14-Feb-2006
Title: Launch 11/?
Author: TB
Archive: GWA and brother_maxwell/TB_home_page.html
Category: yaoi
Pairing: 3x4, 2
Disclaimer: The characters and plot of Gundam Wing are used without
permission and definitely without profit.
Notes: Actual plot ahead, matey. Quatre's theme song is Kasey
Chamber's "Am
I Not Pretty Enough," though with more masculine, less whingy singing.
Spoilers: EW and the show.
Summary: Part 11: The plotting with Mariemaia sees some fruition. Duo
and Quatre say some things that needed to be said, however painful.
Wufei turned away from the spotting scope peeking carefully between the plastic window blinds of their fifteenth-floor apartment. 'Night shift engaged,' he reported. 'Everyone's out who's scheduled to leave.'
Trowa finished cleaning his back-up Glock, and wiped it down with a silicone cloth before sliding it into the holster at the small of his back. 'Suit up,' he ordered, and the men around them burst into movement. Trowa left his perch on the double bed and joined Wufei at the window to look out at their target.
It was squat and disarmingly unassuming, for a prison. Trowa knew better than Wufei how ridiculously easy it was to break in, but they weren't concerned with a single entry and clean getaway tonight. Zaporozhye was no sleepy backwater, but the Zhovtnevy Sector, primarily administrative, shut down at seven. The prison that held Mariemaia Khushrenada- once a fort, and an antiquated one at that- engaged its night shift at nine. They had waited until ten to be sure they wouldn't have any surprises to deal with.
The six men and four women behind Trowa who were dressing rapidly for combat were drawn entirely from the troops who had been hand-selected as Dekim Barton's officer corps. They were personally known to both Wufei and himself. Five had been in White Fang before they'd gone to Barton. Tonight, they were all Preventers.
They wore stolen uniforms and false ID badges. The patches on the left shoulder of their flak jackets were the same as the one on Wufei's, the same that Trowa wore himself. Their black beanies with the cuffs pulled low over the forehead were embossed with the same logo, the six-sided polygram and stylized "P." Their weaponry, supplied unknowingly by Preventer stores, was all registered to the HQ in London. It had taken Wufei time and a lot of effort to quietly stock up even the little that they had scraped together for this part of the mission, but looking at their troop, Trowa knew in his bones it would work. Trowa looked at the excitement in their faces, the adrenaline thrumming beneath the professionalism. He found he was smirking, and was careful to wipe all expression from his face before he turned back to the window.
'No unnecessary bloodshed,' Wufei told them all, as they turned expectant faces toward their leaders. 'Our mission is to free Khushrenada, to be seen and not captured. Catalonia, I leave it to you to impress our hostages with our statement of purpose.'
With her lustrous blonde hair hidden beneath her cap and her pointed chin jutting a fierce counterpoint to her wide blue eyes, Dorothy Catalonia was recognisable only to someone who already knew who he was looking at. Trowa would have known her anywhere by the aristocratic lay of her slender hand on her cocked hip. By the zeal in every line of her body. She said, 'I think they'll be very impressed.'
Not for the first time, Trowa thought with distaste that Dorothy Catalonia was probably psychotic. If her flaws ever outweighed her usefulness to their revolution, he would be happy to take charge of removing her from the face of the planet.
Wufei, oblivious to his partner's thoughts, was nodding crisply. 'Smooth, and quick,' he asserted one final time, and snapped the blinds closed. His face set somewhere between anticipation and satisfaction, he finished, 'For Khushrenada.'
'Aye, sir!' their troop shouted, saluting to a man. Even Catalonia, who met Trowa's eyes as her hand lifted lazily to her brow.
Quatre could hear Duo thinking from the other bed. There were no restless movements, no grunts or grumbles. It was the lack of those more than anything that told him to anticipate the moment. He had to wait much longer for it than he expected to, but Duo was unsettled, that much he could sense, and whatever it was was not going to come easily or happily.
Quatre had been staring at the dimly visible blades of their overhead fan for perhaps two hours, just waiting for it, when Duo suddenly broke the silence. He said, 'Can I ask you something?'
Part of him answered, Finally. Part of him dreading speaking at all. The rest was only resigned. It didn't matter. They had reached that hour of the night where you could only tell the truth, however much it would ache in the morning. 'Trowa,' he murmured.
'Yeah.'
'Don't be angry with him for not being here. I'm not.'
'I don't know what you see in him. I really don't. I think you're wasting a lot of love.'
Quatre winced at that. 'I didn't know. You really don't like him.'
There was a long, thoughtful quiet at that. Duo huffed a little and said, 'I respect him.'
'Do you?' Quatre wondered. Probably not for the same things Quatre did. Quite possibly Duo was thinking of things Quatre knew nothing about. In the end, Duo knew almost as much about Trowa as Quatre did, which, in all honesty, wasn't all that much. Quatre closed his eyes, draped his arm over his forehead. With the weight of it pressing there, he said, 'You're worried that I idolise him, or something. That I think he's some... wounded baby bird that I'm trying to rescue.'
There was a tinge of reproach in the spring air. The curtains waved gently in the corner of his vision, a flicker of lace and cream. 'Aren't you?' Duo whispered.
He pressed harder with his arm, then let it drop back to his side. 'I think I was the bird. I don't know. I wish I could show you what he was like the first time I met him. Just fearless. He surrendered to me, without ever giving up a damn thing. He made me feel like a supplicant.' He thought back to those days in the desert of the Sudan, a very long time ago now, days that had taken on a rosy quality. A wistful little bleed. 'I thought he resented me because of all my nice things. I would have given him any of it. All of it. None of it mattered to me, but it always seemed to matter to him, in this nagging little way. We were so- young. It's like I can see exactly how it should have gone, exactly the path I could have taken to make him happy, but...'
'All that guilt must get pretty heavy,' Duo muttered cynically.
It prompted a grin from Quatre, though a sheepish one. The fan rotated overhead, soundlessly. 'You're a one-note instrument, my friend.'
'Do you ever want to go back to Space?'
He gave that deep thought, though the answer that had leapt immediately to his lips was the same answer he came up with some minutes later. 'Desperately,' he said, and his throat felt close and tight, and there was wet heat in his eyes. He waited for it to go away. 'But I can't. Not yet. Too much happened there. I did horrible things there.'
'Zero,' Duo guessed.
'Not just Zero.' He made himself swallow. 'Zero is a lot of it. But Zero didn't make the hate in me.'
'You attacked Trowa while you were using Zero,' Duo said. It sounded like a question, but it wasn't, and Quatre didn't know how he was expected to answer. There was no shifting at all in the other bed, but he could feel Duo's agitation, a steady burn of current between them.
'Yes,' he said finally. 'He jettisoned. He was almost out of air when they found him. The Sweepers. Heero kept me from going after him, even after I... realised what I'd done.'
'Do you know what they were doing out there? Why they were there when you attacked the colony?'
Quatre opened his mouth, but had nothing to say. He didn't know. Not really.
'He was forcing Heero to test the Mercurius. He was hip-deep in his cover. If they'd told him to, do you think he wouldn't have killed Heero? You know he would have. You know what he did to my partner.'
Deathscythe. All these years later, and it still hurt Duo to say the name of a dead comrade.
'He was doing the best he knew how to do,' Quatre said. 'None of us got out without mistakes. It was just us five. We were only kids. What did any of us know?'
'Yeah?' Duo's low voice had bitterness in it, and Quatre felt ashamed hearing it, wishing he knew how to erase it, how to replace it with the things men their age were supposed to feel, things that didn't scar so deep. 'Trowa doesn't have a problem going back into Space.'
He couldn't heal with a touch. He couldn't make it vanish by waving money at it. He wished he could. He lay there, aching for Duo, for the part of himself that agreed.
Trowa fired, registering the kick-back of his Colt and the impact to his assailant in precise order. The beer-bellied security guard hit the ground with a moan, clutching his thigh where red began to spurt from an artery as if from a hose. Trowa watched him bleed and writhe for a moment, trying to decide whether to help him or let him die. The guard's companion, who had thrown up his hands in surrender when Trowa and Martinez broke into the room, looked between them, grown pale and frightened.
'Move on,' Trowa told Martinez, his decision made only seconds later. 'I'll secure these two and follow.'
Angelina Martinez nodded her acceptance, and backed out of the rec room, her rifle at ready and her footsteps making less noise than a breeze. Trowa crouched beside the man he'd shot, keeping his Colt on the one in the corner, behind the small dining table littered with the remains of a late-night snack. Careful to keep his boots far from the edge of the spreading pool of blood his bullet had created, Trowa popped the snap of the dying man's holster, and drew out the guard's Kahr MK40. He slipped it into an inside pocket, and rose from his crouch. He motioned the unharmed guard into a corner, and followed him with a pair of Preventers-issue handcuffs. He secured the older man to the radiator along the wall, hands behind his back and laced through the piping. He relieved the guard of his weapon, and turned back to the one on the floor.
Bleeding out. Trowa stared at him for a moment, and said, 'For whatever it's worth, I'm sorry.' He aimed again, ignoring the plea from behind him and the wheeze from below, and fired a second shot.
He walked out without looking back at the rec room's single living occupant.
They didn't talk again until, sometime a little longer into the night, the hurt faded off into weary. Quatre replayed those old battles in the flinders they came in, making no effort to direct the flow of his broken memories of that age. Waiting for the anger time to pass. When it felt safe and companionable once again, he asked the dark blob of the wainscoted ceiling, 'Do you ever think about what happened to Heero?'
Duo's soft sigh was his answer. 'I try not to,' the other man admitted. 'But yeah.'
'Me, too.'
The silences between them were getting longer. They were both tired. But Quatre could hear the impulse, the pained hope, when Duo suddenly added, 'Do you think he's dead?'
'No,' Quatre told him confidently, an assurance that felt more absolute in the dark of night than it often did during the day. 'I would know.'
'How?'
He squirmed onto his side, creating a little pull and pain in his chest, stuffing one of the limp down pillows a little under his ribs. He thought about how to explain for a long time before he did. 'During the war,' he said. 'The wars. I felt... connected. To Heero. From practically the first time I saw him. I think it was New Edwards. I'm not sure anymore. But it was always him.'
He thought the silence this time was Duo digesting that. 'I like to think that he's out there. Living a normal life. Being happy. Being a nobody.' Another long patch of quiet. 'I used to think, he's like what I would have felt if I were in OZ and I met Khushrenada. You know? The centre of it. Like he was...'
'Like he made it so you could keep believing what you need to believe,' Quatre finished. 'Like he was- an epitome, or something. Everything you wanted to save and everything that was wrong, all wrapped up in a boy-warrior who could do anything.'
The blurry green display of the alarm clock showed three-twenty-six. Quatre looked at it for a long time before it resolved into any kind of sense, and realised he was sleepy.
'Did you love him?' he asked softly.
The almost-sigh of the sheets on skin floated through the room. 'Not like you mean,' Duo said. 'I'm not gay.'
'I know.' Quatre stared at the opposite bed. 'I just thought... I don't know. You and Heero, you had something. Chemistry, I guess.'
'I think maybe I just understood him.'
Understood him. Not got him; not wanted him; just accepted and cherished him for what he was, sullen, lethal, damaged. Duo was good at understanding. Quatre wished he had half of Duo's gift for it- didn't know he'd said that aloud until Duo chuckled.
'You've got your own thing,' his friend told him in torpid contentment.
When Quatre thought to say 'Good night,' Duo was already asleep.
Trowa felt the vibration of his comm at his hip, and released it from its clip on his belt. 'Barton,' he said into its tiny microphone.
'We're secured,' Wufei reported. 'Ready for release.'
Cameron and Kozlova arrived in the corridor in time to hear that. They wore identical grins.
'Copy,' Trowa said into his comm. He thumbed a second frequency, and said, 'Report, Pryce.'
'Transport ready, Captain.'
He slipped the comm back to his belt, and nodded to the two soldiers who had joined him. 'Join Pryce outside with the van. We're ready to go.' Both saluted- Trowa reflected he could learn to hate that- and took off down the corridor at a jog. Trowa fingered his comm, his one worry about the op returning full-force. Catalonia hadn't reported in yet.
He had just convinced himself to go looking for her when she appeared behind him. Her cap was crooked, long golden hairs escaping it. She'd removed it. He was suddenly furious with her carelessness, and it took a great deal of effort to keep himself from snapping at her. She seemed to see his internal struggle, and her wide eyes mocked him. Dared him.
'Message sent,' she told him archly. 'Shall I tell Chang, or would you rather surprise him?'
He eased his hand away from its grip on his holstered Colt. 'He'll see it with the rest of them,' he muttered. 'Time to retreat, Catalonia.'
But she didn't. Instead, she leaned into him, close enough that he could smell sweat and excitement on her. She whispered, 'I've followed better men than you, Barton; but I have to wonder- if we would have won, Zechs and I, if you had lead instead of him.'
She stared up at him, and he met her gaze without flinching. 'I don't wonder,' he told her flatly. He stepped back deliberately, and turned his back on her. 'I know,' he added, as he walked away.
Mariemaia Barton sat in a place of honour on packing crates draped with blankets inside the large, black Preventer van that Wufei had appropriated for their operation. When Trowa swung into the back and fell into a squat not far from her, she favoured him with a small, tense smile.
'You have my thanks,' she informed him quietly. 'You've done well tonight.'
'This is only the beginning,' he corrected her, palming his Colt and replacing the half-empty clip with a full one. 'Keep your thanks until we're out of the parking lot, at least.'
Wufei knocked on the plastic partition separating the cab from the van's eleven passengers. 'Ready?' he called.
Catalonia appeared at the van doors that instant, leaping light-footed onto the bed and pulling the doors closed behind her. 'We're go, Captain,' she said.
Wufei heard, and had the engine on in an instant. Martinez reached out to steady Mariemaia as they jolted forward, into a wide turn. Trowa concentrated on the feel of acceleration beneath the soles of his boots, waiting for them to hit an acceptable velocity. When he judged them to be out of the lot and well away from the prison, he sought Dorothy's eyes in the dark. When their gazes met, he nodded once.
She held up a detonator, and pressed the button.
The explosion was massive enough that they heard it even from the highway. Wufei, at the wheel, swerved abruptly. Voices erupted about Trowa, as each soldier demanded what had happened, some even scrambling unwisely to peer out of the tinted windows.
'What was that?' Wufei demanded. 'Barton!'
But it was Mariemaia who caught his eyes this time. She was smiling. She adjusted the lay of her blazer, and rested her hands on her unfeeling legs.
'It is begun,' she said calmly.
Quatre woke up.
A soft sigh from his left told him that Duo was still asleep. He rolled his head to look, waiting until his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Duo's face resolved into a pale half-moon of flesh, eventually separating into gentle shadows of eyes, nose, lips. The almost-silent breathing from the other bed was a comforting rhythm.
Quatre eased his covers aside, and slipped out of the bed. He was vaguely proud of his stealth as he padded quick-footed to the bathroom, to collect a still-damp wetsuit from its drape over the sink. The sitting room was warmer than the bedroom, though a little breeze tickled him as he passed the open windows. He snagged a bottle of water from the bar, and turned back to look at the bedroom.
Duo had never so much as stirred. Quatre grinned to himself, and left their rooms.
The lobby was curiously empty, but the ornate bronze clock above the desk showed it was half-five. It was nothing to walk right out the back doors onto the deck, and from there to the beach. He hesitated for a moment there, at the edge of the hotel's bright lights, facing the chill black expanse of the ocean. The only sound was the distant roar of waves on the jetty, slapping against the dock hundreds of yards away. It was like standing inside the hollow thunder of a conch shell.
He turned to his right, and angled himself so that soon he was walking in damp sand at the edge of the tide, but progressing further and further away from the hotel, the docks, and the marina. He had never walked in this direction before, had no idea where the curve of the shore would take him. When he thought to glance behind to see how far he had gone, he was surprised to discover the hotel had shrunk to a tiny star-like perch in the night.
A long, bright series of clicks ending on a whistle split the air. Quatre grinned, and stopped walking. A moment later, on the tail of a second penny-whistle screech, a silvery fin topped water, and then a dolphin leapt from the surf, crashing down with a squeal that was like audible joy.
Quatre worked quickly, stripping his pajamas and climbing into the suit, zipping it up to his throat. He kicked his clothes far enough up the sand that he might be able to find them again, and stood shivering in the ocean-cold air. Then he shuffled his bare feet on the sand, and waded into the water. It was still chilly, despite the fine spring weather. When it hit his knees he began to wish he'd bought a full-body suit. His toes were tingling when he reached waist-deep. But he reached out his hands and waited, rocking with the force of waves lapping about his body.
A huge head broke the water and butted his hands. Quatre laughed aloud when a blunt nose rubbed his belly. Even without the moon, he could see the long grey birthmark. It was Albert.
He kept one hand on Albert's rubbery hide, and followed him deeper into the water. He gripped tight to the juncture of Albert's fin just before his feet slipped free of the murky bottom. Manoeuvring himself about to sling an arm across Albert's broad back, he pressed his cheek to the dolphin's warm body. He made no attempt to control their direction, knowing Albert would never allow him to be hurt.
He didn't look back as they left shallow water.
End Part 11
(:./erin/launch11)
