Pairing: 1x2 (13x5)
Notes: Thank yous to Dev-Aki Basaa, MiyabiArashi, Windsor Blue and Nekofreak for beta work.

Buried in Dust
by Ponderosa

The dawning sky reflected in the coffin lid, pale hues muted and blurred in brushed steel. Heero silently stood by as it slid into the waiting arms of a loading suit. Une's expression was guarded as the loader carried the coffin into the shuttle's small cargo bay.

Preventer kept a dedicated memorial cemetery on Earth, but per instruction there would be no funeral, no marker, and no grave.

Perhaps Wufei had thought that with those absent no one would mourn.

"Did you see the paper?" Une asked.

Heero cupped his hands around his mouth and breathed warmth into his fingers. The puddles stretching thin across the concrete also mirrored the sky. He watched the steady progress of a cloud unravelling into faint white wisps. Yeah, he'd seen the paper.

On the third page had been a list of names he still remembered well enough that he could rattle off each man's favourite massage parlour and how often they called their mistresses instead of their wives. He'd seen it and had just enough time to feel a swell of pride before his cell rang with the rest of the news.

Breathing out a sigh, he finally answered Une with a nod.

A faint smoothing of her brow made Une appear relieved, like it meant she didn't have to say anything more. She slipped a hand into the pocket of her slacks and withdrew a small jewellery box. She offered it to him, the black velvet stark in the centre of her palm. Heero noticed for the first time how neatly manicured her fingernails were. "This is for you," she said. "I want you to hold on to it, Heero."

Heero took it without a word and turned as a dockworker approached. Mumbling an apology, the man handed over a clipboard bursting with forms. Who would have guessed there'd be so much paperwork to sign off on to take a body off-planet? By the time Heero had worked halfway through the mess, the sun had crested the horizon.

It surprised him that Une lingered as he dealt with all of it, but then, this would be her only chance at a goodbye.

Before this last assignment, she and Wufei had been spending a lot of time together. There had been rumours. Heero took his time on the last half of the forms, sneaking a glance at her here and there as he flipped from one to the next. When he finished, the dockworker gave him an apologetic smile and tore free the copies that were his to keep.

"Be careful," Une said. She turned on her heel, saving him from having to figure out how to make his own apologies. Her low, practical heels clicked with each step as she returned to her driver.

Watching Une's silver sedan roll away was like a replay of the moment that had ultimately led to the present. Only then, it had been orders in hand to memorise and destroy, and Wufei already in position and waiting for him to make contact.

Heero folded the sheets in half and tucked them into his coat. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, fingers leeching the heat from his body as he followed the path the loading suit had taken into the rear of the shuttle.

Even putting into consideration the shuttle's size, the coffin seemed out of scale. Out of place. It had been firmly strapped down, all the transport locks and government seals equally incongruous on the sombre steel. Heero double-checked each lock, each strip of bureaucratic bullshit, and tugged at the restraints until the muscles in his arms burned and the reinforced steel hooks in the deckplating groaned under the stress.

Jaw tight, he stepped away and drew in an achingly deep breath. Refusing to look back, he sealed and left the hold. His steps rang as he climbed up into the cockpit, the sound dulled everywhere but in his ears when he ducked under the bulkhead. He dropped down at the controls, already reaching to run the prelim while shoving an arm into the harness.

Leaving the jewellery box in the centre of the empty co-pilot's seat, Heero radioed ground control. He hadn't opened the box yet, but he had a damn good guess at the contents. In all honesty, he didn't really want to open it. Right or wrong, not knowing had a certain comfort, a delicate latticework of pretence to hide beneath.

As the burn of the engines pushed the shuttle higher, Heero enjoyed a temporary reprieve. He took the exit vector manually, something he always did, all his attention needed for holding his course and making the ride as smooth as possible. Leaving from Earth, the twin force of gravity and atmosphere sent the controls bucking under his hands, forced teeth-rattling shockwaves up his arms and a prickle down his spine. Blue sky faded to the black of space, and though exhilaration didn't come with it as his reward, he felt more balanced.

Coordinates for the rendezvous point entered, Heero took care to note the estimated time of arrival before turning his attention to the box. It seemed like such a tiny, insignificant item as it sat there in a sea of featureless grey leather, yet heavier somehow than it had looked resting in Une's palm.

The streets were whores painted with empty neon promises. Their gaudy light faded a few feet into the alleys threaded between the storefronts. Here, the buildings showed their age, no flashy signs to obscure dark brick and crumbling mortar.

The sole of his boot propped against the wall behind him, Heero kept his arms folded over his chest. Through the leather of his jacket, the cold of the stones seeped into his back. His eyes tracked Wufei. "We should extricate ourselves immediately," Heero said. "Take whatever data we can with us."

Wufei stopped his slow pacing. The dark silk of his suit blended in with the shadows. "That's not an option, Yuy." He turned to face Heero, his thumb tapping irritably against the silver cigarette case entrusted to conceal the new information Heero had given him. His lip curled away from his teeth in a silent snarl. "I'm tired of hearing you endlessly repeat it."

A breeze kicked up, ruffling cold through Heero's hair. He flipped up the collar of his jacket and his boot rasped as it slid down the brick. A tattered flyer skittered past him only to catch and drown in the puddle beneath a rusting drain spout. He pushed off the wall. "Maybe if you listened, I wouldn't have to keep bringing it up. There's not much more we can do."

"Yes there is," Wufei said, words clipped, chin raised. His fingers curled tight around the cigarette case. The shadows around him seemed to seethe, reinforcing the silent warning in his posture that said Heero was really pushing it this time.

"No there isn't," Heero replied. "You're getting too attached."

The onboard computer beeped a quiet warning as it adjusted to the pre-programmed course. Heero's mouth tightened at the corners. He threaded his fingers into his hair, holding it away from his face as he took a deep breath. Five minutes had gone by with him staring at the jewellery box and he'd hardly noticed.

Before he had a chance to stall any longer, Heero snatched it up and pried it open. The bottom of his stomach dropped out with a nauseating lurch. Nestled in the satin lining was exactly what he'd expected, dreaded: the micro neural device disguised as a Syndicate earring that had been his before he'd bailed on the assignment.

Wufei drove him back, palm slapping flat to the brick beside his head. Whatever button Heero had pushed had finally been the big red one. "Maybe you want to tell me exactly how I'm too attached," he snarled.

Heero's nature didn't include backing down, though. Not when he believed himself right. And especially not when staying here accomplished nothing but putting them both in dangerous situations they weren't equipped to handle. "How about that information you just put in your pocket?" Frustration made Heero's jaw go tight. "The girl, Chang. It's the fucking girl."

He didn't want to, but he saw it coming. Wufei requesting additional information on her and insisting he get a full profile running two generations back had just sealed his suspicions.

She was their age, well-spoken, prettier than most and would've had a good shot at being beautiful if her pimp didn't keep her on opiates. Wufei spent more keeping her in his apartment three times a week than he did on anything else.

"So cliché it hurts."

Heero didn't flinch when Wufei's hand caught the front of his shirt, and he didn't hold back the words that burned on his tongue like acid: "Meiling remind you of the sister you never had?"

"Shut the fuck up. You know nothing!" Wufei's fist was up, poised and quivering. He flexed his fingers, nostrils flaring on a breath. Heero waited for that white flash of pain to crack along his jaw when Wufei dropped his arm and repeated more quietly: "Nothing."

Wufei shook his hand free of Heero's shirt and stepped back. He tugged at the lapels of his coat and smoothed back his hair. "Don't lecture me on how to finish my assignments," he said.

Looking towards the street, Heero tightened his earring. He almost reminded Wufei that this was their assignment, but it seemed pointless when he was preparing to draw a line in the sand. "Two weeks, Wufei," he said. "If we haven't gotten everything we need, I'm out."

Again, the computer dutifully beeped its warning. Another five minutes and the shuttle would reach the designated coordinates.

Heero closed the box, tucked it into his shirt pocket, and wished it didn't feel so heavy resting there near his heart. Shaking off the burden of memory and all the things he could have or should have said wouldn't be easy. Heero sat up straight and ran his fingers through his hair, scratching at his scalp as he drew in a deep breath and prepared to take the controls again.

The slave trade was an ugly fucking business, and he may have thought Wufei had gotten too attached and went in too deep, but Wufei had gotten the job done, hadn't he?

Heero's sigh echoed in the still air of the cockpit.

The other ship was late.

Like any soldier, Heero had grown accustomed to long periods of waiting, but that sure as hell didn't mean he enjoyed it. He'd boosted the sensor range far enough that he should know a few minutes in advance when the other ship approached. So far it hadn't picked up anything.

Une had said the ship he'd be docking with couldn't hold the shuttle, and that he'd have to leave it dead for retrieval. Small didn't mean off the radar though, small presumably meant agile. A ship with good manoeuvrability balanced out the inconvenience of having to suit up to make the transfer.

A dangerous region of space to be transporting anything to, a smaller, quicker craft had all the advantage. With the amount of debris still floating free from the ruins of colony A0206, it took skill to fly through the area to begin with. But to complicate matters, pirates and scavengers made their home and their livelihoods there, and the bigger the ship, the more attractive the target.

One second it seemed as if the stars in front of him blacked out, and in the next, a ship dropped into view. Neither the long-range sweeps nor the proximity radar had picked up anything. The UFF decoder dragged, but that didn't mean much. Though it was technically illegal, any ship contracted by Preventer would likely have some sort of registry scrambler.

With IDs confirmed and codes matched, Heero pried his fingers off the controls. He made sure to leave a note with the onboard that the systems needed maintenance. To save the other ship's fuel, he took on the task of guiding the shuttle into place to proceed with docking.

The registry named it the Blackjack, and it was small, but not to the extent that he'd been prepared to suffer. By his estimation, it probably ran a crew of about half a dozen. Locked into rotation, Heero suited up quickly. As he checked his seals, he studied the rough geometry of the vessel on the screen to get an idea of what the interior might look like. He turned the grav off, used the handholds to swing back down into the cargo hold, and punched the controls to seal off the cockpit and evacuate the air.

A crewmember identifying himself as Johns brought over a pair of programmed bots that had the transfer going smoothly from step one. A few buttons directed the coffin's sled, and Heero felt almost useless following behind with nothing but his gear.

Coming in from the airlock, the interior looked like it could belong to a much larger vessel. Bulkheads had been stripped of panelling to reclaim precious cubic metres, and what would've been rear quarters up above opened to bare beams. The ship wasn't running empty either. Heaps of miscellaneous cargo -- most of it small-scale mining equipment -- was netted down portside beside a whole block of crates stamped with old Alliance identifiers.

"Are you the captain?" Heero asked. He dropped his gear and stripped off his helmet, tucking it under his arm and extending a friendly hand at the sandy-haired woman standing ready to confirm receipt of the coffin.

Before she had a chance to answer or take his hand, a loud whoop echoed from the catwalk above.

"Fuck me! Heero!"

There was no mistaking that voice, and no mistaking the armful of gangly, black-clad limbs that crashed down on him. With the grav low, the impact threatened to send them careening into a pile of metal scrap, and Heero hastily turned on the magnetics in his gloves and boots. He slammed his palm against the floor, catching and holding there.

He twisted around, rolling onto his back, and Duo seemed perfectly content to move with him, giving him a rib-crushing hug somewhere along the way before ending up straddled on his chest. Heero's heart pounded furiously in his chest, and his head dropped against the deck with a thump.

On a day like today, the enthusiastic greeting fell flat.

"I think this is where we're supposed to have that awkward 'been a long time, hasn't it?' conversation," Duo said, leaning back.

"Or perhaps the even more awkward 'your balls are practically in my face' conversation," Heero muttered.

"Hah, sorry." Duo didn't particularly look sorry, and he just inched down until Heero's stomach bore his weight instead. Heero could feel the crew staring at them. He supposed that while there were certainly no end to the number of people Duo would fling his arms around, tackling and rolling around with him on the floor put him in a special category. Duo prodded a finger high in the centre of Heero's chest. "They didn't tell me you were the agent I was going to be hauling to the ass end of the colonies."

"Well that makes for two of us left in the dark."

"So, who's the stiff?"

If he hadn't been trained to disguise physical tells, Heero's muscles would've tensed. Heero put his hands to Duo's hips and tried to gently pry him off. "It's Wufei's body."

Duo snorted quietly, ignoring Heero's attempts to dislodge him, and leaned in until the brim of his cap bumped Heero's forehead. His head cocked to the side birdlike. "I'm sorry, I thought you said 'Wufei'."

"I did."

All the humour drained out of Duo's expression and he sat back again, his mouth working soundlessly. He picked himself up slowly, then held out a hand to help Heero to his feet. Duo shook his head like he couldn't quite believe it. Understandable enough, it hadn't really hit Heero, either.

"Shit, Wufei..." Duo took his cap off and scratched at the peak of his skull. His gaze settled on the coffin and didn't stray.

The woman Heero had first suspected to be the captain cleared her throat and quietly mentioned they had a schedule to adhere to. Duo spun around, rattling off orders, and, for the second time today something fundamental about Heero's world had changed: Only a short ponytail brushed Duo's his shoulders; his braid was gone.

Narrow, well-lit corridors ran along the length of the ship. Heero could easily reach both walls if he stretched his arms out, but there was just enough room for two people to walk side-by-side if they didn't mind being cosy. Duo spent a good part of the tour at his elbow, taking advantage of that.

Every few feet there were notes on the walls. Heero took them for graffiti before recognising the chicken scratch Duo used to work out math or physics problems. After paying more attention to the next chunk of formulas they passed, Heero puzzled them out as plans, ways to keep structural integrity while lightening or expanding the ship.

Layout and landmarks waited to be fixed in his mind, but Heero found it hard to ignore the swing and sway of Duo's ponytail. Eventually, he had to interrupt the tour to ask the question.

"What happened to your hair?"

Duo paused two steps into the galley and tossed a glance over his shoulder. "Oh, yeah, I know. Most days I still feel kinda naked without the braid." He tugged at the thin ponytail and made a face. Unbound, Heero guessed the majority of Duo's hair would fall only a bit past his shoulders. "Had one of those 'one day you're gonna lose an eye' moments. Long story short, I nearly got my head torn off when my hair got stuck in some machinery. Had to chop most of it off just to get free. I was lucky Liz was around."

"Would've looked like shit if I'd had to do it myself," Duo joked.

"I'm sorry," Heero said. He'd had only an inkling of what Duo's hair meant to him, but he knew a lot of memories had been wound in the length of it.

"Ah, what's done is done," Duo said. He jumped up to perch on the edge of a counter and propped one hand on his thigh. "I'm trying to grow it out again, but sometimes I kinda like not having to wait hours for the lot to dry once I'm out of the shower."

Even with the tour temporarily on hold, Heero scanned the room. He did it partly out of habit but mostly out of curiosity. Like the rest of the ship, the galley wasn't very big and most of the spare space held supplies. More than just crates of food, spare parts for everything from wiring to lighting panels were packed in labelled boxes.

Still, the room managed to be cosy rather than cramped.

Comfortably lived in, Heero supposed was the best term he could pin the Blackjack with.

"So, five years. Man, it seems like everyone else is getting married." Duo slid off the counter and pinned Heero with a measuring look. "How about you? I don't see a ring, but wife? Kids?"

Heero shook his head. "No. You?"

"That's what I've got my wallet out for," Duo said, and sure enough he'd already dug it out of his back pocket and flipped it open for Heero to look at.

A chubby-faced little girl smiled at him from a photograph. The resemblance was clear. Beyond the shape of Duo's familiar smile, she had the same hair coupled with the same unique eye-colour. "Poor kid," Heero said, trying to match Duo's levity. "She looks like you."

"I know, I feel sorry for her already. Like father like daughter, she's going to have to fight off hordes of slobbering teen boys," Duo said. He grinned and smacked Heero lightly in the chest with his wallet before putting it away. "Hey, so no girlfriend either? I figured with the way you were so set on that leggy chick at the hospital, you'd have hooked up with her less than a month after I packed up and got off L3."

"I did," Heero said. "It didn't work out."

"Tough, man, she was a real piece," Duo paused, looking up and meeting Heero's gaze. "Wait, unless it was a nasty break-up. In which case, I always knew she was a bitch."

"It didn't work out because of me."

"Is there a story I ought to be prying out of you?" Duo asked.

"Let's just say after a while I was spending more time trying to get to know her brother."

"O-ho!" Duo whistled and slung an arm around Heero's shoulders to give him a little shake. "Finally decided you actually liked playing on the other side of the fence, eh? I feel oddly proud."

"Just because yours was the first dick I ever suc--" Heero stopped short when one of Duo's crewmembers entered the room. Heat steadily crept up the back of his neck. He ducked his head and laughed softly -- honestly -- for the first time today. Duo always did have that knack of both making him say the worst things at the worst possible times and making him blush on top of it.

"Go on, you can finish, McKenzie here never gets sick about hearing about my sexual conquests."

"I'd rather scrub toilets, Captain," the man said, fetching a protein drink from a crate filled with dozens of cans.

"That can be arranged," Duo said cheerfully.

"Go blow yourself."

"You kidding, now that I've got this guy around again?" Duo's arm tightened around Heero, and Heero's face got a touch warmer.

McKenzie just rolled his eyes, cracked open his drink, and continued on his way.

Duo's relationship with his crew felt a lot like the Blackjack itself. For someone who'd never had a real family, it looked like he'd built himself one right along with the ship.

Heero should've been happy for him, but the cheer that had crept back receded like the tide. Duo's arm slid off him. "Guess after that first year, we didn't keep in very good contact, did we," Heero said.

"Busy making my dreams come true. You know how it goes."

"Yeah."

Though Heero didn't really know, the lie came easily. He hadn't become a Preventer agent because he'd wanted to; he did it because he was good at it. A sour taste at the back of his throat welled up and everything he wanted to say died there. Duo didn't need to hear that Heero was a proud of him. Not when it would inevitably be tinged with jealousy that even after all this time, Duo would pick up on.

"Took a lot of work to get my baby running. Still doing a lot more crawl and haul than I'd like, but it pays, and, hell, she's gorgeous isn't she."

Heero smirked. His initial impression of the patched together chimera of a ship hadn't been entirely favourable. "I'm not sure gorgeous is the word I would've chosen."

"You're just jealous," Duo said. He forced a grin, dropping it when he couldn't get it to stick. "Shit. It's gloomy in here. C'mon, let's finish up the tour."

Two weeks turned into two months. They'd made progress, but not enough to counter the risk, and Heero couldn't wait any longer.

Wufei's new office was on the 68th floor. No one looked twice at him on his way up. The Syndicate thugs who populated the building were either accustomed to him, or just accustomed to looking the other way. If you were a hatchet man, you pretended not to look too close to anyone with a bit of shine in their ear. If you had that shine, you were brothers, invisible because you were family. Trusted.

The thick pile of the carpet rendered Heero's boots silent. He stopped near a low couch upholstered in dark red leather, slinging his weight against the back of it and fixing his gaze on Wufei's back.

"You've made your choice," Heero said.

Wufei didn't turn from where he stood looking out the window, but Heero knew the answer before he heard it. A cigarette smouldered in the ashtray on Wufei's desk. Meiling's plum-coloured lipstick stained the filter.

"I thought as much," Heero said. Triggering the commands to disable and disconnect, he waited for the faint readouts to fade from his vision before he removed the earring.

"I paid a visit to Tanker," Heero said, pushing off the couch to skirt Wufei's desk. Wufei turned slowly, his features fixed in an unreadable mask. "Persuaded him to tweak this to your specs. He didn't have the tools to properly rework the system so he duplicated it instead. There's a pressure plate in the stem of the leaf. Trigger it with something thin like a needle and it should tune to your brainwaves instead of mine."

Heero dropped the earring into Wufei's palm, as glad to be rid of it as he was angry at Wufei's stubborn insistence to continue on with the mission. "It'll feel weird at first, so don't activate it unless you're alone. I've programmed a brief tutorial to run on start-up which you can disable once you're comfortable with the commands."

"I didn't expect this," Wufei said.

"Your girl had better be worth it."

Heero woke with a start, one hand splayed at his chest where Wufei's bullets had struck. In reality, he'd been wearing a vest and bloodpacks. In his dream, the shots had ripped straight into him.

He cursed, smoothing his hands down his face and trying to clear his head of the echo of voices that were purely from memory now.

"Toss him in the water. As is."

"He's gonna float, boss."

"Better if he does. Messages don't get read if they're at the bottom of the harbour."

"Fucking hell," Heero muttered again. He tried not to wonder if they'd found Wufei in the water. The image stuck and he couldn't rid himself of it. In his head, dark eyes stared blankly at him from bloated, ashen flesh. He pushed aside the thin layer of blankets and swung his legs over the side of the low cot. The metal gridwork of the floor stung his bare feet with their chill as he stumbled to the small bathroom. He stood there, hands braced on the edge of the sink for a long, long time.

Loneliness and longing slammed into him with the same vicious impact of those bullets. He'd never felt so mortal before, not even when recovering from Zero's broken-winged plunge into atmosphere. When splashing water on his face did next to nothing, Heero buried his face in a towel and breathed out a long, frustrated groan.

Rinsing his hands a second time, he almost missed the red light pinging on the panel beside the door to his room. Wiping his palms off on his pants this time, he swiftly crossed to the door, hitting the button to open it, and asking, "Problem?" as it slid aside with a soft hiss.

"With me or with the ship?" Duo replied. He shifted his weight onto one hip and propped his hands on the frame on either side of the door. "Either way I suppose the answer is loads of, but then, that's par for the course."

"So this is a social visit then."

"It could be," Duo said. He smiled slowly and didn't aim for subtle, his eyes flickering down so his lashes fanned dark before his gaze wandered back up again. "I hope it is."

Heero's hands itched. He wanted to just push them up under Duo's shirt, or into his hair, get their mouths together and drag him directly to the bed. He wanted to feel skin against skin, and lose himself in an act that required no thought whatsoever.

Instead, he stood there with his heart in his throat.

"Couldn't sleep?" Duo asked, noticing the damp streaks in Heero's hair and the shadows under his eyes.

"Yeah," Heero said. It wasn't quite a lie, there was just more to it. Bad dream aside, sleep hadn't come easily. He'd never feared death for his own sake, but what about everyone else? Dying became a hell of a lot more complicated when you started thinking about who got left behind.

"Me neither."

"Obviously."

Duo's mouth quirked, but he didn't crack a smile. Instead, he leaned a little further in. His long fingers drummed against the painted metal and his gaze wandered around the room before gravitating back to Heero. "We going to keep standing here like this or are you going to invite me in so I can stop pretending I'm not looking for a fuck."

"Is that all you ever think about?" Heero said. He took a slow step backwards, a handful of Duo's shirt clenched tight between his fingers.

"A leopard can't change its spots." Now Duo cracked a smile, a lazy twist of his lips as he let Heero tug him close. But before Duo's eyes became nothing but a blur, Heero caught a flicker of sadness there, a dark echo of the hurt lingering in the pit of his own stomach.

As their mouths drew close, Heero took Duo's face in his hands, fingers splaying and thumbs brushing over the high arch of his cheekbones. Cinnamon hung spicysweet on Duo's breath. He'd taken to chewing gum after working at the docks hooked him on cigarettes like the rest of the blueshirts. Funny that he'd claim a leopard couldn't change its spots when a dozen times over he'd proven that he could adapt, recover, improve.

"I left him there," Heero said. Duo didn't have a clue what went down, but just saying it eased some of the burden. The hands settled near his hips squeezed lightly, wordless acknowledgement that told him even if Duo didn't know, he understood.

For a moment they stood there, foreheads pressed together and their breath mixing, nothing more. When they moved they moved as one, mouths crushing together hot and desperate, no time for anything but the raw push of tongue against tongue. Heero's hands slid down until they framed Duo's jaw, fingers sliding beneath Duo's ears to thread into the loosely bound mass of his hair.

Something fluttered behind his ribs as he discovered Duo's face fit puzzle perfect between his hands. Though it was something he'd always wanted to do and now it would be so very simple, Heero didn't try to work Duo's hair free as they kissed. He just let the fine hairs wisping free at the nape of Duo's neck tickle against the pads of his fingers. Kisses slowing, Heero dragged his mouth away from Duo's and down past the point of his chin, thumbs pressed into soft flesh to tip Duo's head back and expose the long line of his throat.

They'd made it to the bunk by slow inches, in shambling half-steps that left a broken trail of Duo's boots and socks behind them. Duo reached up blindly, feeling for the rack set above the bunk and holding on as if his legs were about to give out. He shivered every time Heero's tongue traced over his pulse and he gasped out a low, "Fuck, Heero, I missed you," just before making this gorgeous sound, a shuddering groan that had Heero's fingers tightening.

There was stillness again, time slowing to a crawl as Heero dropped one last kiss on Duo's skin and lifted his gaze. He opened his mouth, a matching 'I missed you, too' shivering on his tongue, but the space between them proved too thick to bear it.

Duo caught his wrists as his hands fell away. "Hey," Duo said, "no strings if you don't want them."

So, Duo still held that attitude towards him. A faint smile curved Heero's lips. "Can't fuck with our pants on," he said, shaking his hands free of Duo's loose grip.

Duo dropped down to sit on the edge of Heero's bunk, his knees spread wide and arms draped over them. "Sure we can, it'd just be messy," he said. He dragged his shirt off over his head and tossed it away, reaching out immediately after to snatch Heero's pantleg and tug. "I like messy," he added, running his hand up Heero's thigh until he found a beltloop to tug at even harder.

Heero went easily, and then they were a tangle of arms and legs and tongues again. The bunk offered little room to roll around and kept them close. Heero gasped when Duo slid cool hands under his shirt. Duo pushed it up and over Heero's head, then urged him back down to let bare skin meet. Heero kissed every inch of Duo's body he could reach, always conscious of the ache in his groin but wanting this to last.

"You're so fucking hot," Duo said, voice thick and low. His hands kept as busy as Heero's mouth, sweeping over Heero's shoulders, down his back and up along his chest. His touch left little smouldering trails, and he made that same gorgeous sound when he pushed his fingers one after the other into Heero's mouth.

Lips closing on the third digit, Heero balked. He forced Duo's finger out of his mouth with his tongue and closed his eyes. The cold shower of reality hit him full blast in the face. "Shit, what are we doing?"

Beneath him, Duo shifted, and the feathery puff of an amused breath hit Heero's throat. "I've got my pants down and now you're asking this?" Duo snorted.

"No, I mean, what the fuck are we doing? What about your wife?"

Head raised halfway off the pillow, Duo went completely still, even the hand resting light on Heero's back no longer traced idle circles.

"My what?"

Heero's eyes blinked open in time to see Duo dropping back to the pillow, teeth flashing as a genuine laugh rippled up from his belly. "Ah, man, the pictures, sorry. You got it all wrong," he said. He looped both arms around Heero, the amusement on his face turning to chagrin. "I forgot you didn't know the whole story. I just did the deed."

"All the perks and none of the responsibility, hm?" Heero said, not sure if relief was quite the right word for the feeling flooding through him.

"Well, not quite all the perks. A turkey baster got some of 'em." Duo froze again, this time his face scrunching up. "I shouldn't have brought that up."

"Still jealous of it, are you?"

"What? No. Oh, Jesus, no! The girl is like my sister."

Heero felt a sudden disconnect, reduced to an interloper, welcomed but not belonging. From the moment Duo had showed up as his door -- if not before -- he practically had curtains picked out. He didn't even know the people who were important in Duo's life now let alone whether or not Duo wanted anything more from him than a simple fuck.

He rolled onto his back thinking he should ask for a bit of time alone, but Duo moved with him and he couldn't bear to push that intimacy away.

"You thinking about it?" Duo asked, voice hushed to a whisper. He nestled closer. "Wufei, I mean."

"Yes," Heero lied.

"I can't get it out of my head, either. Never figured he'd be the first of us to go."

Heero made a low sound. Dwelling on this wasn't any better, but despite being more immediate and raw, it seemed easier to mend.

"Don't know why, but I always thought it'd be you or me."

"Me too," Heero said. "It's a bit selfish isn't it?"

"Yeah. No one really wants to be the one left alone."

Heero screwed his eyes shut, guilt twisting his lips down. "I just --"

Duo's hand came down onto Heero's mouth, silencing him. He dragged himself up, sliding his fingers aside to replace them with his lips. His mouth brushed softly as he spoke. "He made his choices, Heero, and you can't stop all bad things from happening," Duo paused, and Heero felt him smile. God, he'd missed that smile. "It isn't fair to the rest of us mere mortals if you get to save the world more than once, you know."

"This should be weird," Duo mumbled, voice slurred and sated. His lean body tucked in a curl under the curve of Heero's arm. Half of his hair had fallen out of his ponytail, the scattered strands clinging to damp skin. Heero could still feel the ghostly echoes of it brushing against his chest from Duo hovering over him, hips rolling rhythmically and thighs pressing tight to his sides.

He suppressed a shiver and said, "It is, a little."

The weight of Duo's head on his bicep and the leg slung over his own slowly put Heero's limbs to sleep. Even so, he could stay in the same spot for the rest of the night. He felt strange, yes, but also warm and relaxed, and as tired as his body claimed to be, he felt very alive.

"Yeah, but it's good, too, isn't it," Duo said. He shifted and his leg slid away, but if anything he ended up sprawled even more over Heero. He folded his arms on Heero's chest and fixed him with a languid stare. The angle of the light made his eyes look pale, close to translucent. "Breakfast is gonna be awkward if I stay or if I go, so what do you say to just fixing some breakfast now?"

Heero curved a hand over Duo's shoulder in a slow caress. "Moving wasn't high on my list of things to do anytime soon, but I could eat."

"You can always eat."

"As if you're any different," Heero said. He eased his weight up onto an elbow, careful not to jostle Duo too much.

"Gotta be honest with you though: options are limited," Duo warned, nibbling at Heero's collarbone. He tongued a slow path up to Heero's throat.

"Aren't they always," Heero said. He tipped his head back inviting the marks Duo started to suck onto his skin. Breakfast could wait if Duo wanted to go another round.

Duo got up onto his knees again and inspected his work, his weight resting snugly against the tops of Heero's thighs. He walked his fingers from one love-bite to the next. Heero tried to catch those quick fingers with his mouth as they stroked along the line of his jaw.

Duo laughed when he finally did catch them, and a second later, his eyes were heavy-lidded as Heero sucked gently. "Well, severely in this case," Duo said between quickening breaths. "Your options, sir, are reconstituted eggs or pancakes."

Heero let Duo's fingers slide out of his mouth and kissed the centre of Duo's palm. "Which one can you make without burning?" he asked. His lips skimmed the fragile skin of Duo's wrist as Duo's hand pushed up into his hair.

"Neither," Duo said without skipping a beat. He slunk down, kissing Heero lazily before sliding off to lie beside him. With wordless urging, he invited Heero to roll on top of him. His arms wound loosely around Heero's neck. "Although the pancakes come in fun shapes."

Heero smiled softly, turning his head to press a sucking kiss to the bend of Duo's arm. "Well, when you put it that way," he murmured, and moulded their bodies together, "how can I choose anything but?"

They'd worked up a proper appetite by the time they dragged themselves out of bed and to the ship's galley. Heero perched on the edge of a padded stool firmly bolted to the floor as Duo tended to fixing the pancakes. Every third blueberry found its way into Duo's mouth.

"There aren't going to be any left by the time the batter is ready," Heero said.

"Too bad for you then, huh?"

Chuckling softly, Heero stole a few for himself out of the small bowl. When he didn't eat them fast enough to escape Duo's attention, he shrugged apologetically.

"Guys are gonna kill me for eating them all, but that's the perk of being in charge."

"Having your men kill you?"

The words had dropped out of Heero's mouth before he could stop them. He paled and squeezed his eyes shut. It all just kept creeping back, the cold chill of mortality plucking at his spine with bony fingers. "Fuck."

The batter sizzled as it hit the pan and then the metal on metal thud of the bowl being set down rang hollow in his ears. Duo's fingers found his, but he shook them off, not particularly feeling like gentle touches were going to help. Not dissuaded in the least, Duo caught his hand again.

"Stop being a dick and look at me," Duo said.

It took a lot more effort to open his eyes than it felt like it should have, but Heero did. Duo wore a flatly serious expression, his wide mouth set in a line. "You feeling guilty?" he asked

Voice catching even on such a simple word, Heero nodded curtly.

"Good," Duo said, equally curt. He released Heero's hand and turned away, grabbing up his spatula to flip the pancakes.

Heero surged to his feet, hands smacking down hard on the countertop and his fingers pressing to white. "Good?"

Duo turned his head just enough to be able to see Heero out of the corner of his eye. "It's normal, Heero. Getting over guilt like that won't be easy, but it means you cared."

He'd battled with guilt before. He supposed they all had when they'd each killed so many people fighting in the war. But while some of those deaths may have had names, they'd never been this personal.

Sinking back down onto the stool, a frustrated sound forced its way out of Heero's throat. Duo cut him off before he could say anything though by sliding a plate of steaming pancakes in front of him. They really were in shapes: little stars and hearts and something that Heero couldn't see as anything other than a cock and balls. He laughed shakily and picked up a fork, picking out one of the blueberries staining the shaft of the phallus and holding it up questioningly.

Duo shrugged his shoulders. "Figured it might help keep your mind on the important things."

Duo's cooking had vastly improved since Heero had last choked it down. He really did used to burn close to everything. Either that or he just made each mouthful feel like it scorched your mouth with the amount of peppers and spices he'd throw in. Heero wondered who'd taught him, or if he'd just learned on his own.

"If it isn't classified or anything, I'd like it if you told me what Wufei died doing," Duo said softly.

Heero had been expecting that question. He'd already done a mental rundown of the information likely to be released and likely to be filed in the basement.

"The assignment was breaking up a black market slave ring. Human trafficking. On certain colonies girl children are still seen as little more than extra mouths to feed. No one looks twice when they stop coming to school or to work. It's terrible." Heero poked at what remained on his plate, slowly choosing his words. "Wufei was inserted into the Syndicate as a broker. Low level at first, though he shot up in the ranks unnaturally fast. I don't know how he managed it, but by the time I got out he was well on his way to making the inner circle."

Duo sat there quietly as he went on, asking questions occasionally, but mostly just listening. Heero ended up saying more than he'd intended, sharing theories and conjecture with a willing ear to hear them. He stopped himself eventually and just shook his head.

"He succeeded in providing enough info to take down half the organisation, but he should've gotten out." Heero smoothed his hands down his face, dragging in a slow, deep breath. "He wouldn't leave behind that girl though. Meiling. Hell, I didn't even think to ask Une what happened to her."

"You know," Duo began, "when he and I shared that OZ cell and thought we were gonna die, he told me he'd been married. Did you know that? Can you believe it at the age we were then? I didn't, but he was so serious. Said he'd wished that he'd had a photo to show me. I don't know much more than that, but maybe..."

"Yeah, maybe."

"Hey, you remember when he visited us?"

Heero smirked. How could he forget? It had never crossed his mind that the place he and Duo had shared was smaller than small or that even with two of them working to pay the rent, they were considered at the poverty level for most colonists. Wufei had been appalled and tried so hard to convince them to move; he'd hated to see them 'wasting their potential'.

But the Titan virus had hit L3 hard, and leaving wasn't an immediate option. Not when the healthy emigrated in droves the minute they were cleared from quarantine. Duo had the pockmarks from an earlier strain that proved immunity, and he'd stood watch when Heero's temperature spiked and his body fought off the illness in mere days. Staying ended up being their great social project, even if all they did was bury a lot of neighbours.

"You know he apologised to me about that later," Duo said. He pushed away his plate and stood up. Reaching his arms over his head to stretch pulled his shirt up enough to expose a sliver of his belly, and he groaned as his back popped loudly. "The first time I contracted for Preventer on something they needed kept quiet, he called me on the vid and told me I should've stuck with you."

"Sounds less like an apology and more like regretting that Une kept giving us assignments together."

"Probably," Duo said. He skirted the counter and squeezed into the space in front of Heero. He slowly slid into Heero's lap and hooked his booted feet into the rungs of the stool for leverage. Leaning back, he touched a hand to Heero's face. "But part of me thinks he was right."

Heero was about to respond, if only with a kiss, when they were interrupted by an unsubtle cough. He turned to see McKenzie standing just inside the room with a small, grease-covered part in one hand.

"Christ, Captain, the look on your face is disturbing," McKenzie said. "You turn into a lovesick girl and I'm off this tub."

Duo gestured at the part the man was carrying. "Problem?"

"Nothing major, but I wanted to keep you on top of things. Didn't mean to interrupt you keeping on top of other things, though."

Heero hid a smile as a touch of colour sprang to life across Duo's nose. "Okay, now it's weird," he whispered into Heero's ear as he got back to his feet. Duo loosed his hair, redoing it into a short braid instead of the ponytail, and strolled over to find out what McKenzie wanted him to take a look at. Heero fought another smile.

He could almost pretend that the last five years hadn't happened, make-believe that they were still sharing that dive on L3. Their kitchen in that place had been smaller than the Blackjack's little nook. Heero couldn't escape that things had changed though, and a good deal of them for the better. If faced with losing Duo again, he wouldn't stand back and say nothing. He wouldn't settle for second best and the easier path to travel. Duo had always meant so much to him, it just took time and distance to realise it.

If he faced the choice now, he would follow.

The next day went quickly because he kept busy. Usually intercolony transport dragged, and space didn't even offer the benefit of scenery to make the miles feel less like one endless blur.

Duo put him to work in the cargo hold with Liz, sorting through salvaged Alliance goods. The woman proved reticent when it came to conversation, but that suited him just fine.

Hauling around those crates left him feeling like he did after a lengthy workout, and Heero came out from a brief shower refreshed. As he dragged on a fresh shirt, he wondered if Duo still sat at the controls of the ship. As much as Duo loved running a crew, Heero could tell it was piloting his own craft that he loved the most.

The red light pinged on the door panel, interrupting his wavering as to whether or not to go look for Duo.

"Another social visit?" he asked, as the door slid open to reveal Duo standing there.

"Answered the door pretty quickly there, big boy," he said.

"Preparedness first," Heero said. He hooked a finger into Duo's front pants pocket to drag him inside, but Duo clasped a hand around his and didn't budge.

"We're a little over twelve hours out," he said. His thumb rubbed little circles above Heero's wrist. "If I don't do it now, I never will, and if I never do, I'm gonna regret it."

"Don't do what?"

"This," Duo said. Instead of allowing himself to be dragged inside, Duo pulled Heero out into the hall. He shot a furtive look in both directions and towed him in the direction of the hold.

"What are we doing?" Heero asked. He wasn't thinking much above the belt, but back when they used to fool around Duo played coy half the time.

"Getting closure."

"Closure," Heero repeated.

The cargo hold was empty, and Heero wondered why it felt as though they were sneaking around when it was Duo's ship to begin with. He understood when they approached the coffin and Duo pulled a knife from his boot. Duo sliced neatly through the paper seals, pointing out when Heero started to protest that orders were to jettison the thing, not deliver it to some bureaucrat with a stick jammed up his ass.

He studied the locks next and Heero stood back, arms folded. "A hairpin isn't going to work on those," he said.

"Could try a crowbar or a laser cutter," Duo replied. He slid the edge of the blade under a panel, prying the metal free to unveil a nest of wires. He began separating them by colour and thickness.

Realising Duo really did intend to see this through, Heero stepped in and put a warning hand on his arm. "Duo, that's enough."

"No it isn't," he said tightly. He shook off Heero's grip and propped his hands on the smooth metal. His eyes were shadowed, guarded. "You don't need to stick around, but I have to see him. I don't care if it's messy or whatever, it just isn't going to feel real until I do. I thought it would, but it doesn't."

Duo held his knife between his teeth and stripped off his jacket. His arms were pale against the deep violet of his sleeveless shirt.

Heero felt torn. Breaking into the coffin seemed fundamentally wrong, disrespecting the dead and more importantly, their friend's wishes. But, he couldn't deny that he, too, had a morbid desire to see for himself. "Striped yellow wire," he said once Duo had correctly stripped the blue.

"Had it, but thanks."

Nothing happened when Duo struck the two bare wires together, and Heero lungs ached; he'd been holding his breath. Duo struck them again, still with no result. "...the Hell?" Duo muttered. He took the knife from his mouth, wiping his spit off the steel before prying it under the entire panel. The effort it took to loosen the panel had his muscles cording tight. He peeked at the underside and his face twisted into a frown. "Why would you need a decoy panel on a --"

Heero heard the near-silent click and whirr of an unknown mechanism and pulled Duo back. A rush of compressed air hissed from the coffin, and out of instinct, Heero clapped a hand over Duo's nose and mouth. His pulse raced, adrenaline carving through his veins, but he loosened his hold on Duo the moment he spotted the print scanner.

Duo didn't miss it either, and wriggled out of Heero's arms to take a closer look. Shrugging, he put his thumb to the reader and another set of locks clicked free. The lid swung open easily when he gave it a push.

"What the fuck is that?"

"It's an envelope."

"Thanks for the demonstration of your astounding powers of observation, Heero, but what I meant was, what the fuck is an envelope doing in Wufei's coffin?" Duo turned to him, sarcasm giving way to a much more sober tone. "You don't think it's all that's left of him, do you?"

Heero shook his head; he recognised that envelope. It was a set of sealed mission orders. Eyes only.

The contents of the envelope lay scattered over the table Duo and his crew took their meals at. Heero sorted through the mess, separating keycards for a dozen security levels, passcodes to memorise, and a set of ID badges. Heero noted that there were two in there, one for each of them, and Duo told him that Une paid a whole lot extra to contract his ship when he'd had another gig lined up for this week.

"Guess she knew I wouldn't turn the job down," Duo said, flipping open a handheld and sliding in the data disc that had been the last item to drop out of the envelope.

When it began with an audio file, Duo passed him one of the headphone earpieces and keyed the message to start over. Wufei's voice issued them a greeting before continuing on: "Either you've decoded the message timed for delivery at 1900 hours standard, or one of you couldn't keep your hands off the transport unit. You know which option and which one of you my money is on.

"Everything you need and need to know has been handed to you, so I'll keep this brief. You two are the only ones that myself and the Director trust to handle the situation. Circumstances required this sort of subterfuge. I suspect you're both...angry. I will personally answer any and all questions when you return with the target. Winter out."

Duo broke the silence, saying, "I don't know whether to be overjoyed or pissed the fuck off that the asshole is still alive."

"He won't be once I get my hands on him," Heero said. He jerked the earpiece out and fished around in his pocket for the small jewellery box he'd been carrying around with him everywhere. The bastard was lucky he hadn't just thrown the damn thing out.

"What's that?" Duo asked, eyeing the earring Heero pulled out.

"It has processing capabilities similar to your handheld, recording, transmitting, the usual. The software, however, has neural links. They call it greyware," Heero explained, looking around for something thin enough to hit the pressure plate.

"Sounds expensive," Duo said, handing Heero a bit of wire when he guessed what Heero needed.

"Your tax dollars at work," Heero said. He accepted the wire with a quiet thank you and triggered the switch. As he slipped the earring in, the familiar disorientation of the system keying in to his brainwaves made his stomach twist in on itself.

Duo chuckled darkly and called up the data relevant to the hardcopy maps Heero spread out on the table. The mission profile itself was simple, but simple didn't mean easy. The smash and grab for data included making contact with an operative on the inside who might need extraction. Although not explicitly stated in the profile, it strongly implied Syndicate funding. The operation had been far larger than Heero had been aware of.

"The installation is in the same sector we're headed for currently, but we'll need to alter course," he said. He formed the commands in his mind to connect to Duo's handheld. "Did that work?"

Duo looked confused an instant before blurting out a, "Holy shit!" when the info popped up on his screen. A lopsided smile curved his lips. "Technology, it's fucking magic."

"It should take us roughly fourteen hours to reach the installation," Heero estimated aloud.

Duo grunted his agreement and sat on the edge of the table. "You know, I think I might be the only legit captain crazy enough to hit this region of space."

"Legit?"

"Well, mostly legit," Duo said. He tapped his finger against the image rendering the asteroid's perimeter defences. "This place has more sensor sweeps than the bedroom of the President's daughter."

"Your registry scrambler will --"

"Be useless," Duo interrupted. "Your remember McKenzie's unfortunate timing? The piece higher up on the chain that actually powers the unit went poof. No way to jury rig it either so we can't just sail on in under false colours."

Heero cursed. The keycards were useless. They'd have to find a way to go in dark and heavily armed. He started entertaining options including a free float in the suits he'd seen in the engine room that were used for lengthy, external repairs. Duo, however, didn't look so much concerned as thoughtful.

"When we met you at the rendezvous point, do you remember how we were before your sensors picked us up?"

"Not precisely, but pretty damn close. About five hundred metres, maybe less," Heero answered. "By the look on your face I take it that instrument check I left orders for was unnecessary."

Scratching lightly at the side of his nose, Duo cleared his throat a few times. "Probably. I, uh, maybe kept the schematics those old men drew up when they built Deathscythe's cloaking system. With a little help here and there from Une, I've been spending the last couple years figuring out how to get it to work on an irregular, non-gundanium surface."

Heero let out a low whistle, impressed to say the least. "So it's operational?"

Duo nodded. "It's not perfect, and it's got a bit of an overheating problem, so we need to cut speed to compensate and add another two hours onto that ETA. If you're right about that five hundred metres though, if we ran silent, we could slink in right under their noses."

"It's risky," Heero said. "What about your crew?"

"We've been in tighter spots," Duo said. "It just means they get more of the bonus I'm going to demand for risking my neck out here."

Sixteen hours proved just long enough to assemble all the gear they needed and agree on a game plan.

Whomever they had on the inside provided good intel. Primarily research based, mobile suits at the facility weren't a concern. Getting in, however...

"I can't believe we had to come in through the sewage," Duo said, dismayed. He juggled his gear, holding the important equipment above his head.

The entry point could've been worse. From the look and smell of things, all the reclamation units found on any good ship or station were in use and biological waste was at a minimum. They were hip-deep in runoff from cooling systems; the scrubbers too energy inefficient to filter water laden with heavy chemicals.

Somewhere behind them, a valve opened up, sending a roaring rush of a few thousand gallons into the mix. The water around them swayed as the current from the inflow caught up with them. Bits of debris floating on the surface caught the light from the lamps clipped to their vests.

Heero didn't like having to come in wet any more than Duo did. Limited access points made this decision the least risky. Ventilation systems were always well monitored, and you couldn't go around sneaking through ducts like you might dirtside. Here in outer space, air was as precious as --

"Very free with their water, aren't they?" Heero observed.

"Well, there's gotta be a few millions tons of it floating around this sector that's free for the taking," Duo said.

Though he should have, Heero hadn't considered the colony ruins. Of course scavengers wouldn't be interested in ice when pound for pound there were more valuable things to harvest in the debris field.

"A left and two rights and we should find ourselves at the sweet spot," Duo said.

Heero did another weapons check and took point, switching off his lamp as he neared the end of the last tunnel. The solid concrete of the ceiling gave way to heavy grates that allowed enough light to see by. He spotted a thick, waterproofed pipe running up the far wall.

"That baby should be our ticket in," Duo said, sloshing ahead and moving into position.

"How long will you need?"

"Not long," Duo said, amending that with a numerical value when Heero gave him a sharp look. He set to work immediately, placing a series of pinpoint charges to blow the insulated casing.

"Live," he warned, and Heero looked away, eyes closed as the white-hot chemical flare ate through the metal.

In minutes, Duo had hotwired them access through a maintenance chute twenty metres back.

Moving carefully to avoid cameras, they remained mostly undetected all the way to one of the control rooms. Getting past the stationed guards, however, would require lethal force. Duo reluctantly switched from a gun fitted with darts to a weapon with piercing rounds.

Inching towards the corner, Heero silently apologised for the necessity. He waited for Duo's signal, dropping low as Duo stayed high. All three guards went down before they knew what happened, and the second team that hurried out to investigate dropped just as swiftly.

Gun still at the ready, Heero crept towards the open door. A quick glance inside and a second more cautious sweep revealed no more opposition.

"Clear," he said, turning around to find Duo ripping the helmet off an armoured corpse.

He yanked away the helmets of another two guards and swore a curse before looking up at Heero.

"These are all women," he hissed.

"I'd noticed." The differences were subtle under the neutral shapes of the armour, but the signs were there.

"You know I don't like taking down women," Duo said, changing the clip on his gun. His mouth pressed tight at the corners. There'd been more than one reason he'd declined joining Preventer each time those vague inquiries had come their way.

"You know I don't like taking down anyone," Heero replied flatly. He pushed past Duo, dragging a desk chair out to sit down and slide himself in front of a computer. He swallowed down the sick feeling in his stomach and called up a terminal. The wave of names that scrolled by as the passcode matched to his ID sent his stomach lurching all over again.

The list only lent weight to his doubts that the Syndicate had been buying up slaves for more than the sex trade. It looked as if a good number of them had been brought here. Brainwashed, or something similar, if the body bleeding out by door was any indication.

He and Wufei had been on the case for more than a year. Girls taken for debts that were either their own or their parents. Some of them had voluntarily given themselves to brokers, expecting to work in teahouses not brothels. He could count on his hands the number successfully helped disappear without blowing his cover. And one of the ones he'd failed looked a whole lot like the girl at Duo's feet.

As he worked at disabling some of the security feeds and rerouting others, Heero shared his suspicions with Duo.

"Jesus," Duo breathed.

"I'm afraid that's not all," a strangely hollow voice behind them said.

Heero snatched up his gun up off the desk and trained it unerringly in the direction the voice had come from. The speaker stepped out of shadow.

"I am unarmed, and this vessel can be damaged, but destroying it will not harm me."

An android, smooth featured and slender-limbed, raised it's arms in surrender. It crumpled when Heero put a bullet in the precise centre of its chest. "Let's go," he said, but Duo pointed to where the android had come from.

"I don't think they're gonna let us," Duo said.

Another dozen pairs of eyes had flared to life, robotic bodies moving flawlessly together. They filed into the room, and beyond them stood at least fifty more, heads bowed and inanimate.

"Let's begin again, shall we?" the one in the forefront said.

"Who are you," Heero said brusquely, not liking the odds and refusing to play whatever game this was.

"Your primary objective."

The android took another step forward, pausing instantly when both Heero and Duo cocked their guns. Its head tipped down slightly in a gesture that could have been as much an apology as a greeting. The puppet master had to be damn close for the relays on the slave chips to react so quickly.

"Our objective --" Duo began.

"Your objective," it interrupted smoothly, shifting its weight in a very human fashion, "is a highly advanced program called Theta Drive."

Heero had spent a lot of time reading his opponents via nothing but the movement of their mobile suits. A near-expressionless being could reveal a lot more than a casual observer might think. The fluidity of the android's motions were unnatural any way he looked at it. These units couldn't be simple dolls. "The Theta Drive is an AI?"

"Not quite. Theta Drive deals with tactical outcomes as well as the manipulation of slave units," the android said. The additional units behind it deactivated, glow fading from their optical receptors. It stepped even closer, and Duo warned it to stay put. It raised its chin, almost as if amused. "For the moment though, you may think of me as one."

"How do we get you out of here?" Heero asked, ignoring the look Duo shot at him full of 'are you shitting me?'.

"I transferred the majority of myself onto that device in your ear the moment you stepped into this control room," it said. "You'll understand my processing is severely limited and the moment I pull out entirely, the breach in security cannot be concealed. Regardless, I can still monitor and regulate systems for a time and, as you can see, your proximity allows me to control more than one of, as my captors call them, Epsilon dolls."

"You can give me invisible and unfettered access to the security feeds?" Heero asked.

"Yes," it said, and a second later, a prompt blinked in the corner of the neural HUD. Heero raced through the systems, pinpointing the current location of their secondary objective and plotting the likeliest path to get there and out with minimum casualties. Triggering a send program, Heero had the route flashing on Duo's handheld.

"Memorise that," he said, and Duo studied it for a second before nodding. Heero turned to the android and pointed at the additional units. "And you, bring as many of those along with us as you can."

"Gladly, but if you don't mind," it said, "there's something I have been instructed to show you first."

They'd left their share of bodies behind making it to that first control room, but the AI had put a lockdown on all transmissions and no alarms had been tripped. With the ability to access all the security feeds, they were able to avoid further casualties as they moved towards what the facility's blueprints labelled a biomedical quarantine chamber.

The quarantine chamber turned out to be a storage room that held only a few pieces of discarded equipment. Too clean to be unused, everything about it screamed camouflage. Duo found the access panel cleverly hidden beneath a light switch.

The AI anticipated Heero's question. "I have no authority here," it said. "There are black spots in my sphere of influence. This area is on a separate system entirely."

"What's inside there?" Duo asked. He took a single step away from the near-invisible door and had a hand on his sidearm again.

"From what your associate has relayed to me," the android said, stepping up to the panel, "no human guards, but something which we will all agree is unpardonable." The extra Epsilon units held back in a semi-circle, their forearms raised with thin combat blades extended from elbow to wrist.

"After I open this door, I'm reasonably certain I can get access to the core system. The odds that I will be able to successfully hack in and simultaneously rewire the panel is only 36%. Do you think you can loop the feed as I rewire the panel? You'd have approximately 2.4 seconds."

Heero hadn't pushed the limits of the transmitter's neural software, or himself when it came to using it, but he nodded slowly. He stepped forward, and Duo stopped him.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Duo said, his hand vised on Heero's arm. He gestured at the door with his gun. "2.4 seconds? Heero, man, that's impossible."

The android lay a spidery hand on Duo's shoulder. "Nothing is impossible, Mr. Maxwell, merely improbable. Trust in your friend as I do."

Duo muttered a vicious curse, but his grip on Heero's arm eased up. "Don't fuck this up," he said. His hand slid away from Heero and he put his pistol back in its holster in favour of the SMG slung across his back. "I don't want to punch anyone else's ticket today."

As Duo went to stand with the Epsilons, doing as he always did by preparing for the worst but hoping for the best, Heero and the android tackled the system as one.

Those thin metal fingers punched in a lengthy code and immediately tore the panel free, rewiring the interior with inhuman speed and accuracy as Heero navigated a halo of code on something close to pure instinct. It felt like minutes instead of seconds, and he was certain he'd failed when he gasped out a faint, automatic, "Mission complete."

"Impressive, Zero One," the android said, and Heero blinked to find he'd finished first. "1.93 seconds. As usual, I underestimated you."

"I didn't even have time to shit my pants," Duo said. He switched back to his pistol as he walked over to Heero and put a supportive hand to his back. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," Heero said. He was still reeling slightly, and something about the android really started to bother him. Had it referred to him as Zero One? He shook off the feeling, drawing his own weapon as the android informed them it would be opening the door.

The chamber beyond was at least six times the size that the blueprints claimed. Circular in design, it radiated out from a raised dais.

"Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?"

It took Heero a heartbeat to realise Duo wasn't talking about the body suspended in the cryo-unit at the very centre of that dais.

It was all beginning to click. From that nagging feeling that had plagued him since he shot that first Epsilon unit, to Une's choice in sending him and Duo specifically, to why they had a med-quality stasis unit disguised as a coffin in the Blackjack's hold. Une had known what they'd find here, and it sure as hell wasn't an injured operative.

"I didn't care to believe the girl at first, but there's no denying it now," the android said. "They plan not only to build an army, but to breed one." It came to stand beside them and its unblinking gaze swept around the cloning chamber.

"What are we going to do, we can't exactly destroy this place? They're just babies," Duo said. He trailed off, finally paying enough attention on the cryo-unit to recognise the scarred profile of the body inside. "Jesus fucking Christ."

The breathless curse kicked Heero into action; they were wasting valuable time. He holstered his gun and jogged over to the unit, checking to see if it could be moved. Soft, evenly paced footsteps followed him up.

"I apologise if you think I brought you here for this," Treize said, the cadence of his voice recognisable now in the flat tones of the android's vocal capacitor. "That they have my physical remains is as much of a surprise to me as it must be to you."

Duo jerked a thumb in the direction of the android's smooth metal chest. "Is that thing saying that it's...?"

"I'm afraid they retrieved more than just the ZERO system when they hacked into the remains of the Tallgeese II."

"Fuck me, how is that even possible?" Duo breathed. He swore again and tore his gaze away from the android. He started eyeing the cryo-unit, quickly coming to the same conclusion as Heero -- it hadn't been built to move. And even if the status panel readouts were green, they didn't know just how... alive the body frozen inside actually was. "How the fuck are we going to get him out of there? Getting ourselves and our mystery girl out is going to be hard enough."

"My body was not part of the agreement."

Duo paused in the middle of trying to find a way to separate the unit from its base. "You want us to just leave you here? It here?"

Treize said nothing for a moment. "It's unnecessary."

"What do you mean unnecessary, it's still you, isn't it? I mean, all of you can't be in," Duo waved at the doll-like, android body, "that."

"This is not the time to debate the substance of the human soul, Mr. Maxwell, but if you'd like to philosophize at a later time...."

"Look, I'm just saying," Duo started, but Heero waved him to silence.

"We're taking all of you that there is," Heero said in a tone that would broach no compromise.

"Very well," Treize said, nodding as if he expected Heero to say nothing else. The rest of the Epsilon units crowded around. "Then it's only fitting that I should bear the burden myself."

Those rail-thin android bodies were stronger than they looked. It only took four of the six to carry the unit once Duo had found a way to detach it. Self-sufficient despite not being designed to moved, like the cloning tanks, it had a built-in, renewable power supply.

"We can't go out the way we came in, we'd have to lose the shell, no question about it," Duo said. "That hatch was a tight fit just with our gear."

"We'll just have to press our luck and get the Blackjack close to a loading dock," Heero started calling up the feeds that would get them to one safely, but Treize stopped him.

"That won't be possible," Treize said. He pointed Heero towards a new batch of data and Heero cursed liberally.

"What's the problem?" Duo asked, looking between them.

"Unfortunately your ship has just turned tail and abandoned us."

"Did they come under fire?" Duo's brow furrowed and Heero could sense his frustration at not having easy access to the same information.

Heero shook his head and started taking stock of how much ammo he had left. "Your crew gave us up," he said.

"That's impossible," Duo scoffed, and he pointed a warning finger at Treize in case he planned to bring up the impossible versus improbable up again. "Why would they?"

"It doesn't matter at the moment," Heero said. "We need to find the girl and get out. The ship hit their scanners. They know we're here." He turned to Treize. "How much time do we have before they figure out someone's fucking with the system?"

"Approximately ten minutes."

"As I understand it, you can operate one of these dolls outside the range of the transmitter, correct?"

"One, yes."

Heero nodded and turned to Duo. "We split up," he said, doing a quick scan and adding a new set of points to the map on Duo's handheld before disengaging from the software. He pulled the earring free and pressed it into Duo's hand. "You take this and go with them and the body, this one and I will find and collect the target. Head for the hangar located above rotational axis. As of now there are only two women stationed there. Find us a ship to steal."

Duo repeated the instructions back, pausing only to punch the earring through his earlobe. He finished and wiped a bit of blood off his fingers before checking his handheld one last time to be sure he had his bearings. "What's the cut-off time? I presume there is one."

Heero caught the front of his shirt, pulled him close and kissed him hard. "Fifteen minutes or the moment one of those units tells you we've failed."

Heero ran through the hallways at full tilt, relying on Treize's remaining connections to the security feeds to guide him.

"Location confirmed in the Nursery unit," Treize said, the artificial body keeping pace easily. "Level 6, Zone B. They're starting to manually black out the cameras in all areas, but I've calculated the point of resistance likeliest to result in the least casualties. Take the next corridor to the right. We'll hit guards fifty metres beyond where the hall starts to curve."

The opposition went down easily enough, and Heero witnessed first hand just how deep those blades on the Epsilon's forearms could cut. If they didn't get the Theta Drive out of here and the Syndicate not only had it working in those units, but put guns in the hands of children raised solely for the task.... Heero grit his teeth and focused on the mission at hand. Painted signs warned that they approached the next zone, and he slowed to move more cautiously.

"Describe the target to me," he said. They'd only had a name and an ID number.

Treize did a reasonable job, although he couldn't quantify anything concrete in terms of colour outside shades of light and dark. Pinning her as Caucasian nixed Meiling from the list in Heero's head. Even so, he guessed a simple asset didn't warrant retrieval.

"Do you know her role in the operation?"

"She was sent here to assist me," Treize said. "It's taken me nearly six years since I became self-aware to reconstruct the fragments of my self and manipulate their code to allow me the scraps of freedom I possess. I've been chipping at the walls of my prison with a spoon, so to speak."

They passed laboratory after laboratory and a darting glance through the small windows on the door proved one of them had unarmed people inside. Heero paused and fused the wiring, effectively locking them inside.

Treize continued as soon as they were moving again. "My capacity to act while working to conceal myself is not extensive," he explained. "They've known they had a ghost in the system almost since the beginning. Your girl has been thwarting them since Wufei sent her here. She'd write programs to 'eradicate' the Theta Drive's anomalies and I'd go quiescent for as long as I could."

"As long as you could?"

"Your agent can do a lot with her skills, but she's...only human. She can't navigate the core systems like I can. Wufei did what he could from his end, but no matter what, the task of intercepting faster than light transmissions for incoming deliveries and making them disappear isn't simple, Zero One."

"He was using you to help him divert shipments," Heero said. No matter how many times he'd said it, it still felt wrong to refer to groups of people as shipments or product. It felt wrong to be addressed by the old Alliance codename for him, too. "And my name is Heero."

"Very well," Treize said. One thin metal arm rose, asking Heero to pause, then with no further warning the unit went still.

The muscles in Heero's back struggled to tense up. He breathed deep to remain loose. Seconds ticked by painfully slow, and he wiped his brow with the back of his forearm.

"Mr. Maxwell encountered some resistance," Treize explained as his body came back to life. "However, we have secured the hangar and he's working to get one of the ships online."

He wanted to ask more, see if Treize knew when Une had figured out exactly what the Theta Drive contained, but even if they were nearing the eye of the storm, he couldn't spare any more time for interrogation.

The Nursery had nothing to do with the cloning chambers and everything to do with the Epsilon units. Code for prototypes filled every monitor screen and half-built models both new and old hung around the room.

Inside the lab, Heero discovered that he would've known the operative without a description or the convenience of the other technicians having already been sedated.

"Took you long enough," Mariemaia said, quickly untangling herself from a full-rig VR station. She scooped up a handheld not unlike Duo's from one of the stations and stepped over the bodies of her co-workers. "The spiders told me we've got six minutes until the boys in Black Team pick apart my safeguards and the whole place goes into lockdown mode like it's supposed to."

"Can we make it to Duo in time?" Heero asked.

"No sweat," Mariemaia said. "TD will you grab Sommers there?"

Treize nodded and scooped up the limp body of the man with the matching nametag.

"Now, follow me."

She led them to a utility elevator, hacking in with the handheld to get it to open despite the warning flashing above the doors. "This will get you to the right level," she said. She thrust the handheld at Heero. "Take that with you, it has data on it they're gonna need. That guy knows a lot, too. He'll be my decoy."

"Orders were to extract you," Heero said.

"You've got the body and m--" she stumbled briefly over her words, "the self-aware portion of Theta. If I go with you, we won't have anyone on the inside anymore." She tucked a bit of hair behind her ear and walked backwards away from the elevator. "Plus, someone has to stick around to make sure that ship your partner's got primed is the only one lifting off."

She looked like she wanted to say more, but Treize issued a quiet warning that they had four minutes left.

"Stay safe," Heero told her, and he saw her smile and nod before the doors slid shut.

The elevator started smoothly, and Heero took the opportunity to change the clip on his pistol.

"I am frequently struck with the notion that she looks like someone I once knew," Treize said.

It wasn't his place to tell Treize he had a child, but in case she didn't make it out when Preventer sent in a proper strike team, keeping silent didn't seem any more appropriate. Heero couldn't tell just how much access Treize had to anything outside of this place, and he wrestled with the idea of divulging all he knew, about Mariemaia and all that had happened in Treize's name. In the end, all Heero said was: "She resembles her mother, I hear."

Somehow, the Epsilon unit did a pretty good job of making a featureless face appear pensive.

"I thought we were evac'ing a girl?" Duo said. He twisted around in the cockpit seat, watching as Heero helped ease the body Treize carried into a seat. The hanger doors sealed shut and orange lights flared on in the airlock as the massive doors in front of them prepared to open.

"Operative is remaining of her own volition," Heero said. He strapped the technician's body in tightly, fishing out a pair of plastic zip restraints. In case the guy woke up anytime soon, Heero didn't want him moving.

"As soon as the doors are open we're clear then?"

Heero looked at Treize, who nodded.

"Affirmative."

As soon as those doors opened fully and the runway lights spit out into the black of space that stretched out before them, all but one Epsilon unit clattered to the floor. "Destroyed all I could and disconnected," it said, and the android looked down at itself. "I didn't think I'd be able to maintain control of even a single unit without the greater network. That's an impressive piece of hardware Mr. Maxwell is wearing."

"Clear?" Duo asked again. The engines whined, and his hand hovered over the controls.

"Clear," Heero confirmed, winding through the handful of passenger seats to join Duo in the cockpit. His step lurched as the launch track ejected them, and he strapped in the moment his ass hit the seat.

"That was close," Duo said, pointing to the monitor showing the hangar's launch sequence trying to abort. "Another couple seconds and we would've been stuck."

"You always did have the Devil's own luck," Heero said.

Duo breathed a bitter laugh as he punched in the pick-up coordinates. The set of his jaw said losing his ship might have hurt, but losing it to people he trusted drove the knife to the bone. Heero promised himself he'd be there when Duo felt like talking about it.

For the meantime though, he couldn't offer much more than a little space. Since they weren't pursued, he unclipped his harness and gave Duo a brief squeeze on the shoulder.

Treize had settled into one of the passenger seats. The android body sat there completely still, nothing indicating life, personality.

Only when he spoke did any of that shine through.

"You provided the information that had Une signing off on our initial investigation, didn't you," Heero said, pausing in the aisle and resting an elbow on the back of a seat.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Selfishness. One's mind bent to serve another's purpose is a more appalling rape than anything you could imagine."

"The longer you stayed there, the deeper your influence over the system." Heero didn't need to imply any further. Treize would have had another army under his own control if he'd cared for it.

Treize turned his head to the window, lifting a hand to trace the edge of the face reflected back at him. "I thought to make a copy of myself in the beginning," he said. "A failsafe. Or at the least, a companion. Yet, and this is something Mr. Maxwell might care to debate with me later, I fought with the prospect that doing so was to play God. The more base questions were no less unsettling. Would it be an exact duplicate or flawed? Could I look at another with the full sum of my own experiences and still trust the same mistakes I'd made in the past would not be replayed?"

"In the end I met Zechs on the battlefield for peace, not glory," Treize said, looking back at Heero. "Nor was immortality something I ever sought. My name will fade from the history books. I don't care to be around to see it happen."

Duo's hug nearly squeezed the life out of Heero when they reached the rendezvous point. The Preventer ship that came to pick them up had the Blackjack's unmistakable silhouette anchored beneath her.

"They got my baby," Duo said relieved. He took the controls eagerly, and Heero twice had to caution him to slow down on approach.

But Duo's itch to check on his ship didn't dull his skills. As fast as he swooped in to dock, they didn't scrape hulls.

A pair of agents met them just inside the Preventer ship. Heero had been sure to brief them on their extra guests ahead of time and they didn't blink when Treize delivered the captured technician to be processed.

One of the agents found he had no choice but to fill in Duo on where they found the Blackjack. Heero took the other aside and gave her a more thorough verbal report and instructions for bringing aboard the cryo-unit. She nodded, unclipping the radio from her belt to relay Heero's orders.

"Preliminary debriefing in 202, sir," she said. "We're to escort both the target and the body directly to Winter."

Heero nodded. He found Duo satisfied with the news of his ship. Enough so that he sat through debriefing without looking like he wanted to chew through the wall and check on his baby first hand.

It was after, when they cornered Wufei in the hold that turned Duo springwound tight again.

"Can I do the honours?" he said

"Be my guest," Heero said, not sure he could hold back enough to leave Wufei's jaw in one piece. The heavy smack of Duo's fist doing the job turned out satisfying enough.

"I deserved that," Wufei said, wiping blood away from his lip with his fingertips. His tongue flicked out to lick away the rest.

"Damn right you did," Duo said hotly.

"I get no points for intercepting your ship and apprehending the woman who stole it then?"

"You get a few, but not enough," Duo said. He spun around to leave, but Wufei caught his elbow.

"I'll need that earring back," he said, and his eyes flickered to the nearby cryo-unit and the android standing patiently beside it.

"Right, here, take it," Duo pulled it free, wiping the post off on his shirt before handing it over.

"Thank you. Both of you," Wufei said quietly. He drew a pin from his shirt pocket and pushed the point of it into the tiny, pressure plate. Heero couldn't manufacture any regret at being rid of it a second time.

"Tell the Director I expect hazard pay on top of my bonus," Duo told Wufei. He clapped a hand down on Heero's shoulder. "You want a lift back to Earth?"

"Wait for me outside the airlock," Heero said. "I'll be there in a second."

Duo left, and neither of them spoke.

"You could have told me," Heero said finally.

Wufei's eyebrow arched delicately. He folded his hands together behind him and turned away. In the reflection of the viewport windows, Heero could still see his face. His eyes were closed. "Even though you were right?"

"Right about what?"

"I was... too attached from the beginning."

"What happened to her? Meiling?" Heero asked.

Wufei's mouth curved into a faint, rueful smile. "Two in the chest. Ordered by that weasel working for Hung. I would say it doesn't matter, she was neither the person I hoped nor the one I risked everything for, but a civilian is a civilian. I pray she's in a better place."

Heero nodded. His fingers slowly unclenched. "Now that you aren't dead, are we still on for hand-to-hand?"

That smile lingered and more of Heero's anger faded. "You tell me," Wufei said.

"I'm just looking for a reason to grind your face into the mat."

"Get out of here, Yuy."

At the door leading back to the docking bay, Heero turned to issue a proper farewell. He averted his eyes. Metal fingers combed the hair away from Wufei's face in a gesture intimate enough to make the back of his neck heat.

He never saw that coming. Too attached from the beginning, was it.

Heero shook his head and left without another word.

The Blackjack was waiting for Duo, and Duo was waiting for him.

"You patch things up with your partner?" Duo asked. He slouched against the wall with his hands stuffed in his pockets.

"As well as can be expected."

"Eh, even if he's a colossal dick, you guys are friends, you'll get over it if you want to."

Heero smirked and signed them out for departure. "I'm not sure I should."

"The next time you miss having company during one of those boring soccer games you like so much, you'll be saying otherwise."

"Probably," Heero said.

Duo slanted a smile and nodded towards the airlock. "Shall we?"

"Yeah."

"Looks like I'm going to need to find a new sucker to do all the paperwork for me since Liz tried pulling a fast one," he said. "McKenzie and the other boys don't have the head for it." He chewed at his lower lip, tossing a backwards glance at the Preventer ship before they stepped over into the Blackjack.

"She'll be handed over to the nearest colony authorities."

"I know," Duo said, and stuffed a piece of gum in his mouth. He hit the controls to disengage from the other ship. "It's just a damn shame some people don't know what to do with second chances."

"That it is." Before Duo slipped out of reach, Heero caught him. He slid his arms around Duo's waist, held him tight, and asked, "If I keep in touch, will you give me another chance?"

Duo sank back against Heero's chest. "As many as you need," he said.

Archivist's note: Ponderosa answered a request for a scene set "a few days after" Buried in Dust. You can read that scene here.