Author's Notes:

Thanks for your patience! The past couple of weeks had been hectic at work, and I wanted to do this right, so I had to do a bit of research before writing (and rewriting) this chapter. I hope the effort lends a small sense of truthfulness to the fic.

Trivia: Death and Taxes was actually inspired by a song by Kitten entitled "G#". The lyrics just fit the GW universe, and if this fic were a movie, it would be playing once the credits roll. The next chapter titles will have lyrics from this song. This specific part, however, was written with Moving Mountain's "8105" in the background. They're both on Spotify. Please check them out. And please, please review! Your words are always very much appreciated.

[08082020: Just edited a few typos!]

Disclaimer:

Gundam Wing doesn't belong to me. The story is mine though, so do message me for and questions or requests!

Lunar Ember Presents

A Gundam Wing Fanfiction

Death and Taxes

Chapter 9: Through Teardrops and Haze

Relena could hear them, the numerous whisperings in her head. Voices, hundreds of them, all in quiet murmurs. An ear-shattering scream at one point.

Then there were the death rattles. She remembered her father's well. For weeks after she couldn't sleep. Now she could hear it again as she felt the settling of his chest under her hand and smelled the blood that had slowly stained his suit. That horrible, horrible sound that blended with the sudden explosion of concrete as she looked up and watched a mobile suit crash into a residential building. She reeled back, choking back a sob as she shielded herself from the smoke and the debris, hearing the hoarseness of her voice as she came upon a long-missed figure gently picking up a dead puppy and cradling it in his arms.

"Heero!"

He looked at her, and before she could reach him he was hidden by the smoke and eaten by the battlefield.

The whispers were louder now, more coherent.

"What do you want?"

She covered her ears, but they persisted.

"What do you want?"

"I want this war to end!" She screamed into the nothingness. "I want the fighting to end!"

From afar, she could hear the echo of beeping. She ran only to fall as her vision muddled; for one moment, she could see the dark vastness of space, the next it was overlapped by the charred ruins of Sanc as OZ infantry closed in on her.

There was a whisper, almost an encouragement. "This is the way," it said. "Be victorious."

There was a gun in her hand.

"You can't die now," the voices swirled, merged, and ended in the familiar smooth baritone that she had so wanted to hear. "You have to live to stop this war."

"Don't twist it like that," she said. "This can't be the only choice."

"Fight, Relena."

Not like this!

"Do it!" A thousand voices shrieked as her hand moved on its own and pulled the trigger.

The shot echoed like a clap of thunder, and one soldier before her fell dead. Relena shook, dropping the gun like it burned her, and when the smoke and the ashes cleared to reveal his face, she fell numbly on her knees.

It was Heero.

"What do you mean Relena is piloting Wing Zero?" Duo demanded. "How is that even possible? She could—"

She could die, he almost blurted out. It could happen, he knew. He used Zero before, he saw how it killed a soldier like Trant, and if it could kill someone as trained as him then Relena would—

He glanced at Heero. His face was unreadable, but he could see his hands curl into fists.

"These are dolls," came Dorothy's spotty reply.

"Dolls?"

"Yes. We're controlling them from a base in L4 V0732. I'll relay as much data as I can."

From behind Sandrock, Wing Zero suddenly blasted upwards, nearly swiping through Preventer units surrounding the area.

"Striker team, do not engage the Gundams!" Zechs commanded. "Stay with the Virgos!"

Noin marched to the officer at the communications console. "We need to hail Wing Zero. Now."

"Let me do it!"

The younger crew member immediately vacated the seat as Duo approached. Basing his scans on Dorothy's frequency, he ran through several channels, checking and rechecking as fast as he could. He didn't know how far gone Relena was, but he was sure if they spoke with her, maybe something would click. Maybe she wasn't in too deep. Maybe she could survive this.

The first time he met Relena was under less than favorable circumstances, but of course, nothing was quite predictable when she was involved. She shielded Heero from his aim seconds after saving her from him, and it confused Duo to no end.

In the beginning, he had actually thought she was nothing but a crazy chic who obsessively followed Heero around, but as time passed he realized that she only did so because he was the only semblance of stability she saw, even if he had promised her death. She was just as entangled as they were in the Eve Wars—perhaps, even more so—and she didn't have the privilege of anonymity. Despite that she protected theirs, and paid dearly for it. Returning her loyalty was something that he had carried with him through the years.

They had to get her back.

"Dorothy, find me a way to override the system." Heero's voice was quiet and controlled, but Duo had worked with him long enough to know what boiled just beneath that expressionless façade.

The monitors showed Trowa and Dorothy flanking Quatre as he pursued Wing Zero, trying as much as he could to protect any of the Preventer units from its erratic attacks.

"Trowa—tally four bandits, 3 o'clock high."

Duo watched Trowa's Taurus spin above four enemy units and, immediately firing its beam rifles as Quatre flew through them, clashing with three more Virgos that had begun to surround Sandrock.

"I did a quick blueprint scan. These dolls have working cockpits," Dorothy said over comms as her shotels hewed through two more suits. "A manual override may be possible." Her breathing was slowly becoming labored as the physical toll of running the Zero System slowly manifested itself. Duo bit his lips. If this was nothing but a slipshod version of the original, then he highly doubted that security measures were even put in place to protect the pilot's mental integrity.

"Captain, please give us the order to shoot Wing Zero down," radioed Condor. "Maybe that will cut off—"

"Stand down!" Zechs commanded, slamming his first on a console. "That's an order."

There was a second of shocked silence at the rough outburst, and Quatre's voice filtered through. "Destroy the Gundam and Ms. Relena may not survive this."

"How—"

"We're familiar with the system," he said, leaving it at that.

Suddenly, there was a loud beep. Duo fingers flew over the buttons, and the crackle of a new frequency came through.

"I got her!"

"Midway to Wing Zero," Zechs called out. "Relena, are you alright?"

There was shallow breathing from the other end of the line before a small, ragged voice cracked.

"Please kill me."

Duo felt the air push out of him as he slumped back on his seat. It didn't sound like her. The brokenness was nothing like her at all. Relena had always been larger than life; her words would always carry from the largest stages to the ends of theaters, her tone always sure, steady, and constant.

This wasn't her.

Wing Zero flew in a flash of blue and white, its beam saber going clumsily through Virgos, crushing one in its grasp as its machine cannon caught several Tauruses that weren't quick enough to dodge before Sandrock blocked its line of fire and allowed the Preventer pilots to escape.

"Why doesn't it stop," she choked. "Why…" she paused, her voice was suddenly hollow. "Why is there so much blood?"

Duo knew then that they were going to lose her. His heart pounded in his ears. She will die like Trant did. They weren't going to reach her in time.

"Why… is there so much blood?"

"Lena! Snap out of it!" He shouted against his own rising panic.

"Did I do all this?"

"Listen to me," Zechs approached the console. "You didn't—"

"Did I hurt them?"

"Relena, this is Zero, not you."

"Please kill me."

"Relena!"

Heero's voice rang over everyone's, echoing loudly in the bridge. Duo glanced at him and for the first time, he saw something break in his eyes.

"Relena," he softly said. "Can you hear me?"

There was the crackle of static before she answered through the haze she was in. "Heero?"

"Yes, I'm here. Just listen to my voice. Can you do that?"

"Heero…"

Wing Zero paused in mid-flight, its eyes rapidly blinking blue.

"I thought you were dead. They said you were dead."

"They're wrong."

"I killed you."

Heero was unperturbed. "I'm here," he said, taking on a gentle tone that Duo had never heard before. "I'll come and get you."

The bridge was quiet. Not even Zechs had anything to say. The crew who didn't know their history watched in a mix of confusion and guilt, as if they were privy to something they were not meant to see.

Heero paid no one any heed.

"I'll come and get you," he repeated, securing his communicator and grabbing his helmet as he turned to stride out of the room.

Duo stood and ran after him, just in time to hear Zechs order the last Taurus squadron to infiltrate the colony. They could fight through the Virgos to reach where Relena was but he knew that Heero wouldn't wait for it to be over while sitting on his hands: if her will holds, he was going to manually override Wing Zero. That meant he would need to actually board it mid-flight.

He understood the nightmare Zero had dragged Relena into—a thousand ways to kill Heero, over and over again. It made him sick. The two had suffered too much for too long, and he wasn't about to watch them unravel before him.

"I'll fly you," he offered, and Heero nodded his acknowledgement.

Quatre tried his best to block out the sound of Relena's voice as he weaved through yet another squad of Virgos that approached. He knew what the Zero System could do. He remembered what it did to him.

He gritted his teeth, gunning through another mobile suit as he heard her whisper Heero's name in a moment of clarity.

The frequency was open to everyone. They could hear her ragged breathing as she fought to stay in control, and it left a chill in his chest. For those who had only known her as the incorruptible Foreign Minister, seeing and hearing her like this was unnerving—the galaxy's symbol of peace trapped within a weapon of war, pleading for her own death.

Wing Zero remained where it was with a Virgo's head crushed in one hand, like a horrifying tableau that would explode into motion at any second. The machine shook as if wanting to break free, but somehow Relena held it back.

He knew that it wouldn't be too long before it swallowed her once more.

"Trowa, Quatre, you got me?"

Duo's voice came through and Quatre glanced at his radar just as a Preventer SR-107 supersonic transport appeared.

"Roger, Blackbird is visual," he replied as he reversed his thrusters to avoid a slew of Virgo attacks. "What are you planning to do?"

"Heero will board Wing Zero."

Of course he would. He tilted the sticks and the Taurus edged out of the field, turning just in time to slash through the defenses of the Virgos that blocked his path.

"We'll cover you," he said. "Trowa?"

"Understood."

"Dorothy? Can you still fight?"

"I still can," her voice came clearly, and he knew she was hiding her own fatigue. He could already see the Sandrock's movement slowing down. Like Relena, she wouldn't last any longer.

They had to work fast.

"Condor, do you copy?"

"Loud and clear. Squadron 1 will clear a path for the Blackbird. Squadron 2 will keep the rest busy and Squadron 3 will head to the colony, as per Captain's orders."

"Roger. We'll deal with anything that slips through."

Quatre allowed a moment of weightlessness before he kicked in the thrusters, blazing through the Virgos that straggled within his range. His radars told him that it would take five more minutes for Duo to approach—five long minutes that they hopefully could still spare.

"Relena."

Heero could hear her ragged breathing, and he knew she was at her limit.

"Stay with me."

Waiting in the plane's passenger hold, Heero could feel Duo maneuver through the battlefield as he heard Quatre call out instructions over comms. Relena's voice muted them all, and he fought against dread as he realized that it was coming in softer and softer.

"Heero?"

"I'm here."

"It's all gone now. Everything's burning…"

"Relena," he repeated, his mind sifting through memories that would keep her from drowning. "Do you remember what I told you in Libra?"

There was a pause, a hitch in her voice, and she replied. "Yes. You said you'd protect me."

Heero closed his eyes, recalling how she had tried to convince him to stay. Let me fight, he had asked her. He had wanted her to let him go, but his promise had already tethered his fate to hers.

"That's all I've wanted to do," he said, reaffirming his oath. "And I'm not going to fail you."

Sanc's burning fields shattered before her, and all of a sudden, she saw the vastness of space marred by the clashing of mobile suits.

Is this…

Relena could still fathom the nightmare she had been in threatening to cloud her vision, but his voice broke through it all, and she focused on it, fighting the pain that hammered at her temples. She could feel liquid at the back of her throat and she tasted salt and bile on her tongue but she forced it down.

The voices were once again in her head.

"What do you want?"

One of the monitors beeped and she saw an aircraft approach. As if from far away, he heard a familiar voice shout—"One minute, Heero!"—only to be swallowed by the hollow ones that crowded her mind.

They asked her again: "What do you want?"

The crisp scent of cotton, the sound of a low whisper, the flash of a deep blue gaze, and she remembered that it had always been so simple.

"I want to protect him," she breathed.

The pain was almost unbearable and she choked as she felt the heaviness of the machine around her move; blood dripped down her nose as the hallucinations finally disappeared into the clear reality of space. She saw three unmanned suits in pursuit of the aircraft that she now knew bore him, and she felt herself reach out to stop them.

She saw Wing Zero's sword fall upon them and they exploded on contact.

"Jesus!" She heard someone shout as she saw the aircraft roll expertly out of blast range. Duo? "Heero, you have to make the jump now!"

She tried to breathe deeply, regularly, but even the slightest movement triggered a sharp pain and she bit her lips against another wave of nausea that threatened to overcome her.

"Relena." It was him. "I need you to open the hatch."

She focused on his voice. Only his voice. She couldn't talk anymore. Relena didn't know what to do, only that she wanted to see him and the panel before her lifted, the light of a faraway blast outlining a familiar silhouette that moved closer to her.

"I got you."

He reached out for her hand, and with the last of her strength, she reached out for his.

Then all went black.

Heero discarded the jet pack as his slid into the cockpit of Wing Zero. He secured the hatch and immediately the consoles lit up in alert and error as he felt the fringes of the system work their way into his mind.

He had to break its connection with Relena.

Heero held the controls. He could still feel her consciousness as the suit recalibrated itself to him, hear the buzzing in his ears grow louder and louder as the HUD disappeared before his eyes and the system dove deep into mind, going through his memories, devouring what he knew and all the battles he had experienced, showing him everything it had shown her, and he steeled himself upon hearing her cries as she watched him die several times over.

He felt anger in him rise but he held his own and allowed the vision to play out before him. He could almost feel the system scratch and rage against the walls of his awareness as the algorithm displayed all his possible failures and successes—victories that were not without immense sacrifices—until it stopped.

Within the depths of the system was a small spark of light, a sense of recognition.

"Zero," he acknowledged.

The hallucinations vanished.

There was a soft beep, and Heero watched the console alerts turn green one after the other, his sensors switching on as his monitors flickered to reveal his battlefield. The beep turned into rapid pulses, and it filled the cabin as the three-dimensional radar display of the Zero System slowly lit up, and finally fully initialized.

The buzzing in his ears faded. Now he could sense the hold of the suit, feel every chip, every cable, every part melded in gundanium and others held haphazardly by titanium. The system was a copy, the Gundam a sub-par duplicate, but it held a core that knew him. Heero looked up and felt Wing Zero move in response.

He was in control.

"Wing Zero to Midway. Pilot integration complete."

Zechs' voice filtered through. "Midway to Wing Zero—show them how it's done."

"Roger that."

Duo veered the aircraft back just in time to see the flickering blue of Wing Zero's eyes flash into a steady green. The Gundam slowly drew itself to its full height, unfurling its wings as each panel readjusted and sparked in blinding white, and in a split second, its thrusters engaged and it blasted up before diving into a squadron of Virgos like an angel rendering judgement.

"Hell fucking yeah!" Duo crowed.

There was excited chaos over the pilots' comms—gasps of shock and maybe even of recognition—but Duo couldn't care less about who exactly they thought it was at the Gundam's helm. The tables have turned.

"Sandrock to Wing Zero," Dorothy's tired but relieved voice came in. "I'm falling back. I need to take Ms. Relena off the system. I'll come back up for our rendezvous point."

"Copy," Heero answered. "And thank you."

"Don't thank me. You boys all owe me. Over and out." Her line fell silent as Sandrock's eyes faded off. In a few minutes, Duo's radar activated, and a dot blinked within the colony.

"Junction 274, landing bay," Duo radioed.

"I see it," Heero replied as Wing Zero zoomed past his aircraft in a trail of light, its beam saber flashing in a deadly arc that took down several enemy suits. Duo cussed, maneuvering under the explosion before pushing the thruster levers and blasting through.

"Damn it man, excited much?"

"Quatre, will you be able to handle the rest?"

"Of course, Heero," Duo could almost hear the smile in the other pilot's voice. "Bring her home."

Dorothy felt the pod release her, and she immediately took off the helm and ran to Relena, ignoring the dizziness that almost made the room swirl. The Foreign Minister's pod had also powered down but she was worse off than she was: she could see the careless slump of her shoulders, the tremors that shook her frame, and as Dorothy removed the helm and helped her up, Relena immediately doubled over and threw up bile and blood.

"Shit."

She held the other woman's hair back. Dorothy fished out a kerchief from her pocket to wipe off the other woman's mouth and she saw that she was bleeding from her nose.

She bit her lip. This wasn't good at all.

"Ms. Relena, can you hear me?" She asked, slinging the woman's arm over her shoulder. "You have to keep awake."

"Is… Is everyone alright?"

Dorothy wryly smiled. Of course that's the first thing she'd ask. "Yes, everyone's alright."

"Heero?"

"Especially Heero. He's coming to get you and—hey," she shook her. "You can't sleep on me, okay?"

"But I'm so tired."

"Ms. Relena, I swear to god I will make the rest of your life miserable if you go unconscious on me now." She put her free hand around her waist and tried to support her to the door. "We have to get out of here."

It was only then that she realized that the sound of Virgos continuously deploying had masked the high pitched scraping from the heavily armored door. Sylvia, Dorothy smirked. She quickly typed in an override code and the door opened, revealing a couple of men trying to laser their way through the panel. It almost looked funny.

Sylvia eyes flashed with hatred as three more soldiers behind her raised their guns.

"I'm going to fucking kill you," the woman seethed.

"And then what? What good will that do now?" Dorothy smiled. "Heero Yuy has Wing Zero."

She watched as the color drained from her face.

"Oh really now, did you actually think that he'd just wait around for the Foreign Minister to take a swing at him?"

"Kill them both!"

Dorothy was just about to spin herself and Relena towards the previously discarded gun on the floor when she saw her own guards shoot Sylvia's troops from behind. The other woman screamed in frustration, crawling into the room and onto Sandrock's pod.

"This is a fight you can't win, Sylvia."

"Somebody shut her up!"

The pod folded her in and Dorothy knew that she was good as dead. Beside her, Relena's eyelids began to droop.

"Stay awake, damn it!"

"Ms. Dorothy, are you okay?" One of her guards rushed in and paused when he saw the Foreign Minister. "Is she…"

"I'm fine, but I need help with her. Don't allow her to fall asleep."

The man quickly carried Relena as if she weighed nothing. "And Noventa?"

"The Preventers will deal with her," she said as she and her contingent began to run towards the landing bay. Dorothy was not a religious woman, but she found herself praying quietly that someone would soon be there to meet them. Relena was getting paler by the second, her eyes doing their best to focus on the corridor before her but failing.

If they don't get here in time…

She shook her head. Failure was not an option.

Heero tilted the controls and Wing Zero angled to the side, widely circling the ruined colony just beyond firing range as Preventer Tauruses began to engage the remaining dolls. The deployment of Virgos had slowed down—and if that was the case then it meant that there would be very little resistance when they charged in.

He saw Duo's aircraft fly past as he searched for the landing bay.

"Do you think they have a welcoming party prepared?"

Zero quickly scanned the colony for him, and he realized that for all the convoluted scheming Sylvia Noventa had done, she didn't care for closing a mission clean. It didn't seem that she was expecting to survive it.

"I don't think so," he radioed back, and just as well. He wanted this done and over with.

The system beeped a warning before the threat even showed on radar. Heero's eyes narrowed.

She had to try, didn't she?

"Go ahead and get Relena," he told Duo as he pulled the levers back to slow Wing Zero down.

"Wait, what do you mean?"

"I have something to deal with."

There was a pause over comms and the other man relented. "Alright dude, but be sure to finish it quickly. I doubt it's me that the Princess wants to see."

"Roger that," Heero replied as he turned and buoyed before the colony to wait.

Zero beeped, showing him threads of possibilities—one of which involved firing the twin buster rifles at the suit that was just about to approach—but he ignored it. He was the one who turned her into the person she now was, and if only because of that, she deserved a chance.

"Heero!" It was Quatre. "Sylvia's got Sandrock!"

Activating the beam saber, Heero powered up the engines and the Gundam spread its wings in anticipation, eyes flashing bright green as it trailed the incoming suit.

"I know."

It came within range and Heero launched forward at full speed, ignoring the g-force that pushed back against him as Wing Zero brandished the saber and immediately cut off one of Sandrock's arms, before sharply turning to meet it again, this time edging the fatal beam near the titanium connections beneath its neck.

"You have a lot of nerve to come for me using Relena," he intoned softly, reining in his anger. It was clear to him now as Zero added up the pieces—from the lost funds, to the supposed botched assassination, to Rodrick Gunnar, to the L2 attack—it was all to lure him out in the open. "If you had wanted me, you should have killed me back when I offered you my life."

There was static over the radio, and he could hear Sylvia roughly laugh as she asked, "But where's the fun in that?"

Zero urged him once more to end it, but he stayed his hand.

"I was hoping that you would have fought her in one of your Tauruses," the woman continued. "It would have been so much more interesting to see you try not to kill her—and then eventually kill her."

"You may have forgotten who you're dealing with." He let go of Sandrock even as the system dissented, folding in his wings to put space between them. "I'm giving you a chance. Surrender, and no one else gets hurt. I'm sure Marshall Noventa wouldn't want to see you like this."

"Don't you dare say his name!" She charged at him, and Heero simply evaded.

"Heero!" Duo said, suddenly breaking through the frequency. "I got them!"

"How is she?"

There was a scuffle from the other end of the line. "She's… Man, just get here as fast as you can."

Heero hissed as Sylvia tried to slash him with her remaining shotel to no avail.

"You're wasting my time, Noventa."

"Is that so?"

What remained of Sandrock then turned to face the colony. "If I can't destroy this faux peace that you so love, if I can't get you to suffer—"

She initialized the beam rifle.

"Then I'll kill her. And all of them. Maybe that would do it."

Zero pulsed, and Heero allowed it to do as it wished.

Wing Zero blazed into Sandrock, burying the beam saber deep into the cockpit just as the other Gundam's aim tilted and blasted off the colony's edge. Letting the hilt go, Heero activated the buster rifles, powered the suit's engines, and in one motion, pulled the trigger.

The recoil at full power pushed Wing Zero back as the system tried to hold on to its hull integrity. Sylvia screamed as the blast roared through Sandrock, almost instantly disseminating it while catching straggling Virgos at its wake in a string of rapid explosions. The beam shot through the emptiness like a comet, before disappearing into the vacuum of space.

Heero could hear the woman's labored gasping from wherever she controlled the now destroyed Gundam duplicate. He realized that the mental feedback of attack would be too much for her, and as she gurgled incoherently, he knew that she would not be able to hurt anyone anymore.

Target eliminated.

He turned off her frequency before changing his heading and flying towards the colony, only to stall when he saw Duo's aircraft move out.

"What's going on?"

"Couldn't wait for you," came Duo's reply. "We need to get her to a doctor. We couldn't keep her awake anymore."

Duo veered the aircraft out of Wing Zero's radius as it violently destroyed straggler Virgos to clear his path, its pilot silent after hailing the Midway to prepare the sickbay for Relena.

He remained silent still, even as Quatre and Trowa called over comms and they boarded into the safety of the Preventer carrier. Heero was immediately in the Blackbird's passenger hold as soon as Duo had disarmed the doors, and seeing his expression felt like punch in the gut.

Relena's breath was shallow, her face and lips still marred with tinges of blood. Dorothy was explaining what had happened but Heero didn't seem to hear any of it; he gently lifted his charge from her seat, his jaw clenched as he leaned her head on his shoulder. Acknowledging no one, he disembarked the craft.

There was commotion at the bottom of the steps; Zechs was there, and a contingent of Preventer EMTs were already waiting with a stretcher. Heero allowed the doctors to take over and they rushed away with her, leaving a few responders to check on him and the rest of the passengers.

Duo approached, pulling a hand out of his pocket to rest it on the other man's shoulder.

"Don't worry so much. You've said it before—she's the strongest of us all," he said. "She'll be fine."

Heero gave no answer, and walked away to follow her.

To be continued

Next Chapter: Finding meaning