Author: Sparkle Itamashii

Title: Inheritance

Warnings: Respect the rating. Please see my profile for details.

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing After Colony (AC) is NOT MINE.


Chapter Seven

The day after the hair incident, I decided that things needed to get serious. Heero was being really weird about this whole child deal and every time I thought I had the 'why' figured out, he did something that crumbled my theories. If he wanted to keep that up that was fine- I could handle resistance as long as I knew it was going to be there. I was intelligent. I was inventive. I was creative.

I knew where the hardware store was.

I'd done a lot of handy work in my time. I'd built shelters from rubble on the L2 colony I started out living on and I'd made myself simple toys and gadgets while living at the Maxwell Church. Repairing gundams and rigging bombs and all sorts of technical and advanced things came to me almost naturally… But doorknobs weren't really all that advanced. It was like going into a firefight expecting machine guns and explosives and getting rocks thrown at your head.

Thankfully, unlike most men I know, I was able to repress my urge to say 'I can do it myself' and went to ask the neighbors if anyone knew how to change a lock. Naturally I didn't tell them that I was changing it to keep Heero from getting in the house until he agreed to go in and get tested, or at least until he gave me something I could take in and test. Somehow I thought that would be a little hard to explain and might freak out a few people I still wanted to be friends with…

I was kneeling on the ground, practically straddling the edge of the door as I screwed the last of the screws tightly into place when I heard Heero's car pull into the driveway. As quickly as possible, I swept the tools that were scattered over the floor out of the door's path and gave Heero a 'shit, I'm caught!' look. He raised an eyebrow as I closed the door and locked it, hoping it would hold. I watched through the peephole as he walked up the front steps, fumbling with his keys for the right one. My breath caught as he tried the key and realized it wasn't going to work.

"Duo." His voice was muffled through the wood. "Unlock the door." A pause… "What the hell- did you change the lock?"

I leaned my side against the cool, painted surface and smiled. "Yes." I was unable to keep the smirk out of my voice. "I've decided you're not coming back into this house until you agree to go in and get tested."

"Fine," he said, as though it didn't matter to him.

That threw me off for a second. "What- really!"

"No, you idiot," he growled, vigorously rattling the door handle as if it would magically unlock. "Now let me in."

Can't believe I fell for that one…

The doorknob jangled noisily beside me once more and then everything fell silent. After a moment, I began to worry and took another glance out the peephole to see what he was doing now. I was surprised to see him disappear from my sight, heading for the direction of his car. My initial reaction was to think he was leaving but another part of me said he was too stubborn to just give up like that. It occurred to me seconds later what he planned to do.

"Oh no you don't!" I huffed, shoving myself off the wall and darting for the back door.

Unfortunately my lapse of thought meant that he beat me. By the time I reached the back he was already closing the door and giving me a dry look. Artemis has slipped in around his calves. I'd locked her in the backyard while I worked on changing the lock. I trailed to a stop in the hallway and grinned at the two of them.

"Nice try." He said mockingly. "Better luck next time."

I tossed the screwdriver I was still holding at his head, knowing that he would catch it. "I'll get you, don't worry."

"I won't," he said, purposely bumping into me as he passed. "Any news?"

With a quick glance to the television in the other room, I shook my head. I'd left the news on to see if there was anything interesting but there didn't appear to be anything new- they'd been reporting the same stories as yesterday.

"Same old." I leaned against the doorframe of the kitchen and watched him get a glass of water; I hadn't made coffee. "No one can find Relena's murderer, Dorothy is making a very dramatic fuss over the whole thing, and Quatre has been trying to keep anyone from panicking about anything."

"Are they?" He asked curiously.

"Quatre's the one telling them not to- what do you think?" I replied smartly. "There's a lot of speculation about why she was killed, though." I said carefully, moving forward to relieve him of his briefcase. "Some of them are quite wild."

He trailed behind me as I moved to put his briefcase by the front door. "Wild?" He echoed, drinking.

"Yeah, you know- like, movie-weird kind of stuff. Scorned lovers, weapons of mass destruction, secret treasures, scandalous plots, hidden wills and members of the Peacecraft family- the whole lot is rubbish, of course. Well, mostly anyway."

"Mostly?"

I shrugged. "Well, there is Mara." He rolled his eyes. "But the rest, I mean… come on! Relena wasn't with anyone and she was a pacifist so she obviously wouldn't have had any sort of weapon. Secret treasures? Scandalous anything… It's so stupid."

"…Yeah," he said distractedly, "stupid." He ducked back into the kitchen, leaving me to stare blankly after him.

What was that about?

I shrugged it off before I could start thinking very deeply about it. Heero was obviously still touchy about anything regarding Relena and I wasn't going to start any more fights than was necessary. Contrary to popular believe, I knew when to stop- I just often didn't.

"What did you want to do about dinner?" I called, rolling over the back of the couch to flop and stretch out in front of the television. Artemis huffed and flopped as well, lying on the floor beside my couch.

"I want to make some coffee." He knocked over something that sounded less than unbreakable.

Reaching down, I tangled fingers in Artemis' fur. "Coffee isn't dinner and can you please stop breaking things?"

"I'm not breaking anything," he snapped crankily. "I don't care- what do you want to do?"

Biting down on an inappropriate remark, I tried to think of something easy to make for food. "Tacos?" I suggested loudly, tuning out the news as it droned on about something on the colonies.

"Yuck."

"Stir fry?"

"Had it last night," he replied boredly.

"Crap." I'd completely forgotten we'd had it; Heero hated eating the same thing two nights in a row. Secretly so did I, after having to eat some of the same bland things for weeks at times. Variety was golden.

He poked his head into the room, over the edge of the couch to look at me. "Duo," he said very seriously, "we are not eating crap for dinner. Why don't you make chicken?"

Shifting so that I could make sure he saw me roll my eyes, I grinned and agreed. Although making chicken would take longer than tacos or stir fry, the effort was usually well worth it. At least cooking would put me in a good mood and eating 'real' food might actually induce Heero to act less murderously cynical.

Groaning, I rolled off the couch and stepped over Artemis, who was still laying flopped on the floor at the base. She lifted her head and then hauled herself to her feet, padding after me. I pulled the bag of chicken from the fridge, where it had been thawing for tomorrow. I'd been planning for chicken pot pie but if I used the chicken now… then again, I had other things I needed to get from the store so I might as well get more meat while I was at it.

"Was there anything else said?" Heero asked nonchalantly, moving back to our original strand of conversation about the news.

I knew there was something else; something I'd heard and thought I needed to tell him but if I couldn't remember it couldn't have been all that important. "Not that I remember. Not in the news anyhow." I set the bag on the counter and flicked the switch for the coffee maker. It protested with a sickly gutter, but began to heat. "Quatre had some interesting things to say when I was over there." I hadn't had a chance to talk to Heero about anything yet.

"Is that where you went?" I smiled at the almost malicious curiosity in his voice. Reaching over, I filled the machine and let it open. Thick black coffee poured off into the container at the bottom.

"Yes and before you say anything further, nothing happened. He did say, however, that there were records of Relena having drawn up a will. No one's been able to find it."

"Pagan doesn't know where it is?" His eyes were trained on the coffee maker as I turned my own attention to the cutting board.

I kicked the trash can over so I could drop things into it as I worked. "If he does, he isn't saying." I replied, selecting a knife and beginning to cut off the excess fat from the chicken. That was probably my least favorite activity ever… "Quatre says he thinks there may have been things about Mara in it. You know, stuff left to her or appointed legal guardianship, maybe where she is supposed to go."

"Not here," he grumbled testily.

I sighed, not wanting to argue with him about this again. If I started I was going to bring up the adoption center visit and that wouldn't be a pretty fight. "I don't see why you're tossing such a big hissy fit over this, Heero." I told him calmly.

"Little kids are a huge responsibility, Duo!" He protested vehemently. If looks were tangible I knew I would feel his glare boring into the back of my skull and ignored it. "Keeping one is probably a million times worse than taking care of a dog or cat!"

"Like you know anything about childcare." I snapped, reigning in my voice again at the end and trying to continue as placidly as I could. "You probably know even less than me!"

"Exactly!" He exclaimed irritably. "Tell me even one time, Duo, just once when you went into a situation this unprepared and felt the least bit comfortable that you'd make it alive? You don't go on missions without the fact and accepting this thing into our house amounts to the same result."

Although the argument rang true enough, it was hollow. It lacked conviction. He was speaking words he didn't mean, regardless of how right they sounded. It was like he was trying to cover up something else, something he didn't want to me know. I mulled over his words for a few minutes, slicing off bits of fat from the chicken breasts. Beside me, Artemis gave me puppy eyes until I surrendered and offered bits of fat scraps. There had to be something I was missing.

Think- what was he really trying to say?

Okay, he was treating this like a mission. Accepting or rejecting a mission was a matter of knowing whether or not you could succeed. If there was even the tiniest chance at success you could accept the mission, as long as the cause was something you believed in strongly enough. The only reason most people turned down missions was fear of failure but that was the last thing Heero would ever suffer from…. Right?

I glanced over my shoulder at him, brow furrowed in thought. Was he afraid he would fail, then? Raising a kid couldn't possibly be harder than any of the other trials we'd been through but there was a distinct difference between then and now. The cost of losing this time was different. It wasn't just our lives and it wasn't to stop a war.

"Are you afraid you won't be able to handle it?" I asked softly.

"No," he snapped nastily, "I am not afraid."

Sighing, I reached into the cupboard and pulled down a plate. "That's not how you're acting, if you ask me."

"Well I didn't ask you, did I," he growled. I winced internally as I heard his chair scrape against the tile. "I don't want to talk about this anymore, Duo."

"That's too bad, because I do." I began placing the chicken on the plate, trying to ignore the urge to turn around and face him. I didn't want to see that glare and I didn't want to present a target. Past experience had taught me that he wouldn't take any sort of action behind someone's back- at least that moral had stuck to him. "You can't just keep running from everything. You've got a responsibility to that child whether you like it or not."

"Why are you doing this?" The desperation in his voice was well hidden but I knew him and I knew the tiny inflection that meant he'd reached the end of knowing what to do. I trampled the urge to let him have his way, to give in and let him do what he wanted. "Don't you get it? If it comes here everything is going to be just… it's going to be ruined. Everything is going to be destroyed."

I let out a silent breath and closed my eyes, trying not to let his tone bother me. I had to be strong about this. "I understand that you feel that way but… we can survive anything, Heero. Look at our lives before this. Having a kid in the house isn't going to ruin us because there is nothing anywhere strong enough to do that if we don't let it." I picked up the knife and scraped the fat to the edge of the cutting board with it.

"And if I let it?"

Anger flared up in me and I gave in at last. "What do you mean, if you let it!" Turning around and gesturing at him with knife in hand, I'd intended to reprimand him about saying such stupid things but…

I stopped cold when I realized how close he was.

When I hadn't been paying attention he had crossed the room and was standing about a foot away from me. I dropped my gaze, following his line of sight to settle upon his forearm. My sharp gesture had laid his skin open in a long, shallow gash. Blood oozed from the new wound, clear red staining the blade of the knife in my hand. I met his eyes, trying to think of something to say as all coherent words left me.

His eyes narrowed and he reached for the knife.


/End Chapter Seven, Inheritance/