Title: Never Turn Your Back on the Sea
Section Title: Assassination
Pairings: Overall: 3x4x3, 2xH, 1xR
Rating: T
Warnings: Language, violence

Duo turned toward Quatre very slowly, smiling in a manner that was less a show of good humor than a display of very sharp, very white teeth. "Quatre," he said with false calm, "do you know what I'd like right now?"

"No, what?" Quatre said, looking a touch wary. Wufei didn't blame him. Duo seemed to have grown an awful lot of teeth in a very short time.

"I'd like you explain why you want to drop the conspiracy to commit murder charge against Blue." He took a step forward and slung an arm around Quatre's neck in a manner that might have been comradely had it not been so tight. "And I'd really, really like it if you made the reason a good one."

Quatre coughed and tried to move Duo's forearm away from his trachea, but Duo only seemed to tighten his grip, judging by the way his muscles sprang into sharper relief.

Wufei decided to intervene before things got messy. "Duo, while I can somewhat appreciate your sentiments, I think it would be better if you stopped trying to throttle Quatre until he has a chance to explain himself."

Duo looked thoughtful. "Hm, I guess you're right. There aren't many places to hide a body around here." He released Quatre, who made a nasty gagging noise before he staggered, coughing, to the nearest chair.

"There was no point," he rasped out, clutching his throat.

Wufei took a bottle of water from the mini-fridge. "He conspired with Raleigh Yates to commit a murder. Specifically, your murder. His prints were on the cases. His image and voice were on your recording. He all but fell down on his knees and confessed outright. Why, exactly, is there no point?" he asked, slamming the bottle down on the arm of Quatre's chair.

"It's not that easy to pin a conspiracy charge on a minor, Wufei, especially since his intended victim is walking upright and drawing breath." Quatre coughed and drank some water. "More-or-less."

"He's not a minor," Duo said sullenly. "The age of majority in the L2 cluster is eighteen."

"He's a war orphan. He has no birth record. He's basing his age on a physician's best guess of it, but he could be six months older or six months younger than he really is. It's possible he could have been seventeen at the time of the crime."

Duo had to know that since he himself was a war orphan, but he still looked surprised to hear it. "Seventeen, eighteen, what's the difference? He still did it!"

"It's the sentencing you're worried about isn't it? You're afraid he'll be tried as a minor," Wufei said, beginning to see the point. "Also, Ervy has put an awful lot of effort into his crazy act."

Duo looked disgusted. "Yeah, the little creep even had me going for a while."

"Yes, and I have a feeling he's still doing it," Quatre said. "There's bound to be some doubt over whether or not he's fully in control of his faculties. If you throw the question of age into the mix, this might turn out far messier than we bargained for. Besides," he said, slumping his shoulders a bit, "what we did to him to make him confess to us was a little...questionable."

That was true. Wufei flexed the fingers of his right hand, remembering the shock that had run through his arm when he had connected that fist to Blue's face. He hadn't exactly meant to do it, but it had been deeply satisfying all the same.

And while Duo had berated and intimidated Ervy that day and Quatre had committed outright psychological terrorism, Wufei had physically harmed him, a practice which was generally frowned upon by the Preventers.

Damn.

"It would probably be better for us if that entire incident was not brought before the justices," Quatre said quietly.

Duo leaned against a bookcase, looking thoughtful. "Yeah. That wasn't exactly one of my proudest moments, and that's saying something."

"Nor mine, which is another reason I thought we should drop the charge."

"So what do we do now?" Wufei asked. "We've just declared him innocent, so do we just let him walk free?"

"Innocent?" Quatre echoed, giving him an odd look and an even odder smile. It was almost sinister, which was not a look he Wufei associated with the blond. "Who said he was innocent?"

Duo shoved himself away from the bookcase and dropped into the chair across from Quatre's. "Okay, maybe you'd better tell us what you've got up your sleeve before I get all offended that you didn't ask us about this earlier and decide to strangle you again."

Quatre took the death threat in stride. "Innocence is a relative term. Everyone's guilty of something."

"Such as?"

"I don't know, exactly, but McInnes is authorized to subpoena Blue's bank statements, tax records, employment history and so on. And if he can't find anything...well, I'll supply you with the wire to garrote me."

"That confident, huh?" Duo said, thinking it over. "Fine, then. Let's just hope McInnes is half the sneaky, underhanded bastard Blue is."

"It's cold in here," Trowa said, wrapping his hands around his coffee mug. It was only his second cup of the morning and he didn't feel quite awake enough to fully appreciate the complexities of Heero's workshop, but the High Judicial Court of L2 didn't take into account one's caffeine intake--nor the time difference-- when they decided to convene.

"You'll live," Heero said. He tossed a long white lab coat in Trowa's direction and then began to play around with the spiderbot receiver. Odd transmissions came from the small speakers--space hiss, mostly, with occasional mechanical noises and snatches of conversation.

"Something wrong?" Trowa asked as he shoved himself into the lab coat..

"The problem with hijacking signals is that they don't stay hijacked for long," Heero said, poking a few buttons and turning a knob. "Once I can lock onto it I can compensate for the drift, but till then... Damn, I can't hear. I'm going to try the other one." He pressed a rocker switch, waited for a count of five, and flipped it back. "Shit!"

"What, is it broken?"

"No. Did you hear what happened when I tried to switch it over?"

"I didn't hear anything."

"Exactly. No hiss, no static. Someone else is using it."

"It's probably just broken. Maybe somebody stepped on it."

"There are thirty-eight remotes that send out pings every three seconds. Unless it was utterly destroyed--incinerated, pounded to dust--I would have received a signal."

Trowa looked at Heero's profile, which was as tense and stern as a profile could be. He had a feeling this was a little worse than just losing a spiderbot.

As if Heero could read his thoughts, he said, "I've been violating three or four of the strictest privacy laws in the EarthSphere legal codes. Potentially, I could be sitting in the cell next to Ervy's by next week if I was caught."

What little warmth Trowa had been able to glean from the coffee and the lab coat drained away. "Are you serious?"

"Very."

Though it hadn't been his idea, Trowa felt that it was somehow his fault. He was the one who had been so dead-set on infiltrating the High Court, after all, and he had agreed without argument when Heero had asked him to take the little mechanical spiders with him. He was just as culpable as Heero was. "Look, let's shut this down right now, and maybe there's some way you can cover your tracks. I can still go back in and retrieve the other one if you think it'll help."

Heero shook his head. "Thank you, but that won't be necessary." He flipped the rocker switch again and began to tune for the good spiderbot. "On the off chance we get caught, we'll deal with it. I happen to be on intimate terms with a very good lawyer. And besides," he said with a wicked smile, "I wouldn't miss this for the world."

It took two days to arrange the retrial of Coe Ervy.

No one had expected that several of the justices would be dead-set against the decision--except McInnes, of course. Not to worry, he said over and over as he sat with an increasingly tense Wufei, Duo and Quatre, keeping them updated on his progress, they would come around.

And come around they did, but not before Duo had taken to giving Quatre's neck a hungry, speculating kind of look every time they were in the same room together, as if he was considering what gauge of wire might be best for using on it. Quatre was getting rather twitchy.

It was therefore an occasion for celebration when McInnes announced the trial would be beginning the next day. "We'll be charging him with identity theft, fraud, and aiding and abetting a known criminal," McInnes said.

"That's great," Duo said, shifting restlessly in his chair, "but that doesn't make Blue any older or any saner. What's stopping him from using the same old tricks?"

A faint gleam shone in McInnes's eyes. "The Council, in their wisdom, have deemed that anyone who has the presence of mind to deliberately put themselves in the employ of a corrupt business for the purposes of assuming another's identity, then they are certainly old enough and sane enough to be tried without leniency."

"You mean," Duo said with a rising grin, "that's Blue is going to the Big House."

"There will be no reformatories or psychiatric rehabilitation for Mr. Ervy, if that's what you mean."

Duo and Quatre exchanged a look of triumph and relief, respectively, but Wufei still looked unhappy.

"How long a sentence will he get?" Wufei asked.

"It's up to the Justices, of course, but I would think eight years minimum. Mr. Ervy has quite a history."

"Eight years."

"Most likely more," McInnes said, but Wufei wasn't in the mood to listen. He merely gave the council a long, flat stare before stalking off to the windows.

McInnes, unruffled, stood up and began to collect his papers. "If you gentlemen will excuse me, I have some work to do. Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns."

Duo and Quatre saw him to the door, and when he had gone, Duo turned to his companion with a broad smile. "I'm so glad I don't have to kill you, Quatre. Now, let's get this party started!"

After making a list of things to order from the kitchen and commissary, Duo left to take a quick shower and a nap. Quatre stayed behind. He had been feeling uneasy ever since Wufei had turned away from the discussion. It seemed plausible enough that Wufei was simply fed up with the sequesterment and wanted to get on with things--plausible, but not quite right.

"Wufei, what's really wrong?" he asked, padding toward the window.

Wufei had been standing there for a good long time now. He couldn't possibly have been admiring the view, which was uninspiring at best. The window looked out into a little public square with a tiny park in the middle of it, the main feature of which was a concrete fountain with a large, ugly fish spitting a spray of water into the drizzly air. "Nothing's wrong. I just want to get out of here."

Quatre sat down on the windowsill. "I know. We all want to go home."

"Home? I don't have a home. I have a Preventers-subsidized apartment with Preventers-subsidized furniture and a closet full of Preventers-issued uniforms. It's not a home."

Quatre could see his point. He had been to Wufei's place once or twice and really had no wish to return since it was stark to the point of being depressing. "If you're not happy living on the base, why don't you move out?"

"Because I oh-so-wisely tied up most of my income in an early retirement contract." Wufei sighed, turned around, and sat next to Quatre with his back to the window. "I thought this would be a career, but a short one. If I sacrificed forty percent of my income, let the Preventers invest it, I could retire at the age of forty-five. Full pay and full benefits for the rest of my life. All I had to do was keep my head down and dodge the odd bullet here and there."

"And so far you've done well," Quatre said.

"Insofar as I'm able to stand upright and take nourishment, I suppose you're right. I could live this way indefinitely. I have a little over six hundred credits of discretionary income per month, which is what some poorer individuals manage to live on in a year."

Remembering the cheap and unlovely towerblocks he had been asked to provide heating and light for, Quatre nodded. "Yes, that's true. It's a shame."

"The real shame, though, is that I'm not making any difference."

Quatre was surprised to hear that. He had been under the impression that Wufei liked his job and was proud to serve. "I'm not sure I'm following you."

"Of course you're not following me. I'm barely following myself." Wufei stood up and began to pace. "All I'm really sure of is that I want to quit the Preventers."

"Wufei..." Quatre said slowly, not knowing how Wufei was going to take it, "have you really thought about this?"

"I've thought of very little else since I got here," Wufei said.

"Okay, so you must realize you've got an excellent job, and you've done it so well that you could wallpaper your apartment with the commendations you've received. You've just seemed so perfectly in your element that I have to admit I'm a little shocked you'd throw it all away."

"Two weeks ago, I would have agreed with you completely, and if you'd suggested I quit my job, I would have thought you were out of your mind." He stopped pacing in mid-stride and shook his head. "Maybe I am."

"We both know you're not. There must be a reason."

"There is, and it's this," Wufei said, spreading his arms wide to take in...what, exactly? The recreation room? The seventh floor? The entirety of populated space?

"I don't get it."

Wufei looked frustrated enough to spit, but he pulled himself in with an effort. "The High Court. I've never seen the legal system from this side before. You have to understand that for all the gadgets and resources and red tape, my job is fairly simple: Find the bad guys and turn them over to the proper authorities for punishment. I never really gave too much thought about what went on after I did my job. I've been called to court as a witness half a dozen times of so, but even then I assumed that it was nothing more than a formality, just another hoop to jump through before the criminal got what was coming to him."

"Oh." The light was starting to dawn. "It's not really that simple, Wufei."

"I've spent the last couple of weeks getting that fact shoved into my face. I've heard all the stories about corrupt judges and crooked lawyers before, and I thought they were fiction. But now that I can see what happens during a so-called fair trial-- it makes me sick. What difference does it make how many gunrunners, assassins and drug cartels I bust if they're just going to be let loose on some damn technicality?" Wufei threw himself into a chair and cradled his forehead in his hands.

Quatre went to him. "I know you feel frustrated right now, but won't you reconsider? Just because the legal system isn't perfect doesn't mean what you do is meaningless."

"It might as well be. I just wish someone had told me before I wasted ten fucking years of my life doing it."

"Wufei! How can you say that?" Quatre said, although he was beginning to get more than a little frustrated on his friend's behalf.

"I'm naive, I know that. I've been chasing my tail all this time. I figured I was at least making a small dent in the problem, but I might as well have spent my time shooting fleas in a doghouse."

"But you must have done something to deserve all the recognition you've got. You're only twenty-six years old and you're one of the top agents in one of the top peacekeeping organizations in the EarthSphere. There has to be some reason for that."

Wufei gave him a cold look. "I'm good at what I do. I realize that. But there are thousands of others who are just as good as me and have ended up on the wrong side of a bullet...or who have eaten their own gun."

Quatre couldn't think of any reply to that. He was too shocked to speak, let alone think up a coherent response.

"Don't look at me like that," Wufei said, somewhat more kindly, "I'm not going to run out and kill myself."

"All right, if it wasn't a threat, then why did you bring it up?" Quatre said.

"Because I think I know why they do it. They wake up one day after fifteen, twenty, thirty years' service and see the kidnapper or the dope man they thought they'd put away walking down the street just as free as you please, and they wonder why they bother.

"I don't want to end up like that, Quatre. I was always aware that my life might be short, but I reasoned that having a short, meaningful life was better than growing old with nothing to show for it than a few old battle scars."

Quatre was beginning to see past his own shock--and his anger at letting himself be shocked. He didn't think Wufei was consciously trying to manipulate him. That wasn't his style. Wufei was the most emotionally honest person he knew, in fact. If he said he was feeling useless and depressed over his job, chances were he actually was feeling useless and depressed and wasn't playing it up for sympathy.

"All right, Wufei, consider your point made. I-I kind of know what you're going through, actually."

Wufei gave him a long, searching look, the kind of look that Quatre thought of as his lie-detector mode. "Oh? Do tell."

Quatre felt his face heating up; it had been one hell of a difficult part of his life, and he didn't like to talk about it. He preferred to think of himself as a sensible person. "I was nineteen. I was deep into the whole heir-to-the-legacy thing...I guess you remember that."

"Yes. You were insufferable."

"I suppose I was," Quatre said with an embarrassed chuckle. "It was a lot of pressure, that's all I have to say in my defense. Pressure I didn't want and didn't ask for. I was going crazy. I was stuck in a job that I was temperamentally unsuited for--managing all those resource satellites, trying to pretend I was interested in hydroponics, vat-cloning, the Ganymede ice tug routes..."

"Yes, very boring. Your point?"

"That was the point. I was bored. I was also exhausted, because keeping track of all the minutiae requires an almost constant input of data and since I didn't dare miss anything, I barely got any rest. But then Heero showed up one day, said he'd been keeping tabs on me..." Quatre's cheeks, which had just begun to cool down, began to grow warm again.

"Yes, he tends to do that," Wufei said.

"Yes, much as it makes me want to smack him sometimes, I do love him for it," Quatre said, smiling ruefully. "We sat down--he sat me down, actually--and we talked, and he managed to get me to tell him everything. Even the things I didn't want him to hear. I had...well, he calls it a breakdown, but I think it was more of a temper tantrum. Lots of things got broken."

An irreplaceable pre-Colony clock, a very large picture window, and a bone in Quatre's wrist were just a few of the things that had been broken. The tangible things, anyway.

"And we sat there in the debris...and finally Heero said to me, 'Are you telling me that you're running this entire empire--and driving yourself crazy--strictly by virtue of having a penis?' Then he laughed at me.

"I was still pretty worked up, so tried to punch him. He dodged it. Then he said, 'Why don't you just quit?' and I tried to punch him again. He hurt my hand. I yelled and said some terrible things, then he wrestled me down and sat on me. He's a lot heavier than he looks," Quatre said, smiling at Wufei.

Wufei did not smile back.

"I yelled at him some more," Quatre continued on after a pause, "and he reminded me--forecefully--that I had several sisters who were intelligent, competent, and dedicated, and that I might appreciate their input on the matter."

Wufei grunted at him to go on.

"So...so I did. I called a meeting. I was honest for once and said I didn't want to run the entire company. I wasn't interested in how the colonies got food and water and minerals and so on, just as long as they did. And you know what?"

"What," Wufei said flatly.

"I found that my sisters were perfectly capable of handling the damn thing themselves. The business side, the technical side, the PR side...everything. In fact, the ten most legally-minded of them formed a corporation right then and demoted me to the rebuilding section, which I subsequently turned over to Rashid and the Maguanac. Under my sisters' approval, of course." Quatre smiled. "Then, after I finished my graduate work, I got myself hired on and I haven't looked back."

Wufei did not look uplifted by this story. He didn't look bored by it, exactly, but he wasn't gripped, or enthralled, or even curious. He looked very tired to Quatre; tired and sad. "That's good for you. I'm glad you're happy."

Quatre licked his lips, not sure how to put it so that Wufei wouldn't get angry or offended. He sat down on the windowsill and made a move to pat Wufei reassuringly on the arm, but thought better of it and pulled away at the last moment. "The point I was trying to make is that it's okay to say 'I don't want this, I want something else.'"

"I don't have anything else."

"Yes you do!" Screw the protocol; Quatre gripped Wufei's arm and tried to squeeze some sense into him. "You're skilled, you're talented, you're intelligent, you have contacts. You could have whatever job you want. Don't waste yourself on something you don't want to do."

At last, Wufei looked engaged, if not excited. "So, for instance, you would hire me?"

"In a heartbeat."

The furrows on Wufei's brow smoothed out as he gave Quatre that lie-detector look again. "You would, huh?"

"Of course. It's hard work, you know, but it's rewarding knowing that you're providing people with homes and places to work and schools and such."

A corner of Wufei's lip twitched up for a moment. It wasn't quite a smile, but it was a hell of a lot better than a frown. "Spare me the speech on the joys of civic duty. I've had about enough of that."

Quatre grinned. "Okay, then want to talk about benefits packages?"

Wufei rolled his eyes hubward and sighed. "Save the sales pitch for later. Right now all I want is to get out of here and into a hot bath before you two begin your debaucheries." He stood, stretched, and made to leave, but before he went through the door he shot a thoughtful look over his shoulder. "Thank you. I'll consider it."

It was a different Blue who sat at the defense table that morning. No longer the brash, grinning young buck of Sweepers III nor the broken, fragile prisoner, he sat with quiet dignity. Perhaps he was tired of acting. More likely, he was simply resigned to his fate. Whatever it was, Quatre almost felt himself become sympathetic toward him.

"Blue seems to be holding up well," he murmured quietly.

"Blue is something of a bullshit artist," Duo said.

Wufei sniffed softly. "And you're not?"

"I'm honest about my bullshit, fella."

"Right. There's a world of difference there."

"Stop it, please," said Quatre, who was feeling too tired to listen to a fight. "I want to listen."

McInnes had conjured up a graphologist from somewhere, a little man in a bow tie who was lecturing enthusiastically about ballooning ascenders or some such. On the big visual display, two identical fragments of someone's signature stood side-by-side for the presumed benefit of the observers. At least, they looked identical to Quatre. The bow-tie man seemed to think differently.

"Oh yes," he said in response to a question from one of the justices, "the left one is clearly a forgery. Do you see how the pen strokes are all evenly pressured here, but not here? This one was done very slowly and carefully, not at all how one would dash off one's own signature. And in this next image--"

Duo jumped in his seat as if he had just been bitten by a horsefly. "Hey!"

"What's wrong?" Wufei asked him.

"That was my signature!"

Quatre quickly glanced back at the screen, but the graphologist had already gone on to another image. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure!" Duo said. "Does Raleigh Peter Yates have two Ls in it?" He stood up and began to pace. "Jesus!"

"I don't see why you're so surprised," Wufei said, hiking up the volume a few notches. "Ervy worked for you for quite some time, didn't he?"

"Yeah, about a year, but--"

"He didn't just wake up one morning and think 'Oh, I'll start stealing from this Maxwell guy, he seems about as sharp as a sack of doorknobs'. That isn't how it works. With his level of involvement, he's most likely been doing this kind of thing for years. And he's been getting away with it."

Duo gave him a very black look, but he stopped pacing.

"Look at him," Wufei said, gesturing toward the Diamondflex. The camera had momentarily passed over the defense table, where Blue sat looking pale and rather dazed. "This is the first time he's ever been caught. Even so, he spent a lot of time in denial about it. Only now, it's finally gotten through to him that his luck's finally run out. He's not calm, he's in shock."

"That's not very comforting, Wufei."

On the screen, the bow-tie man had given way to a tall woman who looked like a banker, or a revenue agent. Someone who worked with money and took it very seriously, anyway. Quatre attempted to listen to her opening statement, but what Wufei was saying was far more interesting and his attention wavered.

"Some people are born manipulators," he was telling Duo, "and he's one of them. He's probably never worked an honest day in his life. He's clever, makes friends easily, probably has a thousand stories about himself--"

Duo snorted. "Yeah, and all of them make him out to be the innocent little lamb in a big, bad, corrupt world."

"Exactly. He told you what you wanted to hear. If you had a shitty childhood, his was absolutely abysmal. If you had trouble with the system, he had it ten times worse. If you were struggling, he was in abject poverty. Do you see what I'm getting at?"

"Yeah," Duo said sulkily, "you're saying I'm a goddamned idiot."

Wufei shook his head vehemently. "No, what I'm saying is that you--and Hilde--like to think the best of people. Ervy picked up on that and played you for it. With Yates, he probably tried a different tactic. Maybe he tried the eager-to-please move on him, or the tough but smart young protege act."

Quatre remembered how Blue had leaped up with every appearance of delight when they had first met in person: "You're...you're not dead!" And then had immediately gone into victim mode as soon as he realized he might be in trouble. "He played me, too," he said in a quiet voice. "I guess that makes us both idiots."

"He exploited you both," Wufei said to him, sounding irritated. "He took advantage of Duo's generosity and your desire to protect, but that hardly makes you idiots. Can't you see what he's doing?"

"What he's doing is getting majorly fucking audited," Duo said. He was looking at the screen again, which was showing a display of Blue's tax records for the past three years.

That caught Quatre's attention, and he focused on the tax form which was now in the center of the display. The statement of income and taxes owed were both highlighted. Quatre did a quick mental calculation and concluded that it had been filled out properly.

"As you can see," the banker-or-revenue-agent said, clicking over to the next image, "this does not mesh at all with Mr. Ervy's banking records, not with his credit report."

Quatre blinked. The banker-or-revenue-agent was making an understatement...by at least three decimal places. "Wow. That's quite the discrepancy," he said with awe.

"How did he do that?" Duo asked.

"I'm sure you and Yates weren't the only ones he was exploiting." Wufei stood up and drew his hand over his eyes. "How many more? We may never know. If you'll excuse me..." He began to walk to the door.

"Don't you want to see the rest of this?" Quatre asked.

Wufei shook his head. "I've seen enough."

The trial lasted only an hour and a half into the afternoon session. Much of that was taken up, quite unnecessarily in Quatre's opinion, with Blue's council filibustering on the topic of youthful exuberance and how tender young minds should be nurtured, not punished and things of that nature. Duo kept bursting into snickering fits.

In the end, though, cold fact won over sentiment. After a brief conference, the justices submitted their verdicts to Crothbauer, who rose from his seat to deliver the sentence.

"I must say, young man," he began, addressing Blue, "that your opposition has shown remarkable restraint in their complaints against you."

Blue nodded silently, staring down at his hands.

"I am old, Mr. Ervy, and they say that in one's old age, the social veneer that one has cultivated since childhood begins to crumble, revealing the raw personality beneath. You must excuse me, therefore, if I take great pleasure in handing down the full penalty of law: Six charges of grand larceny, carrying a total of six months' each default, one count of identity theft, carrying a three year default penalty, nineteen confirmed charges of forgery, three months' default each..."

Quatre didn't bother concealing his grin. He turned to Duo, intending to make some comment on the proceedings, but was cut off when Duo grabbed him around the shoulders and squeezed him hard. "The little bastard's got what's coming to him!"

Quatre returned the embrace and clapped Duo on the back. "I hate to admit it, but I'm glad."

Duo laughed. "You're such an idiot. A lucky idiot, but an idiot. If you ever take a gamble like that again I'll wring your neck."

"I'll keep that in mind." Quatre pulled away, still grinning like a loon, and turned his attention back to the screen. The camera was panning wildly across the room, apparently trying to catch every face on record while the punishment was meted out.

It was difficult to tell who looked more pleased, the justices or Council McInnes and his assistant. No one was smiling, exactly, since that would have been unseemly, but they looked pleased nonetheless.

Blue's council looked weary and resigned. He was a young man, and probably not very experienced, but not so young an inexperienced as to not have anticipated the outcome. He was patting Blue on the shoulder and murmuring something to him which the microphones did not pick up.

"If you have anything to say," Crothbauer said, returning to his seat, "now is the time."

Blue stood with help from his council and took a deep breath. "Your Honors, I accept your judgment." There was an approving mumble around the chamber. "But can I ask the court a favor?"

Crothbauer nodded at him benignly.

"Thanks, sir. I only ask...well, it's up to them, but I only ask that I be allowed to meet with Duo--I mean, Mr. Maxwell and those guys--I mean, with m-my accusers--and make amends in person? If it's not too much." Blue lowered his eyelashes humbly.

"Hell no," Duo said.

"Duo, they can't hear you," Quatre said, but at that moment a guard stepped into the room and marched toward their seats.

He was in livery, Quatre noticed, and was carrying a two-way radio to his mouth. At first glance, the only weapon he possessed was a sheathed ornamental sword at his hip. Upon a second look, there was a bulge at his armpit that could only be a concealed weapon. "I'm asking the witnesses now," he said into the radio.

"I--" Quatre started, but the guard cut him off.

"The defendant Ervy wishes to have an audience with you. Do you accept or decline?" asked the guard.

"I--"

"Frisk him, give him a thorough cavity search, and I'll think about it," Duo said. He was doing that poisonous grin thing again.

The guard turned toward Quatre. "Sir?"

Quatre vacillated for a moment, looking from the guard to Duo and back again. "Wufei isn't here, he can't make an informed decision."

"We might as well count him out."

"You're right. And I suppose it can't hurt...I agree."

Duo shot him a sidelong glance. "You sure?"

"Sure. He might as well go to prison with one less thing on his conscience, right?"

Duo looked at the floor, then at the ceiling. His lips moved silently, as if in prayer, then he sat quietly for a long time. Finally, he raised his head and nodded. "I agree too."

"Going for the twins look, are we?" Duo said, eyeing Quatre's clothing.

Quatre, who had thrown on the first thing he laid his hands on after a brief and unrefreshing nap, looked down at himself and colored slightly. "Um...I can explain," he said, tugging at the collar of a somewhat newer and less dilapidated version of Duo's t-shirt.

To his relief, Duo chuckled. "It's okay, I know you've been swiping my 'Cats shirts for years. I always buy two when I go to their games, because I know you've got a streak of larceny in your soul." He tipped Quatre a wink. "Just stay out of my underwear drawer."

Quatre wrinkled his nose. Lets not discuss your underwear before dinner. I'm having a hard enough time working up an appetite.

Duo opened his mouth, probably to defend the honor of his boxer shorts, but was interrupted by a sharp rap at the door. "Oh shit, is it that time already?"

"I'm afraid so," Quatre said, glancing at his watch. He looked back at Duo, and together they opened the double doors.

Coe Ervy shuffled in, flanked by two female warders with red bands around their caps. Behind them was one of the usual seventh-floor guards, who acknowledged Duo and Quatre with a nod before taking up his station discreetly by the bathroom door.

Quatre was disappointed to see Blue was wearing his orange jumpsuit and wrist and ankle shackles, but he wasn't surprised. He had hoped, foolishly, perhaps, that they might have let him wear his civilian clothes one last time. The poor kid looked so dispirited and lost.

"Hands out, Mr. Ervy," one of the warders said, taking a magnetic lock from her belt. Ervy dutifully held his hands out, and the warder who had spoken released his wrist cuffs while the other one knelt to free his ankles. Once freed, Ervy stood rooted in place until the cuffs and chains were out of sight, then he let out a breath and rubbed his wrists.

"Thank you, ma'am."

"We'll come to get you in time for lights out," said the warder who had freed his ankles. "Enjoy your meal."

They both left, closing the door behind them.

Blue looked up, giving a shy glance to Duo, then to Quatre before looking down at the toes of his prison-issued slippers again. "Thanks for seeing me," he muttered.

"No problem. Have a seat."

Duo's voice was tight, stressed. Quatre could almost feel it coming off him in waves, a clammy fog of unease that made him feel vaguely nauseated. He tried to shake it off and forced a smile onto his face that probably looked every bit as plastic as Duo's. "I'm glad they let you come," he said once Blue was seated.

The kid gave him a melancholy smile. "That's nice of you to say." Even if you are lying, his eyes seemed to add before they dropped down to his toes again. There was a very awkward silence.

"I think we should have drinks," Duo said suddenly, nudging Quatre in the ribs and startling about ten years off his life. "Don't you think we should have drinks?"

Quatre was completely neutral on the subject, but he tried to manufacture some enthusiasm for Duo's sake. "Sure, that sounds good."

"I definitely think we should have drinks. Blue? D'you want a beer?"

Blue blinked, looking vaguely startled by the question. "I-I'm not sure I'm allowed to have..."

"Oh, I'm sure they'll let you have a beer. You're over eighteen now, aren't you? For real?"

Quatre winced at the jab. It probably turned his smile into a grimace, but he couldn't help it.

"Yeah. I'll be nineteen come June."

"Well, happy birthday in advance. Quatre, let's go order drinks."

For some reason, Duo felt it was necessary for both of them to go get the drinks. Duo took a grip on his arm was almost painful, Quatre he held his tongue as he was frogmarched across the lounge. He nearly tripped over a stray pile of books, but Duo had such a grip on him that he was in no danger of falling. He wondered briefly what the books were doing there since the cleaning service had come by just that morning.

Once they were out of Blue's immediate vicinity, though, Quatre shook himself loose. "What was that all about?"

Duo's face was contorted into a painful-looking scowl. "This is the fucking stupidest thing I've ever agreed to," he hissed, "and that includes the time Hilde talked me into getting that little robot tattooed on my butt."

"I know it's awkward, but..." Quatre paused as something registered with him. "You have a tattoo?"

"Don't change the subject." Duo picked up the wall phone next to the dumbwaiter and jabbed the button for the kitchen with more force than was strictly necessary.

"Why a robot?" Quatre asked, glancing down at Duo's posterior.

"You're changing the subject again." Duo said. Then, into the phone: "Hello. Send up three Barefoot Ales with lime, would you? On second thought, make it six."

"Six?" Quatre echoed as Duo hung up the phone.

"I'm gonna need them."

Quatre put a hand on his arm. He noted that Duo was nearly quivering with tension and attempted to make his voice sound as soothing as possible. "Look, it's almost seven-thirty and Blue has to be back in his cell at nine. That's not so very long, is it?"

"Time's subjective. Spending an hour and a half getting a massage and spending an hour and a half getting a root canal are two different things, and this evening is turning out to be the latter."

"It's not that bad," Quatre said.

Duo gave him a black look. "You've obviously never had a root canal."

"Well, no," Quatre said. In truth he had never even had so much as a cavity, but he felt Duo's analogy was not all that accurate. "I've had my share of awkward social situations before, though. And that's really all this is, an awkward social situation."

Duo snorted and began to pace in front of the dumbwaiter.

"Duo, it'll be all right," Quatre said, catching him and squeezing both his arms. "An hour and a half after all we've been through isn't really so much, is it?"

Duo refused to answer.

"Besides, this isn't for us, this is for Blue. I know you hate him, but he's going to be locked up for up to fifteen years. Fifteen years! Do you realize how long that is?"

"We were fucking Gundam pilots at fifteen," Duo muttered.

"Yes. And because of that, it could have easily been us sitting there instead of him. If you had a chance to make your peace with the people you'd harmed during the wars, wouldn't you want to take it?"

Duo stared at him with flat, cold eyes. Quatre didn't think he had ever seen Duo's face look so hard, and he wondered if he had pushed him too far. Duo had every reason to resent him for making him spend this evening with a condemned man, and he supposed their friendship was already strained by his decision to drop the conspiracy charge. But he still held his ground, knowing that this was somehow still right.

After what seemed an age, Duo took a breath and relaxed.

"All right, you made your point. I'll make nice for an hour and a half." He smiled. "You owe me big time, y'know?"

Quatre could have collapsed with relief. "Season tickets for the Hellcats. Box seats."

"Seriously?"

"Well...I can try."

"Good enough." Duo raised his head and shouted, "Hey, Blue, have you decided what you want to eat yet?"

Blue polished off a plate of meatloaf and potatoes with a healthy appetite and practically licked the plate clean before Duo and Quatre had even finished half of their own meals. "Wow, you guys weren't kidding about the food in this place," he said cheerfully.

Duo and Quatre exchanged amused glances. Blue had seemed to come to life again after the beer had arrived, and by the time the food was ready, he was almost exuberant. "I'm glad you like it," Quatre said.

Blue burped discreetly and finished off the last swallow of beer. He was smiling for real now, a big, toothy grin that was almost charming. "I'll miss good food, but you know what?"

"What, Blue?" Duo said, eyeing him with thinly-veiled dislike.

"I don't think my time in prison will be totally wasted." He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "Can I tell you guys something?"

Duo shrugged, Quatre nodded, and Blue looked around conspiratorially. "I have a plan. I'm gonna make something of myself."

"That's...admirable, Blue," Quatre said. He had no doubt it was true, but from what he knew of prison culture, the only way that inmates improved was by learning to become better criminals.

"Yeah. I decided today--I'm a smart guy, and I'm young, so why can't I give myself a second chance, you know?"

"Well...sure," Quatre said.

"And nowadays they offer job training to guys in prison. The chaplain told me about it."

"Yeah, you'll have a stunning career in laundry services in no time," Duo muttered, but not so loudly that Blue could hear. Quatre resisted the urge to elbow him in the ribs. Instead, he kept a polite smile on his face and nodded for Blue to go on.

"I got people skills, and I know the streets, so why not put those things to good use, right?"

"Right..." Quatre said slowly. He had no idea where this was going.

"So I decided I'm going to be a social worker!" Blue said with a burst of enthusiasm. He looked at them brightly, smiling with far more wattage than he had shown in months. "What do you think?"

"I..." Quatre hesitated and turned to Duo, who looked as if he had just been force-fed a large bottle of snake oil. No help there, then. "I think that social work is a noble calling."

"Oh, me too! I think I'd be good at it. I can talk to disadvantaged young people like myself and tell them my story, get them turned around, help get them back on track. I could make them see that going legit is better than living by the seat of your pants, living in fear all the time," his voice cracked, but he swallowed and soldiered bravely on. "It would be a way to give something back, you know?"

"That's...that's very..." Quatre turned toward Duo again. "Isn't it, Duo?"

With visible effort, Duo hoisted up the corners of his mouth into something less like a grimace of disgust. "Yeah. Great," he said in a faint, sickly voice.

Blue beamed and practically bounced in his seat. "I'm glad you guys think so! Man, I can't believe I'm almost looking forward to tomorrow! Ha!" He picked up his beer bottle, saw that it was empty, and set it back down. "Just as well, I have to pee like mad. Excuse me and all that." He got up and headed toward the bathroom, throwing the guard a jaunty salute as he passed by.

"Is there any air freshener around here? The smell of bullshit is killing my appetite," said Duo, carefully setting his half-eaten steak aside.

"Could be worse, I guess," Quatre said, abandoning his own meal.

"How?"

"He could have gotten religion."

"I'd laugh, but I'm afraid I'd puke all over you." Duo leaned back in his chair, rubbing his forehead. "Can you believe that motherfucker?"

Quatre couldn't, exactly, but he liked to give the benefit of the doubt. "It's possible." He weathered a stern look from Duo and went on. "Okay, so maybe it isn't probable, but it's just possible that he might turn himself around. Maybe he's just saying that to get on our good side right now, but ten years is a long time."

"Quatre, the kid is a cockroach. In ten years, he's just going to be a bigger, meaner cockroach."

Quatre was about to open his mouth to utter a protest--a feeble one, but a protest all the same--when he was interrupted by a weak cry of pain and the sound of something heavy hitting the carpeted floor.

"Nobody move!" said a clear, authoritative voice.

Of course, they both moved. They put their hands in the air, for one thing. Then, carefully, they looked at the source of the commotion.

It was Blue, a Blue he had never seen before, crouched in a three-point stance with a gun trained on them. Behind him, the guard lay on the floor motionless; his cap had come off in the fall and his scalp was bloody. Blue was breathing hard, but there was no tremble in his grip, no hesitation or fear in his body language.

"What do you think you're doing?" Duo asked. He sounded annoyed.

"I may be going away, but I'm taking you with me, you son of a bitch!"

Several things happened almost all at once: The gun went off with a flat, undramatic clap; Duo went over backwards; and a figure blurred from the area of the book cases and knocked Blue down on his stomach.

"Duo!" Quatre cried out, skidding to his knees beside his downed friend.

Duo was grimacing horribly and holding his stomach. "God!"

"I know it hurts, hang in there," Quatre murmured, pulling Duo's head into his lap. He looked at Blue, and saw with a curious lack of surprise that it was Wufei who had materialized out of nowhere and was now holding him pinned with one arm behind his back.

"I'm going to inform you of your rights under the EarthSphere Unified Nation Penal Codes--" Wufei began, and was nearly thrown off Blue's back when the boy gave a tremendous heave.

"Get off me! Let me finish him off!"

"Shut up!" Wufei shouted, cuffing him across the back of the head. Someone started to pound on the locked doors.

"Christ this hurts," Duo growled through clenched teeth.

"It'll be okay," Quatre said, petting his head soothingly. "We'll get some ice on it..."

"I'm going to inform you of your rights under the EarthSphere Unified Nation Penal Codes--"

"Why aren't you dead!" Blue screamed hysterically. "I just fucking shot you--why aren't you dead?"

Duo, looking furious now as well as in a great deal of pain, struggle up on one elbow. "Because you shot me with a RUBBER FUCKING BULLET, you moron! That was a riot gun! Asshole," he added as an afterthought, and flopped back down into Quatre's lap. "Jesus, that smarts."

"I'm going to inform you of your rights under the EarthSphere Unified Nation Penal Codes--"

Just then, the guards who had been pounding frantically at the doors finally managed to bust them open and fresh chaos ensued. Shouts of surprise, fear, disbelief, many legs trampling and arms waving weapons, much shouting into radios as they called for backup and medical assistance...

Wufei, buffeted to one side in the middle of a fourth attempt at telling Blue his rights, scowled and stalked off to stand near Duo and Quatre. "To hell with this," he said, looking as disgruntled as Quatre had ever seen him before. "Is that job offer still open?"