The Places You Will Go
(or, How Heero Yuy Finally Accepted the Crazy in His Life that Took the Form of Duo Maxwell)

Once upon a time, Heero Yuy had been an innocent. He had been born to normal parents with split nationalities that loved him more than life. They had taken him places (most likely) and surrounded him with fuzzy things (he presumed). Sadly, life is composed of tragedies and Heero Yuy found himself in the care of Odin Lowe with no name (the bastard called him child for years). After the assassin tainted his youth with blood and unceremoniously keeled over, Heero Yuy found himself in a mad scientist's care and killing people along with saving the world. After the war, Heero worked hard to have some semblance of innocence and normalcy.

He should have known he'd give that all up for Duo. He really should have. If had remembered that, maybe the ensuing events wouldn't have come as such a surprise.

…And that would explain why he had the insane notion of making his lover happy by giving his lover the one thing their lives could never allow because they were law abiding citizens and Preventers: something valuable to steal.

The things he did for the love of a thief. Really, he deserved the best boyfriend award for this.

"I spoke to one of the men in my support group," Heero said. "And he said that his dimension incorporates the use of magic. We can do that one first, or we could leave it for last and wait to find a way to compensate for our lack of magic. You're the expert."

Duo beamed. "Let's leave that dimension for last! Some guy from my support group came from a world of ninja! Let's hit them first. I want to see what kind of advantage their ninja skills give them." The darkening violet eyes made Heero squish down his libido.

"Alright," Heero nodded instead. "What item should we target?"

Duo furrowed his brow in thought and realized he had no clue what the ninja dimension had that was worth stealing.

"Looks like we'll have to hack into Headquarters' information about the dimension to see what's valuable," Duo smiled sheepishly.

Heero gave his lover a bland look, secretly pleased the playful spark that had been missing from Duo's eyes was back.

He hadn't even realized how much he loved the look of criminal mischief on Duo's face until the moment Duo lead them out of the house and towards a discreet location to properly research dimensions. Not that it would help much anyways. Half the fun for Duo, Heero knew, was "winging it."

"Heero," Duo breathed and Heero wondered how unique those purple eyes were to Duo. "I wanna steal paper."

Blinking in surprise (didn't thieves normally target jewels and other shinys?), Heero leaned over Duo's computer share with interest. The government program (only accessible to those with proper clearance, or someone who knew how to hack properly) shared a brief summary of how the world worked. Heero mostly skimmed the text, tucking things here and there away for further use; although, the computer certainly explained Duo's sudden interest in paper, or more widely known in the ninja world as forbidden scrolls.

"Can we pretty please spread them across the dimensions? It'll be funny watching them get them back."

Heero considered his options and did something he rarely did. He looked at Duo's puppy dog face – the cute and unbeatable eyes – something he never allowed himself to do previously because of the war.

"Sure," Heero shrugged and then took mental pictures of a smiling Duo.

Damn it, he thought as Duo ran from the room, what did I just get myself into?

As it turned out, (much much much) later as they were running from well trained convicts, Heero could get himself into a lot of trouble with Duo's aid.

The plan had been working perfectly – all systems go. They had researched the village and they had set themselves up in a village in order to blend in with the locals to make the snatch and grab easier. What Heero had not accounted for in all this planning was the one factor he should have: Duo.

Duo (Heero may love the man, but sometimes he wanted to strangle him) within thirty minutes of setting foot in the dimension had made "friends" with one of the most dangerous criminals known to the dimension. Heero said "friends" because Duo had better tastes than a transgender psychopath. (Heero would like to point out there is nothing wrong with being transgendered, but there is something wrong with being a transgendered psychopath.)

Dodging a well aim punched to his head, Heero recalled the events that had led to their rapid fleeing:

"Hee-chan," Duo grinned. "I found us an in."

Heero blinked in confusion and peered around his lover to look at the pale man (woman?) behind him. She (he?) had long black hair, maybe dark brown hair and glittery gold eyes outlined with purple eye shadow. The man (woman) reminded Heero of the famed Japanese geishas with thick white face paint and elaborate clothes. Heero returned his blank gaze to Duo and raised an eyebrow, silently asking "What the hell?"

"I think he's transgendered, maybe in between operations." Duo whispered to Heero. "I didn't think it polite to ask." In a louder voice, he continued. "He's offering us shelter in his village if we do some missions for him. I thought it was fair since we didn't really know where we were going."

We would know exactly where we're going, Heero began thinking pointedly, if someone hadn't got bored with the village. Too easy, he says. Unethical to steal from nice people, he says. Damn thieves and their morals. And then a horrible thought made Heero glare at the man/woman behind Duo.

"He's mine."

The transgendered snake looked startled – almost guilty – for half a moment (making Heero wish he could set him on fire with his glare) before smirking. "I would never get in the way of true love." The condescending tone the snake used made Heero's eye twitch.

"Come on, Heero. Everything will be fine." Duo smiled, only after the snake turned his back did Duo reveal the sly smirk he had been suppressing.

Well, if Duo had a plan…

A week later and Heero was berating himself for being so gullible. Duo didn't often have a plan. He had a series of actions he wanted to happen and then he proceeded to make them happen using luck and sometimes his brain if he was feeling particularly bored that evening. Somehow though, Heero doubted that any of the actions that had occurred were within the Duo's "plan." Two weeks later, and Heero was wondering why he had quit his calm and peaceful job as a Preventer. Three weeks and Heero had arranged all his affairs – Quatre got everything.

Why? That's a loaded question. Heero didn't really think Duo would survive if Heero died for two reasons. One, Duo would most likely hermit himself without his lover and become a bitter man driven to either suicide or a revenge mission where he gets killed (basically suicide). Two, Heero killed him first for causing the insanity in his life. Heero believed reason number two was the more likely option. Duo was gifted in that department.

Or was the question why did Heero arrange his affairs at all? Maybe further recollection of the resulting events of befriending a snakey, transgendered psychopath that called himself Oreo (or was it Orochimaru?) was needed.

"Heero!"

Heero quickly burst into the room and let the kunai in his hand fly. He had given up his guns at the dimensional stop point so not to interfere with the dimension's normal state of being and had to make do with the dimension's brand of weaponry. Not as advanced, but insanely sharp. The sharpness almost made up for his missing guns.

"What the hell is that?" Heero barked with his eyes wide.

"Well, you see, I was trying out some of those scrolls and—"

"And tried to what, raise the dead?" Heero armed himself with a longer blade.

The thing he had sent his kunai into could be likened to a cute furry hamster, except, not furry or cute. Actually, the poor thing was missing its fur in spots and was falling apart even as it struggled to get away. But it was a definitely a hamster. Or used to be a hamster at any rate.

"That wasn't what I meant to do," Duo frowned. "I was trying to summon an animal to help in future fights. That's what Oro does with his snakes."

"And instead you got a zombie." Heero poked the thing with his blade. Any parallels to Heero and a kid poking a dead bird with a stick were purely coincidental.

"Damn it, Heero! It's not a zombie!" Duo pouted.

"So what? You just reanimated the dead?"

"Yeah, wait, no."

Heero tucked the blade away and snorted. Duo, it seemed, was Shinigami no matter what dimension they were in. Raising the dead…pft.

And no, it hadn't stopped there.

"Duo?" Heero asked somewhat groggily.

The room was still thickly dark, making Heero feel somewhat relieved that dawn wasn't near. He needed more sleep damn it. All these missions that Oreo had been assigning was wearing him thin – and he was the Perfect Soldier.

Oh, how he wished he could go back to sleep. Unfortunately, his reflexes that had been dulling since the end of the war had come back with a vengeance and hearing Duo creep back into their room pushed him awake, even if it was somewhat groggily.

"Yeah, Hee-chan?" Duo grunted.

"What are you doing?"

The last thing Heero could remember was a bar and singing. Bad singing. He figured he must've stumbled back to bed when Kabuto began singing love song after love song. The boy had no concept of subtly when it concerned his unrequited love with the transgendered snake, Oreo.

On a personal note, many a kunoichi that it was absolutely darling that Heero was trying to set Kabuto and Orochimaru up. They giggled and called him a softie even when he growled it was just so the snakey bastard would keep his fangs away from Duo. For some reason, they didn't believe him.

"Um, remember how we promised to love each other no matter what?" Duo began somewhat tensely.

"Nevermind, I don't want to know."

"Are you sure?" Duo asked from somewhere in the darkness.

"I'm sure." Heero confirmed. "Now get in bed."

The American was quick to comply and once he had settled, Heero closed his eyes and inhaled Duo's scent. The scent was unique to his lover, especially in this dimension. Duo always smelt of gun powder and gasoline, not that Heero minded. He quite liked it. Reminded him of their younger days and happy moments when they weren't pretending to be ninja. His eyes snapped right back open when something unexpected wafted under his nose.

"Duo? Why do you smell like a wet cat?"

"…Because Kabuto is a sick fuck."

"And just to be completely positive, you have cat ears and a tail, right?"

"Erm."

"Right, I'm going to sleep."

Maybe things would look better in the morning.

And that had all been within the first week. Recalling the second week made Heero cringe because by then, his intelligent lover had been able to learn a lot of the tricks the ninja (who preferred to be called nin, something Heero would have to remember to full immerse himself in their culture) were willing to teach him. Like water walking. Despite Heero's many arguments that they shouldn't be able to mold chakra, Duo had done so.

Later, Duo confided into Heero that he had done no such thing. He had simply thought really hard about not getting wet and he was able to walk on water. Heero resisted the urge to throw his braided idiot off a bridge. He had gotten soaked three times and had to sit through a five hour lecture about chakra before nailing the trick.

By week three, Heero was getting the impression the transgendered snake didn't just want Duo, but was also bent on world domination. Or something of the like. It probably had to do with the evil spouts of laughter that Duo had started partaking in, but the final clue had been a random traveler passing by and after sighting the symbol on the piece of scrap metal that Heero kept around his neck (Kabuto, and later Duo, insisted he wore the damn thing) promptly screamed and began begging for his life. As flattering as it had been, Heero had been slightly shocked. Usually he needed a gun.

So, right, they were working for an evil organization. Heero didn't feel as freaked as he should have. He wondered if Duo knew.

The explosives and evil cackles coming out of a nearby cave answered that particular question.

Despairingly, Heero wondered if there a rehab for good guys turned bad guys…

Thankfully, Duo revealed his (illogical) plan to Heero right before it was to be executed (and before Heero contacted the Super Villain Reform group hosted by Clark Kent and Lex Luthor). Bastard. Didn't Duo know by now he hated being surprised like this?

Heero righted the giant scroll on his back. The damn harness holding it up was too loose, but wouldn't tighten any further. He mentally bemoaned the lack of flash drives and other compact forms of containing information. Giant hulking scrolls not only made it harder for them to steal, they were as awkward as hell to carry.

"So, Oro has some freaking cool forbidden scrolls that he really shouldn't have." Duo said unceremoniously.

Surprised at the non sequitur, Heero stared blankly at his beloved lover. And what a fine lover he was too. Duo's braid had gotten longer and he was dressed in black clothing that was more appropriate to the dimension they were in. It was a rather revealing outfit with the skin tight parts and lack of sleeves. He had a distinct lack of a tan due to his naturally fair skin due to the colony he had been born on (although, Heero was willing to beat that hanging out in underground cravens certainly didn't help). Actually, now that Heero thought about it, Duo looked a lot like some of the prettier boys Heero had noticed during their missions.

Maybe being attractive was a required trait to become a ninja?

"That we're going to take?" Heero asked knowingly.

"Well," Duo grinned. "It would be the publically responsible thing to do, wouldn't it? We really can't allow someone mentally unstable have access to that much power."

"True," Heero shoulder the giant scroll with some irritation. He was going to introduce the wonders of technology to this dimension if it killed him. This was ridiculous. "When?"

"You know how I've been making friends with them?" Duo pulled his braid and pulled it forward so he could hold it. Heero eyed the movement curiously. Even after knowing the boy for almost four years and dating him for two, not all of Duo's gestures were readable by him. Heero knew Duo had lockpicks hidden in the braid, but what else could he be hiding? Senbon were skinny enough he could easily push them into his braid, Heero considered. "It seems not everyone likes Oro. A good majority of them are only here because they have nowhere else to go."

"Didn't they choose to be here?" Heero asked.

"Kind of," Duo shook his head, bangs flopping but his braid firmly in place by the pressure of his hand. "A lot of them are missing nin – or used to be – because of a crime they committed against their village. Some of the crimes are actually pretty horrendous, but those are the ones who like Oro. The others, the ones were kicked out by the village elders, not so much by the actual village, were kicked out for breaking some obscure rule or interfering with political agendas."

"How so?"

"This woman, she refused to kill this kid, but the village elders had demanded the leader of her village's ninja to do it. When she refused, they kicked her out and declared her unjust and unfit for duty." Duo's normally playful features were nowhere in sight. "It's fucked up. The elders have a lot of power from what I've managed to gather. You piss one off, only luck can save you from ending up dead or on the run."

"I see." Heero flickered concerned eyes at his lover, the shadows on Duo's face too similar to the ones that had constantly darkened his face whenever L2's oppression was brought up.

"But that's not the point," Duo chased the shadows away. "The point is they hate Oro and his evil ways. They're just doing what they gotta to survive. They could help us. I'm just not sure how yet."

Heero watched the thoughtful frown form on Duo's lips and then turned his attention to their environment. Dark and scary trees surrounded them, reminding Heero of the Black Forest the Brothers Grimm always seemed to weave about. He rather liked them. He wouldn't mind having a nice house surrounded by dark and scary trees to keep everyone away, except for Duo and their friends. Then again, to the other four, trees were hardly scary.

It would be the things Heero encouraged to live in the trees that would scare them off.

"We could use them as a distraction," Heero shouldered the damn scroll again. Stupid scroll and its massive size.

Duo perked up. "A distraction would so work! But it'd have to be pretty good. I heard that Sasuke – this guy from my support group – only managed to distract Oro using some bloodline thingy." Duo stared into the distance for a moment. "For some reason, they weren't very forthcoming what Sasuke had done."

"I'm sure whatever it was, it was well deserved." Heero said dryly. The snake was still giving Duo some pretty weird and appreciative looks. Looks that Heero didn't trust in the slightest. Damn pervert.

"Probably," Duo smirked. "Sasuke didn't really strike me as the homicidal type without some major provocation."

"I understand the sentiment," Heero said under his breath.

Duo either didn't hear him or chose to ignore him and continued thinking aloud. "If we can cause a distraction big enough to stress out Oro, I bet you we could walk out of there. Now, just to decide what kind of distraction…"

Heero watched Duo trail off with some gentle amusement. He loved the braided idiot, even when he had cat ears (included with tail! No neko is complete without one!) and cackled insanely to fit in. He wouldn't change anything about the vibrant young man next to him.

They ceased any further conversation about distractions and true alliances due their proximity to Sound's territory. Seeing the insufferable smirk on Kabuto face when the harness strap slide down his shoulder again, Heero did what any man in his situation would have done.

He threw it at Kabuto hard enough to break his nose. And maybe other parts of his face. Duo had changed Heero enough he figured he could afford to be hopefully optimistic about these sorts of things.

The plan Duo and Heero began to outline together to the point of perfection only took up some of their time for the next three weeks. (They had been in this dimension for nearly two months now and Heero could hardly wait to get back to someplace with sane people.) The rest of the time they spent completing missions as mundane as stealing someone's cow for ransom (no one ever did claim the cow) to spying on a group of ninja with a preference for wearing black cloaks with red clouds to building a village and setting it on fire (Oro wanted to inflict terror without actually killing people, seemed he had a bet going with a guy named Madara). Sometimes they mixed it up with moments of passion (what one of the creepy kunoichi called it) and experiments with scrolls and other jutsus.

For example, Duo had finally perfected his summons. They were still zombies ("Reanimated dead, Heero!") but now they didn't fall apart with every step. They could actually go almost a half a mile before losing a body part. The single most disturbing part about Duo's summons had nothing to do with the fact they were dead, but more with the fact Duo could talk to them.

Heero had once entered their bedroom hearing Duo's voice and a squeak, only to find his lover on their bed talking to a rabbit that was falling apart before his eyes. Both zombie-animal and Duo had stopped looking at each other and communicating (dear God, the zombies were capable of thought) and stared at him until he backed out of the room. Heero liked to pretend they weren't talking about him, but when the rabbit started showing up everywhere at the corner of his eye, he had known.

Known that Duo sicced a dead rabbit on him for their argument last night.

He really needed a way to fight back. Like, maybe trying his own summons?

Trying his own summons proved to be a very bad idea.

Mainly for his pride.

He had summoned winged fluffy balls with giant eyes (the amount of eyes were various, depending on the fluff ball) that when puffed up resembled a cotton candy ball that happened to spread glitter to everything it touched. With halos. It had taken days to get Duo to drop his investigations into a glitter fairy. Heero never tried summoning again.

"Heero, I think today is the day for our plan." Duo twitched.

Heero stopped glaring at the scar on his thumb and stared at Duo. Was it just Heero, or did Duo look more unstable than normal?

"Okay," he agreed because really, what else was he supposed to do? If Duo was feeling unstable, then Heero wanted didn't want to bring his wrath down on him. Call him a coward, but he liked living.

"Stupid know it all kunoichi," Duo mumbled on his way to the bathroom.

Were those metal flowers interwoven into Duo's braid? Heero put the handmade maps of the Sound's tunnel system away. This required some hands on investigation.

But first, he had to stop Duo from ripping the flowers out before Heero could um, "make use," of them.

Heero smirked that would have made any wandering kunoichi squeal.

The plan occurred later that night, or more correctly, in the early hours of the morning. The plan had originally called for the stealth of darkness, but Duo and Heero had been suitably distracted until a short while ago and with a shrug, each boy decided dazed confusion from just waking up would work too.

Duo did something fancy with his hands, but Heero was understandably distracted by the steel flowers in Duo's hair not to give the motions any real attention. Only when the braid stopped swaying and the smoke from the summons dissipated did Heero disappear to do his part.

The halls were compact dirt. The seeds Heero and other disloyal Sound nin had planted into the dirt began to grow and stretch with some hand seals of his own. It had taken days for Heero to find the right scroll and another three days to steal it from the Grass nin who thought it was wise to tout it around. He passed a many kunoichi's room with wild, untamable flowers growing, their roots tearing at the very foundations of three key points that would utterly collapse the network of tunnels.

For some reason, the women of Sound were their biggest allies.

At the same time, Duo would be using his army of the living dead to scare the crap out of the wimpier nin and use them to sneak past Oro's defense systems. Oro's dog, Kabuto, belonged to Heero. He hoped he could land a crippling blow – not life threatening because then the man wouldn't be miserable for the rest of his years – as a reminder not to screw with Heero Yuy.

Heero had been taking courses on torture for three weeks now. His teacher said he was a natural.

And if Kabuto was lucky (which from what Heero had seen, he wasn't), then Orochimaru might take care of him if he was handicapped. Or kill him. Heero didn't really care what happened afterwards. He hated both of them anyways.

A terrible squeaking made his left eye twitch. Heero looked down and to the left of his foot was a squeaking dead mouse. One of Duo's messengers. The mouse, happy it finally caught Heero's attention, brushed its head against Heero's sandal. Heero gently nudged the creature back (Duo would be pissed if he kicked the thing).

Having greeted master's big pet, the dead mouse with punctures in his side from a particularly stealthy snake, began to scurry its way back to master. Master wanted his big pet, and so the little mouse would deliver. Everyone liked it when master was happy. Even the big pet.

Heero followed the mouse through a series of interlocking tunnels. Every now and then he'd see a plant eating a human, or a human setting a plant of fire and then getting eaten. It made his little terrorist heart swell in pride. They reached the corridor Orochimaru tended to frequent and where Duo had chosen to hold the confrontation.

It was scorched everywhere and more dead things littered the ground than at a cemetery. Although, if Duo had leveled a cemetery, it certainly would explain things. At this point in his life, Heero wouldn't have been all that surprised. It was Duo.

"Duo?"

"Heero! Come help me!" Duo demanded from the depths of Orochimaru's rooms.

Sighing, Heero did as he was bid; not noticing the mouse's pleased twitching. The smell from the rooms was musky like sweat and something else. Seeing the snake droppings and regurgitated mice, Heero grimaced. How unsanitary, but that probably accounted for the "something else" smell.

He followed the loud noises Duo was making to the sleeping room and blinked slowly at the hole Duo had created in the snake's mattress.

"He was hiding all of his scrolls in his bed. How lame." Duo snickered.

"Why did you need me?" Heero asked. "You seem to have everything covered here."

"I thought you might want to help me destroy these." Duo waved a hand at the scrolls.

"I thought you wanted to hide them in other dimensions?" Heero raised an eyebrow.

"I did," Duo grimaced slightly. "But I don't think anyone should know the secret to immortality, do you? Some of these jutsus are plain nasty." He held up a scroll. "This one untwines the muscles so they fall apart with increased use like licorice whips. I don't think just anyone should have these."

"You want to destroy them," Heero concluded.

"Yeah," Duo put the scroll back on the bed. "I wanna make sure no one can use these again."

"Alright."

Which leads back to why they're running away from a village of convicts.

The explosive tags Duo and Heero riddled the room had been set to go off in five minutes when they had been hit by their conscience, or rather Heero's conscience – it had been kind of skitsy since the wars and Duo had learned to just indulge his lover – so the two had enraged the Sound nin not occupied with man eating plants so they would chase them out of the compound. Heero would like it to be known being nice only got you hit with senbon and kunai.

Ungrateful bastards.

Having spent a majority of their lives running away or towards something, Heero and Duo managed to lose their pursuers with a couple of bombs, dead crows, a cow and a blind man's singing. It was a special set of skills Heero and Duo were proud to have.

"Heero?" Duo panted.

For a moment, they were resting in an abandoned village that had telling scorch marks and blood stains. Heero leant comfortably against a wall while Duo sat cross legged in front of him. In front of Heero because he liked looking at the man with the blood on his cheek, sweat heavy bangs and wild grin.

"Yeah?" Heero grunted. He tied a torn cloth around his arm to stem the bleeding. Last time he ever did anyone a favor.

"I love you."

Heero barely had time to process the words before Duo caught his mouth. The kiss was a paradox. It was soft and full of the love Duo had for him, but the kiss tasted of blood and smoke. Heero brought a hand up to Duo's collar and pulled the other man closer to him, until he could feel the muscle of Duo's chest reach his own. He felt a tingle on his lips from Duo's resulting hum – the only warning he got – before Duo pressed his weight fully on Heero by sitting in his lap.

The presence of blood, sweat and weapons didn't hinder the love they felt for each other. It was a part of who they were. It was a part of their relationship. It was a part of the love they held for each other.

Although, Heero did find the one redeeming thing about this dimension: wire.

Yes, Heero referred to Orochimaru as Oreo. In Spanish, my girlfriend taught me oro means gold, but I always pronounced it as Oreo. I suck at languages.

A lot of humor, not so much romance. Something I swear to work on, but I hope it was still enjoyable. And if you didn't catch the joke in the last line, one word: bondage. XD

Next 1x2 focused chapter will be form Duo's POV for those of you disappointed with just Heero's POV. The reason this took so long is because I had conflicting feelings on the format. Next chapter will be a NaruSasu one! The pattern is 1x2, NaruSasu, DMHP, Royed, Puzzleshipping and Spirk with intermissions here and there. :)