14

Being flaming pissed when you didn't need to calm down was fun. Usually. When you had space to rant and throw things and generally be a dick to anyone stupid enough to come within a hundred feet of you. Being flaming pissed while being simultaneously equally confused and locked in a rather small room with a door you didn't feel like using any time soon and a partner in captivity that was at least partly to blame for said confusion and fury, well... That plain sucked.

"Do you think you're likely to stop sulking any time soon?"

"I'm not sulking!" Duo scowled darkly at Trowa curled up in his little corner of misery and it just made him angry. He knew that at least half the things he had thought Trowa was guilty of were not the man's fault, but the emotional response hadn't changed with that knowledge. Duo was having to admit that it wasn't really what Trowa had supposedly done or not done, but more the fact that it was Trowa. Just Trowa. Trowa pissed him off, because Trowa was Trowa and that just grated on his nerves! Which shouldn't have been such a big deal, only everyone else seemed to think they should all be best friends and that worst of all, he and Trowa had things in common. And worst of all, that was probably true! But Duo didn't want to know that; was perfectly content wanting to punch the man in the face. Again and again and...

"At least stop imagining punching my face in. My nose can't take much more."

"I only hit it once," Duo ground out, but he was proud of the damage he'd done with that one punch. The rest hadn't been as strategically aimed, but they were clearly causing Trowa some bother judging by the way he was cradling his ribs. If it was still called cradling when the guy was as large as Trowa. Duo rarely felt small in a room, but he was starting to get a complex and they hadn't even been trapped that long when he weighed it up against all the other times he'd been trapped, in his earlier years.

"Once is enough when you have to explain to Wufei why your nose is flat and cracked."

"Wufei's too blind to see it anyway," Duo snapped back and immediately regretted it. Trowa's face didn't change but his head fell forward and his gaze went faraway, somewhere Duo wasn't and that look Duo understood. He'd seen it in his reflection, on the Reincarnation when he hid on the bridge and tried to stare out at space instead of his own ghostly image on the glass while Wufei screamed, the sound echoing out into space. Where no one listened, or thought to answer. Apparently there really was no such thing as space ninjas. At least he could cross that one off his list, but that still didn't explain who had abducted the real Heero Yuy...

It was hard to imagine the plan they'd worked out, or what part of what had happened had been the plan and what had just gone completely pear shaped. How much was each part of the triad in on it, and who was really pulling the strings? It was easy enough to take Trowa at face value and believe Quatre was behind it all, but taking anyone at face value had never been Duo's thing. Just as easy to lie and put the blame on Quatre to save his own skin. Or what if Wufei was the real mastermind and he'd just set him free to go murder Heero on the Reincarnation? What if Wufei was working with the bastard who owned him, brainwashed into doing as he was told and now the key instrument in the bastard's plan?

"You really need to stop assuming the worst of people," Trowa whispered and maybe it was Duo's imagination but they felt harsher than they might have been meant.

"Sunshine and lollipops is a fairytale," Duo whispered and he curled his fists tighter as Trowa laughed in the wake of his reply. As if any of them had cause to think the world was kind, or that things might go their way, or that anything outside the self was worth fighting for. You could pretend to fight for something, but that something would turn it's back on you the moment you didn't suit it's grande plan. Duo had no time for grande plans.

"Lollipops are delicious."

"What. The. Hell! Is wrong with you!" Seriously? Lollipops? Duo stood in the middle of the room, gaping and horrified, wondering if he hadn't caused serious brain damage. Maybe he'd snapped off part of Trowa's nose bone and shoved it right up into his stupid skull and he was slowly bleeding to death up there somewhere? Those things happened, Duo knew! They'd told him all about it when he was learning hand to hand and he'd spent months terrified of hitting anyone in the face until someone pissed him off badly enough that he wanted to see if it was true. After that he spent a few more months trying to make it happen, and then he just felt damn smug about it.

"Well. They are." Trowa chuckled, watching Duo from behind his shaggy hair as if a clown stood before him, which when you considered Trowa's idea of a clown wasn't quite the insult it might have been but it still annoyed the hell out of Duo.

"You're nuts. Clearly. But even crazy people are less nuts than you!"

"Maybe that's what it takes," Trowa shrugged, still grinning but shifting onto his knees and crawling forward, toward Duo. Duo moved back, frowning and wondering what the hell Trowa hoped to even achieve. It was obvious who would win in a fight right now.

"Obviously, to hatch your fucked up plan you need to be nuts..." But what Trowa's plan was now was still a mystery and Trowa laughing at him wasn't helping. Trowa stopped coming closer and sat back, staring up at him again and he actually looked sad. Sad and disappointed and it was that disappointment that hurt the most. Because Trowa knew he was having a one sided conversation, because Duo didn't understand. On some level just...couldn't.

"Maybe that's what it takes to be happy, Duo," Trowa sighed, shaking his head as though saying it were useless. As if Duo could never understand and for a moment Duo thought maybe he was right. "Maybe that's what it takes to be happy."

Happiness was not a concept Duo had allowed himself to contemplate. Happiness was a weakness that allowed Heero Yuy into his heart and foolish dreams to die in his throat, leaving the dry, brittle taste of burnt fascination in his mouth. He didn't like being made a fool of, and he didn't particularly like happiness.

He liked that Trowa thought him incapable of it even less and it was just another reason to want to punch the man in the face. Only Trowa had his hand on the door handle and was yanking it open before Duo had the chance to stop him and for a moment Duo felt a whisp of fear at the thought Trowa was going to jump. That Trowa himself would be the one to deny Duo the satisfaction of killing him, and wouldn't that just be typical? Wouldn't that be just the icing on the proverbial pie to the face clown finale Trowa had to have planned?

Only Trowa reached a hand through and a foreign hand wrapped hard and solid around his own, clinging tightly and allowing Trowa to haul the newcomer bodily up through the vent.

"Wow, I thought for sure he would've killed you by now!" Marie looked from one of them to the other and then just smirked, hands on hips and her knee cocked. "Not that it doesn't look like he gave it a good crack!"

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Duo bellowed, wondering how much crap the human brain could take before it just shut down and said 'sorry, I'm done'. Because he had to be pretty close. Maybe it already had and he was running on generator power now? Where did the brain even hide it's generator? Was it in the left or right side, because he needed to know if he was going to be logical or be getting creative with shit.

"I'm the rescue party?" She said it as if it were obvious. She was as bad as Trowa; she pissed him off and he would have broken her damn nose as well if he hadn't had a thing about hitting girls who apparently came to rescue him.

"No. I'm the rescue party."

"Well it doesn't look like you were any good at it!" Smart. Ass.

"I don't see you doing any better!" Should've kept his mouth shut. She pulled a backpack off her back and put it down on the floor, pulling out climbing gear and Duo finally took note of the rope hanging off her hip and back out the floor. That was a hell of a climb, and one he would never have thought her capable of. More fool him. For a lot of things.

"You really are part monkey, huh."

"Excuse me?" Teenage girls really had that indignant thing down. Like really, really down. Duo felt scolded by her glare alone, she didn't need to go adding that tone on top of it! Which was stupid, because who felt scolded by a teenage girl anyway? His brain had definitely shut down at some point.

"Red hair...monkey...I'm sure there is a joke that puts this all together, but my brain's a little off right now?"

"Your brain's been rotten from the get go, fucking dick," Marie ground out, but she was ignoring him, pushing Trowa back up into the corner and peeling his shirt up over his head.

"Whoa, hold it just a fucking second! I know you've been working in a topless bar and all but you can't just go ripping people's shirts off whenever you please!" Seriously, was he the only cultured person left in the Valley? Did the future of manners actually rest on his entirely incompetent shoulders? Because Duo Maxwell was many things but God knew no one would ever say good mannered or cultured fit the bill.

"Excuse me?" Trowa sounded like someone was about to die, so it might have been a good thing he wasn't in a position to do much about whatever was twisting his panties?

"First aid, Duo! I'm applying first aid!" Marie screamed at him, her face flushed a furious red eerily similar in colour to her hair as she fished the first aid kit from her bag and waved it around angrily.

"...oh." Duo put his hands on his hips to keep from strangling her, or himself, or both. He stared at the ceiling and took deep breaths but it was Trowa fuming silently that really got his attention off the monkey. Monkey Fox? Was there such a thing? Fox Monkey? A Fonkey? Oh hey now...

"EXPLAIN MAXWELL!" Trowa bellowed and Marie fell backward, staring at him with wide blue eyes while Duo stared down at them, blinking and wondering if this was how owls felt and if really maybe they weren't really wise at all but just really fucking confused by all the crazy people.

"I told you, Heero brought her here..." Had he not listened to anything they'd both been having minor meltdowns over?

"You never mentioned her working in a fucking topless bar!"

"Oh, that!" Duo was horrified to realise the words escaped his lips at the same time they escaped hers, which only seemed to make Trowa more furious about the whole thing, looking from one of them to the other while his hands curled and uncurled. Never a good thing when you were dealing with a knife wielding circus freak.

"Oh that?" Trowa was turning a very interesting shade of red. One that Duo couldn't recall ever actually seeing on his face. Maybe he'd learnt it from Wufei, because his face was that colour on a regular basis? Or had been, Duo doubted Wufei was embarrassed by much of anything these days, all things considered.

"I'm not a child anymore!" Marie snapped and Duo rolled his eyes because all teenagers said the same thing, and whether she liked it or not to them she was always going to be a child. That was the way age worked; you never actually got to catch up.

"You're grounded," Trowa ground out, snatching at the first aid kit and starting to rummage through it. He was having enough trouble with it that Duo took pity on both of them and took over, efficiently going about getting Trowa's ribs bound nice and tight. Maybe a little tighter than was absolutely necessary, but Duo liked watching the man wince.

"You can't ground me!" Marie was harping on, but Duo doubted Trowa was paying any more attention to her than he was until she mentioned the magic word for Trowa's attention.

"Wufei didn't care!"

Trowa was silent for a long time and Duo felt his chest rise and fall too easily under his hands. Trowa was forcing himself to calm down; to remain calm when beneath the skin was coiled tight and ready to strike. This was why little girls shouldn't play with Gundam Pilots. Seriously.

"Then you really aren't as smart as you think," was all he finally said and even Duo found himself just blinking at the man. He looked tired, and not at all like the demon monster Duo had been making him out to be in his head. Worse, he looked hurt and that was partly, and perhaps even mostly, Duo's fault. Okay so maybe it was completely his fault, he wasn't going to sob over it now!

"We need to go," Marie pointed out coldly, clearly unimpressed by the words and maybe even Trowa himself because he wasn't worshipping the ground she walked on and petting her stupid monkey head.

"You can climb?" Duo heard himself ask, and wanted to kick himself because it sounded like he actually cared. Which, obviously, he didn't. Seriously.

Trowa didn't even bother to grunt in response, just pushed to his feet and started putting himself into a harness, so Duo did the same and checked how much rope they had, and how many clips. There were enough to get the job done, but only a few spare, so he hoped Marie really could hold her own, because they couldn't afford to be dropping clips from the sky. Which would likely kill some stupid person below; a huge chunk of metal just falling out of the sky? Dead, definitely.

"Your head is seriously messed up," Trowa muttered, but the scowl Duo gave in return was lost to the man's back and Duo found himself just standing there, blinking, because sticking out in all directions from the bandages he'd wrapped around Trowa's ribs were scars. A whole lot of tattoos, which was why he hadn't noticed them to begin with, but the ridges and lines were unmistakable now. The furrows into his skin were deep and knitted poorly back together, and fresher than they should have been if they were from the war.

Before he'd even thought about what he was doing, Duo's fingers were dipping through one of the thicker ridges and Trowa froze momentarily before stepping away, leaving Duo's hand hovering uselessly in the air. His mouth worked but Trowa was silent, his back still, and eventually Duo's hand fell back to his side and he looked away, his thoughts dark and tumbling into a rabbit hole he wasn't certain he had a way out of.

Things had happened. So many things, and he knew nothing of them. And the only person he had to blame for that was himself.

"Why did Heero agree to bring you here?"

"Because I told him to," Marie pointed out, looking at him as if he'd asked a stupid question. It made him pause and actually think about it before he frowned darkly. It wasn't a stupid question, and her answer sucked.

"Yeeeah, no. The last thing he'd agree to is being taxi driver for the poster child for random ape-like teenage aggression."

"Excuse me?" Oh to be that indignant over anything. To be young again. He might have been that young. Once. It was possible...likely even, even if he couldn't remember.

"You heard me," Duo sniped back. "Why'd he agree, really?"

"Ask him!" She snapped. "You know, if he bothers to come back for you. I hear his track record for that's not great." And with that she dropped back down through the hole and disappeared, leaving Duo ashen and shaking with cold fury, and a hurt so old he'd almost forgotten it, buried under so many layers of ice. Only it didn't seem so frozen anymore.

"Burn," Trowa hissed and followed her out, leaving Duo standing alone in the dark with memories sitting like lead in his otherwise hollow guts.

Alone. In the dark. He remembered that all too well. It was what made him; it was what defined him. The promise of being included. Of being part of a team. Of being valued beyond simply the heat of bodies forced together by battle, and instead held together in peace. The whispered longing to be half of a whole.

He'd thought that half dead, and ironically had life breathed back into it in the Valley. But the Valley was dark, and drugged and filled with lies, and really Duo should have known better. People didn't change... Marie was probably right. Heero probably wouldn't come back. It was easy to believe, because it was the truth he'd built his entire life on.

But it wasn't a truth he wanted to believe anymore, and his reasons for that were a tangled mass of confusion in his chest that ached. He'd thought that half of himself dead, but it was just cold and numb. Slowly defrosting in the heat of the rage that built in the half of him that remained.

That rage had him dropping through the hole in the floor, clinging to the support rafters beneath that held the sky up, slinking precariously after the shadowy forms of Trowa and Marie as they scurried through the place between night and day, quite literally.

"Hey Fonkey, you didn't answer my question."

"What the fuck is a fonkey?" Marie hissed at him over Trowa's shoulder.

"Fox Monkey," Trowa grunted, and he actually sounded amused. That didn't mean Duo liked him or anything, or that they thought alike, or anything weird like that. Seriously.

"That's ridiculous," Marie grunted, swinging to the next light and taking deep breaths, the effort of the climb clearly getting to her. Duo had to admit, it was hard work. "I don't know why Heero brought me. I begged. I must have been convincing."

"He knew a contract would be put out for his arrest, and when the Sweepers saw the name on the contract, he had to know who they would send."

Duo stared at Trowa. That actually made sense. Only Heero had been so shocked when Duo showed up. But maybe that was because Heero hadn't believed Duo would take the job. Maybe he hadn't thought Howard would be able to convince him. Maybe Heero, like everyone else, had given up on Duo. Because Duo had given up on all of them.

Marie was right. He was just going to have to ask Heero. On his death bed, maybe.

"How did you know where we were?" Duo grunted as he swung across to the fixture they were perched on, gathering his strength for the next leg across the sky. It slanted down along the ridge of the Valley ceiling and there wasn't a lot of purchase in between. He counted at least thirty ladder like rungs they were going to have to swing across and he looked suspiciously at Trowa and wondered if he'd been a tad premature in giving him a beating. For a second, and then he remembered Trowa deserved it.

"I followed you."

"Excuse me?" Duo wanted to punch himself in the face. A teenage Fonkey had tailed him without him noticing? He should just quit, right now. His life was clearly over.

"You heard me. I saw you go in that place, and I saw the clock, but I waited outside and when you didn't come out I went back to the Cathedral and I looked up the scans of the Valley Heero did when we first arrived and I realised the ceiling ducts were through there, and then I found Trowa's ship, and I figured you were both probably stuck in there somewhere."

Yeah, no, his life was so over.

"You found Barton's ship."

"That's what I said, isn't it?"

"I searched every berth in the Valley. So did Heero. There's no damn ship."

"Then how'd he get here," Marie pointed snidely at Trowa and arched one red brow. "Unless you think he flew here in a Gundam? Which, for the record, is not as inconspicuous as a ship. People tend to notice Gundams."

"My ship's here," Trowa agreed, but said no more on the subject, and Duo was too lost to his disbelief and failure to press for any more information. There were only so many blows to his ego he could take in such a short time, and he had passed his quota before they left their cage.

He gave himself up to the task of getting out of the sky, and back on solid ground, if one could even call the floor of the Valley solid. The others were content to let him wallow in his frustrations, each sweating and grunting with the effort of the task before them. Duo had to admit he was impressed; he was struggling, and Marie was doing it for the second time. She was tougher than he'd thought. He needed to stop treating her like a child, if she was going to insist on doing stupid things that reminded him a little too much of his own youth.

He felt a shudder of relief run through him when he was down, unhooking the climbing gear hurriedly and shoving it back in Marie's backpack, standing back and watching in satisfaction as Trowa struggled to free himself from his own and pack it away. His hands were shaking, and he wrapped one arm around his ribs, holding it tight to his broken body. But he didn't complain, just took several deep breaths, forcing some colour back into his pale, sweating face.

"I can't be seen like this," Trowa muttered, looking around quickly and starting to head toward a nearby alley.

"The Cathedral is this way," Duo pointed behind them. "I know a way to get there..."

"No," Trowa cut him off, something in his voice giving Duo pause. "This way." He pushed a brick and the wall gave way. Just fell in on itself like it was paper, when it had been solid before, Duo was certain. He stepped up to it while Marie hurried through behind Trowa, leaving Duo standing there poking at the flimsy material until suddenly it slammed back into place, smashing him in the nose and knocking him back on his ass.

"Motherfucker!"

The wall gave way again and Trowa was frowning down at him.

"Would you hurry up?" As if they were in a hurry. For what, Duo had no clue. Heero wouldn't be back for a day or two yet, and all Duo was supposed to do in the interim was find Trowa. Task done. Of course, no one said he couldn't shoot Trowa...technically, he was still found, what difference would it really make if he was alive or dead?

He scrambled to his feet and rushed through the wall before it slammed up again, leaving them in the light coming from the torch on Marie's head.

"Where did you get that?" Duo hissed at her and she rolled her eyes and pointed to her bag. Obviously.

Trowa led them through a series of dark tunnels Duo realised ran through the floor of the Valley, following the wiring systems that gave the place power, channelling the energy from a nearby star into it's solar batteries. Infinite power, endlessly. Well, until said star blew up, but the Valley and humankind would likely be long gone by then.

Hidden away in the underbelly of the engines was a hanger, closed and pressurized, and there sitting innocently sat something that immediately captured Duo's attention.

"She's beautiful," he mumbled, running his eyes over the subtle curves of the saucer like ship. It would slot into the underbelly of a much larger vessel easily, but was not small itself, Duo estimated six rooms at least. Large enough to carry cargo, but sleek and fast and very likely untraceable. And very obviously made of Gundanium.

"How?"

"I raided one of the fabrication factories where parts of Heavyarms were made. There was just enough to melt down and form an outer hull strong enough to protect against most attacks and run the stealth tech you had on Deathscythe." Trowa shrugged as if it were obvious, hobbling to the bay doors of his baby and inputting the code to open her up.

She was as beautiful inside as out, pale silver and lit with soft white lights that came on as they entered, motion sensored. Trowa led them to the galley, and all Duo could do was stare at the plethora of madness stuck to the walls. Thousands of photos, endless lists of names and numbers and coordinates and drop locations. Images of sales, drug meets, warehouses, institutions, laboratories.

Duo had thought a year or two. That their crazy threesome had decided to take on Haze, and put their plan into place and that something had gone awry, resulting in this wild effort to get their asses pulled from the fire. But on the walls was not a year or two. On the walls was a lifetime, year after year after year of hunting and delving deeper into the darkness, searching for every single person Haze had ever touched and sorting the guilty from the innocent.

He walked closer, staring up at the photos and frowning. There was Wufei, in a parade, punching out someone in the crowd and Duo could remember him being reprimanded for it, it had been all over the news, but no one had ever been able to figure out what set Wufei off. The act had seemed random, but in the image Duo could see Wufei's hand in the man's pocket, snatching out a small black book. A long series of photos ran alongside the image, each covered in a seemingly endless list of names. Each name had a line pointing to a set of coordinates, and more images of Trowa, dealing. Trowa with goon bodyguards all around him, crates of merchandise. And more images with more names, and the 'D' marking beside so many. The list of the dead was neverending, the names at the bottom fresher in new ink.

The walls were a shrine to something epic, and horrifying in scale. His gaze settled on two photos side by side; captive photos from the war. Heero's dark eyes glared at him from the faded photo, so much younger and determined. Far from the human he seemed to be crafting now. Beside him, Quatre looked soft and kind. Far from the manic pilot Duo had fought beside. Below Heero's name was a test report; a clean bill of health, dated from just after the war. Not a single anomaly, as if he hadn't fought a day in his life. Below Quatre's photo, the medical report told a different story and finally all of it made sense.

Duo took the report off the wall and stumbled back to the table, sitting heavily and reading the black letters over and over, as if reading them again might change the words. But the words were the key to the puzzle; the one thing that made it all make sense.

"There were no dolphins in the rainforest," he heard himself mumble. The words were swimming in front of him, but he refused to acknowledge the salt brewing on his lashes. It wasn't like he remembered how to make tears fall.

Trowa just stood there, a quiet sentinel surrounded by his thesis. And Duo could admit, now, that it was masterful, and that no one else could have done it. Trowa had done something so incredible, and he'd done it for the most ridiculous of reasons. Love.

"Quatre's sick?" As if the paper weren't all the proof he needed.

"Haze is a derivative of what the Zero System pumps into you," Trowa confirmed. "Heero's immune. It's how we engineered a cure."

"But...he seems fine..." As if Duo didn't know how easy it was to convince everyone you were fine. That nothing was wrong. That you didn't care.

"Some people are more susceptible," Trowa murmured and Duo understood he was talking about Quatre's space heart craziness. Quatre wasn't an addict, but if he'd taken enough Haze the damage would be enough to incapacitate. How badly, he had no idea.

"You and Wufei...you did all this, to find a cure for Quatre."

"It started out that way," Trowa agreed, moving slowly to the table and taking a seat across from Duo. It forced Duo to look away from the paper in his hands and really look at the man in front of him. Trowa was older. They all were, but Trowa looked older. Stronger and far more jaded than even Duo gave him credit for. There were thousands of scars on his body, faint but there, crisscrossing on his exposed skin, and his long hair was thick and ragged, his clothes torn and bloodied. But his muscles bulged and despite his injuries he showed no sign of weakness in the way he carried himself, simply sat there and stared at Duo as if they were strangers.

And they were. Duo had run away from the world because the boy he liked had saved his life and not come back to claim it. Trowa had thrown away his life and given it to the world, to save the life of the man he couldn't live without.

And Duo finally cried, because everyone had been wrong, just like he always said. He and Trowa were nothing alike, and it wasn't Duo who was the good guy.