Title: Year of the Snake - Chapter 1/?
Pairings: Wufei/Sally, eventual Heero/Duo
Warnings: het, shounen ai
Notes: Based on one of Sharon's plot bunnies. Takes place four years post-EW.
Heero threw his jacket carelessly across the back of his chair and sat down heavily, inhaling the coffee he'd poured before setting it down on his desk and booting up his computer.
Quatre had noticed, over the past year, that Heero had a few interesting habits. It was something that either had developed over time, now that the world was, for all intents and purposes, at peace.
He owed Heero a lot - not the least of which was his life. Heero should have killed him four years ago, but he hadn't. At first he'd seemed doggedly determined to do so, and then he'd backed off. When Heero had installed the ZERO system in Sandrock, Quatre had felt like he'd just had his heart torn out of his body. Regret and fear had filled him, but Heero had shown faith in him.
Heero had believed in him.
Quatre still had a hard time reconciling that fact. First the Maganacs had surprised him with their trust, something that he still sometimes wondered about, considering how their first meeting had gone. Then he'd been entrusted with the Gundam.
When Trowa had come out and surrendered to him, though, he'd been overcome. When Duo had agreed to stay with him after Heero's self-destruction, he'd recognized someone who wanted a partnership to work.
Heero, Wufei, and Trowa had confused him on various levels, yet they'd all worked as a team - not always all five of them, together, but they'd had a common goal in mind. Maybe not exactly the same motivations, but they all wanted peace.
As he'd come to learn, the price for such a goal was very high.
He sighed heavily, and got up to pick up the mug of coffee that he knew Heero would not drink, carrying it back to his desk and wrapping both hands around it. Heero loved the smell of fresh coffee, but for some reason he'd given up drinking it. Quatre never had been clear on whether it was the caffeine or coffee itself that Heero was avoiding, but there were many other things he did know about his partner.
He knew that Heero had a small candy dish in the bottom drawer of his desk with chocolate chips in it. He'd seen Heero struggle under the weight of his conscience on more than one occasion, and he'd known before Une that Heero would turn down the chance for a promotion, although he'd been taken by surprise when Heero had recommended the position be offered to Quatre instead.
Quatre didn't want a leadership position. He was here to pay his dues for a crime against humanity, and he was not about to dictate to others what should be done, no matter how much Heero thought he should.
He took a sip and watched Heero's hands fly over the keyboard to enter his password. Quatre couldn't see his face, but he knew Heero's lips were moving. He talked to himself a lot, Heero did, when alone or with those he trusted.
That alone made Quatre want to remain right where he was, as Heero's partner.
The day that Heero had come walking in the building, Quatre had known something very big was going to happen. Heero should have been the very last person Quatre had expected to see walking into the office and throwing his badge onto the desk recently vacated by Quatre's last partner. It hadn't been easy, being an ex-Gundam pilot. It was made more difficult by the fact that people still held a grudge against the Winner family.
The destruction of the colony, however - that was something Quatre would never allow himself to forget.
Heero had invited Quatre out for a drink one night, and they'd sat at the bar nursing glasses of something or other that Heero had ordered but neither of them drank. It should have been uncomfortable, sitting elbow to elbow with Heero and saying not a word, but it had been oddly relaxing.
They'd done it several times before Heero had changed the venue to his apartment.
This time Heero pulled out a bottle from under the kitchen cabinet and twisted the cap to remove the seal. He took a long sip, then extended his arm and offered it to Quatre.
They didn't come close to emptying the bottle, but Quatre had found himself talking about It.
Heero had been there with Trowa when It happened, and had wanted to stop Quatre by force, because it was what he deemed necessary at the time, and not because OZ was calling the shots.
Trowa, who was working undercover for the organization, was the one who talked Quatre through it, before he'd gone silent and Quatre had snapped back to reality, horrified at what he'd done.
It killed him that he had been more bothered by the fact that he'd murdered his friend than by the destruction of an entire colony. Men, women, children - innocents, not soldiers in mobile suits.
Quatre had clasped his hands between his knees and hung his head as he confessed this to Heero, and he remembered like it was yesterday the way it had felt to have Heero sit next to him on the couch and put his arms around him. No words were exchanged, but Quatre knew that Heero understood - Heero empathized, and carried his own guilt. He'd quietly shared a story about a civilian complex, and although the body count was nowhere near comparable, Heero held himself responsible for what was nothing more than an accident.
They'd not spoken about it since then. It had puzzled Quatre, that Heero felt more guilty over that than he had over what happened at New Edwards - and both weighed heavily on Heero's mind, despite the fact that he'd apparently tried to make amends to the victims' families the only way he knew how.
Quatre had no such option. Families of those he'd slain had all lived on that colony - who was left to exact retribution in that case?
Not that it was Quatre's way out. As much as he had in common with Heero, he felt it would be more meaningful to anyone who might have had loved ones on the colony, and to mankind itself, to make amends in a more constructive manner. He wanted to use his family's wealth altruistically, but the choice had been taken from him when fines had been leveled at him by the Earth Sphere United Nations.
Sisters he hadn't even known he'd had had been divided. Many of them were in support of their only brother and youngest sibling, and others felt he'd not only done irreparable damage but had committed an unforgivable sin. Iria was gone, their father was gone - their sudden loss, when Quatre had encountered the ZERO system for the first time, had impaired his judgement. He could still remember how very sure he'd been that the colonies all had to be destroyed.
It had been difficult for Quatre to work with another agent. Trowa would have been Quatre's first choice, if he'd been so inclined, but he'd seemed content with his extended family at the circus. Quatre couldn't say he blamed him, and he didn't try to convince his friend to give up the path he'd chosen once they'd destroyed their Gundams. Quatre had wanted to stay closer to all of them. He thought for sure he, Trowa, and Duo, at least, would have. When they'd all watched their Gundams go up in an explosion of light and sound, there had been what Quatre thought of as A Moment. They'd met through a combination of circumstance and chance, and after having parted ways and then once again adding their efforts to address the Barton Uprising, he was convinced that nothing could keep them apart for long.
He hadn't expected them all to have lunch together once a week or to run into each other periodically at the local supermarket, but he'd at least hoped for some sort of semi-regular contact.
After most of his inheritance had gone to pay for various damages to the Earth Sphere United Nations, court fees, mandatory psychiatric evaluations, and an in-depth investigation of his personal life, he couldn't blame the others for maintaining a low profile.
In a sense, it had made things easier for him as far as his determination to right his wrongs the only way he knew how. With nothing left to focus his efforts on, he threw himself into his work with the Preventers, doing all in his power to insure that all the casualties of the war hadn't died in vain.
He had an endless stream of constantly changing partners. The longest had lasted two months, and that had been because the boy had been a new recruit, one who hadn't known the stigma attached to Quatre's name. That hadn't taken long to correct.
The day Heero had appeared, Quatre had regained some of the hope he'd lost. Heero had always had that effect on him - on all of them, back during the war.
Heero turned around and noticed the slight smile tugging at Quatre's lips. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin, then flipped it in his partner's direction. Quatre caught the one-cent piece with one hand and shook his head.
"Just thinking about the day you got your uniform," Quatre said, blowing on the coffee, although it certainly was cool enough by now.
Heero made a snuffing noise through his nose. "You'd think they'd have taken actual measurements," he said derisively.
Quatre laughed. The look on Heero's face had been priceless when the uniform, pressed and in plastic, had been brought up to the office. Heero had carefully taken it off the hanger and pulled the jacket on, then frowned at the cuffs ending two inches below his fingertips.
He had looked like a little boy trying on his father's clothes, and Quatre had found it endearing as much as amusing. He told Heero now the same thing he'd said at the time.
"You have a commanding presence, Heero."
"Perception is helpful in situations involving negotiations," Heero replied, turning back to his computer. "Not tailoring, where accuracy is almost as important as in marksmanship."
Quatre sipped on the coffee, nodding at Heero's back. His fingers drummed the side of the mug idly before he drained the rest of it, set the cup down, and cleared his throat.
"I'm sending you copies of the handwritten receipts," Quatre said. "Let me know if you see anything."
"Roger," Heero said automatically.
They'd been working on tracking down rumors surrounding a black market ring - one that specialized in automatic weapons.
Heero was highly suspect of any sort of paper trail. The black market operated on verbal contracts only, although paper was much easier to destroy than was any sort of electronic signature. Still, there was no telling what leads these receipts might point to until they'd tried to make heads or tails of them.
The writing had been faint and smudged, and in pencil. With some careful darkening of the image, it was as visible as it was going to get without losing the contrast between lettering and the paper background. Heero was in the process of enlarging the image when Wufei Chang rapped twice on the open door and walked in.
Chang and Po had just returned from their reconnaissance of a small town where there had been incidents of rioting and civil unrest. Nothing made Une antsy about another uprising like small factions cropping up here and there.
As an organization dedicated to preventing major outbreaks of violence before they occurred, the Preventers often sent out agents to do some preliminary investigation when reports of this nature filtered through the network. Heero didn't envy Une her position.
What did puzzle him was why Chang seemed so keen on obtaining their input on this case - especially how subtle he was being about it. In all the time Heero had known him - including the last year working in the same agency - Wufei had been nothing but blunt and straightforward.
There was something afoot, but Heero couldn't quite put his finger on it. He turned away from the computer and eyed Wufei beneath the thick fall of hair over his brow.
That was one advantage Trowa had had during the war - the ability to hide his expression behind his hair, although Heero freely admitted that Trowa hadn't needed to quite as much as the rest of them.
Least of all Wufei, whose anger and outrage had always been worn openly. Of all of them, perhaps Wufei needed the art of hiding his feelings more than any of them, even if it wasn't exactly his style.
"You should start wearing your hair down," Heero announced suddenly.
The crash of the coffee cup Quatre had just emptied told him that that remark had apparently hit a sore spot with Wufei.
Heero found that revelation interesting indeed.
tbc