Review replies:

Yurikitsune: Hey, your entire review actually made it through! Coolness! Thanks for the in-depth review of my last chapters. I'm pleased that you enjoyed them, and especially pleased that you enjoyed my portrayal of Duo. Hopefully I'll have the newest chapter (21) posted here on fanfiction. net before I leave on the med! And thanks for your glowing praise of my writing. You constantly make me blush. (blush, grin)

Pandora-chan: Ah hah hah, just wait. Everything will be answered eventually. Heh heh. Oh, I might be able to upload some songs when I get back from the med – if you're still interested next year, I can put up most of the Mellon Collie album (for a few days only) for download as .mp3's. Thanks for the review!

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Gundam Wing or any song by the Smashing Pumpkins. I am simply an E5 in the USN, and thus have no money. So ha.

-BEGIN FIC-

And once again, you'll pretend to know that
there's an end, that there's an end to this begin
it will help you sleep at night
it will make it seem that right is always right
alright?

We Only Come Out At Night

-- 05:12 --

Duo sat up in his bed, letting his long unbound waves of chestnut hair fall loosely around his shoulders and cascade in soft, thick rivers down his body. Violet eyes barely open, he yawned loudly and stretched his hands towards the ceiling, his fingers laced together and his back arched. Lips smacking, he swung his feet towards the edge of his soft bed, uncaring that he was sweeping the comforter and sheets that had encased him in their warmth throughout the entirety of the chilled night onto the dark blue and gray carpeting that covered the floor of his procured hotel room. Staggering out of his pool of fabric unintentionally deposited at his feet, Duo made his way to the white tiled bathroom of his living space, cursing loudly as his feet hit the cold ceramic flooring. "Damn it!" he whimpered. "Think that damned heater didn't work at all! Fucking hell."

Stepping as lightly across the cold tiles as he could, Duo made his way to the toilet. As he relieved himself, he grumbled and shook his head in a vain attempt to wave away the billowing cloud of sleep-induced haze that threatened to smother him once more in its comforting warmth, quietly encouraging him to retreat to the depths of the warm blankets and sheets that had encased him throughout the night and protected him from the room's seemingly inherent chill. A quiet smacking of lips left him as he flushed away his morning business and straightened himself before striding back into the bedroom of his small hotel room. Walking to the window that took the wall directly across the room from his comfortable bathroom he parted the thick curtains with slender fingers.

Glancing between those curtains, Duo smiled as his gaze fell upon the Ford Taurus he'd carefully memorized every detail of last night. Now he could finally discern its color as being forest green rather than just something very, very dark.

Nodding, he let the curtain fall back into place and walked over to his small duffel bag. Pulling a fresh t-shirt from its depths and a stained but clean pair of jeans forth as well, he tossed them onto the bed and gathered the small heap of fabric that was his clothing from last night into his arms. He tossed that laundry into the bathtub along with the boxers he was wearing. A few moments later, bathwater was running and suds were forming as the liquid that poured from the spotted silver faucet beat violently against the granules of Tide that Duo had dumped in with his black ensemble from last night.

Flopping down in his chair, naked as can be, the long-haired youth grabbed the remote for the aged television set that sat across the room from his table and chair assembly upon the hotel room's dresser. Turning the channel immediately to Cartoon Network, he smirked as Dexter's Laboratory flickered brightly across the screen.

Turning his eyes towards the curtain as the cartoon played on, he nodded. Forest green Fort Taurus with a dent in its left fender three inches behind the wheel hub, with five spoke hubcaps and dark gray fabric interior, license plate number GTF4108. Cracked windshield wipers, too, along with a slightly scratched passenger-side mirror casing. The car had seen a bit of action. That bit of action ensured that it would be all the easier for him to trace.

And the fact that he was tracking someone he'd seen before made his mind rest all the easier. He, after all, wouldn't be losing someone as memorable to his photographic memory as Xavier Johnson any time soon. No, the man was going to have to pull the impressive or the impossible to abandon this little follower.

After all, this man was threatening his best friend. He'd threatened the blonde that Duo held so closely and dearly to his heart that he held a veritable obsession with keeping track of his whereabouts, poisoning the young heir's brain with fear and terror to the point that he'd been forced to call his shadowy lifeline that continually stalked him through the Earth Sphere system for assistance.

Duo had lost far to many people in his life, as he'd told Trowa before they'd parted ways the night before. The kids he considered to be both family and friends in the street gang he was part of during his youth on the L2 colony clusters were long gone, washed away by the sweeping waters of time that had dragged them to the darkness of death with the decent of the plague through their run down, sociologically abandoned ghettos or that had swept them off to foster homes and happy families that welcomed them with open arms and smiles and refused to return them to the orphanage that had supported them after their ramshackle hovel they used for shelter had been demolished. They lived lives under different names, amongst ordinary people doing ordinary things. Even if he were to find the few who'd survived to this day, making it through the travesty of war and sickness to find themselves in these supposedly prosperous times, he doubted he would retain any ability to recognize them for who they were. He'd changed significantly over the past years, so it was quite reasonable to assume that those he'd claimed as friends, family and foe as a young boy marred with the dirt of the street would have done so as well.

The church and everyone he'd known and hated and loved in its confines were destroyed, the memories of his times in its echoing halls all that remained of that once glorious structure flooded with love and warmth. The kindly Sister Helen was lost to the clouds of the heavens, spirited away by the God of Death from the solid misery of the colonies sprung from God's Earth. The old priest who'd accepted him despite his foul attitude, despite his proclamations that the God the Church was dedicated to didn't exist, despite his flamboyant disobedience and lack of will to cooperate with any set regulation, had been murdered while preaching the value of peace to the soldiers who had taken him and those within the Church's confines hostage with the intention of utilizing the holy grounds for a hiding place and to those soldiers who had come to eliminate not only their captors but those with whom they assumed their enemies associated. A false declaration of allegiances had seen the priest, his clergy, and every other resident of that house of love and spiritual wellbeing dead from gunshot wounds or the touch of flame, mutilated by fallen beam or toppled brick wall.

Many of the men and women he'd come to know over his years wandering as a vagabond about the L2 cluster and beyond had perished during the war, victims to the continued violence of the Earth Sphere and her colonies. The Sweepers, while a tough group of individuals, weren't as invincible as many would have liked to assume they were, falling victim to the vacuum call of space and the heat of fire as they manned the ill-fated Peacemillion on her final flight through the sea of darkness, stars and particle-beam bullets that was the ocean of space. Even the twisted and crazed scientist he'd come to know after being captured during his first romp on board the giant experimental spacecraft Peacemillion, who'd instructed him in the Arts of Warfare and the methodologies behind Mobile Suit piloting, who'd provided him with the means to attain his partner Deathsythe Hell and with the missions he'd followed to spawn the war that had brought what everyone assumed was world peace had been lost to the savagery of battle, his flesh burned by fire, his bones eaten by the rabid jaws of explosions and his blood drained by the vampiric chill of the breathless bounds of space.

Everyone he had touched had died or left his life, effectively dying in his eyes as they were to never be seen or heard from again.

But Duo had learned to accept what had happened in the past. After all, he couldn't have expected any different outcome, could he? He was the God of Death, Shinigami incarnate. All he touched, all he loved, all he turned the emotions held in the depths of his black heart to were doomed from the moment his attentions found them.

Very few escaped its touch. Very precious few lived after he'd turned his eyes their way. Lady Une had already been scared by Death's touch, judged worthy by its twisted design to continue her life as the forgiving soul she had become with the death of her heart, of her Treize-sama. Hilde, his dear friend, was a business partner. Even Shinigami recognized that his mortal incarnation needed to work, to eat, to have shelter to continue existing, and that the woman he worked with assisted him in maintaining those basic human necessities. Such is why Duo assumed she had been spared. Lucrenzia Noin was a good friend, but she was also a soldier. She continued Death's work when called, being part of the Preventers organization that hunted the hunters of innocents and peace, earning reprieve from the Reaper's clawed hand. Others, like the Dorlain girl, lived because of their necessity to the world and its developing peace. Or perhaps she lived because of her fierce protector, or because she secretly had an unannounced sliver of jealousy in Duo's black heart that Shinigami found amusing and continued to perpetuate by not snatching her off to the black Abysmal Hell that awaited all souls he clutched in his icy grip.

The four pilots who rode in their metallic demons of war with him through the battlefields Earth, space and colonies supplied seemed entirely exempt from the touch of the dark God and needed no excuse like those others he had already mused over, thriving under its bloodied eyes rather than writhing and fading like a fire-touched flower. Perhaps it was because they had done Shinigami's work, escorting the souls of hundreds, thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands to the black abyss that awaited the dead. Perhaps it was because they were just as diabolical as he was, killing without judgment and striking without mercy.

It would explain why none of the four pilots had yet to die.

Heero, Duo assumed, was practically untouchable even by the thin and reaching skeletal fingers of Death. He was the Perfect Soldier, the escort of Death, a dark angel sent to the realm of mortals to usher souls to their appointed place in the great circle of spirits that swam the cosmos. He and his war-spawned and terrifying machines, the hawkish Wing and the archon Wing Zero, had brought terror and destruction to the masses in the name of Peace, satiating both mortal craving for calm and serenity and the eager lapping of the Grim Reaper for souls to fill his coffers.

Much of the same could be said about Wufei, the Dragon who's jaws had stolen the lives of scores of men, who's fiery breath incinerated souls without mercy. And Trowa the enigma, who's stoic face showed no emotion as he performed his fated task, feeding the hunger of darkness without care, without mercy.

Quatre was the one Duo constantly worried about. He was the gentle one, the innocent one. The one who had not met Shinigami's mortal shell by gunpoint or by raising a weapon, but rather by questioning what fate the boy was following and if it coincided with his own. When the pilots had scattered to the winds after Wing exploded in a flowery blossom of fire and fury, spreading its angel wings to the heavens in an act of defiance against those who would see the young messengers of Death fail in their tasks, it had been the blonde desert prince who had taken the boy with the death tainted and blackened soul into his home, trusting him with his secrets, his life. He was the one who cried for those he murdered, who's tears held within their vivid globes emotions long forgotten or abandoned by the other demons of War who fought at his side. The one who showed mercy when he could, who struck only when necessary, who pitied with his heart and cried in pain with his soul every time he had to cut another life down. The one who, even when enraged by the Zero system beyond the point of reckoning and driven to the darkness that consumed the four who he considered his comrades in the battle he participated in, had cried subconsciously, his soul spilling its sorrow even while his War-enraged mind was hazed to those tears' meaning.

Duo feared for Quatre. He was afraid that the dark spirit of Death that eagerly clamped its hands over all he loved and revered would strike against the boy he considered to be his most loyal friend, against the one who unlike any other held such friendship in his heart that it almost made that deadened organ hurt in happiness to think of him. The blonde was the only one who didn't draw thoughts of enigmatic lack of care or the pain of abandoned, discarded love when he reflected upon him. One he held in his heart with love, though that emotion carried with it loneliness and pain. Everyone else he carried with friendship and merry memories crafted in the shadows of conflict and the crimson of spilt blood. Many who he considered friends found a shadow of caring in his heart, but none so intense as that held for the boy who Duo knew would be the first of the five messengers of the Reaper to fall just by the fact that he was too forgiving, too sweet, too kind to survive in a world tainted with the ghastly vapors of Hell. Where the others thrived in this environment, paying it no special attention and no mind, the innocent's angelic wings molted and drooped, their white color stained by ash and blood.

Shaking his head, the youth sighed. 'Damn, I'm getting morbid in my old age. Sixteen really does wonders for the overactive imagination.' A smirk crossing his lips, Duo rose to his feet and walked to his bag. It was getting a bit chilly in the room – apparently, that lousy heater he'd turned on last night didn't work at all even though it was noisily rumbling away from its spot under the window, spewing musty dust into the barely stirred air.

Pulling his boxers on following with his jeans, he stretched one more time to shake the remainder of what sleep clung to him like cobwebby spiders' threads. Staring at his reflection in the mirror that rested against the wall next to the television, he blinked a few times before sighing.

Quatre was in deep, deep trouble. He could feel it in his bones. He had been feeling it for quite some time. The call he'd received last night had just been a confirmation that he'd never wanted to hear.

That was why he'd made it to Fresno, California so quickly. Because he'd already been in the area, searching desperately for his blonde friend.

Already searching. Duo shook his head. 'What would a 'normal' teen be doing with his time?' he silently pondered, still staring at his reflection. 'Probably spending his time at a movie theater and dating like mad. Practicing behind the wheel to get his Earth Sphere driver's permit, or maybe getting his Colonial driver's license. Dreaming about his new car he's been saving for.'

'Us? Heh. Wandering the Earth Sphere, lookin' for best friends to make sure they don't get their billionaire-asses blown to smithereens by some servant of Death.'

'Kinda funny. Shinigami saving the Desert Prince from a servant of Death itself. Shinigami saving someone from himself. Shinigami saving someone, period.'

He shook his head again. 'Fuckin' hell. Overactive imagination strikes again.'

Pulling his shirt on, Duo walked over to the window and sat down in the chair beside it. Drawing the curtains slightly open, keeping the gauzy white shade that the thick dark drapes had covered still in their shut position, he stared through the obscuring fabric at the room that laid before the front bumper of that forest green Taurus.

He braided his hair as he waited for his enemy, the enemy of his friend, to make his move. And as he waited, he reflected on exactly who it was he was dealing with.

-- 23:00, 196 Days Ago --

Trowa nodded as he slowly closed the door between the living room and the dining room. "Your thoughts, Duo?"

Duo snorted, crossing his arms over his thin chest, his eyes narrowed as he glowered at the door. "I don't trust any of them."

"Neither do I. But if you had to choose amongst them?"

"I… don't know. They're each creepy in their own way. Especially that Waverly guy."

Trowa nodded.

"Xavier's the coolest of the bunch, though."

"You really think so?" Trowa asked, arching a brow.

"Trust me. I'm usually very good at pegging personality types. I think he's definitely hiding something from us, but at the same time, he's the one among them that I trust the most. Which, obviously, isn't saying much at all."

"Right. What do you think he's hiding?"

"Ah hell… I don't know. But something's just… unnerving. How easily he's giving us all this information. He just shows up, introduces himself, gives us that disk you were trying to steal, tells us where Quatre is and what he's doing… it all seems way too convenient, doesn't it? Like he's covering something that he doesn't want us to know by throwing what we want to hear out to us like he was throwin' money to bums."

-- 21:40, 191 Days Ago --

Trowa was calmly pointing the layout of the mansion out to Duo, tracing along the map he'd drawn with a slender index finger.

"So right 'bout here is where you suspect it is, eh?"

"Aa."

"Actually, Duo, the computer server is here."

"AUGH! Damn, man, don't sneak up on us like that!"

Trowa was also trying to quell his pounding heartbeat, though without the same commotion that Duo resorted to. His eyes narrowed slightly as he stared at Xavier Johnson, who was smirking, leaning over the map, pointing over Duo's shoulder.

"So, what are you two planning?" the OZ officer questioned, his smile cheerful and friendly.

"Nothing you need concern yourself with," Trowa said quietly, shrugging as if without care.

"Yep. Just two friends conspiring together. Nothin' you need to stick your nose into."

"I'm not feeling trust here for some reason," Xavier said with a sigh.

"Gee, you fuckin' think?"

Trowa had to fight his face to keep from smirking. 'The Deathscythe pilot sure is entertaining.'

-- 17:35, 191 Days Ago --

As soon as they were safely in the dining room, Duo nearly collapsed into the nearest chair by the table that he could reach. "Fuck…"

"What's wrong?" questioned Trowa, his eyes carrying the slightest hint of concern in their emerald depths.

"I… just… shit. I don't trust any of them. It's like sitting in a room filled with fucking vultures ready to pick the flesh off your bones…"

Trowa nodded, frowning himself. He'd gotten that same feeling.

"Plus not to mention that one of those mother fuckers is the guy that was gonna blast me to smithereens."

Trowa's eyes widened. 'That's right. No WONDER he's nervous. Especially with Waverly speaking so casually about the explosion that was meant for Duo.'

"I just wanna blow the bitches to hell." Snorting, Duo plopped back in his chair and punched his fist sharply down onto the table top, making the candlesticks that were upon it shiver and topple over.

-- 04:18, 189 Days Ago --

Trowa sighed, staring at the disaster of a room. "The only problem is that they may have figured out what you were planning."

"Maybe. But then why destroy it all? Why not wait to see what move I would make, then attempt to use my strategies against me?"

Duo scowled. "My biggest concern isn't over the plan, the room, or none of this shit…"

"Hm?" Glancing over, Quatre raised a brow. Trowa quickly mimicked the move.

"It's that whoever did this is most likely still here."

A quiet groan interrupted their thoughts.

"The floor panel," Quatre softly hissed as Trowa yanked his gun from his holster and readied it.

Nodding, the taller pilot sneaked to the dropping portion of the floor that was once stationed below the chess table, and poked it with his gun. "How do you lift it?"

"The safety latch, right where that tear in the rug is."

Reaching into the tear, he felt the circular device, and gave it a good counter clockwise wrench. He brought his gun to bear as the floor panel dropped.

All three stared in disbelief as the grisly scene unveiled itself to their eyes.

Duo was the first to whisper, "Xavier…?"

The beaten, bloodied body didn't respond.

-- 23:31, 189 Days Ago --

Duo glanced up as the other two pilots finally arrived in the room that currently provided shelter for both him and Chad. "Finally decided to join us, eh?"

Quatre shrugged solemnly as Trowa nodded. They both walked to the edge of the bed.

Chad looked at them with weak, wild eyes. His gaze settled in particular upon Quatre.

"Tell me," Quatre whispered softly.

"You're not the only one around here."

"Not the only one strong enough to utilize it?"

"No."

Quatre bowed his head. "He was using you for cover, wasn't he?"

Chad slowly nodded.

"And by now, he's made his escape."

Duo and Trowa looked at one another before bursting from the room as one.

"No fuckin' way!" Duo wailed as they broke the door to Xavier's room open.

Trowa grimaced, looking at the empty bed.

-- 05:58 --

Duo frowned as his completed braid's end toppled loosely from his fingers. He hated remembering what had occurred six months ago. He hated every detail of that time, from the recollection of the look on Heero's face and the emptiness of his dilated eyes after his skull had split and blood was encasing his frame like a caterpillar's cocoon, from the loneliness that filled him every night when he dreamed of that moment when the one his heart had already found itself slithering silently towards had pressed the red plunger that had assuredly sealed his fate, to the stress and worry that pilfered all joy that might have been his, forcing him to wear the smiling mask and tell the only lie he held in his heart to the world through his lips, when he'd been incorporated without his knowledge in the diabolical scheming between Quatre Raberba Winner and the mysterious entity known only as Douglas Kesslinger. He hated having to remember the three spies who'd made his life a living Hell for those few days he'd been forced to associate with them. He hated seeing the smug, smirking visage of the longhaired, hazel-eyed man called James Waverly on the forefront of his mind. He hated envisioning the plain, round beard-sporting image of Chad Lesley before him, sap in hand and ready to knock him for a loop and abduct him once more in his dreams. He hated remembering the jester's grin that was so very like his own, hiding dark purposes and evil intentions from the world, merrily worn upon the brown-eyed face of Xavier Johnson. He hated the recollections of how helpless he'd been during that fiasco, not having Heero around to turn to or speak to, not having the clarity of a 'destroy everything with your Gundam' mission to fall back on, not having a clue about what was going on. He hated the memories of swimming in that vast sea of plotting that he couldn't bring himself to escape from, flailing wildly after goals that were moved or destroyed the moment he stretched his fingertips out to touch them.

And now he was stalking someone from that period of his life. Someone he'd have given anything to forget.

Someone who'd very likely been the one to have targeted him in that fiasco, attempting to murder him in the comfort of Quatre's home.

The fast-talker of the group. The one who deceived with a smile on his face and lies in his eyes. The one that Duo had at first judged to be the most trustworthy of the bunch but upon recollection had determined was indeed the most shady of all three of the men he'd been forced to deal with. The master of double-talk and the wearer of the fake smile that covered his true intentions, who's eyes were calculating and vicious even as his voice laughed in merriment. The one Duo suspected was the most cold-hearted of all three of the individuals he'd encountered during that time of chaos, those individuals who now rose from their graves of sand washed over them by the passage of time to disturb the present.

At least Chad Lesley had been readable. He was the everyday man, blending into his surroundings perfectly, quiet and easy to overlook. He'd developed no real technique to lying, to covering his intentions, other than avoiding them and attempting to submit altered opinions, orchestrated lines spoken from tense lips. A capable man, perhaps, but no master manipulator. Rather a master information gatherer, and nothing more. A man who was unfortunately fit for no fate other than murder, unable to see the malice in his comrades' actions or the motives for their plots that would assuredly lead to his death.

At least James Waverly, as warped as he'd seemed to the braided boy, had a sense of honor and values that he strictly adhered to. No matter how diabolical he seemed, he only did what he thought and felt was necessary to accomplish those goals he desired, never turning away from the direction his moral compass was pointing at the moment. Duo had seen that in the final days he'd dealt with the man; he'd seen the honor in his eyes even as his lips turned in a smile that radiated bitter defeat when they'd encountered him in the dungeon cells below Gregory Channok's manor. The man had motives and methods to getting things done that, while involving manipulation and murder, weren't without goal or purpose.

Xavier….

Dou shivered.

That man put him on edge.

He started as he heard a car engine start. Glancing out the window, he frowned as he noted plumes of white smoke billowing from the exhaust pipe of the forest green Ford Taurus, snaking along the ground behind the vehicle like the tendrils of spirits rolling along the cold asphalt. As the ghostly wisps turned their adventurous lengths towards the chilly air and danced along an earthly breeze, the car door opened and the tall, lank man who'd started the vehicle stepped free of its interior. Blue fuzzy slippers hurriedly carried their wearer back to the hotel room he was staying in.

He was letting the car warm up.

Duo nodded and quickly packed his duffel bag.

The man was going somewhere, and he intended to go with him.

-- 23:45 --

Duo groaned as he tried to roll off his injured side. His legs, his arms, his body refused to reply to the wishes of his mind to attain a new position, though.

Bruised and battered, the braided boy buried his eyes in the protective shade of his eyelids. Not that it would have made any difference – the area around him was as black as the blackest pitch of a starless night during a total lunar eclipse with no city lights to grace the landscape. Black as a black crayon. Black as Death's Abyss.

He wished he was dead.

Death would certainly hurt a hell of a lot less than this. It would also be less humiliating. It would be less irritating.

It would be less hopeless, less flooded with doubt and fear, less coated in the jacket of nervousness that he now wore.

Duo froze as he heard footsteps. Carefully analyzing the sound, he determined that the footfalls of his captor were receding. The man who'd tortured him for answers was retreating, returning to his meeting that he'd swiftly abandoned upon orders to seek information from the braided boy that he frankly didn't possess.

Pressing his face against the ground, his ears caught the audible pop that ripped from his chest as his body shifted with his skull's movement. A cry escaped his lips, tears unwillingly springing from his eyes.

Boys did not cry.

Fire roared along his spine. The slashes that covered his legs stung mightily. The lashes granted to his thin frame by the fall of a leathery whip, the welts they had brought into being seeped gooey puss that leaked into his shirt, binding it to his flesh and tearing away with every small shiver of his body.

He tried to set himself back into that nearly comfortable position he'd had before his snapped ribs had shifted.

Another pop, another spring of tears.

Boys did not cry.

Biting his lips, Duo turned his mind away from the pain that flooded his reality.

Unfortunately, his mind reflected on the hopelessness of his situation.

No one knew where he was. No one would be orchestrating a rescue. No one would be able to locate him. And he was in the enemy's clutches, unable to do anything about the plot they were crafting, unable to do anything to stop them from murdering the boy who was dearest to him as a friend.

Boys did not cry.

Tears seeped from his eyes as the heavy weight of despair settled on him more heavily than the pain of his injuries ever could.

Duo cried, very softly, in the incapacitating darkness.

-- 22:08 --

Duo shivered violently, rubbing his arms viciously in an attempt to stay warm. He was silently envying the dogs in their crates for their plush fur coats and the cats in their boxes for the same. Quietly reflecting, he snapped a curse at the God who'd allowed humans to evolve as they had, abandoning the fur that would most certainly benefit his health and comfort at this moment for the thin scraggly hair that stood on end, the bumps that ran their courses along his arms raising them into useless little towers upon his pale, shivering flesh. Those goose pimples would have caused any other mammal's hair to stand on end, fluffing it out and trapping warm air next to the animal's flesh to help insulate it from the cold. Well, most mammals. He didn't suspect that walruses or whales got goose pimples.

But no, he was a human. And thanks to the development of the species, he was completely devoid of the luxury of body fur. Hell, he hadn't even grown a decent swath of chest or back hair. He'd never had his upper-lip touched by the hint of a moustache. The stubble of an oncoming beard avoided his face as if it were a carrier of the plague. Perhaps puberty had just decided to skip merrily past him, taking with it all the increased testosterone flow that would make that little thing he desired at the moment called body and facial hair with it. Damn it all.

He snarled at a dog that was looking at him curiously. "Shaddup."

The dog panted merrily.

Duo just hung his head with a whimper. He'd thought during the first couple hours of this flight that he was indeed lucky that this particular shuttle that was connecting at the Lunar Space and Air Station, located just a crater over from the Lunar Base that was home to the Preventers, was a cargo carrier that was at the moment hauling live animals. Such, of course, meant that the cargo bay he was stowing away in would be kept pressurized, oxygenated, and temperate. Meaning that he would be able to snag the same flight as Xavier without having to go through the hassle of getting a ticket and risking being seen by the man who undoubtedly would remember him. After all, he'd probably not met many other violet-eyed, chestnut-haired boys with braids that reached passed their asses in the last few years.

However, he'd forgotten one thing. Animals could withstand cold a whole hell of a lot better than he could.

A sneeze erupted from his nostrils. Wiping his nose ruefully on his bare arm, he snorted. 'There better not be much left of this God damned flight. Wonder why the fuck that moron decided to head to the LSAS anyway? Couldn't be trying to escape. From what Tro relayed, he should be trying desperately to find Quatre right now, 'cause they've slipped out of their clutches. Or questionin' Waverly.'

Duo bit down a gag and a curse at the very thought of that man, and continued with his mental rambling.

'So why the Moon? What kind of damned business does he have on the Moon, and most importantly…'

"Does it have anything to do with Quatre…?"

The dog barked.

Duo snorted and buried his head in the cradle of his arms, trying to warm his hands by covering them with his bangs. "God, I wish I had a few answers… give 'em to me, and maybe I'll start believin' in you. Maybe. Deal?"

He felt ridiculous, sitting in a cargo bay and praying that a deity who didn't exist would pile the answers to his current dilemma upon him.

But he was desperate.

Desperation is known to make men do things they'd never consider doing regularly.

-- 23:01 --

Duo scowled at the man who roughly had his arm. As he was escorted down unnaturally bright white hallways, he refused to turn his eyes to his captor.

He'd never expected that it would be Xavier Johnson who'd snatch him as he attempted to fly from the cargo bay once it had been pried open. How the man had managed to make it out of the passenger compartment and down to the flight deck of the space station was beyond him. He'd not been there to witness the feat.

All he knew was that he loathed the man who had his arm and was hauling him to some unknown destination.

Soon they entered a stark chamber, devoid of any furniture save a table and a pair of chairs. A box held a stack of paperwork and was shoved against the right side of one of those chairs. A bare light bulb, suspended from the ceiling by its power cord, lit the off-white closet-sized room.

Then Duo noticed that he and Xavier weren't alone.

"What is this?" the other man asked, arching a brow over a pale blue eye.

Xavier smirked merrily. "Apparently your little target is further ahead of the game than either you or I expected, my friend. He's enlisted more help."

One brow ticking in annoyance, the man took a seat. Broad shoulders stiff under the dark black trench coat he wore, he scowled as he ran his fingers through the spiky blonde bangs that hung to the side of his face.

Duo started. 'The man Trowa was tracking. The one who got into that Honda with the lollipop in its back seat.'

"First he gets Waverly on his side. Then he enlists the help of who you claim was one of his friends during the Eve Wars. And now this one?" Frowning, the blonde looked Duo over. "He looks familiar."

Xavier chuckled. "Duo Maxwell. You probably saw his photo on the news during the conflicts last year. He had quite a penchant for getting himself captured."

"Fuck you," Duo snarled.

The unidentified man laughed quietly. "I see. And he is involved with the Winner heir. Xavier, he simply must know something that might be of use, do you not think?"

"Got'cha, my friend," Xavier merrily chirped.

Duo was hauled away from the room, swiftly escorted down those white hallways to yet another room. As he was roughly thrown into the room, Xavier turned and locked the door behind himself.

"What, going to torture me now?" Duo said with a biting sneer.

"Sharp kid!" Xavier said with a smile. "I think, perhaps, I'm going to convince you to tell me exactly where dear little Quatre's hiding so that I might finish what we've all started."

'What you've all started?' Duo's brain pondered, even as his lips turned in an even more manic smirk and he snickered. "Best of luck. Can't get no answers from a man who ain't got none. Quat didn't tell me where he was callin' from. Just said he needed help, and told me where to meet Tro."

"Ah, yes. Barton."

Duo froze.

"He'll know exactly where Quatre is."

"So you don't need to spend any time with me," Duo suggested sharply.

"But we'll see what you do know, just in case."

Paling, Duo tried to back away as the man approached, whip procured from a box sitting by the door that the ex-pilot had failed to notice before. Dropping into a boxing stance, Duo prepared to fight before falling.

Xavier smiled gently, mockingly. "Don't struggle. It will just make this hurt worse."

Duo tried to dodge as the whip snapped through the air. His hands went to his throat, trying to dislodge the weapon's deadly coils from his neck even as he was yanked freely off his feet. Hitting the ground, he curled his fingers more tightly around the leather strand, intent on not allowing it to strangle him.

He winced as he heard cuffs snap around his ankles. His hands were pulled behind his back and similarly secured.

The whip freed itself from his neck. Arching above him in a graceful slithering arc, it whistled through the air.

Duo tried his damnedest not to scream.

-- 23:43 --

Duo flopped onto the hard ground in the unlit cell. He intended to stagger, to stand, but without decent control over his motor functions that proved to be an impossibility. Xavier had all but hauled him bodily from the room his blood had stained red, then thrown him like a sack of moldy potatoes into the black hellhole he was to be confined to.

Duo's eyes caught a glimmer of light as the open door was slowly swung shut. His voice rasped dryly through his sandpapery throat, hissing his hate and discontent at the man who had imprisoned him. "Fucker," he spat as mightily as he could.

"Such harsh language, little friend," Xavier mocked.

Duo ignored him. Instead, he reflected on what was happening.

It was beginning again. Everything was beginning again. The frustrations, the futility, the battles, the sliding goals stolen away by laughing outsiders who cared not for life or soul.

But to every beginning, there had to be an end. There had to be! Without that thought, Duo's life became empty and morbidly hopeless, A continuing parade of travesties that would never see its termination.

There had to be an end. That was the only hope that he held in his heart. There had to be an end to the days when he channeled the God of Death, an end to his necessitating blood on his hands. There had to be an end to the days that he needed to fear for his life and for the lives of his friends. There had to be an end to the plots that roared around him now like crackling lightning bolts that never flashed out of existence even after striking, that continually kissed with their deadly electric lips those they sought to destroy.

The hope of an end to the macabre stream that was his existence was the only thing that comforted the braided boy at times. The only thing that let him sleep. The only thing that warded off the creatures of the night that plagued his soul with every beat of his heart.

But right now, he couldn't see any end. All he could see was a continuation of what he'd seen six months ago, and the resulting murder of his best friend. A murder he would be powerless to stop, because he was trapped without recourse on the Lunar surface, held in place by the will of a poisonous viper.

Not even his braid had been left unmolested. Everything he could have used to escape that he normally hid in its immaculate folds had been stolen away by dexterous fingers belonging to a viciously smiling man.

Duo tried to turn his mind from his hopeless situation.

Pain erupted from his thin frame. An unwilling huff came from his nose as he squinted his eyes, trying to keep tears from coursing down his round cheeks.

He decided he really needed to get off the side that Xavier had kicked repeatedly when he'd fallen after being waylaid by that whip.

He needed to get off of his broken ribs.

tbc...