21-Sep-2004
Title: The Color Of Hate 2/??
Author: CleverYoungThief
Rating: R
Warnings: See first chapter warnings.
Archive: GWA
Pairings: None
Genre: Suspense
Timeline: Post One Year War
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Don't sue. College kids are like L2 kids; we got nothin'.
Feedback: Pretty please?
Thanks to: All the reviewers and readers, and the War Room. ^_^
Note: This chapter was - for all intensive purposes - already written, so don't think I'm getting into quick-update mode. After this, I'm actually gonna have to sit down and work with it. ^_^;;
"You gave me this
made me give
Your silver grin
still sticking in
You have soul machine
soul machine... "
--- Bush, Mouth
"Jesus, Duo, you look like shit."
Duo turned and looked at his reflection in the mirror behind him. His hair was barely pulled back in a low ponytail; his face was pale except for the dark circles beneath his eyes. He had spent his whole shuttle ride throwing up. His throat and diaphragm were sore.
"Yeah, well, my shit probably looks better at this point. I feel like I came to make a reservation."
Parker didn't answer, but the medic standing next to him looked distinctly uneasy. Parker knew the younger Preventer's jokes were just his way of coping. He'd gotten used to it. Although the humor did seem more than out of place in the cold, empty morgue. It wasn't as if Maxwell had an audience to laugh at his jokes and goad him on.
"Well, Parker, are we gonna do this, or do I have to freeze to death down here first?"
The medic, which had been standing silently until this point, shivered into life. "Yeah, sure. Over here. I didn't want to rush you."
"Well hell, nobody else here is in any kind of a rush."
Duo followed Parker over to the furthest autopsy table. A covered body sat on it. Duo's eyes caught a few small specks of red on the white sheet and couldn't seem to leave them, drawn to the blood like a magnet.
The medic spoke quietly, respectfully. "He died of a major contusion to the torso. Sword wound. The attacker drove it into his heart. Death was nearly instantaneous, and probably as close to painless as you can get." He shook his head. "A sword. I've never seen anything like it."
"You want to see him now?" Parker asked Duo, softly.
"Yeah."
The medic carefully pulled the sheet down. Duo took one glance and turned away with a jerk, fighting the urge to throw up again, even though there wasn't anything left in his system. "That's him."
"Cover it," Parker told the medic.
"No," Duo interrupted, turning back around. He steeled himself and gazed down at Wufei. In death, the Shenlong pilot's face had attained a hideous stillness, but it was tranquil. Almost dignified. Wufei's black hair-which Duo had never seen down since he knew the man-spilled shining across the cold steel. If it wasn't for the sallow paleness of the Chinese pilot's skin and the awful stillness in him, Duo could have guessed he was just sleeping.
He suddenly saw the black stitches of the autopsy Y across his friend's chest and dragged his eyes back to Wufei's face. The medic tactfully excused himself and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
Finally, Duo looked up at Parker. He loathed the look of pity on the other Preventer's face, and glared at him. Parker's expression quickly slid into a neutral blank slate.
"I want this case, Park."
Parker shook his head. "I don't think so, Duo. We just needed you to ID the body. You can't get involved. You have personal ties with the victim."
Victim... I never thought I'd ever hear anybody call Wufei that.
Duo glared. "That only applies to family, Park, and you know it. So don't fuck with me."
"What other family do you have, Maxwell?"
He had a point.
"You're right. Wufei Chang was a buddy of mine, like a brother. And that's why I want this case," Duo repeated. He looked at the older Preventer with an expression that left absolutely no room for discussion. "I'm the best guy we got in Homicide Division. I want whoever did this to go down, Parker. I want to get this guy."
A scowl crossed Parker's face, and he crossed his arms over his chest, as if defending himself. "I know all about your methods of 'getting' someone, Maxwell. And I don't need this to turn into some kind of vigilante mission."
"I swear to God I'll play by the books," Duo lied, easily. Convincingly. "But I ain't taking no for an answer. Now give me some fucking background, so I have something to work with."
"The sword was a Gan Jiang-"
"Why the hell would you tell me about the sword?"
Parker glared. "If you want me to tell you, shut up. If not, I'll send your ass back starside and you can read about it in the papers. I'm sure they'll come up with something really cute for the headline. The Samurai Suicides, or something. Okay?"
Duo glared back, unable to resist a last word. "Samurai are Japanese, Parker, not Chinese."
And it wasn't a suicide. It was a murder.
Parker ignored him. "Our first impression was that Wufei Chang had been doing work with Fa Dao, and that this was an illegal arms deal gone sour. The sword used on the victim was a Gan Jiang. Priceless, Maxwell. Only a handful of them on earth, and Fa Dao just happened to own one. Best we could figure, Chang murdered Dao, stole the sword, and somebody wanted it back enough to kill him for it. But it doesn't add up."
"Yeah, for one, my friend wasn't a fucking arms dealer, Parker."
"Besides that, they left the sword. And the perp left a note." Parker scowled. "Chang wasn't killed for that weapon."
"What did the note say?"
"'For Treize.'"
Duo closed his eyes, running a hand across his face. "Oh, fuck. Great. One of my friends was killed by a sword-wielding loony who's still pissed over the war."
"I don't think so, Maxwell. There was another sword found in the cabin that had blood on it. The blood wasn't Chang's. Looks like they were going at each other with them, and Chang didn't go down easy. Some nut could have just as easily gotten a gun and blown the guy's brains out while he was asleep; I don't think your everyday psycho would go through the trouble of stealing a priceless sword to challenge Chang to a duel. It was calculated. I'd almost say gangland killing."
He wouldn't go down easy, would he? Duo walked over to the wall and leaned on it, crossing his ankles as he bowed his head in thought. "Have we got a DNA ID yet?"
"No. The perp is an FNF. File not found."
"You're shitting me."
Parker shook his head. "Not only that, the guy left fingerprints everywhere. But they're not in the database, either. The weirdest fucking thing I've ever seen."
Duo scowled. "I thought everyone got their DNA and fingerprints put in Interpol when they're kids?"
"They do. That's why it's weird."
"But couldn't someone just hack Interpol and delete their info?"
Parker looked at him as if he had grown a second snarling head. "Duo, you don't 'just hack' Interpol. It's the single most highly protected computer network on the planet or in the colonies. You should know that much, at least. It'd be easier to hack into the Pentagon database than Interpol."
Duo shrugged, smiling grimly. Interpol was nothing to him; Parker's reverence of it under the circumstances seemed almost morbidly comical. "Yeah, well, I hacked it plenty of times back during... " He trailed off.
"What?"
"That's it," Duo whispered, eyes narrowed. He glanced up at Harper. "Nothing. Keep going. Thinking to myself."
Parker raised an eyebrow. "Well, by all means, share."
"It's nothing. If it turns into something, I'll let you know." He laughed suddenly, unable to help himself. The situation was just too surreal. He was sitting here playing detective while one of the best friends he ever had lay dead on a table just a few yards away. You didn't know whether to laugh or scream.
Duo chose laughter, as usual. Boys didn't cry, after all. He walked back towards the door; the smell of the embalming fluid was getting to him. He stumbled into the corner of a medicine cabinet and grimaced as he pushed the door open.
"Where are you going, Maxwell?"
"I need sleep. Failing that, I need coffee."
"Maxwell, wake up. We're here."
Duo opened his eyes groggily. He reached for his cup of coffee in the cupholder out of instinct, took a swallow, then made a face as he realized that it wasn't even lukewarm anymore. He put the cup down and looked out the passenger-side window of the car.
The small cabin where Wufei had been killed was shrouded by mountain mist. It was picturesque, almost beautiful, despite the fact that it looked dilapidated and worn; Duo couldn't imagine that such a violent killing had happened there. A band of yellow police tape crossed the open doorway.
"That's where he's been living?"
"According to the locals," Parker replied, opening the door. Duo opened his own and stepped out onto the cool grass. "He didn't go down into the town very often."
"That much I can believe," Duo said softly. He started walking towards the cabin's porch. A cold wind that promised snow blew against him, and somehow he felt the hairs at the back of his neck prickling, as if he could still sense Wufei's spirit lurking around on this lonely mountain. It was all too easy to imagine him up here all alone, living as wild and silent as an animal.
But someone hunted him down, Solo whispered in his ear, a presence that never really left him.
Why would anyone want to kill Wufei?
He was a Gundam pilot, Solo answered in his head, amused. Do you need a list?
Duo shook the feeling off, tried to be professional about all of it. He climbed the stairs to the rickety porch and stopped at the top of them, instinctively shifting his weight, stepping forward slowly, rolling his feet.
"What are you doing?"
"Shh." Duo walked across the floor, feeling for all the weak spots in the wood, the parts of the porch that would cry out in protest if he stepped on them. Somehow, an eternity later, he made it to the doorway. He settled and turned around to look at Parker, who was staring at him strangely.
"And the purpose of that little exhibition in stealth was?"
Duo leaned against the wall of the cabin. "That no normal perp could have snuck up on Wufei Chang from the front door. He's practically got a nightingale floor here. He'd hear someone coming after him even if he was asleep. Unless it was a skilled assassin. So that kind of knocks off the whole lunatic theory, doesn't it?"
Without waiting for an answer, he glanced inside the doorway. "How did the hikers find him? What were they doing here?"
Parker had followed him up on the porch. Duo could hear every step, and even under the circumstances, it made him smile. "The guys who found him wanted directions to the temple at the peak. They saw that the door had been left open, so they walked in. Chang was lying in the floor. Your buddy didn't have a phone, so they had to hike all the way back down the mountain to call a police. One of them stayed with him," he added, softly.
He would have wanted to be alone, Duo thought. He sighed. "How long had he been dead?"
"He was almost still warm. So not long."
Duo pulled a utility knife out of his pocket and cut the police tape, watching it flutter to the edge of the doorway as he stepped through. He noted a light dusting of powder in the room. "Has forensics been through here?"
"Yeah. They're the ones who picked up all the fingerprints we found that are absolutely fucking useless."
Duo walked across the room, eyes constantly moving, careful of the blood in the floor. He tried to feel like the killer, taking in everything. "What else did they find?"
"Half-eaten bowl of rice with the perp's fingerprints all over it. Same thing for a mug of tea. Another mug had Chang's prints on it. So what do you think?"
Duo laughed, softly. Dangerously. "Chang knew him. Chang knew the bastard. Fuck you, Parker, why didn't you tell me that earlier?"
His superior's voice was neutral. "I wanted to see what you thought."
"Don't play games with me, Park. You'll lose." He looked at the overturned table and chairs. "They fought here. Fought in the goddamned living room. What else did the CSI guys find?"
"They took the two swords, the mugs, and the bowl as evidence. But a lot of fucking good they are, for an FNF. As far as they can tell, all the know is that the perp is male, and of mixed ethnicity, from the genetic markers."
"Yeah, him and half of the other people on the planet and in the colonies." Duo kneeled on the floor, ghosting his hand in the air above the blood. "There's more here. The guy beat him, then finished him off. Right here."
And Wuffers let him, Solo added.
Shut up.
You know he did. Hell, if the guy let him go, Chang probably would have killed himself.
Shut up!!
"Earth to Maxwell."
Duo straightened up and looked at Parker, smiling. A Shinigami grin. "So, what we got so far is, Chang must have known the guy, right? He sat down and had tea with him. So the perp didn't have to sneak in and catch him. I think the perp was here first. He waited until Chang got back, talked with him. They fought and the perp won, killed him here right in the middle of the fucking living room. It was premeditated. A duel."
For Treize.
He walked back towards the door, feelings rushing up on him all at once. He had to get out of there. And get a cigarette, if possible. "So have our guys on the lookout for a mix-breed hacker with war ties and some serious training. Meanwhile, I gotta talk to the others."
"The others?"
"Winner, Barton, and Yuy. One psycho going after Chang could decide to make hunting Gundam pilots a trend. I want them to know what's going down."
"Yuy." Parker's voice was cold as he followed the younger Preventer out. "You know where Yuy is?"
"I have no idea," Duo replied softly, walking to the car. "Haven't seen him since the end of the war. Sent him plenty of email, but I've never got a response." Truth was, he hadn't really seen any of them after the war.
Quatre had immediately gone to work restructuring Winner Enterprises. He emailed Quatre every once in awhile, just to keep up, but to be honest, with all the death and danger Duo still saw every day, Quatre's descriptions of hostile takeovers and board meetings were tame to him. And with their respective backgrounds, they never really had much in common, besides the Gundams.
The first time he heard Quatre's voice in almost a year was when the blond pilot called him on his cell phone on his way to the airport, asking if he knew anything about Wufei.
He had felt the other pilot's murder in his sleep.
Trowa had gone back to the circus at L3, and Duo had seen it a few times, out of curiosity. But while Quatre tried to keep in touch with both of them as much as possible, Trowa barely acknowledged either him or Duo at all. When the Heavyarms pilot saw Duo sitting in the stands for the first time, Trowa looked him square in the eye, give him a slight nod, and preceded to pretend he had never seen him at all.
They accepted what they had been, and went their separate ways. Duo thought that prisoners meeting on the outside might react the same way.
"But he'll always be 03," Duo whispered, leaning against the passenger-side window.
"What, Maxwell?"
"Nothing."
In... out... in... out...
Slowly, methodically, Heero Yuy weaved clear stitching thread in and out of his flesh, his face completely impassive as he sewed the gaping wound across his shoulder closed. Wufei might have been alone up in the mountain, fighting nothing but the shadows of his old demons, but he had kept his sword as sharp as a razor.
When he had closed the wound, he bit the thread free and turned back to his laptop, typing with his good arm. He would have to lay low for a few days before continuing his Mission. He would have to be in prime condition for each objective; otherwise, there was a chance he could fail. Failure was unacceptable.
find: shinigami_kid.obj
The laptop flashed back:
mission not found
"Hn."
find: apocalypse&finalmission*shinigami_kid.obj
FOUND
The screen scrolled rapidly. Dated pictures flew across the screen. News articles. Addresses, phone numbers, bank accounts.
go to command level
J
010/#xy/67&
/*TARGETS/
dragon
STATUS: ELIMINATED
/*remaining
Include: sandprince
STATUS: ACTIVE
Include: lion
STATUS: ACTIVE
Include: reaper
STATUS: ACTIVE
Include: wing
STATUS: PURSUIT
End Part 2
(:./cyt/hate2)
