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"The Rescue"Written By: Kaeru Shisho Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Gundam Wing
or its characters, nor do I make any monetary profit off this story. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: Drama/Romance Angst Pairings: 1x2, 3x4 Summary: When liberating Duo from a prison camp, Trowa is rescued from brainwashing, and both Quatre and Heero are free to love them. The war may be over but peaceful it is not. A/N: Thanks go to Waterlily for the edits " The Rescue" Chapter 1 His long fingers had a delicate touch, lingering on a stem of fragrant, white freesias and then removing and replacing it with a brilliant sulfurous-hued gerbera daisy. The quiet young man fine-tuned the arrangement with the addition of one more golden flower then stood back to study his creation. He smiled when he felt the warm hand of his lover on his arm. "Trowa, that's lovely!" "Thank you. Duo likes color and Heero likes scents. I think I've found the right balance. Yes. It's done." He caressed the creamy china vase. "I'll box this and then we'll go." "You're sure? You seem, well, more subdued than usual. Second thoughts? You know they'd all understand if you cancelled. Duo's done that twice." Trowa stared down at his hands a moment before taking one of Quatre's and holding tight. His lover was talking fast, rattling on, which meant he was anxious, so he should do what he could to quash his fears and reassure him that all was right with the world. "I want to see them all, him especially. I'm thinking clearly and I want to apologize in person." Whether or not Heero, much less Duo, would allow him express his regrets and ask forgiveness for his transgressions was still open to discussion. He and Quatre had explored the problems many times from many angles, and so had their other friends and their commander. Everything had been said, details revealed, and yet nothing entirely absorbed, wholly understood, and in part even totally believed to provide absolute closure. The Mission was over, but unfinished. Was now the time for talking out the pros and cons or the issues? They would find out, and Trowa no longer wanted to be the one to fold; although, he might be left holding the cards again. For several weeks, Wufei and Quatre had arranged a meeting of them all, including Hilde, and on each occasion someone, usually Duo, had withdrawn his acceptance of the invitation and the gathering had been delayed. "I will be there. I love you and believe in you." Unconditionally-it was left unsaid but Trowa knew that Quatre understood he was no longer under OZ influence, that he was healing emotionally, and that he was very, very sorry. "I wonder what it is I did to deserve you. Maybe I should believe in past lives? I must have saved you from certain death." Quatre smiled and used their joined hands to draw the other man closer. "Forget the past. If you don't kiss me, I'll die of neglect now." Trowa buried fingers in the silky, straw-colored hair and crushed his mouth onto the soft lips, feeling Quatre let him take charge. It felt good, like a return to the normalcy of day to day life and routine he craved. Since his repatriation from the clutches of OZ, Trowa had hesitated to take the lead in any aspect of their relationship. This time he hadn't let a heartbeat of time separate the supplication from the kiss. They were so close that he felt Quatre's cell phone vibrating through his flannel slacks, the buzzing a reminder of the time. The two parted, but Trowa's arms still circled Quatre, refusing to let them part entirely. "I'm sorry," Quatre said, "really." "I know the time." "Yes, well, we really should head over to Catherine's now. I have a good feeling about this." Trowa didn't, really, have any justifiable reason to feel overly optimistic and he wouldn't lie to his lover. "I-I'm...,"Trowa paused after his voice caught in this throat, "...I'm getting a very good feeling about you right about now." (o) Six months earlier- "... which sounds like it's a long time, but really, it's only the gestation period of a sloth," Duo said. "Makes me glad I don't have to go through nine with someone." "Next time, I wanna be stuck with a man that likes women for a change." "I like women. I like you, Hilde." "Duo, you know what I mean." I did, actually. I'm safe to partner with the ladies. Although guys thought I was lucky with the ladies, in reality I was more often than not just a supply line to Heero Yuy. I gave out his number to countless women. For all the good it did any of them. He may not have given me the time of day, but he didn't sleep with girls either. That actually made my one-sided affair from afar worse. I knew he was gay, but he wasn't interested one iota in me. My comfort being that he didn't appear to be interested in anyone, that I was aware of, and no one knew about my infatuation with him. Except Hilde. "And you know Une doesn't want interoffice romances." Her expression soured. "I don't care. I have my eye on a wonderful man." I knew who it was, couldn't imagine my serious-minded, wholly work-dedicated agent friend in an amorous entanglement, and snickered. "Fei's a wonder, all right." "I want romance," Hilde said with a huge sigh trying to ignore his provoking comment. "After we escape this one, I wanna new job. A safer one." "Yeah, me too." "What? Romance or a new job?" "Both, since we're playing make-believe here." "C'mon. Let's get this show on the road." She checked her appearance in the signaling mirror one more time before hefting the basket to her back. Under the cover of darkness, Hilde Schbeiker and I left the Marshfoot base through a secret gap in the fence. Cold mist hung over the fields and obscured the footpaths which partitioned the different plantings. We turned onto a smaller road and took off at a steady trot-walk-trot combination which we could hold for an hour at a time. After a while, the sky shifted to a deep shade of lavender. The cold air took on a heavy swampy odor. A big tree loomed like a monstrous shadow at the bend in the road. Hilde paused, staring at the tree and suddenly the hackles rose on the back of my neck. This was the place where my friend, Trowa Barton, had last been seen. We had come here together with Heero Yuy and Quatre Winner once after Trowa's disappearance, and learned nothing about what had happened to him. Once again, here we were. "Duo?" She looked at me, visibly shaken, as if she expected me to pull optimism out of my hat, and I had nothing bright to say. Trowa and Hilde had been on a mission, traveling along this stretch of the road, and she had stepped aside to relieve herself in privacy. When she'd returned, minutes later, he was gone. No sign or clue as to what had transpired. Not then, not later, and not now. As our stalwart commander, Une, told us: "Subsequent to Trowa's disappearance, OZ has purported to have executed the pilot of Heavyarms." Yeah, well, that hadn't seemed likely. Quatre maintained the unsubstantiated claim was false. He could "sense" the other man was still alive and well. When Heero joined us to investigate his disappearance, he couldn't make neither hide nor hair of the total lack of evidence and found it more perplexing than disturbing. However, as Wufei put it, if Trowa hadn't been executed, where the hell was he? Oh, and when Wufei suggested, barely hinted, that it was conceivable for Trowa to have turned sides, Quatre stopped talking to him altogether. Of course, 'Fei and I remembered our moon base encounter with the OZ Trowa clearly. Kinda stood out in the memory bank. We hadn't known he was working undercover at the time. So I understood how Wufei had drawn that conclusion. Quat had not. Had he had a gun, I have no doubt that he would have shot 'Fei on the spot and not regretted it. Hilde and I agreed to this mission: reconnaissance of the nearest enemy encampments, all three if necessary. As a last resort, we'd infiltrate, but I really, really didn't want to become a prisoner of OZ. She shuddered as we passed the spot where Trowa had last stood. I whispered what I remembered of a prayer I'd learned as an orphan on L2 in Maxwell Church to safeguard us on this mission. It sounded childish and short, but it strengthened my grit. "God above I pray to you; be my guide in all I do." After sunrise, Hilde slackened the pace, but we didn't rest for another hour. We sat behind some bushes and ate ration bars dusted with a sweet powder of sesame seeds, peanuts, and sugar. Later in the morning, a group of armed men, not in OZ uniform but of a side organization calling themselves the unimaginative name of The Resistance, stopped us on the road and asked me where we were going. "We're going to live with our relatives in a village outside the province seat. On the coast." At the time, there were many country-dwellers and city-folk on the roads displaced by intense fighting still going on I scattered pockets, so they found our answer credible and allowed us to go on our way. "If we'd not been prepared, if it had been just you travelling alone," Hilde said, "like Trowa had been, I wonder what they would have done with us?" "Nothing good," I said. Could Trowa have been captured by The Resistance, identified, and then traded for favors with OZ? Sounded credible to me. A man like him, with his talents and knowledge would be too valuable to simply leave languishing in some detention center. We skirted several villages, taking mostly footpaths through endless, unchanging miles of turned fields, barren in early winter. I had never walked so far on Earth, and didn't like the cold dampness. My feet blistered. I assumed Hilde was just as miserable, but she didn't complain so I kept my mouth shut about it. We pushed steadily onward and reached our safe house by sunset. (o) My world filled with golden sunshine. The heat of it warmed my skin and haloed the head close to mine. "If I kiss you, will you understand?" I heard his whispered words and even felt a stirring deep inside. I answered back, "Go ahead and find out." I couldn't see his face. I so desperately wanted to see his face again and feel his lips pressed against mine, the warm reality of his hands on me, the assurance that everything would be okay. His promise that I was walking the right path. "He betrayed you! They all did." The harsh words intruded on my sweet dreams. They always did these days. Voices drilling into me the hard truth, or a hard truth, I fought not to believe. If only I could see that face, the face of a man whose name I could not remember but who I trusted more than the information stripped from my own mind, I would know the truth. He'd never lie to me. Maybe I didn't need to picture his face. Maybe just the thought of him would do. It would have to. "He betrayed you! They all did." "No." I said it aloud. "Not him." After that, the warmth went away and my world plunged into darkness and pain. Mostly pain inside and out. The mind is nothing but a collection of thoughts. These thoughts rise up in succession like the bubbles in a fish tank. All these thoughts that rise in the mind also appear to connect. And then they pop out of existence. Pretty bubbles. For ten minutes, I sat silently and observed the thoughts arising in my mind. I didn't try to control or stop thinking. I remained simply a silent witness to the thoughts bubbling up. The moment a thought came, I tried to quickly (can you knit a sweater from your dog's fur?) write it down on paper (I hate it when people confuse the words "reign" and "rein). Then, at the end of ten minutes I read whatever was written. Rhfsodifasdkd! Sdjfosd sehehtasiofj slehlsdjflejdkl; llllllsjldksdjf Mine was a mad man's diary. Utter chaos. There was no connection between the one thought and the next one. Only when I wrote down my thoughts did I see that my thoughts had no real connection. I might have thought about having a cup of tea and the next moment I would be thinking about blowing someone's head off. All those pretty bubbles bursting. - Trowa Barton Chapter 2 "Go...away." Heero bristled as the door opened, hating the intrusion, but once he recognized the familiar blond head his anger cooled and his voice trailed away. "It's just me," Quatre said as he joined Heero and Wufei in the Surveillance/Tracking room Preventers had made available to them. "Any change?" "Not yet." "The weather is bad," Wufei explained. "When they reach the safe house we'll know." Quatre believed in technology. "They should have gotten there hours ago." Heero was running fully on negative energy. "The earliest they might have arrived was an hour ago," Wufei said, taking painstaking care to moderate his voice and leash in his hair-trigger temper. "With the weather and...other obstacles-" Heero's eyes darted over the desk to land on Wufei, skewering him to his worn chair. "Every piece of filth on the planet is within five square miles of their route, and Une wouldn't okay some kind of backup a day behind them?" "Maxwell is a capable agent and so is Hilde. They are just gathering data." "So was Trowa," Quatre put in quietly. Wufei huffed. "You're not helping." "Sorry, but he was." Quatre turned to Heero, earnest in his desire to pull together. "The situation with OZ has worsened, and Trowa and Hilde weren't properly prepared for that. This time, Duo and Hilde are." "I should have backed them up." Heero would not give an inch. "I listened to Une-" "You followed orders, just like the rest of us," Wufei snapped. "I was there, too, if you'll recall. I offered to go with you and the commander said she wanted us ready to lead troops as counter measures if and when Maxwell reported-" In response to a flashing diode on his computer, Wufei jammed on the headphones and waved an arm in their direction. "Shhh!" Heero and Quatre leaped from their seats and clamored around him to stare at the blank monitor expectantly. Code scrolled over the screen. Duo had always laughed at the encoded gibberish and accused the device sensors of having shifted right one key on the keyboard. His presence could be felt in every part of the building, in every person he worked with, and most deeply in these his closest friends. "Yes," Heero said as he freely interpreted the "02slash38" agent codes for Duo and Hilde. "This is good. They made it past a checkpoint earlier and arrived at the safe house just this minute." Wufei sat back, smiling as if he'd done the locating himself. "There. Real time confirmation." Heero murmured his thanks and ran a hand through his mussy hair, leaving it wilder than before. "Think you can take a nap now?" Quatre asked him. "It's my turn to stay up." "Yes, thanks. But let me know the instant anything-" "I will." (o) We were chilled to the bone. It was a shack, no power, leaking water, and smelling of mildew, but wonderful. "Provisions!" Hilde shouted after opening a cabinet. "And dry cots." I hopped a puddle on the floor. "Any big pots or buckets to collect water?" "No." Through a doorway was the only other room. "Bathroom. No shower, but there's a sink and toilet." We discovered how well a fire-starter kit could ignite even green wood and eventually warmed the hut and laid out our wet clothes to dry. We broke out more rations, including soup packs to heat. Hilde popped our foot blisters, applied ointment and bandages. "We'll be good to go another twenty miles or so." "Swell." By morning the next day we were rested, dry, and ready to move on. We took the main road toward the province seat, where The French Alliance ruled. The largest OZ camp was a few miles beyond that. As far as our information told us. Sweetwater at the time was a twilight territory much like Marshfoot had been a year ago. The French Alliance controlled the countryside during the day, and apparently the Resistance took over at night. We stayed on the well-patrolled highway, avoiding back roads that were watched by OZ and bandits. OZ considered people crossing over to the French Alliance area as traitors and regularly executed them as such. Not that I'd go against orders just for the hell of it, but I had my doubts about this being a successful mission. Une was certain he was a prisoner. I was not, at all. If Trowa were captured, he would get my vote for most able man to get free on his own, but if not, then that left the grim alternative no wanted to accept. Could Quatre be wrong and Trowa actually was dead, killed months ago? Who'd want to believe their lover had been captured by the enemy, tortured, and left to die? I had a hard time thinking Quatre would risk my life agreeing to a wild goose case. I had to believe he wouldn't jeopardize my life on false hopes. Even for Trowa. So, on a hunch that he was maybe trapped someplace, holding out between enemy camps, even injured, I shouldered this misbegotten mission to investigate, locate, and extract him. Hilde had been working in the area for a year, off and on with Trowa. She knew the French Alliance troops at each checkpoint and bribed our crossing all the way through to the provincial seat. There, she bought French papers with new false identification that allowed us limited travel rights- as long as we gave the OZ camp wide berth. And if the Resistance kept tabs on the folks they'd stopped before, the people we had been were now gone. "Eric Martin? For Christsakes! Who came up with that name?" I cried out because it was my only way to vent. I hated getting made-up names that I hadn't made up. "Not me!" she retorted. "They don't let us peons come up with our ID's. Oh, God. I'm Rene Martin. Oh well, at least I'm allowed to go natural this time. I'd been blond with Trowa and if it had lasted any longer I'da had roots to deal with." If it had lasted longer, Trowa might still be an agent and we wouldn't be on this mission in this godforsaken place. I didn't say that but I thought it hard, and then we left the depressing conversation to dissipate on its own. I didn't want to start thinking about Trowa and his situation in all its possible combinations and outcomes. Ours was bad enough. The passage was surreal. It happened in a blur of exhaustion and confusion. We weren't alone by any measure. Clusters of forlorn, homeless people tramped the same path, more joining us from narrow side routes. "Running from OZ," one man shared. "Burned our entire village to the ground. We hope my wife's family on the coast will take us in." "Yeah, us too." It was our lie and it worked because it was his truth. After passing through Sweetwater, in a pounding rainstorm, we missed our turnoff to the safe house. We had to get out of the weather or get sick, so we circled back. The second time we passed by the location without finding it, I admit I was near to panicking. When Hilde suggested we dish out the cash to stay in the next inn or boarding house with vacancy we could find, I said yes. (o) I dreamed about going to a beach with Quatre, and even though beaches aren't so much his thing he went along with it. Along the way we came upon a waterfall where there used to be a mill, judging by the remaining rock wall. There was a nice pond behind it with fall leaves, although it didn't feel fall-like in my dream. It was warm- bonus. Anyway, we were dressed for fun in the sun on a beach. Unfortunately, it was not a shell beach, but there were lots of tiny white or nearly clear pebbles, and rounded pieces of white shells, which I had to collect so I'd have something else to fill a jar with and display on a shelf, when I finally put up a shelf, which I'm this close to dealing with when I get back home. Of course, picking up damp pebbles on a chilly, foggy beach does make one, well, chilly, but we got back to the car before my fingers went numb, and it was a nice counterpoint to having been too hot. Home. Now that I think about Quatre, it hurts. I miss him so much. It's getting harder and harder to remember him, to picture him. If I lose him, I lose myself. "Shoot!" I contemplated the order, rolling it over in my mind trying to make sense of it: "Kill them!" The men commanding me called them the enemy, but all I saw were five frightened unarmed men too frail to be of any danger to me. Where had my judgment gone? I tried to find my center. I tried recall a face, a boy's face, now a man. I felt that if I could see him, I'd know what to do. From the moment we met, he considered me a friend. He'd know if shooting these men was justified. I couldn't conjure him or anything of my safe places-mental havens safe from the horror I lived. I could remember having memories of places and people I could go to for healing and advice. For some reason, my mind had closed those off from me. Was I protecting myself from myself? "Shoot them now or we'll cut off your balls!" My sexual needs seemed a small thing when compared to the lives of five men, total strangers pathetic-looking as they shivered in their torn t-shirts and soiled pants. Better to bend in the wind than to break. Those words of counsel cut through the fog of my brain, words I thought had faded with the memories of a different man, a friend, Chang. Better to bend ... than to break. Had this gem of wisdom originated with Confucius, and more importantly, was his advice good? My recollection of the man was that he'd been one to instruct, but not particularly be instructed-nor was he very pliant. "They are your enemy. They burned your village to the ground, killed your sister, took away everything you remember. They murdered your friends." Bend ...or... break. I felt flexible. Blam! Blam! Blam, blam, blam! - Trowa Barton
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