"A Developing Situation" - Gundam Wing - R
"A Developing Situation"
By Ravenbell
Based on a scenario by ravensilver
Rating: R
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Pairing: Duo Maxwell/Heero Yuy
Summary: Problems arise in Heero and Duo's relationship while they're in the middle of their latest mission.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit, and no offense intended.



---

"Hey." Duo walked into the garage and closed the door behind him. "We need to talk."

"It can wait." Heero didn't look up from the workbench and the firearm he was cleaning. "We're in the middle of a mission."

Duo cleared off the end of the bench and sat down, facing Heero. "Nice try, but that's not going to work. We've got to figure out what we're doing about this situation."

Heero frowned. He didn't want to have this conversation. "Obviously what happened last night was a mistake. I don't plan to let it happen again."

"Uh, yeah. Normally that would be fine, but there's the little matter of the heartfelt confession that came out of your mouth before you jumped me." Duo reached over and took the gun out of his hands, and Heero, despite his better judgment, let him. "Look, I'm all for casual sex, but that – " he jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the main warehouse where they were bunking – "was not casual. Not on your part, anyway."

Steeling himself, Heero looked Duo straight in the eyes. "I was intoxicated. I might have made certain statements that could have been misinterpreted."

"Certain statements." Duo gave him an incredulous look. "Like, oh, you care about me?"

Heero didn't blink. "I believe I said something to that effect."

"And how about, you wanted to spend the rest of your life with me, and you were so relieved I swung both ways, and you really hoped the princess wasn't going to take it too badly?" Duo shook his head. "I'm sorry, man, but if you're going to tell me you only said it to get into my pants, it ain't going to wash. You're not that good a liar."

Deciding a physical retreat was his best option, Heero got up. "Even assuming that I was serious, I still don't see why this needs a discussion." He was halfway to the door when he heard the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked. He turned around, and sure enough, Duo had the gun Heero had just cleaned pointed at Heero's head.

"You're an idiot." Duo told him matter-of-factly. "You don't take your eyes off an armed man. And you don't get to walk away before I tell you that the feeling's more or less mutual. Except I'd be really, really pissed off if we never had sex again."

Heero was silent for several seconds. Finally, he averted his eyes. "Ah. I see."

Duo lowered the gun. "So what are we going to do if someone finds out? Scratch that. When, someone finds out? I mean, the Preventer brass don't normally care who or what the rank and file are screwing, but I'm pretty sure they're not going to like this."

"No one's going to find out." His gaze sharpened at Duo. "I won't say anything and you're not going to."

"Yeah?" Duo raised an eyebrow.

"Yes. Because this… whatever this is, it's not going to go anywhere," Heero insisted. "Like I said, I made a mistake."

His partner gave a short laugh. "I didn't know you were capable of those. And frankly, I don't believe you." From the tone of Duo's voice and the gleam in his eyes, Heero knew he was in for a fight.

They didn't have time for this. "Look." He held up a hand in a placating gesture. "We have an active mission right now, which takes priority over what's going on in our private lives, including this situation. If you won't drop this issue, we should wait until after we achieve our mission objective and terminate operations. We can't afford the distraction now."

Duo looked a bit taken a back for a moment, but he recovered quickly. "Fine." He reengaged the safety and tossed the gun back to Heero. "Let's go kill people. Then we'll talk."

---

It was a straightforward assignment on paper. A terrorist organization called the Neural Stellar Frontier had been showing signs of increased activity in several of the colonies, but the real action was happening quietly on Earth. Duo and Heero had been sent to New Rangora, one of the newly rebuilt cities in South America, to target a few of the NEF bad guys that the United Nations Earth Sphere wasn't officially acknowledging. They had a list of six names, with a dozen aliases each.

They had already located and picked off two of the smaller fish, Martin Carvalho and Ernesto Rocha, and were waiting to see if that would flush out any of the others. Thanks to the Preventers' government contacts in the city, they'd know if anyone tried to run.

But so far, no luck.

"I hate this place." Duo lowered his binoculars, squinting in the bright morning light. They were setting up surveillance in a newly-constructed office building, currently sitting empty thanks to problems with the owners' operating permits. Their target was the offices of the Sagit Pyrophyllite Group, located in the building across the street. The police intelligence said it was a shell company for the operations of Ignacio Ruvenal, the most elusive target on their list.

Heero was busy with the equipment, sorting out cables and wiring. "We won't be here long. Once we have the cameras online, we can monitor the feeds from the warehouse."

"Not the building, Heero. It's this whole damn city." Duo gestured toward the window. "Everything's bright and shiny and brand new. All the maintenance is automated, with robots doing the grunt work. Hell, all the people are practically automated. They smile all the time. It's creepy."

"New Rangora was built to be a model metropolis, but essentially became a privately owned country after a conglomerate bought out the government in AC197." Heero rattled off the information from memory. "Based on population, its GDP and per capita income are nearly the highest for the entire planet. I think that would explain the level of complacency in the populace."

Duo didn't seem to take in comfort in the statistics. "It's unnatural, is what it is. I've seen some of the worst pits in the solar system, but this place is a whole new level of twisted. I just saw one of those cleaner robots spit-shining a manhole cover." He made a face, turning away from the window. "I never thought I'd say this, but I miss grime, Heero."

"There's plenty here. Wait for your eyes to adjust, and you'll see past the glare." The last cable was secured in place, and a window popped up on Heero's laptop screen with the video feed of Ruvenal's office. For the moment, it was empty aside from a ficus on the window sill.

"Looks pretty good." Duo came up behind him, peering over Heero's shoulder at the screen. "What's the word from Tino?"

Constantino Caruso, their contact in New Rangora, was monitoring the city's borders and transportation checkpoints, and sending up-to-the minute updates straight to Heero's laptop. Heero glanced down at the scrolling data at the bottom of the screen. "Still no movement."

"Word must be out about the hits on Carvalho and Rocha by now. If the others haven't tried to run by now, they're not going to." Duo grinned. "I guess we'll have to do this the hard way."

His hand was on Heero's shoulder, pushing him aside slightly so that he could get a better look. It hadn't been that long ago that such contact would have been completely unacceptable, well-intended or not. Now it still made Heero tense for a moment, for a completely different reason.

The transition from being Gundam pilots to Preventer agents hadn't been easy. After years of operating as one-man armies, it wasn't easy acclimating to a chain of command, paperwork, and all the other bureaucratic complications that came with a legitimate multi-national peacekeeper force. Things were a little more flexible in Special Ops, where the two of them had been quickly assigned. Officially, Heero and Duo had been paired because they had worked well together before and because they had joined up at roughly the same time. Unofficially, their friends had pulled a few strings for them to bypass the official procedures.

Fortunately the work was familiar, and their experience was put to good use. After a few months on larger team missions, the Preventer command was impressed enough to give the former Gundam pilots their own assignments and a greater degree of autonomy. They still had to answer to too many people and too many of their fights were with paperwork and protocols instead of terrorists, but they were using their skills where they were needed the most. Heero considered that an acceptable tradeoff.

Except that being in such constant contact with Duo, often in close quarters, had provoked certain feelings that Heero was finding it harder and harder to ignore. No matter how much he wanted to deny it, last night had been a long time in coming.

"As long as Ruvenal's not in his office right now, why don't we just go over there and rig up a little something to take care of him?" Duo squinted at the screen. "Maybe an aerosol poison with a remote trigger or something?"

"You've been watching too many spy movies," Heero chided.

Duo shifted his weight, and Heero found his partner had practically draped himself over his back, arms wound a little too tight over Heero's shoulders. "Hey, what's the fun of being covert operatives if we don't get to do the crazy stuff once in a while?" Duo murmured in his ear.

Heero jerked his head away, the rest of his body tensing. "Crazy stuff isn't in our budget."

"Yeah, yeah, I know." Duo sighed. He got the hint, pulling his arms away and raising them up to stretch out over his own head. "I guess that's why we're driving a rental."

It wasn't deliberate. Heero knew that Duo was only being Duo, and the teasing didn't mean anything. It wasn't his fault that Heero had lost the ability to ignore him, to keep those casual jabs and insinuations from getting under his skin.

"Come on." Heero exhaled slowly and got up, unplugging the laptop. "We have eighteen more cameras to install. We need to move."

Duo grinned. "Yessir, Mr. Preventer, Sir."

Heero watched him collect their gear, trying to keep his mind on the job and on the next task ahead. He couldn't lose control again. It was as simple as that. A sexual relationship was an unacceptable and unwelcome development that was going to end in disaster if they pursued it any further. Duo might not realize it yet, but Heero understood all too well.

He wasn't going to lose what he had now, a place in the world that made sense, where they both had a chance to fight the good fight. It sacrifices had to be made, he'd make them, like he always did.

Even if that something was Duo.

---

If there was one thing Heero had learned about his partner, it was that Duo Maxwell thought with his mouth, and when he had something on his mind, telling him not to talk about it was guaranteed to get the opposite result. But Heero had to give him credit. It was well past mid-morning and their tenth camera installation when Duo finally came to the end of his patience.

"I've been thinking," he told Heero. "We ought to talk to Sally about this before we decide anything. She's known us both for ages, and she'll be a hell of a lot more sympathetic than anyone else at HQ."

They were outside the Hotel Carmody, where the two Germans on their list were known to stay when they were in town. Instead of setting up cameras, Heero had opted to patch into the hotel's security system. Now they were in an underground maintenance corridor, hacking into the video feeds.

Duo was supposed to be keeping an eye on the hotel staff and the roaming robots who might stumble in on them, but there wasn't much activity going on. So, of course, he was bored. "What do you think? I'm not usually one to go asking for advice, but I think this counts as special circumstances."

If nothing else, the delay had at least given Heero some time to work out some basic strategy. "Revealing this to anyone in our command structure is a bad idea," he said flatly. "Furthermore, if we inform Sally, we'll also need to inform Livingston and Brechter." He kept typing on his laptop, careful not to leave any trace of tampering as he worked his way into the system.

Duo frowned at the mention of their immediate superiors. "I don't know. Livingston's okay, but Brechter the Bruiser?"

"Like it or not, they're the ones who'll be the most affected if any of this comes to light." Heero was insistent. "They would need fair warning to take the necessary precautions." He knew Duo would go to considerable lengths to avoid any kind of contact with Preventer bureaucracy that wasn't absolutely necessary. Hopefully this would get him to drop the subject.

Instead, Duo only shrugged. "Okay, if it'll make you happy. But you get to talk to Brechter."

Heero scowled at him. "That isn't what I meant." If Duo was being so nonchalant, that meant he was serious. It was time to change tactics. "Have you thought about the consequences of this, Duo? What about the others?" He didn't have to explain who he meant.

"Others?" As expected, that caught his partner off guard. He was silent for a few long moments, lost in thought. "You know, I don't think Quatre would care much. He's religious and all, but his upbringing wasn't real traditional. And, I mean, if the rumors about him and Trowa are true – "

"They're not true," Heero interrupted. "The two of them haven't denied having a relationship, but everything I've seen suggests that they're only friends. Now Chang Wufei, on the other hand – "

"Wait – Wufei?! Gay?" Duo sputtered. "Are we talking about the same guy? Mr. Straight-Arrow-Hardass-For-Justice, Chang Wufei?"

Heero nodded. "I always had the sense that he was repressing feelings for Trieze Kushrenada." He paused, considering. "I could be wrong."

Duo gave him a baleful look. "My life's is just gonna get exponentially weirder from this point on, isn't it?"

"I wasn't the one who wanted to discuss this," Heero reminded him. He typed a final command on the laptop keyboard, and there was an audible beep confirming that he had established secured access. More video windows started coming up on the screen, and Heero automatically sorted them into more manageable categories and started feeding them into the analysis programs and facial recognition software. With any luck, their targets wouldn't be hidden for much longer.

A small flashing icon came up in the corner of the screen, and for a moment Heero thought that a match had been found already. Instead, it turned out to be one of the other general alerts he had set up.

Duo had realized it first. "Hey, it's Tino." He switched on his communicator and put it to his ear. "How are you doing, man?"

Heero's eyes didn't leave the screen, but he turned on his unit to listen in.

"Hello my friend. I have some good news and some bad news." Caruso had a thick accent, but his diction was perfect. "We still have no locations for any of the targets, but one of my men has intercepted a call to Morales. He has arranged a meeting with the Germans."

"All right! I knew you'd come through!" Duo grinned. "What about Ruvenal?"

"There is nothing so far, but I will keep you informed," Caruso promised. "The other men are meeting at a restaurant in East District. Marta Lucia's. I am afraid you do not have much time."

Duo had a gleam of anticipation in his eyes as he turned to Heero. "Looks like we're finally going to see some action."

--

East district was where a few remnants of the old city, the original Rangora, still existed. It was one of the few concessions the corporate owners had made to the historic preservationists, though the security measures were much heavier in the area for fear that the area would attract criminals and other non-conformists. While everyone knew better than to start trouble there, ultimately the additional surveillance really hadn't done much to deter anything.

Marta Lucia's was a very small restaurant, located out by the highway at the very edge of the old city. It was a family business that didn't draw much attention from the police, the tourists, or anyone else. However, it was rumored that the tiny, but loyal clientele found it a very useful place to conduct private business.

After quick reconnaissance of the restaurant and the surrounding area, where they narrowly avoided a pair of Morales's men who were already lurking, Heero and Duo hashed out a rough plan. Deciding that it would be too much risk to try a hit inside the restaurant, they resolved to take out their targets as they were leaving. Heero would be positioned on the highway overpass, roughly five miles away from the restaurant, and use a sniper rifle to take out anyone who headed in his direction. Duo would be on the ground, ensuring that the targets would be heading in Heero's direction – if he didn't take them down first.

They separated and took different routes back to the garage. Heero got back first and started preparing their artillery. In his opinion the plan was risky and there were too many holes in their surveillance, too many variables that they couldn't account for. It wasn't the way Heero preferred to work, but Duo liked relying on improvisation, and he'd been happily occupied with thoughts of impending violence for the last several hours. And consequently, he hadn't made any attempt to resume their awkward conversation about the "situation" since.

The communicator on Heero's belt crackled. "02 to 01. Come in, 01."

There was a grinding, mechanical sound like a buzzsaw in the background that forced Heero to turn down the volume to save his ears. "01 here. You're late."

”I'm coming in with some extra equipment. Thought I'd give you some warning before you mistook me for one of the bad guys."

"That's highly unlikely. Why would I – " And that's when he realized what the background noise was.

Moments later a motorcycle roared into the garage, bringing a cloud of dust and petroleum vapors with him. It was about the size of a police cruiser with a custom titanium frame, and what sounded like a Tijuana W-quint engine. And of course, it also sported a bright red paint job that was anything but inconspicuous. As for the rider, he was dressed head to foot in leather and kevlar, with a helmet that completely obscured his face. Only the tell-tale braid that he carelessly flipped back over his shoulder betrayed his identity. After bringing the bike to a halt and dismounting with a literal bounce in his step, Duo removed his helmet. His broad smile stretched nearly ear to ear. "Before you ask, I didn't steal her," he announced. "She's Tino's."

Heero crossed his arms, not ready to give an inch. "That would have been my second question. The first one would have been 'What is it doing here?'"

Duo carefully walked the bike a few steps further into the garage before he snapped the kickstand in place. "You can't get involved in a high speed chase without the speed, and I am not trusting my life to the damn rental car. While you're doing the sniper thing, I'm going to get a little more up close and personal." He held his hands up, mimicking guns, on either side of his head, and lowered one to blow away imaginary smoke from the index-finger gun barrel.

It was like Heero wasn't even there. "This is going to attract a lot of attention we don't need." He looked the bike over, almost wincing as he noticed the make of the muffler – at full speed it would make such a racket, anyone would be able to hear Duo coming from miles away. "Do you honestly think this thing is appropriate as a pursuit vehicle?"

Duo nodded, clearly enthusiastic. "Oh yeah. She's not a Gundam, but she's got plenty of fire in her." His gloved hand fondled the handlebars and dashboard with exaggerated strokes. "We're going to get along just fine, aren't we baby?" he practically purred.

Heero fought the urge to roll his eyes. "I don't suppose you mentioned to Caruso what you were borrowing the motorcycle for? Or the low probability of it being returned to him in one piece?" Duo didn't seem to be listening. "02, can you even handle that thing?"

Duo shrugged, finally turning his full attention to his partner. "You worry too much. Tino's used this bike in chases before, and he knows he'll need to make exterior modifications before he uses it again – it's due for a new paint job anyway." He picked up one of the semiautomatics that Heero had laid out, and stuck it in the shoulder holster under his jacket. "And yeah, I can handle it. And if I can't, you'll be watching my back, right?"

If there was one thing Heero envied about Duo, it was that maddeningly effortless charisma. His words were so confident, it was easy to be swept up in his certainty. Despite Heero's better judgment and rational mind, he could feel his misgivings slipping away. "Right," Heero sighed. "You'll have cover within the range of the sniper rifle."

"Oh, well screw that. Here." Heero's hands went up automatically, as Duo tossed him the keys to the rental car. They jangled as he caught them. "There's no telling how this is going to go down. I might need you on the road out there if things go bad." He clapped Heero on the shoulder before turning back to the bike.

"When things go bad," Heero muttered under his breath.

But he pocketed the keys, and went back to work.

---

Heero waited on the overpass, listening to the chatter of restaurant patrons in one ear, and Duo humming tunelessly to himself in the other. The car was parked a few streets over, easily accessible if Heero needed it. He had the rifle loaded and in position, right in the blind spot where the highway traffic cameras wouldn't find it. Any minute now, two cars would come down the road, if Duo did his job right, and Heero would be ready for them.

The bugs they had planted at Marta Lucia's were functioning decently. Morales and the Germans had been earlier than expected, but their late afternoon dinner stretched well into the evening hours. The conversation was only intermittently audible, but it was clear that none of the parties involved were happy about the recent turn of events. Tensions were running high, and there were a few moments where it seemed like the targets would have been more than happy to eliminate each other.

Their terrorists had arrived in two cars from opposite directions, and would leave the same way, possibly even switching cars to make it harder to follow them. In the best scenario, Duo would force both cars to divert towards Heero, who would dispatch all the targets cleanly with the long-range rifle. If one or both of the cars went in the opposite direction, Duo would have to handle them on the ground, which would be messier and easier to trace back the Preventers.

The worst scenario would be a full-scale chase that would almost certainly involve collateral damage. And, though Heero didn't like to think about it, there was always the slim possibility that he might miss and hit an unintended target.

Duo's humming in his ear stopped. "02 to 01. They're on the move," he whispered. There was the sound of the motorcycle's ignition starting in the background, a dull, ominous roar.

"Copy that." Heero shifted himself forward slightly, to peer through the sight on the rifle for what felt like the hundredth time that hour. The computer was going to handle the actual targeting, but he felt better knowing that he could do it the old fashioned way if necessary.

The highway below him was nearly empty, a long, gleaming strip of asphalt and neo-carbon polymers, stretching out into the distance. Most of the weekend traffic was heading in the other direction, away from the sterile city and its robotic caretakers.

"Mercado is still in the silver 997 Porche with one guy left on security detail." Duo's voice crackled over the communicator. "The Germans have switched for a Thalomide with tinted windows. License number 0X777BR. Looks like the fish-mouthed flunky's driving." A sharp intake of breath. "Whoa, I've been spotted. Good luck, 01. Engaging target now!"

"02?" The communicator went dead, and Heero was left listening to white noise. Duo had followed procedure for once, and had gone to communicator silence at once he engaged the targets. Of course, he hadn't remembered to leave the audio channel open so Heero could hear what was going on. "Dammit."

He went back to the computer and entered the specifics for the cars Duo had listed. He'd hacked into one of the highway cameras earlier, so the visual of every vehicle was ready to be instantly analyzed for a match for their terrorists. The facial recognition and targeting programs would take it from there, and all Heero had to do was wait for his cue and pull the trigger. It sounded simple, but a lot could still go wrong.

Agonizing minutes passed, as Heero waited for his targets. His eyes were on the horizon, watching the cars as they emerged around the bend of the highway. He had to focus on what he was doing right now, and what he needed to accomplish. He couldn't afford to think of the thousand and one ways that Duo Maxwell could be in trouble, and certainly not about abandoning his position to ride off to the rescue.

There was a burst of static in his ear. "Hey 01!" Duo was shouting over blaring car horns and the chainsaw growl of the motorcycle. "Morales is heading your way! You've got about two minutes!"

Heero ducked his head. "Where are you?" he hissed.

"Approaching city limits! I'm still tailing the Germans, and I don't think I'm going to be able to convince them to turn around. Don't worry. They won't get away from me!"

"Don't do anything reckless!" And of course, Heero realized how foolish that sounded once he'd said it. Fortunately, Duo didn't seem to have heard anything over the din, because he only cursed loudly and then the communicator went dead again.

Heero didn't have time to worry about him. He could see the silver Porche in the distance, and was vaguely aware of the images on the laptop screen starting to cascade rapidly as the software scored a match.

He heard the whirr of the rifle as the targeting system made minute adjustments, zeroing in on the driver. Morales was ignoring the posted speed limit, though he must have known the highway cameras would catch him and send the vehicle information straight to the police. He was alone, his expression tight, jaw firmly clenched. Heero readied himself, finger curled around the trigger guard.

But roughly half a mile away from his target distance, the Porsche slowed, then pulled over and stopped completely. Heero held his breath for several seconds, watching Morales roll down the window, fumbling with something in his lap. He was a portly man in his late 50s, the kind of terrorist who worked behind the scenes and got other men to do their dirty work for them. At the first sign of a real fight on their hands, they'd cut and run, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake.

The car door opened, and Heero got ready to move – but Morales only tossed something in a plastic bag out into the field, shut the door, and resumed driving.

Sixty-two seconds later, Heero pulled the trigger. He heard the smash of glass as the bullet made impact with the car windshield, but it was impossible to confirm a hit from this angle. Running to the other side of the overpass, he watched the car maintain its course, counting off the seconds, holding his breath. Then the car veered sharply to the right, and ran right into the concrete highway barrier. The door flew open from the force of the impact, and Morales tumbled out on to the asphalt.

Dead from a gunshot wound to the head.

It was time to beat a hasty retreat before the authorities arrived. But after Heero had packed up his equipment and was coming down from the overpass, he couldn't help but wonder what it was that Morales had thrown out of the car. His rational mind told him that it wasn't worth wasting time wandering around in the dark to pick through the man's garbage, but his curiosity won out – probably Duo's bad influence. He hiked the short distance to where he'd seen the bag land.

For his trouble, Heero walked away from the highway with an additional six guns, nine boxes of ammunition, and a few other interesting items.

---

Once Heero had gotten back to the rental car, and stowed the rifle and gear away, he decided to try the communicator again. "01 to 02. Come in 02."

There were a few moments of empty static, but then a sudden crackle of sound that dissipated just as quickly. "Hey man." Duo sounded out of breath. Heero couldn't hear the motorcycle running, and the sounds of traffic had been significantly reduced. "Did you get Morales?"

"Confirmed. What about the Germans?"

"Yeah. They're dead and deader." Duo exhaled loudly. "But, uh, Heero? We've got a problem here."

"What is it?"

A long pause. "I don't know if you could hear what was going on at Marta Lucia's, but these guys haven't been too popular around town lately. It looks like somebody wanted them dead even more than we did."

That didn't sound promising to Heero. "I hope you're going to clarify that statement."

"Well, I'm sitting here with their car down by the lake, and they've got a couple hundred pounds of C4 explosives in the trunk, and what I'm pretty sure is a timer counting down to zero." Another pause, as Duo held the phone up to the device in question so Heero could hear the sinister beeping. "We've got a little over thirteen minutes. That's not enough time to get any decent backup out here."

Not good. Heero didn't like bombs under any circumstances, but at least he knew how to deal with them rationally. He quickly considered the usual contingencies. "Can you defuse it?"

"That's a negative. Looks like that has to be done with the external triggering device, which isn't here. I've checked the whole car and the Germans and their flunkies." Duo's footsteps were uneven, and it sounded like he was walking over loose gravel. "I can try taking the detonation unit apart. If that doesn't work, I guess I'll just have to push the car into the lake."

That wasn't going to do much if Duo was still anywhere near the highway and any untold number of civilians. For a split second, Heero was ready to tell Duo to just abandon the car and run – thirteen minutes would be enough time to at least ensure his safety, if he couldn't do anything for anyone else. The mission parameters would allow action for self-preservation, even at the cost of other lives.

But if their positions were switched, Heero wouldn't have run. And he would never have allowed Duo to talk him into running either. Though their methods were different, they both understood their responsibilities.

He took a deep breath. "All right. Start on detonator unit, but give me your location first. I'm going to come and back you up." He opened the door of the rental car and tossed Morales's bag of guns into the passenger seat.

"What?!" Duo squawked. "01, don't you think – "

"Don't argue with – wait a minute." Heero sat down in the driver's seat and looked at the bag again, thinking. He reached in and pulled out one of the few items that didn't appear to be lethal. "Would your missing triggering device be a rectangular Kershwin module with a modified actualizer?"

"Uh, could be."

Heero looked down at the controller in his hand. It didn't appear to be active or emitting any sort of signal, but the current settings were certainly suspicious. He flipped the main switch to "Disengage."

Duo sighed in audible relief as the beeping stopped. "I guess that answers that question. Morales really was a dick."

Heero nearly laughed at the release of tension, but caught himself. "What's your status now?" He started the car, at the sight of an approaching maintenance robot. It would be safer on the road. "Can you handle cleanup and disposal?"

"Yeah, but what do you want to do with all the C4? Should I give the cops the tip-off?"

Heero considered, looking at the trigger in his hand. "Can the car still be driven?"

"The Germans' Thalomide?" A snort of laughter. "It doesn't look too pretty, but I can hotwire it. No problem."

"Good." He tucked the trigger back into the bag of guns, and covered it carefully with his jacket before pulling the car out. "Bring it back to base of operations so we can do a full search. We'll deal with the inventory later. I'll call our associate to go pick up his motorcycle."

"Uh, yeah, about the bike – "

Heero frowned. "I won't lend you any money for repairs."

"I wouldn't ask you," Duo huffed. "Quatre owes me from the Ganymede job anyway. You I just want for your body."

Heero switched off the communicator without answering, glad that Duo couldn't see his face burning bright red.

---

The last hit of a mission always felt more difficult than the others, usually because of the cumulative effect of the prior ones. The anticipation for finality, for closure, for everything to be over, changed the way people thought and acted. Dr. J had warned Heero that it was harder to end things than to begin them, and a job well done usually took longer than any preliminary estimation would calculate.

Ruvenal was the last man on the list, the worst of the lot, the most careful, the most cunning, the most dangerous, and the most invisible. He hadn't slipped once in all the time Heero and Duo had been in New Rangora, and the deaths of Morales and the Germans hadn't changed that.

Nothing recovered from either vehicle, the restaurant, or the safe houses where their targets had been in hiding provided any clues as to Ruvenal's whereabouts. They didn't have any leads except the ones that they'd started with, and it was the same a week later. A police investigation had been launched into the disappearance of Morales which had also turned up nothing useful. Nobody was looking for the Germans.

The mounting frustrations were inevitable. Heero typed up their mission reports for Field Commander Livingston and spent hours poring over surveillance logs and video feeds, looking for any possible clues.

Duo relieved his stress the way he always did. He talked.

"I'll bet he snuck out of the city weeks ago." Duo's voice came from under the Thalomide, which he'd spent most of the afternoon repairing. "I'll bet he was never even here in the first place. I mean, you pay a few guys to drop some money around, plant some paperwork, and hack a few video feeds – you can make yourself look like you're anywhere. He could have set the whole thing up to get rid of Morales and the rest of 'em. Figured out we were here and let us do his dirty work for him."

"That theory may have some sound factual basis," Heero muttered from behind his laptop screen. "Potential variables remain unaccounted for."

"You're talking like a textbook again," Duo chided him. He eased his way out from under the car, pulling his toolkit with him, and grabbed a rag to wipe the grease off his hands. "I take my eyes off you for five minutes and you're back to Mr. Syllable Overload." He took a seat next to Heero on the workbench and leaned over to glance at the laptop screen. "Looks like a whole of nothing."

"Unfortunately."

Duo tilted his head, looking at Heero askance. "I can tell you're bored when you start agreeing with me." He grinned. "Want to mess around? I promise I won't tell anybody."

It was the third time he'd asked in the last hour. After experimenting with several variations, Heero had settled on a standard response. "I have no interest in having sex with you. Your persistence will not encourage me. And don't you have work to do?"

"Fine." With a long-suffering sigh, Duo got up and retrieved a bundle of C4 blocks from the trunk of the Thalomide. He'd been stripping out the microchip protection from them one at a time, working intermittently over the last few days. He dumped the blocks on the workbench with his toolkit and sat back down. "Happy?"

"Mmm." Heero decided it was safer sounding non-committal.

Duo rifled through his tools, pulling out a wire cutter and pliers. "I know you wanted to wait on this, but I've been thinking about what to tell Livingston and Sally."

Heero did look up at that, but only for a moment. "I thought we agreed to drop this. It's not a good idea."

"Wrong. You decided to drop this." Duo's face was completely neutral, and by all outward appearances, his attention was totally focused on the block of C4 he was cutting into. "I think we ought to keep our options open. We just say that there's a potential situation. Maybe even a hypothetical one. We leave out all the specifics, and nobody needs to know how far this thing has actually gone."

Duo was being completely sincere, which made ignoring him even harder.

"We let Livingston and Brechter know it might be an issue at some point in the future." Duo, wielding his pliers, set down a perfectly extracted microchip on the surface of the workbench. "That's more or less the truth, right?"

Heero stopped typing. "Telling people we're hiding something is a fairly transparent admission of guilt."

"So what are you saying? We should tell them we're not hiding anything?"

Heero frowned. "We don't need to volunteer information. If our superiors find out independently, it's one thing, but otherwise it would be safer to keep this to ourselves."

He could see Duo wasn't happy with that answer. "And what happened to our duty to give them fair warning?"

"I've reconsidered."

"Right." Duo rolled his eyes. "Well, we could always avoid the whole thing and quit. Nobody gets hurt. Nobody gets angry. We could play bounty hunters or guns-for-hire or something for kicks. Or I've always got a scrap pile waiting back at L2. You're welcome to come share it."

It was a nice idea, but hardly a sensible one. "Duo, you don't want to leave the Preventers. Your skills are optimally suited to the work, and you like what these people stand for." Heero paused. "So do I."

"Yeah. They really grow on you, don't they?" Duo sighed. He put down his tools and crossed his arms, looking up at Heero. "Look, I know you still need more time to work through whatever your thick head thinks it needs to work through, but we can't put this off forever."

"We aren't putting off something that's not going to happen," Heero said. It came out more bluntly than he'd intended.

Duo glared at him.

He shouldn't feel guilty. One of them had to be rational about this. Heero took a deep breath. "We have another option. We end our partnership now, ask to be transferred into different units, and forget about that night. We treat it as an error in judgment. An anomaly. No one would question us further."

Duo was shaking his head. "Heero Yuy, if I weren't damned sure you could kick my ass with your head on backwards, I'd sock you one right now." He wasn't angry or upset. In fact, he looked like he was trying to keep himself from laughing.

Mystified, Heero stared at him. "I don't understand."

"And it's annoying as hell sometimes." Duo picked up the pliers again, and started on the next extraction. "But you'll figure it out. And I can wait."

Heero was about to demand a better explanation when his laptop screen started to blink. It was Caruso again. He reached over and hit the button to open the communicator channel. "Hello."

"Good afternoon my friends. I hope you are well."

"Couldn't be better, Tino!" Duo called out. There was the dull click of another extracted microchip being placed on the table.

"I have good news for you." Caruso sounded unusually enthusiastic. "Ignacio Ruvenal's personal bodyguards have been sighted at an office building downtown. The situation is developing and further surveillance is being conducted, but it appears to be a promising lead."

"Affirmative," Heero told him. It could be the break they had been waiting for. Duo was already up out of his seat, pulling on his jacket. "Which building is it?"

"The 600 block northeast corner lot of the Santa Lucinda Esplanade."

Heero blinked. "That's where the Sagit Pyrophyllite Group offices are." He punched a series of commands into his laptop, and brought up the camera feeds from the first place where he and Duo had set up surveillance. None of the alerts had been triggered, and there are appeared to be nothing amiss from a quick glance through the live footage.

"Hang on. Look." Duo had come up behind him and was pointing at the image of Ruvenal's office window on the screen. Heero tilted his head slightly, not sure what he was supposed to be seeing.

Then it dawned on him. "The plant on the window sill's gone."

---

Half an hour later, Heero and Duo were back in the building where they'd set up surveillance cameras a week ago, only now they were cobbling together a secondary base of operations. Heero had their extra display screens and monitors rigged up, with dozens of data streams running at once. They'd hastily retrieved some of the sensors and equipment from other locations they'd been monitoring, ready to be repurposed and redeployed. Currently, the black and white image of a group of men in expensive suits dominated the central screen. They were occupying the office next to Ruvenal's on the same floor.

Review of their data had confirmed that none of them had been seen entering or leaving the building.

Of particular interest was the man currently sitting in the far corner of the room, who had the same height and build as Ignacio Ruvenal, but appeared to be slightly younger. He had bandages around the edges of his scalp that suggested he'd recently had plastic surgery. The man's position made him just barely visible to the surveillance camera, but it was enough for the computers to do their job.

"The software should be able to confirm his identity in a few more minutes," Heero announced, eyes straining to keep up with the rapidly scrolling data. "We just need a definite X-point match on the skeletal topography." Ruvenal might be able to change his features, but he couldn't disguise the bones underneath.

"It looks like they've been using a maintenance tube that connects to the old subway line to move in and out." Duo raised the binoculars again, adjusting them as he continued his scan. "That's why we haven't seen any movement. I think they've been avoiding the offices and staying on the lower floors." He stepped back suddenly. "Dammit."

Heero immediately tensed and reached for his gun, but Duo shook his head, motioning for him to relax.

"Sorry. Those guards know what they're doing. The perimeter's really tight. It's going to be a pain to get in there."

"Sensors say there are heat signatures for twelve people in the building." Heero looked up. "Are they all accounted for?"

Duo nodded. "Yeah. That's the target, a flunky, and ten guards." He frowned, posture uneasy. "They're just sitting in there and talking about horse races. I don’t know. Something about this doesn't smell right."

Beeping from the computer drew Heero's attention back to his laptop. The scans were finished. "Negative match," he announced, grimacing. "It's not Ruvenal." He looked up at the men on the screen, slowly ruling out the others as potential matches, one by one.

"Someone sure went to a heluva lot of trouble to make us think it's him." Duo was slowly backing away from the widow, expression darkening. "So what are the decoys for?"

Heero's eyes narrowed in realization. "They're bait."

"Correct," came a deep, unfamiliar male voice behind them.

It only took Heero a split second to draw his gun, turn, and take aim at the tall, broad-shouldered Latin gentleman with graying hair and very familiar features.

Who was holding a gun to Duo Maxwell's head.

"How did you get in here?!" Heero demanded, striding several steps forward.

"Ah, ah," said Ruvenal, a clear warning in his voice. He had a gloved hand clamped over Duo's mouth, arm wrapped tight around his neck. Heero knew from experience that it was no small feat to get the drop on Duo Maxwell, or to keep any kind of hold on him. Ruvenal hardly seemed to be exerting any effort at all, though Duo was struggling furiously to break his grip. "Stop there," Ruvenal ordered. "Unless you want to watch this one get a bullet in his head." Duo winced as the muzzle of the gun – Duo's own gun, Heero realized – dug against his temple.

Heero froze in his tracks, but didn't lower his weapon. The blood was racing in his veins, and he had to remind himself to think, to stay calm, and to fall back on his training. The surest way to get them both killed was to panic. "How did you get in?" he repeated.

"Your friend Caruso is also my friend," he said simply. He had not raised his voice, and Heero thought he was probably the kind of man who was used to being obeyed without question. "You will drop your gun now, boy. My men are downstairs and you will not escape us."

Heero's first instinct was to call Ruvenal's bluff, but he wasn't so sure that it was one. They hadn't detected Ruvenal in the building, and if their security was compromised there could be others. With the construction half finished, and piles of building materials and heavy machinery still littering the lower floors, there were countless places to hide. Ruvenal could have gotten here first, to set up the trap with the men across the street as bait, and then simply waited for Caruso to make the call.

There were missing panels in the ceiling, revealing steel beams and exposed sections of the ventilation system. Snipers could be concealed up there, or behind the drywall panels, or even beneath them in the floor. They could be surrounded. Or maybe there was no one at all. Either way, Heero's choices were limited.

"Let him go," he demanded of Ruvenal. "Let him go and you can still walk out of this room alive."

Duo's eyes were fixed on Heero, intense and confused. They weren't in the business of negotiating with terrorists. Men like Ruvenal could not be reasoned with, which was why the Preventers had sent them in the first place. Heero had a clear shot – at point blank range, no less. Duo or no Duo, he should have taken it. That was what he'd been trained to do, what every nerve in his body was telling Heero to do.

But he couldn't. Heero's gun hand was shaking as he stared at Duo, heartbeat thundering in his ears. He wasn't a Gundam pilot, or a perfect soldier, or someone who could deal in absolutes any longer. If the shot went wide, or ricocheted, Duo Maxwell would be dead, and that simply wasn't a risk he was willing to take.

Heero lowered his gun, then re-engaged the safety and threw it aside. "You win," he said simply. Though he knew that the act was tantamount to suicide, all he felt was relief.

Ruvenal laughed. "Foolish boy. The Preventers were weak to send a pair of whelps like you to kill for them. You were barely competent to execute the Germans and that idiot Morales." He released Duo, shoving him toward the center of the room with Heero. Now his gun was pointed at Heero's head.

"What the hell did you do that for?" Duo whispered at him accusingly. He was more confused than angry, rubbing at his jaw where Ruvenal's hand had left red marks on the skin.

Heero didn't answer him, eyes never leaving Ruvenal. "You set them up too, didn't you? Morales and the Germans. You used us to dispose of them, you and Caruso."

"He's lying," Duo shook his head, teeth clenched. He turned to their aggressor. "Tino wouldn't cooperate with trash like you."

The man smiled. "He would. He has a wife and small children, and cares for their welfare."

"You bastard!" Duo snarled at him.

Before he could take a step forward, Ruvenal had the gun pointed back at him. "I wouldn't, boy," he advised. His movements were quick and precise, no energy wasted on extraneous motion. "You two are still alive because I have questions. And you will only remain alive and unharmed if you answer all of them. Now hands behind your heads, both of you."

As they complied, Duo glanced at Heero again, who shook his head. No plan. Not yet.

Impatiently, Ruvenal walked forward and grabbed Heero by the arm. "You, kneel facing the wall. Over there, eyes on the ground." He jerked him away from Duo, toward an uncarpeted section of the floor. Heero didn't resist, but he kept careful watch of Ruvenal's movements, looking for weaknesses. He could tell Duo was doing the same, though his back was turned.

If Ruvenal wanted to interrogate them, they still had time. Heero got down on his knees, hands still tucked together at the nape of his neck. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Ruvenal walk back across the room to retrieve Heero's gun, before he turned to Duo.

"You. You're the one who likes to talk." Heero heard the man's footsteps approaching Duo. They were distinctive and easy to discern. "Tell me names. Every contact you have in the city."

Ruvenal must have been in the building before they arrived, because there was no way Heero would have missed hearing him. He glanced over Ruvenal's clothes again. Dark slacks, coat, shirt, belt, shoes. All normal and unmodified. There was no sign of a holster or any other weapons.

He hadn't come armed. All Ruvenal had was their stolen guns.

"The only contact we've got here is Tino," Duo was saying. "And you already know about him, right?" He wasn't exactly lying. Their only official contact was Caruso, but there were dozens of others he was coordinating on their behalf, a list of names that Heero and Duo had both memorized, the hard copies burned before their arrival.

"You are lying. This kind of operation cannot be run with three people only."

Heero's mind was racing. Why would Ruvenal come unarmed? The files all said that he favored firearms as weapons. Unless their security system was still active, and Ruvenal had gotten through with some sort of anti-detection device that couldn't hide weapons. His eyes darted toward his open laptop screen, wishing he were close enough to see the data, to see if the system had been tampered with. It stood to reason that if Ruvenal had come unarmed, anyone with him wouldn't be armed either.

And maybe there wasn’t anyone. It had been several minutes now since Ruvenal had gained the upper hand, and he still hadn't picked up a phone or pulled out a comm device to signal his men. The screens still showed the group across the street in the office building, lounging around. Why weren't they here now, backing up their boss?

No, Ruvenal was alone. Heero was sure of it. If Caruso had been coerced, he might have waited until the last minute to tell Ruvenal where they were, or when they were coming. If Ruvenal hadn’t had enough time to infiltrate their security completely, he might have decided it was worth the risk to confront them alone. Unlike Morales, he liked getting his hands dirty. Ruvenal was more than capable of physically subduing both of them, and from the gloating, he certainly had the ego to try it.

"I've listened to the two of you. Your conversations. Your arguments. I know your secrets and the lies you tell each another." Ruvenal was taunting Duo, who had also been forced to his knees, and was now glaring up at their captor. "That one wouldn't shoot to protect you. So now you will talk to keep him from bleeding."

Duo scoffed. "Protect him? You're out of your mind if you think he needs protecting from anything, least of all you." Heero winced as her heard Ruvenal backhand Duo across the face. There was a sharp intake of breath, and then, "Geez, you're touchy."

An incredulous laugh. "You are still trying to provoke me?"

Heero had to do something while Ruvenal was distracted, his attention focused on Duo. Heero shifted position slightly, keeping his head down but giving himself a wider field of vision. The toolkits were a several feet away, and there was an extra gun hidden in the duffel bag beneath them. But that was too far out of reach.

Wires and cables snaked out over the bare floorboards, connecting up most of their displays and other electronic equipment. He and Duo had been in a hurry, and hadn't quite finished with the setup, so many of the lines were unsecured. One fiber-optic cable, a few inches from his left knee, ran along the length of the wall, behind Ruvenal and Duo.

If he grabbed hold of it and pulled, when Ruvenal was standing in just the right place… maybe…

But just as the idea formulated in his head, Ruvenal was walking back towards his side of the room, an unpleasant expression on his face. Heero found himself grabbed by the back of his shirt and shoved up hard against the wall. Before he had time to react, his arm was roughly twisted up behind him, pinning him there. Heero knew without trying that struggle was futile. Ruvenal's grip was like steel, his strength on a level Heero had only encountered in a very few opponents – usually the product of illegal drugs and chemical manipulation.

"The names," he demanded of Duo. Ruvenal twisted harder, until Heero was forced to grit his teeth against the strain. "Or I start breaking his bones, and then maybe I make him too ugly to go to bed with anymore, hmmm?"

The gun was still in Ruvenal's hand, but no longer aimed at either of them. It was now or never.

Contrary to the rumors, Heero Yuy felt pain, but he knew how to ignore it. Dislocating his shoulder as he wrenched himself sideways resulted in excruciating agony, but Heero managed to pull Ruvenal off balance and knock the gun from his hand. He hit the floor hard, and heard the man above him curse loudly, stumbling back. And the next thing he knew, Duo had knocked Ruvenal to the ground with the hard impact of a metal folding chair to the head.

Heero only needed one good arm to pick up his gun from the floor.

This time, he took the shot.

---

In the end, they decided to make full use of their resources, and used the C4 explosives from the Germans' Thalomide to hide the evidence of the hit. Heero had not been immediately receptive to the idea of blowing up the half-finished office building, but Duo was persistent, and his reasoning was sound. It would look like the Germans had been responsible for Ruvenal's death, and the insurance companies would pay for a new building, so no one would really lose anything.

The resulting explosion was messy, but effective. The intense heat and energy of the blast crackled the air. Glass shattered from the broken windows, raining down on the concrete below. Duo was crowing like a rooster, pumping his fist into the air as they watched plumes of thick black smoke pour out into the still-dark sky from the safety of a rooftop several blocks away.

Suddenly Heero found himself grabbed by the collar, pulled around sideways, and then Duo's mouth was hot and tight against his. With his bandaged arm still throbbing, he decided it wasn't worth fighting him off. And the thought occurred to Heero that emotions on the battlefield might not be such a bad thing after all. His odds of being discovered and killed by the enemy were skyrocketing with every second his attention was being diverted from the task at hand, but if he was going to die, this wasn't a bad way to go.

And right about then, he figured it out.

"Mission's over, partner," Duo whispered in his ear. "Now comes the hard part."

Heero scoffed. "You don't need to be so dramatic. I'll talk to Sally or Brechter or whoever you want. I'll tell them about our relationship, and I'll tell them what they can do with our jobs if they don't like it. We can start out own damn quasi-military organization to save the galaxy."

Duo looked honestly surprised. "You'd do that for me?"

Heero nodded. "I want you. So if you want to talk, we'll talk"

It was as simple as that.

Duo laughed and slung an arm over his shoulder fondly. "Damn right we will."

They got off the roof as the first police helicopters started circling and the sirens on the ground level began to blare. It was time to clean up their trail, pay their debts, and disappear until the next mission. Time to face the paperwork and the budgets and a lot of uncomfortable conversations with the people in charge.

Time to get on with their lives.

---

The End