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"Heero Yuy, L6, and the Second Suit Wars "Part 2Written By: ELLE Disclaimer: I don't own the characters from Gundam
Wing (unfortunately) and they were used without permission, but all
the words are my own. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: occurs post-EW, language, angst, sex,
hopefully acceptable OOC, 1st person POV (*shudder* sorry, no way
around it!), plus a ton of minor and a few major OCs (since it's 1st
person, you get to avoid dealing with them too much.) Pairings: 1x2x1 plus others TBD Summary: Jack Kaufmann has no recollection of the braided man who claims they were once more than friends, but his quest to recover his memories leads him to discover a plot much larger than himself that is a threat to the peace he'd once fought to protect... The lovely Miss-Murdered beta'd this for me and frankly this story wouldn't exist without her encouragement.
"A Former Life Reprised" 2.9 The Breaking Point "Hey." Duo leaned against the wall and stared down at me. I looked up from my tablet, feeling tired after hours of work and a rushed dinner and not much like dealing with him. It had been two days and we never got a chance to talk about what had transpired after the phone call with Edward. But when I noticed the small package in his hand I sat up, my eyes pinned upon it. "So...?" he asked, the question clear as day to me. I nodded and held out my hand. He handed it over to me and I opened it discreetly and held the tiny jump drive in my hand with a great feeling of satisfaction. Yun had come through for me. Quickly I stood up and Duo followed me out and we sat down against the corner of the building together, hiding in plain sight. He watched with obvious curiosity as I plugged the device into my tablet and pulled up the blue prints stored in it. He gasped almost imperceptibly when he saw them. "That man I came back with – he knew Jack," I murmured softly as we reviewed the plans. "We worked together. He said he thought something suspicious was going on. I didn't get a chance to ask further." "He got you this?" Duo's voice matched my whisper. "Yeah. He thinks I'm a spy." Duo laughed under his breath. "You kinda are." I shrugged. "Pretty sure they know I'm here," I warned him a bit reluctantly. "He told me HQ said I transferred here." Duo scowled but didn't say anything. And then I found what I was looking for, on the second innermost ring. There was a series of power stations adjacent to a series of empty rooms. And for some strange, inexplicable reason there was a corridor directly from the docking bay to that series of rooms. The bold lines indicated the power stations were already completed. The only thing completed on any of the three lower levels – with the exception of the center level, which appeared to house the inner mechanics of station operations as I anticipated. "Here," I pointed out what I was seeing, shifting between a few different views. Then he took the tablet from me and started riffling through the blue prints himself, staring across the Delta 2 site as if he was looking for something. Finally, he pointed at what appeared to be a waste corridor in the blue prints. "This is in the cafeteria. It's a waste pipe," he explained and I already disliked where this was heading. "It looks like it cuts through all the levels and runs directly down to an incinerator in the center there." It did look that way as he flipped through the blue prints. It wound sideways until it met the outer hull wall and then ran the circular length of the colony, branches connecting with it from all the other levels, until it emptied into an incinerator. "They probably only flush it a few times a day so it could be pretty rank..." My cool eyes didn't betray my disgust at the prospect, although we both knew how I really felt. But we had no choice. I wondered why he even said anything. Then he was taking out the stylus and writing a series of complex calculations on the surface, the tablet automatically calculating the answers for him. Despite what people might have thought about him and his total lack of any formal education, Duo was incredibly intelligent and a remarkable engineer. Sometimes his formulas made me nervous as they were often hacked together with his understanding being mostly practical and not at all theoretical, but to my knowledge his calculations were never wrong. "Forty-five seconds from here and we pass the point of no return," Duo explained, tapping the juncture where the waste corridor met the outer hull and took a sharp turn into the center of the colony. I knew what he meant by the point of no return. The point where gravity failed to act normally and we would be stuck floating in limbo without enough force to propel ourselves in either direction to get out. Frankly one of my least favorite death scenarios. Self-detention might have hurt like a bitch, but at least it was quick. Duo was factoring a few more calculations and then he pointed to the juncture we would need to reach to access the area with the power stations. "Cutting it close," he announced at last, chewing on the end of the stylus absently. It irritated me, but I let his nervous habit go. "Forty seconds to the inlet." Five seconds was actually a rather long time in the grand scheme of things. Besides, I knew Duo had a metronomic way of keeping time. He'd explained it to me once, how he could be so accurate down to the half second, but I failed to really understand. Some song he'd memorized and knew every beat of. It seemed easier to count, but then I knew he was more accurate than I was so I couldn't fault him. "When?" I asked and he met my gaze with a long, contemplative look. "I can probably get a good handle on the flush schedule from Betty," – shit, did he know everyone in this damned sector? – "you know, so we don't get fucked with the flush..." he mused and then I noted Lennon heading towards us and I took the tablet back from him, closing out the blueprints. "Hey buddy!" Duo called with a wave and an easy smile floated across the blonde's face. "Did you hear?" he asked as he pulled out his cigarette, falling to the ground next to Duo. "Supposedly we're all having some special time of it Sunday to listen to Quatre fuckin' Winner give some speech." For the briefest of moments Duo's fingers flicked over to meet mine even though his face stayed firmly focused on Lennon's and he gave no indication that anything at all was amiss. I knew, however, exactly what he was thinking and what he meant by that gesture. Then. We would have to go then. "No way! The big man himself, huh? I thought he hated this godforsaken shit sack." Duo was grinning and Lennon was grinning and I think I was looking at them like I might be sick, but they seemed not to notice. And then something incredibly unfortunate happened. Miguel wandered up out of nowhere with a disconcerting frown plastered on his face and he stared at us and the C-4 building like he'd never been there before. "Uh, hey, Miguel...?" I heard Duo's concerned voice but it sounded distant, far away, like maybe it was coming from down a tunnel somewhere and not right next to me. "You find some liquor or sumthin' cause you know you gotta share that shit." Miguel's dark eyes turned towards us again and he blinked. "Excuse me?" he said carefully. "Do I know you?" And then something snapped inside of me. Some part of me that had probably been protecting me from my own internal self-loathing and hate. Some thin membrane spread too taunt over my guilt and shame and horror. But in that moment I felt every ounce of desperation, anguish, and gut-wrenching grief over what I'd done to Duo, to myself, and it crashed over me like a tidal wave, dragging me under, suffocating and drowning me and spitting me back up on the shore and I was standing with the forward momentum – I was standing and I grabbed Miguel by his neck and I slammed him into the outer wall of our building, the sound of his collision with the flimsy metal construction reverberating across all of Delta 2. "Don't tell me you fucking did it you goddamned bastard!" I realized I was screaming at him though the words didn't even sound like my own. They sounded like some dark, otherworldly beast possessing me as I slammed him into the building over and over. "You didn't have to fucking do it! You fucking idiot!" I felt hands on my arms trying to drag me away but I knew that even despite my weakened state I was still hell of a lot stronger than anyone else on that whole damned colony and I kept my hands locked on his throat, undeterred. "She'll never leave you! She'll always be there! Don't you fucking get it?!" His eyes were wide and wild and his face was turning slightly blue but I could hardly see him. I could only see myself staring back at me. My own dumb, guilty eyes. Unknowing. Confused. And fuck, I wanted to take it all back. If only I could slam myself hard enough I could go back in time and fix all of this. We wouldn't be on this goddamn colony – none of these people would have to suffer. "You goddamn coward!" Duo wouldn't have to suffer. Duo wouldn't have had to fucking suffer. I was as bad as all of them – everyone who fucking left him. I did that to him. I hurt him. All those broken promises, whispered in the safety of twilight and bed sheets only to be torn asunder when the light of day reached them. And I was screaming at myself. "You goddamn fucking coward!" And suddenly I was looking into Duo's face – his eyes wide and blue the way only ozone and atmosphere could produce – and his arms were wrapped around me and his lips were on my ear and his breath was washing over me and I... "It's okay 'Ro," soft and gentle and totally void of all judgment. "Just let him go." ...I fell apart. My stomach hit the floor as adrenaline curdled in my veins and my hands fell weakly to my sides. I guess I saw him fall to the ground in a sputtering, coughing mess but I was shaking and weak and I thought I was going to be sick but Duo was holding me up. Always holding me up. He moved away from me and in an effort to drive my mind from the horrible, swirling mass of thoughts in my head I began to wonder how he managed to wedge himself between my arms. I focused on his touch as he grabbed my arm and walked me away from there. And in my disorientation I stupidly hoped he was leading me off the colony and back home. Back to where we were together and we fucked every other night and fought over stupid shit that seemed important like whether or not to buy a house and I capitulated to his every whim. But we were just walking across the eerily metallic bright and searing landscape of the Delta 2 sector of L6 and as I came back to myself I began to realize we were doing laps around the housing structures but his hand didn't leave my arm and I almost didn't want him to know I was conscious again because selfishly I never wanted him to stop touching me. Selfish. Yeah. That about sums it up. Relena was right. I was a selfish fucking bastard. "Heero," he warned me quietly and our pace slowed. "I fucked up." The admission wasn't one I made often but I just wanted to get it out in the open before the accusations started. He didn't say anything for about half a lap and finally, when we were out of sight behind the cafeteria, he stopped. "What the hell?" His voice was tight with worry. To me, that was far worse than anger. "I know this is more personal but we can't do this if I can't trust you to keep your cool." I nodded numbly but that didn't seem to please him at all. He crossed his arms over his chest. "Seriously. What the fuck was that? You almost killed him." "He opted for the reconstruction," I replied, as that should've explained everything. Duo sighed grandly and rolled his eyes. "We knew that might happen." He didn't understand. Miguel did it for the wrong reasons. The same reasons. How could I explain it to him? He would've never put us in this position. He would've asked for my help. He would've never piloted ZERO in the first place. "Do we change the plan?" Duo scowled at the question but I knew it wasn't the question itself but my avoidance of the real issue. "The plan stays. You need some time to cool the fuck off and get your head straight. Besides, the most cargo ships come in Sundays." He didn't reach for me then, but his eyes spoke all the volumes of his worry and the feeling of crushing guilt returned full force. I could only nod once more. It was time to follow Duo's lead. I was clearly a liability
to my own mission. But we'd reached the point of no return. I might
die a slow, suffocating death... but it was too late now. We were
stuck.
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