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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 Eight Attack on Apartment 3B The window shattered, the bullets accurately hitting the back of the moving vehicle even though there was some distance between them. Duo had ducked instinctively as the gun was raised and he saw the intention of the merc from the vantage point of the back seat of the car. Catherine was already hunched over, Eli in her arms, and Trowa had managed to swerve the car a little to the side as the bullets impacted with the rental vehicle that they would not be getting their deposit back for. Duo knew it wasn't time to be thinking of something so fucking mundane but he felt a dangerous smirk cross his lips as he looked back out the broken window and fired a few answering shots. The gunfire was far too damn loud in the confines of the car and he could hear the sound of the kid whimpering a little and Catherine trying to comfort him in soothing, motherly tones. It wasn't working - they were speeding through the streets of the earth sphere's most pacifistic country with a black van behind them and gunfire trained on them. It wasn't really the time to be comforting as they were in shit and the surprise element of Nabokov's latest attempt to kidnap Eli and the higher quality of the mercenaries he'd employed meaning that despite having three former Gundam pilots, they were still screwed and totally outnumbered. Duo always liked bad odds. Losing battles. And so this was only another one. He ducked again as he saw one of the mercs slide the gun out of the window, now reloaded, and the machine gun fire rattled, avoiding the car almost entirely as Trowa stopped obeying any laws regarding driving and the car was on the sidewalk. The sound of Heero's grunt of pain as the car jolted alerted him to the other part of this shit storm that was not good. He looked down to where Heero was sprawled on the backseat where Duo had pushed him into the car after the fire fight, forced him in and he knew that he'd taken a hit but not known about its severity until the small indication of pain that fell from Heero's lips. "Fuck, why didn't you say anything?" he said, accusingly, jolted again as Trowa took a hard corner in an attempt to get away from the black van. "It's not bad." There was no time to respond as another burst of gunfire hit near the car and Duo waited, counting as best as he could to ensure that the clip was empty before moving from his crouched position in the vehicle and taking a deep breath before firing a few shots, aiming for one of the front tires. He emptied the clip, taking a moment between each bullet to ensure at least one hit, his aim off due to the speed at which Trowa was driving. The van swerved and Duo ducked his head back into the cover of the car as another round of machine gun fire sounded, missing them entirely as the driver tried to regain control as it spun to the side, the tire blown. The van was no longer a problem, Duo fixed Heero with a glare that was comparable to his own. "Show me." Heero looked up at him and he removed his hand slowly from where he'd been applying pressure to a wound in defeat. "Fuck." He glanced over to the front of the car - realising his whole vow the last few days for his language to be thoroughly PG rated had now been disbanded. Eli had dealt with more in the last thirty minutes than the fact Duo was swearing. He'd seen bodies, gunfire, blood and Heero put his body in front of his in order for him to survive. He was sure a few fucks were mild by comparison. "It's not bad," Heero repeated. "Hold this." Duo gave him the gun he'd been holding and decisively removed his hoodie, followed by his t-shirt. There was obvious confusion in Heero's eyes as to why he was stripping in the confines of the car and in their current situation but it soon became clear what he was doing. He put the hoodie back on, not bothering to zip it as then he ripped up the t-shirt into strips, the sound of ripping fabric suddenly seeming loud in the car without the competing sound of gunfire. They had to get out of New Port City, out of Sanc, in a rental car with obvious bullet holes in it and Duo knew that Trowa understood that - they'd had an evac plan. They just thought it would've gone smoother. He reached for his knife hidden in a sheath in his boot and used the blade to rip apart Heero's own t-shirt, the pale grey fabric entirely saturated in blood on his right side, the cloth clinging stubbornly to the wound and Duo put the blade handle in his mouth as he touched the wound carefully, grabbing at the material and moving it away from the opening. He heard Heero wince and Duo let his hand feel around Heero's side to see if there was an exit wound. It would be better if there damn wasn't and he felt it was lucky that there was not one. "No exit wound." Heero nodded though Duo could see that he was in worse shape than he would admit. Shock was the damn problem. The bullet could stay in him - as sometimes it was damn better that way. If the bullet was in a location where it was more dangerous for it to be removed than for it to stay then the surgeons just left the piece of metal in. And Duo really didn't want to attempt to remove a bullet in a moving car over cobbled streets even if he was shit hot at field medicine. Which he wasn't - rudimentary things were all he'd ever learnt. He tried to create a makeshift bandage out of his t-shirt, aware of the futility of it working as blood was continuing to pour from the wound and then he just scrunched up what remained, balling it up in his bloody hands and applying enough pressure to make Heero gasp. It was a small gasp but one that indicated it hurt. "You don't have to be superman anymore," he said softly, his initial anger dissipating. "You don't hafta jump in front of a bullet." "The kid, okay?" Duo looked over to the front seat, to where Catherine and Eli were crouched and he couldn't see the little boy's face or anything in the darkness but he was alive. And he wasn't in the black van with the mercs. Duo would take that as okay. More than okay. Take it as a win for the good guys. "Yeah. You saved him 'Ro." He knew what those words meant between them. He didn't need to say that he'd done what he couldn't do in Rio when they'd stayed in that tiny room that overlooked that bar where the deals of one drug lord lackey Iniesta would take place. Where there had only been a small thin street between the two buildings so that they could hear the constant sounds of a television on too damn loud with soccer playing almost constantly from that bar - the loud and extended "goal" heard far too many times in any twenty four hour period. That last mission where the walls of the room were cracked, where the windows only opened enough to let stifling air get through and they took turns listening to the chatter of feeds and trying to nap in the damn heat. It had been a fuck up of a mission, the whole thing pointless as they took down a low level shit like Iniesta who used kids to run drugs with a dangerous amount of chemicals in them and they didn't get any intel that was valuable to the taking down of the drug cartel that he belonged to. They'd spent three sweaty, ill-tempered weeks in that place, talking to locals in broken Portuguese and broken English, watching movements and waiting for an opportunity to call in the back up once something worthwhile happened. Duo knew they both took that mission too hard - maybe Heero more so than he did, but then he still remembered the kids that used to hang around, played soccer with them sometimes, running down the winding pathways and chasing them in their bright soccer kits, taking brief moments away from the room and the equipment and the job. It was those moments that probably made one shitty mission harder to deal with - it was not that they hadn't fucked up before, not the first time the Preventers' intel was off, but it was the last time they could both deal with it. The fire fight. The civilian causalities. The image of a kid's bare feet on the dusty ground. Things he'd forgotten but then being around Heero always brought it back up. That they were both to blame when things got out of hand - too restless, too irritated, caged too damn long in that room with cracked paint that was too small. Eli wasn't bloody or dead on the sidewalk outside the apartment complex. Heero had saved him - stopped the bullet from ripping the kid to pieces - probably knowing that the bullet would hurt him but potentially kill Eli and maybe it might make him feel better. Nothing could ever atone for the fuck up of Rio, of the kids, of the thirty or so dead civilians caught in the crossfire of bullets but Eli wasn't dead. He wanted to tell him to take it as a win. Or something. But he didn't as he looked down, zipping up his hoodie one handed with bloody fingers. Duo saw Heero's eyes flutter and he pushed harder on the wound, intentionally causing some pain and discomfort. "You are not going into shock, buddy. I will keep my hand like this and when you feel like you're slipping, you tell me, 'kay?" "Yeah." Duo took the opportunity to look up from Heero and the wound to see more thin streets when all they needed was a damn highway - to get out of New Port City in the damaged car as soon as they could and dump it, blood stained and broken. "Ya think you can get us outta here, Tro'?" "Yeah." They anticipated that it could happen like it had gone down. Maybe they'd been stupid to stay in the same location for more than one day. It was old-school cockiness, Duo reasoned - that they were three ex-Gundam pilots and no one would get the fucking drop on them. Yet they knew that Nabokov had the potential to cause more problems - pay more money and get better mercs. They'd had an evac plan - that if Nabokov's men approached the apartment, they'd separate Catherine and Eli and concentrate the defence on the kid. That Eli was the target to acquire, that the rest of them were expendable and that they'd need one of them to take the kid, one to protect Catherine, and the other to provide cover. It was a workable plan. Just one that Duo had hoped they didn't have to fucking use. But they'd used it - not exactly how they'd planned. Used it in the middle of night - the only damn good side to that being that all three of them were awake, Heero was on the roof but Nabokov had been clever. Somehow their feeds had been fucked with, the images repetitive, and while Trowa and Duo were watching them in turn it took a while to figure they'd been tampered with. It was only when the same woman walked by twice in the spell that Duo watched did he figure that something was wrong. And then he tried to communicate with Heero. The radio frequency didn't work. Nor did his cell. It was a smart move - not just cutting the feeds, instead hacking into them and altering them subtlety. Duo thought about telling Heero his computer skills had got rusty but then he figured it wasn't the most appropriate thing to say. It gave them enough time for Trowa to wake Catherine and Eli - throwing on jackets, securing the weapons, the med kit, the shit that was essential and then made an attempt to follow the evac plan. They didn't get out of the apartment until the sound of gunfire came from outside the building and Duo only smirked, checked his weapon and ammunition, and stepped out running point. He'd slung the duffle bag of weapons over his shoulder, the bag that contained the med kit and some cash - the essential things they needed. He didn't get time to look back sadly at the apartment, to see the mobile suit figures on the floor, the expensive surveillance equipment abandoned, the place that had been a shadow of a relationship long since gone before he was being followed by Trowa - Catherine holding her son tightly, protectively - and they were making their exit down the stairs, Duo hoping that the suppressing fire from the roof was making it difficult for too many mercs to make their way into the building or to try and make it up the stairwell. Duo didn't blame the kid for being scared as he went down the stairwell leaving them at the top, the location of their apartment close to it as that was one of their own remits when they bought the stupid place. That there was an exit. It was only just after the war. Paranoia was their friend back then. Still was. It took a brief second for gunfire to start, enough that time stood still like it did so many times before in battle and this time rather than the first ineffectual mercs that Nabokov had sent for Eli, these guys were much more capable. Black ops gear. Body armour covering their chest with POLICE on so as to look like they were the damn good guys. Duo had only glared under his bangs at them. They may look like the good guys but sure as hell they weren't. And when the first round of shots reverberated inside the apartment complex, Duo fired back - taking down as many enemy combatants as he damn well could. Aiming for the head. 'Should've supplied helmets,' he'd thought. It was only in the scuffle down the stairwell did shit look bad. Heero joined them from the roof, his body being used a block between the mercs and Eli. They'd fought their way down, laying suppressing gunfire until they'd reached the rental car, and that's when Heero had taken his damn hit. Just hadn't acknowledged it until he was bleeding to death in the car. Stubborn asshole. Suddenly, Trowa stopped the car and Duo looked up in surprise, his eyes having been fixed on the place where his hand pressed, covered in a layer of drying blood. "Swapping cars," he said simply, and Duo nodded as Trowa exited the vehicle and jogged to a large silver SUV - a dull, family-style car that was pretty average. It was a good choice. Duo would've made the same if he was on the run. And as he'd spent the last eight years of his life being inconspicuous, learning to do the understated thing, the thing that would not get him noticed, he appreciated that Trowa understood what they had to do. But then Trowa had spent a good portion of his life trying to fade into the background, to go by unnoticed, and so Duo figured that he understood that better than anyone. Better than even Heero. "You okay to move?" Heero nodded in a short tight motion and then moved up from the reclined position slowly, replacing Duo's bloody hands with his own as he sat up. It was painful, Duo could see that, he knew those little signs that Heero gave, and he felt more worried than he would admit to Heero. That it was now ten years since the war - over that since Heero was in Dr. J's labs, his DNA and genetics being played with so that he could survive a fall from a hospital building, so that he could survive self-destruction, survive every battle, every beating, every piece of shit that could be thrown at him. Yet those drugs, those chemicals, those experimentations had long since been done with and God only knew if Heero was as strong as he used to be. And he was noticeably in pain. From a little bullet wound. He'd have made a joke but he hated himself for thinking that. "Just be careful, ya don't want the bullet to move and hit something vital." Trowa had secured the car, Duo impressed that he'd not tripped any alarm or done anything as unsophisticated as knock a window out. He'd not been watching but guessed that Trowa obviously had some sneaky techniques just as he had. 'Knew he was a sneaky ass motherfucker,' he thought as he opened the door and provided some help to get Heero awkwardly out of the car. This time, unlike so many others, Heero accepted the help and they managed to get him out, Catherine and Eli already in the new car, the lights on and the engine running as Trowa approached to help. They moved him awkwardly together and Duo couldn't help but see the look on Trowa's face. He knew more about field medicine than Duo did - after all, he could put broken soldier boys back together - and the way he glanced at the amount of blood and the pallor of Heero's skin indicated he thought it was as bad as Duo feared. He didn't vocalise that thought and nor did Duo. Once Heero was in the car, they stood for a second against the car. "You okay?" Duo asked, quietly, aware that he'd not really said anything to Trowa since their escape. He wiped blood hastily on his jeans but knew there was no damn point. He was covered in blood. Heero's blood. And it would stay that way. "Yeah," he replied, his eyes taking in Duo's obviously bloody appearance. "You?" "Always am, buddy." They didn't speak anymore, getting into the hotwired SUV to drive through the night as far out of New Port City as they could.
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