Sacrifice 4
Reunion

**TWO YEARS LATER**

"Sergeant Major Maxwell!"

The young man in the dark aviator sunglasses shifted a little, but didn't lift his head. Chestnut bangs fell across his glasses. His hair lay in its customary braid down the back of his uniform jacket. His Class A's were decorated with stripes. He leaned against the wall nonchalantly, arms crossed across the front of his dark forest green PREVENTERS uniform, ankles crossed casually. He hummed "Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous" under his breath.

"Maxwell, you idiot! Can't you hear me calling you?"

Duo lifted his head. "Wuffers?" He smiled a little; it was not the same smile he used to have during the Wars; not that carefree, gotcha-buddy grin, but it was a smile. There was something grim and sad about it now. Something painful that time could not erase.

The Chinese pilot came up to him, looking him over critically. "Haven't seen you in a while, Maxwell. I see you still haven't cut that damned braid."

"I see you still haven't gotten the stick out of your ass."

They smiled at each other. Wufei put his hand out to shake.

"Aw, fuck you too, Wuffers!" Duo stepped forward and grabbed the Nataku pilot in a fierce bear hug, picking the slighter man off the floor. Duo had gotten taller, broader through the shoulders, although he was still pretty thin. "Missed you, buddy!"

"Put me down you damned American! Dishonor on your whole family!" But Wufei sounded like he was about to laugh. He would have, too, if his pride hadn't gotten the best of him. When Duo finally put him down, he brushed off the front of his Class A's, scowling in typical Wufei-fashion.

"Wufei! Duo!" The two pilots looked up.

Trowa walked up to them, smiling slightly, moving with the fluid grace of a panther. He was wearing a white muscle shirt with the sleeves ripped off and jeans so worn there were holes in the knees. The pilot looked almost seven feet tall, broad through the shoulders, arms and chest and face bronzed by hard work in the sun. The Heavyarms pilot was huge.

Duo gaped. "What have they been feeding you at the circus, Tro? Lion chow?"

"Does a body good."

"Obviously."

Quatre hadn't greeted them yet, although he had come up behind Trowa. He stood in a navy Armani suit in a cell phone, speaking quick and smooth Arabic into a small cell phone. His diamond cufflinks twinkled in the overhead fluorescent lighting as he talked, gesturing with one hand. He sounded vaguely and as gently irritated as Quatre could get. After a few moments, he flipped the phone shut and put it in his pocket, looking at the other four pilots in embarrassment, flushing slightly.

"Sorry." He shrugged. "Stock brokers."

Duo laughed again, that harsh undertone still beneath it. It was filled with anything but humor. Quatre and Trowa exchanged a subtle look.

~*~

When they had left the spaceport and gathered in the bar of the hotel where Sally said for them to meet her, Duo sat down and propped his feet up on a bar stood. "So, what have you guys been doing with yourselves? You're still with the circus, aren't you Trowa?"

Trowa smiled. "Part-time. I'm going to college. Going to get a major in zoology."

Duo raised an eyebrow. "You got your high school diploma?"

"GED."

He looked over at Quatre. "Don't have to tell me what you've been doing, Mr. Manager of L4." He laughed. "Can't even pick up the damned paper without you being in it somewhere."

Quatre blushed again, and Trowa laughed.

"Wufei? What have you been doin'? We've never been assigned to the same colony, so I don't ever get to see ya."

"Still controlling uprisings from the remaining OZ forces every once in a while. I'm instructing pilot for the new classes of Preventers now. What are you doing, Maxwell?"

Duo's expression clouded. "I work Humanitarian Aid for L2. We don't get a lot of funds... but I do what I can." There was a moment of silence between all of them. Duo could try and pretend that everything was the same as it was before, but it wasn't. He didn't think it ever would be again. He looked up, forcing a grin. "Hey, Wuffers, what did Sally say she wanted to talk to us all about? She tell you anything?"

Wufei shook his head. "No. She told me that she wanted to tell us all at the same time. She wouldn't tell me what it was about."

For some reason, Duo felt a familiar weight of dread settle around his heart. And he didn't know why. The only thing he could think of that would have to do with all four of them would have to be from... back then.

He had cried. They all had.

He had cried then, probably for the last time in his life. He had cried easily and the humiliation of that had left its mark. Nothing in the world could have made Duo Maxwell cry now that he was nineteen. When a seventeen year-old had cried, a nineteen year-old would kill.

He still remembered, though. He still kept the clippings all over his office in L2, haunting him like tombstones. The picture of Heero taken that day, the one that had won the Pulitzer prize for Feature Photography in AC 197. The one where Heero was in half-profile, sitting at the foot of his Gundam, with blood running down his cheek, his bangs falling into his eyes. There had been tears in them. RED BADGE OF COURAGE, they called it. The feature had been called "The Antiheroes." It had been about them.

There were other clippings too. Newspaper articles. Tabloid clippings. GENETICALLY ENGINEERED SUPER-SOLDIERS RAISED ON L1!

He remembered. They all did. They remembered enough to understand what happened.

Well, not really.

Not quite. Nobody really had ever known what happened that day. Nobody knew where Heero was taken, or who had taken him, or for what ultimate purpose. Heero had never told Duo these things. Only that they were his superiors... and that they hurt him.

Duo closed his eyes.

"You okay, Duo?"

He looked over at Trowa, smiling weakly. "Yeah, Great." He pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket and lit one with a shaking hand. He took a deep draw on it, holding the smoke before letting it out.

He didn't see Wufei and Trowa exchange another look. "So... how have you really been, Duo?" Quatre asked softly.

Duo chuffed out smoke and half-laughed, half-coughed. "Not so good, pally. Not so good at all, if you want to know the truth. But hey... it's a living." The Deathscythe pilot still looked seventeen or so... and sounded thirty. Jaded in a way that made Trowa's heart hurt. In Duo's jagged laughter, Trowa could hear that the strain of L2's suffering and the loss of Heero had worn at the braided pilot's very soul.

"Yeah, I hear you."

There was a look of such inexpressible sadness on Duo's face that Quatre had to look away. That expression made the Deathscythe pilot look both bewildered and lost. Even two years later... it still hurt like hell. It hurt Trowa's heart to see Duo like that... the charismatic smooth-talker and the sparkling laughter of their squadron reduced to mute suffering.

Wufei stood up and embraced Duo. Duo hugged him back fiercely. Desperately.

"Whatever's wrong, Maxwell, we'll take care of it," Wufei said softly. He heard the rough sound of tears in his throat and for once, he didn't care. "We beat it together before... we can do it again. We're a team, right?"

// Yeah... // Duo thought. // Minus one. //

Duo pulled away from him, held him at arm's length. He was grinning now, but his eyes were sparkling under the lights. "Sure, Wuffers," he said. "Definitely."

There was another silence between the four of them. Duo wondered what had happened between them in the two years that they were apart. He could see Quatre as he was back then, an uncertain gentle boy in pink dress shirts and khakis, and Quatre now, decked head-to-toe in conservative, tailored Armani, checking his stocks, talking with politicians, negotiating with contractors. Trowa the Silencer changed into Trowa the performer, his makeup running under the hot big top lights. The roar of applause. Wufei, self-righteous teenage terrorist and adamant seeker of justice, now the stern drill sergeant of upcoming peacekeepers.

// How we've changed... //

Trowa bowed his head and smiled. "Duo is speechless? Somebody mark the calendar."

Duo, with no idea what was going to come out of his mouth, replied, "Kiss my ass, Mute-boy."

They glared at each other silently for almost two minutes. Wufei and Quatre were afraid they were ready to kill each other.

Then they burst out laughing.

Duo shook Trowa's hand hard, still a little sad under the laughter, but better. // We're still okay. We're going to be okay. //

But he didn't believe what he was telling himself. They still did not know why they had been summoned. And that dread still lingered in Duo's heart. Waiting.

TBC...