I don’t know why but I am automatically drawn to Heero’s cell. It’s quiet as a tomb; most of the people are in the new cafeteria for dinner. It reminds me of the rumbling of my own stomach, but I’m used to that. The university feels colder than usual, as if the raid has taken all humanity of it away. As I instructed, there are no more guards around his cell. I push open the door, and I am taken by surprise to actually see him sitting there.
“You’re not gone yet?”
He cocks his head, and I see the same surprise in his eyes- he didn’t expect to see me again after the orders I gave.
“Where am I supposed to go?” He sounds strained.
“Relena, maybe.”
He snorts. “She is not my priority.”
“The girl could use some support, you know. It’s not like an everyday event.”
“I am very sorry for the loss of her father. Darlian meant a great deal to me too.” He looks at me, blue eyes shining with... with what? Maturity? Age?
He supports his head with his hands. “Relena is strong, like your friend said. She will get over it, just as she can get over me...more other things. When Relena sets her mind to something, she is determined enough to achieve it. She can be stubborn sometimes, though.”
“Like you?”
“What do you mean?”
He is puzzled and intrigued. We are not more than five steps away from each other. I realize the same moment I have forgotten my cane, and I am not sure if that’s the reason why I am swaying on my feet. I force myself to speak.
“What was she talking about anyway the night I abducted her... you? You said something like: ‘That is all I can ever give to you’.”
He stands so close to me. I didn’t notice him come closer. I didn’t even notice him standing up and crossing the distance.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Just... “
He kisses me. I see him approaching, nudging his head towards me, and parting his lips to catch mine. His hands rest on my shoulders and he squeezes gently, as if he wants to take me in his arms and press me tight to him. I close my eyes. The feeling is... warm. Something stirs in my body, in my gut. I bring my hands up, and his hands slide off my shoulders to catch mine.
“Shh.” He releases my lower lip to shush me, and resumes his kiss. I stand like a statue, unnaturally unmoving, and he kisses me. It’s not dripping with passion, he isn’t ravaging my mouth, it’s not earth shattering nor do I see stars. But his lips on mine… they’re warm, tender, caressing. His fingers are stroking mine. They also feel warm. It’s relaxing. It’s like I can forget... forget the troubles of life, the here, the now.
He releases me. Only his hands stay connected with mine.
“Duo...”
I realize I’m still standing with my eyes closed and my mouth half open, and quickly come to my senses.
“I... I..” Then nothing more comes out of my mouth.
“I was talking about not having feelings for her... that way,” he says, and he smiles. It’s like the sun has fought his way through a dark deck of clouds and shines right into my face.
“Heero...” I pronounce his name, rolling off my tongue. I’ve said his name before, but now it sounds completely different.
“Why...”
“Duo and Heero.” He teases me, but I can see the insecurity in his eyes. I didn’t kiss him back. Our hands are still connected, and I press our fingers together.
“H-how?”
“I can’t say ‘the moment I saw you’. Because the moment I saw you, you were a threat to me and Relena.”
“You’re an Earthling...”
“That sounds very deprecating.” He releases one hand to stroke my face. I turn away. He continues to stroke, and his words flow like a calm current.
“Maybe it’s time you start telling me about my colony’s past and the history you keep referring to. Heero Yuy died twenty years ago. I was born at that moment, and named after one of the greatest spokespersons for peace in history. I know nothing about him, Duo, as I hardly know a thing about you. But I have seen enough to know your astounding strength can...”
“Strength?” I yank myself free. “I have no strength! I can’t even take care of all the problems we have! There are so many problems, and I can’t offer a solution!”
“You can’t do everything on your own,” he calmly chides me, but I can’t stop.
“We’ve discovered mobile suit designs more terrifying than all the Leos together! These Gundams are freakin’ huge, and so full of power they can easily blow up a colony!”
“Gundams?”
“Huh?” I notice he is not unfamiliar with the word. The realization comes to us at the same time- doctor J.
Heero takes my right hand again.
“J told me about his work on a Gundam when he trained me. I know what danger they can pose if they fall into the wrong hands, Duo. Let me help you destroy this menace,” he says. “It’s too dangerous for you alone. Please, let me help you.”
His offer is genuine. There is certain harshness in his eyes, drawn by life and the past events. But the lines in his face have also softened; he has lost his hostile attitude. I told him we were enemies, just a day ago. But were we enemies to begin with?
“I can’t let you help me.”
He pulls me close so we stand chest to chest. He’s just a few inches taller than me and I can smell him again. I want to lean forward and bury my head in his chest, relish the strength of another... human being.
“You are fighting a war in yourself,” his voice sounds far away, but close enough to hear. “I can’t help you if you are fighting so hard against anyone coming from outside. You taught me from all the conversations we had about the reality of this war, Duo. I did not realize how one-sided my thinking was until you showed me that there were more aspects to this war than I could ever possibly imagine. I experienced first-hand the raid and the murder of Darlian... how things have changed... and how things are different. But you, you are fighting one-sided too.”
“What do you mean?” My head inclines. My left knee buckles. I’m losing another fight... one against gravity. He puts his hand on the back of my head and I have lost. My arms slide around his waist and he sighs audibly.
“You fight so hard against everyone coming close to you. I recognize it, because I did so myself. Because of my youth, I thought in high school that every fifteen-year-old boy knew three sorts of martial arts and knew how to pilot, like I told you. Relena... Relena wanted to come close, first as friends, then as lovers. She is an honest and genuine person, Duo, and I hurt her terribly by pushing her away. I recognize my own fight in you. We both fight and keep telling ourselves we are better off alone.”
“I don’t understand you,” I say and feel stupid. I have to blink my eyes. I’m not going to cry.
“I don’t understand you either,” he whispers, and kisses me on the head. “But we are going to understand each other. That’s a promise.”
I can’t recall how long we have been standing there. When I shiver, he draws his arms even closer.
“You forgot your cane,” he says. “Shall we go to your room and pick it up?”
“No, we go to the conference room,” I lift my head to look straight at him. He smiles again, a wonderful sight. It’s like Quatre’s smile, with the addition of his natural confidence. We leave the room.
Trowa uses our laptop, tapping and clicking in a steady rhythm. Wufei and Quatre are discussing, both of them with cups of tea firmly in hands. Sally is absent, as she was with the last of our meetings; there are far too many wounded and injured from the raid that need her specific attention.
My eyes flick to the corner of the room where G always sat. The strange feeling of regret hits me when I realize how I was so used to G sitting there – and it was finally dawning on me that he would never sit there again. Wufei spots me first, follows my look, and he bows for me.
“Maxwell, accept my sincerest apologies. May I ask you what he is doing here?”
It’s typically Wufei and if I wasn’t feeling remorseful, I would have laughed outright. Trowa has risen from his chair and assumed a defensive stance, while Quatre sips of his tea as if nothing important is happening.
“Guys, this is Heero Yuy,” I introduce him, rather redundantly. “Heero, meet Quatre Raberba Winner, Chang Wufei, and Trowa Barton.”
He has the balls to confront them all, shaking hands with Quatre and Trowa, and bowing to Wufei. To my relief, they all accept him without resorting to guns or katanas.
“It’s an honor to meet you... in different circumstances,” he says.
“It’s an honor to meet you too, Heero Yuy,” Quatre answers, and I sure don’t miss the hint of satisfaction in his eyes. I quickly dismiss the idea that Quatre knew Heero would become my partner in some way or another. Wufei eyes him suspiciously from head to toe, and Heero allows it, as if he submits to some examination.
“Are you sure about this, Maxwell, about both of them on walking tours?”
“It’s no use,” I repeat what I already told him. “We can’t keep them in confinement any more. Any advantage we had disappeared with Darlian’s death. We have to regroup and evaluate our situation. There isn’t any need for them to be locked up anymore. Relena’s to be released too.”
“I have to discharge Hilde from her guarding duty, then,” Wufei informs me. “However, I don’t see the girl leaving her room.”
“There is nowhere she can go to.” Quatre swirls the tea in his cup. I silently bless Trowa for his flask of coffee; he is already pouring the liquid in mugs. He prepares three mugs; his silent, but stoic approval of Heero being part of the group.
“We have to find a way to ship her back to Earth,” Heero states. “She has an older brother who can take care of her.”
Quatre looks at him with surprise written over his face, but refrains from comment. Wufei crosses his arms before his chest, and his voice sounds irritated.
“Aren’t you forgetting someone?”
“Heero has offered to help us,” I ignore Wufei, and try to press the advantage of surprise. “I’ve told him about the Gundams. He knows about the danger they inflict- his guardian, doctor J, who was an acquaintance of G, helped designing the Gundams, and he was in training to eventually pilot one...”
“What?” Quatre almost spills his precious tea. “Training one of the...”
“All I need is my laptop,” Heero interrupts. “I can hack though any system, and I can help you download files or data, schematics, whatever you want.”
“Wait a minute,” Wufei holds up his hand. “What is going on here? Have you been planning missions without us?”
“We seem to be missing some information here, Duo,” Trowa adds calmly.
“And where is your cane anyway? You’re exhausting yourself...”
Heero shoves a chair in my direction. “Why don’t you sit down, and tell us all about it.”
I feel a bit embarrassed when he even helps me sit down, and stretch my bad leg. I must have looked red as hell, and the warmth I’m feeling slowly fades away when I tell them about the conversation with G.
“I thought it was something like that.” Quatre closes his eyes in a short moment of grief. “G has written the coordinates of the location of that Tallgeese thing here on L2, in his notes. I couldn’t make the connection between the coordinates on that darn disk and another mobile suit. It was salvaged more then twelve years ago.”
“Are you sure it’s still here? Could the government just not have destroyed it?” Wufei sounds skeptic. It was one thing to discover the designs of those Gundams, but to actually see one finished and on L2...
“From what Duo told me, and what I could make up from G’s notes, it was supposed to stay under strict supervision of the Alliance. The refining process of raw gundanium had to be kept secret until they knew the fine details about it, and could produce it on their own. You know the government here wouldn’t dare to cross Alliance’s orders.”
“You’re right.”
Trowa shoves the laptop towards Heero. “Here, take this one.”
He doesn’t look at it. “I need my own, this one won’t do. My laptop is a special one.. “ He blushes and quickly continues, “It’s in the hotel... or whatever’s left of it.”
“Well, it sure isn’t there anymore. We’re not even talking about a possibility of it being there. A big part of the hotel was destroyed in the Alliance’s counter-attack. We can’t hold up any hope that it escaped the destruction. We have to find a substitute.”
“Maybe it’s been retrieved, and put in a lost and found department,” Heero thinks out loud.
“This is L2,” Wufei corrects him. “The moment you take your eyes off your belongings, it’s gone. And you are supposed to be dead- no one cares for the possessions of an obscure bodyguard after the supposed death of the Darlians anyway. It’s either destroyed or stolen in the chaos.”
“You can find out if it’s stolen,” he insists. “It’s vital to this mission!” He coughs when he sees four pairs of eyes fixed on him.
“We don’t know how the government secured the building the Tallgeese is in. I’m trying to say that with my laptop I can bypass, or hack any system or code to get in, courtesy of J’s training...” his voice trails off. “The thief can’t use the laptop anyway. It’s very well protected, and every program on it can’t be used without a password, I coded the passwords myself. They can’t be hacked.”
“We can always ask Howard. He knows a couple of fences,” Trowa suggests. “He’s always good for intelligence concerning computer goods.”
“Agreed. Okay, you and Wufei are on laptop recovery business,” I confirm.
“G has left us detailed mission plans. I am studying them now, but I doubt I will find anything to adjust or to change,” Quatre states.
“We need every bit of help we can get.”
“I will help too.”
We turn around. I either have left the door of the conference room open, or else she must have opened it herself. Relena stands in the doorway.
“Thank you.” I acknowledge her offer. I can see what Quatre meant when he said that this girl is going to make a difference for a lot of people. I see strength glittering in her eyes, a determined strength that finally surfaced after her harsh experiences. Her father’s death has left its marks on her face, maturing her in some way. Has she done the same as Heero... has she reached the same conclusions, after the confrontation with the real war? Experienced first-handed that things change?
“You’re too high profile, Relena,” Quatre answers. “If the Alliance discovers that you’re still alive, they’ll do everything to silence you.”
“I will go undercover and have a secret identity.” She giggles like a schoolgirl, and for a moment I almost take back my earlier observations on her maturity. But I don’t need to worry; she straightens, and her voice sounds calm and composed.
“I’ll find a way. I know a few people on Earth. Dorothy Catalonia, Lucrezia Noin. My brother. They need to know what the Alliance really is up to. They can help me.”
“You go to Earth as soon as we find you transportation,” Heero tells her, matter-of-factly. She doesn’t object, doesn’t even ask what he is going to do when she isn’t around.
“I’ll hold a campaign to tell everybody about the real situation on the colonies. My father’s death must not be in vain.”
“Don’t try to assume his office,” I warn her. “Quatre is right. You’re too visible, and the Alliance won’t be pleased to discover you’re still alive. They hope we killed you.”
Relena sees the logic. “Insinuating that I wouldn’t be of any more use after fathers’ death. Well, they will learn that the Darlians always come back. I will go to Earth to raise sympathy for your cause.”
“It still doesn’t explain why your father had to be killed in the first place,” Quatre remarks, puzzled. “The Alliance has always had its own reasoning. Everybody knows they’re behind the assassination of Heero Yuy, even though nothing ties them to the murder.”
“We’ll find out, I promise.” I direct this to Relena. “He’ll be the last in the line of men being murdered for their own beliefs.”
“I believe you,” she answers, and turns around. Before leaving, she addresses me.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I notice Heero standing behind me, hands on my shoulders. I’m sure she notices too, but not a word leaves her lips.
Silence falls. One more thing added to the list I already had to do. I slip into my determined I’m-going-after-it-all-by-myself face and my body tenses.
“There is more to discuss,” Wufei continues the conversation. “This Tallgeese...”
“Will have to wait until tomorrow.” Trowa has shut off the laptop. “We have work to do, Wufei. The Tallgeese is our highest priority. Let’s handle things step by step.”
Quatre agrees. “We need to see the big picture. With the Tallgeese destroyed, we set back the Alliance for quite a while.”
“Agreed,” I say. My stomach makes a protesting noise.
“It’s time for dinner, I suppose,” Trowa says dryly, and we laugh- a bit nervous to begin with, and soon the rooms fills with uproarious laughter.
We break up. Quatre promises us to have some dinner sent to my room, as I cannot stand on my leg any longer. For a moment I’m afraid that Heero’s going to pick me up and carry me all the way, but he walks silently after me, following my slow, unsteady pace.
My room is cold, and I pick up the blanket from my bed to put it around me. Heero’s hands on my shoulders feels disturbingly comfortable, as if they always were there... belong there.
“You have marvelous friends,” he says. “Wufei seems a little bit reluctant, but in due time he will come to accept me in the group.”
“Wufei’s hostility isn’t personal,” I explain. “It’s more than natural to him to question every change in the usual pattern.”
He chuckles as if I’ve told him a good joke. “We certainly are a good change from the usual.”
“Why do you keep saying “we”?”
“We are what we are,” he answers cryptically. “We are us.”
“There is no us,” I say. “Not in this lifetime.” I wrap the blanket even closer, as if I want to crawl inside the cloth. “This is a bad idea.”
“I have just been properly introduced to your friends, and they seem to accept us as us,” he smiles. This dull ache in my head tells me I want to see him smile, again and again.
“Kissing me once does not mean we are in a lovey-dovey relationship, and all is well.”
“They live happily ever after.”
“What?”
Again he stands so close I can smell him. Raw. Pure. He wears the clothes Wufei gave him, a moss green shirt, and dark brown slacks.
“If you have ever read a fairy tale, you know that is the standard ending for every one of them. Prince rescues princess, they kiss, and live happily ever after.”
“I don’t know any fairy tales.” I can’t suppress the whining tone in my voice. I only know some Bible stories. There was no time for fairy tales. He presses his warm hands to my back and whispers: “We are ‘us’, Duo. We are.”
I turn around, braid whipping.
“I do everything myself.”
“I’m not asking you to give up on what you do yourself. God, Duo, this is as difficult for me as it is for you. I don’t expect us to fall and weep in each other’s arms. We are just beginning... it’s confusing for me too. In the few days, I’ve been questioning my beliefs, my opinions, and my sanity.” A soft snicker. “I kept reaching the same conclusion.”
“Which is?” He wraps his arms around me, offering a warm shelter in which I can bury myself in.
“I want to be with you. Just... be with you.”
Silence. Blessed silence. I nudge my head. His hands slide over my braid.
“We take it from here, and we slowly go on.” He drops his voice so low I can hardly hear him, but I know the words. I want to speak, but I can’t.
“I cannot offer you a perfect solution,” he says. I look up.
“There is no such thing as a perfect solution.”
He sighs. “I wish I could offer you more, Duo. I can only hand you myself and hope it’s enough for you. However cheesy it may sound... the moment I set my eyes on you, my mind declared you a threat, but my soul decided that it wanted to be with you.”
“The first moment I saw you, I shot you,” I remind him, chuckling with the memory.
“Only sleeping darts,” he grumbles. “Pity I didn’t wake up in your arms, but in a cold and rotting cell.”
I remain silent. He looks at me, eyes filled with the fear of rejection. He relaxes when I smile and he says, “At least that problem is solved. I want to wake up in your arms every day from now on.”
“A-agreed,” I mumble. He kisses me on the forehead.
“Do you believe in love at first sight?”
“No.” I grin at him. We sit down on the bed and I open my blanket. He shuffles himself underneath it and closes the rag. I put my head against his chest.
“I don’t either,” he continues, “in fact, I didn’t believe in love and all that for a long time. I grew up alone, with only J as an adult and a mentor.”
“You didn’t have any friends?”
“At high school or university, you mean? No.”
“We know nothing about each other. We don’t have anything in common.” I push him away. Stop fighting this one-sided war in yourself. I am not myself. I am not just Duo Maxwell. There is also Shinigami. There is also The Underground. I am rebel, ruler and commander. And friend. And I want to be... more than a friend.
“Set me free,” he says, and I look up, bewildered.
“What?”
“Set me free,” he repeats. “Make me have something in common with you. We are going to fight together and we are going to love together.”
“You didn’t believe in love and all that...”
“We can take it from here,” he repeats. “No matter how hard you push, I’m not going away.”
“I am not pushing.”
“I am not going away.” He puts his lips over mine before I can object and I close my eyes and let myself be overwhelmed and God how I am tired but this feels so good so warm and I know my hand is rising to slide over his shoulder and take him into a strong grip because I want him close and never ever let him go.
I wake up with Heero next to me. He’s still asleep, his unruly brown hair sticking out under the covers. He snores very softly, his chest steadily rising and falling. The room is still cold, but fortunately not as dark as I had expected. The early morning light seeps through a large crack in the upper east corner. Our clothes are neatly folded, lying on the only stool in the room. I push away the jumble of blankets, and hobble to the pile of clothing. I carefully sort out mine, black as usual. We are us. We take it slowly from here. I pick out his shirt and look at it. A piece of cloth he wore yesterday. The man who claims he wants to be with me. I can’t get my head around it. It’s only his eyes. I saw them first on a fuzzy static TV screen and they have never left me since.
“Duo? Something wrong?”
I turn around. “No, nothing.”
He doesn’t push. He leaves me the choice of explaining myself or not. I break the silence.
“I... I have to go to,” I say, cringing at my lame remark. He throws away the blankets and takes one step to stand behind me.
“Duo... are you... are you regretting what is going on between us?”
“No, not at all.” I am very quick to respond, and I surprise myself by stating it so loud. Guess my soul also knew before I did that I wanted to be with him. We kissed last night until I fell asleep, and I have never slept better.
“It’s just that I need to go to the field.”
“I’ll go with you.” Just four words, and it’s all I need to hear.
The field is where we bury G, on the outskirts of The Underground. The victims of the Raid are also buried here. It’s behind the only building with a closed garden, the least bit of privacy I can grant them. No markers, no stones, just the growing flowers. Only my closest friends have come to attend the funeral. Quatre puts his hand on my shoulder.
“I’m so sorry for you, Duo. I know you’ve known him for some time, and I think he was good to you, in his own way.”
“Thank you, Quatre.” We clasp our hands together for a short moment.
Trowa offers his condolences, along with Hilde, and Sally. Wufei wears his white tunic, his symbol of grief and respect for the dead. I thank them all for coming.
“G has made his own choice and I have no choice but to respect it,” I say out loud. “I am thankful that I knew him. We’ll continue as we’ve agreed. This war has to come to an end, and he’s given us a strong push in the right direction.”
Trowa addresses me. “If you want to, you can have some coffee with us.” I recognize his way of offering me sympathy, and I gladly accept.
On our way to Quatre’s room – Trowa’s being too small to house all six of us – he tells me about Catherine giving birth to a baby boy. I congratulate him.
“Just another reminder how close life and death really are,” he sighs.
“I know,” I answer. “I know.” I couldn’t keep the sadness out of my voice, no matter how much I wanted to. I make a mental note to make sure she gets a gift from me.
Upon entering the room, Wufei halts me and bows. I motion Heero to go forward.
“Accept my sincerest apologies, Maxwell. I have to excuse myself.”
“You can’t stay for coffee?” I’m really hoping he stays, but he hands me a little orange colored card.
“Howard located the laptop?” I fumble the card with my fingers and pretend to read it. I’ve had reading lessons, but barely any practice and Wufei knows it. It’s an electronic keycard.
“Yes. When we visited him, he had no trouble recalling the thing. Just like Heero said, no one could hack the passwords, rendering it quite inappropriate for use. Howard bought it from a fence, hoping he could take it apart for spare parts. Luckily for us, he hadn’t had the time to do it.”
“Heero has to give his old clothes to him in exchange,” I decide. Heero wears Underground clothing, and as far as I know, he didn’t throw away his smelly old clothes. Clean, well made clothing can be sold for a good price on the black market.
“I will tell Howard about his reward,” Wufei says.
“So... what’s this card for?”
“Howard knows about the Tallgeese. Apparently, G goes way back with him, and they always kept in touch.”
“Howard and G were friends?” I’m baffled. It shows once again how little I really know about the Professor.
Wufei shrugs. “I didn’t ask, because he clearly didn’t want to talk about it. He did tell me that he kept the card all those years.”
“What do you mean, ‘all those years’?”
“The Sweepers were summoned by the Alliance to salvage the Tallgeese after the crash on the colony. Howard’s silence was bought by allowing him to keep some things to himself, like the thrusters and some rockets. He told me it was a horrible job. He also had to bury the body of the young officer who died test piloting the thing. Howard said that the suit crash-landed so hard the titanium had started to melt. He couldn’t imagine the kind of heat it would take to melt the alloy. He found parts of the suit two building blocks away.”
A church burns. It burns so hard that it melts the... I take a deep breath. Wufei knows I’m from Maxwell Church, but he doesn’t know how long I have been there or whether I stayed long enough to witness the fire and to watch sister Helen die in my arms. Maybe I’ll tell him, or Heero, or the others one day how that... event... scarred me.
I tap the card against my chin.
“Great work Wufei. We know the location, and we have a keycard. We’re going to blow that thing to kingdom come.”
He wants to leave, but he turns around to ask me one more question.
“Duo?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you guys doing the right thing?”
“What?” I almost choke.
“I don’t judge you, or Heero. I don’t mind you being together with another man. I do mind if he is the right man for you.”
“I don’t know,” I confess. “It’s... we are still in the initial phase, I guess. We’re both surprised by what we feel for each other... the more because we started off on the wrong foot. I wanted to strangle him first because of his ideas.”
“People change, Maxwell,” he says with that all-knowing smile on his face.
“We both challenged each other, questioned our own beliefs. His guardian taught him about the history of the colonies and their struggle for independence of the Alliance. He shares our point of view of the cause now.”
“I sincerely hope so. I swear on my honor Maxwell, that if he hurts you, I will personally hunt him down and kill him.”
“I’ll tell him,” I tease him. “Thank you.”
He grants me a small smile.
I flip the card. “What was the price?”
“Howard didn’t mention one. Maybe the relief of getting this off his chest is payment enough.”
“Guilt about what?”
“He could have told us about the impending threat of the Gundams sooner. That would have saved us a lot of grief.”
“It was our plan to kidnap Relena and to reveal the plans of the Alliance,” I object. He shrugs.
“There’s no use discussing what could have been or should have been, Maxwell. We all make our own decisions, and we all take responsibility.”
“The justice of it all, eh?”
“I only follow my own sense of justice. I take full responsibility of my own actions.”
“Thanks, Wufei. Better prepare yourself for the upcoming mission.”
I receive another bow and he walks away. He is just out of sight when Heero shows up behind me.
“Are you coming? Your coffee is getting cold.”
“Sure.”
No one has had breakfast yet, so it surprises me to see that Trowa and Quatre serve solid bread rolls, boiled eggs, and even some marmalade. It tastes heavenly. I sit next to Heero and we share a crumbly piece of cheese. Hilde distributes the coffee mugs, and Sally takes the opportunity to lecture me out about the cane.
“You’re still too unstable to walk around without your cane, Duo,” she admonishes me with a scowl on her face. “Your leg isn’t getting any better by running around like you do. If you don’t use the cane, you can forget about your missions for a long while.”
I can’t help myself- I flash her the keycard. “After tonight, I’ll completely hand myself over to you, miss doctor woman.”
She snorts. “I know I can’t stop you, but you should really reconsider your plans. If you collapse on your leg and you’re all alone in that factory...”
“He is not,” Heero interrupts her. “Alone, that is,” he continues when he sees her questioning look.
Hilde suddenly smiles, and Sally’s eyes light up. “I was wondering why you were walking around freely, Heero.”
“I have to thank you for your good medical care,” he says.
“I believe it was Duo who wanted to check you out,” she quips, “literally.”
They laugh. They all laugh. The day started out sad, but it’s taking a turn for the better. I can only smile myself, and I taste the coffee- it’s real coffee, not that surrogate gunk we used to drink.
“Trowa, did you...?”
“There was some left from Catherine’s baby shower,” he says.
“You didn’t sell your flute, did you?”
He shakes his head, and I don’t question him any further. There are always things people want to keep to themselves.
“Duo, are you serious about tonight?” Even Quatre’s drinking coffee, now I’ve seen it all. I scold myself to keep my mind at the task at hand.
“We can’t afford to lose any more time. With each passing day, the Alliance could force a breakthrough in the designs or in the building of the Gundams, or they could move the Tallgeese to somewhere else where we can’t reach it. We have the opportunity now, we can’t afford to waste it.”
“Agreed.” Quatre puts down his mug. “I have finished the mission plans. We brief as soon as possible.”
“Is there something I can do?” Hilde knows her services are highly appreciated. I know I can count on her.
“Please help Sally prepare the sickbay, in case we need it. And maybe you can contact the same driver we had when we were in the city?”
“Okay,” she confirms. “Truck or car?”
“Truck,” I answer. “We need a truck for the transport. Lots of explosives.”
Her ‘Be careful’ is soft, and I almost miss it. Heero has taken my hand in his, and I put all my feelings aside for the briefing. This is important. This is war.
Chapter 8 | Chapter 10