Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Duo's Jewel of Peace ❯ five ( Chapter 5 )

Duo's Jewel of Peace 5/?

Author: Nix Winter

Best laid plans of novelists and cute pink haired girls.. oh well. I meant it to be five.. I'm gonna try to finish it today thought

Warnings…. Upset Relena

Notes: 1x2, after Endless Waltz, and I had Heero and Relena on L1 and on Earth… mistake on my part. They are on L1.

"You shouldn't eat the strawberries," she whispered, taking his hand and then wrapping her arms around him. "I think they're drugged."

The taste of the strawberry lingered tartly on his tongue, to the inside of his lip, and he knew he shouldn't lick at it, to gather up the last of the juice, but he couldn't help himself, really. "Too late," he said and he couldn't keep the smile out of his voice. Already, the drug had him. "Quatre gave me strawberries once. They're my favorite. And you need to get off L2. Yeah."

"Duo," she said, still stunned, numb and frightened because her hero had already eaten the poison and part of her said that was it, everything was over, and part of her just didn't want to listen. "I don't want to die. I'm scared, but I don't wanna die."

He took a step back and reached to wipe his thumb over her cheek, wiping away a tear. Death. The great cleanser, the great hunger. "I don't want you to die, Laura. You're a good person and I'm going to help you get out of here. I need you to be brave and hopeful for me, okay?"

She nodded, her lips a thin line. "I don't want you to die, Duo."

He caught himself in the process of thinking.. too late to that as well. He knew the happiness he felt just then was because of the drug. He didn't feel hungry. The bullet that had broken his leg in the war and left him with a near constant low grade ache, that didn't hurt either. He smiled. Dead or not, he felt pretty damn good. He closed his eyes and considered. His little Jewel, her small fingers wrapped around one of his, the way she held his braid with such innocence. He wasn't dead, he decided, because he still wanted to see her crawl and hear her say his name. And he felt strong enough, not to give a damn if he hadn't done enough penance to have clean hands. He wasn't really ever gonna be good for Heero, but he had time to get good enough for Jewel. If Heero hadn't had Relena, if he'd just had a bit more time to get good enough for Heero, well…. Sneaking a bit of steak from the napkin in his pocket, he smiled. "I got a plan."

Darlian Mansion, L1 …

Relena leaned back in her chair, a chair that had been in the Peacecraft family for a long time. She, herself, was a Darlian, but what had been Peacecraft was hers now as well, including the lovely chair from Louis the fourteen's palace. In her hand, she held a crystal goblet she'd bought two months before, large and thin, with a stem that seemed to be rose stems, perfectly imperfect, just like real rose stems, that rose up to the goblet, with lovely green glass leaves laying to the side and two roses, one white and one silver laser etched into the thin crystal. On one side, between the roses, also laser etched was an elegant R and an ornate elegant H. She'd bought a pair, for a wedding she'd spend a lot of time dreaming about. The mate to the one in her hand lay about three stories down, in a thousand bits of crystal.

She was Relena Dorlian, Prime Minister of the Earth Sphere and no vile little political disagreement on a rather minor colony, however it got blown up into something it wasn't, was going to warrant .. what she didn't know, as she took another sip of very expensive, very sweet wine. Wearing gray pants and just her frilly white shirt, which was open five buttons down, the lacy collar laying to the side. Heero Yuy really was in love with that slut Maxwell. She closed her eyes, rubbed her eyebrows. Anger wasn't the answer. She knew that. What the answer was for making her stop hurting so that even her body felt it, so that she half wondered if she were having a heart attack, she didn't know. So she took another sip of wine.

Distantly, she heard the musical tone of her vid-phone and considered if she wanted to answer it while she was drunk or not. It kept ringing and she had the odd sense that someone was cussing her out somewhere. It was just her imagination, already overused today, as she thought about Heero taking a dashingly handsome Duo into his arms. Of course, Duo was in a tux with black pearls woven into his braid and Heero would hold him tight, hand at the small of his back, dip him back, kiss him better than any romance novel she'd ever read, then confess his love for him. Yeah and there'd be a wedding and in some hideous over use of her imagination, she saw Duo walking towards Heero wearing *HER* wedding dress. As she walked towards the vid-phone, she made a promise to herself that she would burn that damn dress before anyone ever saw it, let alone asked to borrow it. She squeezed her eyes shut, tried to focus, then hit the receive button.

And there he was! The groom stealing braided idiot! Her eyes narrowed and she very nearly splashed the vid screen with expensive wine. "What do you want? You can not borrow my wedding dress!"

"Uh," Duo said, not all prepared for a Relena with her shirt half undone, hair looking like a blond afro of disarray, wine glass in her hand. "'Lena? You know, you did say I could call you here, if I ever really needed something, and Uh, I don't need a wedding dress."

She leaned closer, studying his face. He looked thinner, a lot thinner, dark circles under his eyes, hair dull, cheeks sunk in. "You look like death."

He closed his eyes for a moment, ran his hand through his bangs, and she noticed that hair came out, just a bit, clinging to fingers that were god awful thin. It had been a year or so since she'd seen him and the contrast made her sober. She meant to set her goblet down on the table, but only got it half way on and it shattered over the floor. One hand over her mouth for a moment, she felt suddenly like a completely spoiled brat.

"Yeah, well, it's been a little tight here, but I wanna ask you a favor, 'Lena, uh? I'll owe you big time, but I really need this."

Then behind him, she saw a girl. The child stood only as tall as Duo's shoulder and looked completely terrified. They were in some kind of communications center which was not at all a place she would have expected a child. "How can I help, Duo?"

"My friend, Laura," he started and the head slipped behind him again. "There's a cruiser, luxury class, leaving L2 in about two hours. I need her to have a berth on it, room of her own, and she's gonna need a fake id and a visa. I ain't got the money for the ticket, so I need to buy that, in her name, supply the visa. It's got to have the stamp of the Prime Minister and be all hell of official. I don't want her stopped, and if they do stop her, they'll be afraid of you enough to let her go. Once she gets there, you gotta promise you'll take good care of her."

Relena had heard that Duo was taking care of a child or two, that he was rebuilding Maxwell Church. The girl didn't look as underfed as Duo did though, from the glimpse that Relena had caught. "I can make that happen, Duo. Why don't you come as well?"

"Nope, can't do. I got a Jewel here."

She didn't understand that at all, but she felt, and she laid a hand on the vid-screen, as if she could touch his face as she thought about it. Duo had not stolen Heero. "If Heero weren't in love with you, I might have been. He's coming there, you know?"

"I had heard. Relena, are you drunk?" Duo asked, as he turned to towards the door for a moment, predatory caution showing in the line of his body, in the way he reached for the pistol now holstered at the small of his back. "I thought you didn't drink."

"Yes, well, I thought I was going to get married. Duo, be careful. And don't you eat anymore? Seriously, I think anorexia is worse that getting drunk once."

He pulled the pistol then, face tight and drawn. "Fuck, 'Lena, I eat when I can. Just send me up a picnic, will you? Gotta run. Have that ticket and visa waiting, 'kay?"

"I will, Duo," she said to a black screen. Whatever was happening on L2, it made her feel a bit like Marie Antoinette.. 'let them eat cake'. He wanted a picnic. She would send him a picnic. And a ticket and a visa. She redid her collar, signaled her personal assistant and got to work.

Between L1 and L2…

Sib. Tærsa of the Order of Willful Peace screamed quite like someone not quite ready to meet her higher power. Heero tuned it out and wished with all his warrior's soul that he had a small craft that was armed. The six mobile suits taking pot shots at his little craft wouldn't have stood a chance if he'd had Wing. Or even Deathscythe. Even a good taurus or space going leo. "They fired on us! Tell them we're a diplomatic mission!"

Jade unfastened her safety harness and let herself float up out of the co-pilot's seat. "Sib," she started, politely enough, as she drew herself hand over hand across the roof side of the large cockpit/living quarters of the craft. "Sit down, be quiet, or even if I get the steal modulator to another frequency, they'll hear your wailing and know where we are anyway!"

The red headed man snickered. He had one foot hooked under a hand hold, a tiny electric spanner in one hand, as he worked on some bit of wiring that had blow all the way into the cockpit. "Heero, I got it rewired." He gritted his teeth, used the other end of the spanner as a micro soldering iron, "And sealed. We shouldn't lose stabilizers when we hype the stealth jammers again, but I suggest we all strap in good."

"Speak for yourself, Strawberry," Jade teased good-naturedly. She'd spent most of her life in small craft like this one, not in big environments like Earth or L1 or L2. She clipped her belt to a hook and opened the panel that covered the stealth wiring. "Now, Heero?"

They were only a couple hours out from L2. There would be no failure on these missions. He'd programmed the evasive pattern already. The ship would drop off the level with the mobile suits, veer to the starboard, then roll over and dart around towards L2 on the opposite side from where they'd planned to dock. According to the plans, they could dock, clamp to the inside of the hub, then suit up and walk over to a service hatch. It wasn't a neat way to get in and dangerous as hell because the people who lived on L2 were highly unlikely to be documenting all the re-engineering they did. It was amazing that the thing still had enough balance to go around in a decent cycle. L2 was a wreck of a colony, and Heero had been turning over ideas for how to get Duo and his kids off ever since he decided to go to him. "Now."

Jade amped one frequency of the stealth modulator, which reset the seed variable and completely reconfigured the frequency that was shielding them. Sib. Tærsa held on tightly to her safety harness and Heero dropped them enough degrees, veered, and an energy field hit them. Power sputtered. Heero snarled.

"What's happening?" Tærsa squeaked.

"We're being boarded," Jade said, dropping to the floorward side of the cockpit as the gravity increased. "We're being boarded by something fucking big."

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