Hello everyone, here we go again!

Thank you again to all of you who have offered your support. Have I mentioned before that I actually do like reviews? I won't beg for them, but really... It's nice to know. What direction you think things are going, what I can improve on... I know it is being read, at least. I get "alert" messages all the time... Please, don't feel pressured to review, but if you have a thought, please don't hesitate to tell me.

For fair warning: This is a mature story, set in and Alternate Universe, which will make reference to sex, hold strong language and talk about some serious topics, such as trans-gendered people, homosexuals, sex reassignment surgery, murder and many other things. If any of this isn't your cup of tea, or you are not open-minded enough to handle it, then please, do not waste your time or mine. Thank you and please enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or its charries.

~!~!~

Chapter Five

"You bet I have questions," Duo growled, feeling just a bit guilty when he saw M- Chang flinch. It didn't stop him. These questions had plagued him for years and he wasn't letting her avoid him now. "Why."

Chang seemed to pause for a long moment. Was it that he didn't know? That was frustrating, and Duo had nearly lost patience when the other finally spoke up, "I was... I was dreadfully unhappy."

"We were together for so long, I loved you, and I thought you loved me. I mean, we fought, but you can't say we weren't happy," Duo felt like he was defending their relationship. A treasured love he'd held close to his heart for so very long, and it hurt to hear her say that she wasn't happy. "I know we were happy together, Mei."

Meiran looked up at him, startling him again with the familiarity of those black velvet eyes. "I loved you. It made it.. difficult to leave you. Or to let you leave me, as it was."

"Then why?" Duo's voice was barely a whisper.

"I hated myself." It took him by surprise, to hear the strongest person he'd ever known say something like that. Meiran had always seemed so self assured, but had it all been a hoax? Was everything that he thought he knew a manufactured facade? Unaware of Duo's thoughts, Meiran continued, "I hated that I was weak, no matter how much I trained, I could never get stronger than you, or Heero, or my brothers... But it's more than that. I always knew inside that I was supposed to be a boy. My body never felt right. I hated it, everything about it, because it wasn't... It wasn't me. It wasn't really mine. I..I've always been Wufei, Duo, not Meiran. I was never Meiran..."

He didn't know how to respond to that for a long moment. Meiran... Wufei was trembling slightly and Duo knew that this was a vulnerability that sh- he had a hard time showing. She was so much like his Meiran, but... This person was different. This person was older, more mature, somehow finding the strength that Meiran hadn't had.. to admit to fault.

"You were... You were Meiran. You were my Meiran, and I loved you. I didn't love... 'Wufei', I loved Meiran," there was a pleading quality in his voice he wished would go away, but he needed to say this and needed to believe it, for his own sake.

"You loved me, Duo.. I'm the same on the inside, I just... I look the way I've always felt now."

"We could have gotten you help! We could have taken you to therapy and taught you to love yourself! It's not easy to do sometimes, I know, but we could have made it work, Mei, we could have done it and we'd be happy. Hell, we'd be married, probably have a tyke by now."

All that got him was a humorless snort. "I never wanted to have kids, Duo, you knew that. In fact, getting pregnant was my worst fear..."

But Duo had wanted that, and he'd never given up the hope of convincing his love to let him make a baby with her. He'd wanted a little Meiran to take to parks and teach to swim and ride a bike and to read bedtime stories to... More pain assaulted him with the realization those dreams were long gone and buried. "Therapy, Meiran, we still coulda.."

"No."

"What?"

"I went to a psychiatrist for years," This false Meiran, this stranger said, as Duo began to wonder once again if he'd ever even known the woman he claimed to love. "First because I thought something was wrong with me, then to get my papers signed off. Most surgeons won't preform the operation without having you first prove in psychological evaluations that you are really the gender you say you are."

"So you faked it for some quack-"

"There's more," His ex-lover interrupted, but then seemed to have to take a moment to compose what he wanted to say, "There are other differences that modern science is just discovering. The Interstitial Nucleus of the Anterior Hypothalamus, a part of your brain that controls body temperature, hunger, thirst, fatigue and many other things, as well as the Bed nucleus of the stria terminalis are found to be quite a bit larger in males than in females. Mine is over double the size it should have been for my genetic gender, Duo."

There were too many words in there that Duo didn't understand, and that made him feel more angry than perhaps he had the right to. Closing his eyes, he forced himself to take several deep breaths. Meiran was a man now. Meiran was now Wufei Chang and no amount of arguing would change that. More important, when Duo thought rationally, was the fact that Wufei's life was in danger and Duo was a detective on the case. Heero had trusted him to keep Wufei safe and he couldn't let his personal insecurities (if he was honest with himself, he knew that a lot of his animosity was caused by that) get in the way of doing what was right.

Like it or not, Wufei Chang was someone he'd just have to deal with.

~!~!~

By the time Heero returned to them, they had fallen into an uncomfortable silence, neither daring to look at the other. Wufei didn't know what else to do. He'd already showed an uncharacteristic amount of vulnerability and he wasn't at all prepared to do it again. Luckily, Duo seemed to be slowly processing what he had already said. Hopefully this would give him enough time to pull himself together. He didn't want to have any cracks in his armor the next time Duo staged an attack.

"I'm having the doctor release you," Heero said, handing Wufei some paperwork, which he took and barely glanced at before signing it. "This place is too... Vulnerable."

'Popular term today,' Wufei thought dryly, but nodded nonetheless. "He'll strike again, Heero. It's a matter of time. What makes you think we won't just move on to the next name on the list? Someone else could be dead by now."

"It's possible, but-"

"It doesn't fit his M.O." Duo interrupted, seeming agitated. "His killings are all ritualistic. You getting away is a disruption."

Heero nodded, "There's still a chance that he will kill again, but it's more likely that you are still his primary objective."

"And there's nothing we can do about that right now. You're our only goddamn lead." Duo reached into the front pocket of his shirt, only to find it as empty as Wufei knew it would be. It was an angry tick of his: reaching for his pack of cigarettes when his emotions ran so high they cut through his carefully constructed joker face. It didn't matter that Wufei had helped him- made him- quit a year into their relationship, the tick was firmly installed, from the time Duo was eleven years old, living in the streets, and smoked his first cancerstick.

"Don't tell me you've started again," Wufei said, unable to help but ask.

"Uh, no, just... You know... Muscle memory... I guess," Duo replied, voice trailing off. The awkward silence reigned again until Heero scowled and came to help Wufei from the hospital bed and into a pair of pants. Wufei blushed slightly and kept his eyes lowered. This would be the first time someone saw his... his body, the first person who wasn't a doctor anyway, and this was hardly how he'd imagined it. Someone up there just didn't like him right now, that was for sure.

~!~!~

"Heero, you're fucking insane."

Yes, he was beginning to suspect that himself, because he'd expected Duo to take the news just a bit better than this. "Duo. It makes more sense."

"Like hell it does," Duo scowled, "So he's in danger, put him in witness-protection and that shit."

Heero shook his head, trying to contemplate a.. delicate way to convince his partner that this was the best possible plan. "I don't want him that far. He needs to be where we can keep an eye on him."

"So keep him with you."

Heero's condo was nice enough, but having Wufei there would be a very bad idea, given his usual traffic of bed-partners, both sought out and otherwise. Besides, Heero wanted to test his theory about Howard, and what better way to do so than to see them interact again at one of Duo's weekly football nights?

"If he's staying with me then Mr. Howard is less likely to-"

"It's not Howard. There's no way, Hee-man, I would have seen something before. He would have been asking about the case or something. We never talk about work." Duo sounded exasperated, and by now they had had this conversation a time or four.

"We can't claim he is innocent until he is cleared as a suspect."

"We can't declare him guilty with a reasonable doubt."

"Hn." It wasn't reasonable, they both knew better. Duo was letting his emotions cloud his judgment. It was hard to blame him, between having his ex-girlfriend, now an ex-boyfriend, show back up into his life under such circumstances, and now having an old, dear friend accused of ritualistic murder, but Heero didn't have time for sympathies. He met Duo's eyes and held his gaze until the other man sighed.

"Fine."

~!~!~

Two days later, it was getting harder all the time to remember that Meiran had ever left. Wufei had so easily slipped into the void she had left in her absence, waking early to do the katas Duo still remembered watching so long ago, keeping the apartment in the same strict order it had been in when she left, going so far as to rearrange the living room furniture, and cooking dinner just in time for Duo to eat a hot meal as soon as he came home. After two days, the cup-of noodles were gone from his cupboard, packed away in some lonely pantry, and replaced with fresh herbs, water chestnuts, fruits and fine ingredients, preparing the same meals Duo's stomach had wept for for too many years now.

It was all too fucking painful.

Because as much as Wufei talked like Meiran, moved like her, cooked like her, he was always quick to remind Duo that he was an entirely different person. When he spoke, when he turned to look at him, and literally when Duo slipped and called him by the wrong name.

But despite the pain, Duo couldn't help but be thankful for the company. If Wufei hadn't once been Meiran, Duo was sure that they would have been great friends. There was a nice dynamic between them, like what he had had with Meiran, but vastly different. Duo often tried to pretend that they really were just friends, just getting to know each other, instead of lingering on the doubts he felt when he thought about the farce their relationship had to have been.

Now, sitting on the couch, was a time like that, as they watched an old action flick they'd both seen before, together even, though the feel of it with each one lounging on opposite ends of the couch was different that the feel of watching it while wrapped up in each other, stealing more kisses and glances at each other than at the movie. More questions filled Duo's mind, like they always did when he had Wufei near him in this odd, almost comfortable sort of way and in the ease of the moment, he dared to ask.

"Why are you working as a waitre... Waiter?" Meiran had been a secretary at a large law firm, had made more money that Duo, in fact, and had been going to law school. Wufei should be a lawyer by now, not toiling away in some restaurant for minimum wage.

"I told you and Heero, I have debts."

"Meiran never had debts."

Wufei scowled at him, sitting up in a more rigid sort of posture, muscles tightening like a cat ready to make a hasty escape. "Meiran had never had to find a way to pay for multiple surgeries that insurance failed to cover, not to mention testosterone injections."

Duo was silent for a moment, letting this sink in. When they spoke like this, he understood on some level that Meiran had felt an undeniable urgency to change herself to fit the self she knew she was. When Wufei talked about it like this, he still heard that determination, that drive that meant she had been willing to lose everything in an attempt to someday feel... complete. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. "What happened with the firm?"

Wufei took a long moment to answer that question, eyes getting a far off look in them and Duo knew from experience that Mei- Wufei was remembering something terribly unpleasant.

"…. It was... hard. Being there," he finally said, "When I began transitioning, many people made things.. difficult for me. The partners didn't like what I was, and I made a lot of people uncomfortable.. disgusted... They couldn't up and fire me, of course, because I was excellent at my job and I would have sued them in a heartbeat, but they could go out of their way to make me miserable. I stayed for a few months, but then when I needed time off.. They claimed they couldn't give it to me. And it suddenly wasn't worth it anymore. I had to quit, and then drop out of school, just to afford the down payment on the loan. I was able to stay with my parents during recovery, so that helped a bit, but I have been working hard ever since. Before this, I had two jobs, but one employer became uncomfortable and asked me to resign. I didn't want the same trouble again."

Duo often wondered if there was any point in continuing to have faith in humanity. In addition, he now felt like an asshole, having his own personal pity-party about how rough the past two years had been on him when Meiran had been in pain and discriminated against and alone. Horribly alone.

~!~!~

Their breathing was hard and mingled together and mingled together in the hot air of the room, the slapping of bodies driving out everything but the sound of breathy moans. Duo drove deeper into his partner, wanting to feel that connection. He missed feeling connected.

Sex was a momentary solution to an ongoing problem, but burried to the hilt in another warm body, Duo could hardly bring himself to care. This one felt right, this one felt real.. And he couldn't even remember meeting her and bringing her home.

"D-Duo..." She moaned, but her voice was off. Too deep. Duo turned his bed-partner's face to see and was horrified to find an angular, masculine face, flushed with arousal, a thin sheet of sweat coating him, matting dark hair around his eyes. Coal eyes met amethyst and Duo felt a shiver go through him and he came-

And shot up in his bed, breathing hard and covered in sweat, at once terrified and relieved to find it was just a dream. A sex dream, about Wufei. Not Meiran. Duo grew cold as he found the wet spot surrounding him. He'd gotten off. He'd fucking gotten off, dreaming about screwing another man. Wufei.

Duo curled on his side, shivering and wrapped his arms around himself in a futile attempt to get warm.

"I'm so fucked up..."