FIVE

Sutoomu

Here is the twenty first chapter. Now, things might get a bit angsty from here on out, in the next chapter.

To mah loverly reviewers! Naruto is forever, Trixters' Muse, summersarebright, Vitanie Tora, catc10, Kirihana, Yami no Hikari-Chan, SanzoGirl, Kami-Crimson, Lilith Desiree, MydridFox09, Reikan, Lady-Friselle, silvertwighlight, Katreda, MoonLight of the Darkness,Turtle Kid, allie, and Wing It! I love you all, and thank you to everyone who mentioned the stat page. Funny thing is, I asked where the hits were, and then I found them right after I posted the last chapter. I think I'll try looking first next time, heheh.

Cookies and Tea for everyone! We haven't had cookies and tea in a while.

"So we wandered for about an hour in the brush until Heero and Duo found us, by tracking down my cell phone," Quatre sighed in memory. "Then we all went back to our hotel and cleaned ourselves up. And then we started tracking you down."

"That only took 'Ro eight hours, and then the hour long trip out here, and now, here we are," Duo finished up. "And that's our tale of daring rescue." He walked over and latched an arm in Wufei's. "Now, if you don't mind, I would really like to go home! I am sick and tired of this place. I want to sleep on your red silk sheets with you there, this time."

"And I want a cup of tea," Quatre agreed. "Strong tea." He rubbed at his forehead. "Or maybe even coffee…"

"Heaven forbid what coffee would do to you, little one," Trowa wrapped an arm around Quatre's waist and placed a kiss on his temple, nudging his hand down. "I would like to go home as well, though. This place is beautiful, but I miss the smell of our home."

"There's no real reason to stay here," Heero nodded.

Wufei stared at them all, then frowned. "We can't go yet. We have to figure out the divorce papers, sell the house, pack our things, get plane tickets, get to the plane…"

"Can't you just come home with us and let Quat's lawyer do all that?" Duo exclaimed. "None o' that shit is important. You fuckin' walked out on us for over two weeks, and I'll be damned if you think I'm going to just let you delay coming home some more. I want you home, damnit! Now! I want you…"

"Okay," Wufei agreed without another complaint, and Duo blinked.

"Okay? Just okay?" Duo asked.

"What am I supposed to say?" Wufei snorted. "'No, Duo, I don't want to go home and make out for hours on end.' I'm not stupid." Duo grinned happily and nuzzled Wufei's cheek like a kitten, purring. "You aren't the only one who missed it," he murmured softly, then his brows furrowed a bit. "All that stuff can wait, I know that. I just don't want anything to go wrong."

"Tao Shen's gone," Quatre beamed. "How can anything go wrong now?"

Wufei frowned for a moment, then shook his head. "I know it won't go wrong. I'm just…scared that it will. It always has, before."

"Yeah, but look who you've got for allies, Wufei," Meiran gestured. "If anything does go wrong now, it won't be long before it's right again."

"Does the wife have to come with us?" Duo asked.

Wufei sighed. "Yes, Duo."

Meiran sighed and looked over at Duo. "Stop calling me 'the wife'," she ordered sharply. "I have a name, and it's Meiran. Please use it. And, no, I don't have to come with you. I'll just sit here and knit, all alone."

"Is that sarcasm?" Duo asked, glowering at her.

"No, it's sugar," Meiran huffed. "I had a home there, too, you know. I had my own friends and my family and my house, and I'm stuck here, too, with Wufei. He's not the only one who was ripped from his happiness, and…ugh!" She stopped talking, knowing her anger would make her say something rude, if she hadn't already.

"Duo, don't you dare judge her," Wufei warned under his breath, tensing beneath Duo's touch. "Meiran is a kind hearted, supportive girl, and she doesn't deserve your hate."

"I don't hate her," Duo spoke, miffed a bit by being seperated and scolded. "I'm just…not happy with her, okay?"

"Because I'm a claim to you, Wufei," Meiran explained for Duo, who scowled at her.

"Duo, Meiran is a wonderful girl with a beautiful soul…"

"Why don't you just go live with her, then!" Duo pulled away from Wufei in sudden anger, who kept a tight hold on his arm and pulled him right back in.

"Let me finish, baka!" Wufei snapped, holding Duo's wrist in one hand, his other arm wrapped around Duo's waist. "Meiran's like a sister to me. I could never love her like I love you, okay? There's no chance in hell or heaven or here on earth that I will run away from you for her. Now, are you happy?"

"Very," Duo spoke crisply, then looked at his wrist. "Now let go of me."

Wufei watched Duo and groaned inside. Not even a half hour of reuniting and Duo was already acting like a stubborn child. Wufei understood that Duo was hurt, and he was sorry for it, and he would make it up to the braided boy, but he would not tolerate him letting his anger out on Meiran. Not after all she had done, or tried to do, for him. Not after how understanding she was.

Wufei maintained his grip on Duo's wrist, though he loosened it so as not to hurt him at all. His eyes softened as he watched Duo's violet eyes, turmoiled inside. He sighed and kissed Duo lightly, though Duo didn't respond to it.

"I'm sorry, Duo," he let go, and Duo stepped away. "I just…I…nevermind. I'll explain it to you later. Heero, let's go home."

"Hai," Heero nodded. He had been watching Duo and Wufei interact with concern, and now he was worried for the braided boy. Duo was not acting normal, and Heero could see the inner pain shadowed behind his eyes. The pain of his past, the pain of abandonment. Duo hated being abandoned, and that was what Wufei had done. It would take the most healing to mend the relationship between the two of them. Making out could not do what talking did.

Heero walked over to Duo and brushed his arm. Their eyes connected and Duo smiled sadly after a moment. "Go with Trowa and Quatre, love," Heero suggested. "I'm taking Wufei with me. We have to finish some business."

Duo nodded, understanding, and he dissapeared into the one black van. Taia and Meiran were helped in by Trowa, as was Quatre, and then the emotionless lover came back to Heero and Wufei.

"I think we'd better have a final Session when we get back, Heero," he suggested, his green eyes looking down for a moment.

"For once, a Session sounds like a good thing," Heero agreed, then glanced at Wufei. "It'll be his first."

"I'd be honored," Wufei spoke. "If I knew what it was."

"It's where all of us speak our minds and our feelings, and then we deal with them," Trowa explained. "It's how we stopped Quatre from feeling sorry for himself, and blaming everything on himself. It's also how we healed Duo's wounding, from his past. At least, I thought we had healed it." Wufei felt horrible as he realized he had brought the wounding back out. "He's been hurt more than you know, Wufei."

"Duo's going to be very confused in his head until we start our Session, so don't feel like he hates you," Heero met Wufei's black eyes with his own blue. "He loves you, deeply, but he'll feel like he's supposed to be mad at you, even though he really isn't angry. That's where the rages of anger come in. He's feels he has the right to be mad, but he can't force himself to feel angry when he's not. It frustrates him."

"He's been hurt, and we're the ones who have to heal him, so just tolerate his moodiness for now."

Wufei nodded, completely understanding what they meant. It still hurt, though, how Duo seemed to love him one moment, then hate him the next. Moodiness, indeed. Like a female with PMS.

"For now," Heero spoke with a louder voice, done with the seriousness of Duo's emotional situation. "Trowa will take the others to the airport. You can get the seven plane tickets back home, and we'll be there before the plane leaves."

"Seven?" Trowa looked concerned for a moment. "We have eight people, Heero."

"We'll only have seven by then," Heero spoke, his eyes suddenly haunted and dark, with a merciless cold look in them. He turned before Trowa or Wufei could comment and headed to the second van.

Wufei looked in confusion to Trowa, whose own eyes were haunted as he watched Heero walk away. "What does he mean? We do only have seven people." He frowned, until Trowa explained.

"Tao Shen is in that van," he spoke, so calmly and quietly that Wufei wasn't sure he had heard right, at first. "You need to go with Heero." Trowa left with a touch on the shoulder.

Wufei stared at the van, his mind trying to understand exactly what Trowa and Heero both meant. He had a major suspicion, and it wasn't pleasing him. In fact, it made his stomach feel sick.

It wasn't until the van holding everyone else passed by him that Wufei realized he had been staring as he stood still in the driveway, his mind deep in thought. He shook his head and waved goodbye to the van, then walked over to Heero's van. He opened the passenger door and stared in at Heero.

"What did all that mean?" he asked as he got in. "If it means what I think it means, then…"

"Then what, Wufei?" Heero interrupted him with no anger, just simple fact, his voice hard.

Wufei stopped talking. He really didn't know what to say, and Heero didn't continue the conversation, instead backing up the van and heading out onto the road. Wufei didn't even give the house one last look goodbye. He was too focused on Heero to notice, and he wouldn't have really cared, either way. The house had no good memories. It was just a house, not a home. He was going home.

Apparently, there was a delay before they could, however. And that delay, as Heero explained while they drove the opposite way as the others, was Tao Shen. Wufei looked into the back at Heero's gesture, and his eyes lit upon the nearly unrecognizable Tao Shen, slumped in the far back seat, unconscious. Wufei stared at the mass of bruises and cuts and swollen skin that was his uncle's face, and his stomach and mind began protesting.

"What are you doing with him?" Wufei asked in a quiet voice, turning back to face the front window. He avoided looking in the mirror or at the back, and he avoided looking at Heero as well. He didn't want Heero to see the look in his eyes.

Duo had really laid it into Tao Shen, just as Heero had said. It was unsettling, to think of his braided baka as the cause of all that damage. It put an emphasis on Duo's past, once again. Wufei realized just now that he still did not know enough about his loves. They had all had their own lives before him, and their own lives together before him. He was the latest, the last one. He had missed so much, and he knew so little, still.

"You'll see," Heero grunted in reply, then went silent again, focused on his driving as Wufei's thoughts soared and his stomach churned uncomfortably.

Wufei was being torn apart inside, and it was making him sick. He hated Tao Shen, with a passion so great, he thought he would kill the man easily, if he could get away with it. Now, he wasn't so sure. Tao Shen had deserved to be punished, but was this extreme beating justice? The man looked like a swollen fruit, a purple plum. His one eye had been lost completely in his swollen cheekbone, and all he had seen was purple and black bruises. Tao Shen looked like a monster, horribly deformed...Wufei stopped thinking of what he had looked like, the image coming up in his mind again. He forced it away, his stomach heaving as he breathed to calm down.

He felt very low inside. He couldn't very well get angry at Duo for defending his love, and wanting revenge…but shouldn't it have been his to give? This was cruel injustice. Wufei felt like he had sunk to his uncle's level, by doing to Tao Shen what he had done to Wufei. Did that make him a better person, to have allowed it? He couldn't really have stopped it, and there was no changing what was done, but he felt haunted inside, now. Tainted.

"We're here," Heero's monotone voice brought him out of his wonderings, and he cleared the frown from his face before stepping out of the vehicle. Wufei stood and looked around, then frowned again. "Heero, there's nothing here. It's just miles and miles of wild grass." Wufei observed some more, and then saw the dirt road they were on. "We're not even on a road. This hasn't been used in years, probably."

"That's the point," Heero spoke, and Wufei turned his head to see him shaking Tao Shen in the back seat, trying to wake him up. Tao Shen groaned in pain as Heero shook him, then went silent again, though his head lolling about meant he was awake.

Wufei watched Heero pull Tao Shen's bulky body out of the back seat and throw him over his shoulder. It would have been an amazing sight, to see Heero carry a man twice his size and weight, but Wufei's eyes were too focused on Tao Shen's body to care. As he hung limply from Heero's shoulder, Wufei saw that both his legs were broken, and his one arm was disconnected at the shoulder, the other arm sitting at a funny angle. His wrists were tied and bloodied, as was his ankles, and he was a ruin of cuts and bruises. This was extreme beating, and Wufei felt like vomiting. Tao Shen had beat him before, true, but never as bad as this. It was close, but not this bad at all.

"He deserved it," Heero spoke, almost defensively, as he stopped and saw Wufei's gaze on Tao Shen's body. He shrugged his shoulder and Tao Shen fell into the tall grass with a grunt and a moan. "He deserved it, Wufei."

Dun, duna, duh! The end of the twenty first chapter. The twenty third is about three paragraphs incomplete, so I can get that one out tomorrow or the next day...unless I want to prolong the ending a bit. I dunno.

Duo has issues. He's adorable when he's a lost puppy! For some reason, a sad Duo is a heart jerker, and a passionate Heero is an adrenaline rush! I love the gw boys. Don't you?

The next chap is going to be wonderful! I hope. I always worry that the chapters suck. So reassure me in reviews! Please!

Storm