forehead was brushing Duo's.

"Like..?" Duo repeated softly, licking his lips nervously. Something warm and tingling was squirming around in his chest, making him lightheaded and slightly giddy.

They slid slightly closer, lips almost brushing. "Like this," Heero breathed heavily, tilting his head to cover the last few centimeters between his lips and Duo's.

"HEEROOOO! DUOOOOO!" someone screamed right next to their ears less than a moment before they would have kissed. Heero froze, turning in his seat to pin the idiot who interupted them with the most withering stare he could come up with.

'Target aquired,' his brain whispered sinisterly as it positively identified the source of the interuption. Smoothly he reached under his jacket for his weapon.

Reaching out, Duo absently plucked Heero's gun away from him before it could alarm the general populace. "Not now, Heero," he scolded absently. "Escape first, kill later."

Relena was trembling, blue eyes huge and heartbroken in her overly-pale face. A few feet behind her Elisia wiggled her fingers at them cheerfully, grinning like a lunatic.

The girl commonly known as the Pink Leech wiped a few tears from the corner of her eye. "It's true, isn't it?" she asked slowly, wringing her hands helplessly. "I suppose I should have seen it sooner, but..." Her face crinkled up and turned red as she began to sob brokenly. "Oh, Heero!" Without a single thought towards self-preservation, Relena launched herself at Heero and wrapping her arms around his neck, crying into his shoulder.

Heero's hands came up in the classic position indicating he was unarmed. He had been trained to deal with bombs, live gun fire and even guerilla warfar. Handling an unarmed distraught girl did NOT fall under any of those categories. If she'd been male maybe he would have had a hope of getting through the situation pride intact, but even Herro knew that a crying woman was much more voltile than nitrogliceren, and more likely to do bodily harm.

Awkwardly, Duo reached over to pat one of Relena's shaking shoulders gingerly. Heero cautiously immitated his movements, looking like he'd rather handle a live viper.

"There, there," Duo said uselessly, as men tend to do when women have emotional moments. "We're... Uh, sorry... I think."

She started crying harder.

The two pilots stared at each other helplessly, silently asking each other what to do next. Duo shrugged. Heero whimpered.

At the sound, Relena looked up, face slightly blotchy from crying so hard. Sniffling, she leveled a hurt look at them and asked the one question they had been dreading. "How could you do this to me?"

Both boys minds went blanker than a brand-new chalkboard.

"Well.. Uh, you see..." Duo tried, doing his best to think of a word with two or more syllables. "It's hard to... Umm..."

"We're sorry," Heero told her firmly, since it was the only thing he could think of that wouldn't get them both mauled by either Relena or her followers.

"You're SORRY?" Relena screeched, pushing him away sharply. Her tears had vanished and she towered over their sitting forms like a vengeful goddess. "YOU'RE SORRY? You two don't even bother to TELL me that you're together and you're SORRY?! What kind of friends ARE YOU?!"

Their backs were against the table, but Heero and Duo still tried to cower farther away from Relena's ranting figure.

Relena continued to yell at them, guesturing and emphasising her words with little lady-like stamps of her feet. Little blonde hairs were sticking out from her neat little french braid at off angles and her face was turning blue from the effort of yelling without breathing. "ANYBODY else would have had the SIMPLE HUMAN COURTESY to SAY SOMETHING to me, but you two just couldn't rouse yourselves to even drop a HINT!!!" Leaning forward, she poked Heero right in the chest sharply. "Think of all that time I WASTED because of you two! I spent SO much time trying to force you two together for NOTHING!"

Heero and Duo stared at her in complete confusion, not quite assimilating her last sentence. "Huh?"

The ranting female rubbed her temple, pushing away a stress headache. "You don't think you were... transferred here on accident, did you? Do you have any idea how many strings I had to pull to do that?"

"You..?" Heero asked slowly, brain still arguing with his fight or flight reflexes.

Duo's mind was working a little faster than Heero's, but only because he was finding the situation too hilarious to feel intimidated. He started laughing. "That's why you wanted Heero instead of me!"

Relena bobbed her head primly. "Of course. With Heero I could have dropped hints and stayed safely in the background. You would have never fallen for that, Duo." She pouted. "You wouldn't believe how many perfectly good plans you ruined when you showed up here with Heero." She grimaced, eyeing the students crowded around them warily, all too aware that there were some things even Heero would have to kill her for doing, dropping classified information being the least of them. "I suppose the... transfer papers weren't what I expected them to be."

Heero blinked. "You tried to set us up?" he asked indignintly, not quite able to wrap his mind around the idea that his precious, innocent little hope for peace had meddled with his love life.

"Yes, and the sky is blue, the Earth is round and Bad Luck is gay," Relena told him sarcastically. "Is there anything else you'd like clarified?"

"You tried to set us up?"

Obviously, Heero's brain still needed to thaw a bit more.

Duo rolled his eyes and scooted over. "Have a seat, 'Lena," he said expansively, patting the vacant spot to his right. "We'll talk while he comes back from orbit."

Smoothing her uniform skirt, Relena smiled down at Duo and slid into the offered seat on the bench. "Thank you Duo, I believe I will."

Beside them Heero was mnching on a piece of now-cold chicken. "Relena... Tried to set me up with Duo..."

The two braided teenager, one female and one male, looked at each other and shrugged.

"He'll get over it eventually," Duo told her calmly, taking a bite of his vermicelli while a random lacky brought Relena's lunch from wherever she had abandoned it to yell at them. "First things first; how did this get started?"

Brightening happily, Relena forgot about Heero as she began to explain her plan. "You see, a few weeks ago I ran into Quatre in Vienna. We talked some and..."

Beside them, Heero was still trying to figure out where he had gone wrong.

***

"Come on, Heero, say something," Duo urged, manuevering their rental truck around a corner carefully, flashing his headlights when the car coming at him forgot to switch to low beams. "It couldn't have been that big of a shock."

"No I won't, and yes it was." Heero sunk down in the seat, arms crossed like a sulky teenager.

They drove on for a few more minutes in silence before Duo got sick of it. "Heero, snap out of it. We should have seen it coming, but that's no reason to give me the silent treatment."

"That's exactly the problem!" Heero finally snapped, slinking lower until his chin was forced to touch his chest. "We SHOULD have seen it coming! Every other damned girl in the school was trying to get us together. The odds are astronomical that Relena wouldn't be with them!"

"Relena was their ringleader Heero; of course she was with them," Duo explained slowly, passing a minivan. "She's a healthy, red-blooded teenage girl who just wants to see her friends happy. It's not her fault Elisia took her idea too far, it's not your fault that we didn't figure it out sooner and it's not my fault I decided to tag along."

"It's Quatre's fault for telling her about his damn 'they slept together' theory," Heero grumbled.

"Now you're getting it!" Duo cheered sarcastically, turning onto a rough dirt and gravel road. "Suck it up; we're not the first men to be manipulated by a woman and we won't be the last. Deal with it and move on or Wufei's going to figure out what happened and laugh his ass off."

"Threatening me will do you no good," Heero grunted. Nevertheless, he straightened in his seat and uncrossed his arms as they pulled up to the cabin they had left only a few weeks ago. Wufei had been busy in his downtime; there was a freshly planted border of concealing bushes around the porch, the holes in the steps had been patched and the lawn had been mowed.

Duo could only hope that he'd remembered to repair the Gudams admist what had apparently been a whirlwind of domesticisity.

Before Duo could do more than park, Wufei came out the front door, hands busily drying a plate. "Food's ready," he called too cheerfully. "It's in the oven; come and get it as soon as you finish searching the yard for women with immoral intentions."

Heero groaned and slumped back into his previous position as Wufei vanished back into the safety of the house. "I'm going to kill whoever told him."

Duo just let his head fall forward to rest on the steering wheel. "Me too. Right after I kill Quatre."

***