June 1998
Quatre gazed out pensively over the landscape from the cave ledge and heaved another sigh. His heart-shaped face was strained, blue eyes seeming a bit more faded. He drew his knee up and clasped it in his hands, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth.
"Ne, Duo..."
"...you wonder where Trowa is?" the brown-haired pilot finished, his voice uncharacteristically a trifle sour.
Quatre glanced up, his eyes wide and startled. "H-how’d you –" He flushed bright red.
Duo smiled at him, the expression worn around the edges but still amused. "You’ve only wondered about twelve or so times today, Quatre. And you sigh every time."
"Ah...souka..." Quatre ducked his head, embarrassed.
Duo chuckled, the sound a little more genuine now. "It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Quatre-kun. You care about him, don’t you?"
Quatre’s cheeks were still faintly pink. "H-hai."
Duo glanced out over the forested slopes. He’d figured out weeks ago that the Arabian pilot obviously had a major crush on Trowa, and just as obviously nothing had happened between them. But Quatre was lucky – at least Trowa – at least...
At least Trowa was alive.
Duo was the one who sighed this time, scraping his bangs back from his forehead. He stood up abruptly, leaving Quatre behind to ponder the green beauty of Earth while he returned to the giant silence of Deathscythe. Almost absentmindedly, he picked up the toolkit to make a few unnecessary adjustments and repairs. Might as well spend the time on his gundam. The only thing he had, now -- silence...death... since Heero had...
"K’so!" Duo cursed loudly and viciously as he sliced his hand open on the sharp edge of the tool.
"Nani?" Quatre jogged over, and frowned when he saw the blood. "Oi, Duo, what a nasty cut! Here -- let me help."
The golden-haired boy tore apart one of the clean rags flung over the tool kit and used the strips to carefully bind up the wound. A little blood stained his fingers as he finished, casting a critical eye over the makeshift bandage.
"Thanks," Duo muttered uncomfortably, trying not to inhale the clean sweet scent of the boy so close to him, bent over his hand.
"Dou itashimashite."
Initially to ease the yawing cavern of loss that wracked him, he’d entertained thoughts of seducing this blue-eyed innocent, tumbling him into bed in hopes of erasing a different pair of blue eyes – cobalt, intense, perfect – his perfect soldier. Self-destructed now. Such a perfect soldier.
But Quatre was so obviously gone on the notion of Trowa that he hadn’t the heart to do it. Oh, he knew if he played it right he could pull it off and have Quatre thanking him for the experience – but the whole thought of it seemed empty Like ashes in his mouth, he had no taste for taking advantage of Quatre like that. Especially when his only thought would be of Heero. That, perhaps, was what rankled the most.
It had been two months, at least. And he’d forgotten the taste of Heero’s lips. His skin. The feel of silken strong muscles under his hands, the feel of his body beneath him...
Duo closed his eyes.
He wished he could forget *faster.*
"Duo? Is something wrong?"
The American pilot opened his eyes and gave Quatre a wide, maddeningly cheerful smile that trembled on the knife’s edge of hysteria. "Nothing. Nothing at all."
He reached out, smoothed his undamaged hand over Quatre’s cheek.
Quatre’s eyes flew open wide. "Duo!?"
Again Duo considered it, and regretfully concluded that it just wasn’t worth it. Heero’s name still beat through every neuron in his brain – and even if Quatre wouldn’t know the difference, *he* would. And anyway – one quick tumble and the golden-haired boy would probably try to switch his affections from Trowa to *him,* or get confused between them. The last thing he needed was more guilt.
"When you tell him – and you *have* to tell him! -- make sure you never let him go. *Never.*" Duo’s tone was unexpectedly fierce.
Quatre’s mouth firmed. He nodded once, briefly. "I promise." His blue eyes darkened a little, with a hint of sympathy. "Duo? I’m sorry."
Duo shook his head and turned away. "Don’t be." It’s hard to lose what you’ve never really had in the first place, he told himself bitterly.
Tomorrow, he and Quatre would strike for the spaceport, load up their Gundams in the huge cargo plane and make for the colonies. He could lose himself, in the vast expanse of the colonies and mile upon mile of emptiness. But he didn’t think he could shake free of the hollow interstices Heero had left behind.
"Heero..."
The one fuzzed word, thick with disbelief, escaped him before he cut off his intercom with a desperate jab. "Heero—Heero...not dead...?"
Wing Gundam had joined in the fray, Wing Gundam flanked by Gundam Heavyarms intent on the same mission – striking out for space. All five of them, joined in one mind. Wing Gundam was here. *Heero* was here. Here! *Alive*!
He was abruptly, shockingly rocked with a wave of hurt, and a confused sort of betrayal, underlaid with a pervasive sense of relief. "Not dead," he breathed, then strained against Shinigami’s battle harness. "You bastard! Where the hell have you been for three months!? You let me think you were dead!"
Even in the middle of the battle, surrounded by Leos, blasting and slicing away as usual, Duo was stopped short by the sight of Wing Gundam. At first it was like a mirage, a wavery sort of apparition sliced through again and again with the overlay of artillery barrage from the other mobile suits, but when the gundam didn’t waver and vanish under the firepower, Duo began to realize that it wasn’t some kind of cruel trick of the light. Heero was here. He really was here.
"You bastard!" he screamed again, glad that the radio was dead so he could rail away at the insensitive jerk who’d let him think he was dead for three months.
Three months was a damned long time. He’d been in *mourning*. He’d felt like shit. It had been one of the worst points in his life...and even worse, he’d kept up his customary cheer to allow Quatre to think nothing was wrong. "Shit. Why did I ever waste three months crying over *you*, kisama? Can’t even be bothered to tell me you’re alive, can you!?"
"Nani, Duo?"
Heero’s voice was flat and cold. Abruptly Duo realized that he’d forgotten to switch off the visuals, so Heero could see him ranting away, even if he couldn’t hear him. He bit his lip. Um...Heero could read lips, too.
"K’so," he muttered, staring at the tiny image of Heero’s face lit up on the side of Shinigami’s cockpit. "Nothing you’d understand, damn you. You wouldn’t recognize a feeling if it bit you in the ass."
He shook his head furiously, cutting off all communication channels as he pivoted to mentally re-enter the fray. But Heero wouldn’t leave his thoughts.
Space.
Just as well they were going into space. It matched the gaping emptiness in his own chest.
Quatre’s chest felt tight. With exhilaration, or the flush of battle that pumped through his body, he wasn’t sure. But the beat circulating from heels to temples thrumming in his blood had begun with the sight of Heavyarms, followed by Wing Gundam.
Trowa.
He could see Trowa again.
The battle raged fast and furious around them. Quatre locked blades with a Leo, his giant twin crescents cutting apart the smaller mobile suit easily, into four pieces that collapsed to the ground belching flames.
The fight was not going well – they were hard-pressed, soon to be overtaken.
He wasn’t sure at what point he realized a sacrifice would have to be made, to ensure that at least *some* of them made it up into space. But the Leos were overwhelming them in sheer numbers – and Sandrock – his Sandrock was dying. The lights flashed all through the cockpit, alerting Quatre to his gundam’s imminent doom.
Well, if Sandrock was going to go anyway, he might as well make it worth it.
"All right, Sandrock," he murmured. At least his own death could clear the path for everyone else.
Quatre emptied the last of his ammunition into the approaching mobile suits. He’d do it for Heero, who was somehow miraculously alive, and shouldn’t have to die again to buy them the time. He’d do it for Duo, who’d been his friend and companion for the past few months – and deserved a chance to tell Heero his feelings. And Trowa...
The blond pilot shook his head. Trowa would never know, but maybe things were better this way. Why would someone like aloof, self-sufficient Trowa accept the feelings of a weak little pacifist trying to prove himself, so that his family couldn’t call him unmanly?
Quatre bit his lip. Not even the Maganac fighters knew.
Now he’d keep it that way. He flipped a switch, calmly preparing for his death. The four other pilots had cleared out quickly, recognizing the strange keen of Sandrock’s aerodynamics and realizing what he was trying to do.
The cockpit swung open.
"Sandrock?" Quatre blurted incredulously. "Are you – are you trying to tell me to go?"
As he swung down on the grappling line, his heart was strangely heavy. He wasn’t dead – but that only meant he still carried these burdens. Even without his gundam, there was still a war to be fought And his battles numbered more than one.
He watched as Sandrock continued to tread ponderously towards the base, then turned and made a dash for one of the spacecraft. He would have to be quick – Wufei and Heero were already gone, but Duo and Trowa were still hanging around the launch pad for some reason.
"Trowa!" he waved, sprinting up. "Trowa, I’m so glad you’re here!"
The thin-sculpted features of the taller pilot were impassive as he turned, already suited up for deep space. "Quatre," he uttered, his tone soft and somewhat surprised.
The roar of blasters shook the air, and Quatre squinted as Duo’s ship took off.
"Trowa...yokatta, I knew we’d see each other again," he smiled, but the expression trembled a little. Sandrock...his Sandrock was gone. How could he call himself a gundam pilot, when he had no mobile suit?
Trowa ducked his head. "We have to leave."
"I know," he replied, then stepped anxiously towards Trowa. Duo had said...*you have to tell him*! This might be his only chance.
Trowa’s green eyes lighted on him as he closed the distance, hesitant and perhaps a bit wary. Quatre flushed. "Trowa, I wanted to tell you something before we left."
Trowa shifted the helmet under his arm. "Nani, Quatre?"
*I...I want to go with you...* "I...this!" he finally blurted, covering the rest of their distance in two hasty steps and throwing himself into it before he could think of it, arching upward to frame Trowa’s lean face in his hands and kiss the thin sensitive lips.
Trowa’s eyes were wide when he at last stepped back. Then they hardened, and Trowa raised his free hand...wiping at his lips. He turned his head. "I’m sorry, Quatre."
Knives. No, hacksaws.
"S-sorry?" Quatre faltered.
Trowa turned away from him, walking up the ramp into the ship. "Gomen. Heero has already taken that away from me. I can’t, Quatre."
Quatre remained frozen, still tasting Trowa’s saltiness on his lips until the blast of the engines startled him, and the high-pitched keening of Sandrock’s death cry. Tears slipped unnoticed from his eyes as he ran flat-out for a ship of his own.
Duo opened his eyes slowly. He was in space near the colonies...no.
Chigau yo. That’d already happened. He’d been overwhelmed by a new type of mobile suit, so damned fast...
He felt weightless, but he knew he was no longer safe inside Deathscythe. He felt cold, but he knew it wasn’t the cold of space. And the pain – that was all too entirely real. So, he was alive then.
He remembered being dragged between two soldiers, manhandled into an unlit cell.
His eyes fluttered against the light, pupils contracting painfully in revolt as the brilliance flared over senses that had been deadened with long immersion in the darkness. "N-nani?" he grumbled half-heartedly, realizing that his last reserves of adrenaline were burnt up. He wasn’t sure if he could take much more – he was already feeling pretty wasted by the battle earlier, topped off by the total emotional exhaustion of Heero’s reappearance...damn him anyway. K’so. He was finished.
"Heero?" He started, abruptly realizing just whose silhouette that was, limned by the flare of light from the corridors.
The Wing Gundam pilot’s eyes were steady and flat, reflecting nothing, as he leveled the gun at his head.
"Shit. I’m ready to die," he sighed, getting laboriously to his feet, leaning against the wall. He tried to make the pose seem nonchalant even though it was necessary to prop him on his feet. If this was all he was ever going to get from Heero – sex and death threats – then he didn’t want it. And who better to kill him, than the one who’d been doing it all along?
He gave Heero a rueful smile, letting all that and more play over his face for the other pilot to read.
Without changing expression, Heero lowered the gun.
*Why!?* Duo nearly screamed at him in frustration. *Why don’t you finish it? You’ve already killed any other hopes I might have for – *
Duo let Heero help him out of the cell. And he couldn’t help noticing that Heero’s hands, if nothing else about him, were gentle.
Somehow, they’d escaped without being caught, despite Duo’s injuries. It irked him that he owed Heero that much. Especially when he was still pretty pissed at Heero for not making any sort of effort during those three months to dispel the impression that he was dead – and now he owed him his life, to boot. But no. He wasn’t bitter. Just tired...
"You used my name to go into hiding? Really?" Duo laughed, but in a way he was absurdly touched. "Shit, my name’s just as bad as yours, ya know." He lapsed into silence on the bed, drifting off.
Heero finished applying more antiseptic to a long bloody scrape on Duo’s shin, scowling furiously. This was war. Soldiers got hurt. So why did it seem like an offense to him that Duo had been wounded, before he’d gotten there?
K’so, Duo was a weakness. He should have killed him. They *still* had Deathscythe in possession, which would have to be taken care of. Why hadn’t he killed him?
Why?
Heero seated himself on the bed at Duo’s feet, scowling furiously down at the relaxed face of the brown-braided pilot. Duo was obviously keeping something from him, under his customary veneer of almost manic cheerfulness – maybe he was just too tired to keep up his usual seamless mask anymore.
"Duo."
Silence.
Heero shook the other pilot’s foot.
Silence.
A soft snore.
Heero’s eyes gleamed. He pulled Duo’s boots off one by one. Then he began to tickle the other pilot’s feet ruthlessly – and he knew *every* sensitive spot on Duo’s body.He took advantage of that without mercy. Duo began to squirm, protesting feebly as he woke up, then starting to thrash around in earnest.
"What the fuck!? Heero! Lemme go!" Duo howled, sitting up and trying to hit him.
Heero caught his wrist en route to his jaw. Duo offered him an uneasy smile. "Heero, whaddya want? I was sleeping."
*You*, Heero wanted to say, but frowned instead. What *did* he want from Duo?
What little light there had been in Duo’s eyes emptied from them, and he tugged half-heartedly at his wrist. "Just let me go." Then he grinned, wide and cheerful, the strange fleeting expression replaced with his usual sunny one. "Lemme go."
"No."
Duo sagged a little. "All right What do you want?" The smile quivered at the edges, but didn’t break.
Heero struggled to articulate. Damn, this was hard. Worse than coping with the look in Trowa’s eyes after he’d – he’d – Heero shut off that line of thought quickly. "It’s been three months, Duo." Three months with Trowa had been different in such fundamental ways from being with Duo that he wasn’t sure he could pinpoint them all.
Duo shut his blue-violet eyes, then opened them slowly. His smile was gone. He released a short bark of laughter, but it was not a happy sound.
Heero’s brow wrinkled with puzzlement.
"Is that it? It’s been three months since your last screw, and you’re feeling a little edgy? Hmm?"
Heero blinked. This conversation was *not* going the way he’d intended.
"That’s *not* it," he corrected, then stopped, frustrated. "Duo..."
And it *hadn’t* been three months. But Trowa had been a mistake, and both of them had known it.
Duo’s face was weary, more tired than even the injuries could account for.
"Are you mad at me?" he finally put forth, brow creasing.
"Three months, Heero. You never tried to let me know you weren’t dead. So I figured – when I saw you, I mean – that that’s the way you wanted it."
"Duo..." he tried again, the crease between his eyebrows growing deeper.
"After all, we never had anything but sex, ne, Heero? I mean...you never said you cared. And I was too afraid to admit I did. Because there doesn’t seem to be any room in your life for anything but mmph—mmm..."
Fed up, Heero took his lips to stop his voice. As usual, it worked excellently.
"Mmm..."
Duo’s lips came open against his mouth, allowing his questing tongue to enter. He tugged absently at the wrist still securely in Heero’s grasp, trying to take control of the kiss, then just relaxed. His free hand reached up, fingers stroking the back of Heero’s head.
His blue-violet eyes were soft and surprised when they pulled apart, still full of unanswered questions but he let Heero tug him down onto the bed, the brown-braided pilot’s hands responding at once and almost instinctively as they roamed hungrily over his body. "God...it’s been three months," Duo whispered, kissing his collarbone, obviously forgetting how indignant he’d been that Heero might’ve had the same thoughts. He nibbled a line from earlobe to the hollow of his throat and Heero closed his eyes, hands sliding up Duo’s shirt.
A brief memory of Trowa’s body tense underneath him flicked through his mind and he shut it away abruptly.
He felt Duo pause and opened his eyes. His lover was frowning.
Duo’s tongue moved over the dip at the meeting of Heero’s collarbones then he pulled back a little, smiling, ready to tell him how much he loved him – and stopped. Heero’s expression was cold, remote, removed. As concentrated as when he was piloting his gundam, or tapping out commands on his computer, or focusing on some menial time-consuming task.
He frowned. So, now *he* was reduced to the level of a chore to be endured?
"What?" Heero asked him, wondering what was bothering Duo *now*.
"Are you even here with me?" Duo wondered aloud, sitting up, pulling Heero’s hands out of his shirt with the movement.
Heero scowled at him. "What do you mean? Of course I’m here."
"Your body’s here," Duo raised an eyebrow. "I’m not so sure your mind really wants to be. Are you so focused on that next mission, on getting out of here, that you can’t even stay concentrated enough for that quick bang you seemed to want so much a moment ago?"
Heero blinked. Where was *this* coming from?
"That’s not it," he informed Duo flatly, scowling harder.
Duo looked at him silently for a moment, then turned over on the bed, towards the wall. "If you want to go so badly, why not just go now?"
Heero stood. "Fine."
He grabbed his gun and a few necessaries, and left quickly, before he could change his mind. Duo was right. There was a mission to be completed – he had to reach Dr. J and the others and take care of them, before their knowledge could be exploited. Duo would be fine. He was a gundam pilot. And like he said, he was enrolled in the local school – he could stay here and recuperate until Heero came b—
No. Why come back? Duo obviously didn’t want him here.
He caught the next bus to the spaceport.
Duo heaved himself around, ready to tell Heero he didn’t mean it, that he was sorry and he was probably being stupid – and the latch clicked.
K’so!
That literal bastard! Hadn’t he ever had a fight with someone before? Didn’t he know that when someone said 'you should leave,’ it usually carried the unspoken tag line … 'I wish you would stay and prove me wrong?’
It was almost worth crying over, but he hadn’t cried in so long. Sighing, Duo curled up in the sheets that still bore Heero’s scent in their folded crooks and tried to fall asleep. He was gone. But once he got better, Heero shouldn’t be too hard to find again –
All he had to do was look for the suicidal, psychotic perfect-soldier pilot who was constantly trying to kill people. He didn’t care how long it took. He was gonna confront Heero again. And this time, get some answers out of him.
Quatre was drifting.
For the longest time he’d thought he was dead – then he realized how silly; death was where the angels were and his mother had always told him they’d be reunited, then. After signing off his last message to the other pilots – with everyone in space, they could somehow still keep fighting – he realized his oxygen was getting low. He didn’t think he was close enough to any settlements to save himself. The ship he’d stolen had no more air supply. His suit’s tanks were almost empty. Sandrock shouldn’t have bothered... Trowa had turned him down...he knew he was going to die.
He floated in and out.
Out of time.
Rashid brought him battle plans for the next day’s mission while the Maganac fighters set up a soft background harmony, an old folk tale song, around the camp fire.
One of his beloved sister’s eyes brimmed with tears. *"Quatre...are you sure...!?"*
Operation Meteor *...going to war...*
*"Disgrace…"*
*...not liking girls. He knew what he was. He’d been told...*
*"Quatre-sama – promise us not to act alone again! Don’t go out by yourself on these missions!"* Would it matter if he did? If he died, he was only a footnote to the colonies.
*"...dishonoring our family by this..."*
He took Trowa’s face carefully between his hands and kissed him. And the lanky brown-haired pilot’s astonished expression wrinkled up into disgust. He turned his head. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand...
His mentor lectured him carefully. *"And this is the self-destruct button...but be very careful, Quatre-sama! It must only be used in times of extreme need or emergency…"*
Out of time...
His slender fingers fumbled for a button, hitting random controls on the spaceship instead of punching a self-destruct, altering the ship’s course slightly instead of triggering self-immolation. Sandrock had already lit up in its explosive glory, a beacon against the sky that the other four gundams penetrated on their track to space.
And Quatre continued to drift.
End of Part 2
(:./talya/loss2)
