So I didn’t request a solo assignment after that first awkward time we all five stayed together after all. Things had gotten a little better after the night I had stormed out of the house. I still didn’t feel like I could talk to Heero or Wufei about personal stuff and carefully kept my relationship with the two of them strictly business, but they had backed off a little bit. Quatre and Trowa were a little more accepting of me and I managed to eventually develop something like the relationship I had envisioned we would all share, with Quatre at least.

I thought of him a little bit like a kid brother. I don’t really know why, he certainly didn’t need my protection. He was tough as nails when he was behind the controls of his Gundam, was possessed of a near brilliant tactical sense; but somehow seemed to maintain this…ethereal innocence. I think that was what I was drawn to protect; he just hadn’t seen some of the things I had in my lifetime and I wanted to keep him untouched by that kind of ugliness.

The next couple of months found me paired, and assigned to work, with just about every possible combination of the five of us you could imagine. The worst was a long couple of weeks when I was partnered with Heero when we had to go under cover as roommates at a boarding school. I thought I would go out of my mind sharing a room with the guy, sharing meals, doing class work together and never managing to get passed that cold exterior. I did my best to be as un-annoying as possible. I followed all the school rules like a good little boy, didn’t engage in anything that I thought might be considered an endangerment to the mission, left my music in my Gundam and just did my best to keep my mouth shut. Still, somehow, by the end of the two weeks I seemed to have annoyed the hell out of him, because he was even colder and more sullen than when we had started.

And of course, it didn’t help matters that I spent most nights dreaming about the ice melting out of those cold blue eyes. Dreaming about my finally getting around that exterior and finding the passionate man who lived inside.

Oh shut up. I am well aware that his ice probably went all the way to the core and if there was any passion in that body at all it sure as hell wasn’t going to wake with the touch of my hand. They were dreams, ok? I know that. Those two weeks taught me that if they taught me nothing else.

Even the short assignment I spent with Wufei wasn’t as painful. I suppose it was because I wasn’t hoping for something from him. I think he disliked me every bit as much as Heero did but it didn’t bother me the same. Besides, I had somehow seemed to have earned a little bit of respect from him with my piloting skills and he had finally gotten to the point where he would afford me a least a little courtesy, if not any real friendship.

I was heading toward my latest assignment with a confused mixture of dread and anticipation. I was supposed to be meeting up with Heero and Quatre. We were going to be hiding out in the states on the edge of an industrial town somewhere in the mid-west. We had a small house to stay in about two miles from an abandoned warehouse where we would be able to hide our Gundams. There were rumors that there was something odd going on in the area and we were there to figure out what.

While I was looking forward to seeing Quatre again, I had managed to avoid Heero since the boarding school assignment and wasn’t looking forward to being trapped in a ‘small house’ with Mr. Sensitive. I suppose I should just be happy it was Quatre making up the third on our little team and not Wufei. I didn’t think I’d survive being cooped up with the Brothers Grimm for very long.

So I was a little subdued when I climbed down from my Gundam after landing and securing it in the warehouse. Both the other Gundams were already there; Wing somehow managing to glare down at me with the same angry expression that it’s pilot usually wore. I resisted the urge to flip it the bird. Now that would have been mature.

I was just wondering if someone was going to meet me or if I was going to have to figure out where the safe house was on my own, when Quatre’s voice rang out and he was running to meet me.

‘Hey, Qat!’ I called as I jumped to the ground, meeting him half way to return his quick hug.

‘Duo!’ he laughed, ‘you made it; I was starting to get worried.’

I held him at arms length and looked him over with a grin, ‘No problems. Just caution.’

Then over his shoulder I caught a glimpse of our other partner and had to sigh; Heero was already glaring daggers at me and I’d just gotten there. This was going to be a long assignment.

‘Hey, Heero,’ I called and he came toward us when I spoke.

‘You’re late.’ He said sullenly.

I rolled my eyes. ‘Five and a half fucking minutes, Yuy. Gimme a break.’

He just continued to glare at me and I suddenly, inexplicably felt awkward about my hand resting on Quatre’s shoulder and I stepped away from both of them, turning to get my duffle bag.

Yep. Long damn assignment.

Gear shouldered; I turned back and grinned at them, ‘Lead on, oh partners in crime.’

Quatre chuckled and went to get his own stuff. I followed him, not relishing the idea of standing around having a staring contest with Mr. Glare-o’-death. After a second, I heard his steps behind me.

We walked to the safe house, Heero had obviously already settled in and we followed his lead. It was a somewhat uncomfortable walk and not just because of the cold night air. Mid-winter ain’t got nothin’ on Heero Yuy. That man could put out fires with that icy silence of his.

Quatre and I refrained from a lot of conversation during the walk; mutually agreeing to wait until we’d gotten to a place where we might find a little privacy.

When the mission specs said ‘small house’, they weren’t kidding. It was a little run-down, frame, one story with a small yard that was mostly just dirt and neighbors that looked they wouldn’t have questioned it if we’d ridden in on elephant back. It was the wee hours of the morning though and no one was around to see us arrive. Bad neighborhood; I could tell instantly and decided that I would need to keep a close eye on Quatre. I imagine he’d never seen this side of town before and probably didn’t even know what the term ‘crack-house’ meant.

Every nerve I owned was twitching just walking up to our front door.

Heero took us inside and Quatre looked around with a little ‘oh’ noise. I grinned and without thinking, said, ‘Nice place you got here, Heero. I really love what you’ve done with it.’

It was simple banter; like I said…I hadn’t been around him in a while. I’d forgotten that perfect soldiers aren’t aloud to joke; I think there’s something in the Perfect Soldier handbook about it. Rule #16, right after the one that says they can’t ever smile and before the one that says they have to have abs like a fucking Greek God.

He glared at me, ignoring the comment and gesturing around, ‘We do have electricity and water. The bedrooms are in the back. I will start dinner.’

With that, he turned on his heel and left the room.

‘What a dump,’ Quatre muttered and I nodded agreement as we made our way toward the back of the house. I glanced into the first room I came to and looked around; I didn’t see any gear, so I went on in and dumped my stuff on one of the beds. Dust flew and I had to grin wondering how Quatre was going to handle this.

He came back into my room a few minutes later with a rueful grin, ‘Wait until you see the bathroom.’ He smirked.

‘Well…’ I told him, ‘I was thinking about a shower before dinner…’

‘Be my guest,’ he laughed, ‘I think I may give them up until this mission is over.’

I pulled my stuff out of my duffle and then, on a sudden thought, made my way to the kitchen.

‘Heero,’ I called from the doorway, ‘mind if I shower before dinner?’

‘Go ahead,’ he said without turning around, ‘I have already taken mine.’

Well, that didn’t go too bad. Of course, he might have been glaring and I just couldn’t see it with his back turned.

‘Thanks, man,’ I called. I always tried to keep it in the front of my mind to keep my sentences short and always maintain a strict politeness when dealing with Heero Yuy. I never knew when something I said or did was going to set him off.

The bathroom wasn’t all that bad when compared with ones that I had seen in my lifetime but I suppose by Quatre’s standards it was the pit of the kingdom of disgusting.

I worked fast and only used lukewarm water, just in case and returned to my room when I was done to comb my hair out and get dressed. There was barely enough room in the tiny bathroom to turn around.

I pulled on a pair of loose Dockers but left my shirt off until my hair wasn’t dripping water everywhere, got out my little MP3 player and turned on some of my music, careful to keep it turned down while I began the arduous task of combing my wet hair.

I had hunted up some Emerson, Lake and Palmer after a certain young grocery store clerk had introduced me to their music and before long, I lost myself in the familiar job of untangling my hair and began to sing softly along.

‘Lend your love to me tonight, don’t ask me who or what is right. I have no strength I cannot fight, just flood my darkness with your light….’

I leaned over at the waist and threw my hair forward to comb it out completely, getting the snarls out from underneath.

‘…Behind this face I am alone, I would give everything I own, to touch you. Just lend your love to me once more, don’t ask me what I came back for…Shit.’

That was when I saw the duffle bag tucked back under the bed across from the one I had chosen. I should have known Heero wouldn’t just leave his stuff sit out in plain sight. I froze for a heartbeat while Mr. Lake sang on without me. I straightened, tossing my hair backward and turned to start grabbing my things…and found Heero standing in the doorway with the most unreadable expression on his face I have ever seen. I blinked at him like an idiot for a minute and felt my face flame. Then I scrambled to slap at the MP player, shutting off the music and the sudden silence was almost deafening.

‘Sorry, Heero,’ I muttered, grabbing my bag and stuffing things in as fast as I could manage. Wasn’t staying in this room; uh’uh; no way…absolutely not, ‘I didn’t see your things.’

He didn’t say anything for another couple of seconds and I was starting to wonder if one person could actually bore holes in another one with just a look.

‘You don’t…’ he began and then stopped to clear his throat, ‘Dinner is ready.’

Then he was gone.

I breathed a sigh of relief and got my ass out of that room as fast as my little feet would carry me.

I discovered there was only one other bedroom, there was only one bed in it and Quatre had already laid claim to it. Great; looked like I’d be sleeping on the couch for the duration.

I dug a black sweater out of my bag and pulled it on as I made my way to the kitchen, didn’t want to be late for something Mr. Atomic Clock had scheduled.

Quatre was already sitting at the little metal table, dubiously eyeing the stew that Heero was dishing up. The kitchen was a dinky little thing and I had to grin at the archaic gas powered stove. There were exactly three chairs at the table and none of them matched.

I went around and got myself a bowl and scooped up a couple of ladlefuls of stew.

Behind me, Quatre kind of gasped and I glanced at him.

‘What’s the matter, Qat?’ I asked when I found him staring at me.

‘I’ve just never seen you with your hair down before.’ he told me. ‘You don’t even look like yourself!’

I brushed a lock behind my ear self-consciously, ‘I…was in a hurry,’ I muttered and took the only open chair at the table.

Heero was eating his dinner with single-minded purpose, not looking up; you would have thought he was the only one in the room.

I nibbled at the stew, something I learned early in life; the slower you eat the more full you feel. If you stretch a slice of bread out over ten minutes, you can kind of fool yourself into thinking that you’ve eaten twice what you really have. Wolf it down and it’s gone before you know it and you still feel hungry.

‘It’s good, Heero,’ I remembered to say…politely. He only grunted.

Not for the first time, I wondered what in the hell it was about me that pissed him off so bad he wouldn’t even look at me most of the time. I sighed.

‘What’s the matter, Duo?’ Quatre asked graciously and I could have kicked myself.

‘Uhmmm…was just thinking; it’d be nice if our assignments were in Hawaii or California or someplace warm now and again,’ I evaded; rather artfully, I thought.

Quatre grimaced at me and nodded vehement agreement, ‘I hate the cold.’ He muttered and took another bite of the hot stew, shivering dramatically.

I laughed at him and then thought to look him over; he was wearing a pair of light cotton pants and a dress shirt, ‘Don’t you have anything any warmer?’ I asked.

He ducked his head in embarrassment, ‘I didn’t have time to pack anything else; had to bring what I had with me.’

We weren’t that different in size, I think I’m a little bit scrawnier than he is and might have a half an inch in height on him but I thought my clothes would fit him, ‘I’ll go through my things after dinner.’ I promised, ‘I think you can wear my size.’

He threw me a grateful look and I realized that he must be really uncomfortable. The house was pretty damn chilly.

I forgot who was sitting across from us for a second and opened my mouth to ask if Heero had anything he might want to donate to the cause. He was quite a bit broader in the shoulder than either me or Quatre but still…none of us was all that different in size. Then I blinked at him. He was sitting there in just his jeans and a tank top.

‘Damn, Heero!’ I blurted, ‘Aren’t you cold?’

I swear his cheeks colored slightly and he shrugged one shoulder without looking up, ‘Cold is irrelevant.’

If Trowa or Quatre had said that, I would have laughed out loud and accused them of forgetting to pack cold weather gear. But this was Mr. Always Prepared, after all, so I kept my theories to myself.

I ducked my head and went out on a limb for the sake of doing the right thing and murmured, ‘Would you like to see if I have anything warmer you can wear?’

He actually flicked his eyes away from his bowl for a moment but only said, ‘I’m fine.’ There was a small silence and then, ‘Thanks anyway.’

I almost choked on my dinner. I glanced up but he was totally focused on his stew again. I caught Quatre blinking owlishly across the table at our stoic partner and we shared a grin.

Quatre and I insisted on doing up the dishes and Heero disappeared to his room as soon as he was done eating.

‘I think I’m making progress, Qat.’ I whispered while I washed and he dried, ‘I got through a whole meal without getting my head bit off!’

Quatre chuckled quietly and poked me in the ribs. ‘Don’t get cocky; you’ll get careless and lose an arm or something.’

I snickered and handed him a clean bowl. ‘So, how is everybody?’ I hadn’t seen any of the others for a while.

He let his voice rise to a normal level as we talked amiably about his recent assignments and where he’d been. He’d seen some space time and I lamented my lack thereof. I’d done a little infiltration work and he bemoaned having few skills in that area. He reported his last meeting with Wufei, able to tell me that he was all right as of a week ago. I hadn’t seen anyone any more recently than he had and wasn’t able to give him the information that I knew he was secretly craving.

‘I’m sure Trowa’s all right,’ I murmured softly as we finished the dishes, letting a knowing smile curve my lips.

He blinked at me for a second and flushed the darkest shade of scarlet I have ever seen. I thought for a second he was going to faint.

‘Duo!’ he gasped, shocked as hell, ‘How did you…I mean…I…’

I laughed at him and reached under his chin to push his mouth shut.

‘Because you freaking glow whenever he comes into the room,’ I told him with a wicked grin.

‘Don’t you dare ever tell anybody!’ he burst out and his eyes were wide with fear.

I felt bad; I really hadn’t realized that he thought it was such a deep dark secret, ‘I’m sorry, Quatre,’ I told him, ‘I shouldn’t have teased you…I just thought…you two just look like you belong together…I…’

I was suddenly embarrassed, ducked my head and shut the hell up. He just stood and blinked at me.

‘You don’t think I’m…some kind of freak?’ he breathed and I jerked my head back up to look him in the eye.

‘Why in the hell would it make you a freak to care for someone?’ I growled, a little harsher than I had intended.

Pure relief washed over his face and I suddenly found myself with a bundle of Quatre wrapped around my neck.

‘I was always so afraid that if you guys ever found out…I kind of thought sometimes…but I…’ It was his turn to not have the right words.

I hugged him back for a moment, if the truth be told, just enjoying the touch of another human being myself but then I straightened him up and drew him to sit down with me at the table.

‘Qat.’ I told him seriously, ‘I have no idea how the other guys would take it but I don’t have a problem with it.’

He gnawed at his lower lip for a minute, ‘Before I met Trowa,’ he confessed softly, ‘I never thought about it one way or the other. I assumed that I just hadn’t met the right girl yet.’

I chuckled and laid my hand over his, ‘Never dreamed that you just hadn’t met the right guy yet, huh?’

He flushed again and his jaw worked for a minute but nothing came out.

I knew what he was dying to ask me and didn’t know how. I thought about it for a minute, trying to think how to put it into words.

‘Listen,’ I said and my voice dropped another notch, ‘I’m not sure I believe in…gay and straight…I think that when you find that…person that you’re meant to be with; it doesn’t matter what package they’re in.’ I frowned and looked off at nothing for a minute, trying to make the words come, ‘I didn’t think I was…I mean, I always thought I was straight until…’

I glanced back at Quatre and found him grinning at me like a loon and I had this dawning sense of horror that I had just said too damn much.

‘You kind of glow, too.’ he told me in the softest of voices and then his grin faded, ‘Or…you used to…before…’ He just shut up and looked back at me with the most heart-broken look in his eyes.

I didn’t blush. I went white as a sheet; I’m sure of it because Quatre looked scared and grabbed my arm.

‘Duo?’ he whispered, voice full of concern.

‘No…nobody else knows?’ I could hardly make my voice heard.

He just shook his head emphatically and I remembered to breathe.

‘He’d kill me and scatter the body parts from here to the asteroid belt,’ I warned and managed to get a small, sad smile out of Quatre.

‘I used to think…’ he began and then stopped, looking up at me with those wide blue eyes, ‘But then he started being so…pissy…with you…’

He flushed at his own use of the near swear word and I chuckled at him.

I shook my head, ‘No…there is absolutely nothing in that man’s heart for me but full-fledged loathing. No doubt at all.’

His face crumbled and I thought for a second he was going to cry, I blinked at him stupidly. ‘Qat? What’s wrong?’

‘Seeing the way he treats you…I’m so scared that Trowa might react like that if he ever realized…’

He looked so damn vulnerable, wearing the shadow of my own pain on his face, that I pulled him toward me and let him lay his head on my shoulder, rubbing my hand soothingly up and down his back.

‘Trowa’s not like that,’ I told him firmly, ‘I can’t tell you if he’d be interested or not…but I know him well enough to know that he’d never act like…that.’

He nodded against my shoulder, ‘I don’t think so either…but…’

‘Just because my heart was stupid enough to decide it was going to pine after Mr. Freeze doesn’t mean that you have to be afraid,’ I whispered, scared to death that we weren’t keeping our voices down enough.

He straightened up and looked at me, ‘I don’t see how you stand it.’ He sighed, ‘It would kill me if Trowa treated me the way Heero treats you.’

I grinned at him, putting on the brave front. ‘I’m starting to think of ‘baka’ as a term of endearment.’

He had to stifle a laugh behind his hand and I effectively ended that line of conversation.

He sobered. ‘Duo…I’m so glad we talked; it really helped.’

I smiled at him warmly. ‘It did; didn’t it?’ I agreed.

Then I went to get my duffle bag from where I’d stashed it in the bathroom. The sweater I was wearing was the warmest thing I had and I shucked out of it and made him put it on.

‘But Duo…’ he objected, looking guilty.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I assured him and found myself another shirt, a denim one, not as warm but at least long sleeved, ‘I’m more used to the cold. It doesn’t bother me the way it does you.’

He took the sweater, and a pair of heavy jeans as well, and finally went off to his room. As I had hoped, he assumed that I would be going back to the other bedroom with Heero. I waited until I was sure he was in his room for the night, then settled myself on the couch, using my duffle bag for a pillow.

Surviving one dinner without getting yelled at was not enough to make me brave enough to try and mount an assault on that closed door. I am not the suicidal one.

But by morning I really wished I had thought to pack a blanket; I was freezing my ass off.

I’m an early riser; old street habit, so before Quatre was up and about I had my bag tucked away and there was no sign of where I had spent the night.

I went scrounging in the kitchen, found some potatoes and left over meat that Heero hadn’t used in the stew and set out to make hash for breakfast.

Quatre wandered in first, wearing my clothes and yawning hugely, and just sat at the table while I finished cooking.

Heero didn’t come out until right before I was ready to put it on the table; I was pretty sure he was avoiding me.

He glanced at Quatre, and then at me and frowned slightly before he sat down at the table. Sometimes he just made me tired trying to figure out what was going through his head.

He was wearing his jeans and a plain t-shirt. I gnawed my lip a little bit before getting up the courage to offer him one of my shirts again.

‘Heero…I have some long-sleeved shirts if you want to borrow…’

‘I said I’m fine.’ he said flatly and I backed off with a mental shrug of my shoulders. The hell with him.

Quatre was frowning at him like he was about to light into him with both hands; I caught his eye and gave him a warning look. All I needed was for Quatre to start lecturing Heero. I’d end up getting killed trying to save Quatre’s ass.

I finished serving breakfast and turned the conversation to the mission. That’s always a safe topic with Heero Yuy.

So we ate our breakfast and spent the next hour going over the mission objectives and the little bit of information we had available.

We didn’t have a lot to go on; a report from a spy we had in the Oz organization that there was something covert going on here. The proverbial needle in a haystack.

‘Well, we’re not going to find anything out just sitting around this place.’ I ventured at last.

‘I agree,’ Quatre said, ‘We have to get out where we can make contacts…meet people.’

The prospect of him wandering around this neighborhood alone about froze my blood in my veins. I forgot about the mission for a minute and turned toward him.

‘Listen; Qat…’ I began, trying to figure out how to say this without hurting his feelings; ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that…’

He turned and met my gaze with an odd frown.

‘This isn’t…the kind of place we’re used to staying.’ I didn’t want to single him out by saying ‘you’re’, ‘Most of the people we’re going to run into around here are…drug dealers and hookers and the like.’

I’m not sure which of the two of us was blushing more.

‘You need to be real careful around here.’ I looked down at my hands, I felt bad; like I was saying he couldn’t handle himself but I didn’t know how else to put it. ‘You really shouldn’t go out without one of us…’

Then I looked at Heero. Really looked at him with my head in ‘street’ mindset.

‘Oh dear God…you’re both going to stand out like sore thumbs,’ I blurted before I had a chance to shut my mouth on it.

Heero looked pissed, Quatre looked confused.

‘Duo…I don’t understand,’ Quatre said.

Heero didn’t say anything at all.

I got up and walked to look out the window, turning my back on them, trying to pretend I was just talking to nobody in particular.

‘Look,’ I said around a heavy sigh, ‘I grew up in places like…this. I know…what I’m talking about. There is nothing outside this door but predators…and prey. You are one or you are the other. You are a threat or you are in danger. And if you are perceived as too much of a threat then you are in a whole other kind of danger ’

I turned back around and looked hard at Heero’s stony face. ‘You are a predator. You look like a fucking undercover cop.’

I turned to Quatre. ‘You are prey. You look like an easy mark.’

Hell; now they both looked pissed at me.

‘I’m sorry…I don’t know how else to explain it. We are going to attract all kinds of attention when we go out there.’

There was the longest silence and it was Heero who surprised me by breaking it.

‘What are you?’

I blinked up at him, shocked by the question, ‘Prey with an edge,’ I told him before I had a chance to think about it. ‘I’m not a threat but I understand the rules of the jungle.’

He just sat and stared at me. It wasn’t necessarily a glare but it made me feel like I was being stripped down to the bone, weighed and measured.

‘Then you should be the one to go out,’ he said and I was left blinking some more.

I didn’t know whether to grin or frown. Half of me was floating a foot off the ground from the mere implication that he might possibly, maybe, trust me to know what I was talking about. While the other half was asking me just what in the hell I had gone and done.

‘Heero!’ Quatre snapped, ‘if it’s all that dangerous out there, you can’t just send him off by himself!’

‘He is the…expert here,’ Heero said softly and I was so busy for a second trying to decide if that was a derogatory remark, that I missed part of what Quatre said next.

‘…Damn it! You are letting your personal feelings against Duo…’ He was flaming pissed if he was cussing.

‘Qat!’ I cut him off sharply, afraid of what he might be about to say. I lowered my voice when I had his attention.

‘I’m sorry…’ I told him, ‘I’m not trying to say anything against your abilities. If we were going into some high powered political meeting or…or dealing with a negotiations situation; you’d be the point man. But…this is different. This is outside your realm of experience; that’s all.’

He mulled it over, glared at me and finally said, ‘I don’t think it’s safe for you to go out alone.’

‘I will actually draw less attention by myself,’ I assured him.

He turned those cornflower blue eyes on Heero again and I was only relieved to have them off me.

‘I just want to state that I am totally against this,’ he gritted, ‘and just what are you and I supposed to do? Sit here on our hands while Duo does all the work?’

‘I am intending on doing some reconnaissance work after dark when the likelihood of running into…’

I laughed. I had not meant to and damned if I didn’t have both their eyes on me again.

‘Uhmmmm…Heero,’ I ducked my head, ‘After dark is when things start to happen in a neighborhood like this. You’ll do better to wait until three or four in the morning.’

I got a slight rise out of one eyebrow and a grunt. I took it as acknowledgment of the information.

I decided to quit while I was ahead, ‘I’m going to go see if I can put an outfit together,’ and I went to get my duffle bag.

There was no rush; there wouldn’t be any point in going out for hours yet. Though I suppose I could find someplace to pick up some warmer clothes for the two of them while I was waiting for the local street life to stir.

I pulled out my clothes and looked things over, trying to decide who I was going to be; my Max persona wasn’t right for this kind of situation. I was guessing that I was going to end up playing either Dodger the hustler or Helio the streetwalker. I was hoping for Dodger; I don’t even like Helio. I finally concluded that I didn’t have the right clothes for either one of them. I checked the clock; almost ten. I’d probably be able to find someplace to buy some clothes and recon the neighborhood a little before much was stirring. I dug into my stash and counted out enough money to buy what I needed plus a little extra.

‘What are you doing?’ I heard Heero say behind me and turned to find the guys watching me curiously. Well, Quatre was watching curiously. Heero was just watching.

‘We need some stuff,’ I told him, shoving the money into my front pocket, ‘I’m going out.’

‘Duo,’ Quatre came toward me with something in his hand, ‘Heero and I discussed your going out alone. I’m still not happy with it and we decided that you should at least wear a wire.’

I straightened and looked at what he was holding, ‘You have surveillance equipment?’

‘Some,’ Heero admitted and I had to bite back on the urge to ask him just what the hell else he was holding out on us.

I looked the little bug over when Quatre laid it in my hand. It was a transmitter only; they wouldn’t be able to talk to me. It was actually pretty state of the art; I recognized it and knew it had a range close to a mile.

I quirked a grin at Heero, ‘I’m impressed.’

Of course, I only got a grunt in return.

I mulled it over in my head, weighing the possibility of getting caught with it against the stress this whole thing seemed to be exerting on Quatre.

‘All right,’ I finally agreed, took off my shirt, dug out my repair kit and proceeded to undo the seam on the collar. I tucked the little transmitter inside and stitched it carefully back up.

‘There.’ I raised an eyebrow at Quatre as I slipped the shirt back on, ‘Happy?’

‘Not really,’ he grumbled, ‘But I guess it will have to do.’ Then he turned to Heero, ‘Test it,’ he said tersely.

Heero went into his room without a word and I gave him a moment before I began intoning, ‘Testing...testing…testing…’ Like some monotone robot.

He came out a minute later with a tight nod and I shut up.

On a sudden thought, I turned back to Quatre, ‘Now you listen…there’s a lot of talk on the street that sounds…serious, that just isn’t. People push. People test. You are not to panic unless…’ I thought about it for a minute, ‘Unless I start talking in Japanese. Understood?’

He nodded and somehow only looked more upset. That was what would get him eaten alive outside this little house; everything he felt was written across his face in six foot, flaming letters.

‘I gotta teach you to play poker.’ I muttered and grabbed my jacket and turned to go.

Quatre’s fingers came to brush my arm, ‘Be careful,’ he murmured.

‘Just stay cool,’ I told him, ‘I’ll be back.’

Then I was out on the street and turning my jacket collar up against the wind. Damn but I hate the cold.

The house to the east of us was boarded up but you could tell that someone was slipping in and out of it, ‘Looks like we have squatters living in the house next door,’ I told them as I ambled along, letting my eyes scan everything. Might as well pass along a little information while I was out here.

‘Stop glaring, Heero,’ I chuckled, ‘A lot of street people talk to themselves…it’s no big deal.’

‘Stay clear of the third house down, our side of the street,’ I warned, thinking about Heero’s plan to be out after dark, ‘Looks like they raise pit bulls. You go in that back yard and you won’t be coming out with all your body parts.’ I’m sure they could hear the savage barking in the background. I shivered; I’d seen dog fights before.

‘Nasty little pieces of work,’ I muttered to myself, ‘Give me a nice golden retriever or a German shepherd any day.’

I got quiet while I worked on my walk; God it had been years. I hunched my shoulders and crammed my hands in my pockets and stopped trying to walk like a soldier. Blend in, Maxwell; I chided myself. Stop striding. After a few minutes I remembered to pull my hand out every so often and wipe at my nose. Harmless…think harmless.

‘I been hangin’ ‘round you guys too damn long…’ I muttered, thinking about Quatre hunched over the receiver back at the house, ‘This is harder than I ‘member.’

I dug through my memory, pulling up a mental picture of the kind of person I was pretending to be. I remembered the guy clear as day; Ganor…his name had been Ganor. Everybody called him Gimpy because he had this rolling walk that was almost a limp. I could hear his voice in my head. I had the walk down within the next half block.

‘At’s better,’ I murmured, practicing the talk, ‘Don’ you be callin’ me Gimpy to my face…my name’s Ganor. G. A. N. O. R.,’ I intoned, just the way he used to say it. I always thought it was probably the only word he knew how to spell.

Ganor had walked and acted like he owned the fucking block but everybody knew he was a nothing nobody and paid him little mind. Most people thought he was a loon.

‘At’s odd…’ I said to nobody in particular, ‘Ol’ gray house with the big ol’ porch…she got a brand spankin’ new front door.’

I continued that way, doing Ganor as I made my way toward the business district. Muttering and murmuring to myself and verbally pointing out things that stood out to my mind as something odd, like the car that looked a little too nice for the house it was parked in front of and the only other person I saw stirring that early in the day.

The houses gave way to apartment buildings within a few blocks and I began to pass businesses and bars. Some of them boarded up; few of them open. It took me five blocks of wandering before I finally found a second hand clothing store.

I went inside, snuffling and rubbing my nose, which really was a little runny from the cold.

The clerk glanced up only long enough to give me an appraising glance, counting me as no real interest and went back to her Playgirl magazine. It didn’t take long to find where the better stuff was and I began digging around looking for enough to put together an ‘evening’ outfit. I had decided I would probably do better as Helio, much as I would rather have not…but I hadn’t seen too many places where Dodger could ply his pool hustler trade.

I picked up a couple more sweaters and an extra jacket because I didn’t think that Quatre had one and went slouching up to the counter.

The clerk raised her eyes and glared at me.

‘This here jacket’s gots a hole in it,’ I whined and she only rolled her eyes.

‘That’s why it’s called a second hand store, honey. Get over it.’

‘I ain’t payin’ no full price for no jacket that gots a hole.’

She went back to her magazine, ‘Then put it back, sugar.’

‘Come on, man.’ I whined a little more and reached to rub at my nose again, I caught the flick of her eyes at the movement and I let my hand tremble as I put it back down and shoved it back into my pocket. ‘I ain’t got much…and I got to save some…’

I had her full attention now and her whole attitude changed. The money she made off the clothes went to somebody else. The money she made from selling…other things under the counter was all hers.

‘What’s a’matter, sugar? You look a little wasted.’ The sympathy in her voice held absolutely no reality in it.

I ducked my head down and to the side the way I remembered the real Ganor doing it. ‘I needs the clothes and I ain’t got much cash…’

‘Well…’ Her eyes never left mine and I forced a shiver, ‘Maybe we can talk price if you’re interested in something else.’

I gave her a hungry look and we got down to the real dealing. She was careful not to mention anything by name but a small bag appeared on the counter next to my pile of legitimate merchandise. I got a much better deal on the clothes.

I left the store with a couple of plastic bags full of clothes that would all have to be washed and something else tucked inside my jacket pocket.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I got a couple of blocks behind me, ‘Jesus Christ,’ I blurted, forgetting for a second that Heero was probably sitting there with Quatre, ‘This is bringing back a whole shit wagon full of crap I would just as soon not remember.’

I deliberately worked my way back to the house using a different route and continued my litany of observations as I went.

‘There’s something strange over here on fifth street. There’s a building here that looks too new. There’s something not right about it…it almost looks like somebody was trying to make it look old.’

It was afternoon now and I was seeing more people. I deviated once from the route I had intended to take because I spotted a small group of punks hanging around a street corner. ‘Punks’ and ‘hanging around’ usually meant bored. They weren’t bored enough to come down two blocks to follow me.

I was getting antsy this close to my goal and found myself rambling to Quatre as I wove my way between obstacles, surprised at how quickly old instincts came back.

‘Old piece of street wisdom, Qat. Never go where you don’t have at least three ways out,’ I was prompted to say as I briefly contemplated and rejected going down an alley to shorten my route.

I came to the corner just two blocks up from the house and had to decide between going down the north or south side of the street. On the north, the owner of the pit bull service was outside in his front yard and would have to be passed. He looked like a sullen bastard and wasn’t doing a whole lot of anything but he had one of his dogs with him. On the south side there was a pair of youngish looking punks in colors sitting on the hood of a car passing a joint back and forth, laughing uproariously.

‘Great,’ I murmured, ‘Hell or high water. Ok…let’s decide based on the rules set before me as a child; never failed me before. Rule number two, Qat…it’s the quiet ones who’ll give you the most trouble.’

So I stayed on the south side and only had to endure the hoots and catcalls of two guys too stoned to want to get up off their asses to give me any grief.

I made the front porch of the safe house with that spot between my shoulder blades itching like a son of a bitch and having to make myself not run.

I had been too long off the streets, had forgotten the constant tension, I knew I’d have trouble sleeping tonight with the monsters of my childhood hunting me through the dark.

The door flew open in front of my face before I had a chance to reach for it and Quatre fairly pulled me inside, falling all over himself trying to ask me questions. I laughed at him, a little of the tension easing now that I was under cover.

‘Let me get these clothes in the bathtub to soak and then we’ll sit down and talk.’

He gave me a puzzled little frown, ‘But Duo…you just bought them…’

‘And they’re probably full of vermin coming from a place like that,’ I told him and his eyes flew wide. I passed Heero in the hall on my way and grinned at him, still a little bit high on adrenaline.

‘If you have the map of the area, I can mark some stuff we should probably check.’

‘Meet us in the kitchen,’ he said and I grinned wider. There hadn’t even been a glare with that line!

I ran the tub full of scalding hot water and poured in a liberal amount of the harshest cleanser I could find. By the time I got to the kitchen, I had put Ganor completely behind me and was able to sit down with them as Duo.

When Heero spread the map out, I could see that he had already marked the place with the dogs and to tell the truth, it rather surprised me that he had thought enough of my observations that he had noted it. I went over what I had noticed and marked things off on the map. Heero actually asked me a couple of questions and I hated myself for the warm feeling his attention gave me.

Heero decided he wanted to investigate the house with the obviously new door and the building on Fifth Street; possibly that very night.

When we were done talking tactics, Quatre jumped all over me, ‘What was going on in the clothing store? Why did that clerk suddenly change the way she was talking to you?’

I chuckled lightly, ‘You just heard your first drug deal go down, Qat.’

‘But…’ He sputtered and I laughed some more and explained about how much more difficult it was to make charges stick if the seller never actually makes a verbal offer. I showed him the stuff and marvelled again at how wise and naïve he could be all at the same time.

I caught a slight frost in the air and glanced at Heero to find him looking at me in a very odd way, ‘What are you planning on doing with that?’ he asked in a voice I had not heard before and I had trouble deciding what the tone was.

‘Depends,’ I told him blandly, ‘If I have to go out as Dodger…I may try and sell it as part of my cover. If I have to be Ganor again…God forbid…I’ll probably just carry it as a prop. Otherwise it goes down the toilet.’

There was a subtle change to his features but it was beyond me to read him most of the time.

Quatre was confused again, ‘Dodger? Ganor? Duo…I don’t understand.’

‘My personas,’ I told him, ‘cover identities.’

‘You have them already made up?’ He looked a little incredulous.

‘It makes it easier to pull one out of my hat when I need to be somebody else in a hurry,’ I explained and he just shook his head.

‘Who are you going to be tonight?’ he finally asked.

I ducked my head and rubbed at the back of my neck, a little embarrassed, ‘Unfortunately; after looking around…I think I’m going to have to be Helio.’

‘Helio?’ Heero questioned with a frown.

‘Uhmmm…yeah. Heliotrope…Helio. He’s a…streetwalker.’

That brought a shocked gasp from Quatre and he blushed a bright red. Heero had that unreadable expression again and I sighed. I had a feeling I was starting to seriously give him some shivers.

I ignored what I couldn’t understand and turned my attention to Quatre, ‘Don’t worry, Quatre…I have no plans of taking on any…clients. It just affords me the opportunity to converse with a lot of people while blending in.’

‘But…’ and his color escalated to an even brighter shade of red, ‘Won’t it blow your cover if…I mean what if somebody…’

I laughed out loud. ‘You just set a price that’s ridiculous and send them on their way.’

He didn’t look convinced and I reached to pat his hand. ‘Don’t worry so much…there’s plenty of fish to pick from out there…no reason to push the issue with one skinny little, nothing street rat.’

He blinked up at me and his mouth popped open. ‘Are you kidding? Duo, you’re…’ and then his mouth snapped shut. I am not at all sure what he had started to say but he was red again and he never did finish it.

I finally decided I’d had enough of the question and answer session. ‘I’m going to go rinse the clothes out.’ And I left the room.

I rinsed the crap out of the new clothes and I’m pretty sure I did see some little dead somethings go swirling down the drain. I rung the water out of them the best I could and took them outside to freeze them the rest of the way dry.

With luck, they’d be ready by evening.

When I came back in the house, Heero was on the couch working at his laptop and Quatre was making lunch.

I bypassed Heero and went to sit in the kitchen to talk with Quatre while he worked. No sense pushing my luck with Mr. Mission; if I wasn’t careful, I’d forget myself and cross whatever line it was that only he could see.

Quatre was making soup and sandwiches and just generally hanging around the stove more for warmth than anything, I think. He kept stealing glances at me and I finally sighed in exasperation.

‘Listen, Qat…if there’s something you want to ask me; just go ahead.’

He flushed and ducked his head. ‘I just don’t understand…things, I guess.’ He muttered.

I bit down on the urge to tell him that was exactly why I didn’t want him going out but only asked, ‘What things?’ Wishing that he could learn to be a little more blunt.

‘How did that woman know…’ he stopped, searching for words while he slowly stirred the soup.

I closed my eyes for a second and slipped back into Ganor’s head. I got up from the chair and made my way across the room toward him, doing the walk, doing the tremble, doing the sniffle and the whole attitude.

‘Why…dat woman…she’s a pro-fess-on-nal. She knows her work…she knows the signs.’

He almost knocked the pan over whirling around to face the stranger that suddenly seemed to be in the room with him.

‘Damn; Duo!’

I chuckled in a nasty, Ganor way, closed my eyes and when I opened them I was Dodger.

Dodger’s a punk, on the ragged edge of dangerous. He’s all angles and attitude. I came out of the slouch and cocked my head and my elbows. I seem larger when I do Dodger; you stand up straight and tall and just imagine yourself occupying more space than you really do. I continued toward him.

‘S’matter pretty bird?’ I drawled and let my eyes run over him the way he would get looked at if he dared wander out of this safe place into the streets. I got in his space and he gave ground with his eyes wide.

I pushed it until he croaked, ‘Duo?’ I heard in his voice that he wasn’t sure. I’d genuinely scared him. Good.

I flashed him a pure Duo Maxwell grin and reached passed him to take down the soup bowls from the shelf. ‘What, Qat?’

He just blinked at me as I turned to set the table.

Heero was standing in the doorway watching us. He had that expression again; that one that can only be described as a total lack of expression. Not for the first time, I wished I could read his mind.

Then Quatre surprised me with a question I wasn’t prepared for, ‘Which…which one of you is the real one?’

‘Sometimes I’m not sure,’ I heard come out of my mouth before I could stop it, even as I was standing there still staring at Heero and I saw the surprise wash across his face.

Ouch. Ok…maybe I’d taken this game a little too far. I turned away from them both and set the table.

The subject got dropped after that and I was careful to stick with just being Duo Maxwell the Gundam pilot.

When I brought in the clothes after lunch, I left a sweater and the jacket on Quatre’s bed. Then feeling like a damned little kid sneaking where they didn’t belong, I carefully folded and put the dark gray sweater I had picked up for Heero on the foot of his bed. I have no idea why I keep making these damn gestures; I’m not normally the type of person to pick up rattlesnakes just for fun.

Then I busied myself with getting my ‘outfit’ ready and trying to convince myself to pull Helio out of the box.

There’s an assumption that people make about you when they figure out that you grew up, not only on L2 but as an orphan running the streets. It’s an automatic conclusion that you had to have sold your body to have survived. Nope. Sorry. Not always the case. Yeah, some of the kids did; but you want to know a nasty piece of truth? Little kids trying to be hookers do not live long. If you survived the physical damage, you weren’t likely to survive the diseases you were going to get from the type of people who were looking for a roll with a pre-pubescent anyway. I am as virgin as the new-driven snow. I am not innocent. I know how it works; I know the tricks and the secrets. I’ve had to lie quiet as a mouse in my packing-crate shelter for the night with girls plying their trade not twenty feet away. But I came through those years pretty much untouched. Solo saw to it; saw to it with all his ‘rat children’. I don’t know if he ever had to go that far, I sometimes wondered because he was very vehement about the subject. None of the kids in his gang ever even thought about it. He made damn sure we understood how that would just get us dead.

Helio is based on a girl named Azure. She took her trade name from the color of her eyes. She had the most beautiful blue eyes. I suspect that I will be able to see those eyes when I have forgotten what the rest of her looked like. She wasn’t one of us kids, was older…probably fifteen or sixteen. Seemed as old and wise as some ancient Oracle. She was…a bitter piece of work. I avoided her as much as possible; she made me uncomfortable. Sometimes if you caught her in the right mood, you got a glimpse of the person she might have been. It ate at me.

I sincerely don’t like Helio. I guess sometimes it just comes home to me how close I had come to being Helio.

Quatre sat and watched me slice artful holes in denim for a while, nibbling at his lip and refraining, thank God, from any more questions.

Heero worked at his laptop, doing searches on the building on Fifth Street and coming up empty, which only served to peak our interest about the place.

Then there was no more putting it off and I went to the bathroom to change. It was getting late and the nightlife would be starting to stir.

I started my disguise with black spandex. Shut up, ok; I don’t want to hear about it. Black leggings and a long sleeved, form fitting shirt; a veritable body stocking. Over that went a pair of acid washed jeans that were so slashed there wasn’t a whole lot of places where slinky, black spandex wasn’t showing through. A matching denim shirt, not buttoned but tied at the waist and equally slashed. My black combat boots and a black leather jacket. I took my hair down, brushed it until it shone and pulled two locks from either side of my face to tie back behind my head. I thought of Relena with a dark chuckle.

I surveyed myself in the mirror with a bit of a shock. Shit. I wasn’t quite the scrawny little street kid I remembered. There was some muscle on the frame I found in the looking glass.

My transmitter had been transferred to the shirt I had on and there wasn’t any getting around it; it was time to go out.

I made eye contact with Helio in the mirror and growled to myself. ‘Damn I hate you.’

In the mirror, Helio gave me a saucy wink and just grinned.

I came out of the bathroom trying not to blush and failing miserably when I found the drop-jawed look on Quatre’s face.

‘Duo!’ he gasped, ‘You can’t go out looking like that!’

I laughed until the tears threatened to run down my face. ‘Qat…it’s kind of the whole point.’

Heero came out of his room then and I could feel him looking at me. I didn’t have the nerve to turn and see what expression he was wearing; I had a feeling it was going to be that frozen one again.

‘Heero?’ Quatre exploded, looking to our partner for support and finding none.

‘Will you still be using the same Japanese code if you experience trouble?’ he asked and the glare he got from Quatre was scathing.

‘Yeah.’ I told him without turning and Quatre got so pissed he stormed off to his room slamming the door when he got there.

I finally turned to where Heero was setting up the receiver and caught him looking me up and down appraisingly. It kind of irritated me somehow. Or embarrassed me, I’m not sure which but a tiny bit of Helio peeked out and I raised my arms and turned around to display the goods. ‘Do I pass inspection?’ I purred and was gratified to see him blush and turn away.

I wrestled with things to say, I knew if I got into any serious trouble I was pretty much on my own. There wasn’t going to be a whole lot they could do for me. I wanted some assurance that they wouldn’t do something stupid trying to bail me out. But then I remembered who I was standing here with and I realized what an idiotic notion that was. I finally muttered, ‘Take it easy on Quatre…he’s just…out of his element here and it makes him feel helpless. It’s in his nature to worry.’

I left before he had a chance to bite my head off.

I went out the back door and slipped through the yards, ghosting out to the street and I finally figured out what the odd noises were I’d been hearing for the past hour.

‘Looks like our pit bull buddy is running a dog fight tonight.’ I murmured, ‘Watch yourselves…there’ll be a lot of drunken nasties wandering around the neighborhood for hours.’

I shut up then, realizing that I was talking only to Heero unless Quatre had come out of his room after I left. I couldn’t maintain the same banter unless I felt like I was talking to the more sympathetic of my two partners.

Besides, I needed to get Helio out of his box in my head and get him tried on.

Slow down the walk; need more of a saunter. Stroll…don’t stride. Eyes up and scanning; looking for potential clients. Swing the hair, flash the smile…accentuate the positive. God I hated this.

I managed to swing by the house with the odd repairs and muttered into my collar, ‘Still no lights at target A. No sign of activity.’

By the time I hit the business district, Helio was firmly in place and enjoying himself; swinging his hips and smirking his ass off.

Have I mentioned that I don’t like Helio?

The strip was like a place transformed; the grates were pushed back from all those places that had been closed that morning and there were people just fucking everywhere.

I passed a bar and got a catcall. Where I would normally have ignored it and walked on, as Helio, I turned and flashed the guy a bright grin, tossing the hair and giving him a wink. I was here to make contacts and find information after all.

The guy wasn’t really interested though and backed down when he got a response from me. I walked on.

I wandered like that for a while. I could tell the regulars from the appraising stares I got; somebody new in their territory. I got a couple of propositions and used the high price tactic to blow them off; entered into a couple of absolutely nothing conversations.

It took an hour before one of the local girls got in my face; just a little territorial pissing. In this business, you need a lure…something that makes you stand out. For me…I mean, Helio…it was the hair and the eyes. Violet is a very rare color.

For this girl, it was also her hair. Mine was better.

Hers was long but not as long as mine and flaming red where mine is a light chestnut. Usually when I’m doing Helio I have it streaked but I hadn’t had access to a lot of supplies.

I briefly debated getting into it with her but decided to at least give a friendly exchange a try. I went straight for the jugular and complimented her hair. She preened. I lamented my boring, mouse brown color and raved a little about her hair color. She preened some more and we bonded.

I had to keep myself from shaking my head.

It wasn’t as hard as all that; we really weren’t in any serious competition for clients. The kind of johns that would be interested in me wouldn’t be interested in her anyway. I think she only got in my face to start with out of boredom.

I got her to talk to me a little bit. The clichéd hookers with the hearts of gold really do exist. They usually don’t last long…but they exist.

On closer inspection, I realized that she was a little older than she had looked at first and I played to that, managing to get some maternal instincts going with a calculated show of a little trepidation.

‘Now you listen here, Honey,’ she told me after we’d talked for a few minutes, ‘You stay away from the ‘Red Dog’…them people is just plain mean. They don’t care nothin’ about marks.’

You got scarred up in her line of work and it dropped your street value. Most johns will at least honor the face. Some like it rough and will sometimes get carried away but they will usually stay away from the face.

I nodded in understanding, appearing to hang on her every word, even as my eyes were scanning the street, looking for things that were out of place. A lot of this kind of surveillance work is pure instinct.

She went on in that vein, warning me away from this or that person; letting me know which ones were the gay bars, until a car cruised by and she got a nibble on the hook she was dangling in the water. She forgot me like yesterday’s news and was gone, sidling up to the car and engaging the man behind the wheel in conversation.

I wandered on.

There was a small altercation after that, from a…gentleman who approached me from a bar. Before I quite knew what he was up to, his hands were slipping through the gashes cut in the back of my jeans and he was kneading my spandex covered ass. As Helio, I had to smirk and simper instead of breaking his damn arm.

I finally managed to work my way free with a teasing, ‘you go much further and I’m going to have to start charging, sweetie.’

We did the price thing and he got a little pissy with me. I thought it was going to get rough but he finally backed down and went away muttering to himself about high-priced hookers.

I couldn’t keep the shaky, ‘Shit,’ from passing my lips after he was gone.

Then I spotted something that made alarms go off in my head. Like I said, a lot of this job is instinct and the guy I saw making his way down the street was kicking my instincts right in the head. This was a predator…but wrong somehow. Like finding a tiger shark trolling through the Sahara. Damn dangerous…but out of place. People were giving him a wide berth but eyes were following him from all over the street.

‘Well…this is interesting,’ I murmured to my shirt collar and put myself in the guy’s path.

He was hunting; I just wasn’t sure what. His eyes snagged on me and homed in. I smiled, keeping my body language inviting without making too much of a statement. I wasn’t sure what this guy was after yet, I didn’t want to commit to being one thing only to find he was looking for something else.

He stopped and I could see the people around us writing me off for dead. Shit. I hoped this guy didn’t have a reputation for snuff jobs.

I cocked my head to the side and looked him up and down. His clothes were a little better than this part of town usually saw but they were nondescript to a fault. The guy was freaking huge; a good six inches taller than me and probably twice as broad. Good looking in a crew-cut kind of way. And that thought brought it home to me; military. He fairly reeked of it.

In some distant part of my memory I heard Solo’s voice tell me, ‘Run, you fucking idiot.’

I let my eyes roam back up his impressive height and made eye contact with a grin. And saw him dismiss me.

When he walked on, I wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or weak-kneed relieved. I just stood and watched his retreating back trying to decide between the two until a quiet voice at my elbow said, ‘Damn, honey; you really are new at this.’

I turned with a start to find my earlier redheaded acquaintance standing beside me, I opened my mouth to speak but she didn’t wait.

‘Don’t you know bitchin’ bad news when it almos’ runs your ass over?’

I leered in a typical Helio way. ‘But he was damn fine lookin’ wasn’t he?’

She actually reached up and smacked me in the back of the head; ‘Fine lookin’ don’ mean nothin’!’ she snapped and walked away as though I was obviously just too stupid to talk to.

So I started to follow Mr. Military without seeming to, stopping now and again to respond to whistles and offers but always keeping a close eye on my quarry.

He was looking for something with a little more spice to it. He completely ignored the few who bothered to approach him but actively sought out the ones who were obviously avoiding him. He wanted at least the illusion of a little bit of fight; the thrill of the hunt and all that. He was looking for a challenge. And he was looking the guys and the girls over with equal interest. I tailed him for close to an hour and was pretty sure by the time he finally connected up with a girl who looked desperate enough to risk him, that I understood what it would take to get his attention.

I called it a night and began my meandering path back toward the safe house, things were starting to thin out anyway; it was near two in the morning.

Even though I was getting tired, I made a point of going down Fifth Street and was rewarded with the sight of lights in our second potential building.

‘Target B seems to have a third shift,’ I murmured softly, a little more leery of talking to myself out here in the night. The loons generally wandered around in the daylight hours and holed up someplace safe when it got dark.

‘There are lights,’ I observed for my silent listeners. ‘But only on the lowest levels. No vehicles either…curiouser and curiouser.’

I briefly toyed with the idea of going in for a closer look but decided that wasn’t what Heero had assigned to me and I would just piss him off if I overstepped his instructions for no better reason than ‘I was in the neighborhood’.

Out here, away from the relative, semi-safe ‘business district’, I felt like I was creeping through a minefield. I was strung tight as a bowstring and jumping at every little shadow. I was within a couple of blocks of the house and needed to decide which route I was going to take.

‘Sure wish you guys could tell me how long the damn dog fights have been over,’ I murmured, thinking how much faster it would be to come right down our street. If I circumvented that area, it was going to add four or five blocks to my path. I settled on the direct approach and picked up the pace a little bit.

The dogfights had obviously not been over long enough and two blocks from ‘home’ a rather large, drunken, dog lover suddenly loomed up in my way. From his attitude I was willing to bet his dog of choice had lost.

I stopped and cocked my head to the side, looking him over and preparing some flippant remark but this guy was so far gone there wasn’t any preliminary; he just grabbed for me.

‘God damn it,’ I muttered and danced out of his reach.

He kept coming, forcing me to sidestep or attack him. Drunk as he was, he probably wouldn’t have felt any punch I might have connected with, so I settled on sidestepping…right into the waiting arms of his buddy who’d been hiding in the bushes.

I realized then that the first one wasn’t quite as drunk as he had seemed to be. Well didn’t this just suck? I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen the second man.

They weren’t playing around, there wasn’t any toying with me. The guy who had me by the arms was twisting so hard I thought for a second he’d broken something. There was a flash of burning pain across my shoulders as ligaments stretched to the limit. The original dog-boy came in and punched me hard in the stomach and when my breath exploded out of me, bush-boy let me fall to the ground.

I had my knife out of my sleeve the moment he gave me the opening to do it, but kept it tucked up tight to my body while I sucked for air and tried to get my bearings. Then they were hauling me to my feet by the back of my jacket and I brought the knife into play.

‘Back off, asshole,’ I wheezed and had the blade at his throat before he knew I even had it.

‘Shit!’ dog-boy yelped and let go of my jacket.

We stood and stared at one another for a minute.

‘What the hell do you want?’ I growled and bush-boy, who didn’t have a stiletto under his chin, was more than happy to talk to me.

‘Fucking little whore!’ he snarled and I suddenly recognized him as the guy who had grabbed my ass earlier in the evening.

‘Well isn’t this just a happy little coincidence,’ I drawled and shifted my stance to get them both on the same side of me.

‘Think you’re so God damned hot…’ bush-boy was saying and I cut him off in true Helio style.

‘Oh, sweet-cakes…I am damned hot. Damned expensive and damned worth it. But the likes of you will never know.’ My voice dripped utter contempt.

I could tell that dog-boy had only gotten involved out of boredom and some misdirected desire for a little excitement. He was regretting his choice to throw in with bush-boy and I shoved him away from me hard enough to send him sprawling in the dirt, turning my attention to my real problem.

‘You wanna dance?’ I asked him in my coldest voice, letting the knife weave while I beckoned him with my free hand.

‘What?’ he blurted and I swear to God for a second the guy actually thought he still might get a piece of me.

‘I am most definitely not speaking Japanese,’ I told him roughly, delivering another message to my waiting partners at the same time. ‘I said…do you want to fight me?’

He mulled it over, looking at me, looking at the knife. I heard dog-boy getting to his feet and scrambling away.

‘I ain’t easy,’ I told him, hoping to speed his decision, ‘I ain’t cheap. And I sure as hell ain’t no push-over.’

His eyes were following the blade in my hand and he must have finally decided that I knew how to use it, because his hands came up and he backed off. We maneuvered around each other and he let me go on my way and I let him go on his.

‘Gonna take the long way back,’ I sighed into my shirt collar when I was satisfied that he was headed back toward the business district. I couldn’t take the chance that I might lead someone back to the others and so walked on by the house without even looking at it. I wasn’t sure if bush-boy had followed me somehow, without my seeing him or if my running into him out here really was just a coincidence. I took another damn hour to work my way around and make absolutely sure that I wasn’t being followed before I made my way up through the yards to the back door.

‘Coming in the back,’ I breathed, just to make sure I didn’t get my head shot off, and again, the door was opened for me when I got there.

I was surprised to find them both there, Quatre hauling me inside while Heero shut and relocked the door.

‘I thought you were going out?’ I exclaimed to Heero before I had a chance to think better of it.

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Quatre snapped at me, wide eyed, ‘He couldn’t go off with you in danger!’

I stared at him for a minute. ‘I’m not in any…’ I began and got a full-fledged Quatre death glare. He’d been practicing.

‘We heard you being attacked,’ Heero said flatly, ‘Are you injured?’

I shook my head; unable to think what to say in the face of this…pissed off concern? Whatever the hell it was.

‘They hit you,’ Quatre accused. ‘We heard it.’

‘Will you guys calm down?’ I blurted, ‘I got careless and got jumped. They only landed a couple of punches. I’m fine.’

There was a moment of strange silence and I decided to break it in an effort to change the subject.

‘You’re not still planning on going out are you?’ I questioned.

‘It is too late now.’ Heero said and made it seem somehow like it was my fault. ‘It will be light soon.’

‘I’m…sorry. I didn’t realize you were waiting on me to come back,’ I said sullenly.

A look was exchanged between Heero and Quatre and I suddenly realized that he hadn’t gone on his recon mission because Quatre had not let him. I sighed heavily, imagining what the last couple of hours had been like in this house.

‘Look.’ I tried to keep my voice steady and reasonable. ‘We’re not doing anything else tonight. Let’s just get some sleep. I think I might be on to something, we can go over everything in the morning.’

Heero only grunted, turned on his heel and went to his room.

‘He is the single most pig-headed God damn son of a bitch…’ Quatre hissed through gritted teeth.

‘Qat!’ I gasped at him and suddenly his face crumbled and he was throwing his arms around me.

‘Duo…’ he blurted, ‘I was so damn scared! I didn’t really believe you about what it was like out there! Those people are so…’

I wrapped my arms around him and held him close, using his need for comfort to answer my own need for just some damn physical contact.

‘S’ok little brother.’ I grinned where he couldn’t see it anyway, ‘I’m all right. I was only in over my head for like…maybe ten seconds.’

The joke fell flat but the new little nickname made him draw back and smile up at me, a little reassured.

‘Go to bed,’ I told him gently, ‘It’s been a long night. I’m going to shower. I really, really feel the need of a shower.’

He nodded and retreated to his room.

I went to the bathroom and stared at Helio in the mirror for a minute. ‘You’re going to get my ass killed one of these days, Helio,’ I told him and he just grinned.

I showered in water as hot as I could get it and scrubbed until my skin was raw. Then I went out to get a little sleep on my couch and about fell over when I found a blanket folded and lying there.

Well damn. It had to be from Heero; Quatre didn’t have a clue I was sleeping out here. I rolled up in it and tried to stop grinning. And no, I am not that stupid; I knew it didn’t mean a damn thing. But I was just so hungry for him to…hate me a little less…that it meant the damn world to me. Especially after the night I’d had.

Faces and voices swam in my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about Mr. Military; trying to figure out what he had to do with all this. Mulling over my observations, thinking through my strategy for making a connection with him. Wondering if I truly wanted to make a connection with him. The man looked like he could tear me in half without breaking a sweat. What if I managed to get him to proposition me? What then? How the hell far was I willing to go for the mission?

I remembered the feel of bush-boys hands on my ass and I shivered. I flopped over on my side and let my hand fall on the pile of denim and spandex on the floor by the couch, I fingered the material and tried to follow that scenario through. Nope. Not that far; I knew I wouldn’t be able to go through with it.

I wished Heero weren’t so damn…tight assed. I could really use somebody to talk to right now and I just could not talk to Quatre about this. He was already so upset he was on the verge of imploding. He’d never met people like the ones prowling around out there. Fighting against faceless pilots in mobile suits is one thing; these were civilians and were not supposed to be a threat. I don’t think he had known that there were people in the world who were that close to being animals. It had scared the crap out of him and it was about to drive him insane that I kept wading out into it. That and the fact that Heero kept sending me.

I rolled over onto my stomach and ended up jabbing my bruised abdomen into the corner of the couch cushion and hissed in irritation. With a muttered curse, I threw myself back over onto my back and stared up into the dark.

My shoulders ached from where bush-boy had damn near ripped them out of their sockets. I heaved another sigh; I wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight at this rate.

Across the living room, I heard the door to Heero’s room open quietly. His shadow came silently out and padded toward me. He stopped beside the couch and just stood there for a minute. I blinked up at him and waited for him to speak. What the hell?

‘You are injured,’ he said and I could not have told you if it was a question or a statement.

‘What?’ I asked brightly.

‘I can hear you muttering and cursing from the other room.’ It held a hint of accusation.

I thought about what I had been doing since I had lain down here. Surely I hadn’t been that damn loud? ‘Well excuse me; I’ll try to be quieter.’

There was a long silence and then, his voice sounding cold; ‘I need to evaluate your condition.’

‘I’m fine,’ I growled.

‘I will be the judge of that.’

I was pissed. And well aware that it was driven by the unreasoning fact that I wanted him to come out here and care if I was all right. Wanted it so damn bad I could taste it. I wanted him to sit down next to me and say my name and ask me if I was ok and truly fucking care what the answer was. This…this cold, detached checking of my status as it related to the mission was enough to just about push me over the edge of…whatever the hell I had been sitting on the edge of all night.

He turned away only to flick the light on and then turned back to face me, ‘Show me,’ he said, voice was angrily sullen.

I threw the blanket off and flung myself to my feet, spitting mad and for a minute I couldn’t even speak. He just ran his eyes over me; calmly looking for wounds.

‘Where?’ he asked after a minute.

I had to take a couple of breaths before I could open my mouth without snapping at him, ‘I took a single punch to the stomach. I may have strained some shoulder muscles. Nothing more,’ I gritted.

He stepped in toward me and it was all I could do not to jerk away. It was probably the surreal unlikelihood of his hands on me that kept me standing there, still as a stone, as he pressed on my abdomen checking for internal injuries. He turned me around and checked my shoulders, making me raise my arms up against the downward pressure of his hand. He was efficient and thorough and the clinical coldness broke me in a way I had not expected. My anger washed away on a rising tide of pain.

‘Satisfied?’ I said coldly, my back turned to him.

I got the standard, ‘Hn.’

‘Then leave me the fuck alone.’

He quietly turned the light off and walked away. I didn’t move until I heard his door close. I didn’t dare. When I was sure I was alone, I balled the blanket up and threw it on the floor, then balled myself up into a shivering lump on my couch. I always have had a penchant for slicing my own nose off just to spite my damn face.

‘The wounds are on my fucking soul, you bastard,’ I whispered into the dark and silently cried myself to sleep.

It was out of my system by morning. I’m funny that way; sometimes I wonder about my sanity. I’m thinking about willing my psyche to science when I die. They can put my brain up on display in a jar labelled ‘Abby Normal’. Should make an interesting exhibit; the universe’s only naturally coal-black brain. Ok…maybe it wasn’t completely out of my system.

I opened my eyes to see Heero through the kitchen doorway, making breakfast, his back to me. My blanket was off the floor and draped across my legs. He was wearing the sweater I had bought for him. My first thought was just pure shock that he had come that close to me without waking me. The second was that he was obviously some sort of psycho, split-personality lunatic. I give up. I just fucking give up; I won’t ever understand the damn son of a bitch if I live to be a thousand years old. I can’t read him. I can’t figure out his reasoning. I quit.

I rose, folded the blanket and carefully took it back to his room. If I left it out in the living room, I would have to explain it to Quatre. Nothing more to it than that. Yeah.

I killed a little time in the bathroom, braiding my hair and dressing in my Dockers and a turtleneck. Maybe I could get my black sweater back from Quatre; I was freezing to death. I had a feeling that I might just as well face up to the fact that I was not going to be warm again until this damn assignment was over. I rinsed my mouth and scrubbed at my face and met dark circled, blood-shot eyes in the mirror. I had to grin; maybe tonight Helio wouldn’t get quite so many offers. He looked like shit.

I stayed in the bathroom until I heard Quatre stirring, then emerged and waited for him so that I didn’t have to go into the kitchen alone.

It was as though the previous night had never happened. We ate and went over my observations and suspicions from my stint as Helio.

Heero seemed a little…subdued. I suppose he hadn’t gotten much sleep last night either; I knew how late he had been up, after all. Quatre was so openly curious about everything, that he seemed to have forgotten how pissed off he was at Heero. I found myself dominating the conversation as I warmed to my theories, telling them about Mr. Military. I dug out some paper and did a quick sketch of the man, describing his clothes and expounding on my idea of approaching him. The room went rather icily quiet.

I looked up from my drawings to find two pairs of blue eyes drilling holes through me, ‘What?’ I asked, unsure what in the hell I had done wrong now.

‘Duo,’ Quatre said quietly. ‘Isn’t that the man that lady warned you to stay away from?’

All I could do was stare at him. He turned his gaze on Heero for a second; looking for some support before deciding he probably wouldn’t get any.

‘The man is obviously dangerous!’ he snapped at me and I just lost it. I felt like I was being assaulted on the one side with Heero’s cold-hearted disdain and on the other with Quatre’s heart-wrenching fear and anxiety. I had been waffling back and forth between them, opening myself to Quatre’s emotions, trying to keep him reassured and calm but then having to throw the shields back up with every encounter I had with Heero. I think I just overloaded my system; pain, comfort, pain, comfort. Isn’t that a torture technique?

‘No fucking shit, he’s dangerous!’ I yelled, ‘I am ninety-five percent sure he’s a damn Oz agent! That sticks him in the dangerous category just on general principal! That is kind of the whole God damn reason we’re here!’

Shock registered on Quatre’s face and Heero’s turned to stone. I was flaming losing it and couldn’t seem to get my mouth to shut.

‘I don’t know about you two…but I’m a fucking soldier here to do a God damn job! I thought we were a team. I thought we were supposed to be working together. But you are about to mother hen me to death…you’re making me do shit that I wouldn’t ordinarily do, just to keep you from worrying!’ Mouth just would not shut up and my momentum turned me in Heero’s direction. ‘And you! I want to know what your God damn problem is! You do not treat any other member of the team the way you treat me! I have never failed a mission. I have never refused to do anything you have asked of me. I’m sick of you treating me like I’m some kind of…of…baka!’

Ever kicked a puppy? Unless you are a severely twisted individual you will regret it pretty damn quickly. I was sorry almost before the last words were out of my mouth. I found that somewhere in there I had stood up so fast that I’d knocked the kitchen chair over and I was standing there panting and glaring at both of them. I threw my hands up in that ‘no threat’ gesture and backed away, turning to brace my arms on the counter and letting my head hang down while I got myself back together.

So much for having all the clutter out of my system.

‘Duo…?’ Quatre ventured and there was a world of hurt in his voice. I was opening my mouth to tell him how sorry I was when Heero spoke.

His voice was calm and very quiet. ‘He’s right.’

I couldn’t help it, I had to turn around. He was just sitting at the table, looking down at his hands.

‘I have been letting my…emotions affect my handling of this situation.’

I wondered if my eyes looked as wide and round as Quatre’s did. Somebody find me a calendar; I need to mark this day down.

There was a frozen moment when not one of us knew what in the hell to say next. I toyed with ‘I’m sorry’ but I really wasn’t…it had needed saying. Perhaps not at that volume, nor laced with quite that many swear words…but it had made Heero Yuy admit that I was right about something. Later, I would let myself think about the fact that he had just admitted that he truly didn’t like me.

Heero finally broke the stillness. ‘You have shown yourself to have good instincts and strong powers of observation. I…trust your…evaluation of the targets.’

It took Quatre a minute to realize that meant that Heero was going along with my plan to approach our possible Oz soldier. He opened his mouth but then his eyes flicked in my direction and he shut it again.

I moved to pick my chair up and sat back down at the table, I took a deep breath and just tried to get back into mission mind-set.

‘We can’t afford to waste another night,’ I said to nobody in particular, ‘The recon of target B can’t wait until I’m done with my scouting mission.’

Quatre was trying hard to focus as well and when his voice came, it was calm and totally objective. ‘I disagree. The two missions should not coincide with each other. Duo might need backup.’

I turned to Heero. ‘You’re the mission leader.’ I told him, dumping it in his lap.

He grunted and the look on his face flashed irritation for a moment but quickly stilled. ‘I have had no contact with the operative in question. I can not make a judgment on your ability to handle him.’ And he dumped it right back in my lap.

I started to speak and then thought better of it for a moment. I had been reacting with my gut for the last couple of hours. I needed to really think about what he had just asked me. My eyes flicked down to the rough sketches I had made. I remembered the man towering over me. Thought about what his eyes had promised for whoever ended up accompanying him for the night. Yes…I was afraid of him. But was it merely the thought of what he intended to do to me…to whoever…that was unnerving me? The mental picture of the man overpowering me and…pinning my naked ass to the wall? Why was that any more frightening than getting shot or knifed?

‘In an out and out wrestling match?’ I said at last, ‘I’m dead; he outweighs me by a good hundred pounds. But I think I can keep the situation from coming to that.’

Heero nodded sharply and I think I earned points for blunt honesty.

Quatre saw the vote go in my favor without having to be told. ‘Do you have anything that would allow me to contact you in the event Duo gets into…trouble?’ he asked Heero and only got a shake of the head.

He looked at me then, not ready to give up just yet, ‘Could you possibly come in earlier than you did last night?’

I considered it; ‘I can’t control that,’ I said at last, ‘It’s going to depend on Mr….the target. It was fairly late before he made an appearance last night.’

‘He might not show up at all,’ he said then, a bit of emotion trying to thread its way into his voice. ‘How about you call it a night and return to base if you haven’t made contact with him before…say; 2:00?’

‘That seems reasonable,’ Heero agreed before I could speak. I felt an instant’s irritation but I had to remind myself that he was the team leader here.

Quatre eyed me warily, something in his face I couldn’t quite read, ‘What makes you think you can attract his attention?’ he asked me suddenly, ‘He didn’t seem to have any interest last night.’

That one caught me rather flatfooted. ‘I…followed him. I watched to see what attracted him and what didn’t.’

‘And?’ he prompted.

I sighed and ran a hand through my bangs; he’s a persistent little shit. ‘I was too forward last night…he’s the kind of guy who’s looking for…a little challenge.’

‘Challenge?’ he asked and I wondered, not for the first time, if Quatre had any sexual experience at freaking all.

‘He’s an intimidator. He wants his…’ I thought about wording. ‘Partner to be afraid of him.’

That got me another one of those looks from Quatre and it was all I could do not to bang my head on the table.

‘Can you do that?’ Heero asked softly before Quatre had a chance to open his mouth.

‘No problem whatsoever.’ I grinned at him. ‘Six foot three, two hundred pounds, shoulders out to freakin’ here…probably Oz; I think I can work up a little nervousness.’

I did not get the laugh. I didn’t even get a smile. I sighed again.

‘Look.’ I said before things went any further, ‘I am not going to sit here and play sex education teacher; do we have a plan or not?’

Quatre reddened and Heero only grunted.

‘Fine. Then if you guys don’t care, I’m going to try to get some more sleep. I’m probably going to be out late.’ I glanced at Quatre. ‘Mind if I use your bed? It’s in the back of the house.’

‘Go ahead,’ he murmured and I was rather pleased with myself that I managed not to go running from the room like my ass was on fire.

The dark of Quatre’s room was a nice comfort. It was pure bliss to stretch out on a bed and have a real blanket to roll up in. Even if the bedclothes did smell a little…musty.

I hadn’t lain there two minutes when there came a light tap at the door and it opened to spill light and Quatre into the room.

‘Duo?’ he said softly, holding something in his hands, ‘Heero sent me to look at your shoulders.’

‘What?’ I asked, totally agog.

He slipped into the room and flipped the light on and I could see the thing in his hands was a tube of liniment.

‘Quatre, I’m fine,’ I told him with a sigh.

He only grinned at me, coming the rest of the way into the room. ‘Oh shut up and take your shirt off. I wanted to talk to you anyway.’

I threw him a half-hearted glare and sat up with an exaggerated sigh; pulling the turtleneck off.

He sat down on the bed behind me and poked at my shoulders for a minute. ‘You’ve got all kinds of broken blood vessels back here. Hurt?’

‘Not all that bad,’ I told him, ‘Just a little stiff.’

I heard him rubbing his hands together briskly and I had to grin; only Quatre would think to warm the stuff up first. Then he began to gently work the ointment into my sore muscles.

‘Duo,’ he said softly after a minute or two of rubbing, ‘I’m really sorry…’

‘No,’ I interrupted him before he could go any further. ‘I’m the one that should be sorry. I had no right to yell at you just for being concerned.’

‘I shouldn’t argue with you over your every decision.’

‘It wasn’t…you.’ I sighed, feeling the liniment beginning to warm my skin, ‘I just feel like things have been…running hot and cold for days.’

‘Tell me about it,’ he muttered.

‘I just…’ I stopped and let a sigh escape me, feeling my shoulders relaxing almost against my will, even as my stomach was starting to knot again.

I wanted to throw my arms around him; someone who could understand what I was feeling. I love him, I wanted to say; the words were right there in my mouth, I love him so much it hurts…and he hates me and I don’t even know why! That’s what I wanted to say. Instead I smirked and whispered, ‘Pinch me, Qat. I cussed Heero Yuy out and I’m still alive!’

He laughed with me and I put the pain back on the shelf where it belonged. Sure, I could talk to Quatre about it but what good would that do? Only upset him further and might actually push him enough that he would try to make things better by talking to Heero. Now that would be a very bad idea.

His hands worked over my shoulders and I felt my head sagging forward almost against my will.

‘Did you mean what you called me?’ he blurted suddenly.

‘What?’ I thought back, trying to remember if I had called him something…rude when I’d thrown my little temper tantrum.

‘Little brother?’ He said it very quietly, an odd sound to his voice.

‘Yeah, Qat.’ I told him firmly. ‘I did. I…kinda think of you as a younger brother.’

There was a moment or two of silence. ‘You know I’ve got enough sisters to start my own Country…but I don’t have any brothers.’

I snorted a soft laugh, ‘Well…I think I might look a little out of place at the next Winner family reunion…but; there’s more than one kind of brother.’ I didn’t tell him that was how I’d originally imagined the five of us, together; like a band of brothers. That was obviously not meant to be.

‘I’d like that,’ he said simply and he finally stilled the movement of his hands, ‘Better?’

I rolled my shoulders and had to grin at him. ‘Yeah; it is. Thanks.’

‘Then go to sleep.’ He laughed at me and I reached for my shirt.

‘Qat…I really am sorry for yelling earlier; I was completely out of line.’

He smiled, his eyes twinkling with mischief. ‘If you can’t yell at your little brother; who can you yell at?’

It gave me something warm to hold next to my heart when I lay back down in the cold bed to sleep.

I had weird-ass dreams but didn’t really remember much when I woke up that afternoon. Something about black spandex and Relena Peacecraft; all I know is I woke up chuckling so evilly that I kind of scared myself.

I wandered out of the back room yawning and stretching, and found Heero and Quatre sitting on the couch huddled over the laptop.

‘Find something, guys?’ I asked as I padded into the room.

Quatre grinned up at me, ‘We may have finally found a link between target B and the military.’

I went around the couch and leaned where I could look over their shoulders. Heero was in control of the keyboard of course and was typing commands into a DOS window. I could see they had hacked into some web site and Heero was extracting some sort of data. His fingers flew over the keys and, not for the first time, I wondered what his damn typing speed was. I leaned closer to read some of the information as it scrolled by. I detected a break in the rhythm of the tapping of keys, Heero mistyped a simple command and his breath hissed in irritation. He faltered as he cleared and retyped. As an experiment, I straightened and moved away; his hands went back to their normal speed and pattern. I couldn’t repress a sigh; God he must really hate me.

I wandered off to the kitchen and got some juice from the refrigerator. I leaned against the counter and drank it, watching my two partners where they worked. Quatre had finally found something he could do. Using his knowledge of legalese and the intricacies of red tape, he was guiding Heero through a myriad of layers of virtual camouflage, hunting for some proof that our suspicions were right. I felt glad for him; happy that he had found a way to contribute to the mission. It actually relieved me a little; I had been worrying that he was going to let the inactivity get to him and he was going to try to force the issue of leaving the house. I think if push came to shove, Heero would let him.

But at the same time, I was insanely envious of his ability to sit and work with Heero like that. I wanted to be able to do that; wanted to be able to sit side by side with him, working on a problem together. I wondered if I would ever know what it was about me that made him so…nuts.

I washed the glass and went to get cleaned up for my evening out. Helio made kissy faces at me in the mirror while I tried to brush my teeth.

‘Kiss off, asshole,’ I muttered, spat in the sink and refused to look at him again.

Just to vary the theme, I braided my hair, but much looser than I normally did. I briefly toyed with the idea of not wearing my arm sheath but couldn’t bring myself to leave it behind. I’m fairly certain I would have gotten my ass out of the frying pan the night before without it but it would have definitely come down to a fight. The knife had made my attackers think twice and had allowed me to end the situation without having to kill somebody. I really didn’t need any dead bodies to have to hide right now.

It wouldn’t go far to further my ‘vulnerable and scared’ routine if I managed to hook up with Mr. Military but I would just have to see to it that he didn’t find out I was wearing it.

I retreated to Quatre’s room with my MP3 player while I waited for it to get dark. I was having trouble working up to this again tonight; the proper mind-set seemed just slightly out of reach and I knew it was just because I was feeling sorry for myself. I used my music to drag myself through the emotional transformation that was required. Had to start out by getting a little pissed off to pull myself out of the depression and put my thoughts about Heero out of my head. I listened to a little hard rock ‘battle music’ until I could feel the harsh, metal beat thrumming through me. When I was angry enough that I was starting to feel almost claustrophobic, I changed it to some of my folk ballads. My ‘defense of the innocent’ music, I called it. Channelled the anger until it had a little purpose, refocused myself on just what the hell I was doing here. Helio’s music I would have to play inside my head later. Damned if I’d make the segue into that here in front of Heero and Quatre.

I was standing in the middle of the room with my eyes closed, listening to ‘Goodnight Saigon’ when Quatre came to call me for dinner.

I switched the player off before the next song started and turned to look at him.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked curiously.

I flashed him a grin and was pleased that I was able to again. ‘Ya gotta have a theme song.’

‘What?’ He just looked confused, of course and I laughed lightly.

‘It’s all attitude.’ I tapped the side of my head, ‘It helps to have…theme music running in your head.’

He grinned at me but I could tell he didn’t understand. ‘Dinner’s ready.’ was all he said.

‘I’m not eating,’ I informed him as I moved passed him to go get my jacket out of the living room.

‘Why not?’ He followed me as we went through the house. ‘You didn’t eat any lunch either…’

I repressed the urge to laugh out loud; he sounded so upset about it…like missing two meals in a row was an unthinkable thing. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was probably ten years old before I had known that some people got three meals a day.

‘Because…I look too well fed,’ was as much as I elaborated.

I saw him open his mouth out of the corner of my eye but then I saw him close it again. Well, somebody here was trying at least.

I was rushing and I knew it. I wanted to get out of the house before Heero popped up from wherever in the hell he was; two seconds with him could undo all the work I’d done over the last hour preparing myself for this. I really should have known better; when I turned toward the back of the house, intending to go out the back way again, he was standing in my path. I just stopped and looked at a point past his right ear and tried to keep my music in the front of my head, waiting for him to say whatever it was he was going to say.

"We came in spastic

Like untamed horses

We left in plastic

As numbered corpses

And we learned fast

To travel light

Our arms were heavy

But our bellies were tight.

And we would all go down together

We said we’d all go down together…"

Ok…maybe that wasn’t the best song to be playing in my head right now but it’s what I had and I clung to it and waited for the shot I figured he was getting ready to take. He never failed to somehow hit me below the belt.

We weren’t really making eye contact, because I stubbornly refused to meet his icy gaze but by God he was the one who looked away first.

‘Be careful,’ he growled in a voice so low I almost didn’t catch it. I would have met his stare then, if he hadn’t already turned away.

Damn. Below the belt again…just in an entirely unexpected way. All I could do was grunt and head out. He’ll surprise me until the day I finally die and take that number nine bus straight to hell. I have a reserved seat you know.

I changed the song in my head as soon as I was out on the sidewalk heading back for the dreaded business district. Dance music, mostly; light and a little bubbly. Fluff stuff; that’s Helio. ‘Footloose’, ‘Safety Dance’, junk like that. Yeah…I like the retro stuff; I can’t stand the new music. It never has anything to say, all instrumental ‘expressionism’ crap. It’s no wonder everybody is listening to stuff a hundred or more years old. By the time I made the strip, Helio was fairly dancing along, wiggling and swinging his hips. I really hate letting him out of the box.

God but it was cold tonight. Under the slashed denim, I might as well be stark naked; there is no insulation factor to spandex at all. I was damn near shivering by the time I made it to my destination.

I ran into Red pretty quick; she seemed to have forgotten that I was too stupid to talk to and introduced me to a couple of her friends. I stood around talking with them for a bit. There was a certain safety in the numbers, especially since I wasn’t really interested in letting anybody pick me up.

I kept a sharp eye out for my friend from the bushes the other night but didn’t see either him or dog-boy.

Red got a nibble and wandered off, her group soon broke up so I was back to walking around.

The night took a lovely turn when it started to snow. Damn; as if it hadn’t been cold enough. Now I was cold and getting wet. It seemed to put a damper on things too; people started to disappear, making quick connections and going to seek shelter. I was left trolling the main drag with the other desperate ones. Great. I was just considering heading back toward the house when I saw him coming down the street.

He wore one of those long, dark, great coats. The kind that come down to the calves of your legs and make some guys look damned cool and other guys look damned stupid. He looked cool; striding out of the blowing snow like some dark specter. I didn’t have to fake a shiver and I let myself hunch up against the cold and pretended I didn’t see him. I waited until he was almost abreast of me and then I turned and deliberated plowed right into him. Of course, I acted like I didn’t have a clue and even though I was prepared for it, I rebounded off him like I’d hit a brick wall and fell on my ass in the rapidly accumulating snow.

I let my eyes travel up the length of him until I was staring up into his down turned face. I let my eyes grow wide and my mouth fall open and I squeaked a shaky apology. It really wasn’t hard to put a little bit of fear into my voice; running into the man had brought it home just how solid and strong he was. My little stiletto suddenly seemed woefully inadequate.

He smiled slightly at my position and stretched a hand down to help me up. My eyes flicked back and forth between the face and the hand as though I were afraid to take it. When I finally reached out, I let my own hand tremble.

The smile turned a little feral and I knew I had him.

‘You should watch where you’re going,’ he said with a touch of mockery in his voice.

He didn’t let go of my hand even after I’d regained my feet. I spent a few seconds clearing my throat and blushing and finally murmured another apology.

‘You’ve gotten yourself all wet,’ he purred and used the hand he was holding to turn me around; brushing snow off my butt with his free hand.

In my head, Solo was screaming for all he was worth, ‘Run, you fucking asshole! Run like hell and don’t look back!’

The shiver that ran through me then was completely genuine.

I tried to pull my hand free and said, ‘I’m…ok,’ trying to sound defensive.

My hand stayed right where it was and he was suddenly leaning over me. ‘Am I mistaking what you’re out here for, on a night like this?’

I shook my head and let it appear that he’d shocked me into looking up at him. I let my eyes lock with his and saw him register the color with another of those deceptive smiles. He knew he could scare me, now he wanted to charm me enough to agree to go with him.

‘You aren’t dressed for this weather,’ he observed dryly. ‘I have someplace warm…’ He let it trail off with a raised eyebrow.

I swallowed and did my best to look like somebody getting their head together. ‘I…I don’t come free,’ I blurted, sounding petulant and inexperienced.

He grinned again, from his great height. ‘I have no doubt, little pet.’

He asked the price.

Without thinking, I popped out with the one I had been using to blow people off.

He never blinked, only let the smile widen and then he unbuttoned his coat and motioned for me to move in close enough that he could wrap it around me.

‘I never buy without tasting the merchandize,’ he whispered next to my ear, once he had me tucked under his arm. ‘Will you let me taste you?’

I had seen him kissing the girl he had picked up last night but I hadn’t seen this coming. I froze and he brought his hand down to raise my chin up and before I could think what to do, he was kissing me.

It was gentle and warm and…thorough. He invaded my mouth with a placidly exploring tongue. My damn knees went weak. I knew this was the velvet over the steel; this was what was meant to lure me into going with him where things would change into something…different. I let him think I was fooled.

‘Oh…’ he breathed into my ear when he released my lips, ‘I think you’re going to be well worth the money.’

He had us moving but not, I noted, back the way he had come.

‘Where…’ I let my voice start out a little high and cleared my throat to bring it down. ‘Where are we going?’

‘I have a place out of the cold,’ he reassured me and I had to admit the guy was very good. If I were to meet this man in any other circumstances I would not hesitate to shake his hand and join him in conversation.

I really, really wished that I had seen the girl he had…employed last night around somewhere but I had never spotted her. And I had looked.

‘Uhmmm…’ I stole a glance up at him. ‘What do I call you?’ I asked and did a bad job of trying to sound coy. It came across, of course, like false bravado.

He chuckled and his eyes when he looked down at me, glinted oddly. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’ He had his arm around me, holding me inside the sweep of his coat. ‘What shall I call you?’

I opened my mouth to tell him but he suddenly stopped me with a finger to my lips.

‘No…on second thought; I think I shall tell you what we shall call you.’

I shrugged and dared another look upward.

‘Little bird…’ He sighed. ‘Pretty little bird…I think I’ll call you my little Sparrow.’ He leaned down to nibble lightly at the top of my ear and I shivered, not by design this time. He chuckled lightly.

Solo kicked me in my memory and shouted, ‘And he’s gonna pluck you like a God damn little bird if you don’t get out before it’s too late!’

I tried to act like I suddenly remembered I had a job to do and dared to slip an arm around him, letting my hip nudge against him as we walked.

‘Why are we heading down Fifth Street?’ I frowned up at him, even as I delivered the message to my backup. ‘There’s nothing down here…’

He smiled and his arm tightened around my shoulders. ‘My…company…owns a building down here.’

My heart skipped a beat. Could I get this lucky? The only commercial building down this way was target B. We walked on in silence for a bit.

‘Those are neat boots,’ I said at length, as though trying to fill the awkward silence. ‘Where’d you get ‘em? I got mine at that second hand store on Fourth…’

He laughed lightly and looked down at me, his eyes terribly amused. I maintained my innocent interest. He finally grinned and said, ‘They’re…company issue.’

Oh, that was good; the truth within the lie. To start with; he thought I was stupid, and that was a good thing. Next, he had just as much as admitted that he was military.

Could this get any better? Yeah…I could live through the encounter with my ass intact.

It was all I could do not to crow out loud when he did lead me right to target B. He let me step away from him while he fished out a key. I spared several glances over my shoulder, as though I were thinking of backing out. His eyes were getting…scarily bright the closer we got to his destination. He led me inside.

‘Here?’ I said, moving ahead of him by several paces while he took a minute to disarm an alarm system, getting a little distance between us. ‘It’s a freaking warehouse. There’s nothing in here but crates and boxes. And it’s cold! I thought you said it was warm?’ I wished I dared more of a description to pass back to the guys but I knew this man wasn’t stupid.

Behind me, he laughed and the sound wasn’t near as pleasant as it had been.

‘Surely you’re used to such…austere…bedroom arrangements.’

I turned toward him and looked confused; he wouldn’t expect me to understand the big words. ‘What?’

He looked smug. ‘Never mind.’ He smiled.

‘Listen…uhmmm…’ I ducked my head and blushed, it wasn’t hard, imagining Heero and Quatre sitting back at the house listening to me. ‘I…gotta pee…the cold…is there a bathroom?’

He laughed out right and pointed to the side, ‘Through there, little Sparrow.’ He took a step toward me. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

I flashed an embarrassed grin and trotted off to do my business. Holy shit; I hoped I could get out of this in one piece.

As soon as the door was closed behind me, I had my stiletto out and was cutting at the seam in my shirt where the transmitter was currently hidden.

‘Listen,’ I breathed into it, keeping my voice as low as possible. ‘I’m gonna try to get this thing on him. Don’t panic; it’s gonna get rough here in a minute but I think I can get myself out of this.’

I slipped the knife away and went ahead and peed, just in case he was listening. Then I palmed the tiny transmitter, took a deep breath and headed back out of the bathroom.

He was indeed waiting for me, sitting on a packing crate with one leg swinging idly. I smiled and went toward him; he was still doing ‘nice’ and I needed to get the transmitter on him before that changed. I went right up to him, hoping that he thought I’d used my time in the bathroom to work myself up for the job. I slipped my arms around him, dipping my fingers into his back pockets and rubbing myself against him to distract him while the button-sized transmitter was being deposited in his hip pocket. I’m an excellent pickpocket and it works pretty much the same either taking or leaving; most of it is distraction. The rest is speed.

He chuckled at me and wrapped his arms around me, leaning down to kiss me but this time it was harsh and forceful. Here we went; he had gotten me where he wanted me and now he was going to change the rules. Things were going to get violent. The man freaking raped my mouth. I rode with whatever he did without protest and when he drew back from my bleeding lips to look at me, I grinned up at him.

‘Oh…’ I purred, ‘you didn’t tell me you liked it rough.’

It wasn’t what he had expected, what he sought. He had wanted me to fight him; had wanted to see fear in my eyes. He frowned at me but I didn’t give him time to speak. I slid out of his reach while he was busy reevaluating the situation. I turned off Duo and let Helio take complete control, cocking my head and planting my hands on my hips.

‘Honey, you gotta tell me what you want,’ I sighed in exasperation, ‘I thought you wanted the innocent bit…now you’re tellin’ me you want somethin’ rougher. Just what is your game?’

He was getting angry, starting to realize that all my earlier nervousness and hesitation had all been an act. He rose from the crate to his full height but I didn’t give an inch.

‘I can make you feel real good if you’ll just tell me…’ I began and I saw him go from angry to really pissed in the space of a heartbeat. Seeing it probably saved my ass because I was able to roll with the punch a little bit. He still knocked my butt a good ten feet and I ended up crashing into a packing crate. I came up instantly and had the stiletto out of its sheath before he had a chance to get to me. I knew at this point that survival depended on not showing even one more hint of fear.

I had all of three seconds to register what came spilling out of the crate when I crashed into it. Some damned sophisticated looking electronic parts. He didn’t catch me looking.

‘That’s it!’ I snarled at him, ‘I do not do S&M…no way; no how! Back off asshole!’ I perhaps could have done without the asshole…but my mouth has never been the cleanest thing.

‘I think…’ He glared at me, advancing slowly, ‘That you are going to be…’

I cut him off with a roll of my eyes, ‘Oh cut the damned evil-villain posturing!’ I growled, ‘there isn’t much you could do to me that hasn’t already been done!’ I managed to make that last part come out sounding almost bored.

I continued to back slowly toward the door and he continued to pace me. Sexually; he was losing whatever rush he had been getting from toying with me. But he was still pissed and I was pretty sure the least he had on his mind was a good beating. If he had his way I wouldn’t be walking out of here.

I spared a glance over my shoulder, partially to locate the door and partially to see if he would make a move. He did. He lunged toward me but his move assumed that I would make a break for the door or stand my ground. He didn’t expect me to move toward him. I threw myself at him, dropping low at the last moment to duck under his swinging arm. I did not hesitate after that but shot across the floor of the warehouse and made straight for a pile of crates that were stacked under a window.

Now there is something that people assume about me that is true; I am a fast little son of a bitch. You learn to run on the street; run for your life. I was pretty sure I was running for it now. I could hear him behind me, cussing under his breath and I lunged for the first crate, scrambling up the pile like a damned alley cat with a junkyard dog on his tail. I didn’t even hesitate when I got to the top but threw myself through the glass knowing that I was going to have a good eight foot drop on the outside of the building. I finished my alley cat act and managed to land without breaking anything and got the hell out of there as fast as I could run. I never heard him come out of the building. I think I finally just became more trouble than I was worth. I somehow had maintained my grip on my knife but couldn’t make myself sheath it for a good two blocks. I just hoped like hell that Quatre didn’t panic; I had gone to a lot of trouble to get that transmitter planted on Mr. Military and I didn’t want to lose the opportunity it offered.

I didn’t run straight back to the safe house but I didn’t take the hour-long meandering route either. I burst in the back door with a panting sigh of relief and damn near collapsed on the floor right inside the door.

Quatre came running the minute he heard me, not even slowing down to make sure it was me. Heero’s presence didn’t even deter him from coming full tilt and throwing his arms tight around me.

‘Duo!’ he almost wailed, ‘you’re all right!’

Behind him, I could see Heero standing with his arms folded over his chest and a frown on his face.

I returned Quatre’s embrace, maybe a little harder than I should have, ‘S’ok little brother…everything went according to plan.’ I panted.

Something strange passed over Heero’s face and the frown changed subtly, ‘Are you injured?’ he asked in that clinical tone of voice. I opened my mouth with my standard smart-ass retort and then closed it. Hadn’t we put some of this behind us earlier?

‘I…’ I blinked thinking about it, ‘I don’t think so.’

Quatre let go of me and drew back, looking up at me questioningly and his eyes widened a little. His fingers rose toward my face and then hesitated, ‘He really belted you a good one,’ he finally murmured.

I raised my own fingers and touched gingerly around my cheekbone, wincing slightly. ‘Guess he did, huh?’ I sighed and all of a sudden the last couple of hours just rushed in and smacked me in the face. All I could think about was the feel of that bastard’s tongue in my mouth. I shoved Quatre away and went storming into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. If I had eaten that day it might have been easier, as it was all I could do was hang over the toilet with the dry heaves for the next five minutes and spit as best I could. When I was done, I stripped out of Helio’s clothes as fast as I could get them off and threw them in the corner. I was pretty sure that was the last time I was going to be able to pull Helio out of his box. That was as close as I ever wanted to come. I couldn’t make myself take the knife sheath off. I rinsed my mouth and washed my face and only almost lost it once when it came to me, all unbidden, that that had been my first kiss. I distracted myself by checking for injuries, finding only a couple of cuts from the window glass and some bruising on my hands and knees. And of course the rapidly swelling side of my face and my…lips.

Outside in the hall I could hear the faint sounds of Heero and Quatre arguing.

‘…I said; give him a few minutes.’ Heero’s voice was completely unyielding.

‘Heero;’ Quatre said in an angry tone, ‘he needs us…’

‘He needs you to stop hovering for a minute.’ I was surprised at the calm quality to his voice.

‘He just went through something…horrible,’ Quatre grated out and I could imagine them standing toe to toe in the hall. I found the clothes I had changed out of earlier and began dressing as fast as I could before things escalated into something ugly.

‘And it is over,’ Heero replied and then shocked the hell out of me. ‘He is not…’doing Helio’…again.’

It got quiet then; Quatre didn’t seem to have a reply. I finished dressing and pulled the door open. They turned as one and I came fairly steadily, I thought, out of the bathroom.

‘That’s good…’ I confessed, the shock not having worn off yet. ‘Cause I don’t think that I can.’

Heero came and took hold of my face, turning me toward the light. I got that tiny grunt and then he asked, voice all business, ‘you have evaluated? Are you otherwise injured?’

I shook my head and he let go of me, turning to Quatre, ‘Get some ice on that.’ And then he turned back toward the living room.

Quatre and I just stood and stared at each other for a minute.

‘Oh Duo…’ he sighed and it made the backs of my eyes sting.

‘Don’t,’ I whispered and he saw and understood and just shut up.

In the other room, we suddenly heard a stranger’s voice and we both jumped. Then Quatre’s eyes flew wide. ‘The transmitter!’

We followed Heero into the living room. Quatre maneuvered me into the second chair they had sitting there and stood behind me.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked as soon as we were there and Heero raised a hand to silence us while he listened.

‘…hell have you been?’ a totally strange voice said.

‘None of your damn business!’ came the reply and I had to suppress a shiver; it was Mr. Military.

Quatre laid a hand on my shoulder and leaned close, ‘This is the first thing we’ve heard in close to a half an hour.’ he whispered, ‘There was a lot of cussing and crashing around after you…got away.’ He smiled a little, ‘He was very mad; seemed to throw a lot of things.’

I grinned, more than happy to have frustrated my little playmate.

I had missed something relatively unimportant but now the stranger was saying, ‘You didn’t take another of your little ‘conquests’ over to the damn factory, did you?’

There was a moment’s silence and then a sullen, ‘And what if I did?’ I could tell that he had been surprised. He had not known that this other person knew of his nighttime habits.

‘God damn it!’ yelled the stranger, ‘You are jeopardizing this operation!’

‘How so?’ purred Military-man, ‘It’s not like they ever tell anyone what they’ve seen.’

On my shoulder, Quatre’s fingers tightened so hard I almost flinched, I put my hand over his and squeezed reassuringly. ‘It’s Ok, Qat.’ I whispered and felt eyes on me. I glanced up to meet Heero’s appraising stare. This time, I broke first, looking down at my lap.

‘You are a sick son of a bitch!’ snapped Stranger-man, ‘How many does that make now? Four? Five?’

Military-man didn’t reply and I chuckled, ‘He’s not lying if he doesn’t answer.’ I grinned ferally in appreciation of the tactic. He never did say and therefore never had to admit that he let one get away.

‘The suits will be ready to ship at the end of the week.’ Stranger-man said in a dangerous tone of voice and I had to wonder what in the hell he looked like if he wasn’t afraid of Mr. Freakin’ Huge. ‘I am going to be so glad to get the hell away from you.’

Mr. Military chuckled and there was the sound of a slamming door not long after that.

I glanced up. ‘When that crate broke open…there were electronic parts…mobile suit parts; like I’ve never seen. I couldn’t get hold of one.’

‘They’re building some kind of new mobile suit?’ Quatre questioned and looked down at me.

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted, turning my face up to meet his gaze. ‘I think so…the building had a feel to it inside; like there was a lot more to it than I saw. I think…I think there might be a lot more underground.’

‘There wasn’t anyone else there,’ Heero interjected.

Something hit me all of a sudden and I stiffened, looking past him and not really seeing anything. ‘Son of a bitch,’ I murmured without meaning to, piecing it together in my head.

‘What’s wrong, Duo?’ Quatre asked softly.

‘Last night…’ I blurted, a sick feeling welling up in my chest. ‘When I went by there and saw the lights and thought…thought that there were people working there…’

That bastard had been in the process of torturing and killing that girl that I had watched him pick up. I had been within yards of the damn place. I remembered my unanswered urge to go look the building over. I raised my eyes to Quatre’s and whispered, ‘I let her die…’

There wasn’t any answer to that. I looked from the one of them to the other and neither of them could seem to speak.

‘I was right there…if I had just gone on and checked the place out…’

A sudden voice on the receiver made us all three jump. ‘What’s wrong, Jensen?’ a brand new voice said, full of nasty amusement, ‘You act a little…frustrated.’

‘Tonight’s…diversion…wasn’t as…fulfilling as I had hoped,’ Mr. Military…no; Jensen said, his voice a little irritated. These two were kindred spirits.

The new voice got suddenly serious. ‘You didn’t let one get away did you?’

There was a moment’s hesitation and if the new guy didn’t know Jensen was lying, he was an idiot. ‘Of course not!’

I shook myself suddenly; this was getting us nowhere. We pretty much had the information we needed, what in the hell were we doing sitting around listening to a couple of perverts for?

‘Screw them,’ I exclaimed. ‘We have to blow that factory and we have to do it now. Sooner or later…Jensen is going to find that transmitter and they’re going to know we’re on to them.’

I was looking at Heero, because it was his call after all and he gave me that tight nod.

‘Pack your gear,’ he said tersely, ‘We won’t be coming back here.’

We scrambled to comply and were ready to go in under five minutes. Quatre made me take my black sweater back and I was grateful; I felt chilled to the bone from wandering around all night essentially half naked.

‘We have to make the trip to the Gundams,’ Heero told us, ‘I don’t have any explosives with me.’ He turned to me then. ‘I would rather not use the Gundams to do this but I’m not sure I have enough…’

I grinned. ‘Say no more. I have enough in Deathscythe to bring down a ten-story building.’

I got the grunt and we took off out the back door, doing double time the whole two miles. Heero took point and I brought up the rear. The snow was piling up, three or four inches already but the wind was up enough that it was covering our tracks almost as fast as we made them.

We stowed our gear and unpacked our explosives, divvying them up amongst the three of us. Then it was double time back into town. Heero had kept the small receiver with him and called a halt while we squatted in the snow a half block from the factory and listened in to verify that the transmitter had gone undiscovered. There were a couple of scary moments of silence before we heard the sound of a television and then murmured conversation as our two perverts argued over what to watch.

Heero switched it off after a few minutes and gave the hand signals to move out.

Jensen had made only a half-hearted effort to board up the window I had crashed through. Quatre eyed the height and gave me an appraising glance. I just grinned.

Heero tapped for my attention and then signed to ask me about an alarm system. I nodded and then frowned; my going through that window should have set it off and screwed it to hell until they repaired the window. I tapped my chest and gestured upward; I wanted a closer look at the damage and the connections. Heero cupped his hands without hesitation and boosted me up until I could get hold of the window ledge and pull myself up.

I had to shake my head; the cocky son of a bitch had just shut the alarm system down rather than deal with it at two in the morning. His buddy with the morals was going to be severely pissed off. I turned back and gave them the thumbs up sign. Heero boosted Quatre up to me, I hauled him up and guided him through the window and then leaned down for Heero to jump for my hand.

Heero let me take point, since I’d been here before, and I led them straight to the broken crate. Now that I had a little more time, I looked the parts over. It seemed to be part of a guidance system. I couldn’t figure it out with no more scrutiny than that; Hero had all three of us take one. I knew it was in case we didn’t all make it out.

Then we spread out and began searching for what I was sure was there, a lower level. I was the one who found it and it was most definitely not supposed to be found. There was a dummy wall and an elevator. I waved the guys over and we stood staring at it, mulling over our options.

Heero glanced at me, asking with his gestures if I thought there was a secondary alarm system on it. I was surprised that he had asked my opinion and it gave me the incentive to think twice before answering. I finally shook my head with a crooked grin that let him know that I wasn’t a hundred percent sure.

We opted to take the chance and pushed the button to open the elevator doors. Heero flipped on the receiver to see if there was any uproar at the Oz base. They seemed to be watching the news.

In the end, it turned out to be not all that difficult since our good friend Jensen had been kind enough to turn off the whole alarm system for us. Gotta love lazy.

There ended up being three floors below ground, one of them a huge bay where we found a batch of a couple hundred mobile dolls unlike anything we had ever seen before. Quatre had a small digital camera on him and took some pictures. I hacked into their system and downloaded what I could. Hero attempted to monitor the transmitter nestled next to Jensen’s ass for a bit but discovered that the receiver couldn’t pick up below ground. He then busied himself setting charges. When Quatre and I finished what we were doing, we went to join him. We set enough explosives to sink the whole place far enough into the ground that it might just end up in hell.

It took us just under an hour and we headed back upstairs feeling pretty damn smug. Until the elevator doors opened and we heard voices.

There isn’t a military hand signal for ‘shit!’, but there should be.

I had just enough time to hear, ‘…fuck you; Moore!’ and then they heard the elevator. We scattered.

‘What the hell?’ Jensen’s pervert buddy yelped and then they were taking cover as well.

A shot was fired and I’m not sure from which side. Nobody seemed to be hit, because nobody yelled. I worked my way to the left, wishing I knew where Quatre and Heero were. I hoped all the crates contained suit parts; it was a pretty effective shield.

I glanced at my watch and had to bite down on a curse…we really needed to get out of here; we didn’t have a ton of time left. A couple more shots were fired but nothing seemed to be finding its mark. I made a sudden decision. I knew where our three adversaries had gone to ground and I could only hope that they were still in that general area but I needed to know where Heero and Quatre were. I dug in my bag and pulled out one of the leftover explosive devices I had. I carefully removed about two thirds of the actual charge, set it and yelled, ‘Position!’ at the top of my voice. I heard two quick whistles in response, far enough away that they should be safe. I lobbed the thing at the last place I had seen Jensen and took off running.

There was a shot and I heard the whine of the bullet, seconds ahead of somebody shouting, ‘Oh crap!’ And then all hell broke loose. The concussion knocked me to the floor and there were just a confused couple of minutes before I got myself moving again. Between one minute and the next, the room was peppered with flaming debris. I made for the window with all due speed and at the last minute saw Heero silhouetted there, half in and half out. I scrambled up the crates toward him, he was holding out his hand and I yelled, ‘Where’s Quatre?’

He just shook his head and I froze. What the hell?

‘Come on, Duo!’ he hollered at me. ‘We’re almost out of time!’

I wasted almost three seconds gaping at him. One of the two whistles had been from this general area; I turned and began to scramble back toward where the second one had come from.

‘Duo!’ he shouted but I was too mad to judge if it was fear or anger in his voice.

‘You never leave a man down, you bastard!’ I yelled but I didn’t even look back to see if he’d heard me. Down the crates I went and damn near fell at the bottom. I ran in the general direction of the door and found my way blocked by flaming wreckage. I had taken down part of the ceiling with my explosion. The smoke was starting to get thick. In the back of my mind, my internal clock was telling me just how much time I didn’t have. Then I saw him; stretched out on the floor and not moving. There was a pile of flaming ceiling joists between him and me. I hesitated, looking for a way around and my clock told me we only had a couple of minutes left. I grabbed joists and just started throwing them. The pain was unbelievable, I let it fill me and gave vent to it with a piercing cry; ‘I got him! We’re going out the door!’ On the slim, faint, unlikely, off chance that Heero was waiting for us to come back.

Just as I got through, I saw Quatre stir and I thanked whatever God was listening for the small favor of not having to carry him. I swept through the rest of the debris and caught him under the armpit with the crook of my elbow and got him on his feet.

‘Run!’ I screamed at him and we did. I would not allow myself to look at my hands.

Quatre didn’t seem to be hurt. He was disoriented but moving under his own power. We slammed through the door on the minute mark and started running for all we were worth. I was sobbingly relieved to see Heero come running from the other side of the building. He came in on Quatre’s other side without being told to and we just concentrated on moving. We were almost half a block away when the explosion hit but it still threw us to the ground. I let my hands sink into the snow and bit back a cry as the pain lanced up my arms.

Heero was getting Quatre to his feet and my little brother seemed to be pulling himself together. I struggled up with my clenched hands full of snow and stuffed them in my jacket pockets while they were both otherwise occupied. I still wouldn’t look…I knew damn well I had done some serious damage and as soon as I really looked at them the pain would hit me like a ton of bricks. I don’t know if the cold of the snow made it better or worse but it made me feel as though I wasn’t cooking any more.

We started to run again and since I’d had the rear position before, no one thought a thing of my taking it again. That way they didn’t notice my running with my hands in my pockets. It made it difficult and I was falling behind but I just concentrated on movement. I had just had it seriously demonstrated to me what happened when a soldier fell in this outfit. Heero obviously didn’t understand the code of the Marines or anybody else for that matter; it was every man for himself, apparently. I was damned if I was going to come all this way just to have Heero shoot me at the end because I was incapacitated.

They reached the hanger first and Quatre turned to find me, his eyes flying wide when he saw how far behind I had fallen. He moved to head back but Heero shoved him into the hanger and damned if he didn’t start back himself.

‘I’m coming!’ I shouted at him, ‘Go ahead!’ I couldn’t afford for him to see my hands. I wasn’t ready to see them myself. He hesitated, then disappeared inside.

When I finally staggered through the door, I found Deathscythe with his hatch open and the winch cable run down waiting for me, Heero and Quatre were already in their Gundams.

I stumbled toward the sanctuary of my Deathscythe and did something I don’t often do; I caught the hook on the end of the cable in the treads of my boot but still had to finally pull my hands out of my pockets to hook the winch line with an elbow. Oh God…I looked away quickly and made my ascent.

I threw myself into take off procedures but I couldn’t keep my eyes averted for long and as promised the pain came crashing down as soon as my eyes let my mind acknowledge what was going on at the end of my wrists. OhGodohGodohGodohGod…

Distantly, I heard Heero yelling at me and I croaked a reply.

‘Did you receive the coordinates?’ he snapped and I had to blink the screens into focus.

‘Y…yeah; got it,’ I finally managed.

‘What the hell is wrong?’ he demanded and my stomach about turned to water.

‘Nothing!’ I yelled back, ‘let’s get out of here!’

He took off, Quatre right behind him. I took a second to queue my music and jacked up the volume so I would have something to listen to besides my own screams and then forced my hands to close around the controls.

I do not really remember that flight. That scares the crap out of me when I think about it very hard. I apparently have an autopilot of my very own and it must have fully engaged. I ended up looping the ‘March of Cambreadth’ endlessly, letting the fierce music fill me; replacing whatever rational thought I had. It kept me moving; kept me doing what had to be done. My landing wasn’t my best but apparently didn’t attract too much attention. I would realize later that Nataku and Heavyarms were in the hanger as well but I was so far gone, I didn’t even see them. I jammed my hands back in my pockets as soon as I touched ground. I felt oddly detached, was probably shocky. Trowa appeared to lead us up to the house and Quatre was, thankfully, otherwise occupied, as he always was when Trowa was around. Trowa had engaged Heero in conversation pretty quickly, asking questions about the mission. Heero was being fairly subdued himself, but it still served to keep their attention off me. I needed to get to a quiet, private place where I could deal with this. Nobody paid any attention to me, trailing along behind.

Trowa gave us a quick description of the house as we were coming up the front walk and I had enough mind left to register the location of the bathroom. I walked away from them and headed there as soon as we were inside. I thought someone called my name but I couldn’t tell who and I really didn’t care.

My heart was pounding in my chest and my vision kept going to gray. I moved with a certain, slow deliberateness. I couldn’t get the bathroom door closed fast enough. I wanted to just fall over right there on the floor but knew that I would probably not get back up. I rummaged around until I found the med kit, using my elbows as much as possible to lever the doors and drawers open. I had to use one hand to lift the med kit down when I finally found it and thought I would weep with the pain. I almost fell when I went to sit on the floor and had to lean back against the wall for a minute before I could make myself open the kit and start to work.

I forced myself to really look at the mess that had been my hands. They were black and red and swollen and weeping liquids and…my vision faded to gray again. I just sat until it came back, then worked the scissors out of the med kit and taking a deep breath, began to cut away the shreds of skin hanging…gray…gray…gray…

I came back with the scissors on the floor between my legs and my head drooped on my chest. I reached for the scissors again.

There came a soft tap on the door, ‘Duo?’ Quatre called softly. ‘Are you in there?’

‘Yeah,’ I croaked and the sound of my voice must have been enough, because he just barged in. I blinked up at him; I thought I had locked the door. I had meant to lock the door. He just stood and stared at me for a minute and then he…screamed.

I don’t know what else to call it.

‘Qat!’ I moaned, ‘be quiet! They’ll hear you!’ God; what was he thinking?

He dropped down to the floor beside me and put an arm around my shoulders to steady me but after that first shocking glimpse, kept his eyes off my hands.

‘Trowa!’ he yelled and I couldn’t stop the tears from suddenly breaking and washing down my face.

‘Damn it, Quatre!’ I sobbed, ‘don’t let them see…I can’t be a liability…they’ll think I can’t handle my job!’

He moaned beside me and I distantly heard the sound of pounding feet. Trowa appeared in the doorway.

‘Quatre! What’s wrong…?’ Then he saw me and went still as a stone.

I blinked up at him. ‘I can still pilot,’ I told him with all the conviction I could muster. Shock registered on his face.

‘You did this saving me, didn’t you?’ Quatre was suddenly saying from his place on the floor beside me. ‘Oh Allah…Duo…this is because of me!’ He began to keen softly, trying to hold me but he was shaking too hard. I heard more feet coming. Damn; I was coming into hard focus again.

I dropped the scissors and wrapped an arm around Quatre, keeping my hand carefully away from him, ‘It’s all right,’ I soothed, rubbing the top of his head with my cheek. ‘Couldn’t let my kid brother get blown to kingdom come, now could I?’

He began softly to cry and hid his face against me, ‘Oh Duo,’ he kept saying over and over. Behind him, Heero and Wufei appeared beside Trowa.

I met Trowa’s gaze squarely and calmly told him, ‘Get Quatre out of here.’

He nodded, his eyes hooded and closed off. He came into the room and gently took hold of Quatre’s shoulders. I wouldn’t let go until I had choked out, ‘Get him far away…don’t let him see.’

He met my eyes and firmly told me, ‘Duo. No one is going to hurt you.’

I looked up at him, feeling the gray tugging at me and struggling against it, ‘Trowa…you were a mercenary…you understand…’ I struggled for words, ‘Semper Fi. You know what I mean?’ He looked at me oddly, something in his eyes that I didn’t have the strength to read but he nodded once. My eyes flicked past him and back again, ‘They…they don’t get it.’

He let go of Quatre for a moment and his hand came to squeeze hard on my shoulder, ‘Damn it, Duo…no one will harm you…I swear it.’ I let go of Quatre and Trowa led him away.

‘I can still pilot,’ I murmured to no one in particular and bent to retrieve the scissors, still struggling against the gray, against the searing pain.

‘Duo…’ Wufei said softly and came to squat beside me.

The gentleness of his voice shocked me and I jerked my head up to look at him. It was a mistake; the gray swirled around me and I was suddenly falling.

When the gray receded again I was disoriented and completely confused; I could see Wufei in front of me and I knew Trowa and Quatre were gone but there was a warm body behind me, arms tight around me. What the hell?

Wufei saw something in my face that told him I was back from the gray place, ‘Duo…let us help you,’ he said softly. I must have dropped the scissors again because they were in his hand.

‘I’m…fine…’ I murmured and tried to sit up but the arms wouldn’t let me.

Wufei snorted softly and it was such an odd sound that it made me look at him, he was smiling gently at me. ‘Oh you look just wonderful.’

Maybe I stood a chance; if enough of the other guys thought I could still do my job…

‘I’m not a liability. I can still pilot,’ I told him with as much intensity as I could gather.

The arms around me tightened and Wufei frowned.

‘Just what is going on here, Yuy?’ He was looking past me. ‘What in the hell have you done to him?’

There was a surprised grunt from a voice I recognized and I had to finally face up to who was holding me. There was nothing for a long moment while a staring contest went on over my head.

‘I…made a bad call during the mission,’ Heero finally said, his voice very soft. ‘I made an assumption that…proved false.’

‘You left Quatre,’ I translated and was taken aback at the hint of anger that flitted across Wufei’s face.

There was a sigh from Heero, ‘I…left Quatre,’ he admitted and I finally let myself entertain the idea that they might really be trying to help me.

‘We will discuss this later,’ Wufei said somewhat harshly and then he bent to examine my hands. He turned back to the med kit and I saw him getting out the bottle of morphine and the syringe.

‘No,’ I said, panic taking hold of me again, ‘I’ll be totally incapacitated.’

When his eyes came up to meet mine they held a touch of sadness, ‘You have my word that we won’t leave you. We won’t harm you.’

I blinked at him; Wufei’s word means more to him, I think, than his damn life.

He didn’t wait for me to acquiesce but gave me the injection with an intent look and I was just suddenly too damn tired to care. If they decided to put me out of their misery; at least I wouldn’t feel it.

Wufei gave the shot a minute to take effect and then set to work. A calloused hand came from behind me and lay across my forehead. Heero gently but firmly pulled my head back against his shoulder and turned my face into his neck, ‘Don’t watch,’ he said almost kindly and it was the last thing I remember before the morphine mated with the gray and it all went to black.

It got very strange after that; I really hate morphine. It just does weird shit to my head. I don’t remember much; just sounds for a while. My own voice groaning; echoing strangely. The sound of Quatre softly weeping.

I swam up towards the light of day once, just enough to know that I was in a bed in a dark room.

I dreamed some very bizarre things. Not the Relena/spandex thing again, thank God. But dark stuff; I struggled once in the arms of Jensen, feeling him savage my lips. I thought I opened my eyes to see Solo sitting on the foot of my bed but he only waved. It seemed I heard Trowa whisper to me softly in the dark, ‘Thank you, Duo. Thank you for bringing him back safe.’

More than once I thought I woke to find Heero sitting beside me but that only told me I must have still been dreaming.

It felt like I lost a lot of time. Morphine just wastes me; I really hate the stuff but was not even able to get oriented enough to fight with them over it. I was both relieved and dismayed when they began to reduce the dosage.

In my short but eventful life, I have been shot, stabbed and liberally beat to hell. I have had both fractured and broken bones. I’ve had a couple of surgeries. This was my first experience with severe burns. I think I am in a position to make the statement that burns suck. It hurt unlike anything I had ever experienced before or have ever experienced since. There is no easing it. There is no getting away from it this side of consciousness. It is a pain that encompasses your entire attention. So while I was more than happy to leave behind the drugged half-awareness that I’d been floating in, I was not happy to be waking up to the intense pain.

I opened my eyes to soft morning light and knew that I was truly awake for the first time in…a while. I raised my hands and found them wrapped like the hands of Boris Karloff in the ‘Mummy’. I would have laughed if they hadn’t hurt so damn bad. I lay them carefully back down on the bed and hissed at the jolt of pain even that small contact made.

‘Do you need something for the pain?’ a voice asked gently and I jerked in surprise to find Heero sitting in a chair beside the bed. How did he manage to keep getting inside my radar?

‘No,’ I said and my voice came out dry and gravelly. ‘Please…no more. I can’t take that drifting…’

He grunted in what sounded like understanding and without any prompting, brought a glass of water from somewhere and held the straw so I could drink.

It eased the dry throat and I looked up at him to ask, ‘What are you doing here?’

Something odd happened behind his eyes and he glanced away. ‘We’ve been taking turns sitting with you,’ he murmured, looking oddly embarrassed.

‘Nani?’ I blurted and the strangest transformation came over his face and he quirked a grin at me. A real one.

‘Now you start speaking Japanese,’ he said drolly.

It surprised a bark of laughter out of me and I grinned back, forgetting just who this was sitting beside me.

Then his face clouded as he looked down at my hands. ‘You could have been killed,’ he said flatly and I blinked at the sudden transformation. I tried to switch mental gears but couldn’t seem to keep up.

‘So could Quatre have been,’ I said in return.

‘You let your feelings toward him effect your judgment.’ His frown had deepened and there was still that strange play of thoughts behind his eyes.

I sighed and looked up at him; I must have still been slightly drugged because it suddenly didn’t matter to me if he got angry. ‘You still don’t get it do you?’ I told him sadly and realized for the first time that he was the one to be pitied here; that he couldn’t understand this most base of things. ‘I would have gone back for you too. It wasn’t that it was Quatre…it was…a teammate. You never leave a teammate behind.’

‘Never leave a man down,’ he whispered, almost to himself and I knew that he had heard me that night.

I nodded. ‘That’s what it’s all about, Heero.’ And I didn’t hide from his searching gaze, ‘I would have gone back for any one of you…it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d had five minutes or five seconds. You never leave a man down.’

‘Maxwell,’ came Wufei’s soft voice from the doorway, ‘You shame us all.’

I started and looked his way; I hadn’t heard him come in. He had the med-kit in his hand, obviously come to change my dressing. I flushed and did look away from the both of them then.

‘He’s awake?’ I heard Quatre almost whisper and Wufei chuckled at him.

‘Apparently.’ He stepped aside to give our Arabian partner access to the room…access to me.

He came to the side of the bed in a rush only to stop short and stare down at me with wide eyes. ‘Duo?’

Being flat on my back with the room full of people was starting to make me feel…strange and I tried to lever myself up with an elbow.

A strong arm slid behind me and eased me up, while Quatre rushed to put extra pillows behind my back.

I murmured, ‘Thank you.’ to the both of them and just tried to hide the blush.

Then Quatre demanded all of my attention, ‘Duo…I am so sorry…this is all my fault.’

I snorted at him. ‘I believe I was the one who threw the bomb, Qat.’

His cheeks colored slightly but he forged ahead. ‘It got us out of there. They would have shot one of us eventually if you hadn’t thought so quick.’

I just shook my head. ‘If I’d been thinking, I would have checked the damn transmitter before the stupid elevator doors ever opened.’

They both looked shocked and I had to grin at them. ‘Makes you feel kind of stupid…doesn’t it?’

Quatre actually chuckled but Heero couldn’t seem to get the shocked expression off his face. ‘Don’t sweat it, Yuy.’ I grinned up at him, suddenly not afraid of his anger anymore. ‘We all three forgot about it.’

He didn’t look reassured, only sat and frowned.

‘Well, it doesn’t matter now,’ Trowa said from the doorway and I looked to see him standing with Wufei. ‘The reports are back; the factory was completely destroyed. They’re still looking over the samples you brought back but preliminary findings indicate that was a major find. You guys did good.’

Quatre gave him a funny look and then said, ‘Duo did good. All we did was sit around and listen to…’

I cut him off with a chuckle. ‘Quatre…enough all ready. It was a mission and we all did our part. It wasn’t your fault that your part this time was backup.’

He gave me that irritated glare that told me he was getting set to argue with me some more, so I changed the whole course of the conversation, ‘I promise…the next time we need somebody to play the part of a hooker…you can do it.’

‘What?!’ gasped Wufei and I thought Quatre and I would die laughing at the look on his face.

This of course, as I had planned, led to the retelling of the Helio saga and I embellished the crap out of it until I had them all laughing. Well…all of them but Heero.

I caught him looking at me with an oddly appraising stare and I think Mr. Stoic might have figured something out about the Duo Maxwell grinning idiot façade in that moment. I’ll never know, I looked away to listen to Quatre telling Trowa about how different I looked with my hair down and the next thing I knew, Heero was gone.

Wufei finally got around to changing my bandages and I managed to make eye contact enough with Trowa that he gently but firmly made Quatre leave the room.

Wufei didn’t miss the exchange and quirked an eyebrow at me.

‘He feels guilty enough,’ I growled, feeling defensive. ‘He thinks it’s his fault.’

‘Is it?’ he asked simply.

‘Of course not!’ I snapped, looking up at him in surprise and finding a strange half-smile on his face.

‘As long as you don’t think so,’ he said cryptically.

I grunted and watched as he unwound the last of the gauze; he hesitated. ‘You might not want to look.’

I just glared at him and he smiled again. ‘It was just a thought.’

He gave me a minute to turn them back and forth, looking them over. The palms were the worst but oddly didn’t hurt much at all. The pain was all coming from the backs of my hands and around my wrists. I frowned as I looked; he’d done a good job of cleaning them up.

‘The worst damage is on the palms of your hands,’ he explained. ‘They don’t hurt as much because of…nerve damage. You really should have some skin grafts.’ He shrugged and quirked me another gentle smile. ‘But I’m just an inadequate field medic.’

‘You did a better job than I was doing,’ I muttered without really thinking about it. My brain was rather preoccupied trying to get itself around the fact that those were my hands doing a fair imitation of…of…hamburger. Charred hamburger.

‘That’s enough,’ he warned me and I looked away before the uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach turned into something more.

Then his face got…strange and he was pinning me with those dark, intense eyes of his. ‘You are never to hide an injury from us again, do you understand me?’

I ducked my head and flushed. Somehow, after the last couple of days, my reasoning didn’t seem to stand up so well. ‘I’m sorry…I thought…’

‘I know what you thought,’ he told me gently, ‘And I understand. But you see now that things aren’t quite how you thought they were, right?’

I nodded, still not looking up, still embarrassed. He put a hand under my chin and forced me to look up at him. His eyes met mine with a searching intensity that made me feel like I’d been turned wrong side out.

‘Heero made a mistake,’ he told me firmly, his lips curving a little. ‘Despite what he seems to think; it happens to the best of us. That does not mean that we would…abandon you because you’ve been hurt. Are we totally clear on that?’

He wouldn’t let me get away with the nod again and I had to smile at him. ‘Yes….I think it’s sunk into my thick head.’

He let go of me then and bent to work on my hands. He is surprisingly gentle; there is the spirit of something else behind the fierce warrior front he puts on.

I whined until he grudgingly agreed to let me out of bed for a while but he stayed close, helped me until he was sure I was steady enough on my feet that I wouldn’t fall.

‘Burns are very susceptible to infection,’ he warned me, holding my elbow as I took my first wobbling steps across the room. ‘You have to be very careful to keep things clean.’

I marvelled at him; he had probably spoken more civil words to me in the last hour than he had the entire rest of our acquaintance. Somehow this mission had won me…something from Chang Wufei. Respect maybe? I really wasn’t sure.

We walked together down the hall and though I wouldn’t have let it show for a million credits, I was feeling the strain before we had gotten far at all.

‘As soon as we are cleared to leave this place,’ he was telling me, ‘I want you in to see a real Doctor. Those hands are going to need a lot of work.’

I was trying hard to listen but found myself struggling with the gray again. I stopped walking and waited for the light to come back into my sight.

‘Duo?’ Wufei questioned, concern in his voice.

The gray was eating me one sense at a time; it had my sight already and now my hearing was dimming. ‘I…I’m Ok…’ I tried and even my own voice sounded distant.

‘The hell you are!’ he growled at me and his arms went tight around my waist. I’m taller than Wufei and I may actually outweigh him, he was holding me up but couldn’t do much else, ‘Yuy! Barton!’ He was yelling and I tried to hush him but the gray was nibbling at my balance now and I was reeling in his arms.

‘What the hell is going on!’ I heard Heero very near at hand and he sounded angry.

‘Help me get him back to bed;’ Wufei was saying. ‘He’s going to pass out…’

‘I’m Ok!’ I snapped but it came out sounding pretty damn lame.

‘Let me have him!’ Heero said tersely and just swept me up in his arms. The sudden movement had my head spinning and though I wanted to fight against them, all I could do was press my face against Heero’s shoulder and fight the nauseating dizziness.

I think I did fade completely into unconsciousness for a moment, because I don’t remember being laid down. I don’t remember the blankets being pulled up. But it was just for a moment, because I was aware fairly quickly of the two of them arguing over my head.

‘Why the hell did you let him get up to begin with?’

‘He hides things too damn well! He seemed all right.’

‘You can’t trust what he says; you ought to know that by now!’

‘He doesn’t lie…’

‘He doesn’t have to…he works with half truths and evasions…you won’t ever get him to admit to the pain!’

That was followed by an ironic little snort and then an angry grunt. Heero stormed out of the room.

‘I’m sorry, Wufei,’ I said softly. ‘I didn’t have any warning; it just came on me all at once.’

‘My fault.’ He smiled down at me, ‘You’ve been drugged and flat on your back for the last thirty hours; I should have known better.’

He put his fingers against the side of my neck to check my pulse and looked long and hard into my eyes. ‘You need to rest; I’m going to give you something for pain and I want you to get some sleep.’

‘No more morphine, ok?’ I pleaded. ‘I can’t stand that ‘out of my head’ feeling.’

He just chuckled at me and gave me a couple of pills to take. I was pleased that he left the room after I swallowed them. I really didn’t like the idea that they had been taking turns sitting here watching me sleep.

The pills might not have been morphine but they were still damned strong and I felt myself drifting away on the ebbing tide of exhaustion, despite the wracking pain.

Jensen was leaning over me and he grabbed hold of my bandaged hands, squeezing until I whimpered.

‘Thought you could get away from me, my little Sparrow?’ He chuckled evilly and I groaned as he gave my throbbing wrists a sudden twist.

‘I wasn’t done with you, my pet…’ He breathed and was leaning down to kiss me again. I struggled to get out of his grip but couldn’t seem to manage any leverage and then his lips were crushing mine, his teeth cutting me, his breath filling me…

‘Duo! Wake up! It’s all right…just wake up…’

My eyes flew open to find Heero sitting on the side of my bed, his hands on my shoulders. My breath was coming in sporadic pants and I was shaking like a leaf.

Our eyes locked and he leaned down and whispered intently, ‘He’s dead. He can’t touch you ever again…I won’t let him. Never again; do you hear me?’

I managed a nod, my brain reeling from the sudden wrenching twist in reality. What the hell? The drugs were making it hard to think, I couldn’t process this. Then it hit me and I beamed up at him, ‘I’m still dreaming aren’t I? You’re dream Heero.’

He just sat and blinked down at me but then his hand moved to stroke a sweat soaked strand of hair from my face telling me that I was right. I relaxed under his hands and smiled happily up at him.

‘I haven’t dreamed about you in so long,’ I sighed, ‘I’ve missed you.’

His face became oddly still and my smile faded. ‘Heero…what’s wrong?’

He just stared at me for the longest time, long enough that I started to doubt myself…maybe this was the other dream Heero; the one who yelled and cursed.

But finally he hesitantly raised his fingers to stroke gently across my uninjured cheek, ‘N…nothing.’

I smiled full force again, closing my eyes and turned my face into his touch, ‘I like dreaming,’ I murmured against the palm of his hand.

‘I’m sorry…’ he breathed and I opened my eyes to look up at him, puzzled.

‘For what?’

‘The whole mess…the mission…Quatre.’ His eyes looked pained and something started nagging at me again.

‘I…I don’t understand,’ I told him and I knew I was frowning. ‘That wasn’t you…that was the real Heero.’

He was quiet for a minute. ‘All the same.’ he said at last, ‘I’m sorry for…what he did. I…he let his fear for you panic him.’

His fingers were stroking over my face with increasing boldness and I smiled again, letting the questions just slip away. I forgot about the strange things he was saying.

‘Hold me…please?’ I sighed; dream Heero loved to hold me close.

‘Of…of course…my…love,’ he said and his voice was strangely hesitant. His arms slid around me, gentle and warm and he pulled me against his chest. It was better than any dream I had ever had. ‘Don’t let me hurt you,’ he whispered against the top of my head.

‘You could never hurt me,’ I told him and felt a shiver run through him.

I drifted out of the dream and back into deep sleep pillowed against his imaginary warmth with a soft smile on my face.

It was the sweetest dream of him I had ever had and the harsh, morning reality of my solitary bed damn near broke me.

I found out later that he had left the safe house sometime in the night; against orders. Under the circumstances, the orders were lifted and Wufei and Quatre whisked me off to the base hospital immediately. Deathscythe was packed off to Howard for safekeeping.

I was out of action for weeks; Wufei had been right about the skin grafts and there were other things he hadn’t told me about, all of it amounting to a lot of pain. I went back to the active duty list before the Doctor’s wanted me too, but I was learning to work through the pain and the guys needed me.

When Heero sent the message to base, he blind copied me on it. I had to think about that for a long time and I never did completely make up my mind what it meant. I almost showed it to Quatre once, but decided it was a bad idea and never did tell anybody. I’m still not sure what to think.

‘Though pilot 02 has shown himself to be a very competent agent, the dissimilarities between his methodologies and those of pilot 01 make their working together an impossibility. Therefore pilot 01 would like to request that they not be assigned to any further missions together. This request does not in any way reflect on the abilities or performance of pilot 02.’

Just like Heero; short and to the point. We crossed paths after that but only on missions that required all of us together. We seldom spoke. I never worked up the nerve to ask him why and I never dreamed about him again.

End