"I'm feeling all the heat, all the chaos
It's gotten underneath my skin
So far to go to reach absolution
My sanity, my soul runs thin

Why don't you care?
Don't, don't you dare?

Rectifier, how's the world supposed to be?
Rectifier, take my hand and rescue me..."

      --- Ra, Rectifier

Requiem for the Sinners Part 13
I, Lucifer

"Jesus, Duo, what'd you do to this one?"

Duo gave the nurse who headed up the makeshift clinic at Paradise Lost a wide-eyed, innocent look. It was the look of a long-suffering martyr, but anyone who knew him well could see the mischievous humor sparkling in those violet eyes.

"Marge, I'm surprised at you! To think that I, mild-mannered Shinigami, would harm a hair on the leg of a fly. I am surprised."

"Bullshit you are," the elderly woman replied amiably, moving aside so he and Harper could carry Heero in. "They don't call you that for nothing, my dear."

"Oh ye of little faith..." Duo took all of Heero's weight into his arms, moving the Wing pilot to a cot, being careful not to hurt him. His shoulders seemed to be on fire from carrying Heero, especially the wounded one, and his arms twanged like guitar strings that were strung too tightly.

"Gunshot wounds?" the matronly nurse said clinically, getting a form from the desk.

"Yup."

Suddenly, the nurse took another look at the young man lying in her ward. "Duo... is that-"

"Heero Yuy? Yeah."

"Dear, you make the strangest associations, you realize this, right?"

"You have no idea."

Harper made a noise behind him that sounded suspiciously like a snort. Duo ignored it, grabbing a pair of scissors from a bin against the wall to cut the bandages away from the Wing pilot's chest. No matter what stupid honorary role he had taken as Relena's guard, he would always be a Gundam pilot to Duo.

Heero's eyes fluttered as he felt Duo's hands on him, the scissor blade sliding close and cold against his skin. His voice was a cracked whisper. "Duo... Duo..."

Duo flicked his eyes nervously up to Heero's face, but Heero had closed his eyes again.

"Don't talk, bud. You're gonna be fine." Duo looked over his shoulder at Harper. "Where's Wuffers?"

Harper looked at him blankly a moment, and Duo shook his head distractedly, waving his comment off. "Commander Wufei Chang. Where are you keeping him?"

"Oh," Harper replied, understanding. "He's in a shipping hold at the space docks with the rest of the Perfidy and Valkyrie Preventers. They're all tied up. He kept askin' for 'parley' with you. I'm assumin' that means he wants to talk to ya."

Duo suppressed a grin. "Yeah. I'll see him in a bit. Why don't you go check to make sure those good greencoats are comfortable, eh? I'll be down in a few minutes, after I get Heero situated."

Harper hesitated, but nodded, stalking out of the clinic.

Duo carefully pulled away the blood-soaked bandages on his partner's chest, revealing the wounds underneath. The stitches were torn, and the wounds were beginning to gape again. Shit.

Marge kneeled beside him, a pan of sutures and needles in her hand. The Irish woman put her hand on the L2 general's shoulder gently. Duo looked up at her, a question in his eyes.

"You be careful of Harper, dear."

Duo raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise at her before turning back to the task at hand, gently cutting away the stitches in Heero's shoulder and side. When Heero writhed a little on the sheets, he laid a hand flat and palm-down across the Wing pilot's stomach, stroking it in a soothing motion. Heero stilled, letting out his breath in a shudder.

"Why do you say that, Margie?" Duo said quietly. He stuck his tongue between his teeth in concentration as he worked, gently pulling the suture from Heero's skin.

"He's a rough boy. He's a wolf with teeth. And he doesn't like your partner here. It didn't take me two seconds to see that."

Duo shrugged, his shoulders shifting her under hand as he strung a piece of fresh suture and began to re-stitch the wounds. Heero jerked when the needle pierced his flesh, and without thinking, Duo leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to Heero's bruised side, not caring if Margie could see or not.

He knew she wouldn't spread rumors.

Heero's breath left him in a sigh, and he swallowed.

The nurse tapped a shot, preparing to inject it into the wounded young man, but Duo quickly grabbed her wrist, eyes wide.

"Is that morphine, Marge?"

"Yes." The older nurse looked at him questioningly. Duo shook his head.

"He's allergic to it. Put it on his chart. I don't want anybody givin' it to him. No morphine, and no heroin if we run short on the morphine. Okay? I had to use it on him once during the wars, and he had a bad reaction to it."

The nurse nodded at him, putting the shot away. "I suppose we're going to have to make due with something else for him then," she replied softly, clucking her tongue in sympathy. "But we have to give him something. He must be in such pain."

"He can handle it."

"But he shouldn't have to, Duo. That's the point. Can he handle a dose of methadone, do you think? We don't have much, but we have more now that the Preventer supply cargo came in for inventory."

Duo deliberated a moment, then nodded. The nurse went about preparing another shot, then gently took the Wing pilot's arm and injected him.

"Marge..." Duo looked up at her for a moment, meeting pale green eyes almost enveloped in crow's feet. Marge always said she had a wrinkle for every worry and every boy in uniform. That was a lot of wrinkles.

"Yes, dear?"

"Um... can you leave me alone with him for a few minutes? I'll let you know before I go back to the docks again. ...Okay?"

Marge smiled at him, then reached over with one hand gnarled by arthritis, ruffling his bangs as if he was a five year-old. Duo thought of the way Sister Helen had always done the same thing, and his heart lurched a little.

"Of course, dear. You just make your amends. There are other young lads to tend to without adding this one to the list, so I'll leave him to you. I'll check in on him when you leave. He's a handsome boy. I'm glad you went back to save him."

Eyes wide, Duo wordlessly watched as the elderly nurse straightened up and continued to make her rounds.

As soon as she had left, leaving the ward silent except for the soft groans of wounded soldiers and civilians, Duo turned back to Heero. He dipped a cotton swab in hydrogen peroxide, running it across the gunshot wounds, watching the solution bubble and fizz.

His free hand stroked Heero's stomach slowly, soothingly. The body under his hand shifted, and Duo suddenly found himself faced down with deep cobalt. Heero's eyes were already starting to glaze with the effects of the drug, but it didn't bank the fire in them.

"Duo."

"Yeah?"

"Why in the hell... why did you bring me here?" Heero whispered, his voice harsh.

Duo looked back at him, not answering for a moment. "I don't know. Because it was my fault. Because you were supposed to die."

"Then why'd you save me? Your priorities are fucked, Duo."

"I'm the only one who has anything worth fighting for anymore," the Deathscythe pilot answered softly, looking down at Heero sadly.

"Why'd you dance with me?"

The question, spoken in a bitter murmur full of verbal acid, caught Duo off-guard. He looked down at Heero, eyes wide. "W-What?"

"You heard me. You knew what you were going to do... and you did it anyway. Why? One of your... fucking games... Duo..."

Duo somehow found the courage to look back at Heero without turning away. The worst thing in Heero's gaze wasn't Duo's betrayal of his trust, but a hurt that had nothing to do with the assassinations in the least.

He turned away before he spoke, closing his eyes. "What do you want to hear, Heero? You want me to tell you it was just my morbid idea of a joke? Just a last prank before I blew you away? Well, I'm sorry, buddy. The truth is I don't know why I did it. Okay? If it makes you feel better, I wish I hadn't."

"So do I. And I wish... if you were going to try to kill me... you had finished the fucking job."

Those three words hurt Duo worse than anything. He felt warm tears prick at his eyes, but he blinked then away furiously. He wasn't a kid anymore.

"What, you woulda rather I left you in that cell to rot, 'Ro? Or did you want me to blow your brains out right there? Either way, you were dead. By them or me. I just decided that maybe what we had was stronger than that, so I didn't do either. Is that not enough to satisfy you?" Duo's voice was soft and dangerous.

"You validated... everything they ever said about me..." Heero's eyes fluttered, but he kept them trained on his former partner.

"What do you care? You never cared about that crap before," Duo whispered, gazing back at him steadily, not looking away. He had risked his life to save Heero, and the showdown would happen eventually, whether he looked or not. Better to look. Safer, maybe.

"People... didn't look up to me before," Heero whispered, face set into a furious blank expressionlessness. "Duo, this is not the war. I... didn't want to fight anymore. Don't you see that? Damn you, Duo."

Duo looked at him silently a moment longer, then stood up, his face inscrutable. "Say what you want, Heero. But the war is back, whether you want to fight in it or not. How do you think the world is supposed to be, Heero? Always like this. It always will be. Relena's peace is a pipe dream, and it always was."

Heero closed his eyes wearily. He didn't have the energy to argue. His voice was almost inaudible. "You killed... everything we stood for. You killed it, Duo."

Duo looked away, violet eyes flashing. "It was dead to begin with. I just dug it up."

Heero didn't answer. He sank back into a doze, chest rising and falling raggedly. Duo gazed at him a moment longer before turning and walking stiffly out of the ward.

~*~

Things weren't right with his father.

Gabriel didn't know how he knew things like that. He painted on the ships in the scrawling, flowing script of tech pidgin, drawing angelic symbols on them and writing their names there. The Xas. The Anai. The Danjal. The Lauviah.

Usually as he did it, he let himself blank out, feeling that thrum of things beneath the surface of the world and the people around him, hearing voices in a thousand whispers. He had asked his Daddy what he thought of these voices, the words that seemed to come from the heart of people without them having to say a word, and Daddy had given him a strange look. So he hadn't mentioned it again.

He could tell something was wrong, something wrong with Daddy and Harper and the new man Daddy had brought with him on the Watcher. It was the way they looked at each other. The way they walked and talked.

It was on their faces and behind their faces, in their thoughts and hearts, where only Gabriel could see.

He finished painting the name for the Mephistopheles, and damn, that was a long name. He smiled as he finished it, proud of himself.

He hung his legs over the side of the ship, swinging them idly. "Howie!"

"What, kid?"

"Where is Dad?"

"He's coming. Be patient." Gabriel looked at the old tech for a moment as the man worked on one of the ships, rewiring and calling orders. Howard's shoulders were slumped, sagging, and he moved like a chronic invalid.

Silently, Gabriel slipped down from the ship, heading into the lobby to get a warm soda from one of the broken vending machines.

Howard was worried about his Daddy, too.

He didn't need to use the Trick to see that.

~*~

When Duo reached the shipping hold, Harper was waiting for him. "Jesus, D, took you long enough."

"Yeah, well. I only have two hands and one mouth. This where they're keeping the greencoats?"

"Right." Harper slammed one hand against the thick steel door, and the sound echoed through the docks. "No way those guys are getting out of here." He pulled out a PIN card and slid it into the lock, causing the light to go from red to green. The door slid open.

Duo walked into the room full of silent, bound Preventers. About half of them gazed at him steadily, with righteous fury. The others looked scared half to death.

Duo could immediately discern which were Wufei's crew.

And speaking of the devil...

Wufei sat against the far wall in nothing but his boxers and a gag, his hands cuffed behind his back. His black eyes sparkled dangerously when he saw Duo.

Duo gave Harper a strange look. "Was stripping him to his skivvies really necessary, Harp?"

Harper shrugged, smirking. "I warned him, you can ask any of these others, but he didn't believe me. He was shouting abuse at everyone and everything within hearing distance. Those steel doors aren't soundproof, you know."

"And the gag?"

"I told ya, he wouldn't shut up. Just take it off him, I'll show you what I mean."

Duo walked over to the bound Shenlong pilot. "I'm gonna take that gag off you, Wuffers, if you think you can be somewhat civil? You think you can do that?"

Wufei didn't answer, of course. He just sat there, thrumming like a captured crocodile, the gaze in his dark eyes promising slow torture and death if he ever got loose.

Duo reached around Wufei's head and removed the gag, pulling it from his mouth cautiously.

"Damn you, Maxwell, you idiotic American! Are you insane?! What in the hell do you think you're doi--"

As quickly as he removed it, Duo shoved the gag back into Wufei's mouth, tying it around his head again before patting the Chinese pilot on the cheek. He stood up, raising an eyebrow at Harper.

"Good call."

TBC...

 

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