Disclaimer - The Gundam boys are not mine. I have to bring this up each chapter, and it sucks.

Only You

Chapter 3

Struggle

"Wufei?"

Familiar coal-black eyes widened in stunned disbelief. "Duo?"

In retrospect, not expecting Wufei to be somewhere in all this chaos was rather stupid. Hadn't Quatre told him that both Heero and Wufei had joined Preventors? And of course they'd partnered up, as Quatre had noted, because they were used to working together and were both exceptional fighters. Envy flashed through him like molten lava, heating him into a blaze. Of course they would join together. They were almost exactly the same. They were stoic, silent, decided, assertive, and dead set on their missions. They also both hated Duo's guts.

Oh, this was going to be an absolute joy.

"Status!" Wufei snapped, and he realized he'd blanked out again. Shit. He gathered his energy and forced himself to pay attention. Still, he couldn't help the old feeling of someone having his back, of the light pressure that no longer weighted him down. Back-up. Reinforcements.

"Not in danger," he finally replied.

Miss Paisley stepped out from behind the door before Duo could tell her not to. But Wufei'd already covered the back; Duo could vaguely make out a few downed bodies. Thank goodness Wufei'd been there, or else they would've been taken out when he'd opened the door. "If you aren't in danger, honey, then I don't want to know what you've gone through."

It was rather apparent that her relief at seeing back-up was about equal to his own. Maybe even greater.

Duo just shook his head and gently led her forward, officially giving her over to Wufei. "No, you don't," he told her. He tried to keep his tone light, but it just ended up sounding tense despite his efforts. Damn, damn, damn. It had been a bit too long since he'd experienced the punch of adrenaline, the sort of pain that only accompanied battle. Wufei took one look at him and ushered for him to come, too.

Duo shook his head and stepped back inside, closing the door in front of him. If he hadn't been trying to hard to keep his focus, Wufei's stunned face would have been rather comical. But there was no way he was going to leave Heero alone against so many enemies. Hell if he knew what he could do to help, but hell if he was leaving Heero alone, either. Besides, his co-workers were still in there, in the thick of the gunfire. This was his workplace, dammit; he needed money, damn it all, and these assholes just randomly came over trashed the place he worked?! No way were they getting away with that!

He slipped quietly through the back again, and his eyes caught sight of the young girl again. She gave him a rather tight smile, her eyes frozen mid-emotion and looked rather pointedly at his injured arm. He shrugged his right shoulder and returned the smile with a rather reckless one of his own. So he was wounded. There wasn't much he could do about it at the moment.

His way back to the battlefield was faster then his exit, free now that he was from he civilian female who had slowed him down. He slid back against the cashier's counter. His blood, though he didn't spare more than a glancing thought for it, was seeping deep into his jeans. He moved slowly around the corner. The gunshots were still coming strong. He felt one pass right by him and felt that same tingle that warned him about how close it'd been. The feeling was ignored as easily as his lost blood. His eyes scanned the area, searching for Heero. He wasn't acting as decoy anymore, which made sense. But still the worry pumped through his system. Was Heero hurt?

He scooted around the counter a bit faster and felt the fear slam into his gut. Heero wasn't behind the counter any longer. Duo's eyes narrowed. Before he could think about the ethics of it, he turned to a middle-aged man with a bullet wound in the back and asked, "did you see where my friend went?"

The man was wearing a suit's undershirt and nice slacks. And his blood loss was fatal. His glazed eyes scanned Duo over and latched on his injured arm. "Your friend is... all right, son," he gasped. Though the man's eyes were almost empty, showing just how close he was to dying, Duo could see that even if the man didn't want to die, he wasn't regretting the moment too much. Thank goodness. "He... left... a little while ago."

"And left you here?!" Duo demanded angrily, not believing Heero would be so heartless, but the man just smiled.

"He told me... to tell you to... get the hell out. And to... meet with him and... his partner." He coughed a bit, spilling more blood onto the floor, but he continued talking, anyway. Duo's hands fluttered uselessly by his sides. "He said... that I would... not be... forgotten."

And those words sounded so unlike the old Heero that it took some time to realize that he'd been given an order.

"He was right, you know," Duo said as he inched his way back the way he'd come. "You won't be forgotten."

But the man had already given up his fight.

His progress back was pretty slow, his concentration going mostly into correctly placing his feet on the ground and crawling forward without landing on his face. His free arm tried ineffectually to stem the blood flow from his arm. He was losing too much blood. This time he ignored the girl when she looked at him. His eyes took in everything around him, but they kept sliding stupidly to the employee exit and latching there.

He opened the door without any fanfare whatsoever and shuffled his slow way out from the building. The area was clear of enemies, all of them downed already. His eyes caught on an ostentatiously nondescript white van and started making his way toward it, knowing something that blah had to be uniform issue.

Wufei turned to see him coming up to the van and hurried to meet him. Duo was more than content to stop moving and wait for Wufei to reach him. His mind made another interesting trip, informing him of just how much more blatant his blood would appear to be on that particular paint job. He sighed.

It was pathetic, really, but he had sighed at the comforting silence before realizing that silence meant no more gunfire. He looked blindly at Wufei as the Chinese man finally stopped in front of him. "Where'd they go?" he asked stupidly. His speech was slurred. Oh, shit. He felt his fingers tingle, watched as the world tilted rather dangerously. He shook his head to clear it, but that only made the world dance a bit faster. He groaned. But there was no way, no way in five flaming hells, that he was going to bloody well faint in front of Wufei. Hell, no.

Head pounding bad enough to bring tiny white spots to the corners of his eyes, Duo focused on Wufei's words. "...Heero came around the building and took the witness out of the area. They're chasing after them now, though you and I both know it's useless. I can only guess that you're the reason they stuck around a bit longer before chasing after Yuy?"

Duo started to nod before realizing that doing so would land his face in the concrete. "Yeah. I've been shot," he said, then cringed. Well, no shit there, Duo. Thank you for that startling revelation.

"We've got to get you to a doctor," Wufei said, apparently willing to ignore the stupidity of Duo's statement. "You're bleeding heavily."

Duo rolled his eyes in lieu of a 'duh,' but his balance swam and circled and he found his body swaying. Wufei grabbed his good arm and held him steady. Those white spots got a bit bigger and took over a bit more of his vision.

"Status," Wufei whispered in his ear, his voice worried. Duo managed a "bad" before falling deep into darkness.