13:
"OW!"
"Ow? OW? Are you fucking kidding me, I'll give you fucking ow you stupid, crazy motherfucker!" Duo launched himself at Trowa, taking advantage of Trowa covering his aching face with his hands to shower Trowa's gut in kicks and punches.
"Duo!"
"You are the sickest son of a bitch alive, you disgusting fucking fucker!" The barrage continued, mouth and fist and swinging legs. It took Duo a long time to realise Trowa wasn't fighting back, that he was just rolling with it, lessening each blow and allowing Duo to lose it. Lose it big time, too. He slowed as though withering and in the ache of the adrenalin fading he felt only a deep sadness and a well of confusion for that quiet melancholy.
"A fucking fucker? I thought you knew how to swear."
"Not all of us have been hangin in the Valley," Duo muttered, moving back until he hit a wall and then leaning back against it to catch his breath, watching Trowa struggle to sit upright and feeling no sympathy at all. A beating was the least of what Trowa deserved.
"I should hope not," Trowa muttered, staring at the blood in his hand when he pulled it away from his nose and glaring at Duo for a moment before he just sighed and shrugged it off. That annoyed Duo more than everything else, that he was so easily discarded. So simply forgiven.
"I think I broke your nose," Duo pointed out, and even to him it sounded childish to be so pleased about it. Trowa just smiled, a little wry and shrugged. He'd clearly had worse, and they both knew it.
"It'll suit the image." Mr. Smug? No. The drug lord one. The one Duo had wanted to destroy when he let his fist fly in the first place. Ironic that even by beating the guy up he was just helping him out some more.
"Duo. What are you doing here?"
"You sent for me?" Duo reminded him as if he were mad. "I'm the rescue party." And for once that didn't make him feel the least bit proud.
"Really?" Trowa sounded as dumbfounded by the action as Duo already felt and they stared at each other for some time, just letting the ludicrousness of their situation sink in.
"Doing a grande fucking job of it, aren't you?"
"Fuck off."
"Can't. Door's in the floor...it's easy enough to open, but..."
But it was a long way down. Duo stared at the outline of the vent in the centre of the room and had a brief moment to marvel at the genius of the cell. You could escape any time you wanted, but it was a one way trip, and even if you landed on some poor bastard it was the Valley, so it wasn't likely anyone would care.
"So Yuy is..."
"Taking Wufei and Hilde to test the cure."
"Right." But Trowa was frowning as if it didn't quite add up, which was weird because Duo was pretty sure they'd figured out that part of his plan pretty decisively.
"But?" Did he really have to ask? Of course he did, because it was Trowa and Trowa was a secretive little prick.
"What are you doing here?"
"Seriously?" Hadn't they covered this already?
"Seriously?" Trowa mimicked and they remained, staring silently at one another, for what felt uncomfortably long to Duo only Trowa seemed in his element and after a while Duo had to grunt and look away because the one eye was freaking him out a little.
"You told Marie to get Howard to bring me here, to pay Wufei's selling price?"
"No I didn't."
Well now, that was awkward.
"Yes you did." Because denial was definitely the best policy. The guy was probably just trying to fool him anyway, get a rise out of him, mess with his head. That was the sort of thing Trowa's did!
"No I didn't." He lied too, so that meant nothing. Right? Right! Only he really didn't look like he was lying and when Duo thought about it, not that he had a lot of time to think about anything while his brain was having a small meltdown right in front of the odd bastard, but he was trying and that was definitely the point. He didn't look like he was lying, and when Duo thought about it Trowa had no reason to lie, either. Did he? What possible motive could there be...
"Seriously. I didn't tell Marie anything. Why the hell would I involve a teenager in this? We're in the Valley for fuck's sake! Is she here? You brought a teenage girl to the Valley?" Incredulity didn't really suit Trowa, in Duo's never so humble and very much confused opinion.
"Technically, I'm not so sure she's a teenager any more? Do you know how old she is? I never bothered to check or anything...she's annoying as hell you know? And just to be clear, I didn't bring her. Heero kidnapped her and brought her here."
"Excuse me?" Well, when you put it that way, Duo supposed it did sound a little insane. He'd thought so too when Howard first gave him the folder and sent him on his merry gig to catch and detain Heero Yuy in Mettle Valley and free but return to house arrest his young captive. All of that had sounded certifiable and he might have given it more thought than he had if the idea of shooting Heero Yuy when he resisted arrest hadn't been so damn appealing.
"I was originally sent here to retrieve Heero for kidnapping Marie?" He scratched his head, not sure that was really helping even if it was starting at the beginning, more or less. If you really wanted to start at the beginning he supposed you had to go back to the Incident. Or maybe even the destruction of L5? Hard to tell at this point. He wasn't big on timelines to begin with.
"You were?"
"Well, I turned the gig down to start with but then Howard was all you're fired unless you go and I kind of like my job you know? And the old man, well he's like family only family isn't supposed to threaten to disown you for not going to work, they're kinda supposed to help come up with an excuse to take a sick day or something, but he totally didn't do that so I'm not so sure he really counts as family anymore, but the point is I took the stupid gig because there was a chance I would get to shoot Heero, and that would be pretty awesome, you know?"
"...Yup. Can see how that went down," Trowa slowly agreed, though he seemed a little more wide eyed than usual and it was obvious he was thinking pretty hard to keep up with the conversation, which was weird since he was supposed to be the mastermind behind it all.
"Still doesn't explain why you're the rescue party. Which, you're not, by the way. Since we're still stuck here."
"I'm working on it," Duo grumbled, and they both knew he wasn't. That they were stuck, which was why they had the time to have a conversation, and clearly they weren't being monitored or Trowa wouldn't be allowing conversation at all. It would be all glares and grunts until Duo gave up trying to talk to him and went to sulk in a corner. Instead there were questions and confusion and really...of course there were, this was Trowa!
"So I get to the Valley, do some gunrunning..."
"You did what?"
"You cannot lecture me on crime!"
"Point." So that at least they had right. Maybe. Hard to tell, since they were pretty sure crime had been a part of Trowa's life pre-Gundams and all. Still, current predicament made it pretty clear crime wasn't that big of a deal to Trowa.
"I find Heero and Marie, only they say they're here on this top secret mission of Marie's, to save Wufei!"
"Why?" There was so much ferocity behind the question that Duo actually paused and took a better look at Trowa, studying the way he cradled his left ribs and starting to feel a tiny niggle of guilt that he'd probably just broken them. But only a tiny niggle, because the bastard deserved it.
"Because Wufei was being sold? He's a sneaky ninja, by the way? I mean even blind and drugged he damn near kicked my ass jumping out of a crate and stuff?"
Trowa was just glaring now, and Duo shrugged. Eventually someone would understand. Ninjas were dangerous! Way worse than guys who flew Gundams and blew shit up.
"So Marie says that's why I'm there, right? To pay the auction fee?" Only Trowa didn't seem to have any recognition of that at all and it made Duo frown, push off the wall and start pacing the room.
"When was the last time you spoke to Wufei?"
"When he arrived in Mettle Valley to track down the source of Haze."
It was definitely Duo's turn to stare. This had all been Wufei's idea? As what, some mental downtime hobby while Preventers investigated the mess with Marie? But hadn't Marie helped to set all that up? Didn't that mean Wufei had to be in on it?
"You guys...made the decision to track down the Haze source as a team?" He sounded skeptical, and with good reason. Nothing at all seemed to make sense any more, if it ever had. And if they hadn't been right the first time, what was to say Trowa wasn't lying this time? Maybe they really did have it right and Trowa was just sneakily trying to find out what they knew and throw him off track at the same time?
He was really getting paranoid.
"Not exactly," Trowa hedged. "But we needed a way to get Wufei some off Earth time away from Preventers and Marie was as easy a means as any. She has the most ridiculous crush on him..."
"Almost as big as the crush she has on you, Master Barton."
"That's...really quite gross," Trowa frowned at him, pushing himself back until he could prop himself up against a wall and watch Duo pace in a wide circle around the room.
"So you did get Marie to forge a diary that would have Wufei incriminated."
"Yes." Bastard deserved every kick and more. That Wufei had apparently been privy to the plan did not make anything better.
"But you didn't have Marie come here and buy Wufei and arrange for me to come find you. You left an awful lot of clues if you didn't want to be found..."
"I did not," Trowa grumbled, frowning darkly and looking as confused as Duo felt which was only slightly mollifying.
"How did you talk to Marie?"
"To her face, how do you talk to her?" That was a little insulting somehow, but Duo shrugged it off, fixed instead on the facts and the gnawing big hole Trowa was punching in his storyline of events.
"Not by message board?"
"What? No! Wufei set that stupid thing up for her so she could talk to him when he wasn't at work. Stupidest thing ever, but he insisted she be able to contact him if she needed something. Instead, it just fed her stupid crush!" The frustration in his voice was obvious and Duo wondered how many nights Trowa had spent waiting for Wufei to come to bed while Wufei insisted he just talk to her for a little longer, just until she was ready to sleep, just until she felt safe and...Yeah, Duo could see how that would get frustrating.
"She thinks you've been giving her orders on that message board."
But Trowa had already put it together. He'd slumped back against the wall, head pressed back against the cold metal, eyes closed and a grimace on his face. After a while he shook his head, reached up and pushed the hair out of his eyes, looking properly at Duo who just stared back and tried not to gape. Trowa's other eye was bright in the poor light, sparkling faintly, drenched in Haze. Blind.
"You...what the fuck man!"
"It's fine."
"You're an addict, man, I don't think it's fine! You're not supposed to try your wares when your wares turn you into a worm!"
"What? Duo...where the hell did you get the worm?"
"I don't know!" Did everyone have to keep fixating on the weirder shit that came out of his mouth instead of the point he kept trying to make? Haze was not okay! Using was not okay! Why did everyone else not see that this was not okay! NOT OKAY!
"Did you get Wufei?"
It was in no way a surprising question. To be honest, Duo had expected it to be Trowa's first and he'd been thrown for a loop when it hadn't been. Maybe he should have guessed things were amiss when Trowa had instead asked what the hell he was doing there. Pretty big difference in conversation initiator now that he thought about it.
"Yes. Got him out of the Valley, got him clean, though detox is a complete bitch and you owe me like a thousand pairs of new sheets? But then we brought him back here to help find you, only then we figured out the whole thing about Sahar and the cure and Heero took him to L3 to make sure it works."
Fury. Trowa's face changed so fast, for a moment Duo thought him possessed, or that he hadn't been speaking to Trowa at all and the true face of his partner in cell-share had finally shown his true face. But it was Trowa, just completely enraged.
"You're testing it on Wufei?"
"Isn't that why you made us buy him and get him clean? To make sure it works?"
"I didn't make you buy Wufei! I didn't know he was being sold! I didn't know he was even in the Valley! Last I knew he was Sahar's personal slave! I have no fucking clue what the hell shit is sprouting from your stupid fucking mouth because for the past three weeks I've been stuck in this fucking cell watching the Valley through a damn hole in the floor and surviving on the water that trickles through the vent from the damn air conditioning!"
Well now. Very awkward didn't really begin to cover it. But it was. Awkward. Duo stopped his pacing and frowned, staring at the way Trowa's shoulders rose and fell like a cartoon characters would, but no smoke came off Trowa or out his ears. He was just angry and hurt, and that part at least was Duo's fault even if he didn't quite feel guilty for it yet. And a little disappointed because smoke out of the ears would be something to see.
"You know, none of this is really making a whole lot of sense to me? I thought I had it all figured out, I mean I even found you from all those freakin hair brained clues you left, which were nuts even for you? So I was pretty sure Heero and I really did have it all figured out?" Even if he had for a short time suspected Heero was just in on it all with Trowa and they were trying to blow him and the Valley both to kingdom come.
"You think it's not making sense?" The laugh that escaped Trowa was painful, and a little wet. It was the liquid that made Duo's gut ache. The suspicion that sneaked into the small thawed corner of his soul and whispered in the near silence.
You were wrong. Again. Wrong about so many things, it seemed.
"Why the fuck would you test it on Wufei? There's a million guinea pigs here! Every one of them guilty!" So much hurt was built up behind the words that Duo found himself at a loss, for words or anything else. It wasn't supposed to be like this. He was supposed to find Trowa, have all their conclusions confirmed, beat the shit out of him and cure Haze. He was supposed to feel good at the end of it and go back to Howard with a fuck you on the gig register and a new job to attach himself to. Maybe go on a date with Heero.
"We thought you..." Told them to. The sound of his palm connecting with Marie's face came back to him in startling clarity, resounding loudly in his ears like a warning gong.
A tear rolled down Trowa's cheek and the man didn't bother to wipe it away or hide that it slid there. Duo doubted he knew it escaped. Doubted he was feeling much of anything. He looked like he was in shock. Looked betrayed, and Duo should know because he'd seen that look in the mirror a thousand times before the sun had slipped away and he'd let the cold in completely.
"But...the clues..." It was a last feeble attempt to explain his own actions to himself. It was also the last thing holding back Trowa's sanity. He laughed, a raw broken sound that echoed horribly in the small space off metal walls.
"Clues? What clues? Like breadcrumbs for you to follow? Why would I do that? Why would I ever need your help? Who would rely on you?" He was up, cornering Duo, pushing him into the wall and screaming in his face, silver eye glinting and green but a memory. Lost in the Haze of his own memories, and his own pain.
"You, who doesn't even own a phone for someone to call? You, who runs and hides but doesn't lie, unless of course it's to himself! You, who doesn't even know a birthday to decline an invitation? You, who doesn't even know if the man who's watched his back most of his life should really be called family, when he's the only one answering your damn emails and trying to keep you breathing, because he doesn't allow you to push him out of your life like everyone else and come up with a valid excuse for you to pull a sickie whenever it pleases your sensibilities to do so? You? I'd call you? There's no fucking number to call! There is no email to reply to! There's not even a photo to make me remember you exist! Why the fuck would I leave a clue for you? You wouldn't come unless you were forced and what sort of rescue party has to be forced to do the rescuing? You're not worth calling! You're not even here! You don't even know you're not here."
Pain. Like a fist of iron to the stomach. Duo folded over it, cradled himself to the sound of Trowa's laughter as he retreated back to his own corner and slid to floor, cradling his own wounds and laughing like the madman some part of him was. But Duo was lost to his own memories, to the pain of knowing deep down that Trowa was just speaking the truth.
Because the fist in his guts still felt real, like the betrayal he'd taken it as. Because he'd taken an attempt to keep him safe and out of harm's way as a diatribe on his lack of abilities, which if he was honest had never been questioned to begin with.
Because he'd then spent years pretending that no one even tried to contact him, while he did everything in his power to ensure he couldn't be contacted, and then blamed people like Howard for making sure he was so too busy to stop and think about anything at all, knowing the whole time that it was his choice. That all he had to do was say No, and he could change it all.
Because when Heero said the words I Love You, something inside him broke and took hold of that pain in his guts and let it erupt over and over in a vicious loop until he thought he would lose his mind and when it stopped it left him with a hole so large inside nothing could hope to fill it, because he'd ensured it was left empty and that emptiness wanted to swallow him whole.
Because there were no pictures, no photos, not even empty frames waiting for the memory to slip inside and hold fast. He'd let it all pass, let the photos accumulate on desks and walls far away, without his face in any of them.
Except Heero's. Heero remembered him. Heero waited, and just wanted to be let in. And it was that simple fact, and the memory of lips and warm breath that steadied him. Duo took deep breaths, listened in the dim light as the maniacal laughter slowly died, replaced with sobs and then heavy breathing and later still, with nothing at all.
As Trowa slept, Duo watched. Studied. Tried to piece together the old facts with the new and make sense of the non sensical. It was hard when his ever so helpful thoughts kept reminding him that Heero was off testing yet another drug on Wufei, while Wufei's lover was trapped here with him, both of them unable to do a damn thing about it.
Harder still when he remembered pushing the blood soaked sheets into the incinerator. Standing in front of his bathroom mirror trying to scrub the blood residue from stained nails. Listening to Wufei's ragged breathing in the dark, praying to whatever God may or may not exist that he just took another breath.
Why? Why had he agreed to test it on Wufei? Because Heero said so? No, Heero had the same misgivings. Because an end had seemed to justify a means? Because a cure would be such an incredible thing? What had blinded him to the fact it was Wufei? The whore's face that never quieted in his dreams? The eyes that stared at him from his own gaping well of guilt with silvery orbs?
"I'm sorry," was what finally managed to escape him, quiet but still breaking the silence when Trowa's breathing changed with his waking.
Trowa sighed and took a long time sitting up. He looked tired and worn. Hungry, which you would be Duo supposed after three weeks on limited water and zero nutrition. Lonely, too.
"I didn't mean...to say those things," Trowa admitted at last and Duo just shrugged.
"But you meant them." Trowa shrugged and they both sighed. Words were strange that way; once said it was impossible to take them back. You just had to move on. Like fists to the gut. Because Duo was clearly so good at putting the past behind him.
"Georgio Sahar sold Wufei?"
"To Marie," Duo agreed. "Though, admittedly he didn't know it was Marie, just some rich girl wanting a pretty toy, but..."
"I get the idea," Trowa agreed, and the idea clearly made him sick to his stomach but he was thinking about it. Which meant it was the part of Duo's story that confused him, which was weird since it was about the only part of the story that made sense to Duo anymore.
"You get everything else?" He was supposedly the mastermind behind it all, so that made sense, but Duo was starting to suspect Trowa wasn't quite the mega brain they'd been giving him credit for. Or he was, but that another manipulator was actually pulling the strings, since Trowa had been incapacitated.
"Is the cure complete?"
"...how the hell should I know?" As if he had anything to do with any of this! But he thought about it and wasn't Trowa supposed to know? Which meant three weeks ago the cure hadn't been ready. Was it really ready now, or were they about to shoot up Wufei with a dose of Haze? Something he was already addicted to. Which could push him over his pain threshold into lala land for life.
Life needed a save station and a replay option.
"The whole Valley is on Haze and they don't even know it," Trowa grumbled and it seemed to genuinely offend him which was a little weird since almost no one on Haze actually chose to be on it in the first place. But he knew Trowa would be equally offended for those victims, only...these ones, as he had pointed out, weren't innocent.
"I learnt that from your crazy friend outside the diner," Duo agreed.
"Are you just making this shit up as you go?" It seemed a rhetorical question so Duo saved himself a little dignity by not answering and allowing Trowa to continue. "We were going to test the cure here first."
Replace the contaminated air with the cure. That was pretty clever. And if it failed wouldn't change anything other than make a few thousand criminals detox for a few days until they got the Haze circulating again. No harm done? It was certainly a nicer way to go about it than testing it on Wufei, but then they'd been working on the assumption the drug was already tried and tested and ready to go.
"The cure won't fix the brain if you're already gone," Trowa pointed out coldly and Duo blinked at him, pretty sure that was obvious. "If you give Wufei Haze after detoxing, he might not last to see a cure."
That hadn't been a consideration. They'd assumed Wufei was fine, because the sneaky ninja kept saying he was. But they all knew he was lying so why hadn't they thought about the consequences? Because they'd thought they were doing what Wufei wanted them to do? Did they ask Wufei?
What the hell was wrong with him?
"So you didn't leave me any clues? They were pretty specific, are you sure you didn't? I mean there were like receipts with just ones and twos all over them, it was like tailor made or something!"
"Duo! I didn't leave you jack shit. If I had ever intended for there to be a rescue party, which I never would because we both know that's not how I operate..." And he had known that, recalled thinking that the only time Trowa would ask for help was if he got so deep into shit that he needed an army to get himself out. Or a few Gundam Pilots.
"But if you had, it wouldn't have been me," Duo finished for him softly, and somehow it hurt less to be the one to say it. To understand it and feel it deep down in his bones and know it was true only because he'd let it be so. That Trowa would have called, if there had been a number, and he'd felt he needed it.
"Heero would, if it makes you feel any better," Trowa noted quietly and that had Duo gaping at him. "If Heero was in trouble, it wouldn't be my number he would be calling," Trowa continued as if the words were actually making sense. "He'd find some stupid excuse to get Howard to send you to help him, and then he'd apologise a whole tonne and beg for you to give him a chance because he's a romantic idiot like that."
"I can't believe you just put Heero and romantic in the same sentence," Duo heard himself mutter but his thoughts were darker, seeing parallels he didn't like and his silence must have alerted Trowa to his thoughts. That, or there really was a window in his forehead that allowed people to read his mind.
"Heero Yuy did not set this whole thing up so you would come and think you were rescuing me so he could confess to you. Which I'm assuming, since you've so hilariously jumped to that conclusion, he's done? Begged you for a chance to try having a relationship like two civil adults instead of hiding on opposite sides of the planet and pretending you're not both butthurt by why the other did? Or really...didn't do?"
Duo scowled, but there was not a whole lot he could say to defend himself from...the truth.
"We're maybe...trying...or something."
"Halle-fucking-lujah," Trowa grumbled. "For the record, I don't actually care. I just can't sit through another luncheon with Yuy moping over a celery stick."
"Heero hates celery! He thinks negative calorie foods are useless and avoids them like they're going to contaminate his stomach with their uselessness."
"Exactly!" The ridiculousness of the conversation wasn't lost on either of them, but they were trying not to focus on the fact they were still very stuck in a sky cell without any food and Duo was getting very hungry. He didn't do well with 'hungry' and they both knew it. Were he Trowa, he would have taken the plunge by now. Maybe. Hard to say, he would have tried to find an alternative of course...
"So, there is a cure."
"Yes. Originally, no. We wanted to find the source of Haze and put an end to it, but then Wufei got caught by Sahar and when we looked into it we found out he was..."
"Sahar's toy, and an addict," Duo mumbled, trying to imagine how that realisation had gone down and thinking it wouldn't have been pretty. "That's why you trashed Quatre's mansion. I knew the dolphin story didn't make any sense!"
"I'm sure you're fucking up my life story in your stupid brain but sure, that's why I trashed the house." Had lost his shit completely. Duo had seen the leftovers. Quatre had gutted the place and just renovated while he could. Erased the evidence.
"So you came..."
"No, so we decided to make a cure. Before Wufei was captured he found out the main dealer was a man here, in the Valley, and that he had the whole Valley in his hand because he was controlling them with Haze in low doses."
"Through the air," Duo surmised, nodding to himself because that was actually pretty clever. You could do a lot, with the power of the Valley behind you.
"Quatre took over making the cure while I came here and infiltrated the drug ring."
"By infiltrate you actually mean took over," Duo pointed out, still angry that Trowa had felt the need to go that far.
"It was the fastest way to get what I wanted." Cold. Simple. To the point. If you were Trowa. To Duo it seemed crazy when you could just blow up the stupid colony. Again.
"But you got caught?"
"Sahar was here...we met. He realised I wasn't the same dealer..." Duh. That was bound to happen at some point. And then the rest had happened. Heero and Duo and Marie had come because Wufei was being sold, likely because Sahar was panicking and trying to cover his tracks and track down the cure, and...
"So you really didn't leave the breadcrumbs?" They'd all been things to do with Trowa, which was why they'd come looking for Trowa in the first place instead of just grabbing Wufei and making a run for it.
"Duo. Who has the power to force Howard to force you to take a gig?"
The one thing Duo hadn't stopped to consider, ever, was why Howard made him do it. He did it now. Howard had no reason to. If he'd wanted Duo to interact with the others, he could have done it any time. Handed him the phone, shown him an email, brought them up in conversation.
He hadn't. Had kept Duo's bubble in one piece every day, so what changed? Who could force family to turn against their own? The answer was so simple they were both laughing, Trowa because he thought it hilarious Duo hadn't figured it out, and Duo because his heart was so still easily discerned inside it's cold storage. So easily heard, torn from it's cage and manipulated.
"Quatre."