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"Iron Fists "Written By: ELLE and Miss Murdered Disclaimer: If Gundam Wing was ours, there'd be ONE damned cannon kiss. All for fun, fun for all! :D Rating: NC 17 Warnings: post EW, physical violence, m/m sexual
relations, cursing, you know – the typical angsty stuff! Pairings: 1x2x1, Summary: In the world of illegal cage fighting there are no rules and only the strongest survive. It is a world that Duo has been undercover in for over a year and when the Preventers fear he may have gone rogue unexpected back up arrives... Author's Notes: Miss Murdered mentioned this little
inkling to ELLE one day and several weeks later after ELLE's desire
to get into a fight peeked, ELLE asked if they might team up and write
some delicious, sexy fight scenes. All Duo's chapters are Miss Murdered's,
all Heero's are ELLE's. Enjoy! "Iron Fists "
16. It had been days since Heero had last seen Duo. Not that it mattered or meant anything anyway but he missed him and he needed to talk to him about the mission and Milliardo and he needed to touch him again. Needed to feel him and ground himself and know that it was okay. That they'd be out soon. Home. Where they could talk about what they needed to fucking talk about years ago but couldn't. Instead he sat on his cot wearing Duo's shirt with his knees curled up to his chest and his arm spread out over them, tracing the two long scars on the inside of his bicep with the fore and middle fingers of his left hand. Over and over he traced those two thin lines with perfect timing until he thought he might wear them to bleed again. He remembered the faint pain of it as he sliced into his arm with his switchblade. Duo's favourite blade. Ironic. Symbolic. Not that Heero understood symbolism at that point in his life because maybe if he'd been a little less literal the scars wouldn't exist at all. It was during Duo's second undercover. At the recommendation of his therapist Heero was living in a guest wing at Relena's. He wasn't allowed his own apartment yet and when Duo was gone he was to be with her. Something about not letting him be alone so he didn't relapse back into that same mindset. He needed people, life, unexpected situations. Apparently he needed people to barge in on him from time to time. He didn't realize that yet, but Relena had been told to do just that. He was supposed to be protecting her, but she was really protecting him. Later he would be angry when he found out this deceit. Even later he would understand why it had to be that way. But at that moment when she stepped into his bathroom where he stood in nothing but a pair of boxer briefs with blood quickly running in rivulets down his arm he wasn't angry and he wasn't thankful. He was confused. He remembered the stricken look on her face and the pained way his name fell from her lips but he stared back at her panic coolly. "If I were trying to kill myself, I would've used a gun." The words snapped her from her shock and she launched into action, grabbing a towel and forcing it under his arm, taking the knife and setting it on the sink. "The cuts are shallow - they don't need stitches." She glared, a look to rival his own, and began digging around for the first aid kit. "What were you thinking?" Her voice shook. Heero wondered at it. This had nothing to do with her. "Duo got a tattoo on his last undercover. He couldn't explain why. I looked up tattooing - scarification is the same category and quicker and I wanted to understand. It didn't hurt. It doesn't mean anything." She pulled out some liquid sutures and antiseptic to clean the wounds, sighing grandly at his poor explanation before starting in on his arm. "Heero - people get tattoos to symbolize something to themselves. Just because Duo can't explain what it means to you doesn't mean it doesn't mean something to him. You can't just go experimenting on yourself like this any time you don't understand something. That's not normal. Come ask me instead." Relena had finished with her handiwork and was inspecting it critically. It wasn't the best job Heero had ever seen, but he didn't care. He was just going to undo it all anyway to make sure they scarred. "Is that why he left me again?" The words were unexpected but she had said to ask and part of him wanted an explanation. It was something else he didn't understand. But he knew he couldn't just leave like Duo did. He had nowhere to go. He had nothing. No one. Just Duo and Relena. He wouldn't be approved for under covers if he had to do a psych eval. "Huh?" She was never the articulate politician when it was just them. Heero liked that about her, about them. "Duo. Is that why he left? Because I'm not normal?" Relena forced him to sit down on the edge of the tub and she sat down right next to him, holding his hand. "Do you think Duo is normal?" Heero took a moment to contemplate the question. He wasn't really sure. Duo certainly seemed normal. He had friends and was social and he passed Preventer's tests and evaluations and he took him out of the bunker and brought him back to society so Duo had to be closer to normal than he was, right? "Maybe." She squeezed his hand, the blood on it staining her own pale skin but she didn't seem to care. She had never seemed to care about all the fucking blood on his hands. "Duo isn't normal, Heero," she said very softly. "I don't really think any of us are, to be honest. Kids who pilot Gundams at fifteen aren't normal. That's okay, though, I think it's better to be special. No one normal could've accomplished what we have. But you have to understand, Duo is trying to figure out what it means to be normal too. He doesn't mean to confuse you." "But I am confused." "Why?" she asked, tilting her head, eyes narrowing with curiosity. "We had sex." The words hung heavy in the air between them but Heero didn't really understand why. It took a long time before he truly understood that Relena had a crush on him during the war and what that meant and many years later he regretted the things he said to her as they sat on that tub. "Excuse me?" Her voice was quiet and still. Her hand trembled within his. But Heero didn't understand. "When he came back and I stayed with him, while he was here, we had sex. For the first time since he found me. I thought that meant I was significant to him again. But he still left." "Heero..." Her voice shook. Sometimes he didn't understand why she said his name so much. Duo didn't. Duo called him 'Ro or Soldier Boy or Asshole or maybe Fuckface, if he was really mad or frustrated, but not Heero. And his voice never shook. "Heero, I know you mean a lot to him. I know he doesn't want to hurt you but I'm sure he is struggling too. He just hides it inside, the way you hid yourself, do you understand?" He was still confused but he nodded his head, sensing that Relena wasn't going to be able to help him much more short of bringing Duo home and forcing him to explain his actions himself. "You know, during the war, how they called you pilot oh-one and Duo was oh-two?" Heero nodded dutifully. "Is that why you cut twice? For him?" Heero stared at the bright red lines glaring angrily up at him under the shiny gelatinous sutures. He didn't think of that when he'd made the cuts. He really wasn't thinking much of anything. He probably would've cut a few more times had Relena not interrupted him. But he guessed that knowledge would probably upset her and he didn't know what to say. He grunted noncommittally. "Duo already left his mark on you, though." She fingered the bullet wound on his arm from their first meeting with her other hand. Heero stared at it and thought of the scar on his leg, eyes moving down to note it as well. Two holes. Two scars. Two different sets of scars. Pilot 02 had marked him twice. Maybe this was symbolism. Maybe this is what Duo meant with the amateurish tattoo of the cross on his bicep. He wasn't sure. When Duo came home a few months later with a new tattoo he didn't say anything about the scars and Heero didn't ask about the tattoo. Duo just fell into his arms for a few weeks before he disappeared again. Over time Heero became content with the pattern. Duo always came back to him. He moved out of Relena's a year later, agreeing to stay on her detail 90% of the time despite his successful psych evals. Duo started showing up in his apartment - only retreating to his own space when Heero fucked up and tried to get too close. But it was good. It was all the good parts of a relationship and none of the bad because Duo always left before it got bad. Heero's fingers slid over the ridges again. He wished Relena was here. He needed to talk to her, ask her opinion because he knew this wasn't normal and he didn't know if they even had a chance at something like it. Maybe Duo had been protecting them both. Maybe it'd have been better if he'd never said anything. I fuckin' love you. He held on to the words and repeated them in his head with each stroke along his arm until they sounded strange and warped just like everything else once it filtered through his brain enough times. But he needed it. Just needed to hold on a little longer. Then he'd be able to bring Duo home. Then he'd be able to hold him. "Freak." Heero's fingernails dug into his own bicep and the sniggers of the men who had been staring at him for the last few minutes derailed his contemplation. His patience was worn thin. He just wanted to get to the next fight, get a second look at the men there, reaffirm their faces and then get the fuck out. He was sick of this petty bullshit and the paranoia it wrought in him. Sick to fucking death of the stink and the loneliness and the ignorance and the insults. He noticed the laughter stopped and the expression on the men's faces changed to concern and he realized he was shaking, breathing heavily, his fists clenched, glaring at them maliciously. But he was just so fucking angry. He had fucking killed two men and he was the only person who cared? Didn't these men know what he had sacrificed to bring them peace and yet they still wanted war? They still wanted to hurt and kill each other - despite everything, despite how it destroyed so many lives they still got pleasure from war? It made him feel hollow and empty inside, useless. Fuck - did protecting Relena even matter when she advocated something so out of touch with reality? Oh, it was nice to talk about pacifism and ideals and a better humanity and blah-di-fucking-dah in a well lit room with freshly brewed tea and crumpets and personal chauffeurs waiting in brand new town cars downstairs and - fuck but no wonder Duo had to leave because how could he possibly lie in a king sized bed with goose-down bedding in a climate controlled room in an expensive and well furnished apartment next to someone so fucking out of touch with reality when he knew the truth? When he dealt with this shit every fucking time he stepped out the door? No wonder Duo scarred his body - memoirs cemented into his skin of all the shit he's seen. Just like his hair. Just like his name. A constant fucking reminder of pain. How could Heero ever hope to make him happy when he held on to pain so tightly his whole goddamned visage reeked of it? Fuck but this was all a mistake. A huge mistake. Not just this mission, being here, but Duo, too - a huge fucking mistake. He stood and stormed out of the room, pent up and angry and not sure what he was going to do. He wanted to pound his fists into something as his thoughts spiralled quickly out of control. He understood then that Duo would never stay. Love be damned - love wasn't enough for them. His throat felt tight and he swallowed hard at that realization. If love was wanting someone to be happy then it didn't matter how much he loved Duo because he knew he could never make Duo happy. Duo had probably never been truly happy in his life. What made him so vain, so conceited, so fucking presumptuous to think that he could provide him with that? He was a freak. He knew that. He even fucking enjoyed it. He enjoyed the looks of fear he provoked in the other fighters, he enjoyed the way he could overpower any man in the cage, he enjoyed his superiority - so what if he wasn't like them? He was better than them! But he was the cost... He was jaded, emotionally stunted, socially confused - he was nothing that Duo needed. Oh yeah sure, he could offer him a paltry reprieve from his pain, offer him his body and his bed for a few weeks, but love? A relationship? What did those things even mean to a boy who had no parents, no role models, nothing but a past riddled with violence and training? Heero stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, his fingers gripping the sink so hard he thought they might bruise, his nostrils flaring as he breathed heavily, feeling sick and angry and at the very limits of his self control. He hated himself in that moment. Despite everything he'd been through in his life, he was still so goddamned naïve...! Naïve to think he could be anything Duo needed. Naïve to think he could just take him home, wrap him up in his sheets and hold him for the rest of his life. He hauled back and slammed his fist into the mirror, enjoying the feel of the crunch under his hand as the panelled glass shattered and fell. Duo didn't need someone who locked himself in a bunker because he was too fucked up to deal with the ghosts in his own mind. He punched the area the mirror used to be again, shards of it pressing into his knuckles as he bent back the metal slightly, but he didn't feel a thing. He was a freak - such small pain meant nothing to him. Duo didn't need someone like that, a freak, someone who couldn't feel pain or sorrow or happiness or fucking love until it was literally crushing him under it's weight, destroying him, tearing into him so deeply he became powerless, unable to comprehend or react to or fucking deal with the feelings that overwhelmed him and left him feeling weak and helpless. Another punch, the metal bowing, blood running down his arm now, dripping off his elbow onto the floor but he didn't even notice. Duo didn't need someone who came into his missions and fucked them all up. Compromised them. Made his whole job that much fucking harder as he tried to manage himself, the mission and the fuck up who went by Heero Yuy. Didn't need someone who couldn't handle a couple months on an undercover without falling the fuck apart. The next punch was a little less steady, a little less powerful as his arms shook, and he bit down on his bottom lip hard, feeling completely exhausted, confused, out of control. He felt like he wanted to cry but he didn't know how and he stared at the shards of glass in the sink as they refracted his skin back at him and he thought it was a particularly poignant image. He was no more whole than that glass and no more able to be put back together. He was broken - irreparable - and Duo deserved better than him. Duo needed someone better than him. Deserved it. He rolled up the short sleeve of the shirt and stared at the two thin scars he stroked only minutes ago and picked up a piece of broken mirror, slashing at the area angrily, the only pain he felt the ache in his chest as he tried to erase Duo from him. Erase his mark on his skin even if he couldn't erase his mark on his heart. Heero was so focused he didn't hear the door open but he did hear the frustrated huff as a strong hand reached out and gripped his wrist, halting his slashing motion. "Fuck kiddo - what the hell is this?" He met warm brown eyes with his own cool blue ones and he recognized the man as someone Duo interacted with frequently. The medic. James... Jeff... Jim? Fuck. He didn't know. He really didn't fucking care, either. Heero glared for all his worth but the man wasn't dissuaded and he threw open the pack over his shoulder and started pulling out gauze and antiseptic. "Don't know what the hell MJ wants with you, but you can't be walking around bleeding like OZ troops after a damned Gundam attack," he muttered out as he lined his equipment up on the unaffected sink. "Come on now, take off your shirt so I can wrap this shit." Heero growled low in his throat at the suggestion, lips curling over barred teeth. Fuck if he was going to give up Duo's shirt. The cuts weren't bad enough to warrant being wrapped anyway. "Christ, son, I don't have all day and it's not like I get liquid sutures out here in east bumblefuck." Jim grabbed his other hand in the mean time, completely unintimidated, and ran it under cool water. "Duo warned me about what a fuckin' horrible patient you were after Aziz." Heero flinched at Duo's name but luckily Jim was pulling out a piece of glass at the same instant and Heero covered his moment of internal suffering in the external pain he was supposed to feel. "Look, if you're depressed -" Jim started but Heero sneered at the suggestion, yanking his hand away although it was quickly snatched back and antiseptic poured over it. "You see a guy cutting himself, what else are you supposed to think?" Heero let his glare fall back to his hand and watched as the man towelled it off and then smeared some cream over it. "Shirt?" Heero shook his head angrily, eyes narrowing. He'd fucking deck him if he had to - but Jim just sighed. "Whatever. Fucking neurotic little shit." Then he held his arm over the sink and poured antiseptic on it as well. Heero stared at the angry red lines, antiseptic fizzing along the fury he'd wrought there, and he could hardly see the two scars that had come to symbolize Duo underneath it all. But then Jim was covering it with the towel and applying pressure to help halt the bleeding. "Cuts ain't deep," he observed but Heero already knew that. Jim leaned a hip against the sink as he held Heero's arm in his hands, staring at him critically. "Look, kiddo, here's the thing - I know you ain't just some super star fighter. Been around the block 'nuff times to know the way you fight is something different. I know your sponsor, I know who he is, and I have some guesses as to what yer doin' here and I can't say I don't welcome it, but fact is, you seriously gotta get your shit together." Heero glared at the side of his head as he removed the towel and dabbed at the area for a minute before pressing again and meeting his eyes honestly. "You got a girl back home or somethin'?" Heero blinked, surprised by the unexpected question. "A guy?" Jim tried again. Heero averted his eyes, not wanting to give anything away. "But you got someone, right? Handsome kid like you, you gotta have someone." "I - No," Heero muttered, frustrated with himself for even opening his mouth. Jim stared in a way that made Heero uncomfortable. He yanked his arm out of Jim's grip. Jim chuckled as he grabbed the ointment and slathered some on his fingers. "This little melodramatic display is about a chick?" Despite Heero's fists tightening dangerously, Jim grabbed Heero's arm back to rub the ointment in. "Look kid, here's some fatherly advice - if it's meant to be, it'll be. Sure she might be pissed you're all the way out here but either she'll wait, or she won't. If she won't, she ain't worth it, and if she will... Well, when you get home you better show her the time of her fuckin' life, if you catch my drift." Jim arched his eyebrows in a suggestive way that immediately reminded him of Duo. For some reason those kind words calmed him down a little, leaving him feeling empty. If it's meant to be, it'll be. Sure sounded easy when he said it, but Heero knew nothing about either one of them was 'easy.' "I ain't no shrink, and I don't know just what your problem is son, but if you need some valium or some shit you can come to me, okay?" Jim appraised his handiwork after getting a conciliatory nod from Heero and packed up his bag. "Look, MJ is lookin' for you and I don't know why but I think we've kept her waiting long enough, eh?" Heero's eyes narrowed suspiciously and Jim shrugged as he slung his bag back over his shoulder. "Told ya, you hafta get your shit together, 'kay?" Heero pulled at the sleeve of the shirt to straighten it from where he'd rolled it up. There was blood on it. It threatened to send him back over the edge in a fit of anger at his own stupidity and negligence but he took a deep breath, held it in. Jim was worried - that should be enough. He had to get his shit together, like Jim said. Duo didn't need this. Duo didn't need one more fucking thing to worry about. He followed Jim out and immediately saw the woman from after the death fight waiting for them in the hallway. Her whole posture exuded nervousness and her eyes latched on to him desperately as soon as he was through the door. "Thanks Jim," she breathed out quickly, taking his hand and squeezing it for a minute. "You gonna be okay?" he asked hesitantly but she just gave a curt nod, grabbing Heero and walking him quickly down the hall in the opposite direction Jim was headed. "You and me, we have to get the fuck outta here right now," she hissed as soon as they were safely out of earshot of Jim. Heero was caught completely off guard. He'd talked to this chick once and now she was acting like they were some kind of team? Fuck - what the hell was going on here? "I can't leave," he said bluntly. No one just walked off this colony anyway. She rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Look, I know, so just call Preventer or whatever the fuck you have to do. I'll make the same promise to you - I'll testify. I'll testify against Kerrigan, Milliardo, anyone you fucking want, but we gotta leave. Now." Her breath was hot on his face, her fingers clutched into Duo's shirt, twisting it in a way that made him angry. It wasn't hers to touch! He grabbed her wrist and felt the bones in her hand creak under his grip. "Why?" The single word was heated and angry. He didn't know how she knew so much and he didn't know what she meant by testifying - against Milliardo, no less - and a promise...? "Promise me you'll get me off this fucking colony with you!" "Why?" he repeated, immune to her pleas. "Because Duo's been fucking compromised."
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