Disclaimer:   Gundam Wing belongs to Bandai, Sunrise, and other people who aren't me.  And of course, I wouldn't dream of profiting off of other people's toys.  Well, okay, I can dream.  But that's all, I swear!

Warnings:  Same as usual:  yaoi, violence, and sexual situations, as if you didn't know this by now. 

Chapter 7

Duo's lungs burned.

It was a ridiculous feeling considering he was drowning.  All he had to do to stop the burning was open his mouth and take a big gulp of water.  But that would be bad, really bad.  He pounded against the ceiling; even now he had a hard time giving up on life.  He had always been a survivor.

Until today.

Black spots danced across his vision, but his life wasn't flashing before his eyes.  It was probably just as well.

His legs had been kicking frantically but now were slowing, until he stopped moving all together.  He just floated, braid unraveled behind him like a funeral veil as violet eyes closed.  The pressure on his chest was too much.  He opened his mouth.

The water rushing into his lungs was almost a relief.

Quatre's heart stopped as Duo went still.  Oh no.  Please no!  This can't happen, it can't!  Duo, hold on for just a little longer, hold on!

Quatre reached for him.

Not physically of course.  He was still strapped down full-length.  He reached empathically.  The machine measuring his brain waves went crazy, beeping shrilly, but he didn't hear it, or notice Morris hurrying over to check it.

He was with Duo, who was dying.  Quatre could feel the darkness closing in on him, closing in on the tiny, wavering spark of light that was his best friend.  He reached for that light, and felt Duo.  You won't be alone.  I promise.  He held on tight, realizing that the darkness would devour them both.  He couldn't bring himself to care.

For a second Quatre felt the heart and mind of his best friend regarding him, and then a response of emotions from Duo.   They formed one word.

No.

And he pushed Quatre back into his own body, away from the devouring dark.

Back on the operating table, Quatre's eyes flew open.  His gaze sought the monitor, and he let out a choked cry as he saw the limp body floating listlessly in the water.

That was when he felt a slight rumbling vibration, as if somebody had set off a low-grade explosive.  The room shook slightly, and Quatre quickly lifted his head back to the screen and Duo.  A crack had appeared along the ceiling, and then a section broke away and floated into the water.  A pair of hands plunged down right afterwards and closed around Duo's hair, the only part of him still within reach, pulling him up and out of the water by the long strands.

The hands and Duo disappeared out of camera range.

"No!"  The angry scream came from Morris, who stared at the screen in incomprehension, before quickly grabbing up the controller and changing the scene back to Wufei's cell.

Which was empty.

Quatre's hands were clenched into tight fists.  Please let it not be too late, he prayed silently and frantically. 

He glanced at Morris.  His scarecrow body was trembling like he was having some kind of apoplectic fit.  He turned slowly to stare at the blonde.  The man's pale eyes were burning with thwarted rage; his expression was more than a little homicidal.  It didn't get any better when Quatre met his furious gaze.  The blonde's expression was tight and deadly.  If Wufei hadn't been in time . . .

Ivan snarled, finally a sound that fit his appearance.  He stalked behind Quatre and then came back with a sharp, gleaming surgical knife.  The blonde was realizing that he had better start worrying about himself and put his comrades out of mind for the moment.  "I don't know how you did it," Morris hissed wildly, "but don't think I'll let this go unpunished.  I can study your brain just as well when it's out of your body."  He lowered the sharp implement to Quatre's forehead; fully intending on cutting the brain out while the blonde was still alive and able to feel everything.

Suddenly he screamed and dropped the knife, backing several steps away from the blonde.  He was cradling his hand to his chest, and for good reason.  A throwing dagger was sticking out of the center of his palm.  Quatre whipped his head up to the spot the weapon had been thrown from.

Trowa was here.

Morris stared incredulously at the tall, knife-wielding young man on the other side of the room.  "How . . . how did you get here?!" 

It was more of an accusation than a question, but Quatre answered him anyway.  "You picked the wrong people to fuck with."  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Trowa start slightly at the uncharacteristically coarse language.  "We fixed the communicator up so that it was no longer just capable of sending one way."  He pulled slightly on the wrist the device was still strapped on for emphasis.  "My partners have heard and seen everything you've said and done.  You gave us Duo's location.  We also installed a tracker inside this so they could find me."

"But how did the Chinese boy get out of that trap?  It's impossible!"  He glared into green eyes across the room accusingly.

Trowa snorted.  "Did you really think that my teammates would have had a fight with the enemy watching?"

Quatre smiled coldly.  "That's why Wufei pushed me into the wires in the control room." Though Quatre thought he hadn't needed to push quite so hard.  It had been a childish way for Wufei to express his anger over personal matters.   "We knew they were connected to the main controls.  I planted a device that allowed a friend of ours to hack into your computers.  He gained control of the door and let him out."  This, of course, had taken a little bit of time, and so Wufei had meditated to conserve his air until Heero could open the door.  It was the same thing he had done when he and Duo had been trapped on the moon base and the oxygen had been shut off.

Ivan's pale blue eyes were narrowed into tiny puddles of rage.  His face was jerking in helpless little fits, and Quatre wouldn't have been at all surprised if he started foaming at the mouth.  Trowa was walking wearily over to them, eyes firmly fixed on the enemy with a dagger held ready in his fist.  Not liking the expression on the crazy man's face, Quatre tried to forestall any problems Morris might decide to cause Trowa.  "Try and give up gracefully Mr. Morris.  You've lost, and there's no where to go."

The pale eyes jerked from the advancing Trowa to the bound blonde.  Apparently, it had been the wrong thing to say.  The pale eyes were calm again, and a small unsettling smirk graced his mouth underneath the beard.  Quatre tensed.  He no longer felt rage leaking off of him; he was disturbingly calm, which was very bad.  An angry enemy had a tendency to not think and make mistakes, but now Morris had regained the ability to think clearly, and he had just gotten a lot more dangerous.

He slowly lifted his arms above his head in an unmistakable gesture of surrender, but he was still smirking.  Quatre pulled futilely at his bonds, realizing that something was about to happen.  "Trowa!  He's going to . . ."   He never even got to finish his sentence.  Morris lunged backwards, moving surprisingly fast for such a dilapidated individual.  Trowa threw his second knife, but because of Ivan's unexpected move done on the tail of surrendering he only managed to sink the dagger into their enemy's shoulder.  It didn't seem to faze him one bit.  He grabbed the same remote he had been using to control the cameras and pressed something.

Suddenly Trowa was too busy trying to dodge the newly activated laser beams to stop the man from leaving through another hidden door.

Wufei breathed into Duo's mouth, then placed his palms on the soggy chest and pushed down in a rhythmic pattern.  He repeated the process, cursing the other boy fervently in Chinese for not responding.  But one of Wufei's major traits was stubbornness, (third on the list after cantankerous and belligerent), and he wasn't going to give up on his fool of a friend and love interest that easily.

He leaned down, breathing into Duo again, who suddenly gasped and choked and spit up water all over his savior's face. 

Wufei quickly pulled him into an upright sitting position, making it easier for the water to leave his friend's lungs as he coughed it up.  He rubbed his back soothingly, still muttering in Chinese, only this time it wasn't swearing.  As the coughing died down, he pulled Duo to rest against himself, back to chest, so he had an improvised chair.  He was completely heedless of the water that was soaking into his own clothes in the places they were touching.

Duo rested this way for a minute, just enjoying the ability to breath again.  He felt strange, and he had the oddest feeling that Quatre had just been with him.  Which was impossible, of course.  Frowning, he shook his head weakly before finally speaking, voice hoarse.  "Thanks 'Fei," he took a breath and fell into another fit of coughing, feeling arms coming around him from behind.  "So," he began again painfully, trying to inject his tone with weak humor, "it must be nice having me quiet for once, huh?"  His grin was sickly, but that was soon changed into an expression of astonishment as Wufei grabbed his chin and tugged his head around so that they would have been facing each other if not for the awkward angle.  His eyes widened and completed the expression as the Chinese boy covered his lips in a fervent kiss, a little bit clumsy because of the way they were sitting, but infused with so many emotions that it didn't really matter.

For a second Duo felt like he was drowning all over again, but this time it was a way he wouldn't mind going.

Wufei finally pulled away, realizing that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to obstruct Duo's air passages right now.  "We've been going about this all wrong," he murmured huskily into the other pilot's ear.  "Neither Trowa nor I meant to hurt you.  After this is over, we all need to sit down and talk.  I'm not letting you run away this time either." 

Duo stared at Wufei dumbly for a minute before slowly nodding his head.  Almost dying did wonders for a man's perspective, and although he wasn't really sure what Wufei was talking about, he was feeling pretty forgiving right now and more than willing to listen.  Of course, a lot of that could be blamed on the kiss.  Not many men were able to think straight when it came to sex.

But whether Little Duo was in charge right now or not wasn't really the ex-pilot's first priority, as the American found out once Wufei began to explain exactly what had been going on.

Duo was only given a couple more minutes to recover, than they headed out to rejoin their comrades.

After all, Duo didn't want to give the jerk another chance to try and off him.  Experience had taught him that villains could be annoyingly persistent.

Trowa did a quick flip backwards, the laser beam just missed singeing his bang.  He dodged and weaved through the threads of dangerous red light, trying to figure out exactly where they were coming from.

"Tro-wa!"  The panicked call came from Quatre who was still tied down.  A beam was traveling at him straight on, deviating from the pattern of the other lasers in a disturbingly deliberate manner, coming at him between his bound legs with a very bad destination apparently in mind.

The tall young man could see why the blonde was getting a little panicked; castration was every man's worst fear.  Between darting through the deadly light, Trowa managed to find time to yank out his last two daggers and throw them at Quatre's bound feet.  As soon as the Arabian felt the knife part the restraints at his ankles he rolled backwards in an agile somersault and got the hell off the table.  His hands were still trapped, but with his feet now on the floor he was able to pull the operating slab with him in order to get out of the laser's path.  It put a painful strain on his wrists, which were stuck at an awkward angle, but it was better than the alternative. He also noticed that where the beam had touched the table was split in half.  These things could literally cut you in half. 

Though there was a blessing in disguise, because the laser's pattern hadn't been as chaotic as the others (probably pointing to the fact that Morris had found time to give them a little extra attention) Quatre could now see where some of the beams were originating.  Of course, he couldn't do anything about it in his current state.

A hiss of pain from Trowa almost provided a deadly distraction for the blonde.  He looked up to see blood staining the sleeve on his friend's shirt, and then almost missed the beam coming from his left.  He was just barely able to dodge, but it was close enough that the table was sheared away several inches in front of his wrists.  Now he had less baggage to maneuver through the dangerous rays, but his arms were still tied.  Quatre briefly considered using one of the lasers to cut his bonds but their paths were so erratic that he quickly scrapped that idea.  He didn't fancy losing a hand just because one of them decided to veer left unexpectedly.  So instead he managed to work his way over to clipped part of the table, where with some difficulty he managed to saw off the restraints with Trowa's thrown daggers while still dodging. 

Freed finally, he yanked both of the knives out of the table.  "Quatre!  To your right!"  Heeding his friend's words instantly he dived to the left, a beam narrowly missing him.  Freed now, he got ready to take care of their problem.  He flipped one of the daggers in his hand to get a better grip for throwing, and then released it.

The machine sparked and exploded in a small puff of electricity, and three of the beams disappeared.  There was still three left, which meant that there was one more automaton . . .

"Quatre, two o'clock, it's about three feet from the top!"  The blonde immediately looked where Trowa had bid and saw it.  He aimed carefully and threw the last knife hard, praying that it would hit.  If he missed . . .

He didn't.  The dagger struck true and the last of the lasers died.  Quatre quickly moved over to Trowa and his blood soaked arm.  "How bad . . ."

Trowa shook his head, already yanking off his sleeve to use as a makeshift bandage.  "It's just a flesh wound, the thing barely nicked me."

Quatre nodded in acceptance and then asked another question that he was almost afraid to know the answer to.  "Trowa," he began quietly, "did Wufei make it in time, is Duo .  . ."  He trailed off, not able to say the word for fear that what he dreaded coming true.

Instead of answering, Trowa pulled out his own communicator and spoke into it.  "O5, come in.  O5 what's your status?"  For several tense seconds there was silence, and Trowa and Quatre both waited breathlessly.

Then:  "05 here.  Abstraction of 02 successful."  The waiting pilots let out matching sighs of relief.

Then they heard another familar, very welcome voice.  "Yep.  02's a little soggy and kinda pissed, but otherwise all right.  Now where's the bastard who's responsible for all this crap?  We need to have a little talk about drowning people."

Trowa and Quatre exchanged glances, then the blonde was the one to speak into the communicator.  "He escaped," he said simply, than winced at the accompanying cursing that spewed out of the device.

Wufei voice interrupted Duo before he could really get going.  "I've just received a message from 01.  He's picked up electronic activity north of our location."

Quatre nodded, not caring that the two on the other end couldn't see it.  "That's probably him.  He seems to be alone, I never saw any other associates.  Give us the location."

Wufei's voice crackled over the speaker as he did so.  It was decided that both teams would come from different directions in a pincher attack.  Trowa and Quatre hurried to the location, and then stopped outside the entrance.  Without any firearms this was going to be more difficult than either of them would have liked, but they did have the knives, and both of them were quite proficient at throwing them.

There was a shout from inside and they hurried in, realizing that Duo and Wufei must have gotten there before them.  Inside was a large control room, where their other two teammates were flanking the opposite door.  Wufei was holding a gun, and the blonde recognized it as the one he had dropped before being knocked out by the gas.  The Chinese boy looked furious and Quatre finally saw why.

Ivan Morris was threateningly holding his palm pressed to a red button on the side of a console.  He was shouting, pale eyes wild and triumphant.  "If you come even a step closer I'll push it!"  Morris saw Quatre enter and smiled with glee.  "You may have escaped my lasers," on the opposite side of the room Quatre saw Duo raise an eyebrow and mouth 'lasers' incredulously, "but you won't escape this.  This is a self-destruct button I built in for the entire Emerald Sphere Resort, and there is no countdown.  We'll all be blown to bits instantly.  It's not the way I would have chosen to kill you, Quatre.  But it is acceptable."

Quatre blanched when he realized exactly what he meant.  Pressing that button wouldn't only mean their deaths; it would also mean the deaths of all the innocent vacationers on the surface.  He opened his mouth in the hope of negotiating, but apparently Ivan Morris had decided on a course of action.

He pressed the button.