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"Heero Yuy, L6, and the Second Suit Wars "Part 2Written By: ELLE Disclaimer: I don't own the characters from Gundam
Wing (unfortunately) and they were used without permission, but all
the words are my own. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: occurs post-EW, language, angst, sex,
hopefully acceptable OOC, 1st person POV (*shudder* sorry, no way
around it!), plus a ton of minor and a few major OCs (since it's 1st
person, you get to avoid dealing with them too much.) Pairings: 1x2x1 plus others TBD Summary: Jack Kaufmann has no recollection of the braided man who claims they were once more than friends, but his quest to recover his memories leads him to discover a plot much larger than himself that is a threat to the peace he'd once fought to protect... The lovely Miss-Murdered beta'd this for me and frankly this story wouldn't exist without her encouragement.
"A Former Life Reprised" 2.14 The Catch
Duo headed for the bathroom and I took his advice, skirting the broken vase with my bare feet and righting the table on my way to the shared parlor. I peeked out hesitantly and seeing the coast was clear and that food and clothing was indeed left for us, I grabbed it and wondered just what that employee heard beyond the door and would report back to the boss. I shoved a sandwich into my mouth quickly while I listened to the sink running, suddenly ravenous. I contemplated Duo Maxwell and how damned lucky I was that anyone would put up with my shit for this long. For fucks sake, I didn't make the best impression, stealing probably a quarter of Deathsycthe's parts after our first meeting. That should've been an indication to him right then and there to get the fuck out while he still could. Stubborn fucking idiot. But I found myself moving forward into the bathroom where he was splashing water on his face and I pressed up against his back, embracing him from behind, holding him against my chest with my arms. I felt him sigh as I nudged his braid away from his neck with my nose and planted a kiss there. "I smell turkey," Duo accused and I chuckled in the back of my throat. "There's a whole plate of food out there for you - sandwiches, fruit, little chocolate cakes," I informed him as I moved away, staring into the unbroken half of the vanity mirror and taking in my seriously abused face. "There's peroxide," Duo returned, handing me a bottle. My eyes slid up to his with a bit of a glare. I looked like I had been tied to the back of a car and drug across pavement. He just shrugged unapologetically and toweled off his own face. I went to work picking porcelain out with tweezers as he left the bathroom and I heard him exclaim with delight when his eyes landed on the food. "Petit fours!" he called in. "Not little chocolate cakes!" I grimaced. It sounded like a Relena word. It took me probably twenty minutes to attend properly to my face and even then I felt some scaring was likely. I was immensely grateful for a hot shower and deliberated under the steady stream for a lot longer than was necessary. Understandably by the time I was clean and dry and Trowa's jump drive was safely placed around my neck again, my face ached and I felt exhausted and I wanted very little else but to lay down in that luxurious bed with my handsome partner. Walking back into the bedroom I was treated to the image of Duo sprawled across the bed, dozing contentedly, his hair still terribly mussed from earlier - making it that much harder to fight the desire to bask in our much welcomed reunion, take time to rememorize every solid inch of him, lay down next to him so close our sides could merge as one and my soul would be complete. Instead I began tugging on the clothes left for us with no amount of weary resignation. It would be better to get this over with now, without Duo knowing. I slipped quietly from the room, trying to recall Quatre's exact hand placement on the elevator's keypad as I moved down the halls. However, I found my concern was unnecessary when I saw him sitting comfortably in a chair at the bottom landing of the stairs. It seemed as though he was expecting me as he turned knowing eyes towards mine. But his face changed slightly as I stepped into the soft lamplight. "Your face?" he questioned as he stood, although I knew if he thought about it, he really didn't need to ask. "Duo," was all I said. I expected some sort of snide remark but he just nodded and lead me to the elevator, entering his code as he had done only hours ago, and we descended once again into the underground hangar. I didn't need to ask how he knew I would come. He knew me well enough to know I would be driven here by interest, by guilt, and by desire. We were the same, all of us. I didn't need to contemplate how many times he sat in those cockpits since their construction started. I knew it would be every night he spent here, every time he had a free moment. If it weren't for ZERO, Duo would've beaten me down here. Part of me half expected him to appear out of thin air behind me, following me stealthily since my departure. But he didn't and it was just Quatre and I who faced the three suits this time. I turned my eyes to him, silently questioning if he had a preference to which one I should try. "Zeus' design is the most similar to Wing," he explained, the direction of his stare indicating the gleaming gold and white hulk of machinery standing in the center, flanked by one of black and one of red. "You know the password." He shared a meaningful smile with me and I nodded before quickly ascended the ladder that reached the construction scaffolding flanking the three suits. The cockpit was already open and I jumped easily from the shoulder down into it, falling into the familiar seating as easily as I fell into Duo's body less than an hour ago. My mind unhelpfully provided a myriad of stressful memories as my trembling fingers traced the memorable control panel. I really never thought I would be here again. I thought I was it, the last weapon of hostile man and yet... here I was. I had found a brother again. My hands strained as they gripped the thrusters - every inch of me forced to remind myself where I was as I brought the suit to life. Duo was here. I promised him. Together. I quickly shifted through the file system and brought up HERA, staring at the four-letter password prompt with an uncomfortable grin lancing pain into my busted face. Deftly I typed the letters: H - E - R - A. Hello, subject alpha. Or as you prefer, Heero Yuy. Immediately I was greeted with the disconcerting feeling of another consciousness floating in the back of my minds' eye and I flinched away from what felt like fingers on my shoulders. My hands grasped desperately at tendrils of nothing as my panic rose. There is no need to panic - I am Hera. I am here to help. Help? Her calming words seemed to soothe me and I remembered Quatre saying something about an AI... But he damn well could've warned me. This was nothing like ZERO. Nothing at all. I am an unbiased observer of your emotions. I can help you decipher what it is you truly want. And suddenly I was being hit with an overwhelming flash of images - my memories from before, my memories of sitting in a similar cockpit ten years ago - and pain and sorrow gripped me in a way that made me gasp, tears springing unbidden to my eyes. This is what you want? I shook my head furiously as I fought for control of my brain from the AI. And then Duo's face filled my mind, but it wasn't his face as much as an amalgamation of every time I'd ever seen his face. Love and anger, fear and contentment, joy and reservation, every emotion I'd ever seen him express, every face he ever made that ever caused even the smallest twitch of my heart was displayed before me in one startling instance and I knew exactly what HERA wanted me to see. This is what you want. YES. The definitive way with which my heart responded in my moment of clarity made my whole body quake with the overwhelming feel of it. Never in my life had I ever had a full body emotional experience like this. Always there was something there - my training, my reservation, my own mind - blocking me. I wondered if Duo felt his own emotions this intensely. I wondered if anyone ever did. I wondered how anyone ever could. This is what they all want. They who? I wondered. What do they want? Duo? Love. Without realizing it I was apparently asking HERA as I felt her stretch across the universe, drawing my psyche with her as we reached a distant point in space. It was far beyond the most mind-altering experience I ever had and let's face it - I've had some pretty serious mind fucks in my relatively short life. Yeah, ZERO certainly did a number on me more than once, but shit a couple months ago I woke up with four years of my life missing and no memories to account for the lost time. And then I choked and slammed my eyes shut, unable to avoid HERA or the images flooding my mind as my brain seared in agony, pain shooting through every neuron and synapse instantaneously until I figured that it was a very real possibly that my brain would simply explode. Memories of a moment I didn't even know shot through my brain like fireworks, sparks flying behind my eyes, a little girl in a pink gingham frock pressed up against my chest, cradled in my arms so carefully. A little girl with a young dog standing in a park. The same, but different. The same because in that instant I realized I had committed them to the same fate. Different because this little girl was still alive. Her face filled my vision and I saw her smile in recognition of me, her feelings of joy and surprise engulfing and devastating my unprepared body. "She tells me your name is Heero now," she said, her quiet voice ringing through my ears and I slammed my hands against them, banging my head down into the console, desperately trying to get that little girl out of my head. I clawed frantically at my head, ripping at the skin on my face until blood dripped down into the controls from my previous wounds. This wasn't happening. This wasn't FUCKING happening! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD! I begged in the most hysterical, pathetic way I had ever begged for anything in my life and I felt her pain at my internal screaming and her own anguish reflected back at me and magnified mine tenfold until my breath heaved and I thought my chest might collapse. "But Jack - I thought you were my friend?" It was too late. It was too goddamned late. Fuck.
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