The Hatred of a Minute: by trucizna

Summary: (post-endless waltz). At age nineteen, Chang Wufei has quit the Preventers and works as an assassin. Tonight's job is a bit more complicated than usual-- His target happens to be Duo Maxwell.

Rating: R language, violence, adult themes

Spoilers/warnings: none.

To —

I heed not that my earthy lot

Hath—little of Earth in it—

That years of love have been forgot

In the hatred of a minute: —

I mourn not that the desolate

Are happier, sweet, than I,

But that you sorrow for my fate

Who am a passer by.

--Edgar Allan Poe

The Hatred of a Minute

---by trucizna

My hesitation afforded him a rare opportunity to speak before I killed him. This posed as an item of some curiosity to me. Most people in his position wanted to know who I was and why I was aiming a gun between their eyes. The smart few wanted to know which of their many enemies sent me to their doorstep. Since he most assuredly knew the answers to the first two questions and probably the third, I wondered what he would say.

He chose, "We should talk," thus opening up an endlessly wide selection of following phrases to pick from. I said nothing and my aim didn't falter.

With the momentum left over from my snappy and sudden entry, the door behind me closed with an ominous snicker. We stared evenly down the barrels of each others' guns for a few moments.

"I've been expecting you. Well, not you, but someone like you, for some time now. I only found out you would be the one coming for me this morning. So, with only ten hours of mental practice, my reunion speech is probably going to be a little disappointing."

Part of me wanted him to get this little charade over with so I could shoot him. Another part wanted him to talk ceaselessly so I wouldn't have to. A third—much smaller and more disconcerting than the others—remarked on how attractive he still was and how there really shouldn't be any shooting or talking going on at all.

I was doing a fine job of ignoring that part so far.

"Well," he sighed, his gun arm pointing straight and steadily at my chest, "I've missed you. It's been three years. Where the fuck have you been?"

I still didn't move. I knew that my expression was as dead as the leather coat I wore to conceal my many gun holsters. The expression and the coat matched my emotions rather well. It was all part of the job. Duo sighed again, this time dropping his head and lowering his gun. He blew out a long, wavering stream of air and brushed his bangs aside, looking at me. "If you're not going to kill me right away, sit down or something, will you?"

I didn't think I could kill him—not when he was looking at me like that. I sat down, the gun gripped tightly and held in my lap.

"Once again, where the fuck have you been, Wufei?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Fine. Then tell me why you left without telling me. Tell me why you felt the need to disappear from my life without so much as a word. Tell me, Wufei, why you felt the need to break my goddamn heart."

I couldn't tell him that, either. My reasons weren't nearly good enough to put into words. I couldn't even admit to myself that I was afraid—how was I going to tell him? The anger and hurt were furious in his eyes, and I forced myself to look into them, and I tried to do it with as much apathy as I looked into the eyes of all the people I killed every night. I owed him much more than that, but I knew I'd never be able to pay it. I should have tried.

"I run an impressive underground drug circuit. Everyone in L2 who gets drugs gets them from me. Do you know how many of these drugs I take myself? None. Do you know why?" He didn't even pause for effect—he knew I wasn't going to answer him. "There was never any reason to take them, because I never lost hope that you were alive, that you'd come back for me. Never."

He smirked, the expression sinister, "and look, here you are."

"I came to kill you."

"Good to know you're still master of the obvious, Wufei. Like clockwork. Next you'll tell me exactly how you're justified; only the reasoning will be skewed to hell and beyond, because while you were always so good at pointing out the glaringly obvious everywhere else, you were always hopelessly dense when it came to looking at yourself. And me." He sighed, the gesture the only betrayal of his feelings. His voice was otherwise steady and slightly vindictive. I wasn't about to play his stupid game. It had been three years—it was no one's fault but his own that he was now the most envied man in the Earth Sphere underground. It was his fault people were paying big money to have him killed. I just happened to be the best that money could buy. Being an ex-Preventer had all kinds of merits I could never have anticipated when I'd accepted Sally's invitation to join. I eyed him warily, the color long gone from the knuckles that still gripped my gun.

"Even a demon was an angel, once… " He whispered suddenly.

"What?"

He met my eyes, and a single thought came to me with more clarity than any other all night, 'this is not Duo Maxwell. This is not the boy I left behind.' But I couldn't think of who it could possibly be instead.

"I'm glad you came for me, 'Fei. I wouldn't want to be killed by anyone else." Unexpectedly, in one fluid, well-practiced motion he cocked his gun and pulled it around to point at me. By the time his finger began to press the trigger I had already fired. The shot was deafening, the motions required to fire it wired so well into my brain nothing could remove them. When it came down to kill or be killed, I always ended up on the living side. Always.

But the living side didn't feel like the winning one, this time.

I didn't fully realize what I'd done until he slumped sideways in his well-stuffed chair, the blood oozing surprisingly slowly from his head across the leather arm.

But, just like everything I'd done to him, I couldn't take it back.

I sat for a long time in a leather chair identical to his, watching him, watching the blood cool, ignoring the way it had splattered onto the wall in the vague shape of a chair behind him.

I knew my face looked the same as it did when I bought those bullets last night, when I took the first half of the money from my client, when I entered the room, when he spoke to me—always the same expression. The fact that I used that very same expression when I shot the only person who ever understood me hurt more than anything else, because I knew then that nothing is sacred. I had only suspected as much before.

The sun had gone, it was time to go. On a whim, I picked up his gun from the floor and pulled out the clip. It was empty.

I let the pieces of metal fall to the ground as I left the room. I couldn't bring myself to close his eyes.

The door closed behind me with that same knowing snicker and, leaning against it, I checked my own clip. I counted five bullets.

What a waste, I would only need one.

---El Fin---
author's notes/credits:

-- 'even a demon was an angel, once…' is a quote from Aura, by Carlos Fuentes.

--'To—' is a poem by Edgar Allan Poe (quoted in its entirety at the beginning of the story), and the title of this story, 'the hatred of a minute', is taken from that poem.

--no money was exchanged to anyone for any of this, and the characters involved do not belong to me, nor the rights to the poem, blah blah et cetera et cetera. You know the drill.