"Bad Company"

Written By: Clara Barton & Kangofu_CB

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing. The following is an intellectual exercise with no intention of profit. That said, these characterizations, words, and situations are mine. Please ask before reprinting.

Rating: NC 17

Warnings: Post-Canon, Undercover Missions, Undercover as a Couple, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Human Trafficking, Gang Violence

Pairings: 3x2

Summary: "The only hell and the only paradise are the ones we build ourselves." - Unknown

This fic is dark. It explores the way the lines between good and bad, black and white are blurred, for those who work from the inside to bring down the bad guys. Clara and I do not, at any point, get graphic in our descriptions, but there is a lot of sensitive subject matter. We have tagged as clearly as possible, and individual chapters will contain individual warnings. As a general rule this fic contains: implied torture, death, description of a human trafficking organization and its methods, the surrounding implications of human trafficking including forced prostitution and what amounts to slavery, drug and alcohol use, and drug trafficking. We understand that these subjects are not for everyone. We have made every effort to be respectful and accurate without being gratuitous or disturbing. The bad guys are bad. The good guys are, sometimes, not much better.

We use a liberal sprinkling of Spanish and Russian in this fic, and neither of us are native speakers of either. We’ve relied heavily on the internet, and so we apologize for any mistakes. We have also included translations at the end of each chapter in the form of footnotes.

Note: This chapter includes civilian deaths. It’s not a graphic description, but it does happen, and we didn’t want anyone to be caught unawares.

"Bad Company"

 

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds

-Johnny Cash

Chapter 3: Walk the Line

There was no such thing as 'vacation time' in the cartel. You got in, you did your job, and you kept doing your job until you fucked up enough to get killed.

Still, there were days, weeks sometimes, when work was light, when the compound Alessandra ran the Sinaloa cartel from was nearly empty, with only a few enforcers and palomniks roaming around.

She treated her employees like family. Like the kind of family that she had handpicked and would turn on and devour in an instant if they betrayed her.

"She's like a praying mantis," Anhil had muttered, once, while he and Trowa leaned against a wall and watched one of the enforcers have his fingernails ripped out after Alessandra discovered he had been stealing from her. Trowa had nodded in agreement, had kept his eyes focused on the scene of torture and on the dark-eyed woman who sat on her teak chair, her throne, and smirked at the agonized cries from the man she had once trusted.

As family, most of the employees who oversaw the details of the cartel's empire lived at the compound. Located in Mazatlan, on the northern end of the beach, away from the tourists and locals alike, it wasn't exactly a hardship to have the ocean so close, to have the vibrant jungle stretching out around them. But it was isolating, was a constant reminder that they were deep in the wilderness, surrounded by primal earth, their very lives controlled by Alessandra's every whim.

Trowa had worked his way up the ranks slowly, had been on-hand during a riot in L3, had helped Alessandra's people escape the local enforcement and, knowing that they were all too low in the cartel to give him any valuable intel, had bartered his way back to Earth, hitching a ride on the cargo shuttle smuggling six-dozen hollow-eyed colonials past Terran customs. Trowa had helped unload them, had helped restrain the ones who realized, too quickly, just what was about to happen to them, had helped collect the drugs that each of the 'passengers' had been forced to ingest before they had been cleared through L3 customs and allowed to board the shuttle in the first place. And then Trowa had requested an audience with Alessandra, and had found himself presented, instead, to Salome.

At the time, Trowa hadn't known who she was - Preventers knew she existed, knew Alessandra had an attachment to her, but nothing else. That first meeting had taught Trowa a great many things about the pale-skinned, pale-eyed, pink-haired woman. Things he wasn't likely to ever forget.

He managed to pass her test, but she didn't take him to Alessandra. Instead, she handed him off to Anhil, one of Alessandra's favorite and most trusted lieutenants.

It was a tricky balance, working his way up.

He proved his worth to Anhil by following his commands without question, by watching Anhil's back and keeping ambitious enforcers on their toes. Anhil, who had helped Alessandra carve her path to the top of the cartel, didn't trust initiative unless it meant Trowa fetching him a coffee unasked.

Trowa quickly memorized how Anhil took his coffee.

And he learned other things about the man who was both his in and, if Trowa's real motive was uncovered, his future executioner. He learned that Anhil's brother had been killed by the last boss, that the brother had left behind a family that Anhil sent money to and occasionally left the compound to visit. Trowa also learned that Anhil was gay, that he favored the young, smooth-skinned boys who frequented the pools at the resorts Alessandra ran.

And if ever Trowa couldn't find Anhil, that was the first place to look.

The cartel was between shipments - the last cargo shuttle from L3 had landed at the local airfield four months ago, and the next was scheduled to arrive sometime that day.

There was never a definite flight plan - while the cartel could grease enough palms in L3 to ship their cargo as 'migrant workers', in order to get the shuttle onto Earth, the crew needed to stop mid-flight, weld the cargo holds shut, and haul out crates of low quality synth plasma that was best engineered in space. If the cargo was cleared through Terran customs, it still needed to fly under the radar and avoid any of the territorial patrols before landing in Mazatlan, where the airport was entirely controlled by Alessandra's people.

Trowa had been at the compound, idly spying on the new accountant, Haverford Smith, when Salome informed him that the shuttle had made it through Terran customs. She had waved her hand at him dismissively, lazily instructing Trowa to fetch Anhil without even looking up from her phone.

So, Trowa headed down to Pueblo Bonito, and, sure enough, Anhil was seated at one of the umbrella-shaded poolside tables, sipping from a glass of beer and watching the tanned tourists frolicking in the clear blue water.

Trowa pulled a chair out from the table noisily, smirking when Anhil winced and glared up at him.

He threw himself into the chair, stretching his legs out and folding his hands behind his head. It was a pose he had adopted from Duo, the kind of relaxed 'I'm so comfortable how could I possibly be thinking of how to kill you?' pose that the other man could fall into so easily. Duo-

Trowa ruthlessly squashed that trail of thought. Now was not the time to think about him. Never was the time to think about him, if Trowa wanted to live.

"They let you out, tigryenok?" Anhil asked. Alessandra had saddled Trowa with the nickname after watching him fight off three drunken tourists who had been too stupid to realize who Alessandra was when they tried to accost her at one of Mazatlan's nightclubs. Tiger, she had called him, the Russian dripping off her tongue while her dark eyes ran over his face and her elegant, deadly fingers caressed his shoulder. Salome, of course, had immediately corrupted it, had insisted on calling Trowa kotyenok, kitten. Both nicknames amused Anhil, who Alessandra only called moy medved, my bear, to tease him when she was in a good mood.

Trowa flashed his teeth at the old joke. Loosed from his cage. It was too ironic to have ever amused him.

"Shipment's on track," he said simply as he caught the eye of a passing waiter and signaled for a glass of whatever Anhil was drinking.

"Who's caught your eye so far?" Trowa asked, scanning the pool himself for likely candidates. He whistled as his eyes landed on the very round, very tan, very exposed ass of a man wearing a bright green thong. Trowa watched his muscles flex as the man rose from the pool and used the steps to exit.

"That one?" Trowa asked with a leer.

Anhil gave a negligent shrug.

"He's got tits," he groused.

Trowa had to laugh, but when the man turned to the side, he could see the very defined pectoral muscles on him. Not Anhil's type. He liked slim-figured, big-assed boys who had a thing for older, browner, sturdier men.

They sat in companionable near-silence for a while, Trowa pointing out likely candidates for Anhil's affections and Anhil rejecting or shrugging off nearly every one of them.

"What's on your mind?" Trowa finally asked when Anhil waved off his suggestion to invite the waiter - slim, fit and directing a grin that was somehow both sly and shy at Anhil - to come back to the compound.

Anhil took a thoughtful sip of beer, the second one he had started since Trowa joined him.

"Security breaches," he rumbled.

"At the compound?" Trowa hadn't heard anything, and he made it a point to listen.

"No. The cyber network. You know anything about that shit?"

Trowa took a sip from his glass and then shook his head.

"Hermano, I know how to check the baseball scores and look at porn. You asking for my help, or accusing me of breaking things?"

Anhil snorted.

"You got some weird taste in shit too," he muttered, shaking his head. "The new accountant mentioned some 'holes'," Anhil held up his hands and emphasized air quotes around the word, "in our system. And last month, Marco said he was locked out of the system."

"Marco, the cyber security expert?" Trowa sneered, emphasizing the title with disgust. He didn't like Marco - hadn't, since day one, when the man had made a joke about Trowa being a colonial himself, had suggested that Trowa could be used as a 'translator' for the palomniks.

Anhil shrugged. He didn't care for Marco either - he thought he was just some young punk who partied too hard and didn't care about the cartel enough. Didn't think of Alessandra as family, just as his next paycheck.

"He said something happened to the network. Someone had been fiddling with it."

Trowa finished off his beer.

"He probably doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. Remember those Snakeheads we ran into on L3 six, seven weeks ago?"

"The ones who said shit about la mujer?" Anhil's dark eyes flashed. "Yes. I remember them." His lips twisted into a grimace. "That's right - they talked a big game about taking us down, didn't they? About cutting into our territory and cutting better deals with the L3 customs agents."

Trowa nodded, scowling himself. It was an unnecessary complication, a rival cartel taking on Alessandra while Trowa was trying to bring her down from within.

"You think it's them - getting into our system?"

Trowa shrugged.

"No clue. My money's on Marco fucking up. No tiene dos dedos de frente."

Anhil drained his beer and left a pile of bills on the table, pausing to scrawl his phone number on the top one before tucking it under his empty glass.

"He's a dumbshit," Anhil agreed.

"Never had problems like this when I was with the Sweepers," Trowa sighed. "Our tech guy knew his shit. Everyone knew how to do their fucking job, or Howard made sure they found a new one far the fuck away from us."

Anhil made a face.

"He's Salome's cousin, Trowa. He ain't going nowhere."

Trowa looked at his phone. It was nearly five.

"We should get to the airfield and set up the perimeter," he suggested, and Anhil nodded in agreement.

As they walked away from the pool, Trowa looked back to see the waiter collecting the money and empty glasses. The young man grinned as he slid the bill with Anhil's number into a different pocket than the rest. Trowa shook his head at Anhil's smirk and eyebrow waggle.

-o-

There were parts of the job that made Trowa question why he was doing this in the first place. Things Trowa had to do that seemed so far down the path of evil that he wasn't sure how any of it could possibly add up, could possibly lead to good being done.

He understood, logically, that he had to be a bad guy to bring down the cartel. Preventers - and before them, nearly every Terran law enforcement agency for hundreds of years - had tried to bring the cartel down through surveillance, through strictly legal, strictly good means. It hadn't worked. It had, in fact, failed spectacularly.

The decision had been made to embed an agent in the cartel, to work from within to implode the organization. It was designed to be a long op - the initial estimates had projected two to three years - and there were only a handful of agents capable of carrying something like this off. Just two, really - Duo or Trowa.

And Trowa had made damn sure Duo didn't get roped into it. When the op had still been in the planning phase, both Duo and Trowa had had a clear schedule. Trowa had gotten wind of the op, had overheard Une and Sally discussing how Duo's skillset was the best for it, and had quickly inserted himself into the mix, insisting that he would be the better choice, that he had the L3 connection that Duo didn't, that he didn't mind accumulating a body count in the name of getting the job done.

Not, of course, that Duo did have a problem with it. Duo was as cunning and ruthless as Trowa - maybe even more so - but Duo was plagued by guilt far more acutely than Trowa. And Duo...

Trowa hated seeing the look in Duo's eyes when he woke up from a nightmare, when he was wild and sick with regret and anger and his pulse thrummed with fear.

Duo didn't need to go on this op.

Duo didn't need to deal with a cartel that trafficked colonials from L3 to Earth, using them as drug mules during the journey, and then selling them off into slavery on Earth once they made it. If they made it.

Trowa had told himself all of that from the start, reminded himself of it each night, in the ten minutes he allowed himself to think about Duo, to think about the rest of the world, the real world.

The reminder had stopped making much of a difference months ago, and on Delivery Days, all it did was make Trowa feel nauseated.

The cargo shuttles typically carried anywhere from one hundred and fifty to two hundred colonials. Enough to make the process of off-boarding them complicated. Add in, of course, the fact that most of them had realized, during the forty-eight hour journey from L3 to Earth, that having to shove a bag of carfentanil up their ass and then being cramming into a ship not rated for that many inhabitants wasn't going to be the worst thing that happened to them.

After all, the bags still had to be retrieved. And after that...

Trowa remembered the fliers, from his own childhood. Passage Home. Journey to the Land of Opportunity.

He remembered the way the mercs sneered, how they angled their dicks so their piss drenched the curled, stained promises. Everywhere's the land of opportunity, the captain had always said. Nowhere is home.

It had been more than a decade since then, and the posters hadn't changed much at all.

Neither, Trowa imagined, had the faces of the colonials when they emerged from the shuttle, blinking and stumbling into the heat and blinding sun, with the half-dozen automatic weapons trained on them.

Most of the time, they were stunned into being docile; most of the time, they didn't start to panic until they were loaded into the trucks and the roll doors descended, and they were locked into darkness and transported across dirt roads to the abandoned lumber mill to be processed. Then they started to panic, screaming and lunging, emerging bloodied and bruised. Then a few were shot, pushed too close to the handful of guards against their will or, if there was a particularly stupid colonial in the mix, deciding to make a break for freedom.

No one ever escaped.

Today, however, things started off horribly and just continued to go downhill.

As soon as the first dozen colonials were led down the shuttle ramp, Trowa knew something was wrong.

There were too many anxious glances between the colonials, too many people stepping out of the lines they were forced into.

It wasn't until the third dozen, however, that Trowa realized what was wrong.

There were children. Two of them.

As a general rule, the cartel didn't traffic anyone who looked under thirteen. It had less to do with ethics and everything to do with reality - children were fragile, and they squirmed. They made for poor drug mules, and while they could be assets in the slave trade, there were simply too many drawbacks to make it a worthwhile investment for the cartel.

Especially when the children came with parents. And these two clearly did.

They broke free of their line, ignoring the shouts of the guards, and went running across the tarmac, wailing, arms held wide.

Two children, and two parents.

Trowa watched the taller of the two children fling themselves into the arms of a thin, hollow-cheeked woman. The shorter child caught up a moment later, curling against their mother and their sibling.

And then the father tried to step out of his line.

"Get the fuck back in line!"

The man ignored the shouted warning from Matvei, running towards the three huddled colonials without hesitation.

"Fuck," Anhil muttered under his breath.

He and Trowa were posted up beside the trucks, making sure the colonials got inside, letting Matvei and the other enforcers deal with shoving the colonials from the shuttle to the trucks.

Matvei looked furious, but he knew how to handle the situation. He had, after all, been doing this for years.

Unfortunately, Gerhard was closest to the man. Gerhard, who had been pulled from the operation on L3 because his methods of 'persuading' colonials to travel to Earth had involved too much violence and drawn the attention of too many government agents.

Gerhard held up his PP-2000 and fired off a burst.

And chaos broke out.

Colonials screamed and hit the ground or started to run - most towards the cover of the shuttle or the truck, but a few took off down the open stretch of tarmac, running straight towards the narrow copse of trees that lined either side.

Trowa swore, and he and Anhil abandoned the truck.

Half of the enforcers took off for the colonials attempting to escape, and the other half started pulling and shoving the remaining colonials towards the truck.

The sound of more gunfire split the already tense atmosphere, and Trowa looked to see the fleeing colonials dropping, red blooming across their backs.

Always preserve the merchandise.

Usually, that meant both the drugs and the colonials. But when the choice was between one or the other, the drugs always won out. Better to kill a colonial attempting to escape and dig the carfentanil out of their corpse than risk them getting picked up by local law enforcement and bringing attention to Alessandra's operation.

Anhil shoved Gerhard, who shoved him back, and the two started shouting at each other in rapid, angry Spanish.

Trowa's Spanish was good, not good enough for him to pass as a native speaker, but good enough for him to catch most of Anhil's insults, good enough for him to understand the threat Gerhard made in response.

He lunged for Gerhard just as the man started to raise his gun again, training it on the family of four kneeling, crying and clinging to each other just feet away.

Gerhard depressed the trigger, and the gun shuddered in Trowa's grip, pumping out bullet after bullet after bullet until he finally managed to wrest it away.

All Trowa could hear was the pounding of his own heartbeat, the drowning roar of blood in his ears.

Just feet away, four bodies folded to the tarmac, blood pooling around them, still clinging to one another.

-o-

It was late by the time they made it back to the compound, and Anhil remained silent, letting Trowa stew, and likely stewing himself.

At the lumber mill, things had gone swiftly, easily. The colonials had been sorted, led one by one to Matvei, who had drawn the short straw and was tasked with removing the condoms full of carfentanil from the colonials' rectums, and then locked in, six to a cage, to await permanent relocation.

No one tried to run away.

Halfway through the process, however, Salome arrived. She visited the mill infrequently, and her presence was never a good thing.

Her hair was pulled back into a tight, smooth bun and she wore skintight, studded black leather from neck to foot, defying the heat and humidity that weighed down the rest of them.

She pulled Anhil aside, and they carried on a fierce, whispered conversation for nearly twenty minutes before she called Gerhard to her side and the two of them left.

No one else spoke - about what had happened on the tarmac, about Salome's appearance and disappearance with Gerhard afterwards - the lumber mill was eerily silent except for the shuffle of feet and the metallic clang of gates being slammed shut.

Anhil set a schedule for the enforcers, three to a shift, reminding them of what to watch for, who to call if shit hit the fan, and then he signalled for Trowa to leave with him.

The older man held out his hand for the keys to the Land Rover, and Trowa wordlessly passed them over. Usually, Anhil let him drive with just a muttered comment about not steering them off the road. Usually, Trowa gave Anhil shit about driving like his grandmother on the rare occasions when Anhil insisted on driving.

Tonight, neither of them spoke until Anhil parked the car in the lot, beside the other black SUVs and the handful of sleek sports cars that Alessandra had accumulated recently.

"You got some shit eating at you, manito."

Trowa tensed at the words, at Anhil's oh-so-casual tone. They weren't in the habit of having deep conversations about their feelings or existential crises.

"Rough day at the office," Trowa quipped.

Anhil's lips curled into a sneer.

"Si, si," he muttered, and then sighed. "You gotta watch what you say, manito, about Marco. You and me," Anhil waved an index finger back and forth between their bodies, "we know how things are. But in that house," he jerked his thumb towards the hacienda, "you keep your mouth shut and let that fucker hang himself, yeah?"

Trowa nodded, letting his mouth droop into a sulk.

He knew, of course, to watch what he said. He knew he could talk shit about Marco to Anhil and Anhil alone. Still, if Anhil felt the need to offer him counsel on the issue, Trowa did need to watch himself.

"You did good today, manito," Anhil continued.

Trowa snorted derisively. Good would have been stopping Gerhard before he had fired his gun the first time.

"I mean it," Anhil insisted. "You kept your head. You did what you could. Most days, that's all you can do."

Trowa swallowed against the sudden dryness in his mouth and the rush of bile in his throat.

He nodded again.

Anhil got out of the car, and Trowa followed, trudging into the hacienda after him, accepting the beer Anhil thrust into his hand and doing his level best to ignore Marco, sprawled on a couch, smoking and playing a video game.

There was a palomnik curled against him, her too-pale skin giving away her colonial origins. She was one of the cargo, an L3 native who had made the mistake of falling for the cartel's propaganda. But she had caught Salome's eye months ago when she had arrived, and Salome had pulled the girl aside and given her a bunk in the compound. Palomnik. Pilgrim. Salome called them that, the 'lucky' ones who she pulled aside and kept around for the amusement of herself and Salome's soldiers.

It was ironic, in the gut-churning way that most of Salome's jokes were.

Salome herself was in the kitchen, grimacing and scrubbing at something on her leather jacket.

Trowa, who had come to the kitchen in search of food and a momentary reprieve from the company of anyone, almost walked back out.

But she saw him and snapped her fingers imperiously.

"Tigryenok, let me see your nails."

Frowning in confusion, Trowa held out his hands to her.

"Yes, come here." She grabbed his right hand and pulled him over to the sink. "Look at the studs on the shoulder."

He did. He also looked at the towel sitting on the counter, stained pink and red with small, soft lumps of pink and gray clumped across it. The same lumps seemed to be clinging to the gold studs on the leather jacket.

"Use your nails and get that shit off, hm?" Salome waved her own hand in Trowa's face. "My nails are too short."

Trowa took a long, deep sip of his beer and then set it down on the counter.

He picked up the jacket and started to pick out what he was positive had to be bits of Gerhard.

Salome picked up his beer and drank from it.

Trowa gave her a look, and she laughed before leaning against the counter beside him.

"What happened today cannot happen again," she said, voice solemn, blue eyes glacial.

"I know."

Trowa could feel flesh squishing between his skin and fingernails as he scratched it free from the studs.

He could feel her eyes following the movements of his fingers.

"Alessandra and I talk about you."

If it had been Anhil saying that, Trowa would have made a quip, would have thrown in innuendo and a smirk, and they would have chuckled before Anhil told him to get his mind out of the gutter.

Salome might castrate him if he made a joke like that.

Trowa gave a noncommittal hum.

"We have plans for you," she added.

Trowa had no idea if that was a threat or a reward.

He hummed again and, he hoped, got the last of Gerhard off of her jacket. He handed it back and turned on the faucet.

Salome shrugged the jacket on.

"Do not disappoint us," Salome said. She took another sip of his beer and then put it down beside the sink and left.

Trowa scrubbed his hands methodically, rubbing soap back and forth and back and forth and back and forth until his fingers felt numb.

Back out in the common area, Marco and Matvei were shoving at each other and playing the video game together, the palomnik sitting between them and wincing as she was jostled. Anhil was drinking silently, half his attention on the game, half clearly very far away. Two of the other enforcers were watching a soccer game on a computer.

Trowa walked over, watching over their shoulders for a moment, pretending to be interested.

Marco had established a policy, long before Trowa's arrival, that only phones, tablets and computers that he had personally purchased and networked could be used inside the compound. Each member of the cartel was given a phone - burners that were rotated through frequently - but there were only a few computers for communal use in the hacienda.

Trowa eyed the computer sitting at its charging station, and debated whether or not to bother. He really, really didn't want to do anything other than go to his room and stare into the darkness until he forgot who he was.

But he had a job to do.

With a sigh, he reached for the computer. He picked it up and tucked it under his arm.

Anhil caught his eye, and Trowa nodded at him.

"Descansa," he said to the other man.

"You're really going to go watch your clown porn tonight?" Anhil teased him with a grimace.

Trowa smirked back at him.

"Of course I am."

Anhil shuddered, and one of the enforcers watching the soccer game muttered something in Spanish about Trowa being insane.

On another night, a night when he hadn't just picked Gerhard's brains off of Salome's jacket, Trowa would have responded in kind.

Tonight, he thought the words were entirely too honest.

He retreated instead. His room, located on the second floor of the hacienda, was narrow, and had only one window. Trowa walked in, closed and locked his door, and dropped the computer onto his bed.

Stripping out of his clothes usually felt like lifting away a burden, like peeling back a layer of himself and, at least temporarily, discarding it. Tonight, Trowa just felt the cool, humid air hit his skin and envelop him. There was nothing soothing about it.

He laid down on the bed and opened up the computer.

Marco checked the web-cam feeds every once in awhile, often enough to give Trowa shit about things, and he kept track of the browser history with a kind of religious fervor that was as annoying as it was dangerous.

Trowa started to type in a website, and the search engine auto-filled in the rest of the address for him.

With a sigh, Trowa scrolled through the site until he found the newest upload.

Clown Daddy Drives Two Clown Bitches.

He clicked on it.

It hadn't been Trowa's idea, and, in fact, he was fairly certain it was some asshole's idea of a joke. As a joke, it sucked. As the only safe means of communication Trowa had with Preventers, it was serviceable.

He watched the surprisingly limber clowns, in full makeup and distressingly brightly-colored costumes, screw each other with disinterest. It was the background that he cared most about.

The video was filmed inside a clown car. A clown van, more like, judging by the room in the backseat. The van's upholstery was old, worn and cracking along the seams, and littered with faded stickers. Some of the stickers were clown faces, some were souvenir stickers from cities all over North America, a few had slogans on them.

Trowa's eyes fixed on one of the stickers, just visible under the quivering thighs of one of the female clowns.

The sticker was a green diamond, with white squares at each point and a tan circle in the middle.

A baseball field.

On each of the plates, stark against the white, was a single black number.

-o-

Part of Trowa had hoped he got the day and time wrong for the meet-up.

But when Trowa walked up to the 'Will Call' line at the stadium and gave his name, a ticket was passed over to him.

He bought a beer and a hotdog, slathering the thing with relish and mustard, and then reluctantly went in search of his seat.

It was playoff season, with the home team, the Venados, competing for a chance to go to the Caribbean Cup, and the stadium was packed.

Trowa squeezed down the row of seats, eyes focused on the single empty blue seat near the end of the seemingly endless row.

Only when he had finally made it, when he was seated and had figured out how to balance the beer between his legs while he took a bite of the hotdog, did he even look at the man sitting in the seat to his right.

Zechs Merquise stood out, even with his pathetic attempt at blending in - a blue baseball cap pulled over his blond hair and a short, well-trimmed goatee just barely obscuring his mouth and jaw.

Trowa thought the look was awful, which was a shame, since Zechs really only had aesthetics going for him, in Trowa's mind.

His first bite of the hotdog resulted in a perfect, squelching rush of mustard and relish all over his hands.

Zechs grimaced, and even looked a little nauseated.

Trowa smirked at him and took another bite, not bothering to wipe his mouth or his hands.

"You're depraved," Zechs muttered.

Trowa snorted, and then instantly regretted it as the mustard burned his nose.

Zechs looked away from him, towards the field, and he glared at the game.

"We're moving up the timetable," Zechs muttered.

Trowa noisily licked his fingers.

"How much?"

"You've got two weeks to prepare for the insertion."

Trowa was sure Zechs had misspoke.

"Two months?" That was insane, but not as impossible as the very concept of two weeks.

"No," Zechs growled, and flung a napkin at Trowa. "No, two weeks. We need this taken care of before the new legislation goes to the parliament floor for a vote."

"Two weeks isn't possible," Trowa growled, leaning over closer to Zechs. "This op was scheduled to take two years minimum. There's no fucking way I can set things up for another agent to be inserted in two weeks."

"You have two weeks. You're a Gundam pilot." Zechs spared Trowa a cold, lingering glare. "Or, at least, you were. Impossible is what you do, isn't it?"

Trowa wanted nothing more than to shove the remainder of his hotdog into Zechs's face. Actually, he wanted to punch Zechs. Maybe throw him down the concrete aisle of stairs.

"Which agent?" Trowa asked.

"Does it matter?" Zechs challenged.

Trowa glared at him. Of course it mattered. Zechs knew it did.

The other man rolled his eyes.

"Don't worry. No one is going to break up your little buddy club."

The news didn't make Trowa relax, but it didn't make him want to fling himself from the nearest, tallest building either.

Ever since Wufei had been pulled off undercover ops permanently after a spectacular crash and burn on his first op that had nearly led to an international incident, the 'buddy club' as Zechs so condescendingly put it consisted of Trowa, Duo and Heero.

Duo had been scheduled for another op, something long-term, dealing with a smuggling ring on L5, even before Trowa left for this op.

Which meant it was going to be Heero.

Heero wasn't Wufei when it came to undercover work, but he wasn't Duo.

Then again, he wasn't Duo.

Trowa swallowed hard, and he nodded.

"Alright."

Zechs arched an eyebrow at him.

"'Alright?'" he repeated derisively.

"I'll set it up."

"Of course you will. That's your job."

Trowa wondered how long it would take Salome to rip Zechs apart. Wondered just what bits of Zechs he would have to clean off of her clothes.

Zechs stayed for another half an hour, ignoring Trowa completely, and Trowa had lost his appetite as well as any interest in further antagonizing Zechs with the messy hotdog. Instead, he shoved it under his seat and nursed his beer, and tried to figure out how the fuck he was going to get himself and Heero out of this alive.

At least, he thought furiously, it was Heero. Heero was shit with duplicity, but he could pass as a silent, antisocial hacker who could replace Marco. Marco, who Trowa had slowly been working to set-up. Marco, Salome's cousin. Marco, who Trowa had two weeks to bring down.

The plan, all along, had been to create enough flags in the security system to make Salome and Alessandra doubt Marco, and then plant several million dollars in his bank account, funneled from a Snakehead account on L3.

But the plan was supposed to have months of prep time, and Trowa was supposed to have months to convince Salome and Alessandra to accept his candidate as a replacement.

Now, Trowa had two weeks to engineer Marco's downfall and convince everyone that they needed to hire one of Howard's Sweeper hackers.

And, of course, Trowa had to figure out how the fuck to keep Heero shielded from the worst of the cartel shit. Marco was fairly insulated - Salome looked out for him, and besides, the only time Marco had been on-hand for any kind of violence, he had puked all over himself, and Alessandra had laughed at him for weeks afterwards.

Trowa doubted that Heero would get that sort of treatment. He would be tested. He would be scrutinized. He would see the hell that Trowa had been living in for nearly a year. And he would see the monster that Trowa had become.

When Zechs left, shoving past Trowa and the rest of their row rudely, Trowa realized just how alone, just how truly fucked he was.

He felt entirely confident that he would never be free of this nightmare, would never see Duo again.