24 Aug 2000
Notes: Shounen-ai (1x2)
No warnings -- general summing-up. (1+2)+R
/I know why you came
I promise you/
Things weren't perfect after that, but they went from uneasy truce to something much more comfortable.
The end came sooner than he expected, although at the time he didn't know just how final the mission would prove to be. The chime of his laptop alerted him to the new orders in the middle of the night, as usual: the new Taurus suits were being moved from Lake Victoria to Oz's spaceport in Siberia, and the gundams were to take them down. It sounded simple enough, despite Oz's clumsy attempt to confuse their pursuers with a decoy route.
Dr. J's image had scarcely faded from the screen when light from the hallway slanted into his room, and he turned quickly to see who was daring enough to open his door without knocking. As if he even needed to look.
Maxwell peered into the room, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness. "I've come to say goodbye. I have a bad feeling about this." He pushed the door all the way open, leaning against the doorframe in an elegant slouch. "Oz's transport plan is good. They'll be taking two routes: by air, and by land. Heero, can you take the air route? I'll fight them on the ground."
He didn't answer, and Duo spoke again: "We'll lose unless we have our own plan, this time."2
So he was their tactician now? "What exactly is our plan?"
"If the others show up, too, we should have enough firepower to take care of both routes. If they don't -- we'll improvise."
"And that's a plan?"
"Okay, how's this? I'll take out the land convoy, and <then> I'll come rescue you and clean up the air transports myself. Like that one better?"
Heero shook his head, actually smiling. "All right, all right. We'll improvise." Duo's eyes were cautious as he spoke. "I'm leaving in half an hour, if you want to go along."
"Ryoukai."
After the door closed, Heero turned back to his computer, hands moving automatically to shut it down before he started to empty his dresser into a duffel. He was used to packing in the night, used to rearranging school records to cover his disappearance. But this was the first time he wasn't taking off into the night alone -- and it didn't feel like such a bad thing.
Arriving at school the next morning, Relena was greeted by an anxious group of girls. She would have known even if they hadn't been there, practically falling over each other to pass along the exciting news -- Duo and Heero were gone, transferred overnight. But she already knew. Deep in the night, she had seen the firetrail that was Deathscythe, heard the sonic boom that was Wing, as they shot across the sky. <Off to fight again, Heero?>
So this halcyon time was over -- the calm before the storm, the eye of the hurricane. The strange double life they'd been leading had narrowed back to one objective again, for each of them. She squared her shoulders; she was headed for her own battleground.
The End.
[2] Down to this point, scene and dialogue lifted pretty faithfully from Ep 10 (subtitled).
(:./lilias/beauty11)
