Author's Note: As the title suggests, this is the chapter that you all have been waiting for, dieing for. That's right, you read correctly. The answer you've all been waiting for has come at long last! Enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing

Warning: slight language, shounen ai

The Answer You've All Been Waiting For

A good night's rest can cause one to forget a lot of things.

That includes Solo's personal declaration of war on his cousin, the plot for retribution having completely escaped him by the time he woke up that morning. He would remember it eventually but for now it was not as important as the chance to rudely awaken Duo and see how angry he could get him.

However, before he could get that far, he found himself mesmerized by the sight of seeing the braided one in deep sleep. Without the teen's personality in control of his face, there was just something that made Solo want to stand there and watch him sleep. There was such peacefulness on the troubled teen's face, an innocence of that nature really became the braided one and it should have been a crime for Duo to wake up.

The bed that Duo laid in only served to amplify this, making Duo's form seem smaller than it really was. The image of cradling the braided one in his arms upon finding him in the restroom after Heero beat him up made a brief appearance, reminding him just how delicate Duo was.

And from what he knew of him, Duo's father, for some unknown reason, hated him. Duo never spoke about his mother, not even when he had told him a little bit back at his apartment the day he had followed Duo there. Howard, Duo's lawyer, also made no mention of her.

Then there was Wufei. What was his problem with Duo? What was it that he was accusing Duo of doing? Duo was just as baffled and confused by the accusations himself so there was no help in understanding it from that party. Heero, he kinda figured, just followed the Chinese's lead.

There were so many people that hated or disliked this one person out of billions of people on this planet and yet there was no clear, concise reason that he knew of to explain it.

Sitting down carefully onto the bed, so as to not wake Duo up, Solo continued to look down at the braided one, his hand slowly reaching out to stroke the long, unbraided hair… Heh, funny, he hadn't noticed that it was unbraided… Wait…was that…a smile on Duo's face. The teen mumbled in his sleep and leaned his head closer to Solo's hand. The blond managed to hold back a chuckle at the antic.

He was so adorable…

What the hell was happening to him? He only knew this kid for about a week and already he had softened him up. It wasn't really a bad thing but he had never imagined himself to be in such a position before, especially from what he had done before coming here. Still, how could he not just by looking down at the small teen?

"Um, what are you doing?"

Being ripped out of his musings, Solo finally realized that the topic of his current thoughts was wide awake, violet eyes watching him curiously yet demanding a satisfactory answer as to what the blond was doing.

So, being his danger-for-pleasure seeking self, Solo answered, "I was thinking about waking you up but I saw just how precious ya looked asleep and couldn't bear to go through with it."

Duo only blinked in response. "So…" he began slowly, gathering his thoughts, "…you think I'm precious, huh?"

"Did I stutter?" Solo countered in reply, grinning cheekily down at him.

"I'm just wondering how a 'bad boy' like yourself can allow himself to actually use that word."

"I can say whatever I want to say. There's no law that says I can't."

"True, but people have an image of you and don't expect you to say such things."

"If they have a problem with it, then they can say hello to my fist."

"Is violence your solution for everything?"

Instead of answering, Solo flopped himself down onto Duo's prone body, pinning his arms down to the bed, his face only mere inches from Duo's. With his breath mingling with Duo's, Solo purred, "Not everything."

Duo swallowed unconsciously, his face pinking due to the close proximity of the larger blond and the exorbitant heat he was generating. The green eyes were darker for some reason, the eyelids half closed leaving only what was visible to bore into him. A small, lusty smile only served to complete the fiendish look Solo was giving him and served only to unnerve the unbraided one. What was this guy planning?

"You know," Solo began to drawl, "you should really leave your hair out like this."

"Why?" Duo whispered, intimidated by the sudden change in atmosphere.

"Because…" Solo paused, building up the tension, "it makes me want to do this to ya…"

Trailing off, Solo leaned down and devoured Duo's lips, his tongue invading and plundering the unbraided one's mouth. In response, Duo let his eyes shut and allowed the larger teen to do what he wanted, actually enjoying the attention that he was receiving. He couldn't describe what was going on inside his head exactly but he knew this: it was…

…It was over much too soon for his liking.

When had he stopped anyway? One minute he was in heaven, the next he was looking up at a smug Solo who still had that fiendish look on his face. Releasing one of Duo's pinned arms, Solo poked his nose affectionately and stated, "You know you look adorable when you're blushing?"

Indeed he had a small blush and it was rapidly reddening, much to the blond's delight. "Wow! You can make it go darker! That's a nice trick you got there."

He could literally feel the heat rising from his face now. He did not know how red he was at the moment and it seemed Solo had been impressed long enough that he began to talk again.

"Now that you're awake," Solo drawled, "how about you get ready and meet me for breakfast? That sound okay to you?"

Not trusting his voice, Duo nodded.

Giving him a quick peck to the nose, Solo said, "See ya down there Tiger."

The moment the blond had vanished from sight, Duo shot his hand down under the covers to a certain part of his anatomy and groaned. He was going to have to fix that problem first before he met Solo down stairs.

He couldn't help but wonder what else he could do to prompt more attention like this.

--

Duo, no matter how many times it had happened, would never be able to get used to being driven to school in a limo of all things. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy being taken to and from place to place while in the lap of luxury, it was the stares that he received from the other students whenever he got out of the vehicle that made him uncomfortable. Still, the presence of Solo nearby kinda took the edge off a bit but that didn't mean he liked all the attention he was receiving lately.

However, if the wake up call he had this morning was a surprise, what greeted him at the front entrance to the school was just…weird to say the least.

There standing before them was none other than Relena Peacecraft herself in all her pink glory, but there was something different about her today. The expression on her face was one that he had never seen there before. She looked as if she was…what did she look like anyway?

Her eyes lit up when they caught sight of him and she began to make her way towards him. At first he was thinking she was heading towards Quatre, or even Solo, so when she stopped in front of him of all people and looked him in the eye, he was weirded out to a point he had never been before.

What the hell was going on?

Taking the initiative, the Peacecraft girl spoke first. "I would like to convey my most sincere apologies to the incident that happened to you last week," she said, a forlorn look in her eyes. "What Heero did to you was despicable and inexcusable and he deserved everything that's happened to him thus far. I couldn't believe he would do such a thing but he admitted to it to me recently. I would like to have the opportunity to repent for it."

Duo raised an eyebrow, confused. "But you didn't do anything!" he protested.

"That is why I wish to repent," Relena explained. "I have spent many years of my life idolizing Heero, wishing that he would return my affections for him and maybe even marry me. I thought he was the most perfect person on the planet and that he could do no wrong. I was wrong though. He was been bullying you and possibly others without anybody knowing it. I had heard stories, though, of him doing such things but I willfully ignored them."

"Okay?" Duo was really surprised at the confession and he was sure that everyone else around was also wondering what was going on.

"Please, if you need anything, anything at all, come to me," Relena said. "It's the least I can do to try to repent."

"Yeah, sure…"

Watching the teen leave them, Duo looked up in confusion at Solo and asked, "Do you know what just happened?"

Looking down at the braided one, Solo gave him a small smile before saying just one thing. "The times, they are a changin'."

Placing a firm hand on Duo's shoulder, Solo directed him towards the school, already wishing that the day was over already.

--

It wasn't that today was a bad day, far from it in fact. Sure, there was that incident at the front but that was just weird and nothing had come out of it.

No, what really bugged the blond today was that whenever he caught sight of Chang Wufei, the guy was leveling nasty glares at Duo but did nothing else other than that.

Solo enjoyed solving mysteries, it was a hobby of sorts. He had patience when dealing with the enigma of Duo Maxwell mainly because he had made some way on it. However, he was losing patience on figuring out what was the reason that Wufei hated Duo. No one seemed to know or remember how and when it happened, which only served to irritate the blond.

So, it was after school and back at the mansion where Solo cornered Quatre and more or less asked to know what the smaller blond knew. His exact words were:

"You've known Duo for a long time, right? Tell me why Wufei hates Duo's guts and don't try to bullshit me about not knowing."

Okay, okay, so it was more like a demand. Still, he couldn't waste his time pussy-footing around the subject and he had taken great pains to make sure that he had gotten Quatre alone and away from any prying eyes and eavesdropping ears.

"What makes you think I know?" Quatre demanded defensively.

Paying no heed, Solo charged on full ahead. "Of all the people at school, you're the one who pays attention to anything concerning Duo and don't try and tell me that you don't know. You at least have an idea so spill it. Spill it now."

The two blonds traded look for look, neither giving up any ground to the other. Solo bored his eyes into his cousin's aquamarine, determined to squeeze an answer out of him, no matter how trivial it might be. This was something he was not going to give up on.

Without appearing to look like he was giving in, Quatre stated, "You want to know what I think about how Wufei's hatred towards Duo began." His eyes did not leave Solo's, still fixed on them. "Well, sit down. I might have an idea but only Wufei would know for sure."

Not taking his eyes off Quatre, Solo nodded. At least he would be able to learn something new.

Finally taking his eyes off his cousin, Quatre stared straight ahead as he began to speak. "When Wufei first moved here, you could say not a lot of people liked him. Over the next few weeks, he began to build a reputation as a smart guy who knew how to have a fun time and began to start attracting everybody. Even Duo wanted to get to know him but Wufei didn't seem interested and he bummed Duo off. Not strangely enough, Wufei wanted to become friends with me and asked me to lunch a few times. Being polite, I told him I would think about it, ultimately never taking him up on any of his offers.

"He continued to ignore Duo as he became more and more popular. To tell the truth, he wasn't even nasty to Duo as he is now. He just pretended that Duo didn't exist and Duo being Duo kept trying to be nice.

"Personally, I think it all began one day when Wufei had gotten everybody in our Algebra I class together and explained that he had figured out how the teacher did the grading curve. He told everyone that no matter what, she would always boost the highest score to a hundred and add the amount of points added to that score to all the others. Wufei proposed that on the next test everyone get a low score. He wanted to be the one to get the hundred and he guaranteed that he would get the highest of the low scores and bring everybody up when the teacher added the curve.

"Much to my own shame, I agreed to going along with it.

"The test would be taken the very next day, however there was one person that did not know about the scheme and no one told him about it either. Duo had been sick for a few days and would be coming back just in time for the test. He was so nervous when he took it but I thought I'd leave him in the dark, hoping to surprise him when we would learn of the curve."

"So how does all that explain why Wufei hates Duo?" Solo interrupted.

"I was just getting to that," Quatre explained. "The day of the test, all of us finished sooner than the teacher expected since we purposely answered a good amount of the questions wrong. Duo was the last one to finish, still working on it as the bell rang, and he was so nervous when he turned it in that he told me he knew he had bombed the test.

"When all the tests had been graded, the teacher announced to us that she was very disappointed in how low the scores were. Despite this, we were all still sure that the curve would rescue us. But then she added something. She said that despite all the low scores, there was one that was high. It was Duo's and he had scored a hundred, shooting the curve. We were all stunned but no one more so than Wufei.

"Wufei's family is very family oriented and tradition bound and one of the things they advocate is being the best at everything, even at school. I heard that when his parents learned of the low grade that they grounded him and buried him in so much learning crap that it took weeks for him to get through it all but that was just a rumor.

"You can bet Father wasn't pleased when he heard about my score.

"It was after that I began to hear about things being done to Duo and once I caught Wufei verbally bullying him. He didn't know I was there but he had finished up before I could intervene. Because of the fiasco, no one participated in any other schemes that Wufei concocted but he soon found another way to make himself popular and that was none other than his extravagant parties.

"As he was becoming popular again, he turned a good amount of the school against Duo but I guess everyone was just too lazy or something to actually physically hurt Duo. Instead, they ignored him and I was the only one who didn't follow the crowd. It was my fault for not telling Duo anything about the scheme and I got what I deserved for trying to manipulate the teacher into giving me a grade I didn't deserve."

"So let me get this straight," Solo said. "Wufei is pissed off at Duo because the guy made him get a bad grade on a test that he had planned to get a bad grade on anyway because he would use the grading curve to boost it up? Even if it was a good plan, he fucked up by not telling Duo. It was his fault that he got that."

"That's not how he sees it," Quatre said. "He thinks that Duo did it on purpose, or that's what I've heard."

"That asshole is so full of himself," Solo muttered, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Tell me something I don't know," Quatre replied bitterly.

Snorting, Solo got up, saying, "Gonna go hunt down Short Stuff. See you later."

"You're not just going to lead him on, are you?" Quatre inquired, his eyes now boring straight into Solo's back.

"I'd never do that," Solo answered without turning around.

"Then what is it?" Quatre demanded, standing up.

Glancing back at his cousin, Solo gave him a smirk before replying.

"He's mine. He just doesn't know it yet."