War’s Requiem

Part Two

Chapter Three

“Miracle”

The lights in his apartment were off when Duo got back, opening the door as slowly as possible to avoid the squeaking noise the hinges tended to make when jarred. There were no lights streaming out from underneath the door to Hilde’s room, and he assumed, from the lack of activity, that she had long since gone to sleep. He felt bad for making her worry, as she always did when he failed to return before nightfall, and he locked the front door with a resounding click and deposited his jacket on the couch, vowing to put it away correctly the next morning.

He paused in the hallway next to her door, listening for signs that she might still be awake, and he heard nothing save for the wind rustling through the blinds covering her windows. He made to move away, down the hall to the bathroom, but his feet creaked on the floorboards, and he heard rustling within the bedroom. A few seconds later and the door opened, and Hilde stared blearily out at him, nightgown clutched around her figure.

“Duo?” she asked groggily, blinking several times. “Did you just get back?”

“Yes,” he answered honestly, knowing there was no point in lying. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“I wasn’t asleep yet,” she said, though he knew she had to have been close, for her hair was matted somewhat on the left side of her head, and she had pillow creases on her cheek. “Where were you?”

“I went for a walk,” he said, and when she glared at him, pursing her lips, he shrugged his shoulders slightly. “I needed to know if I could find information on my parents.”

“Your parents?” she asked, looking more confused than sleepy, and she opened her bedroom door wider as if to allow him access inside. “Did something happen?”

“No,” he said, and then shook his head. “Well, yes. I’ve been having dreams. Dreams about them, or what I think are them. I can hear things in them. I think they’re memories of some kind.”

“But you were so young when it happened,” she said, frowning, leaning on the doorframe. “How could you remember anything?”

“I think they are just clips,” he responded. “Fragments of memories, maybe. I just needed to know what really happened.”

Hilde frowned, but didn’t press the issue further, and he wondered if she wished to ask why now, of all times, he had gone searching for such information. On a topic so long gone, so far removed in his past, it seemed trite to be aimlessly trying to find clues, and he knew how ridiculous the notion sounded. It even sounded foolish when he said it aloud himself.

“Did you find anything?” she asked finally, breaking the silence.

“Names,” Duo said. “There was an accident. I think- I think it was an assassination.”

“That’s it?” she asked, sounding both incredulous and aghast. “That’s all there was? Why wasn’t there anything more?”

“I think I’m going to go to Colony 986 to find more information,” he told her, suddenly feeling terribly weary. “Maybe there’s still something there.”

His feelings must have played out on his features, because Hilde reached over and grabbed his hand, squeezing his fingers in her own. Her face was open, and her eyes were shining, and she looked almost ethereal bathed in the moonlight streaming in from the open curtains. Her lips curved into a slight smile.

“Then I’m going with you,” she told him, in a voice that left no room for arguing. “Maybe we‘ll find something more.”

Duo tightened his hand in a response, offering her a smile of his own, and then he went to his room to strip off his clothing and collapse into the sheets, which were warm and soft, and offered him a respite from the myriad of thoughts screaming through his head.

And when he slept, he didn’t dream.

o.0.o.0.o.

If Wufei hadn’t worried about Heero acting rashly before the news announcement, he was afterwards, for the Japanese pilot had said little during the day and spent most of his waking time pouring over reports through the computer system, hoping, Wufei expected, to find information on Relena’s whereabouts. He felt like cursing the news for bringing it up again, especially when there was so little that could be done, and he decided, after he couldn’t stand anymore of Heero’s rapid typing, that he needed to go and get a drink and some fresh air, anything to get out of the stuffy apartment.

He checked once on the Gundams, confirming that the suits were still safely stowed away and that no messages had been received since the power-down, and then he walked along the darkened sidewalk, letting his gaze rest on the ground in front of his feet, watching the cracks and lines go by beneath his gait.

The local pub, which he had all intentions of going to, seemed to be full of more unsavory characters than usual, and he had no desire to get into a brawl in his current situation. He bypassed the front door and moved on down to the convenience store just a few buildings further, purchasing a bottle of carbonated water and several packages of snack food instead. On his way back, he checked the pub again, but didn’t spot anyone he recognized through the foggy windows.

There were two figures standing near the building in which the Gundams were kept as he neared the hideout, and he frowned, trying to gauge heights and builds in case they were military cadets sent to destroy the suits. They turned towards him as he was walking, and as he approached, the light from the streetlamp illuminated the figures, bathing them in a warm orange glow, and he nearly dropped his sack in surprise.

“Milliardo?” he asked, caught between alarm and relief. “Noin?”

“You do remember,” the woman smiled, the action breaking up the sharp contours of her face. “We were worried that perhaps it had been too long ago.”

“What are you doing here?” Wufei asked, stopping a few feet away. He trusted them as much as he trusted the others involved in the One Year War, which was, in truth, not as high as perhaps it should be, and he knew that as long as he stayed one step ahead, he had a fighting chance to survive an onslaught. It appeared he shouldn’t have worried at all however, when neither of the two appeared to be carrying any weapons, nor wearing clothing that would be in any way beneficial in a fight.

“The scientists sent us here to find you,” Noin answered. “They gave us a tracking beacon set to the Gundams’ frequencies.”

“Did you come with instructions, then?” the Chinese man asked, and Milliardo shook his head.

“There isn’t enough information to give you instructions about,” he said, shrugging slightly. “Everything is a mess right now.”

“And this TAW Federation?” Wufei asked, raising his eyebrows.

“From what we can tell, they haven’t done anything other than threaten the military itself,” Noin replied. “And it appears that perhaps they were right in challenging the degree of power the military holds.”

“What about Relena?” Wufei continued, watching Milliardo to gauge the other man’s reaction. The Lightning Count frowned, but stilled.

“The military has her as bait,” he said, sounding older than Wufei remembered.

“Do we spring the trap?” the Gundam pilot asked.

“Not yet,” Noin told him, looking pensive. “Not yet.”

o.0.o.0.o.

Trowa was slightly apprehensive when he opened the large double doors to the warehouse they had stored Heavyarms in, but his fears were for nothing when they found that the suit hadn’t been disturbed in their time away. There was no flashing on the dash when he slid into the cockpit, and he frowned, wishing that someone would contact them in order to give them the information they so desperately needed. Lana was behind him, falling in slower before sitting in the second seat.

“What are we going to do?” she asked, biting her bottom lip. “We don’t have anywhere to go that we know is safe.”

“There has to be somewhere we can go in order to figure out what is going on,” Trowa mused, flipping on several controls and watching the cockpit light up around him. The harsh neon blips were almost painful in the darkness of the warehouse shadows.

“Maybe back to the scientists, then?” the brunette suggested, and Trowa paused for a moment before nodding, reaching over to toggle the communication line. It flipped on with a sharp hiss, and then he keyed in the frequency, or at least the last one he knew, to reach the scientists underground base on the colony.

“Come in, this is Gundam 03, come in,” he spoke, and was rewarded with nothing but the crinkling of static. He frowned, and tried again. “This is Gundam 03, do you copy?”

When there was still only silence, he looked to his right, and Lana shrugged.

“Maybe they were discovered,” she said, though she looked somewhat unhappy with the idea. “I don’t know what else could have happened.”

“I think we should go anyway,” Trowa said with a sigh, flipping the comlink back off again. “At least then we might get some answers.”

She didn’t respond and he took her silence as agreement, and he shut the cockpit door and finished powering on the remaining systems, watching as the screen before him turned green when they finished loading. When it was complete, he gave her a curt nod, and they flew into the sky, the buildings shrinking beneath them. It wasn’t a long journey to the base where Trowa last knew the scientists to be residing, but it was enough of one that he was still worried about being detected. The last thing he wanted was to engage Heavyarms in another fight against the military suits.

The flight was peaceful enough until they were halfway there, and then Trowa wished he hadn’t thought of fighting at all, for it seemed to have doomed them to run directly into a squadron of Leos.

“Dammit,” he mumbled, jerking the controls forward. “I didn’t want to have to do this.”

“Shields are up,” Lana announced, putting one hand up to her ear. “They’re coming in fast.”

Trowa moved Heavyarms around in a circle, sending a wide arc of bullets spraying in each direction. He managed to take out a few of the suits in the front of the line, but the regiment was big, and more surged past the other ones, rifles and energy swords at the ready. He pushed forward to hit one of them with the blade on the right arm, and then spun again, taking down two more with the shoulder cannons.

“Ammo is down 20,” his co-pilot announced, fingers moving quickly over the keyboard. Another round and another line of suits down, and there were still more, moving to quickly for Trowa to lock on to. They were swarming around the suit, and the cockpit heaved forward as one of them got a clean shot to the back.

“Ammo down 40!” Lana exclaimed. “We can’t repel this kind of power alone!”

“We don’t have another choice,” Trowa answered through clenched teeth. He used the shoulder cannons to take out several more, and then spread the suits’ arms to either side, taking out several suits that had tried to come about without him noticing. They were making a dent, but it wasn’t enough.

The comlink sprang into life, illuminating the left side console, and both pilots stopped to stare at it for a moment. There seemed to be a transmission coming through, but it was losing strength, and the picture was rapidly fading to static and another news broadcast from a nearby colony.

“Who is that coming from?” Trowa asked, tearing his eyes away to send another barrage of bullets into the incoming suits. “Identify it!”

“It’s coming from the scientists’ coordinates!” Lana cried out, sounding frazzled. “I can’t get a strong enough connection, there’s too much going on out here. We keep picking up a television broadcast from a nearby satellite!”

There was another hit, and the suit rocked violently, and Trowa swore.

“How are we doing?” he asked.

“Ammo down 65,” she said, her voice low, and then, quite suddenly, she stopped moving altogether, hands clenched on the keyboard. Trowa spared her a glance only to find her staring open-mouthed at the comlink display, which was showing footage of the Gundams from the One Year War. Trowa couldn’t hear the anchor, but he could only assume that the story was a recount of the current situation with the military.

“That’s it,” she whispered, so soft that he almost didn’t hear her. There was another hit, this time closer, and the lights in the cockpit faded in and out dangerously.

“What is it?” Trowa cried, dodging another attack and taking the suit down with the right-arm knife. “What on earth is going on?”

“That’s the suit!” she exclaimed, her voice sounding high and squeaky. She pointed to the com screen as a black suit flashed across the upper right hand corner. “That’s the suit from my visions!”

Startled, for he had not been expecting such a declaration, he looked at the screen.

“That’s Deathscythe,” he told her, spinning around and sending out another spray of bullets in each direction. “That’s Duo’s Gundam.”

The comlink went dead suddenly, and Trowa urged the suit forward. They had almost broken through the line, and if the transmission had indeed been from the scientists’ base, he wanted to waste no more time in arriving there. Another couple rounds from the shoulder cannons, and they were clear, and he flipped on the rear boosters to propel them away from the remaining suits in the squadron. Lana was quiet, hardly moving, and he sighed.

“I don’t understand, either,” he said, hoping she was listening. “But for now, let’s just concentrate on getting there in one piece.”