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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 3 Quatre entered the room after taking his break and was nearly bowled over by waves of panic. He wasn't sure if it was all his own anxieties playing in his brain or a mix of what was in the air. "Are they late- again?" "They are not late; they are completely off schedule!" Heero said through gritted teeth. "When unexpected events force a change in the plans, Duo's been known to rely on his intuition and formulate creative-" "'Flying by the seat of his pants'-that's how he'd put it- was not in the mission specs!" Heero snarled. "You're being very hostile, Yuy." Heero's next words come out as more of a snarl. "You noticed?" Wufei stood and stretched his back. "Why? They've been on more difficult and dangerous mission before without you coming undone. What's your particular problem with this one?" "Everything. We lost one agent and so we send two more the same way to the same place and expect what miracle to happen? I didn't like the plan when it was first outlined and like it less and less now." "You suspect Hilde." Wufei said what Heero had carefully left out. Wufei and Hilde had been dancing around one another for the past year; he was terrified of appearing weak or needy and she was equally petrified of frightening him off. Although he didn't talk about his feelings or his relationship, Wufei would be quick to defend her honor. "Oh, no!" Quatre cried out. "She's not to blame. Stop this. Stop this at once!" "I didn't say that." Heero backed off. "I don't think it either, Chang. Damnit anyway! If I had, I would have said something before I let...ah... watched Une assign Duo to go with her." Wufei dipped his chin, acknowledging the truth. He sighed and his breath was shaky. "The tension is getting to us all." "That's right," Quatre agreed. He studied Heero's face speculating on what his friend been about to confess, wondering just how much influence Heero believed he had over Duo's assignments. Or how much Heero wanted to protect Duo? He wondered if Heero had disclosed his feelings for his fellow agent yet, as he'd said he would. With both men staring at him, Heero tried explaining his thoughts. "It's more that... I think it's obvious she's not the target. As long as we keep sending them ex-Gundam pilots, however, they'll keep capturing them." "That should stop us from making plans to go in after them," Quatre concluded logically. His roguish expression said otherwise, though. "So, let's devise our own plan." (o) The river-fishing village of Drain at dusk looked like a beached fishing trawler Heero and I had once had to search for smuggled drugs. The power lines were askew like broken rigging and garbage piled in the streets like spilling bilge muck. It was an unsettling sight that hurried us into the nearest hotel by the square. We took a room, unloaded our heavy bags, and hid anything of value. Money and weapons we kept under our clothes. I wanted to signal the home office as best I could that we had settled in for the night. I imagined Quatre suffering under Wufei and Heero's verbal strikes, critiquing our job execution every step of the way. A delay in checking in would drive them nuts, but missing a check in would send them over the top and scrambling to launch a full scale extraction with hovercraft evac units. Or maybe I was ascribing to Heero some of my own feelings. Would he care enough about what happened to me to come after me against orders? It was possible that Une might just cross us off the list and move on to the next agents to find Trowa, her favorite agent by far. I doubted Wufei would let Hilde, a woman!, go down without attempting a rescue operation, him as his outmoded L5 ideas of gallantry. Okay, I was getting a little depressed. I knew the others wouldn't leave us to rot in the field. I didn't want them to worry unnecessarily, though, so I got to work making a clever emergency signaling device. "What are you doing to your watch?" Hilde asked. "If I can get this thing to send out one blip, just one, then he'll...ah... Preventers will know we made it to a safe place for the night." "A signal? Jesus, Duo! If there are sniffers around they'll get wind of a tech device and start searching. Preventers can wait." "I got it ready." I put it in my pocket. All I had to do was push in the time-set button and a single double-pulse for "02" would be emitted. I could only hope the safe house we couldn't find was not compromised and had its receiver/transmitter in working condition. Otherwise, this tiny signal would be too weak to get picked up by anyone "good". "Don't worry," I told her on our way out the door of our room, "I won't try anything until we are outside in a crowded place. It'll be okay." The streets were dark and a smell of smoke was in the air. When we passed a knot of teenagers, I pressed the button and prayed. If the adjustment I'd made worked, if the transmission wasn't garbled, if the transmitter picked it up and boosted the signal strong enough to make it to the field office, then I knew Heero would understand it and maybe relax a little bit more. Heero might not have had a romantic interest in me, but he would be damned if he didn't track my missions. We walked into a restaurant half a block down the street. During dinner, there was some commotion in the street. Down at the fisherman's wharf, a gunfight broke out between a local OZ regiment and some French Alliance officers in civilian clothes trying to board a ship. A French major was killed, his men captured. Hilde dragged me back to our room. "We have to stay out of trouble. Remember our mission!" "Yeah, yeah, but damn! These French ID's we got won't get us much further. Eric Martin-do I even look like an Eric Martin?" (o) Today I'd seen terrible things and didn't want another nightmare-filled night, so I tried to recall the guidance of a man who'd been a friend in my veiled past. This time the vision spilled like the blood I'd seen, oozing slowly, flowing from one scene to another. It had happened long ago after a bloody fight with our Gundams. He had wielded the scythe of death, I remembered, though not his name. We were bunked together and he asked me how I got past it all and got to sleep at night. "I don't," I told him truthfully. "If I'm beat like now I just pass out, I think. What about you?" He told me he fell back on his upbringing, such as it was, and chuckled somewhat darkly. He prayed. To God. "You can try it, if you like," he said. He taught me a few of his prayers and I found that repeating the litanies led to believing the words and that actually helped a little. So, I tried now. I'd forgotten what the boy looked like and what his voice sounded like. I struggled for the words, but a small warmth radiated from deep inside my chest, melting away a little of the deadly apathy that had numbed my spirit. "God." I began with that. "Forgive me for I have sinned." I knew this was right when I heard the cackle of laughter in the background. But it wasn't his, I knew that. It was theirs. I wanted to sleep, but they made certain I was awake, icing the soles of my feet, then burning them with matches. They'd let me sleep when I denied everything, even his God. - Trowa Barton Chapter 4 The two Preventers agents, Wufei and Heero, and single independent consultant, Quatre, expected Duo and Hilde to report in with some news this day. There were several possible incarceration camps between the river town of Drain, which they should have passed by now, and the coast. Trowa might be at any one of them. They needed to know where to send in an extraction team. "Call in anytime, Maxwell. Pick an installation and survey the place." Wufei talked to himself as if he could direct the agent's actions by will power alone. "What's taking you so long?" Heero stared at his coffee, leaving Wufei's unanswerable question to hang in the air while his mind raced to fill in with fruitless possibilities. Quatre didn't think Heero's mental state would improve until he'd told them what was eating away at him. He had a pretty good idea that Heero's problems revolved around his feelings for Duo, and that bottling it up was damaging his friend's coping abilities. Before the group-anxiety ratcheted up to the breaking point as the check-in deadline neared, he decided to break the ice. When Quatre spoke, his sudden interruption actually startled Heero. "Did you tell him?" "Tell who what?" Wufei asked even though Quatre had directed his inquiry at Heero, not him. Heero looked up then frowned and shook his head. "No, not that it's any of your business. Now forget it." "Oh, Heero. You said-!" "I know!" Heero exploded, pounding the table hard enough to crack the laminate. The release of stress gave him control over his breathing and after a couple deep breaths, his voice. "I know I said I would. I know, but I couldn't let him go on a mission with that to think over. I couldn't make me a distraction." "Distraction? How about giving him something to look forward to?" "You are so sure he would react...positively," Heero grumbled. "He would! You know that! Anyone can tell, even... Wufei here knows." Wufei, guessing what they were talking around said, "Oh, of course. Maxwell wears his heart on his sleeve for everyone to see, except you, apparently. So, your 'mad-on' is all about not having bared your soul to that idiot before he left on a mission? I wouldn't worry. He knows how you feel. He's just waiting for the right time, and I quote, 'to jump you'." Heero slumped with his head in both hands. "God. I told him I had something important to tell him when he got back." Quatre perked up. "That's good, Heero! He'll want to complete the job and get back quickly all safe and sound." "You don't think he'd want to avoid some confrontation with me?" "He'll want to hear what you have to say. It could only be good. You wouldn't have said that if you'd meant to hurt him." "No, I wouldn't." Heero looked relieved for about ten seconds. "What's that?" he asked when the incoming transmission beeped. "Just a blip," Wufei determined. "Move over." Heero keyed in a higher signal-enhancement level and removed more background distortion. "Duo! It's an '02'!" Wufei studied the many-times relayed signal for distortion. "You are right. It's real and not just noise. I missed that." "They're okay, then, but not at the safe house?" Quatre asked. "That's how I interpret it. He wouldn't mess around with us." "But they are off mission specs." Wufei met Heero's eyes directly. "I don't know how he rigged that message to get through, but it didn't originate at a safe house." (o) At 2:00 AM Hilde woke me and said, "I had a dream. OZ came here and arrested us." Drowsy, I didn't understand what she was trying to say. "They came to our house?" "Not the house. Here! This room!" she exclaimed. "They jailed us." My friends are gifted with super-normal abilities. I have come to appreciate that fact and to make use of it. I believed Quatre when he claimed he felt our life substance beating in his heart. That's why I wanted to believe him when he said Trowa was alive. And that's why I agreed to come on this stupid mission. Hilde often had uncanny premonitions. I shot out of bed. There was nothing to do except hide the weapons and the bulk of our money, the credits and not what Hilde had sewn into the seams of our clothes. Leaving the hotel in the middle of the night would surely get us shot. The OZ patrol came to the hotel within the hour and began searching. We stood in the corridor with another family with children while they ransacked the rooms. They missed the money and weapons hidden beneath ripped up floorboards. Good for us that the soldiers were incompetent kids younger than us and poorly trained. "We'd been told out-of-towners had been seen in a restaurant nearby wearing bandoliers of ammunition under their clothing," one of the troops said. It was possible the bulges under our coats looked questionable, but many folks wore bulky layers that looked even more suspicious, I'd thought. We hadn't been locals, that was the problem and it had drawn distrust our way. "The government has declared martial law and all non-residents of Drain are to leave the city and go home with the dawn," the officer in charge informed us a few minutes later. Since that was exactly what we were planning to do anyway, we were more than happy to comply, not suspecting any deception. Well, not completely. "We'll leave everything but our cash and knives here," I told Hilde. "We have a couple safe houses left where new munitions are laid in." Hilde felt exposed without a sidearm. I insisted, though. If we were caught leaving and armed, we'd surely be shot on sight. "You saw them. Touchy guys. Besides, either of us could take one of those guys down in-hand-to-hand." The previous day the checkpoint into Drain only had a couple of guards who'd waved us through without a word. Today, leaving the village on the far side, the border stop was staffed with many soldiers in OZ uniforms and, curiously, civilians wearing French Alliance armbands. They signaled us to stop. Other families were waiting, sitting by the side of the road while their wagons, cars, or belongings were searched. "I'll take your identity cards," an officer told us. "We are looking for traitors with concealed weapons." The OZ men were well armed, I noticed, while the Alliance civilians executed the searches through the luggage. "We should be okay 'cause we got rid of everything," Hilde said. I didn't reply, but I thought we were certainly in trouble. Guerillas frisked us, found and confiscated the knives, and then searched our simple belongings. I was impressed with their discipline. When they came upon our cash, they left it in place. They didn't even take my watch, which hid a state of the art communicator. After about half an hour of searching without finding weapons, they told us they must take us back to the city to wait for orders from their superiors. I hoped this would get us closer to finding Trowa and didn't fight them, but when men with AK-47s riding motorcycles showed to escort us back to Drain, it became clear then that we were under arrest. Whoever engineered the capture was very devious. Arresting out-of-towners last night would have caused considerable commotion. Some might have escaped. But today, by ordering non-residents to leave town, they netted everyone since there was only one road in and out of Drain. Catching people at the checkpoints was clean and efficient. We could have escaped and might have taken that course of action had we been thinking straighter, not been so worn from the foot travel and anxiety in general. But we went along with the escort thinking that this way might lead us faster to Trowa, if he'd been held by these people. For all we knew, though, he was with the Resistance, or dead, despite Quatre's feelings. "We should have hidden our cash reserves better," Hilde hissed. "You sewed them into the seams fine. So what if a few bills came loose? They didn't seem interested in the money." "They must have arrested us because of it, though!" Her eyes looked up at me wide and fearful. "It's cash, not creds. They probably don't know anyone can buy dollars on the black market in Sanc. They could charge us for being spies!" "I'm sure they know about the black market. Look, there are other families being sent back. Not just us. All these other people are carrying everything they own just like us. They have money, too." I tried to sound reassuring. I didn't need my partner's panic multiplying my own. We didn't know at the time that all non-residents of Drain who tried to leave the village that day were arrested. It had just been a good guess on my part. "What should we tell them?" Hilde whispered. She looked more upset than before. The fear of what internment for a young woman could be like had to be getting to her. I repeated our story with all the calm and confidence I could muster. "I'm a collector and seller of scrap metal and you're my wife. Tell them we were heading to the coast where we have family and heard the fighting was over." "What if the fighting has started up again?" "They don't know when we left. On the road, who knows what news is right or wrong?" "They could ask us to prove when we arrived here and where we stayed." "I'm sure the hotel registry lists us. Listen. In this chaos, they won't have the time to check what we say. We have to stay cool, hope they believe us, and they might let us go." "If they believe us," Hilde echoed, skeptical all the way. Her face was taking on a sick pallor. Beads of sweat trickled down from her forehead. She was terrified for good reasons. As a former mecha pilot and later as a high-ranking Preventers' agent in the Special Forces, she could certainly expect serious punishment should her ID be made. Seeing her in distress made me think about my own situation, which was worse. I had been a very visible Gundam pilot and later worked for a secret project organization, which was a well-known front for Preventers. It would not matter to OZ or any of these enemy groups that I'd been drafted. A heavy silence fell on us. The fear and tension was so palpable even the birds flitting from bush to bush in search of winter berries became ghostly quiet. As we re-entered Drain, the lead escort turned down a side street. "They are not taking us to the town hall!" Hilde cried. "They are going to torture us!" Our convoy turned toward the gate of a huge compound enclosed by walls and barbed wire. There was a sign at the gate: Drain Prison. My heart jumped in my chest. "A prison?! Why didn't we know about this one?" Hilde demanded. I could tell she wanted to flee, but there was nowhere to escape to now. "Must be new and totally off the map," was my guess. Hilde frowned at me. My attempts at any humor eluded her under the circumstances. "There aren't any maps." The escort had us wait next to a dozen civilian cars, goat-carts, and bikes and ordered us to leave everything except a small bag of food apiece. Hilde especially found it difficult to leave a small fortune in plastic explosives sewn into her backpack's binding. Rather than the endless numbers of high-security, cold-stone cells typifying the OZ moon base prison, this looked to be a more conventional small-town lockup, a compound of four long, single-story buildings forming a square and enclosing a large courtyard. That plus the mix of uniforms, badges, and identifying armbands of the men in charge gave me hope that this wasn't an OZ operation and that our stay would be temporary. Apparently, I could pull hope out of nothing at the time. Quatre must have been rubbing off on me, and not in a hot-gay-man way. The main entrance had a thick, iron door. In the courtyard, I estimated a crowd of about two hundred sat, guarded by fifteen guerrillas and civilians with red armbands, a mixed lot. We were told to sit and wait. The escort gave our identity cards to a clerk. At first, the crowd reminded me of the refugees that flooded Sanc the past month. They had small bags and luggage by their sides, babies crying in their arms. Their children ran around playing, oblivious to the situation. Hilde jabbed me in the ribs. "They got to keep more of their stuff." "They have children," I pointed out. But, instead of fatigue and sadness, I saw fear. An ominous air hung over them. They gathered in family units and whispered among themselves. Some glanced at us when we sat down next to them, but they didn't say a word or even give a signal of acknowledgment. No one wanted to be associated in any way with a possible spy, and any one of us could be just that. Everyone was waiting his turn to called into the temporary tent set up at the center of the courtyard to fill out some sort of declaration form. It began to drizzle, adding to the general misery of the day. I was tempted to do something stupid several times. Grab an automatic and take down as many guards as possible while Hilde ran to free anyone she could, and look for signs of Trowa. Since that wasn't in our mission parameters and infiltration was, I sat and made certain Hilde followed my example. Our call didn't come until sunset. There was barely enough light to fill out our declaration forms. We were not allowed to talk. Although the OZ representatives had been telling us all day over the loudspeaker that the more truthful and complete we were in our declarations the sooner we would be released, I did not trust them. Judging from the number of detainees that day in the courtyard, I figured they had at least five hundred forms to review, and they would likely have many more in the coming days. I became very depressed thinking about that. The more time they had, the more likely it was that they would uncover our identities. Hilde and I only needed a few hours to discover if this was a possible holding location for Trowa, and then we needed to move on to search more likely internment camps for clues. One of us would have to get away! Once we finished with the forms, they immediately took us to our cells. They led Hilde off to the ward reserved for women and children. I went to one of two different wards for men, not the one on the right-hand side, but the one at the back facing the front of the compound. My cell was a single large room, roughly 30 feet wide and 140 feet long. At one end of the room was an open washing area equipped with only one squat toilet and a cement tank filled by a single faucet. The person using the toilet had to hold up a sheet of newspaper for a modesty screen. A bank of small windows with iron bars lined the inner wall above head height. To look outside, one had to jump up and grab hold of the bars. During the day, they opened the outer sheet-metal door to air out the cell. Twice a day, guards passed food though the inner door's iron bars: mildewed rice and a foul broth that gave everyone diarrhea. As one of the first inmates, I was able to pick a spot on a raised cement platform far away from the toilet. Our captors had arrested so many people that they didn't even have time to search our bodies. All they did was take our names, then incarcerate us. With only the clothes on my back and a money belt lined with thin bills hidden beneath my trousers, I took off my shirt and laid it down on the floor to mark my spot. I checked the blades slipped into the lining of my boots, the wire woven into my braid, which were all the potential weaponry I had left. My knives and doctored-up watch with locator had been left with my backpack, by orders. Who knew if I'd see any of that stuff again? My neighbors arrived. A young man in his late twenties and an older man in his forties with graying hair, both northerners heading to the coast like, allegedly, I was. I could tell they were of the middle class by their mannerisms and speech, which was a relief since it was unlikely that they were spies planted among the inmates to gather information. Like me, as my story went, they were aiming to find a boat to escape the terrors of being trapped between the Alliance, the new Resistance, and the OZ invasion. (o) I'm forgetting things. I'm unable to keep my thoughts ordered and I'm not able to see things in the right perspective. I leave unfinished ideas everywhere. I cannot even finish a sentence, except when I concentrate and type slowly on the ancient typewriter I've been given. One thought is interrupted by other unconnected thoughts, stepping on one another, and cluttering my head. There's no...continuity. No focus. My concentration is shot and I'm restless. I can't sleep for shit, which more than anything makes me irritable, even angry, for no reason. I'm constantly feeling frustrated. And depressed. My whole life is in a shambles. Mostly I find myself doing nothing. I can't imagine enjoying anything. There's no fun. My friends are gone. Everything fits in one vast negative space. I killed 20 men in cold blood. I am amazed at how easy this has become. I'm a natural, I'm told. A killer. And now I will have the chance to rid the world of the worst enemies. I will be tested soon. If I perform acceptably, then I will be allowed to go after the other offenders. I will become a hero to the state and an important man. In a flash came a vision of eyes glaring into mine and an overwhelming feeling of remorse, and the name: Heero. I'd been traveling with him on trip of penance. He couldn't bring back the men he'd murdered, not any of the people he'd killed by accident or on purpose. Atonement hadn't worked for him and probably it wouldn't work for me, either. I'd have to live with the guilt, knowing the pain I'd delivered to the families left behind. Forever. Just like him. Everything in the past died yesterday, and everything in the future is born today. - Trowa Barton
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