"Heero Yuy, L6, and the Second Suit Wars "

Part 3

Written 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.

"Restitution of a Former Life "

3.6 The Ruse

 

Despite leaving early in the morning, it was dusk by the time we arrived in Sanc and we spent the night going through Duo's excessive arms collection, eating sandwiches from a shop down the street, and drinking vodka in bed straight from the bottle while Duo recounted all the weddings he attended and jobs he'd taken over the years of my absence.

The normalcy of waking up in bed with him heartened me and I went about my morning tasks with an inner peace I hadn't experienced in years. Duo confessed to having kept some of my things, including a suit, and although I didn't quite fill it out the way I had while weight training and working for Preventer, it would have to do for a meeting with the co-founder of L6.

Quatre had e-mailed us the meeting details and we were both thankful it was a relatively early meeting. We had a quick breakfast date on the way to the Peacecraft mansion, going over the details of what we knew because I think we both realized this meeting was going to be trying and we didn't want to go in there without being on the same page.

The Peacecraft mansion was the same as it ever was and likely the same as it always would be. The Porsche was parked for us by the valet and we mounted the stairs confidently. I may have been confused and angry with what was going on here, but I sure as hell wasn't intimidated by Sergio. I was however somewhat surprised when Milliardo himself met us in the entryway.

We exchanged courteous and short greetings with one another. I had plenty of questions for him specifically, but he clearly didn't intend to answer them as he led us through he halls to a private sitting room. Sergio stood as we entered, the perfect picture of impeccability. He wasn't a particularly domineering man in terms of stature. He was tall, but slight, with slicked back dark curls falling down his neck. His Hispanic heritage gave his face a distinctly hard edge, however, and when he smiled I recognized it as a reflection of my own - calculating, holding no warmth, a social requirement.

"Good afternoon Jack," he greeted casually and my hackles immediately rose. "I see you brought him." I already hated the way this was going but to Duo's credit, he didn't react at all.

"I prefer Heero, thank you," I replied smoothly and stepped forward as he gestured to the plush seating surrounding a coffee table with tea and biscuits set out upon it. "I'm not sure if you've ever met my partner, Duo Maxwell." Not that I had ever met Sergio, per se, but obviously we met at some point when I was Jack.

"Not as such," Sergio replied, offering a handshake Duo accepted with practiced nonchalance. There was a tense moment after we sat where nothing was said and we all tried not to watch but didn't know where else to look as Milliardo fixed himself some tea. But once he was done and relaxed comfortably in his seat, Sergio seemed to resettle himself and fixed me with a pointed stare.

"Do you know why they renamed the L5 LaGrange point?" he asked conversationally, but I assumed the question to be hypothetical. Everyone knew why the L5 point was renamed. Once it became clear I didn't feel the need to answer, he continued with a hint of amusement.

"Humanity is really quite flawed, don't you think? We are mindless little things, so easily swayed by propaganda, by the thoughts and feelings of others, but we have no way to validate those thoughts, to truly understand our fellow man. Even mindless little ants have it better than us - they are biologically wired to share their existence with their brethren."

"And this has to do with the L5 point...?" I interrupted neutrally.

"We are embarrassed of ourselves," Sergio answered directly. "Embarrassed that we don't understand each other, embarrassed that we are led to violence against our fellow man. The self-destruction of L5 is so painful on our collective psyche that we would rather bury our martyrs in political posturing than forgive ourselves our own transgressions against our brothers and sisters. The ESUN practically begged me to put something up there so that we could forget. 'To heal our hearts,' or so they said. But it doesn't have to be that way."

"Yes," I interjected, "we can just wipe our minds to forget - become a civilization of drones."

He chuckled and it made my skin crawl. "You are a smart man, Heero, a man I admire even. Don't be so damned short sighted."

I scowled. Of course I knew what he meant, Quatre had already told us the sum of this conversation so far. But I wasn't going to make it easy for him.

"I don't think the consideration of the few thousand slaves on L6 right now is short sighted," I retorted.

"I know you understand how the ends can justify the means." Sergio's words had a hard edge to them that I didn't appreciate.

"I don't see any end which can justify this."

Sergio sighed and stared at his fingernails for a moment in a particularly self-indulgent manner. I could feel Duo's hostility rolling off him in waves.

"The procedure you created is truly only a very small part of this reality. It is the AI you helped create that truly steals the show."

"You mean that you manipulated me into creating?"

He scoffed. "However you choose to see it, humanity is back to where it should be, on the verge of a huge leap in evolution, a leap that will bring us together, that will eradicate the need for war, conflict, misunderstanding, that will unify us as one global whole."

"God endowed us all with free will," Duo finally sneered and all eyes turned towards him, his teeth barred just slightly under his polite veneer. "And you are not God."

Sergio's mocking laughter was short. "God is constantly at war with evolution because He does not want His children to realize their full potential for they would destroy Him." His eyes dismissed Duo as easily as a piece of lint picked off a jacket as they slid back to me. Nothing pissed me off the way someone dismissing Duo did.

"Do not let your personal weakness affect your rational intelligence," Sergio warned me, stoking the flames of my anger.

"I have used your system - HERA," I replied, restraining my irritation just barely. "You cannot seriously believe everything you just said about human evolution and then state my consideration for my partner is a 'personal weakness.'"

Sergio's lips twitched downward in disappointment. "You are still thinking far too narrowly, Heero. I am disappointed. Surely you must understand that love," he spat the word like it was diseased, "between two people is selfish and dividing at best. It leads to fighting, hatred, jealousy, and consideration of one person above all others. What wouldn't you do for love? We have already established that you would destroy yourself, wipe your mind, agree to whatever proposition we promised in a desperate bid to protect him." Sergio pointed an accusing finger at Duo.

"You don't even know how we used you, how we manipulated you with him." He made a harsh noise of disgust in the back of his throat as my fingernails dug into my palms. "Jack knew nothing of the ZERO system. Jack was nothing but an ultra-intelligent puppet. We used his memory as an emotional trigger in you to bring out your former life and experiences to create HERA. And you did it - why? You sacrificed your so-called morality and for what? One fucking man."

The desire within me to turn this into a physical altercation was nearly more than I could rein in. I looked towards Milliardo, remembering how he'd told me once nearly ten years ago now that humanity needed those with strong hearts. I wondered how he had become perverted enough to believe in this vision of the future where we were apparently expected to disregard our emotions - our understanding of right and wrong.

"Love can be a beautiful thing when done correctly," he continued, softening his voice slightly as my eyes found his again. "Once humanity is connected absolutely, thoughts and feelings shared instantaneously, love will be actualized on a global scale. Hate will be eliminated because we will truly understand one another. There will be no jealousy, no hatred, no pain - because we will all love each other."

"That's all great," Duo spoke up again, bold and undaunted. "But that's not humanity. Nor should it be. Our pain defines us, creates our individuality which becomes our strength." If anyone had the right to talk about pain, it was Duo. But Sergio completely blew him off without a glance, so before he could get another word in edgewise I leaned forward in my seat, brows furrowed in frustration.

"I am not a man of great vision," I said as plainly as possible, letting the words hang heavy in the air with implication. "I am not Treize Khushrenada. I am not Heero Yuy, although I bear his name. And I am certainly not you. You'll find you are very mistaken if you think you have an ally in me. All I have ever wanted was a simple life, free from oppression and tyranny - and what you are describing to me sounds a lot like tyranny."

A brief flash of irritation rippled through Sergio's dark eyes before he smoothed it away. "Well that's a disappointment."

"You have a work force of slaves, a hangar full of mobile suits, and a dormitory of child pilots and you argue that isn't oppression?" My words bit off angrily as I fought the urge to stand and walk out. "Perhaps I might believe in your fantasy if I hadn't killed my first man at eight - you should consider that."

"You have no interest in those suits, what they can do?" he asked then, sounding faintly surprised.

"I gave up that life willingly and worked to actively shut down operations like this. What interest would I have in a fleet of mechanized weapons beyond making sure it never sees the light of day?" I posited seriously, unable to understand how he thought I would be party to this madness.

"They are not weapons." Sergio seemed personally offended by the idea. "And if everything goes according to plan, they never will be."

"Of course," I muttered darkly, "stipulations. You are no different than Dekim Barton and every alleged revolutionary before him."

"But you have used it!" His voice took on a surprisingly desperate edge. "Haven't you felt it? The connection you can have with someone else - unlike anything you have experienced before?"

I grunted in a particularly dismissive way. "Clearly you have never experienced the kind of mind-altering sex that I have." I didn't break eye contact with Sergio but I heard Duo choke back a laugh at the unexpected statement and even Milliardo appeared to be struggling not to respond as he buried his face in his teacup. I'll admit to myself that the HERA experience Duo and I shared was definitely on an entirely different level than anything I'd ever experienced before - but I sure as hell wasn't going to admit that to Sergio.

He just sighed in aggravation and I stood. Everyone followed my lead and I appraised him for a moment, not caring that I had to look up at him, just leveling my well-practiced glare on him.

"It is obvious that we have nothing to say to one another - you will not divulge your plan any more than I will allow it to succeed." Then I warned him seriously, "I will expose you and put an end to this farce before you can do any serious damage to Earth or the colonies. That, I promise you."

Sergio held out his hand and I took it in a firm shake despite the hostility between us.

"For what it's worth, I hoped this would go differently," he offered and I scowled.

"For what it's worth, Duo wasn't why I didn't take the job originally," I returned flatly. "AI design simply doesn't interest me." His lips tightened, agitation clear at my total dismissal of his work, but before he could argue any further I was turning from him and walking out.

Duo's light footfalls followed me as well as the distinct, heavy stride of Milliardo. As soon as we were significantly down the hall, I slowed, falling in line with Milliardo and appraising him, holding back as much disdain as I could manage.

"You always have to ride the coattails of megalomaniacs." It was an accusation, but he didn't flinch.

"History will remember me - unlike you." He spoke quietly, without any sort of infliction or condemnation as far as I could tell. It was just an explanation. And I guess that's where we were fundamentally different. I never had any desire to be a part of history - and I never would. But I was just a nobody, a boy who meant nothing to no one, and he was a Peacecraft with the weight of hundreds of years of history riding on his back.

We didn't speak as we walked out and the valet pulled the car up, both of us spotting the helicopter en route to our location - likely to pick up Sergio. Duo flipped it off with both fingers as the Porsche pulled up and we climbed in. As soon as we were off the premises, he declared in no uncertain terms that he needed a drink.

The terrace level restaurant we found ourselves in was typical of anywhere in New Port City and Duo was already on his second beer in nearly as many minutes - having ordered two as soon as he sat down. He appeared to be over the string of obscenities and attacks on Sergio's person that had dominated our conversation until he lapsed into silence.

"So what are we going to do?" he finally asked, turning his eyes towards me from under his bangs, obviously hoping I had some kind of answer. I thought about it a minute, hating to disappoint him with a lack of any real, concrete plan. I had a feeling that nothing Sergio told me would be news to Quatre and I had a sinking suspicion that Sergio never really planned to divulge anything that would have been. I didn't really understand why that meeting had been set up at all, frankly, and it irritated me as I straightened the flatware on the table, the one little thing I could control.

"Maybe we should go to Une," I offered, finally capitulating to the demand he'd made from the very beginning. He sighed, laid his head in his hand and rolled his eyes to the bar in disappointment. I didn't know what else to tell him. Aside of infiltrating L6, which I imagined wouldn't be so easy this time around, and blowing the place from the inside, killing who knows how many innocent brainwashed people and children, I really didn't know what else we could do. Being as the pilots were children, it really put us in a bad position. We both had our reasons for wanting to avoid the deaths of innocent children as much as possible that spanned back much further than Zurich.

Which led me to wonder, why did it have to be children? Duo and I both piloted HERA without any particular difficulty. I thought back to the omitted information in Trowa's plans and what I had read of Jack's published research while recovering from my knee injury. And I considered my experience with Lizzy and compared it to my experience with Duo and I wondered if we were doing something wrong or if HERA held back the full use of the system intentionally due to the physical strain it imposed on us. I could feel Duo's emotional state, sure, but Lizzy had accessed my mind in a way I couldn't access Duo's. She pulled my thoughts straight from my head and pushed her own thoughts onto me. Perhaps I was just so self-absorbed in the emotional onslaught I hadn't tried to do the same?

But my mind flipped through what I could remember of Jack's research and I remembered Duo in the shower, saying he knew they were using children, and I remembered that night we decided to go to L6 and what he'd said and I looked back up at him.

"You said that -"

He cut me off with a finger and I followed his eyes to the TV over the bar where a picture of Relena filled the screen as the muted anchor talked and subtitles scrolled across.

"- has been declared missing as of 11:00 a.m. UTC." Duo slammed his fist into the table, causing all the flatware to jump and clatter. "No further information has been given to the press at this time. We have been asked to announce that if you have any information which might aid in the recovery of Mrs. Darlian Peacecraft to call -"

I stopped watching the TV as Duo stood abruptly, stalked across the nearly empty dining area, and stalked back, slamming his hands down on the table and looking at me with startling intensity.

"That fucker totally played us," he growled, fingers flexing on the lacquered surface until the tips turned white. "He brought us close, the one fucking place we wouldn't be able to do anything, the one way we wouldn't suspect shit, and he's already on a damned helicopter heading to fuck knows where!"

My anger rose up to meet his, then, as I considered that he was absolutely right. The whole meeting was a fucking ruse, an opportunity to steal Relena right out from under us. I didn't know what the hell Sergio wanted with Relena but it sure as shit wasn't going to be good, I knew that. Fuck, he could be planning to perform the memory procedure on her.

The waitress was eyeing us nervously - I guess when you have a table with a guy stalking around angrily, downing beers, and another guy with his face ripped up and scabbed over it does seem a bit hostile - and I waved her over, asking her to box our lunches and handing her a card.

We didn't really have time to be screwing around here. We had to get back to our new Gundams - and quick.

~ * ~

tbc...

Chapter 7

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