Everyone had fallen into that solemn blank eyed trance that came from any long trip in a vehicle that one had no control over, even one so loud and jarring as the transport van that held the ex pilots and the Preventers assigned to assist them.
Click
//It was so different, even from their usual missions,// Quatre mused, watching his companions. They had never actually been a part of a team. True they were a team unto themselves, a deadly and efficient one. But there were others involved this time, young Preventers, eager for a battle, to take a slice of the glory of the Eve wars, and old veterans, their eyes haunted by a replay of their lives, yet unable to stop themselves, to drift away from the adrenaline and soul deep pain of the life they swore they would never return to.
Click
Their lives would depend on the ex-pilots. Some staring at pictures, some mumbling a litany of prayers, some bragging. One could actually see the lives of those who were on the line, even if Quatre didn't know their names. //We had fought when people were at risk before, but we never knew them. We never wanted to. It would make everything too painful, too personal.//
Click
Now these people, strangers maybe, but people now, were here, and would live or die at his command. True, the Maguanacs would do the same, but they did it from devotion, and Quatre had begged them many a time not to follow him, not to risk their precious lives. But what devotion did these people have? They were here on orders. Was this what it was like for OZ and for the White Fang? No, they had their devotion as well as their orders.
Click
//These people must too,// Quatre thought. Une wouldn't force anyone, not anymore. She had changed so much since the first war, and the Preventers weren't exactly the military. It was voluntary. Their devotion.
They weren't here for Trowa though, not like ex pilots were. They were here to stop a disease. //They are more noble than us. But our time of nobility has passed with the signing of peace treaties. We are allowed our selfishness... aren't we?//
Click
But who here wouldn't come back because of it? Wide blue eyes took in soft cheeks hardly free of their baby fat and craggy ones that served as frames for haunted eyes. People.
No, this line of thought was getting him no where. Quatre mentally reprimanded himself, he drew his own battle plans around him like a cloak. Perhaps it was best that we were to be accompanied, a cold calculating voice said within Quatre, after all, they were crippled without Trowa and Duo.
Especially Heero. He was so used to have Duo just a step behind, a cover of bullets or fire, loud and extravagant, or too quiet for even Heero to tell more than his partner was somewhere close. One without the other was incomplete. They didn't know how to operate solo anymore. That worried Quatre.
Click
Quatre's gaze found the Japanese boy. Heero's demeanor had deterred even the most enthusiastic Preventer from so much as saying "Hi," much less friendly conversations. It wasn't just so much of the cobalt eyes, deadly cold and backlit with such intensity, no it was probably more of the fact that he'd been cocking and uncocking his gun for the majority of the ride.
Click
And it was starting to get annoying.
Click
"Heero?" Quatre asked, carefully waiting until the gun was uncocked before speaking up. Lupine eyes fixed on the Arabian. Not even a "hn." He was back in Perfect Soldier mode. Quatre sighed. "Could you please stop doing that? You are unsettling everyone."
Click
"Doing what?" he asked without interest.
Click
Wufei forestalled Quatre's imminent explosion by leaning over and placing his hand over Heero's, stilling its owner's nervous action.
Heero blinked down at the bronzed hand covering his a moment before meeting two concerned pairs of eyes.
"Hn," he said, softer than usual. He swiftly tucked his gun away. The translation was clear to those who knew him "I'm fine"
A lie. Heero's smell was unbalanced, radically shifting back and forth. But now wasn't the time or the place. He had his own mission to concentrate on. Either he'd walk out with Trowa or not at all.
The Child would have paced if he had thought it would have accomplished anything. He could feel Relena tiring, she'd be asleep soon. He'd been ready to fight before, but time had given him opportunity to settle and doubt.
The Jester had woke him in time to hear IT; shaken him out of his cloak like old dust as outside reality echoed suddenly around his ears.
//We both have battles to fight, you come out of yours and I'll come out of mine.// We had to work on his accent, but there it was, just for him, He knew, He was encouraging him. Then... He said IT.
//Ai shiteru.// How many years now? He'd known it for so long in his heart, so many times he told himself that it didn't matter as long as he KNEW Heero was human. Heart and all, all devoted for him. He'd no idea how much he needed that declaration, from the bottom of his soul. Now he had it, irrefutable, undeniable, confirmation. It was his forever and always, because Heero never gave up on ANYTHING.
The euphoria of the memory passed as he sunk again into his dilemma. The Fool wasn't there with his wisdom. He'd danced off to take care of something, and Shinigami he hadn't seen all day, although he could feel the quiet one, his presence was dark and gathering strength somewhere.
"Good fer ya kid," another voice commented, like his own, but different. The Child felt a separation within himself as something intrinsic to him split away and materialized in front of him. "Wit the soldier an' all. I knows ya been waiting fer that. We both have."
The Child looked up, smiling at the child he usually resembled. Perhaps the raven haired one was a bit taller and a little thinner in the face, but more or less the same. He knew instinctively that now he looked more like the Duo that they saw in the mirror. "Wutcha doing out here Solo. Ya dun know iffen one of the others wander by."
"We's alone. It safe to be separate." Solo grinned.
"Have it yer way." The Child sniffed, leaning against the ghost's shoulder. Solo wrapped his arms around the smaller Child. Both smiled, enjoying these rare moments. "I's holding ya to ya promise ya knows." the brown haired one said thoughtfully.
"Eh? Which one?" The other child blinked, startled out of his contentment.
"Baka. Iffen ya leave, ya gotta takes me with ya."
Solo frowned. "Tha's an old promise."
"Dun mean it not valid no more. Tha one that ya'd stay wit me always ya holden to jest fine, an' it older."
"Wut iffen tha Jester wuz right? Iffen taken ya will kill us all." Both children looked guilty.
"When it all come down to it. I dun want Her to have Him. I mean iffin He wanted it, I'd have no problem, but not with her mind like it's now. If dying be wut it takes than we do it." The Child played with the end of his shoulder length braid. "So, only if she wins?"
"'kay," Solo nodded with obvious reluctance. "I kin do tha."
"You didn't have to come," Noin said, feigning irritation at her 'guard'. "I'm a big girl now."
"I realize that." Zechs murmured, shifting his gaze from the compound for a moment to smirk at Noin. "Their security has been upped."
"Yeah, I guess that would have been normal all things considered. I wish we'd have known from the start, that way we wouldn't be in this position." Noin picked up her handset. "Teams three and six, give me small blackouts at irregular positions along the middle levels. Five minute intervals. Copy?"
"Copy that. Ten four." A static voice replied.
"Blackouts?" Zechs asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Une sent some goodies, top of the line thermal sensitive glasses. I don't know the technicalities, but it'll help you guys see in the dark, while anyone with flashlights' positions will be given away. I've been doing small interruptions from the power lines about three miles up the wires, but when we are ready, I'm going to knock out their main generator. It'll take em a good half an hour to get it on line again."
Zechs gave a little laugh. "And all your plan? My friend, I can't believe that you were nervous about coordinating this."
She snorted. "Still am really." She sighed, then shook her head, fishing for a distraction to soothe her churning stomach. "So what's with Duo? That kid's never sick... okay, so he might be perverted, but not too ill to fight. Out of all of them, he's the only one who struck me as really loving to fight."
"I can't tell you really. I didn't see him."
Noin sent him a puzzled look, visible only through the ghostly half-light spilling off the screen of her monitor. Zechs shrugged, his expression unreadable.
"I'm not as close to them as I sometime wish to be." Zechs had turned back, monitoring the patrols around the perimeter. "They may have forgiven me, and even accepted me on the team, but I don't think that they can stop thinking of me as their enemy."
"Except Wufei?" Noin asked.
"Aa, except him, although there still isn't trust, but I think I'm beginning to understand him."
"You mean, you are beginning to finally understand yourself?"
Zechs blinked, turning around to regard his longtime friend. She gave no indication of paying him any mind, except for a knowing half smirk ghosting her lips.
"What did you mean by that?"
"Oh nothing." Noin looked up at last. She waved a hand, as if casually dismissing the issue. "Girl talk, you wouldn't be interested."
"Eh?"
"9? The transports are arriving we are in position now. Power down in ten minutes." A voice interrupted from the com.
"Roger that." Noin responded checking her watch. "Hey you."
Zechs paused, somewhere in the tangled process of climbing to his feet after sitting for far too long. "Mmm?"
"Just be careful tonight okay?"
Zechs smiled at her as he rose to his feet. He gave her shoulder a companionable squeeze. "You're a good friend you know that?"
She harumphed and blew her bangs out of her face, but her irritation dissolved almost instantly into fondness, "What am I gonna do with you?"
Zechs frowned, his golden brows drawing together over a petulantly confused face. Noin shook her head, somewhere between bemused and amused, and shooed him off.
"Get going you, you've got a castle to storm." Noin bit her lip as he complied, resisting the urge to give that tush a playful pat. Watching him jump would be fun, but she couldn't afford to have him confused any more than he was for the mission.
"One of these days." She promised herself. Noin sighed, checked her watch again, and went back to work. "All teams, gimmie a full lights out on my mark. Mark."
The Jester sat, flipping through the memory of a doujinshi. He felt the Child resolving himself and smiled, and sensed Shinigami materialize at his side. Inwardly, he ticked that off as another satisfactory thing; as dark and unpredictable as he was, Shinigami was a powerful member of their triangle and their strongest will to fight. The Jester flipped a nonexistent page, trying to ignore the question in the killer's posture.
Another step closer. The Jester tucked the manga back away into the forgetfulness he'd fished it from. He shrugged. "Aya, I know. Tis what I've struggled so long for. He's more than ready now. I cannot understand why we are not yet drawn together completely, but he is ready."
The Jester sighed, letting his doubts flow easily into his companion as Shinigami shared its muted questions with him. "But have I shepherded him along the right path? What business has the whimsy of a shattered mind in guiding affairs of the heart?"
The red glow dimmed thoughtfully, before the apparition shrugged and motioned for the joker to continue. He didn't have long to wait, now that the Jester could freely speak his mind, he did so eagerly.
"I did not want a part of this to start. I've no care for battles and such. Life is but lived for what entertainment can be dreamed. Our time passing like a flash of sun upon the waves. Here, then gone in the next ripple. What point is there but to satisfy the self?"
Shinigami stared for a moment at the morose fool for a moment, before pointing towards the presence of Relena, just on the edge of the subconscious, drifting finally to sleep. She was tiring herself quickly from her futile struggle with the handcuffs and her rage. The Jester looked confused for a moment, before the meaning dawned on him.
"Dear Death, you do have a point. Perhaps that is her philosophy as well, to take what is given chance to partake of. But I know, of my thoughts, none are agreed with by either of you, my sharers of soul. A temper to each other, but she is single, without her balance."
"No perhaps I give voice before I've thought, she does have her own three, two blondes and a dark one come to mind when I think of her fool, her child and her killer. It is maybe the shame that they are upon the outside while we are with her here, for without that balance she has spun out." He paused a moment, shaking his head. "The body we share now has done her no favors either I'd guess. The good doctor said that those chemical concoctions of our long training were the undoing of many a sanity before ours. But oh, why must she have unraveled THIS way. I could have /dealt/ with docile and drooling."
Displeasure radiated off Shinigami in waves. Its red eyes flared a bright red and its uniformed arms crossed over its chest.
"I know, you think me weak." The Jester laughed. "But really dear Shini-chan, try shouldering the burden of perpetual gab and see how heavy these words weigh."
You Can Have It.
Spoken without speech, as the Jester sees without eyes. Death's first words in years sent the Jester's amused laughter ringing off to the far corners of the mind. Much cheered by the simple victory of a phrase from their taciturn side, he danced off intending to meet with the Child. Finding /two/ children there was not what he expected.
/I cannot understand why we are not yet drawn together completely, but he is ready./ His own statement mocked him at the sight.
"Well," A dawn of sour understanding washed through him, sweeping away his earlier good humor in a quicksilver flash of moods. "This changes all."
Under the door, the faint traces of lights went dark for the second time this hour. Even the faint hum of electricity coursing through the thick walls ceased.
The shouts and clamor of some unseen ruckus were just barely audible through the cement barriers, but his time in the dark, however short, had fine tuned his hearing.
To the prisoner's knowledge, the lights had gone out several times that night, yet the men and women stationed there hardly panicked so much, blaming it on the high winds plaguing the area. This was something more then.
Just outside, the two men who'd been guarding his cell abandoned their post. He could hear their sharp footsteps echoing each other, and fading off into the distance.
A single bright green eye opened in the darkness. Nimble finger set to work on the handcuffs, perhaps not with the deftness of one of his friends, but with skill nonetheless. It was Duo who so often got captured, more times for a sheer diversion, or the victim of bad luck than any actual incompetence or mistake. He was glad he had asked the young sneakthief to teach him a few tricks.
He knew it was now or never. He just had to gamble on the hope that the cause of the disturbance is what he thought it was.
//You mean you're beginning to understand yourself?//
Noin's words kept echoing through Zechs' mind as he made he way to the group's position. They were still a good mile to a mile and a half away from the patrol routes, so he didn't bother much with stealth in favor of speed. Knowing Quatre, the efficient blonde had already started final orders, knowing that Noin or Wufei would fill in the tall Preventer.
Chang Wufei, his mind echoed. His sour frown broke that tenuous friendship that the two men had established. The implication she made had him uncomfortable for a reason he couldn't identify.
//She's comparing me to Chang? He is hot headed, hot tempered, egotistical, chauvinistic and easily the most insecure man I have ever met. His world is composed of black or white and can see only his own truth.// The incredulity of the whole idea almost amused Zechs, if it weren't for that still, small voice in the back of his mind that agreed with her. It was that little voice he argued with more than Noin's statement.
But, he also couldn't deny that more often than not, she knew him better than he knew himself. It was one of the foundations of their friendship.
//I am not like him.// but Zechs knew the lie before he thought it. His mind turned to darker thoughts, a mental image of Wufei fighting alongside Mariameia rose up. //I would never do that. No. I did. I turned against my oldest friend to fight with a stranger. I gave up myself to find who I was, and I still don't know.//
His time with White Fang sprang out of his mind again, ever present, even after the soul searching he had done after his "death." "No," Zechs reaffrimed, "I am not like him. I refuse to believe it." But still the little voice spoke agreement with Noin.
"A single explosion won't do the trick, what fooled them once probably won't fool them again," Quatre was explaining as he passed out the small black glasses Noin had mentioned earlier. The blond gave the long haired one a nod as he approached. "Noin will disable their alarms and their main generators. Cutting the external power to the area should be simple, these will give you an advantage over the soldiers, as flashlights would give away your positions."
"Eyeglasses?"
"The latest technology, the outer lens is covered with a hardened layer of a thermal gel, it's incredibly heat sensitive, able to pick up minute variations of heat, the inner strip makes it lightly phosphorescent, so you'll be able to see the color changes. It will look a little silly, but I don't think anyone will have the time to complain. The glow will be dim enough that it won't give away your positions but remember you won't be invisible," Quatre shrugged. "These took a long time to develop because the heat of the wearers own body would interfere with external detection."
"Of course," Quatre said dryly, noticing expressions of consternation and discomfort on the faces of those who had already put theirs on. "It will take a while to adjust to them. You have 10 minutes, the lights will be out again in 5."
Wufei had noticed the scowl on Zechs' face as he had approached. He moved discreetly over to his partner for the mission. "What's wrong?" Wufei inquired in a low tone.
"Nothing." Zechs snapped back. The Chinese man's eyes narrowed. Wufei did not appreciate the tone directed at him.
"Nothing?" Wufei parroted. "Then why the attitude?"
Zechs turned on the shorter man, ready to trade angrier words. Honor was a wonderful shield for what troubled him.
"Settle down, now!" Quatre ordered, catching the conflict before it truly began. The tone of his quiet voice made it seem like a shout. "Whatever is going on between you two can wait, right now follow your orders. We have a mission to complete."
Quatre's words settled into both men's mind and exerted a calming influence. The two men exchanged heated glances while Quatre continued, as if their time and talks in the hospital never existed. They'd talk about this later.
"This changes all." The Jester's tone was unusually neutral. His face betrayed no emotion other than the mask of gaiety he regularly wore. Solo drew his arms protectively around the Child, both sensing the Jester's displeasure.
"Din't mean tae keep it from ya." The Child said, playing with hair that was now chestnut, if no cleaner.
Hallow sockets narrowed.
"He din't," The black haired child reaffirmed. "We dun thought it wuz need'd. Ya knows? I tol' him I'd be here always, he let me stay, but we dunt know wut me being here'd do. Wells, we knowed that the split between ya and tha Child was kinda muh fault." Solo looked guiltily between the two.
"But dat split neva hurt us all none! In fact it helped us lots. Lotta weird stuff, like keepen sane when the Church burnt an' Shini came to be our third, surviven through the docs gundam trainen, and we'd neva get sick nows!" The Child spoke up, desperate for the Jester's kinder smile and acceptance. "I din't neva mean tae hurt us."
"Me neither. I's just keepen muh promise tae ya!" Solo looked down. "How's we posed to know queen witch'd come, dat she'd do this an' stuff. 'S why I thought bout leaven ya know?"
"And I did naught but stop your journey. Perhaps this could have been resolved days ago."
"Dun say that!" The Child said, blue eyes glowing fiercely. This time he was the one to hold the other child in an embrace. "I wants him here! I's just... Dun't you have no heart?"
"No sweet child." The Jester smiled thoughtfully. "You hold our heart, remember? You can no more teach me love than I can teach you trust." The lanky fool shook his head. "Never pay mind to that. No, I have a better question, you are so alike, mirrors of each other, how? Who is who and when?"
"Jest like we's all three Duo. Me an' Solo are the same these days ya know? We's tha same mind an stuff."
"So you were separate at times?" The Jester guessed.
"Unhuh. Still are sumtimes." The Child nodded sliding a sideways glance at the boy who held such an uncanny resemblance to him. "Wuz Solo who fell in luv wit Heero first. I's just kinda fell afta."
The Jester leaned back, and gave the impossible impression of blinking in shock. After a long, thoughtful pause he turned to regard Solo. "Can you even leave?"
"I dun know. I thought bout it lots. Been thinkin I been doen tha same damage as ojo-san, jest slower like, cuz I been invited tae stay, but I been doen it all the same, splitten ya'll up." The black haired ghost shook his head, for his part still looking defiant and humble at once. "I wuz willen to try before.. but.."
A familiar chill swept over the three, cutting off whatever the ghost was going to say. Shinigami stepped out of the shadows, red eyes narrowed at Solo for an instant before turning to face the source of the cold.
The Jester put his hands on his hips. "You knew?" he asked the silent specter.
"Heh Death be knowen more den he ever tell." The Child said, returning the nod in unison with Solo. "We's got a bigger problem anyway right now. Big, blond and batty 's on her way."
The two children shared a glance with identical, bright blue eyes, and in an instant Solo was gone, as if he was just another fragmented illusion of Duo's overly creative mind. The Child once again had the familiar shape the Jester had known since the plague.
"We go scrap now," the Child said, returning the Jester's regard with quite a bit more composure.
"Agreed, we reclaim what's ours." The Jester nodded, following the other two, murmuring to himself. "But then we truly need to exchange words when things are not so dire."
TBC
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