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"Caught in the Crossfire "Written By: Miss Murdered Disclaimer: I don't own the GW characters –
am just borrowing to torment for my amusement Rating: NC 17 Warnings: Swearing, yaoi, violence, hints of long
past NCS Pairings: Primarily 3x2, past/presentish 1x2,
past 3x4 and 1x3 Summary: When Trowa's nephew is threatened by
the ruthless father who abandoned him, Trowa needs help in order to
fight back and protect both Catherine and the little boy. Things get
complicated when both Shinigami and the Perfect Soldier come to his
aid as the three men must discover where they stand with each other
while they work out a way to protect Trowa's family. "Caught in the Crossfire "
Chapter Three Finding Duo The truck was one of the circus vehicles that could be spared. Trowa glanced in the mirror to the back seat to see that Catherine had finally fallen asleep with Eli in her lap, her fingers wrapped in the boy's hair. He looked back to the dash to see the amount of miles he'd put between them and the circus location as he headed randomly further out of Prague. He'd not been tactical, he'd just picked a direction and started driving and would stop when he felt there was enough distance to make him feel at least somewhat secure. Now that Catherine was asleep, he slowed the truck down and started to find a dirt path or somewhere to pull up that would be inconspicuous and make a call. He shook his head ruefully, it felt like hiding Heavyarms though that had been considerably bigger and had needed more thought than the truck. The call had waited. He didn't have time after he'd retrieved Eli and brought him back to the circus camp. A crowd had gathered of people in various degrees of disarray having being woken so suddenly as he emerged from the trees. Catherine ran towards him but stalled as she saw the figure in front of her. Eli's arms were very tight around Trowa's neck, small fingers clutching at the hair at the back of his head. The boy hadn't said a word as he walked deliberately out of the woods and Trowa didn't say anything either. Was he supposed to comfort the boy? How could he explain to a five year old that what he had done was completely necessary? How did he explain that he wasn't a cold hearted killer? He'd said at the end of the war that he never wanted to kill again. He'd refused the Preventer offer for that reason - the so called peaceful organisation seemed to be built on a lie of pacifism while agents went out in the field armed with guns and licenses to kill. Heero and Duo had joined the Preventers and it had ended their tumultuous relationship - a testament to the strain that the organisation put on their agents. They'd left the Preventers long ago unable to continue within it after a disastrous mission in Rio. A mission Trowa only knew about after a broken Heero Yuy turned up at the circus, unable to look Duo in the eye anymore and in search of someone who would understand. Trowa couldn't understand but had offered a body and a bed. It was all he was able to do. Trowa's hands were shaking slightly as he drove, his body a confused mix of adrenalin and endorphins. Catherine hadn't been able to look at him since he'd appeared from the woods. She'd taken Eli off him with fierce protective hands, cradling the boy and running her fingers over him and repeating words like "it's all okay" over and over again. Trowa knew how he looked. The blood and dirt had caked his skin and he felt the awful look in Catherine's eyes. She never wanted him to be that boy who had been unafraid of death, who maybe even welcomed it, that boy without fear or identity. "Pack up," he'd said to her, simply. He was trying not to cause a scene even as he knew the glances he received. The old circus performers knew the past of the former Gundam pilot and for them the fact that he had appeared covered in blood was less shocking than to the newer members who knew the quiet man who looked after the lions and did a solo trapeze act. "Trowa..." "Pack up." He knew he was speaking to her harshly as he walked back into the camp, eyes trained on him, making him feel more than a little uncomfortable. Trowa had spent most of his life being no one, invisible and occasionally another person. He was the master of blending in, of being inconspicuous despite his height and physique. "We leave tonight." "But... Trowa! Eli's terrified!" That wasn't difficult to see. Catherine had tears in her eyes and the boy's tight grip was now on his mother's arms, small hands tightly holding skin, afraid to let go. Green eyes looked to see the focus was all on them. He knew some of the newer performers had thought them a couple and that Eli was his own son - a mistake that got made frequently as it seemed very few people could coax a response from Eli and fewer could get more than three words from Trowa. It appeared like they were having a lovers tiff for the other performer's amusement. If not for the amount of blood that stained his clothes and the terrified child, it might have convinced some that they were. He lowered his voice and moved closer to Catherine. He looked around at the people watching, thinking of any of the new performers. There wasn't a war and he no longer checked up on people to check their identities but he didn't like the way some of them looked at him. He tried to remind himself that he was covered in blood but Nabokov could easily infiltrate the circus. Old war time paranoia had resurfaced and all Trowa wanted to do was get moving now but Catherine's hesitancy was frustrating. "Alexei just tried to have you killed. He tried to kidnap Eli. We need to get somewhere safe." She blinked, processing the information. "And where's safe, Trowa?" "Away from here," was all he could offer. They'd packed up and gone, Trowa throwing away the t-shirt and shorts and washing away as much of the blood as possible. They didn't have time and he didn't shower. The blood felt rusty and cloying underneath his nails as he tapped the steering wheel, his head bowed as he looked down at the side of the road trying to find a location to stop for a break. His eyes were blurred and he was no longer safe to drive, the sun would be up in a few hours and he did not feel like stopping the vehicle in sunlight knowing that they should keep moving during the daylight hours. He found a dirt path that seemed to veer off into a forest and he abruptly turned the vehicle, he saw Catherine and Eli shift but they didn't stir. Sleep like that had been impossible for Trowa for years. He drove a little way off and then stopped the engine and for a moment leaned his head back in the seat rest, taking a deep breath. He wasn't sure where he was. He was unsure of what he was trying to achieve but all he wanted was distance. He undid his seatbelt and opened the trucks door as quietly as possible, jumping down and saw that Catherine had opened her eyes. Trowa nodded at her and she shut her eyes again. The sky was clear as he walked a short distance from the truck and then got the phone from his pocket, he'd turned it off to retain battery power and waited as it buzzed into life. The signal should have been poor from this location but Trowa was raised to adapt things - he'd boosted the signal and tinkered with the thing as he could never guarantee where in the world he would be and whether he would need to make contact. It would seem strange to his war time self that he was contacting pilot 02. During the war, Duo was the one pilot he didn't really get opportunity to spend any time with and plus, his first impression had been that the Deathscythe pilot was loud and brash. Their personalities were perhaps far too different for a friendship and he had never made any attempt to make a connection with him. After the war, he'd been with Quatre and Duo had been with Heero. They met up from time to time and socialised but there had been no opportunity to become friends during that period. Heero had been possessive of Duo and to say he had trust issues would have been playing down the way that relationship had worked. It had been like watching fireworks up close - they spent two years destroying each other in a volatile and violent relationship that concerned every person who ended up in the unfortunate position of seeing any kind of disagreement between them. After the mission in Rio, he'd known that Duo had disappeared and there was no knowledge of his movements after that. It was six months ago that Trowa had first found Duo Maxwell again. When Alexei made his first attempt to get custody of Eli, they'd sought legal counsel but the vast sum of money they needed was beyond the meagre wages they earned from the circus. They didn't need to earn money in the circus as food, transportation and housing was provided and subsidies for that were taken from their salaries. Trowa knew he could probably still hack into funds but was aware that he was living a normal legal life and plus he feared that if anything came back to him, Alexei could use it as more ammunition. The legal papers had featured a very damning report on his life and his potential mental health issues without anything new to add. Instead, he needed people he could trust. Heero drifted and resurfaced occasionally but at this time he was impossible to locate with his computer skills that superseded all of them combined. Duo had disappeared. Quatre was easy to find but after their bitter break up, Trowa would not contact him unless he ran out of options. Wufei was a tenured professor and cut himself off from the former Gundam pilots. They had become scattered, lost to each other and themselves. It was with the knowledge of the other former pilots that he found himself attempting to find Duo Maxwell - the one who had tried to keep them together in the very beginning. The first port of call had been Hilde Schbeiker but that had been pointless. She hadn't seen him for years and didn't appreciate his name being brought up - it seemed there was still bad blood between the pair. The second call had been somewhat more successful. The Sweepers had some knowledge and Howard had seen "the kid" two years previously which was the most recent contact that anyone seemed to have had with Duo. He'd needed a shuttle for some unknown reason - Howard didn't ask and Duo didn't tell. Howard hinted that whatever Duo was doing now it was a lot less than legal and he was living off grid. He moved around but drifted back to L2. Howard suggested that if he was to be found, that he would be found in the L2 cluster doing "something" and so Trowa started logically. Hacking into the shuttle port security feed. Using facial recognition software, he got a match for Duo arriving back on L2 and froze the image. The former Deathscythe pilot hadn't changed dramatically in the eight years since they'd met. Braid still in place though hidden down the back of a jacket, baseball cap on his head, taller, filled out more - basic things that happened now that they weren't boys but men - but essentially Duo looked the same, just older. The next stage was trickier as he hacked into various cameras around L2 from the date he arrived onwards, tracking movements as best as he could. Most colonies had advanced surveillance systems, improved even more so after the wars and the paranoia of potential terrorists threats rising again. Unfortunately, L2 as the least reputable and least wealthy colony had a less advanced system so movements got lost once Duo left the main hub of the colony and went wherever he went. It seemed a frustrating job trying to track Duo down and he briefly thought about burying pride and contacting Quatre. The thought of going back to Quatre after the bitterness of their break up and asking for money horrified him enough to double his efforts of finding Duo. A lucky break came when a particular camera was fixed outside the main nightclub and bar area and he managed to match the recognition software five times to one particular place. Then it was a case of getting a message to the bar owner to pass on to Duo. He wasn't aware if Duo was going by Duo Maxwell or an alias. His name popped up in databases prior to his disappearance and then vanished. He didn't travel, purchase things electronically or indeed, pay taxes, own bank accounts or have medical or life insurances. His Preventer file was marked closed and it was as Howard had said; he'd dropped off the grid. Trowa sent a cryptic message via a confused bar owner who did know a man with a long braid. Least Duo had kept that distinctive feature. /02 - Status? Old comm channel. 03./ The old comm channels were heavily encrypted but were still working. Trowa routed it to his cell phone and waited. It seemed it didn't take long. The message had made Duo just as curious as Trowa had intended - perhaps for the same reasons Trowa himself found it weird that he was contacting him out of any of the other former Gundam pilots. They had no connection apart from fighting a war. They would never have been friends. They were too different. And now he was contacting him again. He selected the details in his phone and waited, the slow process of finding satellites and patching through the call taking time. Duo was usually colony bound, he hated being "dirt side" as he called it and that had been a notorious thorn in the Yuy-Maxwell relationship. Heero wanted to live in Sanc. Duo wanted to live in the colonies. Heero got his way. From the best of Trowa's knowledge, Heero had always seemed to get his way but he understood that. He'd been in a relationship with a very domineering and controlling man just Quatre did so in an entirely different way than Heero. The click of the line connecting stopped his thoughts. "Hey," a familiar voice answered. "Duo?" "The one and only. What's up, Trowa?" "I need help." "Money? I can wire you -" "Nabokov just tried to have Catherine killed and Eli kidnapped." "Shit." There was a pause on the other end of the line and Trowa didn't know what to say. He was a man of few words and he found phone conversations more challenging than vidphones. Least he could see the person then. "Where are you?" Duo asked finally. "We were outside Prague... I took a truck and left the circus." "You think it could've been someone in the circus?" "No... I don't know," he said, the weariness in his voice showing his lack of sleep, "they were mercs, Duo. Four mercs." "Jesus. They get away?" "No." He heard a low chuckle. "Least that's one thing." Trowa didn't think it was a laughing matter but the chuckle wasn't humorous. It was dark. Cold. Slightly chilling. "I killed them in front of Eli. He saw." He didn't know why he said it but he heard an intake of breath on the other end of the line. Maybe Duo would understand. He didn't honestly know. He didn't know him well enough. "Tro'...you did the right thing. Mercs would've done much worse and, hell, you have no idea what'll happen if fucking Nabokov got his hands on the kid. Don't beat yourself up. We all got too much blood on our hands." "I don't know where to go." "Just keep moving - usual shit, Tro'. No credit cards. Dump cars. Disguise yourselves. Back roads, you know this, man." "I know." "Give me some time... I'll get you some fake ID docs and cash and I'll be dirt side in a couple of days. Hide yourself until then and I'll be in touch." "Duo..." "Trowa, don't say my name like that. You need help. He sent four mercs and he underestimated you. What the fuck is he going to next time? You need back up." He wished he could just nod as he was finding the telephone conversation difficult. "Okay." "Now just keep 'em safe. I'll be in touch as soon as I can get some shit done, 'kay?" "Thanks." "Don't thank me yet, Tro'." The call disconnected and Trowa blinked at the phone in his hand. It seemed weird to him that Duo had just disconnected the call without anything else but then perhaps the braided man wasn't as talkative. The slang was still there, the swearing was still there but that cold laugh had been chilling. He put the phone back in his pocket and pulled himself back into the truck to see Catherine's eyes open. Eli was still curled in her arms, his chest rising and falling in sleep. "Who did you call?" "Duo. He'll be here in a few days." She let out a huffy breath. Trowa knew Catherine's opinions on the former Gundam pilots and while she could be nothing more than grateful for the money that the braided man had sent, she did not have to like any of them. They reminded her of a time when Trowa was nothing but ready to die. And she would never feel anything but hatred for Quatre Winner. Trowa may have got over the break up but Catherine hadn't. It had been like living with a zombie. Worse. Indeed, least a zombie tried to eat people rather than just mechanically move around. She never wanted Trowa to become like that again. Those other pilots were chaos and violence. She remembered Duo as the one who tried to persuade Trowa back into the fight - the one who was with Heero after. While she had no real reason to hate Duo Maxwell, she didn't like him by default but she tried not to say anything to her brother as she stroked the hair of her son. The truck started again, rumbling underneath them, and Catherine sighed loudly. "Where are we going now, Trowa? You need to rest. You've driven through the night." "We keep moving." "Trowa...you are not a soldier anymore. You need to rest, please, Trowa, think of us. You are no use to us bleary eyed and sleep deprived." His eyes met hers through the rear view mirror as he started reversing back the path. It was the first time she'd looked him in the eye since he'd snapped the mercs neck. There was that old sisterly concern there. He knew that Catherine wasn't his biological sister but he'd long since accepted that she was family. And the little boy was not blood but he was his to protect. "We'll find a hotel," he offered, blandly. "Good. You need to sleep, little brother." He gave her a small smile through the mirror and she gave him a small one back. It meant that she was beginning to accept what he'd done. Trowa hadn't wanted to kill again but he was sure by the end of this, his hands would be covered in blood once again.
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