Warnings: Swearing, yaoi, violence, general angst, possible OOCness (ages since I've written fanfiction so may be a little bit rusty) m/m sexual relations – limey/lemony, slight sap, Duo abuse

Pairings: 1x2 , 3x4, 5+2

A/N: Song is Bitter End by Placebo… thanks to my lovely beta ellewrites – only three chapters to go…

Chapter Twenty One

See You at the Bitter End

The pause on the stairwell is cut short as the ground floor door opens and I instinctively make a break through the third floor door, still feeling like my heart's about to explode from my chest. The light is bright as I exit the stairwell and I close the door behind me and let my body slide down the cool, hard metal. I'm hyperventilating. I'm not having a fucking heart attack – at least that's what I tell myself in some attempt to reassure myself but then I'm not really the kind of guy that's hyperventilated and I sure don't know what a heart attack feels like.

It's what old dudes have when they've spent their lives eating cheeseburgers and drinking scotch and smoking cigars and playing the occasional round of golf. It ain't something that I'm going to do – not yet, anyway. My body can give up after I get Dallas. It's what keeps running through my head as I take a moment to re-evaluate the situation.

I'm on the third floor. There's nothing but large rooms here. And I know that Heero is unconscious on the eighth floor. I have no freaking idea where Quatre is or where Trowa will be. My guess is that Wufei is at least helping command the Preventers if not actually doing so, as you know, we had kinda fucked up his glittering career recently with getting a hospital destroyed and knocking him out and making him look ever so slightly weak and maybe even a little incompetent. Wondered how he would take accusations of his mistakes from his superiors. I can imagine not well. Just what everyone loves to hear – a patented Wufei weakness rant.

The run through calms my breathing and my heart rate, while still elevated, is more normal than I could hope for. It's like going into mission mode and I can deal with that – it ain't just soldier boy who can use these coping methods – I learnt them as well.

I listen to the sounds in the stairwell, waiting for them to get close to this floor. I can hear heavy boot falls and I stifle a smirk. I figure that I can do this one last time – be Shinigami, lay my ghosts to rest and finally stop blaming my own sorry ass for Solo. And after that, it don't really matter.

I open the door back into the stairwell with excessive force. I feel adrenalin coursing through my veins and it's like I'm invincible. Maybe this is what Heero feels on a daily basis. Must be awesome to be him. So this is how you self-destruct without dying, jump outta hospital windows without feeling the pain and generally do some shit hot heroics without thinking of the consequences. Kinda fun.

The door makes contact as I'd calculated the correct moment to open it and it slams full force into a face. I'm kinda figuring it ain't a Preventer but I had my suspicions anyway – figured those booted feet were not Preventer issue. One of the most important skills as an expert in stealth and infiltration is that you listen, you know. People may doubt I have the skill to be quiet and at times, I damn well don't, but hell, I knew how to really listen and I recognised those steps. Two goons. Big build. Dallas' boys.

The door is metal and the amount of force makes the guy on the other side shudder and fall. There's a moment of recognition as I step through, slamming it again behind me. The twins never were the smartest but it takes them too much time to react. Eyebrow twin is on the floor, the other takes precious few moments to raise his weapon and it only takes a well-aimed kick to send him crashing backwards down the stairs, heavily, painfully. The sound of a body falling down the stairwell reverberates despite the alarms. Despite the hammering of my heart in my chest. Duh dum. I'm not sure if he'd dead or stunned but there's the sound of a crack, bones meeting hard floor and it's kinda sickening. It stuns eyebrow twin enough to let me relieve him of his weapon – they've got semi-automatics that look Preventer issue – once it's in my hand I work out that they are Preventer issue.

"Where's Dallas?"

Eyebrow twin looks down at his brother who's now got a pool of blood coming out of his head and not me and he tries to make a move to go see the condition. I guess this is something I won't understand as I have no biological link to anybody in this whole dinky world – nothing like the connection of being together your entire life, in the womb and all – and a more sympathetic guy, one that wasn't trying to get revenge and hadn't had the shit beaten out of him by these jerks, would maybe let him check. Maybe they would. But I don't.

I grab him by his collar. I suddenly notice how the gang is dressed as being that I'd been kicking one twin down the stairs while disarming the other, my observation skills were less than awesome. They're not in street clothes. They're dressed to look staff at the damn Conference Centre. They don't look at all distinctive. They even have ID's – they probably just walked through the staff entrance, scanned their ID's and as we'd focused our attention on providing one entry point, they'd done something we'd not expected or seen coming. Damn it all.

The twin struggles against me and I can see blood drip down his shirt from his face – his nose is pretty banged up, the blood steadily flowing – bitch to get dry cleaned. I push his head against the metal of the wall behind him. Hard. It's enough for the back of his head to make a little crunch sound but not hard enough to break anything. Still not quite Yuy strength, you know, even with the help of the little pick-me-ups.

"Fuck you," he spat.

"Original."

Ah yeah, I'd totally gotten used to being told 'fuck you.' Usually my default choice of swearing – funny to be on the other side. I push him again. See? No more Mr. Nice Guy, buddy.

"You tell me and I get your bro some medical attention."

I get a snort in response. I'm totally bluffing here. I have no comms. I have no way of getting an ambulance or a paramedic and I know shit about what has happened on the ground floor. If the gun fire was correct, there could be plenty of bullet wounds needing treating and if a Preventer agent was down then hell… they're not gonna try and save a street punk bleeding to death in a stairwell. Unless they had valuable shit to tell and I'm kinda positive the twins knew little – nothing about Roth, maybe some stuff about their job in the plan, but not big picture kinda goons.

I push him, hard, again, put my arm across his throat and push, limiting his oxygen supply enough to make him scramble against me. It's enough to make him panic. I'd always thought the way I'd most hate to die would be running out of air – brought back fun memories of the Moon Base and 'Fei and thinking I was gonna just stop breathing… it was tempting to panic. Wufei didn't. Always amazed me. As I felt my old heart hammer in my chest from the exertion of threatening this creep, I kinda wondered if I'd ever get a chance to say that. Or anything to anyone.

There's a slight noise from the other twin. It distracts me enough to look down and I can't tell if I'm imagining shit – do these stupid pills cause hallucinations? – or if I'd not quite killed the dude. My arm loosens enough to let eyebrow twin breathe and slide down the wall. He chokes and feels for his throat. That automatic gesture.

"Basement." His voice ain't real loud and I barely hear it above the hammering in my ears and my own chest. "Dallas will be waiting for you."

The last sentence sounds kinda creepy. He slumps a little and I don't ask anything else. I kick out at his body, he slumps further with a whimper of pain and I'm not sure what damage I've done but I start back down the stairs, carefully walking over the prone body of the other twin. I'm thinking dead. There's too much blood and I can't avoid walking through the sticky brownish-red puddle. I should feel something for the kids – maybe some of the ones who didn't know the shit they were in – Zee, Lance, the young ones who didn't know the dangerous end of a gun – but the twins evoked no sympathy. Their boots had bruised my body and hell, they'd probably enjoyed it. They knew about the virus and shit. They were in Dallas' inner sanctum and fuck, they could die.

Maybe I am Shinigami again. Maybe I really don't care. Maybe the drugs have totally fucked any part of my morality that was left. Whatever, I think of the schematics of the building as I take the stairs far too quickly, breathing shallowly, feeling my heart squeeze and constrict in my chest. Duh dum. Duh dum. Never been so conscious of it. Never before felt every beat of my heart.

I'm thinking of the schematics of the building and my mind drifts ever so briefly to sitting behind Heero while he looked at the floor plans on a borrowed laptop and the how my hands were just so lightly touching him and he wasn't flinching. Wasn't pushing me away. Learnt to accept my touch again and a wave of nausea hits. I figure he'll never forgive me and I deserve that. Totally do but my mind seems to be taking me back to the bunker and gentle touches and having my arms around his waist from behind, seeing the details of this building in white lines. And the basement is where the main bulk of the security located. It has a laundry facility to accommodate the masses of linen needed to provide comfort for however many delegates this place hosted and whatever other fancy shit they needed for this fancy ass building.

And the basement would be a weak point. Fewer cameras. A restricted area. And shit… it was where the main power supplies were located. Communication lines. And the temperature controls and the air-conditioning system. The basement was the key – hell, they'd ignored our trap as it wasn't part of their plan. They had their own plan and so far it was working.

I reached the ground floor and thought about checking the situation but figured I had no time and shit knows whether I'd be arrested as a gangbanger or given an opportunity to explain myself. Didn't know what my status was – undercover operative, rogue agent, gangbanger… all too vague so I took the final set of stairs. A few cheerful signs told normal folks that the basement was for staff only and was not permitted for guests or delegates. I suppose normal people don't consider going down to the basement anyway… only if lost and I ain't lost.

The door to the floor is closed with a key card and a keypad with a code input requirement. And I didn't have either. I didn't even have lock picking equipment with me – I'd lost that when I'd been searched at the damn hospital and replacing it had not been on my list of priorities in the past coupla days. I wonder if I could just shoot out the mechanism but that's so unlikely with the level of complexity of the security in the building and even as I bring out the gun I figure it's a moot point.

There's a slight amount of movement at the periphery of my vision as I realise a small camera is located above the entrance to the door and suddenly that camera moves. Remote and all. I don't know whether to give it a sarcastic wave as the noise of the electronic lock being overridden can be heard, ever so quiet, among the sounds of alarms and my own heart and breath.

I push on the handle and the heavy metallic door opens. My gun is out in front of me as I push harder to be confronted with a metallic corridor that sure as hell brings OZ bases to mind – all drab places with alarms and flashing lights. I expect to be greeted – I expect that Dallas has half his crew ready to rip me apart as I was the great Preventer traitor – pretending to be one of them only as it suited my purpose. But I supposed I wasn't the commendable Preventer agent – I was doing what the hell I wanted and wasn't playing by any rules or protocols. They didn't get that I would be one of them if… if I'd not got out, if I'd not met the guy who's unconscious so many floors above me. The thought steels me as I take a quick sweep, gun raised, along the corridor and I remember the intersections.

There are various stairs from different corners of the floor that lead into the basement. I guess so staff can access laundry or something. My gun shakes just a small amount in my hand and I feel sweaty palms. This is so not me. I am not a wreck. I don't have nerves but there's a jitter running through my body and I pause, standing against the wall, the harsh metal against the skin at the back of my neck making me shiver, my hands and forearms feeling the cold. I don't think the drugs are good shit.

In fact, I'm sure they ain't as my heart beats hard. Squeezing. A couple more real deep breaths. Duh dum. Or I've pretty much fucked myself over by giving myself an OD. Not the time. Not the time, Duo. Pray to the only God I believe in and hope that Shinigami gives me enough time to do this…

The deep breath, the wiping sweaty palms on rough denim does something and probably the silent prayer to Shinigami and I take a few steps to an intersection, carefully strafing both sides with gun raised, steady, but I see no one else. The eerie silence of the area is worse than the alarm sound in the building above – here it's distorted and far away and there is no sound of anything other than heavy breathing. Mine.

The control room for the surveillance feeds is down an intersection and I take it cautiously, sticking to the walls, taking wary steps and there's the first sign of life… a door is open that should be locked. There's even a sign on the partially open thing that says 'to be locked at all times' so damn, that instruction's been ignored.

I push it open, gun raised, but am met with resistance as the door will not open any further, and sliding my body through I realise why. A fucking blood bath. A guy in a Preventer uniform is slumped over the control panel, blood pours from an open wound that pretty much took off half of his face and I sure as hell don't recognise the guy. His dirty blond hair is mostly intact but the screens are splattered with grey matter and blood and bone. The coppery smell overcomes the small room.

The second body is behind the door, a bullet hole right through the stomach, which is so big that it's a complete damn mess. With a normal weapon, the shot would not necessarily prove fatal – from Dallas' crew and the hollow point bullets, it was grim and pretty damn effective. Poor dude. He looks like a newish recruit – must've been in his mid-twenties. Not much older than me. Another Preventer body. Shit.

I don't bother checking for pulses as is protocol with agent down. The protocols are pretty pointless when one agent don't have most of this face and the other doesn't have his guts. I can already feel the coppery smell and clotting blood sticking to my body as the floor is saturated and my boots are walking through it. My eyes flicker to the screens and the red stained monitors. The images are looped from earlier in the day and tell me nothing. They'd controlled the vidfeed and I wondered how the hell they could without having inside help. Then I figure. Roth knew too darn much – knew me, knew my records like they weren't top secret James Bond shit that no one should be able to access and Wufei's concern that someone within the Preventer was feeding information out… The plan was never going to work as they knew what we were trying.

The plan had so few people on board. The five of us. Winner staff. Une and a few higher ups and the men and women of Wufei's undercover unit. It was one of them.

I don't get time to figure out more or attempt to get any intel out – I wanted to check if they'd block the hard lines because there was a chance that the communication jammer may not block out that but I realised I'd done something stupid. Blame the drugs and the weird high thing I'm on – blame the recklessness that I'm kinda working on – but this room was at the end of an intersection. And the one thing you don't kinda do – or shouldn't in a situation where everything ain't hopeless – is put yourself into a corner with no real exit strategy which is what I'd done. I heard the short, mocking laugh from behind me a second later than I should've – the hammering in my ears and the loud fluttering of my heart had distracted me from the noise of boot fall – or maybe it was just viewing this damn carnage. The amount of blood and slow sound of it dripping was sickening to even someone like me who'd spent a lifetime causing death.

"Thought you were dead, G-Boy."

"Takes a lot more than that, you know, I am Death."

"Should've just put a bullet in your head."

I laugh low in his face. "You kinda made the mistake that everyone does, Dallas."

I'm being stupidly cocky here. He's got a much bigger gun and I can feel how damn dry my mouth is and how sweaty my palms are. He just raises the eye brow with the piercing in a real mocking way – the sorta thing that makes me want to smash his face in – but instead, I just answer him, my voice all steady.

"You underestimated me."

There's a moment that he just looks at me as though I'm fucking crazy and I figure I deserve that. Maybe it's those few seconds that the words need to sink in – hell, I've been underestimated my entire damn life. I was the boy with long hair in a gang, I was the fifteen year old with little training that was handed the keys to a Gundam, I was the undercover operative sent to the worst places on earth and paid the worse kinda dues for the way I looked. And now I was the Preventer agent standing in the way of this and I was still being underestimated. Damn.

He wanted to stand here and trade insults – wanted to turn this into some cheesy finale of an action film where we talked before the fight takes place but I don't give him the chance. His eyes widened as I kicked. He wasn't expecting the suddenness of my attack. His gun dropped but went off in the process, the bullet ricocheting around the metallic room and making a noise that would surely bring some Preventer agents here. I automatically duck at the sound but the bullet doesn't clip me or him. He takes a second to go for the gun and I take the opportunity.

I rushed him, dropping him into the ground and put my elbow over his windpipe. No more fucking around. Dallas could meet Shinigami.

He groans and does a spluttering thing and I take a second to realise that, fuck, he is probably a better fighter than me as our positions are reversed and I'm on my back and both guns have been lost in the scramble. Should've just shot him straight away. Hindsight's a wonderful thing, you know, as hands tighten round my throat. Tight hands and I feel the thrumming of my heart against my rib cage harder… duh dum. Duh dum.

I know he's taunting me – I can see his fucking face above me as he tries to suffocate me but I'm not listening as I slide my hands down my body to get to the front pocket of my jeans. The problem with suffocating someone is that it takes effort and damn, I'm not sure Dallas has ever done this. I'm struggling against him but he's got the upper hand until….

My fingertips reach the knife and I just pull and aim upwards not giving a shit about how effective the stab is – I just need to take a breath… I need his hands off my throat and it works.

His hands release as blade slides into flesh. I can hear the howl of pain more than all the words of threat and insult. I kick upwards, his body falling off me as he holds his stomach, the blade still embedded in his body.

I smirk, wipe my hand across my own face, feeling my own blood there as I take two deep breaths. I've been stabbed in the stomach before, the wound was impressive and badly stitched, I remembered the searing pain of flesh being separated by a sharp point and I remembered calloused fingers tracing it gently.

I don't get to my feet immediately, instead, I reach out for the guns, stretching back towards the surveillance room where they are both embedded in coppery blood but there's a hand on my leg and it's pulling me back.

"No, you don't."

I kick back, hard, damnit and it connects with something fleshy and I hear the grunt as my fingers meet the coldness of steel and slipperiness of blood.

The gun feels solid in my fingers as I turn my body to a reclining position, Dallas' own gun pointed as his head, and our eyes connect.

"Where's Roth?"

He laughs and I notice there's foamy blood coming from his lips. "You think he's here, kiddo? Naw, he bailed as soon as the hospital went up. In the wind, blue eyes."

I take a deep breath and start to rise a little, feeling the unsteadiness of my own two feet. "The virus?"

"And why would I tell you that?"

I'm unsteady against the wall and I notice that there's so much blood on my clothing and body that I don't know what's mine and what's other peoples and the nausea hits again. My hand touches the metallic walls for support.

"You're dead, Dallas. Think of it as your last rites or something."

He smirks and suddenly my legs aren't under me and I realise that he was playing a little more than I thought. The knife is in his hand, he's removed it from where it was embedded in his stomach but the gun's in mine. I take a shot but it's off and hits the metal walls, the sound deafening in the corridor and I hit the floor with a thud. My body takes a moment to react as the blade is on my throat and I realise that he's probably going to kill me. This is so not how I want to go.

"The virus is already in the colony weather system. It's all go on Zee's confirmation of the Winner kill."

He sees the look in my eyes – I guess my puzzled expression is easy to read.

"You thought we underestimated you, kid? Hell, you sure as shit missed her, didn't ya? Cute chick, a little unsure of herself and damn, everyone ignores her."

The knife presses further into my throat and I feel the first trickles of blood.

"Never told you her real name, did she? We call her Zee but her full name is Zadie. Zadie Roth. Daddy's little princess." He laughed – that trademark mocking laugh thing. "You think they'll pick her up, the Preventers? The pretty girl in the waitress outfit? Naw, I don't think so…"

"Naw, I don't think they will…" I said quietly. "But I will."

The sudden push causes the blade to slice my skin a little but it's superficial unlike the bullets that penetrate Dallas. I fire twice. The second shot is unnecessary as the bullets penetrate chest and with his love of hollow point bullets, the damage is devastating.

I push the guy off me and unsteadily get to my feet, raise a hand to the wound on my neck and take a breath. I look down at Dallas, feel the shuddering of my own body, the duh dums of my heart and the erratic breathing.

One more thing to do and that's it Shinigami, I promise.

Let me find Zee.