Disclaimer: I don't own a thing (as sad as that realization is), except for the words I've written.

Warnings: Rated for adult language (Duo's got quite a surly mouth and mind), some violence, and mild adult themes.

A/N: I have decided to start updating on Wednesdays as well as Sundays when I can, so be on the lookout for more frequent updates. Please leave a review if you are so inclined, I'd love to know what you think of this story so far. So without further ado, here's Chapter 2.

Maxwell

Chapter 2: This Is The Life of Illusion

Grease - Frankie Valli

In life Heero Yuy had been barley smaller than Duo, but damned if he wasn't more powerful than the entire lot of them. He was thin yet muscular, ordinary yet roguishly handsome. He had been cold, reckless, and detached. There was no fucking way to kill him during the war and there certainly was no fucking way to kill him now.

Duo sat across from Wufei at a diner of his choosing, a place that the Preventer certainly seemed to have a distaste for, which probably ended up being the main reason in choosing it. The sun had been up for little over an of hour. Wufei had instructed that the man get some sleep, but the bags under Duo's eyes suggested that he hadn't heeded the advice very well. But hell, what did he expect? Fuckin' Shinigami at it again. Heero Yuy is dead. That's the kind of news you give a guy at one o'clock in the morning?

It was true that Duo hadn't seen Heero in three years, but shit, looking down at the autopsy photograph set out on the sticky table top before him, he didn't even look like the person he had known during the war. His body was stiff and flat on the table in an unnatural way. The camera's flash had bleached his skin an ominous shade that made Duo's empty stomach cringe.

Shit fuckin' awful.

But then again, dead people do often tend to look pretty awful.

"Why do you have this?" Duo asked.

"It's my case," Wufei replied.

There was a pause of silence. "But don't you need like perspective or something? He was-well he was-"

"He was one of us," Wufei filled in the blank. "I was asked to investigate because of that."

Shit, of course he was one of them, but that didn't mean they needed to get all nostalgic and get the gang back together just because one of them was now dead laying in some Preventer morgue somewhere. They should have probably all died on many different occasions during the war, so why would it matter now? He felt a lump in his throat.

"Where was he found?"

"About thirty miles out of Sanc. A field, nothing unusual, nothing for miles, about a hundred yards off the main road. No footprints." Wufei was succinct in his description. Fucking Preventer protocol and all.

"What, was he just dropped out of thin fuckin' air?" Duo was getting impatient. His exterior indifference and interior denial were starting to crumble. He wanted answers though he knew Wufei didn't have them. Obviously he didn't. Obviously that's why he was here.

The question was ignored. "I need your help."

"My help?" Duo was actually taken aback. Mr. Big Shot Preventer Man needed his help. That was a first.

"You were the closest to him."

"That was a long time ago, 'Fei."

"Preventer is willing to compensate you for your services. A contract to hire deal." Wufei seemed almost desperate and it made Duo smirk.

"I already told Une when she came lookin' for me that I am not Preventer material."

"No one's forcing you to take the job. But now, with those pictures you were sent, this might be bigger than we think."

Duo knew what he meant. They'd already sent the photographs in to be analyzed. Someone had been following them, documenting their every move. Someone out to get them, blackmail them...murder them. Fuck, they'd already skipped the initial steps, they'd already murdered Heero.

He sighed, trying not to think about the autopsy report and Heero's cold skin and the way they leaned on each other in that old picture. "You think it's related?"

Wufei looked down at the table. "Could be. We can't assume, we can't speculate." Good old 'Fei, taking the joy out of everything. Speculation was something Duo was good at.

The waitress came and their conversation paused as she unloaded her tray. Duo stabbed his fork at a piece of practically cremated bacon and used his other hand to pull the autopsy closer to him for a better look. His stomach had finally settled, but he realized by Wufei's quirk of an eyebrow that maybe it was weird to eat and look at the dead body of his comrade. Ex-comrade that is. But, shit, he was hungry.

Wufei held his steaming cup of tea by the handle and gave it a blow. "Two Preventers found the body. They said it was like he had fallen from the sky. The autopsy report seems to align with that idea."

Duo squinted his eyes. The body certainly resembled Heero Yuy, but there was something about it that didn't sit well with him. Maybe it was the thought of the perfect solider free falling, flailing through the air. But he'd self destructed, been shot, jumped out of a fucking hospital window. How could he be dead now, after all of that?

"ID was made through his fingerprints," Wufei added.

Beginning to skim the report, Duo barley heard him as his attention was on something else. "This says he fell from a shuttle." It was a statement and Wufei nodded.

Duo shook his head. "But it couldn't have been. A shuttle has a stall speed of, what? A hundred miles an hour? He'd have come out the door fast, hit the tail or the wing or some shit." It was amazing how smart the man could be when he actually applied himself.

Wufei stared at him in realization. "A helicopter then? Stationary hover."

Duo looked back down at the autopsy picture. He studied the man's arms, chest, legs. There were signs of the impact, but very few. Heero's body had been pretty fucking advanced he guessed.

And then he saw it, or rather didn't see it. His eyes studied a spot just above the man's hip bone in the little muscular recess Duo's lips had been rather acquainted with once upon a time. Heero had a scar there, it was long and jagged and one of the only scars the ex-pilot actually managed to have. Distinguishing to the point that it gave Duo a shiver to think of it. But the cold, dead body he stared at in that photograph had not one single scar.

"This isn't him."

Wufei looked up with calm eyes. "The fingerprints say otherwise."

"That's not fucking him. I'm telling you." Maybe Duo was just falling back on denial, but shit he knew the man better than anyone, as much as he might deny it to Wufei. He knew every curve, every inch of him and he knew for damn sure that that body on the table couldn't be Heero Yuy.

Shaking his head slowly from side to side Wufei just kept staring at him.

"Look, dammit, do you want my help or not, 'Fei?" Duo was getting mad. At the situation, at Wufei, at the Preventers for fucking tracking him all these years. And for what? So when someone that was supposed to be Heero got murdered they could try to enlist him? No fucking thank you.

"I want your help." Wufei seemed slightly quieter, like Duo's outburst had made him decide to change tactics. "If this isn't Heero Yuy then who is it and why does he possess Yuy's fingerprints?"

Duo looked at him for a moment before answering, his demeanor softer now. "I sure wish I could answer that question right now, 'Fei."

"There's something we need to do," Wufei said. Duo hated how he could still be so cryptic and make people hang on his every word and shit.

But still, Duo bit. "What do we need to do, Mr. Preventer Man?"

"We need to get the pilots back together."

They sat in the back of a nondescript car traveling back towards Wufei's swanky, Preventer expense's hotel. A man, also nondescript, was driving them which made Duo feel oddly ostentatious; he didn't like other people having to do things for him that he himself was perfectly capable of. But shit, it didn't seem like Wufei had a problem with it.

A duffel bag with the few important items that Duo carried around with him sat on the floor by his feet. There were a couple of guns and a switchblade in there somewhere and Wufei didn't ask about them because it was obvious he already knew. Hell, he always knew.

"Someone murdered Yuy. We can't just let it go." Wufei had been lecturing him since the moment they'd paid the check at the seedy diner.

"Someone got murdered, but it sure as hell wasn't Heero." Duo smiled. There was that little vein he remembered so fondly popping out of Wufei's forehead. They still hadn't quite been able to see eye to eye on the whole fraudulent autopsy situation.

Wufei clenched his teeth. "Let's just say, for all intents and purposes, that the body does belong to Yuy. If that were you, wouldn't you feel a little disgruntled if the rest of us just ignored it and moved on with our lives?"

"If that were me, I wouldn't be feeling disgruntled. I wouldn't be feeling anything. I'd be dead." He may have still been in shock by the lack of sleep and bizarre turn of events, but damned if Duo wasn't going to answer stupid questions with stupid sarcastic remarks.

His response was a rough sigh. "You get my point, Maxwell."

Duo wondered for a moment why Wufei was suddenly so concerned the with well being of the people he hadn't been in contact with since the war. He'd always been a lone wolf, hell looking back at those photographs he was barely in any of them. Maybe the whole peace keeping Preventer shit had made him turn over a new leaf.

"I can handle it," Duo said. "Maybe we can handle it. But we can't all just drop what we're doing and come back together as much fun as that little reunion would be. It'll never work."

Wufei replied quickly, "We need them."

"Why?"

"Because, even if Yuy is somehow still alive, someone out there was trying to kill him. And maybe not just him, maybe not just you or me. Those photographs were of all of us."

Duo had to admit that 'Fei had a pretty damn good point. The picture thing was spooky and maybe one of the others would know where to find Heero. The real Heero.

"Quatre, or even Trowa, should have been easier to find than me." Shit, Quatre was practically famous in the ESUN, how hard could it be to find him? Trowa, on the other hand, made a little more sense.

Wufei shook his head. "I can't reach either of them. I've left a dozen messages on the only number listed for Trowa Barton and Quatre's secretary is probably sick of my voice with how many times I've requested a call back."

Duo decided he was kinda glad he didn't carry a phone with him. Damn inconvenient sometimes, but most of the time he liked being completely off the grid.

Five pilots. How difficult could it be to get five people back together? Duo knew specifically where two of them were: traveling down I-78 in New Jersey. That only left three, or two if they weren't counting Heero. But Duo was definitely counting Heero.

The sound of Wufei's cell phone interrupted their thoughts. He answered curtly, said few things other than some "yes's" and "I see's" and then hung up. He turned to Duo. "Preventer got a call about a break in at a bank in Stockholm. Happened last night. Nothing was stolen, not a single dime, the only thing missing was the contents of a safe deposit box." He stared for a moment at his braided companion. "It was registered under the name Duo Maxwell."

Duo let his head fall backwards against the car's plush headrest. He'd been to Stockholm before, seeing as how close it was to Sanc, but he certainly didn't own a fucking safe deposit box. He closed his eyes tight and ran fingers over the shaved side of his head.

"Shit," he muttered, opening his eyes to look at Wufei. "Heero. It's got to be Heero. He always used my goddamn name for everything. Even when he enrolled in a fucking private school during the war."

Wufei raised his brows slowly and pocketed his cell phone, not breaking eye contact with the other man. Duo sighed raggedly; he needed sleep, he needed answers, but he knew those would now have to wait even longer. "Looks like we're going to Sweden."

Nine hours, 3,946 miles, and a slightly crankier Duo later, a new, more European, car made it to a Swedbank placed in the center of the city. It was still crawling with Preventers which made the braided man think that there was definitely something more to this than a simple break in. Wufei had told him nothing was stolen save for the oddly registered safe deposit box so why the need for all the security?

When they entered the building Wufei barely got a second look by the Preventers standing in the open doorway. There was an air of intimidation and Duo realized he must have been pretty hot shit within the organization to receive that kind of fearful respect. Of course, even during the war he'd had that effect on people.

Several people gave Duo a once over with suspicious eyes, but seeing as how he was traveling on the heels of their high and mighty Captain Chang, they didn't bother to say a word. He supposed he still probably looked like hell, the whole no sleep thing and all.

Wufei told Duo to wait a moment while he discussed something with a gray haired man. He might have been higher up in the chain of command but he seemed stiff around Wufei so he figured, despite the age difference, the Chinese man was still a superior. The whole situation began to make him feel inadequate again. 'Fei was making it and still he wasn't, he was just a fucking tagalong on a murder case that probably wasn't Heero Yuy, but the question was still annoyingly up for debate.

When Wufei returned to him he flicked his fingers forward in the air without another word and Duo followed him towards the back of the bank where the safe deposit boxes were housed. Normally there was a large gated doorway and locked metal door between the outside world and the hundreds of boxes lining the room's walls, but it was all open and a little ominously quiet for Duo's liking.

Once inside both men eyed the empty metal box, about one foot deep and several inches across, laying on a central table. It was totally empty, like they had expected. Shit, so what was the point?

"This is your department." The words coming from Wufei's mouth made the braided man squint. His department? The fuck was that supposed to mean?

It was obvious that his lack of response was a sign of either confusion or denial so again Wufei spoke. "You and I both know that Heero Yuy wouldn't be so stupid as to leave anything important in a safe deposit box. At least not out in the open, waiting to be found or stolen."

Duo swallowed. He knew what he meant and he knew why it was his department. Deception, sneakiness, thinking outside the box and all that shit. Yeah, that was his department.

He stepped forward and looked at the metal box. Ordinary. Fucking ordinary. His eyes roamed the edges and lines of the container, looking for some sort of clue, some sort of chink in the armor. Running his fingers along the bottom and in the creases he wondered wryly if Wufei only requested his help for the street smarts, when the pad of his pointer finger fell upon something that could possibly be the indication he was hoping for.

Duo grabbed for the knife residing in his back pocket. Lucky for them they'd flown private, Preventer private, and that meant no giving up the right to his personal weaponry. Fucking commercial airlines, he hated it.

He slipped the edge of his knife into the small space between metallic bottom and the box's long side and pulled up, angling the blade to wedge it in. With a pop, the floor of the container loosened slightly. He reached fingers into the space and pulled out two identical compact, white flash drives.

"Bingo." He held them up for Wufei to see, a smirk of satisfaction on his lips. "This what you were looking for, Mr. Preventer Man?"

Wufei grabbed the devices from his taunting fingers. He studied them in his hand with those quiet, black eyes. Each were marked with a date; one from several months ago, the other much more recent. "I'm sure they're password protected. Probably three tries before it wipes the contents."

Duo pointed to the drives with a long finger. He was confident and yet unsure. "Guess we better start figuring out just how well I actually know Heero Yuy."

He realized too late that his phrase should have been past tense. Knew.