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"Without Virtue"Written By: Clara Barton 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: Drama, angst, Character Death, violence,
gore, language, drug use, language, yaoi sex, het sex, language, AU Pairings: 2xSolo, 6x3, 1x2x3, 5xM, 5x H, 4x S,
4x R, 13x 6, 13x?, probably a few more as well. Summary: "When virtue has slept it arises invigorated." - Nietzsche. A darktale of violence, lust, and vengeance in a city without justice.
" Without Virtue"
It had been eight months since the death of Mike Kennedy, but Alex Smith still walked the streets of L2 looking like his heart had been cut out. He had also starting doing stupid shit – at sixteen he was too young to be put to work in any of the legitimate businesses in L2, so he hung out with gangs that ran whores, drugs, and guns into the other quarters of the city instead. A month ago it had gotten his ass sent to jail for a few hours after he had picked a fight with a cop to allow an injured gang member to escape, until Duo and Howard had managed to pull enough strings to get him out, but it hadn't discouraged him from hanging out with that same bad crowd. So Duo decided to intervene. Maybe it was because he felt guilty over Mike's death – if he had acted quicker or hadn't been distracted by the incredibly distractful Heero Yuy, he could have saved the kids life – or maybe it was because Duo knew what it felt like to have your best friend die on you. Duo knew what it felt like to be completely unmoored, to wander the streets at all hours looking for something to do that made you feel alive again. But Alex was sixteen. Too young to throw away his life and definitely too young to have the tired, cynical look of an L2 street thug in his eyes. With the permission of Alex's mother, Duo picked the kid up from school one day and took him to the local gym. "Boxing lessons," Duo explained to him when Alex started to complain and said he didn't need to lift weights. "I'm not worried about people punching me," Alex sneered. Which told Duo that he was definitely worried about people shooting him. That, Duo knew, was entirely his fault. Mike's death had been one of only several incidents of outsiders bringing guns and violence into L2, but in the intervening months it had only gotten worse. Duo had to split his time between retribution against the Sanc cops – it took effort and a lot of work to kill the bastards and it make it untraceable – and protecting his own quarter. It wasn't as if L2 was helpless – every adult had training in firearms and self defense and was put on security rotation for one month each year, to ensure the continued safety of L2 – but these weren't gangs trying to push in on them. This was something else. Something organized and something relentless. Every body they searched had that same M tattoo with the three dots, but as yet no one had ratted out who they worked for or why they were invading L2. It was a mystery, and Duo hated mysteries. What he hated even more than that, however, was to see a kid afraid of outsiders. "You should be worried about people punching you," Duo argued and to demonstrate his point swooped in and delivered a quick succession of hits to Alex's stomach that left the teen doubled over in pain. "Fuck, man. What the hell was that for?" Duo couldn't help but grin. "For being a pussy." Alex glared at him and jumped back to his feet and rushed Duo. He easily sidestepped the boy and danced on the balls of his feet, a shit eating grin plastered on his face that Duo had perfected as the ultimate tool to annoy his opponents. Duo let the boy attempt to hit him for a few minutes, always jumping back and keeping him at bay, but didn't bother to hit him again until the end, when Alex growled in frustration and reached for the gun Duo knew he had started to carry around. He grabbed the boy's hand and delivered a brutal punch to his wrist, sending the gun flying from his desk and skittering across the concrete floor of the gym. "How old are you?" Duo demanded. Alex yanked free of his grip and glared at him. "I'm sixteen." "Then you gotta wait two more years before you can carry a gun, shit head." "I'm not a kid!" Alex insisted with a shout. It was all Duo could do not to roll his eyes – why was it that whenever a kid wanted to prove they were grown up they always acted like a child? "No," Duo agreed after a moment. "You aren't. You've seen things no kid should ever have to see." The quiet words got Alex's attention in a way that Duo making fun of him never could have. He watched the boy swallow hard several times. "But you owe it to Mike to be smarter than this, Alex. You owe it to your Mom to come home at a decent hour so she doesn't have to stay up all night, picturing you bleeding out in a gutter somewhere." Alex opened his mouth to argue, but Duo shook his head in warning. "It isn't your time yet, Alex." "That's such bullshit! Everyone knows that when you were my age you were kicking Core ass! Why do I have to wait? You didn't!" "You're right," Duo agreed. He took off his jacket and then pulled off his shirt. Alex's eyes went a little wide as they took in all of the tattoos on Duo's arms and chest. He turned around and let him admire the back view for a moment as well. "You want this, right?" Duo asked. "You want the ink and the reputation? You want to feel big and bad and tough and you want to prove to the world that nothing can touch you, right?" Alex nodded eagerly. "Do you know which of these I got first?" Alex shook his head in the negative. "This one," Duo said and jabbed a finger against the Celtic cross over his heart. "I was eight when the Maxwell Church was burned down by OZ gunrunners. It took me three months to track down the bastards who did it and kill them. So Howard let me get the cross, because I earned that, at the age of eight when I killed four men and two women." Duo next pointed to the reaper scythe on his rip hip. "I started running with the Reaper Crew when I was ten, but it wasn't until I was eleven that I killed my first Sanc cop. It was some fat, middle aged bastard who wandered into L2 looking for a cheap fuck." Duo stepped closer to Alex, gratified when the boy actually stumbled backwards a step. He showed him his left wrist in Alex's face so he could see the Latin words Messor de Mors that were inked across the veins on the inside. "This one I got for being the only Reaper who escaped the shootout when I was thirteen that killed off the rest of the crew." He pointed higher up, on the outside of his forearm, to Misericordia In Anima Mea. "This was a gift from Abe Greenfeld when I saved his daughter from getting raped by Core crank dealer. I was fourteen." He started on his right arm, taking vicious pleasure in the slight green tinge to Alex's face. "This –" "I get it," Alex interrupted. "I get it." "Do you?" Duo asked. "It's not just ink. You earned those – each of them." "It's funny, I never think of it like that – of earning them. I paid for them, Alex. I paid for each of these with my blood, with my pain, hell, even my fucking tears." "What about that one?" Alex asked, and nodded to Solo's name across Duo's clavicle. "When did you get that?" "When I was seventeen." It wasn't, Duo thought, one of the stories the kids probably liked to tell about him. To his knowledge, now that Solo was dead, Alex would become only the third person to even know it. "It was a fucked up time in my life – after the Reaper Crew I sort of drifted between gangs for a few years before I fell in with the Deliverance Crew." Alex's eyes widened, the reputation of that particular gang was very well known. "Yeah," Duo agreed with the look. "Things went to shit real fucking quick. The Deliverance boys thought they could run guns into L1, compete with OZ, and I was at the age when I was stupid enough to want to fit in with a gang and belong. They planned a hit on one of the OZ warehouses, but I was a moron and left behind my cut," Duo used the slang term for the leather vest that members of gangs wore to identify their allegiance, "so Freddy – the leader – made me go back and get it. I bitched up a storm about it, but I went. By the time I got back, the crew was in the middle of it. I was ready to charge in, but some pig grabbed me and threw my ass in jail for breaking fucking curfew." "What?" Alex asked in dismay. "I know," Duo agreed with a shake of his head. To this day it rankled him that Solo had pulled that crap. "Nobody's given a shit about curfew for the last thirty years, but this stupid asshole made me spend a night in the holding cell for being out too late." Duo shook his head. "In the morning he let me out, but he made me watch the news scrolls. Every single member of the Deliverance Crew that went on that run died. I was the only one that survived it – and that's only because some fucking pig got to me first." "Solo?" Alex guessed. "Yep. So after that, my life was his." Duo tapped one finger on the tat. "Still is. He saved me from going down in flames. I'm going to do the same for you." Alex regarded him with a wary expression for a moment but then he sighed. "I'm not going to have to get your name tattooed on my chest though, am I? Because, no offense, but that's a little gay." "You are so going to get your ass kicked, you little fucker," Duo said and charged him. After he had pinned Alex and given him a few more good-natured, slightly pulled punches, Duo directed him towards one of the heavy punching bags along one wall of the gym. "The reason you need to learn boxing is because you need to learn discipline," Duo instructed. "You're right – you're not going to meet too many people who want to punch you. These days everyone has at least one gun and who the fuck knows how many knives. But those weapons can be taken from you – like that gun you're not going to touch again for two years. But your fists… if someone takes those from you then you've got other issues." He showed Alex a few simple lunges and leaned back against the wall to watch his form. "Boxing lets you build up your body and focus your mind. You got a lot of rage, over Mike's death, right?" Alex nodded and delivered a vicious right jab to the punching bag. "That's good, but it's going to get you killed." Alex turned to stare at Duo and he took the opportunity to kick the heavy bag forward and catch the boy in the groin. "It blinds you," Duo explained with a grin when Alex glared up at him. "Makes you stupid. You'll get yourself killed if you act in anger. Right now, when you think about Mike's death what do you feel?" Alex swallowed hard and shook his head, indicating that he couldn't talk about it. "Sick, right? This hot, sick knot of pain deep in your belly that seems to be eating away at everything inside you?" Duo suggested. Alex nodded and blinked back tears. "Gotta cool that down, buddy. Turn all that into ice and don't ever let it melt." "Is that how you feel about Solo's death?" Duo smiled tightly and rubbed at a spot just below his ribs. "Not yet, which is why Papa Bear and Baby Bear Catalonia are still alive. If I moved on them now… shit, they're vicious fucks but they're smart. Catalonia knows I'm coming for him." "You've been killing cops," Alex pointed out as he resumed punching the bag. "Yep, but that ain't personal – it's not about Solo. That's about keeping the balance." "I don't understand." "Good. I don't want you to, not yet." Alex glared at him. "But I want to do something, man! I heard about the guys with the M tattoos – I know the guy that killed Mike had one! I know they're outsiders. That's why I'm running with the Nightmare Crew." Duo shook his head. Even though you weren't allowed to own a gun until you were eighteen in L2 most of the gangs started to recruit prospects who were sixteen or seventeen – a perfect age since they weren't good for anything but bitch work. The Nightmare Crew weren't the worst of the gangs in L2 – the rebuilt Deliverance Crew took the cake on that front – but they weren't one of the light weights either. "Fine," Duo said. "I'll give you a choice – which is more than I ever got. You want to run with the Nightmare Crew and get fucked over when the war starts – and we all know it's coming – then go for it. I won't stop you." Alex frowned. "What's the other choice?" "You show up here every day after school and I teach you everything I know. You go to school, you respect your Mom – and you stop stealing shit from Howie's store. And I won't treat you like a kid unless you act like one." Alex considered his choices. Duo had enough of a reputation in this part of L2 to be something of an urban legend among the teenaged boys, and Alex was of the exact age to be enamored with the stories of Duo's ruthless creativity as it had recently been called. If Alex worked his way up the ranks of the Nightmare Crew and managed to keep himself alive, he was smart enough and tough enough that he could be the leader one day. But if he became Duo's apprentice he was guaranteed a whole other level of respect in L2 than that of a mere gang leader. "I'll think about it," Alex finally said. Duo was happier to hear that than an immediate decision, and he nodded. "Good."
He waited until it was just after midnight before he
caught the subway to L1. She lived in a middle class, run of the mill neighborhood, in an actual house. The brick structure looked… cozy, and it unsettled Duo enough that he spent over an hour looking at it before deciding to break in. He jumped the fence to her back yard after ascertaining that she didn't have a dog and broke the glass on her back door and let himself in. The place wasn't alarmed – a stupid, stupid move on her part that Duo made a mental note to rectify as soon as he could – and there was enough external light from the streetlights that navigating the dark rooms took him no time at all. He found her asleep in her bed and couldn't resist the urge to give her a bit of a scare. Duo put on his leather gloves and pulled out his knife before approaching the bed. He clamped one hand over her mouth and used the other to press the knife against her left side, the angle perfectly poised to enter between her ribs and sink into her heart. Hilde reacted instantly, biting down on his hand and kicking her legs upwards to catch his knife arm and send him staggering back for a moment. He had his gun out and trained on her a full three seconds before she managed to find her own sidearm. "Dead. Five times over." Hilde was breathing hard, but she kept the gun focused on him. "Who the hell are you?" "I'm Uncle Duo," he introduced himself with a broad grin. Hilde's eyes narrowed. "What the hell are you doing in my house at one in the morning?" she demanded. "Proving to you that you need to move out of Sanc." "I'm not leaving Sanc," Hilde insisted. "Then you're an idiot. Just like that reporter friend of yours – Meilin Long?" The gun wavered. "What are you talking about? Did you – did you know her?" "Yeah, I met her once. And you're just like her. Jesus Christ, you don't even have an alarm system on your house!" She shrugged. "Any halfway decent thief would be able to by-pass anything I could afford. There's no point wasting the money." Duo was impressed with her logic, even if he didn't agree with her. "I'll get you one then. And stop sleeping with your gun on the nightstand. Keep it under your pillow and keep another under each side of your bed." "Citizens of Sanc can only have one registered gun. Even cops." Duo rolled his eyes. "Then get some unregistered guns." "That's illegal. I'm an officer of the law and I have to uphold –" "Oh fuck that bullshit. You think Solo didn't have a damn arsenal in his apartment?" Duo had smuggled the guns into the apartment himself, since one of the conditions of Solo, a cop, being allowed to live in L2 meant that he didn't get to carry a weapon unless he was on the monthly security rotation. "Solo lived in L2," Hilde pointed out. "What the hell does that have to do with anything?" "My neighborhood –" "You seriously think your neighborhood is going to protect you when OZ sends hit men after you? Or are you implying that Solo had to protect himself from everyone who lived around him in L2? He told me about you – your weekend adventures in L2 with your Dad and your real life with your Mom here in L1. I know your type – you fucking half-ins are all the same. You think having a relative in L2 gives you street cred but you look down on the quarter just as much as the rest of the assholes do." Hilde didn't bother to deny it, and he gave her points for that, at least. With a sigh, Duo finally put away both his gun and his knife. "You'll do fine against any of the OZ regulars," he decided, "but if you piss off the Catalonias enough they might send a real professional after you – and that you wouldn't be able to survive." "Then I guess I'll have to try not to piss either of them off," Hilde said. Duo liked her attitude – it reminded him of himself – and he could see what Solo had liked about her. "I appreciate you looking after the kid a month ago," he told her. "Of course. That's my job. I always try to look out for L2." It was said a little defensively, as if she was trying to make up for her earlier, tacit admission to looking down on the quarter. "Yeah. I know. Anyway, I'm sorry I haven't stopped by before now, but I've been a little busy." Hilde arched an eyebrow. "Eleven dead cops in the last six months," she said in agreement. "Including my new training officer. I was reassigned three times before they just gave up and took me off probation and gave me full rights." "Sorry to be a hassle," Duo said with a grin. "Those cops…" "Were all crooked." "But were they irredeemable?" "Were they what?" "Irredeemable? I know you – and Solo – have that whole motto of once a scumbag always a scumbag, but have you considered that some of these cops are only crooked because they don't have any other choice?" "Fuck me," Duo muttered and ran a hand through his hair. "You're serious, aren't you?" She regarded him levelly. "I might be one of them – if Solo hadn't been my training officer. There's a rookie right now who's borderline – he hangs around Merquise all the time but he's kind to the whores and drug addicts in holding." "Don't go writing off Merquise just yet," Duo cautioned her. "Really? He's practically Catalonia's right hand." "No, his daughter is his right hand. Merquise is just well connected, but he's not crooked. Not too crooked, anyway." Hilde shook her head. "He protects the meth labs in the Core. The rookie I mentioned – he actually arrested one of the dealers one day and brought him in. When Merquise cut him loose they had a huge fight in the middle of the station." "Sounds like your rookie isn't borderline after all," Duo pointed out. Hilde frowned. "Not with stuff like that – but the other stuff… every single arrest we make on someone connected with the Barton foundation somehow finds its way to his desk and then it always gets buried or written off." "How long has he been a rookie?" "Three months – he went through the Academy on an accelerated pace and finished his training in four months instead of six, so he's really fresh. Catalonia – Dorothy Catalonia – has it out for him, though. Don't know why, but she hates him. Every time they send a cop into L2 for any reason it's him. It's like she wants him to die." "Do you need any more proof that he's on the level, then?" Duo asked. Hilde sighed. "No. But the Barton stuff bothers me." "No one's a saint. Not even Solo was," he added when she started to speak up. "Even your reporter friend – she meant well but she was fucking stupid. I don't want you to end up like her, okay?" Hilde nodded. "Good. I'll come back in a few days and install a security system for you. In the meantime, can you give me any intel on your coworkers?" "What kind of intel?" "The kind that I put on my list and check twice before giving them a Christmas present. What kind do you think? I need intel so I can wipe out those crooked pigs." Hilde hesitated. "I'm not… I can't do that. I know Solo used to give you info on the guys he arrested who didn't get convicted and I know that you killed them. I know that's what you're doing now and… yeah, a lot of those guys are just as bad as Catalonia. But not all of them. I can't just sell them out like that." Duo arched an eyebrow. "Really?" "Really," she said in a shaky but determined voice. That was a major setback for Duo's plans. All of the intel he was operating from was nine months old – all from before Solo's death – and it was starting to be wrong as often as right these days. He needed Hilde's help to get this thing done. But he could tell by the set of her slim shoulders that she had made up her mind about this. "Alright," he said. Maybe in a few months, once things had gotten worse, she might feel differently, he decided. "In that case, will you look into this tattoo for me? See if it comes up on anyone you guys arrest? Let me know." He passed her the folded photograph of the body of the man who had killed Mike and the tattoo on his chest. "Okay," Hilde agreed. "Thanks. See you later." He started to leave her bedroom and then remembered. "Oh yeah, I broke your kitchen door window. Might want to have that repaired." "Thanks," she spat.
He walked back to the L1 terminal at a sedate pace, enjoying the crisp fall air and trying to work through just how he could get fresh intel on the Sanc cops since Hilde refused to cooperate. Duo almost missed him, but just as he walked into the main terminal he saw a flash of messy brown hair that stopped him in his tracks. It couldn't be… But it was. Duo followed him for three blocks before he finally decided definitively that it was Heero Yuy he was following. He hadn't seen the man in more than half a year, but Heero had a face that was impossible to forget. Not to mention the fact that Duo never forgot the face of someone who held him at gunpoint. He had no idea where the other man was headed – his route through the L1 quarter was circuitous and he backtracked at least three times, as though he was convinced he was being followed – but Duo continued to tail him for twenty minutes before he lost sight of him headed down a side street. "Shit," Duo muttered to himself and chose an alley at random to head down. Heero was waiting for him, gun cocked and aimed squarely at his forehead. "Evening, Heero, buddy," Duo greeted him. Heero's brows wrinkled in confusion. "Why are you following me?" He seemed genuinely baffled to have Duo tailing him. "Well if I follow you I have a pretty good view of your ass," Duo said and grinned at the other man, "but there's also the matter of you stealing my gun. I want it back." Heero smirked. "That Five seveN of yours was modified. It doesn't handle like anything I've ever used before." "No shit. Why do you think I want it back?" "Can't you just get a new one? I'm assuming it was manufactured in L2? Or at least you had the custom work done there." "I did the mods myself. And it has sentimental value." Heero seemed to be deciding whether or not to kill Duo, and he let him think it through. Duo didn't meet too many people who actually intimidated him – Duo had spent a lifetime analyzing weaknesses in others and size, weight, and muscle didn't faze him – but there was something so cold and detached in the way that Heero assessed him that had Duo standing on the balls of his feet, ready to react. "I didn't carry it tonight. It's back at my apartment." Duo waited for him to elaborate, but when Heero remained silent he decided to fill in the blanks for himself. "So… are you inviting me over for milk and cookies?" The slightest hint of a smile tugged at one corner of Heero's mouth. "I guess so." "Good, cuz I am fresh out." Heero put his gun away and started walking again, and Duo fell into step beside him. "Been busy?" Duo asked, thinking about the near weekly destruction of meth labs on the news scrolls these days. "Yeah," Heero said. "Have you started any new video games?" Duo was amused that Heero had remembered his excuse for the equipment at his apartment. "A few," he told the other man. Heero lived in a far more upscale part of L1 than Hilde, but his apartment building had no doorman, just a keypad and what looked like bulletproof front doors. "This place feels like a fucking fortress," Duo muttered as they walked through the empty foyer towards the elevators. "It is," Heero said but offered no further explanation. He lived on the fortieth and top floor and the view from his living room took Duo's breath away. The entire city of Sanc stretched out below them. Duo could actually make out the Core and each quarter, divided by the highway, and it looked… peaceful. Duo had never seen the city from this angle. L2 had tall buildings, and Duo had done his fair share of B & E in high rises all over the city, but there was something about the view from L1 that made him rethink his mental image of the city. Behind him, Heero turned on five different flat panels and five different news scrolls started playing. Duo barely paid attention to them – just long enough to discern that Heero wasn't playing the underground L2 scroll – before turning back to the floor to ceiling windows and the amazing view. He followed the neon trails of lights through L3 towards the huge, bright strings of light that had to be The Circus and then looked past it towards the dark, empty field that was the city cemetery. Duo was so engrossed that he didn't even realize Heero was standing behind him until the other man had a gun pressed to the base of his skull. "You're not seriously going to shoot me and risk getting blood all over your carpet," Duo said. "It's stain resistant," Heero assured him. Duo couldn't help but chuckle at the other man's sense of efficiency. He slowly turned around and Heero adjusted his aim so that he was pointing the gun at Duo's chest. Smart, Duo thought, going for the sure thing with a body shot instead of risking me ducking a gun aimed at my head. "That's not my gun," he pointed out. "No, it's a SIG Sauer P226. I wondered if you would be interested in modifying it for me." Moving slowly, Duo reached out and put one hand over Heero's on the gun's smooth grip. Heero's fingers relaxed under his and Duo took the gun. "What did you want done?" Duo asked and started to disassemble it, keeping his focus on Heero's face while his fingers worked from memory. "Chop it down to seven and a half inches and replace the wooden grip with rubber." Duo shrugged. "That's a lot of body work – you're talking taking off more than an inch on it. Why not just get something new?" "Sentimental value," Heero said with an arched eyebrow. "And I'm curious to see if you can do it." Duo laughed at the honest challenge. "Yeah, alright. I'll see what I can do." He put the gun back together and put it down on the nearest surface, a coffee table, before turning back to admire the city. "This view is fucking incredible." "It is," Heero agreed, but in the reflection from the window Duo could see that the other man wasn't looking through the windows at all. His dark gaze was focused solely on Duo. Well that answers that question, Duo thought to himself with a smirk. He leaned one shoulder against the window and turned slightly towards the other man. "You ever fucked anyone against these?" he asked casually. "Not yet," Heero answered, and the heat in his gaze told Duo that he planned to rectify that fairly soon. Duo smirked and reached out to grab Heero's shirt and haul the other man against him. Heero's eyes were narrowed, the expression in them halfway between angry and aroused, and Duo kissed him. As their tongues tangled together and each man fought for control of the kiss, Heero pushed Duo back against the windows and started to strip him. Heero pulled off his shirt first and skimmed his hands over Duo's exposed flesh as if mapping his body. The kiss lost its edge of urgency and turned deeper as it became less of a battle. Duo let the other man undress him, only helping by stepping out of his boxers and cargo pants and then kicking off his boots, and allowed Heero to look over his body for a moment before he returned the favor, reversing their positions and shoving Heero back against the cool glass while he took of his clothes. Once Heero was also naked, his amazingly taunt, lithe body practically vibrating with need, Duo knelt in front of him and licked his way down Heero's erect penis. The other man groaned and his hips surged forward when Duo closed his mouth over the tip and slowly worked his way down to the base. Duo pulled back to repeat the motion, but a sudden light illuminated the night sky beyond the windows. "What the fuck?" Heero turned and they both watched as a massive explosion ballooned up and painted the darkness the bright orange and yellow of fire. The fire had been visible for less than two minutes when Heero's phone rang. With a scowl he searched his pants, found the phone, and walked away from Duo before answering it. Duo didn't even bother to pretend that he wasn't listening in on the conversation, even if it was faint. "…not me. No, father. I did not disobey your orders. I have not engaged the target. It was not me." Heero snapped the phone closed and threw it away in disgust. Well that was unexpected, Duo thought. He turned away from the open flame when first one, then the other news scrolls started to broadcast the live footage. "Fuck. That's the Police Academy." Duo barely recognized the outline of the structure with so much fire and smoke engulfing it. Heero came to stand beside him and the two men watched the carnage unfold over the news scrolls for the next half hour. Until Duo recognized a familiar face. Dressed in full uniform and running out of the fire carrying the burned body of a cadet was none other than the man Duo had met at Dorothy Catalonia's apartment six months ago. "Officer!" One of the news reporters followed him as he deposited the body with EMTs. "Officer Barton, can you tell us what happened?" Sharp green eyes glared at the camera. "Someone attacked the Academy," he snapped, stating the obvious. Without another word he disappeared back into the fire. Officer Barton?
It was an hour before dawn when Duo finally left Heero's apartment. They had stood and eventually sat and watched the news scrolls for hours, both men in a state of shock over the absolute horror of so many casualties – by the time Duo left they had accounted for sixty-eight of the one hundred students, all dead, and recovered the bodies of at least eight instructors. Thus far the only survivor was Lieutenant Lucrezia Noin, the woman in charge of the Academy. She had been pulled from the fire by none other than Officer Barton. Officer Trowa Barton, Duo learned during the course of the night, who was just a rookie with the Sanc police force and had only graduated from that very academy three months prior. He remembered to take Heero's SIG Sauer with him, but completely forget to get his own Five seveN back, a fact he didn't even realize until he had made it back to L2 and collapsed onto his bed. Duo couldn't sleep. The images of that fire on the scrolls and from Heero's windows were seared into his brain, bringing his own memories of the Maxwell Church fire vividly to life. Maybe it was because he had rehashed so much of the past with Alex earlier that day, but the deaths of Father Maxwell and Sister Helen felt more fresh and raw than they had in years. He tried to imagine what the recruits at the Academy had experienced during their final moments, as the fire consumed them and they choked to death from the smoke and toxic fumes. It was early afternoon before he ventured outside and it seemed as though every scroll he passed was focused on the Academy fire. Duo went to the gym to wait for Alex, disappointed but not surprised to see that the owner of the gym had his panels set to the Core news scroll. It was after three when they finally called off the search for survivors – whatever explosives had been used to burn the place had been concentrated enough to practically melt the walls, and the fire had reached such high temperatures that no oxygen had remained in the recruits living quarters. At four it was announced that Noin was the only survivor. By five Duo gave up on Alex showing up at the gym and was on his way out when Hilde Schebeker, in full police uniform, stormed in and pulled a gun on him. "You monster!" Her entrance and attire had the other five guys in the gym scrambling for their own weapons. "Back off," Duo warned them. "That pig has a gun on you, bro!" One of the men pointed out helpfully. "I noticed," Duo snapped. He focused all of his attention on Hilde. She had clearly been crying for hours, her eyes red and puffy and her breathing labored. "How could you do this?" she demanded. "Do what?" he asked in confusion. And then he realized. "That?" He pointed at the news scroll showing the burnt remains of the Academy. "You think that I did that?" "Last night you said – you said that you wanted to wipe them out! You said –" He couldn't believe that she – that anyone – would assume he could engage in the wholesale slaughter of more than a hundred people he had never even thought of before last night, let alone wanted to kill. "I said I wanted to get rid of the crooked pigs, Hilde. I never said anything about murdered fucking children in their beds. I never said anything about burning them alive!" "But you – you hate them so much!" "I didn't even fucking know them!" He rushed her as her arm started to waver and ripped the gun from her grasp. "All of my friends were in there, Duo! My friends, my teachers. They're all dead. Solo – everyone is dead." While part of him could empathize with her pain, a larger part was furious with her. How insane was she to have marched into L2 – and this gym was pretty far into the quarter – in full uniform and pulled a gun on him, on Duo Maxwell, in front of witnesses? He drew her into his arms and awkwardly patted his back. "Her Dad worked in the textile mills," Duo explained to the bewildered men. They nodded, barely accepting his explanation for why he hadn't killed her on the spot. Duo pulled off his leather jacket and draped it over her shoulders before leading her out of the gym. He walked her to the L2 subway terminal. "Don't ever do that shit again," he warned her while they waited for the next train. "You can't just storm down to L2 wearing that and waving a gun around. That's not how things work and you're supposed to be smarter than this." Hilde nodded jerkily. "I wasn't thinking." "Not thinking is going to get you killed," Duo warned her. A train pulled up and he took his jacket back, reasonably certain that she wouldn't be molested on the train for being a cop. Not today, at least, when even the citizens in L2 were horrified by what had happened last night. He watched the train pull away and her tear streaked face vanish in a rush of motion before walking back towards Howard's convenience store. The old man had just been elected City Councilmen for the L2 quarter, so if anyone might know what the hell was going on it had to be him. Apparently Duo wasn't the only one who thought so – the store was packed with people shouting questions at Howard. Duo was about to turn around and walk out, but Howard caught sight of him. "Duo! Duo! You got mail!" He never had mail, but Howard held up a fancy, cream envelope with gold embroidery and his name scrawled across the front in elegant calligraphy. Duo frowned at the envelope but accepted it. He waited until he was home before he opened it. You are invited to dinner with Master Quatre Winner tomorrow night at seven p.m. Please dress appropriately. No RSVP necessary.
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