Wow this is going quickly. I made a goal of posting within three days if I had one more review then the last chapter. Which I have received! Thank you to Kaliko the Cat, yesterdays-lover, and A!

Here is the next chapter as requested by Kaliko! Sorry yesterdays-lover about it being slow and not action packed at the moment, (the pace is pretty slow), but I swear there will be more action! To make up for it I will be posting two chapters at once. (That way we will get to the action sooner maybe? I hope this works for you)

On with the fic!

Ch 31

Duo felt the tension rise as his heart leapt when the door came crashing open. Wufei was standing in the doorway eyes shining, but demeanor stiff. "Follow me." He stated and turned and left. He expected to be followed at this point. Duo jumped into action from where he sat on the couch, bolted towards the vacant doorway and bounded after Wufei who was proceeding back towards the main gambling floor. He had a bunch of papers in hand, so his goal of obtaining his freedom to do anything appeared to have worked. The deal had been signed and his task here was done.

Arriving back in the room with the noisy bright slot machines, Wufei turned and double backwards to another door that led to an alley. There was a black vehicle waiting there with tinted windows. Duo was unsurprised when Wufei walked around to get into the driver's seat. Taking initiative he hoped into the passenger's seat under the assumption that he was supposed to tag along. Wufei would surely throw him out if he was mistaken. He was relieved when Wufei simply started the car and began driving away from the noisy lights and the cacophony that had been assailing him since they entered the facility. It was undoubtedly why Wufei selected the location. It was turf that he seemed to know well and have previously scouted. The atmosphere had been disorienting and directional microphones would have had issues in the environment even with the best techs attempting to fiddle with the sound filters.

Duo eased himself back into the seat and did not bother looking at Wufei. He would hopefully be getting to see a lot of him if he was allowed to stay in his presence for whatever the next step was to be. Une had simply stated that he would have to report back to the Preventers at a minimum of once every two weeks. If not to her directly then through Heero, Wufei's other handler, whom Wufei had already managed to squirrel away from already. Duo didn't mind the implications. Heero was probably trying to analyze every nuance of what just occurred in whatever meeting they just had. Duo had grown rather tired of that. Heero didn't have an innate understanding of people's emotions and he knew that. He even accepted that about his friend, but lately Heero had been probing and trying to analyze everything he had been doing and it had been getting irritating. Living under a microscope was not ideal.

He wasn't going to put Wufei under that kind of microscope either. They drove in silence and Duo relaxed further into the seat and stared out the window at the slums. It was apathy really he was feeling. Not any kind of a link to the passing surroundings, just a silent observing status. The minutes went by and neither spoke', but Duo felt the vibrations of the car's tires on the road and Wufei's steady presence driving them to wherever he deemed safe enough to stay. It was like an evacuation post mission. He knew he would be safe where ever they ended up. He felt his eyes begin to drift shut and he didn't stop them.

When Duo woke up it was because the engine had shut off. It was early morning if the light just breaking over the tree tops was any sort of an indication. He had no idea where he was. He could check his gps on his phone, but the need to do so was not very high. He blinked his eyes and looked over in the driver seat. And Wufei was looking at him, just observing. "We here?" He asked and stretched in the seat. Wufei nodded and opened the door to get out.

Here turned out to be a small cabin structure sheltered under trees and bamboo thickets. Whether they were natural or planted Duo had no idea. He was not a green thumb being from a run-down colony cluster such as the L2 clusters. The air seemed cleaner than in most of the city areas he was used to visiting and it sounded like there may have been a river near by somewhere in the area surrounding the house. He cautiously stepped out of the car and followed Wufei to the front of the building and watched him slide open the door before stepping in.

There was not much inside as far as he could tell. The furniture was simple with clean lines. Functional. The kitchen was off to the right of the entry. There was a longish couch and a book shelf with books stacked and crammed to make them fit. The hallway towards the back probably contained the bathroom and hopefully bedrooms where they would stay.

"There is only one bed so for now you get the couch." Wufei spoke up suddenly. Duo nodded and watched him walk off down the hallway. He did not know what he was doing here. What Wufei could possibly want from him. He distracted himself by going to the book shelf. A lot of them were in asian characters that he had no means of understanding. Wufei came back and tossed white sweats and a tank top at him. He looked them over and uttered a soft "Thanks."

Wufei nodded, "I need to get some sleep. If you come to the backroom, I will likely shoot you. You are free to walk the grounds or to anything in the kitchen." He turned and retreated to the bedroom. Duo looked down at the clothes in his hands. The white sweat pants. The tank top.

He was in one of Wufei's safe houses from the war.

That knowledge somehow took the air out of Duo's lungs and he sat back onto the couch. They never shared each other's house locations. Sure they had multiple. But that at least meant that he must have trusted him somewhat? Duo smiled slightly as he gripped the clothes closer to him. Heero had been feeling further and further from him as of late. But suddenly it seemed that Wufei was coming closer. It was the first glimmer of happiness he had felt in a while. Hugging a pair of sweat pants.

As soon as he was able to summon enough energy and thought to get himself off of the couch Duo had looked around the kitchen, went to the bathroom and headed outside to explore the grounds. There was a stream that was running near the house. It was quick moving water over a shallow bed of smooth rocks. It was midafternoon and he had his feet sitting in the stream. The water was surprisingly cool, but he could sit there for a long time he had decided.

The soft rustle of vegetation being moved to the side alerted him to Wufei's approach, but he didn't bother removing his feet from the water. Wufei would be able to talk to him whether his feet were in the water or not.

Wufei sat down with his legs crossed in front of him a few feet off from where Duo sat with his feet in the water. Duo looked over at him. He looked older, but then again he had to be at this point. It had been well over a year since he had seen him in person, before the group of them had helped retrieve him to put him in prison. Duo hadn't wanted to, but the convincing had done its work. He had played his part and helped his friend be imprisoned. "Why did you pick me?" Do asked suddenly he had felt compelled to for some reason. An urge that couldn't be repressed.

Wufei looked at him straight and stated, "I read your emails." It was an innocuous statement, but it definitely had meaning. His heart clenched ferociously for two beats two long and began again thunderously. It was sure to be detected by the other teen sitting there and observing him. He looked away to the rocks in the bottom of the river. Watching the waters ripples and bubbles cascading around them. "We won't talk about that now." Wufei continued. "We'll get to them in time. You sit and relax for right now." When Duo didn't respond Wufei nodded as if he had been expecting that and got up from the ground. "I'll be inside if you need me." And then he was gone.

They kept apart for the remainder of the day. Duo was not thinking about much. He let his fingers run through the blades of the grass and kept his feet in the water until his toes went numb from cold. He eventually rose from the grass and brushed the dirt and debris from his pants and went inside. Wufei appeared to be busy in the kitchen, the food smelled delicious, but Duo veered away from the smell coming out of the kitchen and grabbed up the clothes that Wufei had handed to him earlier and headed for the bathroom to shower.

He still did not quite know where he stood with Wufei. The emails he had sent were… quite personal. It was as if he had been writing a journal. He knew that there was always a possibility that Wufei would eventually open up the war time network emails and see what he had written. That thought had never scared him that much. But now some of the things he wrote were starting to flash through his mind quickly causing a strange combination of absolute panic and staggering relief that Wufei had read them. Wufei had done what he asked when he emailed Zechs, but that did not mean that Wufei was excepting him as family again, because that was what the group had always felt like to Duo. A family.

He knew better then to get attached to people with his history of the street living and Maxwell church, but he also knew that individuals were never nearly as strong as in a group. Wufei seemed to be defying that thought at every step this last year, but at the same time he had come back into the fold in his own way. Attempting to negotiate his release from having to be hidden at all times and requesting Duo as his contact. So somehow Duo had always lived under the impression that you shouldn't get attached but you shouldn't work alone. It seemed he was never very good at the don't get attached portion of this ideal. But that was something that he would have to confront another time.

He stepped out of the bathroom in the white sweats and tank top after he re-braided his hair as was his customary style. He walked into the kitchen to see Wufei sitting at the table that was off to the side with another dish filled with food sitting across from him in front of another chair. Duo took that as his signal to come over and he did. It was some form of vegetables with meat and rice. Probably better than most of the food he had been consuming on missions over the last month anyways so he dug in and began munching as quickly as he could muster. It was silent Wufei would occasionally look up at him and Duo would feel the weight of his glances, before he would return to eating.

Duo finally cracked after one of the looks and blurted, "I'm sorry." And then he promptly began a choking cough on rice that he inhaled. Wufei looked up at him and set down his utensils and waited for the coughing spasms to stop.

"What for?" He questioned.

"For my part in the initial plan. For alienating you. For leaving you and not being able to get you out. For not visiting you in jail. For not just exploding the jail when we thought you were there the first time at four months." Duo stopped short clicking his teeth shut. He was rambling and he looked down at his food and picked up his fork again poking at the green things that were on the rice.

Wufei shook his head and exhaled deeply before whispering, "It's fine."

Duo shook his head rapidly back and forth. "No it's not Wufei. We left you there. We captured you and led you to prison because they told us to. That was no way to treat a… treat a… fri-…" Duo trailed off. He wasn't sure how Wufei would react to being called a friend. Friends would not have done what they did. They would have warned him about what was coming. What was going to hit them.

"I'll admit." Wufei began and then paused. He shook his head trying to decide what he was going to say to the brown haired teen before him that was broken in his own way. "I was very upset when you planned and executed my capture instead of warning me. I'm still very… angry when I think about it." Duo winced at Wufei's words and his emphasis at the word 'very'. He had been expecting them, but that didn't make it any less painful, "While you didn't visit me in jail was upsetting in a way, I did appreciate your cookies the one time I received them." Duo risked looking up at Wufei, but he was looking down at the table. Talking of emotional subjects tended to strain all of the pilots. "As for using explosives on the jail, while I am sure you were good, I'm glad you didn't since you didn't know where I was. It would have been a terrible way to die after all we've lived through. It was the judge and the warden of the jail that kept me in there, not you all. I found out recently that the warden was benefitted by helping the judge. He was allowed to keep his position after he had landed in very serious trouble for taking bribes."

Duo took another bite and pondered what Wufei had just said. Wufei still may or may not be angry for his initial part in the plan, but everything else that Duo seemed to be feeling guilty about was not really a concern of his. "Well then why are you still angry with the others?" Duo cursed himself inwardly after his mouth just opened and shot that out.

Wufei lifted an eyebrow at his question and leveled a stare at Duo, who shrank into his seat slightly. "I found out through some of my new 'friends' in jail that you were searching for me through some unsavory contacts and that you had been for quite some time."

The sentence hung in the air between them and Duo started up saying, "Well the others -"

"Let's stop talking about this now." Wufei said suddenly. He obviously did not wish to discuss the other pilots. Dup nodded and picked up his utensils again to keep eating. They were silent for some time when Wufei spoke up again, "You know that while you work with me I will be killing people, correct?" Duo nodded. He has assumed as much with Wufei's new contract. "I serve myself now more than anyone else and I just don't care to reiterate that in the future if you begin to feel strange about what we are doing. This is a war all over again - whether the Preventers and the public believe it or not."

Wufei seemed to finish at that point and picked up his dishes to drop into the sink. He moved off from the kitchen and back to the bedroom. He was abruptly done with the night apparently. Duo was both relieved and confused by his departure. They had not discussed what would happen from here. Not really. They had not discussed the emails that he had thought he had been sending to the nether-regions of cyber-space. He had simply decided that he was done for the night.

Duo finished off his food, but noted he felt a lot more comfortable with the situation then he was before. Wufei didn't hate him, but he didn't seem to like him either. He only had half the things he needed to feel guilty about confirmed which was an excellent load that he didn't quite believe he was relived from. He finished his food and went to the sink. Instead of dropping his dishes in to join the others he picked up the sponge and began running the water hot. Wufei had cooked. It was only fair that he cleaned.

TBC...

And right now... I present the next chapter! Awesome.