A shriek rang out from the bridge, and Sally rushed inside. Duo and Heero kept their guns trained, entering slowly behind her and keeping constantly wary of ambush.
"Clear!" Came a scream from within. "It's clear!"
Duo was the first to lower his gun and take stock of the almost entirely empty room. Aside from his two companions and himself, the room housed only three people: Une, cowered against the wall to the left of the bridge door; Corporal James O'Keefe, rolling on the floor clutching at his right kneecap; and what must have been Captain Charles Benning, kneeling in the center of the bridge, his bleeding hands folded delicately on his lap.
For a few uncomfortable heartbeats, the room was silent.
"I can see why Ellie was so smitten with you," said Benning solemnly, his voice slightly strained, and he turned his leathered face to Duo with a sullen look. He smiled softly. "Of course."
The room seemed to come back to life. Duo became suddenly aware of O'Keefe's labored moaning, moans of pain from a man who had never once taken a bullet in battle or otherwise, a man who hadn't the dignity or self-respect to fight the pain. Une had crept around behind, slightly more composed now, and Sally helped her to her feet. He glanced at Heero, whose face belied no expression but whose eyes burned with angry fire. It was the look of war, the look Heero used to wear back when he was the assassin. Considering all this man had put Heero through in the last months, Duo could not be surprised that something more primal had caught hold.
And then Duo trained his gun back on Benning, stared back down the barrel, and stepped around Benning, out of line of sight of the door. He held his aim steady.
"Is the ship clear?" Duo demanded of Benning, and Benning nodded.
"Yes, Sir."
Duo bristled just slightly. He didn't much like being referred to as sir. This man was a Captain, and Duo's discipline demanded that hierarchy be honored. "You don't owe me respect," Duo said. His voice remained even, despite the adrenaline. This moment was the culmination of months of pain. This moment was what he had been working toward since he'd left the Peacemillion. The fact he could hold his nerves in check was just training in action. "I repeat once more: Is the ship completely clear of your personnel?"
"Yes."
"Where are they?"
Benning looked to the floor in silence, O'Keefe's groaning echoing behind him. When Duo glanced up again, he saw that Heero had moved very close to the writhing Corporal, had his gun still pointed at O'Keefe's head. Sally and Une had left, but he could not say to where they had gone.
"Where are your troops?" Duo demanded again.
"I sent them out," Benning said, "to stand against you. To buy a little time before... Well, I suppose I don't know."
"Explain," Duo said, and after a pause added stiffly, "Sir."
At this, Benning chuckled and again. "You're very stubborn, aren't you? Ellie said so, said that you were bold as a peacock and stubborn as a mule." He sighed. "I received the call that things had gone pear-shaped aboard that warship of yours, and that Secretary General Peacecraft and the First Gentleman were escaping with a fairly large support crew. I didn't yet know that you had arrived in your gundam as well. I didn't see the whole picture, I suppose," Benning paused. His eyes dropped to the floor again. "I sent my men out to stop the shuttle, but it seemed that fate had other plans. Before I knew it, they were gone. Now here you are, and here I am..." his voice trailed away, and Benning turned his bloodied palms upward. Duo had shot north of the knee, pierced the man's thigh. Blood flowed freely. "Your reinforcements will arrive soon," Benning said, folding his hands again over his wounded leg. "And then what will you do? Turn me over?"
Duo adjusted his grip on the pistol. He'd never expected to come face to face with this man, the man who'd caused him so much pain. If Heero's records were to be trusted, this man had orchestrated everything from Duo's capture to the destruction of the colony. He certainly wanted to shoot the man, but somewhere in Duo's heart he knew that such an action would be driven by wild emotion, could prove catastrophic if executed without enough consideration. "What do you want me to do?"
"Your hands are shaking. Why are your hands shaking?" Benning paused, but Duo offered no reply. "No matter, I suppose. You owe me no explanation. Though, it seems I owe one to you, don't you agree?"
"I think you should save it for court."
"You think I'm guilty, then? You would have me put on trial without evidence I've committed a crime the same way you were? Of course, you know I commandeered this ship, which goes without saying, but what else do you suppose I'm responsible for?"
"I think you're responsible for everything."
Benning shook his head. "No, no. Which reminds me: While we're talking so casually, what would you have me call you, soldier? Ellie referred to you as Maxwell, but said you didn't much like it. Said you wanted to be referred to by rank...Is that so? You're so dehumanized that your identity is wrapped up in a rank? Even after all of this?"
Duo wondered if Benning wanted him to shoot. The tone in his voice and the content of his message had begun to get beneath Duo's skin. Duo felt ruffled, flustered now more than he felt angry. Once upon a time he'd been certain that he'd kill this man if he met him, but now he was faced with the action, he couldn't commit.
"What do you know?" Duo said, his voice straining to remain even despite his anger. "You're captured now. I could kill you in the blink of an eye. I want to know what you know."
"Duo," Heero called from the side, his voice solid as rock. "Keep your head, now."
But Benning offered another placid smile that set Duo's blood to a light simmering. "You want me to absolve you," said Benning in a fatherly sort of way. "You want me to pat your back and tell you that everything is okay and that none of this is your fault. And you're holding my life hostage in exchange."
"If that's what you want to think. But we're both stuck here. We're all stuck here, and until reinforcements arrive we may as well make nice."
Benning nodded. "You're fair, too. More fair than I deserve. Would you mind helping me tend my leg a bit? A towel, a bandage, something to stem the blood?"
"Not a chance in hell I'm taking my gun off of you."
"Fair," Benning chuckled. "Everything she said about you..."
For a moment, anger flared, and Duo brandished the gun with more force than perhaps he intended. "If you're going to say something say it! Enough baiting!"
"One thing you ought to know about me, Master Sergeant, is that I know when I've been bested. I know when I've lost. I cannot say the same for those who've worked beneath me. Ellie," he seemed to choke on her name and paused for a while. "Ellie was my world, you know. And I see a lot of her in you. You two were more the same than you know. We all are, I suppose. I served with her father in the armed conflict following the assassination of Heero Yuy in AC175. We fought for the Earth Sphere, though we never agreed with what they had done. We kept in touch, of course, and kept serving. Ellie was born, her mother died in childbirth, her father died only a few years later in the early days of the One Year War. Ellie grew up as a war orphan, same way I had. The same way you did."
"Don't you dare," Duo warned, and this time he cocked the hammer of his pistol. "Don't you dare."
"She became angry. She was only seven, didn't understand what was going on, but she got this idea in her head that she wanted revenge. She wanted to hurt the people who had hurt her, and so she began planning. Sometime after her father's death she got the idea in her head that she would unravel the Earth Sphere. Contacted me a few years ago, all grown up and prepared to fight for what she believed. I agreed with her. I thought that the Earth Sphere Nation should pay for what it did to the colonies, for how much it oppressed their citizens. I thought the Earth Sphere should pay for killing so many people.
"She marveled at the genius of Operation Meteor, as much as it failed. She admired the people who set it all off. Ellie wanted to do it, but she wanted to do it right. You know how greedy men are, I think it'd be foolish of me to assume you don't. The minute I approached some of the wealthier contributors to the military about a lucrative operation which would pad their pockets a little bit more, they practically threw money at us. Men make money from war. Millions and millions of dollars came flooding in, and we set our plan to action."
Duo stammered a bit, floundering for a response and feeling somehow extremely lame in the face of the explanation, in the face of its plainness. He looked to Heero, who stared cold-eyed at Benning and offered no comfort at all.
"You ought to stop waving that gun in my face, young man. You're bluffing with it anyway. If you were serious you'd have shot me to death a long time ago instead of letting me linger here in pain."
"I can't shoot you until you go on trial. I'm no judge."
"You contradict yourself, given how many of my men you've killed," Benning said flippantly. But when Duo leveled the gun at him again, his face fell stoic once more. "We—myself and Elliott—earned the support of a few high-ranking military officials, as you know. In turn, they manipulated our squads. We discovered the Quell and ran tests using some of our own troops and with varying effects. All of this happened at the same time; all of these events came together simultaneously. It was like an act of God, you see, which made me believe that what we were doing was right. To rebel against the Earth Sphere, we thought, was for the greatest good even if it came at the expense of innocent lives. Even if we had to destroy a colony to do it we wanted to help the colonists. I suppose you helped us with that, in the end, after our cause was lost."
"Except you couldn't do the dirty work yourself!" Duo spat. "You made me do it! You made me pull the trigger!"
"No," Benning whispered. "No, we didn't. We pulled the trigger ourselves."
The gun dropped to Duo's side and he stared, blank-faced and dumb. "Excuse me?"
"We pulled the trigger, Master Sergeant. Ellie did it. We had covert operatives inside that colony. They infiltrated its engineering staff and gained access to its core. They planted explosives there to knock the colony out of balance, to send it careening into Earth. You couldn't have known, but the day the colony blew it was orbiting on a perfect line. If it had fallen out of the sky on that day, if it had detonated correctly, it would have landed atop the Earth Sphere Unified Nation's headquarters building, where all of its representatives were in meeting. Perfection! Yes, it would have been perfection. We would have carried out Operation Meteor and to great success, beheading the Earth Sphere and bringing the colonies to power—we never spoke of our plan, never broadcasted our intentions. It was all so quiet, until you came aboard."
"I don't understand..." Duo stammered. "If you had the colony rigged, why did you need me? Why did you kidnap me? Why did you drug me?"
"We weren't aiming for you specifically. We knew who you were, of course. Or I did, as soon as Elliott sent me your photograph. No matter what, we knew that we needed a pilot who was highly skilled, because once the colony fell we would require firepower to help us secure our hold and stake our claim. You can't just destroy a government and have no backup plan. The power vacuum has to be filled. A war has to be fought. The battle at M-204's detonation was a test to make certain that the system worked. We needed a live run to make sure you could fight off encroaching soldiers and to be certain you were fully under our influence. The day M-204 exploded was supposed to be the day our plan came to fruition, they day that we toppled the Earth Sphere for all it's done to sour humanity. But you woke up, and you killed her."
"I fired on the colony!"
"Maybe. Maybe your shot even connected, but you weren't the reason that the colony exploded. Your shot? Oh, perhaps it would have done some damage to the colony's external components. Might have thrown it out of whack, if it had connected on its own. But there was no way your shot could have caused such a catastrophic failure. No way your shot could have detonated the colony in such a way. No, Master Sergeant, it was Elliott. Elliott remotely detonated the colony. I'll never forget the call she made before it happened. She sounded so happy. She was going to blow the colony that day, and even though innocent people would be killed, their deaths would be for the greater good of mankind. She hoped that you would stay with her, once you came back to yourself. Once everything was over she hoped that the two of you might—"
"No," Duo protested. "No."
"This should make you feel good," Benning said, and the honesty in his tone made Duo's stomach squirm. "I'm providing you an admission of guilt on a silver platter. I'm exonerating you."
Not for the first time, Duo did not know what to do, and he did not know what to say. Benning was right: Everything he'd been saying for the last—ten?—minutes had been the perfect words to clear him, Duo, of any wrongdoing, and both Heero and O'Keefe had been there to serve as witness. Everything about which Benning had talked not only made sense, but it cleared Duo of guilt.
Duo stammered for a while. His thoughts seemed to have stopped completely, though whether his mind had been clouded by his emotions or stunned stupid by the truth of it all, he could not be sure. All Duo knew was that he felt sick and marginally faint, and very much like he wanted to put a bullet between Captain Charles Benning's eyeballs. His mind reeled as he tried to wrap his head around the logic. The rest of him felt dead, his body felt as it had on the Quell: Void of emotion entirely, but heavy with its implication.
"It seems your crew has arrived," Benning said, and looked toward the entry to the bridge.
But Duo did not avert his eyes, instead raising the gun again. he didn't particularly care at this point who was standing behind him. Something had been stirred in him, and he needed the rest. He needed to know. "If you're going to clear me, then do it."
Benning nodded. "When the colony blew and you were recovered I had a feeling that the whole operation had gone bust. Without the colony we would never be able to take down the Earth Sphere. But the thing had grown so big, had taken on a life of its own far beyond my control. My colleague," he paused and shot a glance to O'Keefe, who seemed only half conscious, "insisted we continue with the mission. He'd become wrapped up. He'd become angry, just as disenfranchised as I had been at the start, though by that time I had lost heart. But I stayed. What more did I have to lose? Ellie was gone. I never had a family of my own. I allowed the operation to continue, allowed him to take much of the lead from me and try to eke out a new plan from the remains of the old. He bribed his way into heading your trial, and it was allowed. Money is a powerful motivator, you know. He orchestrated the assassination attempt, believing that Relena Peacecraft's death would cause the whole Earth Sphere to crumble and allow us to continue as if the colony mishap had never happened. But it failed, and things spiraled out of control. Our insurgency had been exposed, and we tried to use that to our benefit as well. If we could plant doubts about the military's integrity..."
There was a pause which seemed to linger, though in truth it passed on only a moment. Duo expected Heero to fire at Benning's admission of guilt, particularly with regard to the assassination attempt, but Heero remained rooted to the spot, his gun lowered to his side, watching intently and with some newly acquired expression of horror at the conversation.
And then, as though the lull in conversation had sparked something, the remaining Peacemillion crew sprang to action, fanning out within the bridge under orders from Zechs that Duo had never heard. Suddenly, Trowa and Wufei and Quatre had all opened communications with various parties; Une rushed out of the room once more, explaining that the rest of the mothership crew had been locked in the cargo hold.
For a moment the rest stayed, staring at Duo, who felt alone and small as he stood in the middle of the room. All their eyes had been on him, everyone had been staring at him, pointing his gun at this pitiful man as if to execute him. His heart was beating in his throat, his thoughts were conflicted, and for one last time he looked to Benning, contemplating a shot.
Duo lowered his gun, and walked away.
"See to it that he's taken care of," Duo said as he approached Sally, Howard, Hilde, Milliardo, and the rest. He did not stop as he approached the bridge door. He heard Sally rush toward the Captain as he turned his back toward them.
"Where are you going?" Howard asked tentatively. "What are you doing?"
Duo paused in the doorway and shook his head listlessly. "I need some space," he said, and though he tried to keep his voice steady it carried a deep sadness. "I've got go get out of here."
Hilde stepped in the way of the door, her arms held out and a look of hard defiance on her face. "I won't let you go again," she said, and she shot a glance to Howard, then back to Duo. "We just got you back," she begged, "we don't want to lose you again."
But Duo shook his head, looked serenely between Hilde and Howard. "I promise. This time I'm not running away.
