Author: Sparkle Itamashii

Title: Inheritance

Warnings: Respect the rating. Please see my profile.

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing A/C and its plot, characters, and settings are NOT MINE.


Chapter Twenty Two

I wrapped my hand around Mara's mouth, whispering to her, pleading with her to be silent. She snuffled angrily through her nose, tiny fingers prying at my hand to no avail. Above us I could hear our attackers stamping around, obviously unaware of the crawlspace tunnel beneath them. They were saying things I couldn't hear through the floor, things that sounded like bad news for someone; I just hoped desperately that it was for them and not us.

We'd managed to make it out of the first lab only because Heero had provided a distraction. It had been close; they'd known how pinned we were, how there was nowhere for Mara and I to go. Two of them had already been coming down the stairs, boots clanking against the webbed metal. It was no wonder we hadn't seen them, dressed all in black, hiding on the maintenance balcony. We'd been far too careless. They'd had more than enough time to spot us and watch to make sure we were someone they wanted to shoot.

Heero had managed to land a bullet right across the collarbone of the closest guy, sending him rolling down the rest of the stairs. I'd heard the guy scream as he dropped to his knees and caught a glimpse of him on the floor when I'd made a dash for the door with Mara screaming at the top of her lungs. We'd been shot at but I think they were too busy staying alive against Heero's return fire to pay much attention to us. I don't believe they'd thought we would fight back if they had us cornered well enough. It was obviously no one we'd fought before, then, because we were notorious during the war for doing just that.

The first person that did turn toward us went down with a yelp and a wet noise; a knee shot, the soldier within me had registered. Mara was jostled so much by my run that she'd shut her mouth and buried her face in my shoulder, arms wrapped in a chokehold about my throat. It was all I could do to bolt from the lab and evade the tight but badly planned ambush seated outside the door. It seemed they hadn't expected any of us to make it that far. I'd managed to shoot two of them and the third had surrendered his weapon to me with shaking hands. A tiny thrill had shivered across my skin at that feeling of power; I hadn't felt that way since piloting Deathscythe. It was a thrill I hated to treasure and love, but I did.

Though I did think to ask, the man wouldn't speak, wouldn't tell me who was behind the attacks. I didn't have time to press the issue because the sounds of fighting had died within the lab and I couldn't be sure of the winner until it would be too late. I left the guard there without weapons and disappeared into the city. I was good at disappearing, if nothing else.

We encountered our pursuers twice more, although the first time they didn't see us before we saw them. The second time we were by the same building under which Mara and I now hid and we'd only managed to disappear the second time on sheer, completely insane luck. I'd opened the right door at the right time, saw the creases in the floor that meant there was a crawl space, a maintenance tunnel beneath the building. Now we were squirreled away inside beneath the floor of the old structure, listening to our enemies with bated breath. Waiting for them to leave. Hoping they wouldn't see what I had seen or follow the tunnel too far if they did.

Mara keened through her nose- a very quiet, cranky noise. I shifted her, curling my arms a little more tightly around her. "Shh, I know sweetie," I crooned, gut twisting as I prayed we would not be heard. We had stopped walking so that I could listen. "But you need to be quiet for me, okay? Can you be quiet for daddy?"

There was a moment's pause where she breathed furiously but then she nodded, fingers curling against my hand. I released her slowly and she squirmed out of my grasp, sitting across from me on the floor and giving me a rather sullen look. I could see the tears in her eyes and the way her face screwed up, her lips pressing together like she wanted very badly to scream. But she remained silent, breathing through her nose like a snorting bull and she did not cry or scream as she'd been doing previously. It reminded me so painfully of Relena's stubbornness.

I smiled at her and put one slender finger to my lips before whispering: "Do you still want ice cream?" Though she eyed me suspiciously, she nodded, her own fingers drifting to her mouth. "If we're really quiet, I'll get you some, okay?"

We spent nearly an hour in that crawl space, waiting to be sure that our attackers truly had gone. Mara crawled into my lap shortly after my promise of ice cream and she had fallen asleep there. I didn't blame her; she'd been on the move all night with the rest of us. I'd been awake for well over twenty four hours and my body was beginning to feel the strain of that. I could feel the headache starting behind my eyes, feel the way my muscles tingled at the lack of proper resting time.

I was just beginning to fall asleep myself when my phone went off, jangling in the dead silence like a siren. I flailed, jerking out of my sleep daze and nearly bucking Mara off my lap as I scrambled for the phone, cursing up and down in my head. Had anyone heard? Was there anyone left listening?

"Hello?" I breathed as soon as I'd gotten the blasted thing turned on and to my ear. I hadn't bothered to look at the caller ID.

"Duo?" It was Heero's voice, gentle and worried. "Thank god you're alive…"

"Believe me, I did," I replied in a soft whisper. I'd thanked him more than once. "What the hell was that? Where are you?"

"They shouldn't have been there," he said, ignoring my questions. "They must have had Wu Fei's cell phone." He left 'so they must have him' to hang silently in the air between us. "I didn't expect they would be able to get into the labs before us..."

"Who is they, Heero?" I hissed, anger finally welling up within me. "What is going on? We could have all been killed back there- I don't know why those people hesitated but it is only because they did that we're all still here. I will not let that happen again."

"I'm at the ice cream shop on fifteenth."

"Don't you dare fucking hang up on me, you jerk," I growled. Mara opened sleepy eyes to look at me and I curbed my tongue. "You shouldn't have called me in the first place but you're not going to hang up now. Tell me what is going on or so help me the next time I see you I'm going to wring your neck myself."

"I'm sorry I called so soon, but I figured if they didn't have you by now they weren't going to. You're okay, aren't you?"

"I'm fine," I snapped. "Stop avoiding the question! If you're sorry you called and you're sorry you screwed up, then you need to really be sorry!"

"Just meet me at the ice cream shop." Which meant he wanted time to separate what he absolutely had to tell me from what he could still keep silent. I thought to protest only a second too late; the phone was already dead in my hands.

I cursed and just barely kept myself from chucking the phone across the tunnel. Mara's brows were creased as she stared at me, afraid of me for the first time since I had met her - god that seemed like ages ago – and I immediately felt guilty. She wasn't the one to blame; she didn't know anything. I took a few deep breaths and then smiled at her, holding out my hands in the gentlest way I knew. "Come on, sweetie. Papa says he's at the ice cream store waiting for us. You want some ice cream?"

"Chocate?" she asked suspiciously as she allowed herself to be pulled back into my arms.

Laughing as quietly as I was able, I hefted her up to rest her weight on my hip. "Sure, lovely. Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry- whatever flavor you like. All the flavors you like. We have to make a bit of a walk, though, okay?"

"Okay," she agreed, wrapping her arms around my neck and snuggling her face into my collarbone. "Sing!" she commanded before yawning.

"How do we ask nicely?" I prodded as I began to walk.

Her sigh sounded more like an indignant snort. "Sing, please?"

"You got it, pretty," I told her with a smile, trying to listen past what we were saying to what was going on above us. They must have moved on because I didn't hear even a breath of noise.

We made it out of the building without incident. The streets were deserted and I could understand why. It must have been a shock to the people on the colony to see men openly carrying guns in their midst. No one had called the cops and so they must have assumed that it was the cops, despite the fact that none of the men had been dressed as Preventers. I wondered how far word would have spread by now. Were our pictures on the news yet? How many people would recognize us? Were we the good guys or the bad guys this time?

The ice cream shop wasn't as far as I'd thought it might be. I set Mara in an alleyway and asked her to sit very, very still between a pair of trash cans. She huddled down and put her finger over her lips with a smile. I think she thought it was a game or something, and so long as she stayed where she was, I wouldn't contradict her. The open, glass front wall of the shop was easily visible from just a few paces down the street and I would be able to hear Mara if she screamed. I kept my hand against my gun, though I left it in its holster; if I didn't have to, there was no sense in causing a scene.

Heero was sitting just inside the door in almost plain sight of people from the street. He had his face buried in a newspaper and a cup of coffee beside him; he must have been feeling the strain of being away this long as well. He didn't like coffee. I stuck to the shadows, watching him and watching the street around him. I had to. When I'd last seen him he'd been surrounded by the enemy and that meant that it was possible he was working under them against his will. It hadn't seemed that way on the phone, but one could never be too sure about these things.

Within an hour he'd spotted me without seeming like he had. There was a stiffness to his posture before which vanished when his eyes flicked over me. He laid his paper on the table and picked up his coffee mug. I let my eyes wander, taking in every single last detail of the shop and the street but there was no one there still that had been there when I started observing, save the people working behind the counter of the shop and a pair of high-school girls playing on a silver laptop behind Heero. Nothing. We were safe.

I ducked into the alley where I'd left Mara. She was sprawled on the ground like she was dead but as soon as I frantically touched her she opened sleepy eyes and asked if it was ice cream time yet. I grabbed her up and told her it was and assured her again that she could have any flavor she wanted, repeating over and over that she'd been a good girl. I could feel myself shaking; the stress of being back in soldier's boots, of protecting something, of finally being at least marginally safe again was making itself known. Relief was like a drug in my system as I crossed the street and opened the door to the ice cream shop.

Mara was immediately taken from me as Heero met me at the entrance. She clung to him with a happy squeal of "PAPA!" and he gave me a wide eyed look at which I had to laugh. She squirmed out of his grasp though she did not release his hand, and hauled him over to the glass display cases where she knew the ice cream laired. He hoisted her up by her waist to see the flavors, still a little bewildered at the sudden noise and warmth of having his "family" back with him.

"What took you so long?" he asked as Mara pointed at about eight different flavors.

"I wanted to make sure you weren't being watched," I said evenly, eyeing the case myself. My stomach rumbled in appreciation of the sight. I hadn't eaten since our flight earlier. "We're not, if you're interested in knowing."

"I knew that," he said. "But thank you for checking again. Wu Fei called."

"When? How?"

"About an hour ago," he said, brow wrinkling. I felt an answering tingle of wrongness about the statement. We'd definitely heard our cell phone ring in that lab but if it wasn't Wu Fei, if Wu Fei had his cell phone, whose was it? "He was with Milliardo."

My voice dropped. "So?"

"So…?"

"That one!" Mara shrieked, pointing to a disgusting looking, rainbow mix of ice cream. When Heero nodded, the man behind the counter began to make a kiddy cone for her.

"I…" he began, trailing off as though he wasn't sure what to say now that I was here, actually facing him. "I've booked a flight to the L2 cluster to meet them. It leaves in a couple hours."

"We're going? Just like that?"

"What do you want, Duo?" he said defensively. "I spoke to both of them and there didn't seem to be anything wrong. They didn't know anything about the other phone." I could see that he'd given it thought already, more thought than I'd been given time to have, but that still didn't ease the lump of doubt settling heavily in my stomach. "For all we know, someone figured out that tone and used it to their advantage and that's all."

"Did you call the others and even try to find out?" I replied, a little frustrated. I accepted the cone from the man behind the counter and handed it gently to Mara.

"I called Quatre first and he said Trowa called him last night to check in, and that means all of us have our phones."

I stared at him for a minute before realizing that the man behind the counter was watching us quietly, waiting to see if we wanted anything else or if Mara's cone would be all. With an angry face I put in an order for myself and told Heero he was paying for it. I received rolled eyes for my effort. "You don't think it was… Relena's… do you?" I said quietly, when the idea occurred to me.

He shrugged. "It's possible. I don't know."

I let it drop, took my ice cream when it came, and followed Mara's trail to a seat at one of the little round tables in the shop. Heero joined us a few minutes later, silent and tired. Though I had to force myself from saying anything, I managed to ignore him for a little bit and enjoy the ice cream. I could feel his eyes on me but I kept my attention focused elsewhere. He would never admit it aloud but he hated when I did that. He hated being ignored more than I hated being silent.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled at last, fidgeting. He knew I was angry at him and I knew he wanted me to stop but there was no easy way for him to ask for that after he had screwed up so badly.

"Well if you don't want me to be angry with you, you need to tell me what the fuck is going on," I said testily. I wasn't going to let him off the hook with only an apology this time. "I could have died back there because I didn't know. We all could have died. You can't protect me all the time and if we get separated, then I'm going to need to know what to be careful of. You know that, Heero. You know. Stop thinking like an idiot and start remembering what it is to have to fight because obviously we have to right now."

"Look, I'm sorry, okay? It shouldn't have happened."

He looked genuinely sorry, something I only very, very rarely saw in him. But it wasn't enough and we both knew it. "Sorry isn't going to cut it, Heero. Sorry isn't going to keep any of us alive longer." I gave him my hardest glare, the one I knew he couldn't look away from without feeling horrible, without knowing I meant what I said because it was the absolute truth.

"Okay," he conceded grudgingly; clearly he wanted to tell me no. He was angry because he knew I was right and that he could have lost me- that he nearly had. His consent meant that he knew that he still could lose me, that I could still be hurt. His face twisted a little bit, nose wrinkling in frustration. "Fine." He threw a glance around the shop, eyes running in a calculating way over the other customers.

"But?" I prompted, following his gaze.

"Some of it will have to wait until the shuttle," he said seriously. "I can't risk it being overheard here. We'll have our own compartment and I can say more there. Okay?"

"Okay," I agreed, relaxing just a little.

He took a deep breath and nodded, seeming to relax as well. "There is some… information in the labs that is very dangerous. It's dangerous beyond you and me; the information could mean trouble for most of the world. It needs to be destroyed."

"Then why didn't we just blow the place while we were there?" I asked, crushing down my desire to ask what the information was.

"I wanted to make sure it was actually there," he said. "I wanted to make sure that if we destroyed the lab, we would actually be destroying the evidence. Trust me when I say that this is not something we need coming back unexpectedly later."

"So you saw the inside of the lab," I said carefully. "Do you think they have the information?"

Sighing, he shook his head in a helpless way. "If you'd asked me before we left Earth, I'd say no but you saw the state of it. They weren't looking for information anymore; they were waiting for us. They know us, Duo. They knew enough about us to know that we'd separate to investigate that particular ring tone."

The implications of that were a little scary. Being even a little predictable was a bad thing when you were in this sort of situation. "You think who-ever is after us wants to separate us?"

"Wouldn't you?" he pointed out evenly. "Divide and conquer…"

I hated when he talked like that. It brought back too many bad memories of the times he'd given up in the past. "So let's just blow the places," I said under my breath. "On the news they'd been saying that they'd tried to get into the L1 lab but had been kept at bay by explosives, right? If there were trigger explosives like that, we should be able to set them off remotely."

"If we could have just done that I would have done it from home. We'll have to go in person. We have to make sure the information is there to be destroyed before we do it."

"So let's at least split up!" I lowered my voice when I noticed several people glance in our direction at my exclamation. "We can cover more ground if we're split up, right?"

"It's not that easy," he hedged, eyes slipping away from mine, refusing to meet my stare. "I promise you'll understand why once we're on the shuttle."

"Okay so… no splitting up- yet. What are we going to do instead?" For not having most of the information I feared I would need, my head was startlingly clear. Focused. This was the mission, these were the guidelines, and that was the kid we'd have to keep safe during all this, smearing ice cream on the table.

He thought for a moment, watching Mara and I as we ate, considering. I knew where his mind was- the same place as mine. How do we keep a three year old safe? There was no way we'd be able to do anything quickly as long as she was with us. It was a miracle she was even still alive. It was a miracle any of us were. If we got into another fight I wouldn't be able to shoot with her in my arms and I couldn't put her down because I wouldn't have enough control of her. That left…

"We'll have to drop her with Milliardo, like I said I would," Heero said before I could speak. "It's too hard for us to keep her with us and do this. Milliardo will have an easier time disappearing with her if he doesn't have to go anywhere public. We can probably send Wu Fei off to hit some of the other labs, so that will speed things up a bit."

I didn't like it but there wasn't much I could say to the contrary. Instead I let it drop and we lapsed into silence once more. Mara was busy with her ice cream still and I was trying to plot the fastest route in my head between the colonies. I could tell that Heero was off in his head thinking as well, with his eyes half closed and unfocused.

It felt good to eat and settle down a little bit after the fight we'd just escaped but the adrenaline was still thick in my blood and I couldn't help casting nervous glances in the direction of the window wall. Was someone watching? Were they just waiting for us to leave? It was unsettling, to say the least and when Heero finally suggested that we leave to make the shuttle I was on my feet heading for the door before he'd finished speaking. He gently plucked Mara from her seat and followed wordlessly.


/End Chapter Twenty Two, Inheritance/