In his death, Heero became a celebrity. Dignitaries who’d called him a terrorist and worse only a few weeks ago jockeyed for position at his funeral, where the media cameras could see their sincere sorrow. Relena was there, too. I know she would have kept Duo out if she could, but she was not in control. Quatre refused all her offers of help to make sure nothing of the kind happened.
Even Queen Relena could not interfere in what was, after all, a private funeral. But her eyes burned when she looked at Duo.
She wept loudly during the service. Duo did not. He looked straight ahead, his own eyes dry, ignoring the wailing girl in the row behind him. I saw how his hands trembled, but when he made the three bows, and the cameras pointed their vulture lenses at him, he betrayed nothing. He lingered a moment in front of Heero’s picture, no longer than a brother soldier might, then bowed deeply and walked away. My heart filled with pride at his courage. He showed the world that day that he had a warrior’s spirit.
But it cost him.
Trowa and I pushed through the gaggle of reporters who’d surrounded all of us since the funeral. Quatre followed us closely, his hand on Duo’s back, surreptitiously steering him toward the waiting limousine. Most of their attention seemed to focus on Duo, as though they scented his grief, but fortunately for him—and for them—he remained oblivious to their prying cameras and questions.
He made it into Quatre’s limousine before the tremors that had started in his hands spread to envelope his whole body. He huddled into the seat, eyes squeezed shut, shivering as if he could not get warm.
Ignoring the voice in my mind that still prated about honor, I put my arm around his shoulders. He stiffened briefly, but only in surprise. For just a moment, he opened his eyes and smiled, a sad, fragile remnant of the grin I remembered.
“Thanks, Wu. You’re okay.”
With a sigh, he leaned against me. In a few minutes, he’d fallen asleep, exhausted by grief.
The rest of the ride passed quietly. None of us felt much like talking, and no one wanted to disturb Duo. For me, at least, it also passed much too quickly. I would have prolonged the time spent holding him if I could have. When we pulled into the long drive, I shook Duo gently, hating to wake him. For a little while, at least, he’d had some respite from heartache.
He blinked, and I saw the moment he remembered where he was, and why.
“We’re home.”
He looked out the window at the stone façade of Quatre’s house. “Home. Huh. Since when do I have one of those?”
“You have one with us for as long as you want.” Quatre squeezed Duo’s hand. “You don’t have to go anywhere.”
We stood outside the house, the four of us, reluctant to go in, as if it would write the final ending to the day—and to Heero’s life. Trowa’s arm circled Quatre’s waist; I’d noticed that since Heero died, they’d hardly left each other’s sight. Duo watched them from underneath his bangs. I knew that he struggled not to be angry with them for having what had been taken from him. Quatre must have seen as well, because he stepped away from Trowa, squeezing his lover’s hand so that it didn’t appear to be a rejection. A shadow of guilt touched Duo’s tired face.
“Guys…”
“Don’t, Duo. There’s nothing you have to say to us.” Quatre hugged him, and for once Trowa didn’t glower at the sight of someone else touching his treasure. “Let’s go in.”
We walked together into the elegant foyer, four soldiers who had run out of enemies.
“Is anyone hungry?” Quatre didn’t quite know what to do with a tragedy too big to be cured with a cup of coffee. Or maybe like the rest of us, he remembered other losses and looked for something to fill the emptiness inside, if only food.
“No.” Duo looked as though the thought of eating made him sick. I understood. When one grieves, everything tastes gray and feels like ashes.
I thought back over the last few days. Did I recall seeing him eat anything? I know he hadn’t touched any of the food at the banquet following the funeral, but none of us had. Quatre had been too busy handling the reporters and the dignitaries. Trowa and I had guarded Duo’s privacy. The reporters had a lot of questions about him and Heero, but none of them wanted to cross us. I frowned. It would be like Duo to quietly let himself starve if none of us paid close attention to him. I would give him another day, but after that…
“I think I’m just going to go upstairs.” Duo climbed a couple of steps and stopped, then turned back to us. “Thanks, guys.”
He hesitated as if he wanted to say more, but he didn’t. Pain washed across his pale, drained features and with it, the need to be alone, like a hurt animal seeking a hiding place. He turned away from us and went up to his room, his long, slim hands clinging to the polished banister as if he had to drag himself along.
I watched him, the way his braid twitched as he walked, how his pants pulled across his hips, unable even now to avoid the stirrings of lust he always incited in me. Disgusted with myself, I turned away, only to discover that Quatre and Trowa had seen.
“I—” I sighed, glancing up the stairs again as Duo’s door closed. No excuse that I could give would exonerate me.
“You don’t have to explain,” Quatre said, his gentle smile lighting his face. “Duo is an easy person to love.” I’m sure he believed that if I loved Duo, everything would be all right in the end.
Trowa was not so naïve, but he did say the one thing to me that made a difference, that day and for a long time after.
“Go on, Wufei. He needs you.” He glanced sideways at Quatre, the habitually wary look fading from his eyes as he did. “Sometimes being needed is as good as being loved.” Quatre slid his hand into Trowa’s, intertwining their fingers. Neither had to tell me that, for them, need had grown into something deeper.
I climbed the stairs and knocked on Duo’s door. I received no answer, but I tried the door anyway. He hadn’t locked it, and I let myself in.
The room, with its mixture of military precision and total chaos, could not have belonged to anyone other than Heero and Duo. Duo’s few belongings scattered helter-skelter around the room, and clothes dotted the floor, apparently dropped wherever he took them off. His mess made the contrast of Heero’s tidy desk even starker. In the center sat his laptop, closed forever, like a sacred icon in a shrine. It wrenched my gut to see it still sitting there. Only Heaven knows what the sight did to Duo.
In the midst of a jumble of laundry, Duo lay on his belly on the floor, still dressed in his suit, his head resting on his arms. His eyes were closed, and for a moment, my heart stalled. I knelt next to him.
“Duo?”
“Hmmm?” He opened his eyes. Surrounded by bruise-dark circles, they seemed even larger than usual. “I guess it wasn’t a bad dream, huh?”
“No.” Impulsively, I brushed his bangs out of his face. “Why are you on the floor? You scared me.”
“I did?”
“I thought…well, I thought that you had…that you might have…” I stumbled to a stop, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. It’s unworthy of me to think you would be such a coward.”
He laughed, a harsh, ugly noise. “Don’t give me so much credit. I’ve thought about it enough in the last few days.”
“Everyone thinks about it,” I said. “You haven’t done it. That’s all that matters.”
“Only because it seems like it would take so much effort.” He propped his chin on his hands, staring at the wall in front of him.
“You haven’t told me why you’re on the floor,” I reminded him, more to divert him than anything else.
“I’m so tired …” His shoulders sagged. “But I can’t sleep in that bed. I can’t.” He covered his face with his hands. “Oh, god…the pillows still smell like him. Wufei, what am I going do?”
He was going to live. I wouldn’t accept anything else from him. “First, you’re getting up off the floor.” I took his hands—they seemed so small and cold in mine—and pulled him to his feet. “And then you are going to my room to sleep for as long as you want, but you are going to sleep in a bed.”
The relief on his face when we left the room he’d shared with Heero was unmistakable. Tomorrow, I decided, I would persuade him to move into my room. For his good, I convinced myself. I would not pressure him into anything more. He stumbled from weariness, and my immediate concern became getting him to bed. He let me guide him to my room, where he undressed without making a fuss. I gave him a pair of my pajamas; I don’t think he owned any himself. He put them on as I turned down the covers for him.
“Good night, Duo. Call if you need anything.” I turned off the light and left him alone, although it was the hardest thing I had ever done.
I closed the door behind me.
“Is he sleeping?” Trowa’s voice spoke from a shadowed doorway.
“He will be soon. He’s exhausted. Why?” Something about his posture alerted me. I sensed more to his question than mere concern for Duo.
“There’s something the three of us have to discuss, and it would be better if he doesn’t hear. Come down to the study.”
I closed my eyes. The day had already drained my mental and emotional resources. I felt that I could not face anything more. Then I thought of Duo, sleeping alone in a strange bed because he had just buried his beloved, and I felt ashamed. How dared I feel so sorry for myself, so weak? I followed Trowa downstairs.
I don’t think I’d ever seen Quatre angry. But as we entered the study, he turned to us with the face of an avenging angel. I recalled the colonies he had destroyed with Wing Zero in the wake of his father’s death, and I thought that whoever had roused that anger again must be a fool.
“Relena hasn’t given up.” He handed me what was obviously an official—a royal—communication.
I scanned it, but the legal terminology made little sense until two words leaped at me, tearing my heart like hatchling dragons.
“War crimes?”
Trowa nodded. “It’s blackmail. Obviously, unless we join her ‘Preventers,” he said, sneering at the pacifistic absurdity, “we will be charged with every horror perpetrated during the entire war.”
“Trowa.” Quatre’s voice quivered with suppressed fury. “There is no ‘we.’ The three of us are not mentioned.”
I looked down at the document, reading more carefully this time. The brief mentioned only one Gundam pilot by name: Duo Maxwell. Scarlet fury blotted out my vision.
“She would not.” My fingers strangled the paper. But I remembered her eyes at Heero’s funeral, and I knew she would. I dug my nails into my palms, breathed deeply, controlling the rage that clawed at my mind. When I could see clearly again, I smoothed out the document and the three of us leaned over it.
An hour later, I sat back, astounded by the venom of her attack. How long had she hated Duo? From the very beginning, when he stopped Heero from killing her? Or sometime later, when she realized that the boy whom she’d once called “a cheap street whore” had defeated her dogged pursuit of Heero?
The final charge sickened me the most. She had done her research, and she had struck the most vicious blow possible. By a perverted twist of logic, she had accused Duo of being at fault for the massacre at Maxwell Church.
Trowa must have seen my clenched fists and followed my gaze to the foul charge. “No court will even entertain that one. He was a child. She must know that.”
“Of course she knows,” I said. “But by adding it to the other charges, she also knows that the incident will be brought up again, discussed in detail, and he’ll be forced to think about it. To talk about it. She only wants him to suffer.” As if he hadn’t suffered enough.
“We won’t permit it.” Quatre took the paper out of my hands. “My lawyers—“
“No.” I held up my hand, stopping him. “It can’t be done like that. If this becomes a public legal battle, it won’t matter if she loses or wins. She’ll still have destroyed Duo, and that’s what she wants.”
Trowa nodded in agreement. “She knows this is preposterous. But the real hell of it is that a world court might actually convict him. He’d be a perfect scapegoat—he can be blamed and no one else has to take responsibility. Either way, this will destroy him.” His green eyes narrowed, his voice deceptively soft with quiet fury. “We can’t allow it to go forward.”
“But what can we do, then?” Quatre asked. “What do we have to bargain with?”
The injustice of her scheme still enraged me. Once, I stood by and let another fight a battle I should have joined. Not again. Nataku’s voice razed my doubts. “I will go. I’ll find out what she will take in place of Duo’s life.”
Quatre reached for my hand. “That’s so kind of you, Wufei.”
Kind? How little he understood. “I’ll leave in the morning, but there’s one thing I must ask of you first.”
“We’ll take care of him for you,” Quatre assured me, anticipating my request. “Don’t worry about Duo. Everything will be fine.”
