|
"Grounded"Written By: ExecutiveShrimp Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, it belongs
to Bandai, Sotsu and associated parties. Written for pleasure not
profit. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: unbeta'd, sexual, violent content (graphic,
at times). Pairings: 2x1 Summary: A Preventer mission goes horribly wrong. Co-captains Duo and Heero both survive, but as changed men, and they have to rebuild their lives from the ground up.
"Grounded" Part VIII – Duo's POV The guilt was unbearable and the only way to escape it was to be away from Heero and to drink. He hadn't been drunk since he was thirteen years old; the last time was on the night G had scouted him. The man said he had been watching him for months and Duo told the "old perv" to live out his fantasies with the boys down the street who'd do anything for a hot meal. But G had made it clear that he had a purpose for Duo; he offered him a life that meant something. It wouldn't be any easier, or less dangerous, but it wouldn't be useless. "Think about it," G had said and Duo had gone to the alley behind the bar where the owner let him drink straight from a cheap bottle of spirit in exchange for some of his earnings of the day. He had drowned the memories of his life, the only way he knew how to deal with them. The next morning, sober – or close enough, at least – he went to find G where the man said he could and he never drank again. Not because the memories were any less hurtful, but because he had a job to do. That job was gone now. Duo was once again in a position where he had no purpose, but what he had no shortage of were memories that he'd rather forget. So he drank. He spent the entire night at a bar. As he stumbled home, the lights on the colony started to come on. He knew he wouldn't make it all the way up all the flights of stairs to the master bedroom on the top floor, so he crashed on the couch, not caring that his skin got clammy as the leather was warmed by his body heat. He was out cold for hours. He was a lightweight compared to his thirteen year old self. When he finally woke up he was half hanging off the couch; his arm dangling down and his hand resting on the carpet. His cheek was wet as he had moved his face into a puddle of his own saliva. Trying to move, he felt very old. Every joint ached from sleeping too long in the uncomfortable position. He hadn't been able to sleep much for the past three months, ever since the mission went awry. He kept waking up from his nightmares – thankfully so – which left him running on fumes. It was the first night he had been able to sleep without being haunted by his memories and Duo was torn between relief and guilt. It felt good to finally get some rest again, but then again, did he deserve to escape the nightmares? Shouldn't suffering the nightmares be the least of his punishment? With a groan Duo pushed himself upright and he squinted his eyes at the bright light that poured into the living room through the tall windows. Outside the leaves of the trees rustled in the flow of the air-conditioning and the current of the oxygen supply. Once in a while, a car drove down the street. He searched for his phone, wondering about the time. He patted himself down, but his pockets were empty. His gaze fell on his jacket, strewn on the floor by the front door and he remembered slipping his phone into the inner pocket before leaving the bar in the morning. He regretted having to get up, but he would have to get up at some point anyway. He reeked of alcohol, sweat and the cigarettes two patrons had been illegally smoking; the bartender allowing it. He dragged his feet across the open space and picked up his jacket. The time startled him. It was seven pm! He had left Heero on his own all day, that hadn't been his intention. In the freezer he found a frozen meal that wasn't past its expiration date. He popped it in the microwave and waited with a growling stomach. He quickly shoveled the meal into his mouth, burning his tongue on the first few bites and then he went upstairs for a much needed shower that took longer than he had intended. The warm water felt nice and soothing and he remembered sharing the shower stall with his partner on a couple of occasions; standing under the spray together and soaping each other's body. The memory was tainted with a sour aftertaste. Taking a shower together? Heero can't even stand right now. Who knew how long it would take for Heero to be able to share such a simple joy with him? If he would even want to share any moment with Duo once he would inevitably find out why everything had gone so wrong. With an appropriate level of self-pity and self-loathing, he dried off his body with a towel and blow-dried his long, thick hair, ignoring his reflection in the mirror. When he finally looked at himself, his reflection was a disappointment. He looked like a total wreck, with dry, chapped lips and dark circles under his eyes. He fussed with his bangs, trying to hide behind them as much as he could. He redid his braid three times, to make it perfect, as if that mattered. It didn't and he knew it didn't; he was stalling. The thought occurred to him that he shouldn't go see Heero. He argued with himself that his presence in the hospital room did neither any good. Heero was frustrated by the secrecy and whenever Duo wasn't overwhelmed with guilt, he was frustrated himself at Heero's stubbornness to get back into the field – as soon as possible. But it was his responsibility to go and offer his partner his help even when the other kept insisting that he didn't need any help and even when Duo had stopped believing that he was actually helping. He took the metro to the office building, not trusting himself to drive, considering how much he had to drink during the night. He would've taken the stairs up to the fourth floor – under normal circumstances it would have been faster – but he felt drained of all energy, even though he had slept better than he had in a while. He also worried that too much activity would end up making him nauseous. He was already regretting his microwave dinner, especially eating it as fast as he had. The doors opened on the fourth floor by the nurses' stations. Duo knew most of them – not just by name, he actually knew them. Not only had the staff tended to both captains on multiple occasions after risky missions that nearly went wrong, but not quite, he had also been spending a lot of time in the medical wing of the building and although he never felt much like chatting, the nurses rambled on about their daily lives to him or to other nurses and Duo would overhear. He raised his hand in a polite wave to greet Su, Coën and Floramaria. The latter was a bitch, to be honest, but the friendlier he was to her, the easier she was to handle. He walked past their station, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans and headed for the door to Heero's private room, when Flora's scratchy voice stopped him. "He's asleep." Duo spun around and quirked an eyebrow at her. He had to wait for her to finish her conversation with male nurse Coën before she continued: "Faulkner gave him his sleeping pills about an hour ago." She checked something on the whiteboard behind her and specified: "Fifty minutes." The agent checked his watch. It was only eight thirty. Faulkner normally didn't give Heero his pills until nine pm. "Why? It's still early. I was hoping to see him." "If you were hoping to see him, you should have come sooner," Flora bit. Duo blinked at the jab, as if she somehow knew why he had skipped on his afternoon visit. "Why is he already asleep though?" Duo pressed. "He's had a rough day. He's had an accident." Duo's heart skipped a beat and he took a step closer. Within a second his fear melted into anger, thanks to how snobby Flora was regarding him, with her hands on her hips. "He had an accident? How the fuck is that even possible? He's bedridden!" The nurse shook her head at him and shared a look with her colleagues. "I'm not going to talk to you if you take such a tone with me." "Tell me what the fuck happened!" He demanded. Flora glared at him and wagged her finger at him in warning. "There is no need for you to be volatile." Duo was about to blow up at her when he felt a hand on his upper arm. He turned and was relieved to see Rhiannon's much kinder face. "I'm so glad you're here." "I was on my way out," she nodded to the elevator, to which she had been headed. She was still wearing her scrubs, but her dreadlocks hung loose and framed her small face – the hairclips were pinched onto the breast pocket of her shirt – and she had a blue bag slung over her shoulder. "I don't mind filling you in. Come with me." She motioned for him to follow her to Heero's room. He shot one more look at the authoritarian Floramaria before trailing after Rhannion. He was relieved to lay eyes on Heero's calmly sleeping form. His breathing sounded steady and he looked fine – as well as anyone could look, after what his body had been put through. His skin was paler than normal and his cheeks were starting to hollow because he still refused to eat properly and he couldn't exercise. "He's fine," Rhiannon started off with and Duo was grateful for her patience with him. "The cleaning lady had pushed the bedside table out of his reach, so he couldn't get his urinal. When he leaned over the edge of the bed to get it, he fell out." Duo winced and shot a sympathetic look at his partner. He could only imagine how much that would hurt. "You know how he is. He never calls for help." Duo nodded. "Candice found him. We don't know how long he had been on the floor by then." "Aren't you supposed to check on him every thirty minutes?" Rhiannon shot him a look. "I'm going to ignore your attitude and remind you that we are understaffed and dealing with more patients than Heero, who, as you very well know, doesn't like it that we come into his room every thirty minutes. We were tending to a code red and the junior nurse was too intimidated to go check on Heero by herself, but she did keep an eye on him and when she saw through the window that his bed was empty, she rushed to his help. It's not Candice's fault that she trusts a difficult patient to at least call when he needs something." He sighed and knew not to let his anger get the better of him again. He was mostly angry at himself anywhere, for not being there. He walked closer to the bed and tenderly rearranged Heero's bangs out of his face. "Why weren't you here today?" Rhiannon asked. "I- I needed some space…" "You don't have to feel guilty about that," she replied, correctly interpreting his morose tone. "I understand." "I do have to feel guilty," he bit back. "I shouldn't get 'a day off'. Nobody gets 'a day off' from what happened. I don't deserve it." "Is your self-loathing helping Heero in any way?" He heavily slumped down in the chair and muttered into his palms: "Hating myself seems only fair." He scrubbed his face with his hands and looked at the nurse with tired eyes. "And what about your drinking?" She probed. "How is that going to help?" Duo snapped his head to look up at her. His instinct was to lie and deny the accusation, but from the stern look in her eyes he could tell she wouldn't buy any of his bullshit. "I can smell it on your breath." "A guy can't drink every now and then?" He shot back, still wanting to defend himself, even though he knew his decisions had been poor. She approached the bed and momentarily focused all of her attention on smoothing the sheets over the bed and Heero's frame and tucking it under the sides, making it seem like she was going to drop the subject, but Duo knew better and he waited for her to finish her task. She routinely checked the monitors and the electrodes pasted onto Heero's chest, slipping her hand under his shirt to find them, something the Japanese pilot would never allow if he was awake. She checked his catheter too, which they had put back in after the accident, apparently. Duo knew Heero was going to hate that. "He needs you," she eventually said, once she was satisfied everything was in order and her patient was comfortable. Duo snorted and scrubbed his face with his hands. "Nothing I do will be of help to him. "What's that supposed to mean?" "I'm just going to fail him again!" He blurted and then his gaze shifted to Heero's face, to make sure his bellowing hadn't woken him up. But, of course, the pilot was medicated; this wasn't the kind of sleep he would easily wake up from. Rhiannon looked confused. "What he needs-" He clenched his jaw shut, but at her expectant expression, he couldn't help but speak his mind: "What he needs is someone who isn't going to fuck this up." "What are you talking about? You saved his life. You got him out of that satellite alive," she insisted. "I didn't save him. I saved the shell of him. He is never going to be the same man again and as soon as he realizes that, he is never going to forgive me. And neither will I." "Duo. You are the only one he wants at his bedside. He kept asking for you today." "That's only because he doesn't know the whole truth. He doesn't know what I did to him." She put her hands on her hips and cocked an eyebrow. "I think he knows you amputated his legs to save him, Duo." "I hacked off his legs!" He shot up from his seat and glared at her. She was just trying to make him feel better, but that was exactly what was pissing him off so much; because he didn't deserve any relief from the unbearable weight on his heart. The fists at his sides were starting to tremble, as was his bottom lip. She used the word 'amputated', but while equally definitive, that term was far too clean and polite and controlled to be an accurate description of what he did. He knew what he did. He did it again and again, every night since the mission, in every nightmare that plagued him. What made him sick to his stomach, was knowing that that wasn't even the worst he had done to him. He had betrayed him. He had betrayed his partner's trust. Heero would never forgive him, as he shouldn't. Duo would never forgive himself either. It would eat at him until there would be nothing left of him. He reached down and grabbed Heero's hand, giving it a tight squeeze. Then, in a moment of weakness, he brought the hand up to his face and placed a kiss on the knuckles before gently putting the hand down at Heero's side and then he walked away. "Duo," Rhiannon called after him. "Duo, where are you going?" He heard the squeak of her sneakers on the linoleum floor as she followed him down the hallway to the elevator. "I can't be here. I'm only going to cause him more pain." He stopped at the stainless steel doors of the elevator and impatiently pressed the down button over and over again, giving the shorter woman ample time to catch up with him. "You're coming back though, right?" "I can't help him, Rhiannon." "Yes, you can." He shook his head at her naiveté. Her tone changed as she stated: "You know what? Fine. If you want to leave, you should leave. But don't pretend that you are doing him a favor by not being here. You are running away for yourself." The doors opened and he stepped into the elevator. He didn't meet her eyes and stared at the control panel instead, with the lit-up bottom for the ground floor. Before the doors could close again, he heard her say: "You are being a coward." He couldn't breathe again until the doors were shut and he felt the elevator descend. She was right, he was being a coward. He shouldn't get to walk away from the pain he had caused, but staying at Heero's bedside as a reminder of everything that had gone wrong, wasn't going to help the Japanese pilot. The blue-eyed man had always been better off without him. Everyone had always been better off without the company of the "God of Death". He was still that kid from the streets of L2, fucking everything up; making all the wrong decisions. He knew that if he would stay, Heero would look to him for guidance, as the man had done many time over the years – being so unsure of many things, when he was out of his element – but Duo couldn't be trusted. He wanted to do everything right and he had convinced himself that he had been doing a decent job at that, but it was time to face the truth: he had done everything wrong. He should atone, but not at Heero's cost. Watching Heero go through this painful process would hurt him more than anything else, but it would also hurt Heero and the man had been hurt enough. With his hands tucked into his pockets he walked back to the metro station and took a seat on the bench. Lost in thought, he missed the next three trains. They stopped right in front of him and people stepped off and on; the crowd moving around him with a hum of sounds – half-conversations, music from headphones, the shuffle of feet and the rustle of clothes, all blending together into white noise. He finally woke up from his trance, although barely enough to function, and got up and sat down in the next train that stopped in front of him. He kept his gaze focused on the LED sign over the door, not wanting to miss his stop, but knowing he would if he didn't pay close attention. It was a short walk from the metro station to his home. But his home hadn't felt like much of a home without Heero. Being inside the house felt like being locked up in Pandora's box; he felt claustrophobic in the confines of the space, while crowded with all the memories that were stored there. The experience of returning home wasn't about to get any more pleasant when he noticed an expensive rental sedan in the driveway and he knew who he would be dealing with even before he spotted the two figures seated on the steps leading up to the front door. Trowa and Quatre rose from their seated position as they saw him walk up to the house. Trowa looked characteristically stoic while Quatre was appropriately distraught. Before Duo could do anything to avoid it, he was embraced by the short blonde. The Sandrock pilot wrapped his arms tightly around his friend and pressed his nose into his chest. "I know you kept telling us not to come," he mumbled against Duo's shirt. "But we couldn't stay away any longer." Trowa chimed in: "We were at the office, but they wouldn't even let us up to the hospital floor." Duo sighed and politely disentangled himself from the other pilot. "He doesn't want to see you. He has made that very clear to everyone. I'm sorry." "How is he?" Quatre asked – his eyes big and red-rimmed. The American scoffed at the tone of hope in Quatre's voice. "How do you think he's doing?" "Duo-" "He fell out of bed today because he had to take a piss," Duo snapped. "He can't even take a goddamn piss." He shook his head and side-stepped the two of them to climb the stairs up to front door. Of course, they both followed him up and he had no choice but to let them in. The living room was a mess, as was the rest of the house – the state of the kitchen was the worst of all. Heero had always been the organized one and especially given the circumstances, Duo couldn't be bothered to clean up after himself. The smell of the unwashed dishes in the sink was noticeable, even at the threshold. Quatre and Trowa made no comment about the mess and quietly followed Duo inside. "Would you guys like something to drink?" He ripped the refrigerator door open. "I have… Water and beer." "No, thank you." Quatre's voice was meek. With a sigh Duo closed the door, resisting the urge to grab a beer for himself, knowing it would spark a confrontational conversation that he wasn't in the mood for. He leaned his body against the fridge, feeling heavy and tired. He pinched the bridge of his nose, still feeling the headache from one of his worst hangovers in years. "You shouldn't have come." "He can't keep avoiding us," the blonde argued with a stomp of his foot. "It's not right. We're his friends." "You can't help him anyway…" Duo dragged his feet over to the couch where he dropped down on top of clothes that he had stripped off days earlier and never bothered to put in the laundry. "We want to show him our support." "That stuff doesn't mean anything to Heero," he groused. "You know that's not true," Quatre said and his aquamarine eyes were fiery somehow. "You know that better than anyone." "Do I?" He remembered all the things that hero had said to them when they had had another one of their arguments. He had never saved Heero. He hadn't saved him from that satellite. He hadn't saved him before – he hadn't saved him from himself. Everything Duo had hoped for for the past few years was an illusion that had shattered into a million pieces and every step he made in an attempt to fix things, only had him stepping into those sharp shards of a broken dream. "He is still the soldier, nothing more. All he is focused on is getting out of that bed and getting ready to go on missions again. It's all he thinks about." "Is that even possible?" Trowa inquired. "No. But he refuses to believe that." "Well, he's… Heero. If anybody can get back to their old self after something like this, it's him," Quatre offered, again with that hopeful tone that was so out of place. "Nobody can come back from this, Quatre," Duo pressed. "If he could be the kind of soldier that he was, with fucking robot-legs, Dr. J would have sawed off all of his limbs himself when he was a kid." "Well, with the advances in medicine…" "Quatre, if this is the kind of 'support' you intend on giving him, it's for the best that they won't let you see him," Duo snapped. "He doesn't need you feeding his delusions that having his legs hacked off is nothing but a temporary set-back." The two other pilots exchanged a look at Duo's biting remark. "He needs to accept that he won't be the same again and the sooner he does, the more he is spared from disappointment. And the less likely he is to become self-destructive in his quest to get back on his feet again – shit, excuse the pun." He puffed out his cheeks as he blew out air. Quatre took a seat on the armrest of the couch, nudging away Duo's feet which had been propped on it. "Are you okay?" Duo covered his face with his hands. He couldn't look at either of them, nor did he want to be seen, as he admitted in a whisper: "No." He felt a hand on his calf, giving a comforting squeeze. "Everything is ruined, and it's all my fault." The hand rubbed up and down. "Why do you keep saying that? I don't understand. You can't seriously blame yourself for taking the measures that you did to save Heero's life." With a grunt he sat upright and he pulled his legs up to his chest, getting them out of his friend's reach. He looked at the two of them with pitiful eyes and told them half of the horrible truth. "He begged me not to." Blonde eyebrows raised until they were hidden behind his bangs. "What do you mean?" "I read the report," Trowa interjected. "Heero was unconscious." "I wrote that report." "You lied. Why?" "Because-…" Duo threw his hands up in exasperation. "Because we have to detail everything in those goddamn reports and I couldn't fucking… write down-… I couldn't relive it, to commit it to paper, knowing he would read it eventually. The one thing that gives me some piece of mind is that he doesn't yet remember what happened and hopefully he never will – not fully." "Maybe knowing the full truth can help him accept his situation. Heero is strong, he can handle it." "He begged me to let him die there, Quat!" Duo regarded him with furious eyes. Quatre was such a silver-linings-person that he couldn't imagine the dark in people and he idolized Heero to a point where it hampered his usual acute awareness and understanding of people. Quatre seemed as frustrated with Duo's negativity as Duo was with Quatre's positivity. He rose from the armrest and put his hands on his hips. He was looking at Trowa when he said: "I want to see him." The American let out a bitter chuckle. "He won't let you. He wouldn't even let Relena see him." Trowa nodded in understanding. Trowa and Heero were very different from one another in many ways, and yet they always seemed in tune with each other and they understood each other without needing words. "Give him time, Quatre. If he's not ready to face anyone but Duo yet, we have to respect that." "Even when he's wrong for shutting out his friends?" Quatre challenged, not at all pleased that the two other men in the room were ganging up on him. "He needs to realize that for himself." "But I want to help," the blonde stated pathetically. "I know," Trowa appeased with a nod, "and so does Heero. But helping someone when they aren't ready yet, isn't helping them at all." Quatre stood in silence, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He pinned Duo down with a cold gaze. "You need to take care of him. And remind him that we are all there for him, whenever he's ready." "I can't go back there," Duo confessed miserably and he dropped his head down, letting his bangs hide his shameful face. "I'm not helping." "Duo, you're being ridiculous," the shortest pilot argued. "Of course you've been helping him. You're been helping him for years. Don't give up on him now." Duo threw a look up at him. "I'm not giving up on him," he hissed. "I would never give up on him." "Than what-" "I'm giving up on myself," he clarified. Quatre's features melted into something sympathetic and pitiful. "If he wants to be the Perfect Soldier again… well, fuck it, maybe he can or maybe he'll die trying. But I can't be a part of it." Duo stared at his hands, his gaze followed the lines in his calloused palms. When he curled his fingers, he could still feel the cold steel of the axe's handle. He could still feel the weight of it. His arms had nearly been too weak to even carry the tool over to his fallen partner, much less swing it. He winced and squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath until a sudden, vivid memory left him alone again and all he saw behind his closed eyelids was blackness. When he opened his eyes again, he could see that he had balled his hands into tight fists; the tendons in his wrist were standing out and his knuckles were turning white. "I broke him." "He must have been in shock when he asked you to let him die," surprisingly, it was Trowa who was speaking up. "I'm sure that once he is better, he'll be grateful that you saved his life." "I didn't just break his body, Tro. I broke his trust. His trust is such a special and fragile thing and I wrecked it… Because I'm a fucking idiot," he scolded himself. "Okay, you are going to tell us right now what happened exactly," Quatre demanded. Duo shook his head. "I can't. I have to tell WuFei first. As an agent who falsified a mission report, I have to come clean to my division leader first." "Formalities can wait." "They can't. If I tell you first, I'm putting you in a situation that I should not put you in." "Do you think the mission went wrong because of you?" Trowa surmised. With a sigh Duo got up from the couch and shuffled towards the front door. "I need to sleep. I have a meeting with Major Chang tomorrow." He opened the door and wordlessly requested for them to leave him alone. Trowa walked by him in silence, with nothing but a thoughtful furrow to his brows. Quatre paused in front of his friend; his aquamarine eyes were a swirl of emotions. "Whatever you did, Duo, I know you did it with the best intentions," he said in a soft tone. "That's true," Duo agreed, his own voice cracking. "That's exactly why I'm so scared of myself. I don't do things with the intent of hurting anyone. I always try to do the best I can and things still end up going wrong. But instead of it blowing up in my own face, the person I love most got hurt." He added: "… And three people died." He turned his head away when he noticed Quatre was about to lay his hand on his cheek in a comforting gesture. "Go back to L4, Quat." "We're not going anywhere. If Heero isn't going to let us help him, then we'll help you." He smiled sadly in return, unsure of how willing his friend would be to lend him support once he knew the truth about the horrible mistake Duo had made. As soon as Quatre had stepped over the threshold, Duo shut the door and leaned back against it. He heard their muffled voices as the two had an indiscriminate exchange of words as they headed down the stairs and to their rental car. Alone in the house, with no one but ghosts to judge him, he headed for the fridge and retrieved a bottle of beer. Normally, he'd prefer something stronger, but he didn't want to go out to a bar again, having barely made it home last night before getting himself into trouble. He finished the beer in a few large gulps and then reached for a second and a third bottle, that he brought upstairs with him. He let himself fall onto the bed, his drinks momentarily forgotten. He buried his nose in the pillow Heero used to sleep on, but it didn't smell like the other man any more. Instead, the pillowcase and the sheets smelled of his own sweat, from the many nights since the mission that he had spent tossing and turning in the bed; barely asleep – not deep enough in slumber to rest, but deep enough to be submitted to nightmarish memories that he couldn't escape from. He couldn't count how many times he had shot upright in the middle of the night, with sweat cooling on the bared skin of his torso and his legs all tangled up in the sheets. One night, he had even fallen flat on his face while trying to escape an invisible threat that had chased him from the dream into reality. The nightmare was the reality. The other two bottles were emptied quickly and he went downstairs to get more and settled on the couch. The idea of the bed was alluring and it kept tempting him up to the top floor of the house for the past few weeks, but there was no comfort on the soft mattress, or wrapped up in the silk sheets. He had a better chance of falling asleep on the trusty couch, where fewer memories lingered. Heero and him had had sex on the couch many times, but those memories were not the kind that bothered him. In that bed they had slept in each other's arms, shared whispered conversations about the things they didn't want anybody else to know and had kissed through sleepless nights without either having the intention of taking it any further than the intimate merging of their mouths. Sex wasn't special to Duo; he could have sex with anyone – and for a few years, between the wars and joining the Preventers with Heero – he did exactly that: have sex with anyone. But what he had shared with Heero in that bed – their bed – was something he had never had with anyone else, nor did he ever want to have it with anyone else. It was a bond that he had cherished. But now it was broken and the most bittersweet thing of all was that he was left to wonder if he truly lost something, or if he never had anything to begin with. Nothing but misreading all the little things between them. Eventually, the self-induced drunken stupor guided his mind into unconsciousness and he managed to get a few hours of sleep before the bright lights of the colony mimicking earth's sunset thankfully woke him from more of the same dreams. He dragged himself upstairs and went through the morning ritual of showering and brushing his teeth as often as he could stand before getting absolutely sick with the taste of spearmint of Heero's toothpaste. Then he got dressed in the only clean clothing he had left; a respectable combination of black slacks and black button-up shirt that he had saved for the occasion. It seemed only appropriate. The hangover wasn't too bad. He felt alert enough that he was confident he could drive to the Preventer office, rather than take the metro again. In the underground parking garage he was greeted with polite nods from other agents and techs coming in. For them, it was just another day at the office. Joining him in the elevator was agent Cho. She offered him a smile in the reflection in the doors. He didn't smile back; he hadn't been able to smile at any of them, he had a hard enough time looking anyone in the eye. WuFei came bursting out of his office, with his nose buried in a folder. He nearly ripped the pages as he leafed through the information and the two of them would have crashed into each other if Duo hadn't jumped to the other side of the corridor at the last second. The Chinese agent looked up with an exasperated apology. "I need to talk to you." "I'm busy, agent Maxwell." WuFei was about to walk away but Duo grabbed his wrist and rooted him in his spot. Black eyes met his and the two stared at each other for several heartbeats, without saying anything. WuFei started to nod slowly and he closed the folder as if it had suddenly become unimportant to him. "Okay. Okay, let's talk." He gestured for Duo to step into his office and then followed him inside, closing the door behind him. Duo waited in the center of the room as WuFei maneuvered around him and his desk to take a seat in his chair. "What's going on? Is Heero alright?" The Major inquired when the silence stretched too long for his liking. Duo noticed the slip of WuFei calling the agent by his first name. The former Shenlong pilot tried very hard to stay professional, but lately he had been failing. He had a connection with Heero that he would probably rather deny, since he didn't seem to understand it any more than anyone else did; it went beyond mutual respect. Instead of replying, Duo fished a folded-up rectangular envelope out of the back pocket of his slacks, smoothed out the crease and then solemnly placed it on the desk in front of his superior. "What's this?" WuFei didn't touch it, or even looked at it for longer than a split second. "It's my letter of resignation." The Chinese man scoffed and flicked the envelope away. "I don't accept." "You will. You will want the satisfaction of firing me, but if you fire me I get benefits that you won't want me to have." WuFei sighed and sat back in his chair. "You're being very melodramatic, agent Maxwell. I don't know what to do with that. But I do know that I don't want you to quit and I don't want to fire you either. You're the best team Captain of this division." That was so comically untrue he nearly let out a dark laugh. He kept his face straight and said: "There's no team to captain anyway." "There will be." His fingers rifled through a stack of files on the corner of his desk and then produced three of them. "I have been working on finding new agents to complete your team. These three will make a good fit, I think. Stieber, a transfer from L3, and a recruit straight out of the Academy – top of his class, I trained him myself." Duo shook his head. "No. I'm quitting. I can't do this without Heero." "You're wrong," WuFei asserted. "Heero couldn't do this job without you, not the other way around. I only allowed for you two to captain a team together because I knew we couldn't find another place for Heero in the agency otherwise; he could never be a subordinate, he's too independent to accept anyone telling him how to approach his missions and he would never be able to lead a team by himself either. You're a good Captain, Duo, and these three," he nodded down at the files, "in combination with Cho, Swafford and Rubo, will make a good team." "I don't deserve your trust. I don't deserve Heero's trust. And I don't deserve the trust of any team member." "Just spit out what you want to say, Duo." He wanted to. He was trying to. But saying it out loud was different from the rehearsals he had gone through in his head. Self-preservation made it hard to come clean; it was his survival instinct rearing its ugly, selfish head. But he had done so many wrong things that he knew it was time to do the right thing and telling the truth was always the right thing. "Maxwell?" "It's all my fault. They should have never come along on the mission with us."
|
