Author's notes: Yay, it's another Gundam Wing Alternate Universe fic! Yes, believe me, I sicken myself as well. But, there it is, inspiration doesn't always care about whether there's a million better products out there than the one it's urging you to write. Hopefully you, gentle reader, will find this story interesting enough to continue, however... personally I think it's one of my best. For a full explanation of what exactly is so AU about this world, go ahead and read the bottom End Notes, because I tried to explain myself... :P
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

War Crimes
Prologue: Red Tape
by Akaitsuru RedCrane

Every shake of my one uninjured shoulder was, ironically enough, making every other part of me hurt.

"Get up. You're not dead. Yet."

A sharp prod somewhere in the generalized mass of pain formerly known as my chest finally succeeded where simple shaking had not--I gave my insistent rousers the benefit of an insolent grin and sat up as slowly as they seemed willing to let me. Unfortunately I overestimated their patience and wound up being hauled to my knees by the hair; I flinched at the thought of what this latest indignity must have inflicted on the remains of my braid and squinted up at the one who held me. The massive laceration on my neck broke open again and resumed bleeding through its thin bandage, pouring hot liquid down my back once more. The cell was so frigid my blood steamed warmly on the air.

I just forced myself to smile more widely.

"Thanks, guys, I was getting a little cold."

The hand remorselessly gripping my head let go. I thought I might have earned myself at least a backhand for that remark to complete the set of bruises I knew were painted out on my face, but for once my guards--Brute and Jitter, as I'd mentally labeled them--were strangely silent. Jitter even had something suspiciously like... pity? ... in his eyes, though when I glanced at him it vanished into the vacant look of cruelty he usually wore. There could only be one reason for their abrupt quiet today, I decided; the only explanation I could come up with was that they weren't going to be my jailers any more. Treize had finally cut through the red tape and gotten what he had wanted since the end of what was becoming known as the "Gundam Conflict..."

"Hey," I said to the solemn expressions that fit so badly on my captors' normally heartless faces. "If this is going to be my proverbial 'last meal,' would somebody order me a pizza?"

Neither of them laughed, though Brute smiled rather nastily as he looped one arm around my waist to drag me to my feet.

"Give ya somethin' better," the middle-aged man mumbled lewdly, and through the haze of pain from my abruptly jarred bones I felt a hand slide up the inside of my leg. "Wanna do 'et again, just fer old times?"

Jitter's raucous, mean-spirited laughter made me grit my teeth almost as much as that prodding hand, but I kept silent about both. They'd do it if they wanted to, just like they had since I'd first been put into their "care"-- saying anything to protest would only make their attentions more certain.

"Such a pretty boy," Brute leered appreciatively, and I almost winced at his rank breath on my bleeding neck. "And such a good ride, too. Which one ah those others was keeping you as their pet, huh? Had to learn those tricks someplace. Was it that slanty-eyed chink? Or did the little blond and his... heh... "friend"... let you in once in a while? Ya did do a pretty good job with me and Locun together, so mebbe ya practiced on them."

Suddenly I felt tears start in my eyes, but I made sure they didn't see even the barest hint of my pain.

No. It wasn't Wufei, or Quatre, or Trowa.

"Naw, Chiggen, wasn't none of those kids I bet," Jitter spoke up like he could read my mind. "I think it musta been that one that died, wot's 'is name, yeah, that Heero Yuy kid. The one 'et fought like somethin' possessed and then blew himself to hell when 'e couldn't win."

I had to close my eyes to contain the tears, and Brute leaned forward to drag my chin to face him.

"Musta not cared about you much, boy, if 'e did himself in like 'e papers say. Whatsa matter, didn't rub 'im the right way? But you couldn't 've cared for 'im much either, ain't never seen ya cryin' for 'im. And ya didn't cry when I first came for ya, come to that."

You bastard, I heard something in my head wail, and the tears threatened to spill despite my best efforts. You didn't hear me scream when I saw Wing go up in those flames! Nobody did, not even the one I screamed for! That's why it doesn't matter if you fuck me now. I can't feel it. I could only ever feel Heero, and he's dead, so what's the difference who uses me after this? I'm the next thing to glad that I'm going to be executed!

I swiped a hand across my face, like I was trying to wipe away grime instead of tears, and looked coolly at both of them as they snapped handcuffs around my wrists.

"Why didn't I cry?" I murmured neutrally. "Boys... don't cry."

They both sniggered horribly and dragged me out in the hallway.

I wasn't expecting to see them and it surprised the hell out of me when I did. I knew they'd be going too, of course--if Treize was going to use our executions to mark the beginning of his 'total pacifism' campaign, then he'd have to do us all at once just for the sake of dramatics--but I still didn't think we'd be together for it, defenseless or not. The bastard OZ officers he'd handed us off to wouldn't even let us stay in the same cells, they were so afraid of us, so it had been quite a long time since I'd last had a chance to even talk to any of them. Wufei's one remaining eye burned into me when I slapped his back and called him "Wu-chan," so I can only imagine that captivity had just made him madder and more arrogant than usual... he didn't seem frightened, either, so I guess he had put on denial along with his chains. Quatre, predictably, looked the worst, the marks of beatings and teeth showing up badly on that white skin of his. He was still barely walking from being hamstrung in our last battle and happened to be using Trowa as a crutch when I met them in the hall; his smile was automatic and broken, like one of those dolls that say "mama" when you stand them up. Trowa gave me a look that said as clearly as words not to mention anything about it, so I didn't... well, not really.

"Heh, fancy meeting you lot here," I chirped, since nobody else seemed inclined to say much. "I guess you must be on your way to hell, too? I hear it's great this time of year--little hot, though, bring some white clothing."

"But Duo..." The utterly beaten voice that came from Quatre's mouth immediately made me wish all he could say was 'mama,' "You always wear black..."

I put one hand on his shoulder as several OZ gun barrels prodded us into as quick a walk as the Arabian could manage.

"Well, of course, Q-man," I said cheerfully, mindful of Trowa's protective eyes. "I'm a native--wouldn't want to look like a tourist, right?"

Jitter or one of the other guards might have cackled at that crack, but I wasn't paying attention by then. My mind had kinda frozen up a little, finding all of us broken like this and seeing how careful the guards were being; one of them had a rifle pressed against Quatre's ribs to keep Trowa in line, and Wufei's martial arts had obviously been accounted for since he was the only one in full chains. The handcuffs on my wrists were too tight and kept chaffing my skin, and I couldn't even scratch my filthy hair without one of the OZ boys shoving a gun up in my face. It was all pretty theatrical, really. And that was even before the cameras showed up and started filtering our highly publicized walk to oblivion to millions of captivated viewers. At the point where they started taping us I just kinda zoned out for a while and let my mind drift wherever it goes when I'm not watching it--I didn't want to see if it followed the path of destruction that had led us all here, or if it chased off after Heero. It was generally one of the two, when I bothered to keep track... I wondered briefly what the folks at home were making of my dreamy expression and decided they probably thought I was on drugs.

I wish.

I didn't watch out the windows either when they put us in that black van. At that point Wufei started twitching, pulling at his chains and muttering under his breath; it scared Quatre, who burrowed further into Trowa's chest and drew an unnoticed look of disgust from a couple of the OZ soldiers. Evidently same-sex pairings aren't encouraged in Treize's oh-so-formal ranks. I just sat in the darkest corner I could find and tried to look like I was planning supernatural revenge on everybody I could see. "You can't kill Death," was my one comment when the video cameras turned my way, but I refrained from adding a melodramatic laugh to that on the principle that this whole affair was hyped up enough already. L3 cluster's capital, New Vienna, sped by the windows at a speed that made it feel like my eyes were blurred with tears--I blinked a couple of times to make sure it was just an illusion and settled with my spine pressed against the cold wall. To wait.

Our transport slowed somewhere deep in the heart of Treize's recently conquered city. I say "slowed"--what actually happened was the motor jerked into a low gear so fast I hit my skull against one of the restraining bars sticking out from the ceiling. I touched the thin scab on my neck to make sure it wasn't going to rupture again and curled up as much as my chains would let me, resting my aching skull on my knees... and it was because I was looking at the floor just then that I managed to catch a glimpse of Wufei's foot blurring into motion.

He did manage to bring two of them down, which is more than I would have expected given an entire armored carrier against one lone, bare-fisted martial artist. As the first guard's jaw exploded into bone fragments I was already on my feet, but just as my wrist-chains slid around a convenient neck I felt something cold and steel nudging me somewhere in the vicinity of my ear. Though logic dictated I was about to die anyway, either cowardice or survival instinct took hold, and I pulled my hands back from the panting OZ's throat and sat down again.

Then I got to watch Wufei being beaten into what a cook might refer to as the "soft peak" stage in meringue.

After that it stayed a pretty quiet little hayride to hell. I guess it was only by default I wound up with Wufei's unconscious body in my arms, but I held onto him like a rather bloody security blanket until the van came to a stop. All the L2 Westerns I'd crept into as a kid assured me that execution grounds were supposed to be out in the desert, surrounded by buzzards, cacti and bullet-riddled stucco walls, but the building we pulled up to looked more like a large hospital. Most of my attention was taken up with hauling Wufei up the three flights of stairs on our journey, so when I finally got a chance to look around my impression of a doctor's office hadn't wavered--the place we were in was all white, and as immaculate as an operating room. Except there wasn't any of that fancy medical equipment or those monitors you see on TV. There was just a chair in the center, a chair with padded restraints.

Next to it was a tray of needles.

"Last stop. Everybody off," I mumbled into the silence, and at my side Wufei moaned almost inaudibly.

I won't go into the exact details of what happened next; if you wanna know about it in all its glory, you can go watch the fifty or so videos the various news stations all filmed for their networks. I gotta admit, it was pretty awful, even for someone who's seen as much destruction as me... maybe because for once, there wasn't any blood to accompany or announce the end of life. Wufei finally came out of his shell of disbelief and asked for his head to be cut off in a more honorable manner, but the commanding OZ officer refused on the grounds there wasn't any time. I bet if Treize had heard about it he would have done the honors for his old adversary, but as it was Wufei just decided to go first. I managed to keep my gaze on Trowa and Quatre the whole time. Trowa had one arm around Sandrock's pilot and the other one over his vacant blue eyes so he wouldn't have to be scared.

Quatre was next. I've heard since then that a bunch of the news networks' ratings took a dive when Trowa lead him up to the chair--apparently, the close-ups the cameras did on his beautiful face upset a lot of viewers. He was too pretty and too obviously out of his mind to execute, was the argument afterwards, but at the time there was no one to protest. The OZ let Trowa hold his lover's hands and whisper to him as they put the needle into his arm, and Quatre never looked away from him for a moment, even when he started to cry in slow, perfect drops and his heart finally stopped. Trowa went quietly after that, and only gave me the slightest of brusque nods before closing his eyes for the last time. ...Then I was alone.

Fear has a nasty sense of humor sometimes. It only really closed in on me when Trowa quit breathing, after ignoring me for the entire morning. I felt its first bite like the cold of my cell creeping into my bones, insidious and arresting, but what could I do? All the real strength I ever had left me when they blew Deathscythe Hell to bits like its predecessor, and I had realized that a long time ago. The only weapon I had left was sadness, and that was what I fought my rising terror with as I was prodded into a seat still warm from my comrades' bodies.

I thought of Heero.

"Do you have anything to say before your sentence is carried out?"

The words seemed to come from far away.

"Besides the fact I'll be there to greet you when this mockery of a government is overthrown and people like me put you guys into this chair?" My mouth was talking of its own accord. "...Nope."

The poison was numbing, so strong I could feel it moving through my veins from the instant they injected it. First there was tingling, then warmth, then coolness, then nothing, spreading outward from my arm in a quiet rush. Fear disappeared as darkness veiled my vision, and in my mind I lifted my arms up to touch the fingertips of the one thing I had wanted since this entire war began: a boy with dark brown hair, and eyes that burned like blue vengeance.

Heero... finally... I'm coming to you...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
End Notes: How did this happen, you might ask? War Crimes takes place in an alternate GW timeline where the Peacemillion's fuel tanks blew up after it impacted Libra, destroying both battleships and the Zero System copy that was operating White Fang's mobile doll forces. While Heero and Relena managed to escape before the tanks detonated, Heero lost to Zechs and Epyon due to his injuries. Once he was assured that Relena would be restored to her position in the Cinque Kingdom, Zechs surrendered himself to the forces of Earth. With nothing left to oppose them, Treize's soldiers disarmed the Gundams and took over the colonies, unifying the planet and space and bringing about peace... but at a terribly bitter cost to the pilots who had fought so hard only to find themselves on nobody's side.