|
"Sinnerman"Written By: L.
Valensi Disclaimer: The characters are copyrighted to
BANDAI and all others responsible for their creation. Rating: NC 17 Pairings: 1x2 Summary: Duo and Heero were in the same unit in the war. Heero was killed and Duo is searching for those responsible. « » Marks words spoken in a different language
episode judges xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx i wake up all fear and dread-locked woe, woe, woe, woe, is we xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Duo, confident enough that the plan was going accordingly, unpacked his bag of deadly toys. Safely hidden amidst the leafy camouflage, he arranged his weapons, sat, and waited. Through his PSG-1’s sight, he could see clearly into the open windows of Sanc Estate. Contrary to its outside appearance, the estate contained within it a habitable residence—at least, in Duo’s opinion. He had already begun to survey the contours of the mansion when the oddest sensation struck his stomach. It was as if he’d once been in this very position, looking into this very same building. And as he peered into each individual window, the feeling spread throughout his body. The sensation became less déjà-vu than palpable dread once he set his sight on a certain room, glittering gold even in the shadow of night. Wait—night? How long have I been here? He thought. He took his eye off the sight and immediately felt the stiffness in his muscles, no doubt from having stayed in the same position for so long. The ache was worst in his lower back, which was positioned (stupidly, in hindsight) against a large, sharp rock. He yawned, realizing he was definitely feeling the fatigue of waiting too long in the same spot. He decided it was time to stop waiting—yet he couldn’t for the life of him remember what he was actually waiting for. His hand moved to disassemble his rifle, but a strange curiosity froze him in place. He took a deep breath and looked straight ahead into the room full of golden furniture, still empty and unlit. Another close look can’t hurt before I go. Maybe I’ll figure out what it is I’m waiting for. He brought the rifle up and set it on his knees. He peered through the lens, tracing the edges of the aged stone windowsill lining the room. When his crosshairs hit the center of the window in question, Duo realized that he was not looking at just an empty golden room anymore. Staring back at him was a pair of familiar blue eyes—and he then his heart stopped beating. Tsubasa? The man in the window offered a grave smile and shook his head slowly. Either disbelief or relief gripped him—he couldn’t decide which. He could think of only one word, one name: Heero. Unable to look away, he saw the words form on Heero’s lips. “What are you waiting for?” Light flooded the room as if by magic. It blinded Duo, pained him, but he could neither pull away from the sight nor shut his eyes. His body felt as strained as his eyesight, like he was being stretched by a vacuum into another dimension. He could feel his throat struggling to shout, but it was silenced; he could feel the cold, night air flowing into his lungs, but he could smell nothing. The unnatural throe continued to attack him until he felt like vomiting everything inside of him. And then it stopped. He could smell again, hear himself breathing deeply. His eyesight remained blurry and pixilated, nauseating him significantly. He shut his eyes and clutched his stomach, stumbling forward— Wait—why… why am I standing? He battled to open his aching eyes, feeling uncomfortably vulnerable. The lights must have turned off some time after the pain stopped, gauged Duo, because the vision before him was wrapped in darkness. He stumbled to the side and hit the length of a table or a cabinet, something lower than his arms. Dizzy as hell, he pivoted and fell on top of it. As he was lying on top of the icy, smooth surface, his vision cleared. He saw that he was bent over on a table shining gold under the moonlight. He could see his reflection on the table’s surface, unusually haggard and thin. Sickened by his own reflection, he put his head down on the table, closed his eyes, and drifted off to what felt like sleep. When he awoke, he was no longer even in Ostrava—he was back in New York, in a room more familiar to him now than his own bedroom. He opened his eyes and saw the room in the Waldorf-Astoria where he and Tsubasa would meet and— Wait—how did I… I thought I was… “Stop asking stupid questions.” The voice did not belong to anyone he knew. It belonged to the only person he didn’t know, the only person he lost before he could ever know him—in every sense of the word. It belonged to the voice of a ghost he was never meant to see or hear from again. And it hurt more than he’d ever imagined it could. “Please, don’t,” choked Duo, balling up the feather-soft sheets in his hands. “You’re gone, and I’m not here…” Warm hands tickled his thighs underneath the sheets, heating up Duo’s lower half. “Face it, Duo,” the voice whispered, but Duo heard it clear as day, “you like this.” “No…” he whimpered, cringing at the unfamiliar caress of his dead, blue-eyed partner. He could feel Heero’s fingers massaging the hard curve of his cheeks, urging his legs apart. In his head, Duo screamed of resistance—but he was nothing short of putty for Heero’s rough hands. Duo’s hardness strained against the mattress, already wanting release from five years of desperation. Heero’s breath against the small of his back and the unwelcome, penetrating sensation of his fingers sent electricity and need coursing through Duo’s body. Every pore on Duo’s body oozed desire for the man who smelled like a garden amidst a battle. By the time that Heero had positioned himself behind Duo’s elevated lower half, his wet length pressing hard into a place where no one ever dared to venture, Duo was crying halfheartedly-memorized prayers. “God, please, stop,” A broken sob escaped his lips, muffled against the thick of the pillow he clung to. Duo knew this was a dream but could do little to stop his perverse reactions. The powers-that-be were knowingly working against him as furiously as Heero, a relentless bullet on the fast-track to claiming his sanity. The heat of him—the smell of him—the feel of him—they tore at his insides, churning like a tidal wave of bliss and pain. “You want this, Duo,” Heero’s slick hands gripped Duo’s shoulders tightly, pulling the braided man back to arch against his body. The blue-eyed man smiled into Duo’s neck, biting hard as his mouth traveled upward to his ear. “You always have.” Heero was right. Duo never wanted it to end. But he knew it would, and he was tired of watching it end. He was tired of how real it felt to be taken by Heero in the most humiliating way possible, to be exposed as the sick, twisted, and pathetic human being that he had always been. He was tired of wanting, of needing it. Duo turned his head and caught a glimpse of cobalt blue before his mouth was overtaken by the forceful violence of Heero’s teeth and tongue. But I can’t live without it. Heero flipped him on his back, despite his wordless protest. Duo’s hands searched around him for pillows, anything to hide his visible shame. But Heero’s arms tightened around Duo’s legs, pinning them in an incredibly straining position. Duo couldn’t bring himself to fight back. He was locked into Heero’s intense gaze, eyes half-lidded in ecstasy and throat raw from reaction to every vehement thrust. Fervid from pleasure, Duo stopped resisting. He reached up to touch the face of the man he loved, to savor his visceral abandon until it was once more squandered by reality. But when he laid his hand upon Heero’s cheek, it passed through his lover as if he were a ghost. The room cooled abruptly, and so did every part of his body. Heero felt like a corpse although he looked alive. The thick mane of swarthy brown began to fall off in chunks from his dead partner’s head, as if it were being buzzed off by an invisible razor. And the deep blue eyes intently boring into his soul were washed over by a rather well-known violet hue he knew better than his own name. His fingers flexed against the cool surface of the mirror suddenly in front of him, trying vainly to reach the man on the other side. Gone was his long, hazelnut braid, replaced instead by a detestable whitewall haircut unfit for the delicacy of his youth. His face was dirty, wounded; his dust-studded uniform barely fit his thin, muscular frame. He stood tall before Duo, aloof but confident, with the cocky grin of a high-rolling gambler. He gave Duo a thumbs up, turned around, and began to run towards an unknown horizon. Duo pounded on the mirror, calling out after him, but no sound came from his mouth. Duo clutched at his throat in confusion. “He can’t hear you,” said a voice. Duo looked up to see who it was—and his stomach tightened, thick with nausea once more. “He doesn’t listen to people he doesn’t know.” Heero stood before him as Duo remembered him on the last day they were together: bruised, bleeding, and broken. Blood seeped through large portions of Heero’s uniform, creeping through the fabric. It dripped from all sides of Heero’s head, staining his grim lips dark red. “That’s impossible,” said Duo, surprised at the sound of his own voice. “He knows me. He is me.” “No,” said Heero, somberly shaking his head. “He would have been responsible. He would have saved me.” Heero limped towards Duo, passing through the glass into Duo’s world with ease. Duo was frozen in place, tears unwontedly trickling down his cheeks, as Heero approached him. He couldn’t look away from Heero, who was decomposing with every step he took. He stopped in front of Duo, panting heavily and smelling like burnt hair; and then he fell forward into Duo’s arms and hugged him tightly. Heero pressed his rotting cheek against Duo’s, whispering softly into his ear, “He would have never betrayed me.” Duo felt the embrace cut short the moment Heero stuck a knife into his back. xxx A sharp vibration against the small of Duo’s back woke him. His body bucked into consciousness, fingers grasping between the sheets and his naked skin to search for the cell phone blasting “Aerodynamic” into his spine. I don’t care how cute you are, Q, I’m gonna kill you for calling me so damn early, he thought, groaning as he grabbed the phone and wrangled it from the sheets. “Hullo…?” he answered groggily, expecting an onslaught of cheer that would almost certainly ruin his morning mood. But for thirty seconds, nothing but a crackling static filtered through. Duo sat up, instantly prompted to lucidity by the silence. “Who is this?” He demanded, already in the process of dressing himself. A chuckle stopped him. “Hide as you like in that little room of yours. We know who you are. We know you’re involved with the God of Death.” Duo’s blood ran cold. The garbled voice meant to mock him laughed at his silence. “Your butler did a number to keep us from being able to access any of your files, but sooner or later we’re going to figure out who he is and you’re going to go down with him anyway,” it said, sing-song. It was trying to piss Duo off and doing a dandy job. “In return for making it so hard for us to get our information, we went ahead and fried your entire system… and returned the favor to your little manservant.” It cackled heartily. “If you even dare to comply with any more of the God of Death’s deals, famous or not we will get rid of you in whatever way we like.” Duo didn’t bother to reply. The cell phone was on the floor before the voice could give its warnings, and Duo was flying out of his room and down the stairs like his life depended on it, because it did. Trowa, was the one name repeating in his head this time, accompanied by the nightmarish nausea attributed to someone else—someone already gone, someone he’d already failed. Not Trowa. He could barely breathe; the world around him moved viscously as he made his way through the house he had shared with his best friend—his family—for so many years. The feelings were too much for him, as they always had been. His life with his green-eyed confidant played out in his head like a memory being laid to rest, like a broken record repeating the saddest part of a forgotten song. Not you, he thought, his heart breaking as it was so often used to doing. This was never meant for you! When he arrived, he realized the doors to his basement had somehow been bypassed. The trespassers had entered in cleanly, easily. Duo tried to turn on the lights, but they had no doubt smashed that to pieces, too. Sparks of electricity lit the interior of the basement, emanating from destroyed computers, television screens, and torn wires that now lied at the foot of a desk chair, swinging slowly around. “Trowa!” cried Duo breathlessly, running as fast as he could down the length of stairs to the middle of the room. He could make no sound as he watched the chair swivel around to reveal his trusted friend, his hands and feet bound by steel wires, his face bruised, bleeding, and broken. Duo fell to his knees in front of his butler and buried his head in his lap. His stomach sank. A rustling of fabric stunned Duo. He looked up to meet Trowa’s green eyes, shining kindly in the darkness the way Duo had memorized. “I’m still here, master Maxwell,” he whispered, his voice like china breaking in a quiet room. “Can’t very well… leave you just yet.” Duo put a finger on his mouth to silence him, and stayed holding him until he could feel Trowa’s breath as his own, until he felt that Trowa was as real as he’d always been. The scene that had played out in Duo’s head so many times was palpable now. There had always been a certain danger that Trowa wasn’t real, or that he would cease to be in the most untimely of all times. People—the ones that mattered—slipped through his fingers all the time, like grains of sand: too small to hold onto, to grasp as they fell from between his fingertips, to pick up from a desert of disappointments and heartaches. The young, bloodied man he was holding in his arms now was the one person that he’d hope never to lose like that; the one person perhaps big enough not to be lost among all the others. Yet despite giving him a heavily barricaded home, a protected identity, and the best combat training short of the military—everything Duo could do in order to hide him and secure his life—Death still managed to find him and mark him as his own. He felt Trowa’s ever pained convulsion as if it were his own. He mind was blank with rage and grief as he carried his butler up the stairs and into his room, where they would be more safely contained. The titanium doors compressed behind Duo as he gently laid Trowa down on his bed. Duo kissed his fluttering eyelids, whispered, “I’ll take care of you, now,” before he got up to run the bath. When Duo returned to Trowa’s side, his breath was momentarily caught off-guard by the tragic juxtaposition the morning had given him: here lied his stoic confidant with the most peaceful expression Duo had ever seen on his face, yet it was accompanied by multiple bruises, probably a few broken bones, and more cuts than Duo could count on his hands. The sight inspired fear in Duo, because it was an expression he was familiar with. It was the face of a man who’d accepted his death. But the warm hand that reached limply out to hold his ensured him that that was not yet the case. Duo undressed him (save his underwear, for propriety) and cautiously submerged his badly-wounded body into the bath. Trowa was noticeably pale against the black ivory of the tub; Duo tried in vain not to let the sight before him upset his stomach. When he moved to squeeze out the blood that had collected on the sponge into a pan at his feet, he felt absolutely wretched. I should be the one in the tub, he thought, an exquisite onus weighing down the corners of his mouth. You should be the one standing. “The pain is not yours to bear, sir.” The voice caught him by surprise. “The wounds are all mine, if you couldn’t tell.” Duo turned to face him, a relief flooding throughout his body at the half-smile playing on Trowa’s lips. His eyes were full of life despite his deathly pallor. Duo returned Trowa’s attempt at a smile with one of his own, albeit restrained to more of a grimace by an initial worry that had yet to fade. “They should be mine,” he said rather seriously. “The pain should be mine, too.” The reply earned him an honest chuckle from Trowa, which was something of a rare event to witness even for Duo. His hand stopped scrubbing the blood off of Trowa’s chest for a moment to take in the humored timbre. “Frankly, sir, it was tedious work cleaning up after you. It’s nice to be on the other end of the bargain, even if I had to get a few of my ribs broken,” said Trowa. Duo found himself able to afford a genuine smile. “I should have known you were just trying to make yourself out to be the hero,” he joked, dabbing at an open cut on Trowa’s collarbone. He then finished cleaning the wounds on Trowa’s chest area, calmed significantly by his butler’s willingness to talk. In the last few weeks, Duo had noticed an increased reticence in his butler; he wasn’t dense enough not to notice that it had been spurred by his unfortunate introduction to Tsubasa and Duo’s uninspired, feigned ignorance. But it was particularly difficult for Duo to discuss Tsubasa because of the mitigating circumstance surrounding their relationship. All the things associated with Tsubasa, Trowa could not know about in full; in part because Duo wanted an avenue for self-preservation, but in large part because it necessitated that Duo reveal how selfishly he considered Trowa. He kept Trowa sheltered in a bubble for a reason—to keep him safe from his name, his curse, his private chaos. Yet even his latest attempt to save his loved one from himself was looking to be a failure, now. As he brushed the underside of Trowa’s chin, his finger idly traced the line of his jaw. Trowa gazed at him as if he understood all of Duo’s unsaid explanations. “I’m sorry, Trowa,” he said, low and wrapped in pathos. “I should have never involved you in this the way I did…” Trowa closed his eyes and submerged his body further into the water. “You give me very little credit, sir,” he replied. “You act as if you have made all my choices for me.” “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been involved.” “I entered your world on my own accord,” said Trowa sharply, decisively. His visible eye shone with the same determined light of half a decade ago, when Duo first met him. “Your life was not without its dangers before you met me. It was no more different then than after you asked me to join you.” Duo smiled. He acknowledged the argument defeated, if only by Trowa’s insistence on shouldering the blame. “Still,” he said, continuing down Trowa’s body to clean his torso. “I could have done a better job with teaching you how to kick ass, at least.” “They weren’t planning to kill me,” said Trowa. “Otherwise, it would have been a different story. I let them bind me so that I could see what it was they were looking for. They wanted information. I had already destroyed most of it. Resistance would have been futi—ah!” Duo jumped back, shocked by Trowa’s sudden outburst; he had been so intently listening to Trowa’s explanation without so much as a second thought that he didn’t realize where exactly his sponge hand had begun scrubbing. Trowa, whose pale skin was growing rosier by the second, instinctively drew up his knees to hide his embarrassment. Duo withdrew his hand and started laughing. Trowa grumbled but refrained from speaking directly about it. Duo, still amused, ran soap into the water to hide Trowa beneath the bubbles. Duo squeezed out the sponge and resumed cleaning Trowa’s lower body, despite the butler’s protests. As he finished Trowa’s right leg, Duo turned to him with an annoyingly suggestive grin. “I bet you’d rather have Quatre doing this, don’t you?” Trowa flushed noticeably red in response. “That—nonsense!” the butler exclaimed, visibly flustered at the mention of one Quatre Raberba-Winner. Duo wiggled his eyebrows playfully. “You’re fooling yourself if you think you can fool me with all your running around behind my back,” said Duo, a presumptuous look on his face. It scared Trowa a little, especially when Duo leaned in close to his ear and said, “And with all your secret little make-out sessions that you think I never saw.” Trowa turned to him, red with anger or humiliation, or both—Duo was too busy laughing to care. “I think we’re done here,” said Trowa tightly, attempting to remove himself from the tub. Duo shook his head and held him down. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, Trowa, you don’t walk away from your master when he’s trying to take care of you. That’s just rude.” “Well, then, it would be greatly appreciated if you would refrain from making such ludicrous declarations about Mr. Winner and I, sir,” the butler replied, still beet red. “So it’s not official yet, huh?” asked Duo, impetuously pursuing the conversation. “Don’t worry, I can tell he’s all ga-ga over you. And I can tell he makes you happy, which is the most important thing for me.” Trowa had to hand it to the grinning fool—he knew precisely when to pry information out of someone, even Trowa himself. He needn’t even use force if he wanted; he was that good. He often wondered if his master had learned such things in the Marines, but he rarely ever received answers when it came to that period in Duo’s life. Trowa leaned back into his previous position in the tub. “He’s a very good person,” he said, earning a questioning hum from Duo, who was busily scrubbing the dried blood off his left foot. “Mr. Winner, I mean.” “Oh, he’s an angel, alright,” replied Duo. “But you know that as well as I do.” Trowa made a sound of agreement. “I was surprised.” “About him being nice?” said Duo as he turned around and squeezed out the bloody water into the pan. “A dog in China could tell he was nice just by looking at him. Not even him. Maybe even just a drawing of him, or a picture of his foot, or something.” “No, not about that,” answered Trowa, quieting slightly in mild discomfiture. “During the Darlian deal, Mr. Winner came here to see you, but you were in Europe. I let him in and he—I—we—” The stammer was enough for Duo to understand exactly what he meant. Duo stared at him, astounded and slack-jawed. “You sly bastard,” he said accusingly. “I go off to London for a week and you take advantage of poor Q? You weren’t sick at all when I called to check in, were you? You weren’t red because of a high fever! You were—” Duo feigned a horrified gasp. “—you were doing it with Quatre!” Trowa shot him a deadly glare. “What are you, sir, a child?” “Proper even when derisive,” said Duo, amused. He reached over Trowa’s legs and unplugged the drain. “There’s no way Q could have refused you for any longer. There’s no way anyone can refuse you, you perfect man, you.” Trowa offered a small laugh. “We both know that’s not true.” Duo felt the subtle tug of Trowa’s toes on his drooping robe as he leaned over to run clean water into the tub once more, but he couldn’t bring himself to immediately look at his butler. If he did, he was sure he’d end up doing something both of them would regret. He had too much at stake in Trowa to let his basest desires take advantage of something that precious to him. But during moments like these, when his self-restraint was tested by his unsteady emotions, there were certain things he knew to do in order not to exacerbate whatever the temptation may be. “In any case,” said Duo cheerily, as if no moment of discomfort had occurred, “I’ve got the perfect plan to help things along with you two!” “That’s not necessary, sir, we—” “Don’t be silly, Tro, what kind of a boss would I be if I didn’t even let you have the kind of love life thirteen-year-old girls only dream of?” He joked, splashing water onto Trowa’s chest. “Think of me as your fairy godfather, okay? If things go according to my plan, soon enough, it won’t be me with you in the bathroom when you’re wet and naked.” Trowa, wide-eyed in shame, grumbled. “You, sir, are an insufferable human being.” xxx After Duo had finished bathing Trowa, he robed his butler and carried him back to his large bed, despite the butler’s vocal protests. “I can walk just fine,” said Trowa several times in various ways, all of which were duly ignored by his braided master. Eventually he succumbed to being treated like a child, his body truly unable to struggle or fight back. Lying on Duo’s bed, Trowa closed his eyes and nearly fell asleep but was awoken by the creaking of wheels. Duo wheeled in a steel cart containing cleansing agents, towels, and bandages. He pulled up a chair next to Trowa, who was peacefully staring at Duo’s tv-sized digital clock hanging directly above an even larger tv. As Duo began to bandage Trowa’s arm, he said, “I don’t know who’s watching me.” Trowa looked at him inquisitively. “I know they’re connected to the government somehow. Probably not actual agents. Hired hands, most likely.” “That makes sense. They were very sloppy. I don’t suppose they even recognized me, much less cared who I was.” “And on top of that, they called me, even though I’ve run circles on military tech for years,” “What did they say?” “They said they knew I was connected to the God of Death, meaning they don’t have any conclusive evidence. But they’ve finally connected the dots. And strangely enough, they stayed on the phone long enough to be traced.” “They were probably trying to convince you to follow a trail.” “Yeah, but to what?” Duo sighed heavily, pausing to put rub his forehead. “I’m tempted as hell to check out where that trace leads, where the mess they left leads me. At least then I’d get an answer as to who might be behind all this shit.” Trowa’s silenced signified opposition. “You ought to lay low a while, sir,” advised the butler. Duo looked at him with furrowed brows. “What is it?” he asked. “You think it’s one of my clients? You think they cracked our voice distortion?” “No, sir, I highly doubt it was one of your clients,” replied Trowa. “They know little as it is. And they’ve been targets for interrogation for far longer than any recent day.” Duo cracked his knuckles, focusing his apprehensive stare at the floor. “Right,” he said, finally breathing a sigh of relief. “They don’t know anything.” “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some other source.” The statement took Duo by surprise. Trowa gazed at him levelly, coolly—a departure from the tangible warmth of their bathroom conversation. Somehow, Duo had been waiting for things to go in this direction; but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t dread having to give the explanation for the question resting on Trowa’s lips. “You know him, don’t you?” asked Trowa, causing Duo’s throat to dry immediately. Duo’s gaze dropped to the floor. “The man who came to see you, who left the note for you.” Duo remained silent for a moment, his head in his hands. “Yes, I know—knew him,” admitted Duo, his face plain with regret. “Yes, I lied to you that night when I said I had no idea who he could have been. And I’m sorry for that, I really am, it’s just—” “Complicated?” said Trowa, sounding rehearsed. The reason had been given so many times before as a poor excuse for an excuse that it was hardly unexpected by the butler. It was Trowa’s attempt at forgiveness, yet Duo still couldn’t manage to face him directly. “He was—his name is Tsubasa. He and I—we were…” Duo gulped, his throat itchy with guilt. “…Involved. But it was superficial; I never—we never were officially together. That, I would have told you. But he—he wasn’t important, so there was no reason for you to know, do you understand?” Trowa gave no visible response, but a part of him continued to harbor disappointment against his master. “It’s none of my business, sir. I only bring it up out of suspicion. You alone are fit to estimate the dangers of your acquaintances.” Duo smiled lopsidedly at him, somewhat thankful. Trowa continued. “I am also aware that you would have informed me about any important persons in your life, as would be natural. So my suspicion is drawn when non-important persons show up to your doorstep asking for your attention.” “Anyway, what I mean to say is, he’s not somebody we need to worry about. In fact, I doubt we’ll ever see each other again.” Trowa nodded understandingly, but was inwardly skeptical. Neither of them spoke much during the duration of the dressing of Trowa’s wounds. He watched his master wrestle with the turmoil so obviously occurring in his mind, but Trowa was wont to remain quiet. He knew if he pressed any further he’d receive no substantial answers. He could tell Duo’s mind had gone adrift a long time ago, anyway. xxx “I’m sorry,” he says, breathing in a sweet lungful of Tsubasa’s Boucheron cologne, a scent he’d managed to deduce after an afternoon at Macy’s. He nuzzles his nose into the crook of Tsubasa’s neck, lightly kissing his collarbone. “I didn’t know it was such a sensitive subject.” “A guy tells you he cried over The Lion King because it’s the first time he saw anything die and you think it’s appropriate to laugh your ass off at him?” Tsubasa haughtily rejects his advances. “God, you’re an asshole. I wouldn’t hang out with you if you paid me.” Duo’s hand creeps over his stomach and forcibly presses Tsubasa’s body to his own. “Good thing I’m not an asshole, then.” He says, sucking on the supple flesh of his upper neck. Tsubasa scoffs, attempting to wriggle out of Duo’s embrace. “You’re lucky you’re hot,” he says, moaning appreciatively. “I need money, but I don’t need it badly enough to be treated like shit.” Duo freezes in place. He positions himself on top of Tsubasa, a hurt look on his face. “Have I treated you badly?” He asks, sincerely concerned. Tsubasa gazes back at him, unwaveringly emotionless. It is a look that almost makes Duo leave, for reasons not safe for Duo to start thinking about—especially now. Tsubasa smirks at him. “Not enough to make me leave.” “Good,” whispers Duo, lowering his head down far enough to barely touch lips with his blue-eyed lover. “Because you should know how much I appreciate you by now.” “You ‘appreciate’ me?” asks Tsubasa, hands tenderly caressing the muscles defining Duo’s back. “That’s something I’ve never heard before. Usually, when someone wants something from me, they go all the way—‘I love you,’ or ‘I can’t live without you,’ or ‘You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’ But you just appreciate me…” Duo held Tsubasa as close as possible to himself, conspicuously gyrating his lower body against the other in a way that was supposed to signal an end to conversation and the beginning to other forms of communication; however, Tsubasa didn’t seem to respond in kind. “I must be doing something wrong,” he muses out loud, weakly pushing against Duo’s suggestive movements. “No, you’re not doing anything wrong, but I wish you’d do something,” jokes Duo, sliding down to take Tsubasa’s erect nipple between his teeth. “Or someone. Namely me.” “As if you’d ever let me do you,” retorts Tsubasa, body arching into Duo’s skillful mouth. With eyes half-lidded in lust, Tsubasa looked down at Duo. “Why, do you want to—” Duo stops suddenly, pinning Tsubasa completely to the bed. Dumbfounded, Tsubasa struggles to free himself but Duo’s too strong. “What are you—Ah!” At this point, Tsubasa begins to laugh hysterically, due in large part to Duo’s relentless tickling. He bucks and twists underneath Duo; his laughter is frenzied, youthful. In an unexpected upset, he sneaks his hands around Duo’s waist and rolls them over, putting himself on top of Duo. Duo stops tickling him and tries to calm his own laughter down. Tsubasa, flushed beet red, glares angrily down at him, looking as if he’s about to rip Duo’s eyes out. “You—!” he exclaims heatedly, breathlessly. Duo expects to be hit or cursed at; but no such thing happens. He is, instead, surprised when Tsubasa’s countenance softens. He leans down to whisper in Duo’s ear, in certain terms, “I appreciate you too.” xxx “—Sir?” The voice jolted Duo back into reality like a splash of cold water. He took a moment to compose himself, to figure out what exactly was happening around him. Remembering then that he was in a car and that the old man curiously eyeing him from the rearview mirror was his driver, no doubt asking for a clear set of directions, Duo shook himself from the clutches of his daydream and responded as casually as possible, “Yes—what?” “Just thought I ought to tell you that we’re coming up to the red carpet now. Shall I fetch you and mister Barton at midnight?” That’s right, he thought, finally recalling the situation at hand. Today is Quatre’s big day. He smiled at the driver, who was not Trowa, and responded brightly, “You’ll be picking me up a bit earlier than mister Barton. But before that, I have another request to make, and that is for you to drop mister Barton off first, turn around, and drop me off.” “That is a ludicrous request, sir,” said Trowa, who was sitting beside him with his arms crossed, stoic but noticeably uncomfortable. “It will take you a useless three hours to turn around in this traffic.” And also Trowa’s big day. Duo observed his butler, who he noticed had healed amazingly quickly—only two weeks had passed, yet there was barely a scratch left on his face. His visible eye gazed at Duo from beneath a well-kept coif, which made him look like royalty in his one-button Zegna suit that Duo had tailored to fit the butler like a well-pressed glove. Much to Duo’s surprise, the butler opted to match his suit with a thin, black tie with amber stitching atop a white dress shirt. Classic, streamlined, and yet marked with Trowa’s personal aesthetic—he looked the part of a star, an Adonis afloat on a sea of imperfection. Even Duo found it difficult to resist the temptation of sidling up to him like a crazed fangirl. But he chose just to smile contentedly, privately; he was genuinely happy at what had become of the masochistic circus freak he’d first met in the open plains of the Midwest. “Now, now, Trowa, let’s try and remember the plan, shan’t we?” he replied, pretending to flick invisible lint off Trowa’s suit. “You’re about to be thrown into the spotlight. I want the world’s first glimpse of you to be taken in without me as a needless distraction. I’m telling you, they’ll fall in love with you!” “If I may, sir,” said the butler, catching Duo’s wrist mid-flick. “This is an incredibly stupid and dangerous idea.” Duo shook his head and maneuvered Trowa’s hand around, trapping it in his own. “The clock’s ticking for me, Trowa,” he began, idly rubbing Trowa’s wrist. “By tonight, we’ll figure out that it’s the government that’s watching me. They’re sifting my accounts now, and they’ll probably freeze them by tonight. I’ll find they have a search warrant for the house, so I’ll have no place to stay—and neither will you.” “We’ve already taken the necessary precautions with the house, sir,” replied Trowa, pulling his hand back. “And where would you go if not home?” “Trowa, this can’t involve you.” Duo sighed heavily, fatigued. The butler sat still and didn’t reply. The gravity of Duo’s words weighed on both their shoulders. “Being beside Quatre is the safest thing for you. When interrogate you, they’ll see that all your records show that you lived in Nebraska for years before coming to New York recently to pursue life as a writer, working as a personal escort on the side, for me and for Quatre. And if they ask you about the God of Death, you feign knowledge. And in the end, you’ll tell them what all the other clients tell them: you don’t know who he is. You needed the money from me, was all, you know nothing else. And Quatre—well, they can find for themselves that he’s not involved.” Duo put his hand on Trowa’s knee, his expression reminiscent of grief. “I need you to be safe, above all other things. My battles aren’t yours to fight—and if I lose you to them, I’ll never forgive myself.” Trowa’s countenance stiffened under Duo’s gaze. The unspoken words between them remained, like a tightrope billowing between two skyscrapers trapped in a hurricane. Trowa’s eyes shouted in anger at his master’s selfishness, in frustration at not being allowed to be his protector; Duo’s pleaded softly. We can’t fight this together, you and I, they said, because I’m fighting for you as much as I’m fighting for myself. The butler turned away and replied evenly, “As you say, master Maxwell.” “Good,” Duo said, content. He clapped Trowa’s shoulder and pointed outside, to where bright lights shone brighter than the sun and the screams of fanatics stifled the air with obsession. Duo grinned at his butler, who, despite his convincingly stoic calm, was balking at the sight of the media jungle. “Well, go on then, mister Barton, and blow their minds silly!” Trowa was about to step out, but paused suddenly. He turned to Duo for one last question before they parted. “Where will you go now, sir?” He asked. “Home, to grab the last of my things,” answered Duo, no sign of trepidation in his voice although it loomed in the back of his mind. “And then I’m off to Howard’s.” The last thing Trowa remembered as he stepped out onto the red carpet was the somber gaze they shared, full of understanding and devoid of antipathy, sentiments which disappeared once he turned and faced the crowd awaiting him on the red carpet. Almost immediately, the cameras swarmed him, wondering who he might be. He attracted them like a bright light in a swamp of flies, no doubt with his god-like beauty (without which they would likely have passed him by as just another face in the crowd). But, as Duo had predicted, the curiosity of the paparazzi, of the fanatics, was successfully piqued. Trowa, perpetually unruffled, made his way down the carpet without offering so much as a breath to the questions that were being screamed at him. But the raging media, masochistic as ever, pursued him as he threaded through celebrities of all ranks, easily breezing by the shoulders of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as if they were shoppers at a local grocery store. Even the cameras could tell: the mysterious green-eyed man was looking for someone specific. They wanted to know who. When he reached his destination, Trowa pensively slowed to a stop. The clamor around him kept growing, but he wrote it off as more a natural outcome of being in a situation such as this; however, their presence became bothersome as he mulled over how to make his presence known to one Mr. Winner, who was charming the hell out of Maria Menounos. “You must be so excited for tonight, Quatre!” she said, her toothy smile blinding in the spotlight. “I have no doubt you’re going to win this!” “Oh, Maria, you’re always so nice to me,” he said, as prim and soft-spoken as a prince. Quatre laughed with her, but also noticed her eyes shifting behind him every once in a while. He made a confused face at her, as if to ask What’s going on? Her smile then widened suggestively, not at Quatre but rather, to something behind him. “Friend of yours?” Maria asked, waiting expectantly. Before Quatre could answer dumbly, a warm hand rested itself on his shoulder, causing his heart to leap in shock. He veered around to face the stranger and was immediately drawn into Trowa’s bright green stare. “Oh my g—Trowa!” he nearly yelled into the microphone. The small blonde blushed furiously when Trowa replied to his exclamation with a pleased smile. Trowa had actually expected him to be quite displeased with the change of events, but Quatre was grinning widely, visibly excited. He turned back to Maria with one arm hooked to Trowa’s. “Yes, of course, I’m so sorry, Maria. This wonderful man here is my friend and escort, Mr. Trowa Barton. He’s come all the way here from New York to accompany me!” Maria shook Trowa’s hand with that familiarly bubbly expression on her face, but the camera caught her hungry eyes stalking him the way many around him were undoubtedly doing. xxx Grand swaths of blues illuminated the walls of the Kodak Theater as the voices of Helen Mirren and Hugh Laurie filled the venue with their English charms. They played their scripted parts gracefully, eliciting a slew of laughter from the black-tie crowd, until it came to the announcement of the award they were to present. A gargantuan screen behind them rolled scenes from several movies. The minute moment seemed to last forever for Quatre, whose fingers twiddled anxiously. Trowa looked over to him just as Helen Mirren said Shia LaBeouf’s name, and offered him a gentle whisper of, “You’ve already won, love.” Quatre was unsure of whether to cry or self-induce a nervous breakdown, but neither seemed as important as repeating Trowa’s words in his mind. Even when Hugh Laurie’s peculiarly British pronunciation of his name urged applause from the crowd, Quatre couldn’t for the life of him shake himself out of his reeling stupor. It took a nudge from Daniel Day Lewis, to wring the shock out of his system and warp him back to the reality of his victory. Frantically, but endearingly, Quatre bolted from his seat and ran to the stage, stumbling happily on the congratulatory handshakes his acquaintances and friends sought to offer him. Gratefully, he shook them all briefly and haphazardly, but they sympathized with the genuinely clumsy astonishment. Breathlessly, he leaned over the podium and began to speak. “I… I really don’t know what to say,” he said, clutching his tie nervously. “Tonight, for me, there’s really… little room for words to describe just how happy I am. Not just because I won this award, but because this is a good time that we live in, full of hope for change in the future. I hope we all still feel this way. For people like Kat, it was important to hope like this, even though sometimes it seemed impossible. I wanted to take this time and let you all remember that, because in the end, happiness is all that matters.” Quatre, red-faced and grinning ear to ear, waved his Oscar in the air above him. “But this helps somewhat!” The audience burst out in applause and laughter. Quatre laughed but before the cameras were able to cut him off, made a sound of protest. “Wait—wait—I wanted to thank everybody, though, everyone that I worked with. Frank, Bob, Jack, Leo, Dan—I love you all! The film’s producers—the makeup, set artists—oh, and Ang, you already know how utterly fantastic you are! And—and—god, I don’t even know anymore! Oh, thanks to my friend, who came all the way from New York to see me make a fool out of myself—Trowa! Love you all!” Duo watched Quatre walk off the stage with the two presenters, mulling over whether it was actually a good idea to have sent Trowa out in the open. During Quatre’s speech, they showed his butler’s entire face, for fifty million people to see. There could have been a better plan, sure, but all of it involved having to separate him from Quatre. And that, Duo would not do. “Sir?” Duo looked up at his driver, who, despite still being mired in the unmoving traffic, did not seem as if he wanted to kill him. “We are here, sir.” “Good, thank you, Gregory,” said Duo, placing a stack of bills and an envelope on the seat next to him. “Here’s what I owe you. I’ll put in a good word for you to the service.” The driver nodded. “Thank you, sir, have a good night.” Duo merely nodded back in response and got out of the limousine. Duo buttoned his suit and surveyed his surroundings before wading through the tall, green shrubbery of a nondescript area on the side of the 5. After twenty minutes or so, Duo arrived to find an unmarked charter plane waiting innocently to be boarded in the middle of the dry Los Angeles plains. xxx He landed inconspicuously to the edge of Prospect Hill, just outside Oscawana Lake. He remained in the pilot’s seat for a while, fiddling with specific buttons and switches until a secret compartment opened up in the co-pilot’s seat. He removed a pre-paid Visa card from his wallet and placed it in there, along with other borrowed equipment belonging to the company. He looked at his watch and gauged that it would take at least two hours for him to get back into the city. Sighing, he abandoned the plane and headed towards an icy-black MV Agusta F4 1100 CC, gleaming under moonlight as if guiding Duo towards the right direction. The cold tore at his lips and eyes as he drove down the parkway back to New York City. His skin felt almost as frosty and hollow as the rest of him at this particular moment, when he could not for the life of him decide whether to feel relieved or anxious. His emotions, as they had been for quite a while now, vacillated almost as mercurially as his thoughts, fading in between the fragrance of Trowa and past and present turmoil. A specter manifested itself above all such thoughts so strongly that it reminded him somewhat of what he’d been born to discover, lose, and spend an eternity trying to resurrect. Somewhere amidst the desert of his mind, one grain of knowledge stood out, paramount above the rest: there’s no other road than the one before me, and all I can do is keep walking until it ends. No matter how many prayers for another path are called out; no matter how many sins wash him off his humanity; no matter if there’s nothing to be found at the ultimate dead end. Duo Maxwell had no choice—he never had. That knowledge was perhaps the only solace that kept him alive, if existing as retribution could be considered living. After surviving the rough hands of Winter for nearly two hours, Duo’s resolve strengthened. The city, he knew, had been waiting for him to come back and claim a destiny he’d been awaiting for some time. The city had been waiting to take his life, and it comforted him to know that he wouldn’t go down so easily—his stubborn will to fight was the only vestige of will still left inside of him. Before all that, though, there was one place he had to visit. It was something his soul needed before it was sacrificed to fate. It was something he needed, most of all, just to make it through to the end, whatever that should be. He dismounted his bike and stood in front of a dark grove that shielded a small church from the cold of night. His mind went blank while his feet led him inside to be showered with a warmth that hadn’t been familiar in weeks. It held him like a mother putting her son to rest inside a tiny confessional, the only place he’d felt safe in since the war. “It’s been a while, Father,” he remarks, his voice low; serious. “So it has.” Duo didn’t realize how unready he was to hear the priest’s steady tone; even so short a sentence struck his heart like an arrow from Cupid himself, full of sorrow and pleasure at the same time. “And what blasphemous deeds come tonight from the mouth of the sinnerman?” A hint of a smile. Duo laughed hollowly. “I commit too many a day to possibly list them all for you tonight, Father, as you well know.” The words were heavy and the man behind the opaque netting understood. Duo maintained a pause pregnant with doubt. “Only confess what you think you must, Duo,” He said, guiding the words out of Duo without so much of an unwavering note. “I am the international black-market arms dealer known as the God of Death,” Duo confesses suddenly, void of regret and full of conviction. “I’ve killed more men in my line of business than I can count. I’ve felt no remorse for any of the lives I’ve taken in exchange for money and my reputation.” The priest on the other side of the confessional remained strangely silent, allowing for Duo to continue his confession with bated breath. “Everything I touch is bound to get hurt in some way. And everything that I love enough to keep near me dies eventually—usually untimely, grisly deaths, all of which replay in my head to the point where I end up doubting my own sanity. I killed the woman I called my mother, and I killed the man I called my father. I killed the ones I called my brothers and sisters. And I killed the man I loved. “Today, I let go of the only family I’ve had since I lost everything that ever mattered to me. It’s perhaps the best thing I’ve ever done my entire life, because now he’ll be able to live longer than he would have if he’d stayed with me.” Duo became silent after that statement. Time passed like viscous, bittersweet honey; Duo’s statements hung like strange fruit between them. “Father,” he said without warning before the priest had a chance to reply. “This may be the last time you’ll hear from me. Every day that will pass from now on is a day when I’ll be praying for my own death as I fight to keep it. I didn’t come here for you to pardon my sins, none of which can be forgiven. I came here because I needed, for a moment, to feel as if I’ve got something left to live for.” The priest’s silence breezed by Duo’s soul and the last lingering light of hope dwindled away into his abyss of isolation. “Then I will pray that you find him, Duo Maxwell,”—a ghostly murmur—“and that in finding him, you unearth the lost salvation of the sinner.” And for one pierced moment whiter than the rest, a despair as deep as the ravine to hell was lifted. xxx When Duo arrived at the steps of his home, he wasn’t surprised to find there were detectives staking out his residence. He found it unfortunate that Merquise’s preliminary move was to have the city’s radar turned on him, but not enough for a search warrant of anything of the sort. It meant that Trowa had indeed removed any necessary information before they could get anything out of him. It was likely that they hadn’t even begun interrogating him despite his appearance on national television. But Duo also knew he had a limited amount of time—if, indeed, Trowa was being interrogated at the moment, as soon as his name came out of his butler’s lips, they’d be on him like flies to a pile of shit. Fooling them was almost too easy for him, even with their poorly hidden surveillance cameras surrounding the entrance to his home. Duo was in his home faster than they could point their guns and attention to a young, long-haired actor Duo had sent as a decoy. In a span of less than two minutes, Duo had evaded an eight-man stakeout circus and had entered his own home with the casual confidence of someone who’d just bedded all of the Victoria’s Secret models in one go. Knowing fully the constraints on the situation, however, Duo made his way upstairs to collect the vitals—that is, to pack up the necessities for his inevitable descent into hell. A clean navy suit, a couple black dress shirts, some underwear, and bullet-resistant gear. That should be all, he thought, without even mentally noting the assortment of handguns and rifles he also packed into his favorite black duffel. He left the room intentionally unlocked behind titanium doors as soon as he finished. When he reached the foot of the stairs, Trowa’s voice in his head called out a reminder—Don’t forget the files—as if the butler had been with him all along. Smiling to himself, he made his way to Trowa’s room and sifted from the stacks a bright pink book called Kitchen. He held it in his hands, looking almost nostalgic (he remembered he chose the book as a personal joke, recalling the fury on Trowa’s face the day Duo called him his ‘wife’), but his fingers were busily inputting an entry code into a sensory number pad hidden in the jacket. The print of Magritte’s The Lovers slid down from its frame into the wall and revealed a cavity containing only a thin, black laptop. Duo quickly packed it with the rest of his things and prepared to head out. Outside the window, he saw that they had apprehended his decoy and were about to drive him off to the precinct. The other detectives were busily trying to get back to their surveillance cameras to see if they had missed anything, which they all did, of course. And like all unprepared idiots, Duo mused, they were likely to be unaware of the fact that de-icing trucks had been scheduled to pass through the street in compliance with the neighborhood’s (i.e. Duo’s) demands. The last thing the detectives saw on their cameras was Duo’s Cheshire grin gleaming victory beneath a Giants cap—by the time they rounded the de-icing trucks, all that was left were a set of footprints laughing at the detectives as they led to an empty parking spot where a motorcycle had once been. xxx Once Duo had safely stashed the motorcycle in one of the many Times Square parking lots, he made his way uptown, cleverly disguised as just another trendy, white Rastafarian. He relished in the few moments he had to himself as he walked out Grand Central and into the busy midtown streets. As he passed by a couple of standby police officers, he heard the directions they were being given—namely to look out for him—but he’d been there, done that. Cop dodging was as natural as breathing to him, yet for some reason, the name Duo Maxwell being associated with crime set him on edge. Yeah, well, no turning back now, remember? He told himself. He joined a throng of tourists heading back into the Waldorf-Astoria for the night and made his way to the elevators without much fuss. His spirit settled down as he approached the room he’d thought he’d never have to go back to again—and yet, here he was, standing in front of it as if expecting someone to open it for him. It was Duo who opened the door, but somehow fate managed to meet his expectations anyway. His first reaction was shock, but it was one that didn’t survive the journey of expression. Instead, Duo looked back at the man sitting primly on the paisley chaise with wooden eyes. He said nothing as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him, his eyes locked to the blue staring back at him with suspicious calm. In truth, he was fastidiously deciding what course of action to take (primarily, how he would get the body out); however, the man that had been waiting for him gazed back with such intensity that for a moment Duo forgot his paranoia altogether. Tsubasa stood up and extended his hand towards Duo, who was careful not to make any sudden movements. Between his fingers was the room’s key, somehow still activated. He let his hand drop to his side and the card to the floor as he approached Duo gingerly. “You don’t seem surprised to see me,” he said in a low murmur. “Aren’t you even a little bit suspicious?” Tsubasa watched and admired the stormy flashes of emotion in Duo’s eyes, interfering his otherwise stony countenance. He brought his hand up to touch Duo’s face, but the taller man caught him in his steely grip. “Who are you?” Duo said. “I don’t know.” Tsubasa’s arm went limp in Duo’s hand; it was a suggestion to Duo that he meant no malice, but Duo was loathe to believe him. “All I know is that I needed to see you again.” Duo could feel his blood boiling. “What do you want from me?” He asked, eyes swimming in vitriol and distrust. “I need you to tell me who you are,” Tsubasa whispers, letting his body fall against Duo’s, pushing him back against the door. Duo dropped Tsubasa’s hand, which snuck around Duo’s waist to hold him in a loose embrace. “There are times that I dream that I’ve been someone else all this time, as if I hadn’t just met you six months ago—as if I’ve known you all my life.” Tsubasa’s arms tightened around Duo, but Duo didn’t have the strength to react. His mind and beating heart were trained on Tsubasa’s confession, as if it was going to reveal something precious, something Duo has been wanting for as long as he could remember. And the feeling only solidified in Duo’s heart as Tsubasa continued a recollection still living in Duo’s memory. “I dreamt of you, Duo, in a desert. Where we were—I don’t even know—but I felt so much fear, so much uncertainty. I—I walked around for hours. There was nothing around me but broken buildings and dead bodies, like I had just woken up the night after a slaughter. I became so scared that I ran towards the first sign of light I could see. When I got there, there was only one thing in sight: a body moving beneath dirty sheets, twisting around as if it was dying. I reach out to touch it, but even though I couldn’t see what it was, something inside of me made me call out your name. “And then you turned around, a smile in your eyes, and told me it was okay. You said, Don’t worry, Tsubasa, they’ll never touch you as long as I’m around. I’ll be here tonight, tomorrow, and the day after. I’ll protect you. And my heart stopped beating. Because I didn’t know what to say. Because I believed you. Because I felt the same way.” Duo’s initial reaction was to cry, but instead his body bent beneath Tsubasa’s smooth, cautious movements that awakened sensations unbeknownst to every muscle and capillary that still found the will to keep him alive—because as far as Duo was concerned, in this one moment, he might as well have died and gone to heaven. The next morning’s cold was almost too much for Duo to bear, although somewhere in the heated tangles of the previous night the thought that this is just a dream lingered just enough to dull the disappointment that hit Duo harder than a bad hangover. His body ached for reassurance that his prayers had been answered, that he’d ended one painful search to begin a happy one—but all that brewed in the silence of the empty hotel room was a terrible feeling that perhaps he had been allowing himself to be tricked. And when he sat up to survey the mess they’d made of his sanity in a miniscule gamut of time, only to find a cryptic note atop a pillow that still smelled of sweat, sex, and Boucheron cologne, he couldn’t help but feel that this was and had always been the case between him and Tsubasa. STAY AWAY FROM ROME T Notes _ Yes, I’ve been working intermittently on this, but school has been incredibly taxing on me… plus I’m determined to write this series better and better as it goes along. I haven’t given up, I swear, and someday, I hope anyone who started reading this will come back and read the whole thing when it’s finally finished. I know it’s painful to wait for those of you who have cared enough to read this labor of love of mine… I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will definitely try my best to beat Writer’s Block AND college and get this series going! It’s not a promise that I’ll get it done faster, but it’s a promise that I sure haven’t forgotten about Duo and all of you. Btw, I’m particularly proud of this chapter, I hope you all will enjoy it despite the lack of bloody action! (With the exception of poor Trowa of course.) Also, I know their separation happened fast, but to clarify: they know someone is following them, and because Trowa’s face had already been seen, Duo had to find a way to convince whoever was likely to interrogate Trowa (in this case, he assumes it’s the government—and he’s right) that his butler was merely a pawn. In order to do this, he arranges for Trowa to be near to Quatre, who would no doubt support him without even asking questions. Both would pretend to know next to nothing about the God of Death, which will put only Duo under any danger or mandate from the government. You’re gonna ask why Duo had let such a thing happen even if it could have been avoided, like it had been in the past, where he didn’t use Trowa to be his middleman at all. But it’d be a shame to reveal ALL of Duo’s motives, now wouldn’t it?
~ * ~ Chapter 6 |
