"Bad Company"

Written By: Clara Barton & Kangofu_CB

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing. The following is an intellectual exercise with no intention of profit. That said, these characterizations, words, and situations are mine. Please ask before reprinting.

Rating: NC 17

Warnings: Post-Canon, Undercover Missions, Undercover as a Couple, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Human Trafficking, Gang Violence

Pairings: 3x2

Summary: "The only hell and the only paradise are the ones we build ourselves." - Unknown

This fic is dark. It explores the way the lines between good and bad, black and white are blurred, for those who work from the inside to bring down the bad guys. Clara and I do not, at any point, get graphic in our descriptions, but there is a lot of sensitive subject matter. We have tagged as clearly as possible, and individual chapters will contain individual warnings. As a general rule this fic contains: implied torture, death, description of a human trafficking organization and its methods, the surrounding implications of human trafficking including forced prostitution and what amounts to slavery, drug and alcohol use, and drug trafficking. We understand that these subjects are not for everyone. We have made every effort to be respectful and accurate without being gratuitous or disturbing. The bad guys are bad. The good guys are, sometimes, not much better.

We use a liberal sprinkling of Spanish and Russian in this fic, and neither of us are native speakers of either. We’ve relied heavily on the internet, and so we apologize for any mistakes. We have also included translations at the end of each chapter in the form of footnotes.

"Bad Company"

 

Chapter 2: I Still Miss Someone

I go out on a party
And look for a little fun
But I find a darkened corner
'Cause I still miss someone.
- Johnny Cash

---

Duo grinned cheekily at the young female agent staring wide-eyed at him from across the hall.

A hand shoved him from behind, between where his arms were cuffed tightly behind his back.

"Move it, Maxwell, we're not here to sightsee."

"Aw, Agent Po, but I'm enjoyin' the scenery!"

He winked at the same agent, watching as she dropped her eyes and hurried away, blushing.

Sally Po snorted, giving him another shove, and he stumbled towards the elevator.

"I'm gonna have to file police brutality, you keep shovin' me, Agent Po."

"You wish I was getting brutal with you, Maxwell."

He grinned at her, too.

The ride up to the thirteenth floor was made in silence, Duo still leering cheerfully and Po rolling her eyes.

"Most buildings don't got a thirteenth floor," Duo remarked, for maybe the hundredth time, "'cause it's unlucky. And I see they still have you in this shit closet with no view. Maybe if you actually arrested me for something I did, they'd give you a nice corner office and a secretary."

Po shut the door on his rant, sighing in exasperation. "Here, turn around and I'll unlock-"

Duo dropped the cuffs on her desk with a metallic rattle, settling himself into the chair across from her desk, rubbing his wrists. He crossed his ankle over his knee and slouched lower in the chair, looking up at her with an arched eyebrow as she pinched the bridge of her nose.

She circled around her desk and took a seat behind it, pulling out a file and flipping it open to skim.

"Ok, I have your report. Do you have anything to add?"

Duo shrugged. "I tagged Ferro's shipments, so you should be able to track them to their destinations and use that information to trace the rest of the organizations he's working with. I didn't get much on Shuisheng's setup because I don't blend," he gestured, loosely, at himself, "but I did manage to create an... opening, that you might be able to utilize on one of the resource satellites. It's in the report."

Sally nodded. "We've been working with Gong Li towards that end. I'll need you to brief him before he ships out."

He nodded again, waiting.

She wouldn't have risked his cover to bring him in to discuss a report he'd delivered two days ago with nothing high priority in it. She wanted something else.

"We're having a briefing on Barton's mission today, and I want you to sit in."

Well, at least she was saving him the trouble of bugging the meeting room, or her uniform, or other, riskier methods of getting intel. Like hacking the security program he'd helped write.

An official invitation was always better.

"He alright?" Duo forced the words to sound casual, merely inquiring rather than demanding.

"Zechs says he's fine."

Duo snorted his opinion of that. "Zechs says a lot of things. Why do you want me there?"

"We have to adjust the parameters to accommodate the new legislation Relena is trying to push through."

They were bumping up the timeline.

It was literally the fastest way to fuck-up an op.

He sighed. "Lead the way."

*

No one looked all that surprised by his presence when he followed Sally into the small briefing room, even though Duo was back from his previous assignment nearly a week early. Five pairs of eyes glanced up at him as he leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, then they turned back to where Une was setting up a projector as Sally slid into the remaining empty seat.

"Barton has been embedded in the Sinaloa Cartel for the last eight months, working his way up to the upper echelons of the organization, trying to gather enough evidence to shut down operations permanently and prosecute this woman-"

The projector flashed, the woman appearing on the screen. She had short, dark hair, full lips, and her eyes were hidden behind large sunglasses. She was lounging, the very picture of relaxation, on a teak chair next to a sparkling pool. At the edges of the photo, Duo could make out the silhouettes of several heavily-armed men.

"Alessandra Vasiliev. We believe this is an alias. She's the current head of the cartel, and her rise in the ranks was littered with bodies. She also nearly doubled the Cartel's territory following her takeover, most of it carved out after the Barton Uprising in the subsequent power vacuum."

They had sent Trowa to the fucking Sinaloa Cartel.

What in the actual fuck?

Duo and Trowa had a system when they went into deep cover, something they'd worked out over the years, something that helped both of them feel reassured. They mailed postcards to dead drops at predetermined intervals, and although they'd both missed drops in the past - undercover ops were notoriously unpredictable, after all - Duo had checked his box when he'd returned two days ago and found there'd been nothing from the other man in weeks. He was well past his standard check-in time.

Duo didn't actually have any official details about Trowa's current op. Duo had been gone on his own mission when the other man had left, probably halfway between one of the hundred L2 to L5 runs he'd gone on, tracking contraband weapons and infiltrating low-level smuggling operations. Trowa's first postcard had been blank, just an ocean vista, Bienvenidos Mexico! in curling script on the front. So he knew where in the Earth Sphere Trowa was, but not much else. Subsequent postcards had narrowed the locale slightly, using vintage maps, picturesque resorts, and tourists traps. Duo could find Trowa, if he had to; they'd always made sure of that.

He hadn't planned to find out he was neck-deep in one of the worst crime syndicates in the Earth Sphere.

The projector flashed again.

"Known associates. Salome - no last name." Young, blonde, beautiful. All the mannerisms of a merciless killer, judging by the assessing stare she was giving the unknown man pictured with her.

"There seems to be some question as to what role she actually plays in the organization, though it's common knowledge that she's killed a half-dozen people in rival operations."

"Anhil - last name also unknown. Lieutenant." Dark, muscular, aviators and slicked-back hair.

"Branson. Former accountant. Presumed dead."

More faces flashed across the screen, most of them young, many of them beautiful. Vasiliev definitely had a type. All of them were likely viewed as expendable, based on the sheer number that Une said were deceased. Enforcers, lieutenants, foot soldiers. Only the first half-dozen had been around with any kind of consistency.

Une shut the projector off. "The Sinaloa Cartel is the largest drug and human trafficking organization in operation between the colonies and Earth. People pay for passage to Earth, are conscripted as drug mules, and upon arrival, find themselves deeply in the Cartel's debt, forced to work off their cost of passage plus interest. Most end up as sex workers, getting trafficked from location to location."

The lucky ones ended up that way, Duo didn't say.

Most of them ended up dead.

He knew all about the Sinaloa Cartel.

"The organization itself is large, multinational, and fiercely loyal to Vasiliev. She took brutal control of the Cartel, killed those who didn't agree with her, and terrorizes anyone who dissents."

And they'd sent Trowa into the middle of it.

Jesus.

Duo glanced around the table in disbelief.

No one seemed to think any of this was a problem. He was surrounded by the peak of the Preventers organization, and they didn't seem to understand anything about what they'd asked Trowa to do.

Zechs looked bored, for chrissake, though Noin at least seemed to have the sense to be somewhat concerned, judging by the furrow of her brow. Wufei was his typical stoic self, having never considered the possibility that something might be actually, literally impossible.

Like bringing down the Sinaloa Cartel. It had been operating since before the colonies.

Sally was watching Duo, her face dark and unreadable.

"Barton is well-placed to provide us the opportunity to implant another agent," Zechs finally spoke. "The Cartel has a serious problem with leaks as of late, and they've managed to... misplace their accountant. It wouldn't be a stretch for them to lose their electronic security expert. We could get someone in and get access to their system more quickly, hopefully before the new legislation passes."

They intended to send in another agent.

Duo realized, belatedly, that they meant to send Heero, of all fucking people.

As an 'electronic security expert'.

For the fucking cartel.

Heero wasn't total shit at undercover work - that title unquestioningly belonged to Wufei. But he wasn't great, either, and what he excelled at was undercover work involving electronic espionage. Where there were no face to face meetings, no people to convince of his sincerity.

"You want Heero to infiltrate the Sinaloa Cartel?" Duo's words were flat, and he hadn't even been planning to speak before they were tumbling out of his mouth. "You can't be serious."

Zechs sneered at him, but Duo was long accustomed to that. He knew what Zechs saw when he looked at him, with the ratty jeans and the tattoos and- Well, at least Zechs, of all people, couldn't judge him for his hair, but that was about the only thing the other man hadn't had a snide remark for at some point in the past.

It was Heero who looked the most visibly affronted.

"You don't think I can do it." The words were delivered in his most arch, nasal tone, not a hint of a question to them.

"Heero's computer skills are more than up to par-"

Noin was speaking, but Duo waved her off, still looking at Heero.

Duo slouched against the wall a little more, let his posture go loose and lax, eyeing the other man insolently. "Eh lindo," he grinned, the dark tone conveying more meaning than the actual words, "favor va a matar más rápido que una bala."

Taking in the dark-haired man's blank expression, Duo sighed. "You don't speak the language, and even if you did, you don't speak the lingo. This isn't like working a computer case. Your skills don't matter. Or at least, they don't matter as much as your loyalty."

More blank looks, and not just from Heero.

"A gang like that?" he gestured vaguely towards the screen where the projector had shown the key members of the cartel. "You gotta prove you belong before you get to anything good."

The fact that Trowa had made it so far into the inner circle in such a short time meant he'd probably had to do a lot of fucked up shit.

Sally was sitting back in her chair, glancing over the files that had gone unreviewed on the table so far, but Une was watching him shrewdly, her face thoughtful. He had Heero's full attention now, and Noin's too.

Zechs, on the other hand-

"Eh, chochito," he called to the other man, who scowled, recognizing he'd been insulted, even if he wasn't sure exactly how. "How'd Branson die?"

The blond shrugged, unconcerned. "Barton didn't say."

"Yeah?" Duo huffed a humorless laugh. "He probably didn't say who else he's killed, either, but even you can't be that stupid."

Zechs rolled his eyes as he stood, gathering his things. "I'll tell Barton we're sending someone in. My presence isn't required for this melodrama. One former pilot is as good as another." He breezed out, hair trailing behind him like a shimmering, platinum cape.

Talk about melodrama.

Taking the abandoned chair, Duo scooted into the table, addressing Une earnestly. "Look, this is what I do, this is what I'm here for. My skills, my experience, it's for ops like this. Heero's great behind a screen, but, no offense, this is out of his area of expertise. I speak the language, I'm familiar with the way the cartel works, and my computer skills are as good as or better than his."

"The cartel speaks Russian as well as Spanish, Duo," Sally murmured, not looking up from her report.

"I'm passable. Izvinitye, ya plokho ponimayu po-russki, no ya mogu zakazat' napitok."

Heero snorted.

Duo'd forgotten he spoke Russian.

"If I hadn't been gone when this came down, I'd have been first choice for this op anyway, and we all know it."

It grated on Heero, Duo could see, but he really didn't care at the moment. He'd deal with that, later, once this was straightened out. Before Heero ran off and got himself - or worse, himself and Trowa - killed.

"Alright, Maxwell," Une said slowly, "you want this assignment so bad, you've got it."

*

Sally smuggled him out the same way she'd brought him in - cuffed and smirking - depositing him outside the back entrance of the building. She didn't offer to unlock the cuffs this time, just held her hand out expectantly as Duo jimmied them off and tossed them to her.

"Good work in there," she offered, ducking back inside before he had a chance to respond.

He made it about three blocks before Heero caught up, elbowing him into the narrow alley space between two of the downtown buildings and cornering him just out of sight of the street.

"What was that, Duo?" Heero's face was hard, jaw tight.

"Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me that while I was gone you suddenly became an expert on gang infiltration. You don't even look the part, Heero." Duo stared down at him, his own teeth clenched, chin jutting out mulishly.

Heero sighed. "This is a bad idea, and you know it. There's a reason they don't partner agents who-"

"It's a worse idea for you to go. You'll be dead inside a week. 'Death before disloyalty' isn't just pretty words to these people. Do you have any idea what kind of fucked up shit goes on in the Sinaloa Cartel? Because I do. And if you aren't careful, you'll get Trowa killed while you're at it. The first time you hesitate, the first time you look soft, they'll be on to you. Not even Howard does business with Sinaloa, if he can avoid it."

Taking a step back, Heero seemed to surrender the point.

"That's true," he conceded, "but you can't claim objectivity, either. You're invested."

"Of course I'm invested, Heero," Duo scrubbed a hand through his hair in frustration. "Don't be stupid. You're invested too. We're all invested." The words came out more bitter than Duo had intended, but that didn't change the fact that they were true.

Heero half-shrugged, humming noncommittally.

Duo relaxed some at the other man's casual attitude. Maybe he was going to actually let it go.

"Come over for dinner," Heero offered suddenly. "It'll take a few days to get everything set up. You've been gone for months."

So he hadn't given up, he'd just changed tactics.

Duo snorted. "Why, so Quatre can ferret out some more information he's not supposed to have, and give you more ammunition to make your case? I'll pass, thanks."

*

Despite his arguments, Duo still found himself on Quatre and Heero's doorstep for dinner two nights later, glancing around reflexively as he rang the doorbell.

Duo's face had been blasted all over the colony news when he'd been captured by OZ, but it was the face of a teenage boy ten years his junior, and while Duo traded on his name for his work with Preventers, his face actually wasn't all that recognizable anymore.

The hair, maybe, but not the face. He'd worn it in a loose tail tonight, just in case. He'd even gone to the trouble of making himself look more presentable, losing the worn jeans and leather he was most comfortable in and digging out slacks and a collared shirt for the occasion. Anything to make him more anonymous.

Still, that didn't stop him from being cautious, from looking over his shoulder as he stood on the front stoop of a modest townhome in a pricey neighborhood.

It wouldn't do for him to be recognized outside Quatre Winner's home.

Heero opened the door with his characteristically impassive face, glancing over Duo's shoulders with the same overabundance of caution Duo employed before stepping back and motioning him inside.

Duo stepped over the threshold, hands in his trouser pockets, taking in the changes to the room since he'd last visited. It had been months, since before his last assignment, and it would likely be months again before he was back.

Quatre appeared around the corner with a bottle of wine and two glasses, the overtly cheerful look on his face putting Duo instantly on edge. Quatre Winner only looked that happy when he already knew he'd won.

Or when he was planning something he was certain would be successful.

"Duo! I'm so happy you made it!"

Duo accepted the hug and the wine without comment, following the blond-haired man through to the kitchen.

"Love what you've done with the place," Duo said, glancing around, noting the new paint and refinished hardwoods. Quatre had purchased the townhome with Heero almost a year previously, something smaller and less ostentatious than the typical Winner mansion, when their relationship had gotten serious, and they'd been working on it ever since.

"Oh yes, thank you! I forgot you hadn't seen it. We had Trowa over not long after the floors were finished."

Bright blue eyes flashed over at him from where Quatre had turned to pull something out of the oven.

So it was going to be like that.

Duo held back the sigh threatening to escape, refusing to show any weakness.

Not that it mattered. Quatre was clearly planning to dig it all out tonight anyway.

He should have just left early for Mexico. Surely infiltrating a cartel was less likely to blow up in his face than navigating dinner with Quatre when he was on a mission.

Heero snorted at the look on his face.

Duo tilted his glass back, taking several long swallows of what was undoubtedly expensive wine. Maybe if he got drunk enough this would seem like fun.

"Speaking of Trowa," the other man continued, basting what appeared to be a perfectly-roasted chicken, "have you heard from him recently?"

"Not a word," Duo quipped, looking around for the wine. "He left on his assignment while I was working this last job." Heero helpfully passed him the bottle, smirking all the while. Duo filled the glass well above what one would consider polite, perching on a stool at the nearby bar.

"How strange," Quatre mused. "I really thought you kept in better communication than that, your relationship being what it is."

Duo kept his face carefully blank.

What Quatre knew versus what Quatre knew were two very different things.

Quatre suspected a lot of things about his and Trowa's 'relationship', but he didn't know nearly as much as he implied.

"It must be really hard on the two of you, both of you gone for long periods, different places, different times. It'll be nice to be on a job together for once, I'm sure."

Heero had a big fucking mouth. Duo glared at him over the edge of his glass, not that the other man looked the least bit contrite.

"This isn't the kinda job anyone would call nice, Q," Duo answered, rolling his eyes. "We'll be lucky if we don't end up dead. Or worse."

"What's worse than dead?" Heero asked, sarcastically.

Duo could think of more than a few things, and the fact that Heero couldn't only proved his point that Heero didn't need to be going on this assignment. He shrugged in response.

"Still," Quatre said, expertly quartering the chicken, "it will be good to work together again." He paused, knife in hand. "Unless, of course, something happens, and your objectivity is compromised, and the whole operation is blown. That could be problematic."

Blowing his breath out of his nose, Duo prayed for patience.

"Are you-" He paused as a plate of food appeared in front of him. "Are you trying to convince me that you could go into an undercover operation with any of us and maintain the objectivity to stand by and do nothing? Because I'm not buying."

Quatre took the seat next to him, where Duo could just see him out of the corner of his eye. He brought a forkful of food to his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. "I'm not an undercover Preventers agent."

"You're a goddamn Gundam pilot!" Duo sucked his breath in through his teeth, already regretting his outburst. "Look," he tried again, "this is not like a regular mission. This involves the biggest players in the game, and Trowa is already at the very top. He's not going to be able to just leave. It doesn't work like that. He has to see this through to the end, and if I go back him up, then at least maybe he has a shot of surviving it."

Duo turned to stare Heero down, to watch his face as he continued.

"This isn't about objectivity or investment or whatever words you wanna use to make me feel bad for putting you off an op you aren't qualified for. This is about me goin' and doin' what I can to keep Tro's ass out of the fire, regardless of whatever relationship you think I have with him. I'd do the same for either one of you. Now, did you invite me over for dinner, or was this strictly a guilt trip? Because I'm not that hungry at the moment."

Heero, at least, had the grace to look abashed, but Quatre simply nodded as though Duo had confirmed some private speculation.

The rest of the evening passed without incident, Quatre apparently feeling he'd made his point and Heero finally seeming to understand he'd been about to be in way over his head. They asked a few questions about his recent travels, though nothing about the specifics of his mission, and gave him a tour of the nearly-complete townhouse.

On his way out the door, Quatre pressed something into his hands without comment, waving him out with a quelling look.

Behind the wheel of his car, Duo pulled it out to examine whatever it was.

The size of a quarter and about twice as thick, it was a sleek, nondescript black device with no

identifying marks. Holding it under the faint light from the streetlamp, Duo found a small switch along the edge that he could flip with his thumbnail.

A few seconds later, Quatre texted him.

In case of emergency.

*

Duo dropped his keys in the bowl on the entry table and looked around at the dark, empty apartment. He'd only been back a couple of days, but it looked as unlived-in as ever, still echoing and hollow. He and Trowa had agreed to share a space long before they'd agreed to much of anything else, snagging a two bedroom in a moderately good part of town where the neighbors didn't pay you much attention, but you weren't likely to get robbed either.

And then they'd proceeded to basically never live in it.

Une kept both of them out on missions a good portion of the time, and their downtime seldom overlapped for more than a few days or weeks before one or both of them were out again.

Duo had gotten a cactus as a joke, since he couldn't get a pet, and it had been funny until the damn thing had died of neglect.

A fucking cactus.

He poked his head in what was ostensibly Trowa's room on his way down the hall. The room was impersonal and neat as a pin, Trowa having left in the middle of Duo's assignment, the bed made and the room stale. Duo's room looked marginally more lived-in, and Duo suspected Trowa had spent at least some of his nights there while he'd been gone.

Duo did the same, when Trowa left on an assignment and Duo was still home. Slept wherever Trowa had slept, whichever bed that happened to be in, until the sheets no longer held his scent.

He sighed as he unlaced his shoes, kicking them into the closet, and stripped off the stuffy clothes, tossing them in the hamper, before reaching for worn sweats and a t-shirt.

No, he couldn't quite be objective about Trowa.

Not that he was particularly objective where any of the former pilots were concerned, but Quatre was right in thinking that Trowa was different.

Hell, Duo hadn't been able to be objective about Trowa since he'd found him at the circus, bewildered and unsure, and had sent Quatre to straighten him out. His objectivity had decreased exponentially when the other man - boy, really - had chosen to fight with them despite his amnesia, unsure of how much good he'd even be. Had quietly befriended him, tried to be supportive, had even kept his mouth shut when Trowa used the godforsaken ZERO system.

At least he'd come out of that with his head screwed on straight.

Then there'd been the Barton incident, Trowa playing the role he played best - double agent. Done so well even Duo hadn't been sure of him, but he'd still managed to get both of them out of there with their skin still intact.

Despite Heero's fucking machismo.

Then they'd been approached by Wufei, contracted by Une, agreed to an apparently endless string of undercover missions and infiltration jobs, and at some point...

Well, at some point they'd found a connection, something that mattered, and what had started as stress relief and companionship had become something else entirely that neither of them spent a lot of time talking about - or, in Duo's case, thinking about.

And damn Quatre for meddling in it anyway!

Duo was a big fan of 'if no one asked, then he didn't tell', and Trowa wasn't exactly in the habit of discussing his personal business, and for the most part, it had been fine.

Until Trowa had gotten injured on an op and had ended up in the hospital afterwards with a raging infection, and Quatre had just happened to turn up to offer his assistance only to find Duo sitting at the other man's bedside, emotions a tangled mess.

And that had been all she wrote.

Quatre didn't ask and Duo didn't tell, but obviously, Quatre had said something to Heero, who was like a fucking pitbull, and who had been hounding Duo about whatever was going on with him and Trowa ever since.

Falling into bed with a groan, Duo tugged one of the pillows closer, tucking it under his chin, and imagined that he could still smell Trowa on it, which was a fucking joke because the other man had been gone for months already.

Didn't matter anyway. Duo would be seeing him soon enough.

Of course, it remained to be seen whether Trowa would be happy about that.

Duo had a feeling the answer was going to be a resounding no.

tbc...