Treize/Quatre. Prior Zechs/Treize. NC-17. 13,000 words. Dub-con. Some non-con. h/c. Alternate timeline for events after Mercurius battles Wing Zero.
Quatre and Heero are captured and taken to the Lunar Base. Romefeller decides it’s in their best interest to keep Treize confined there as well.
Everyone Was Still
It didn’t seem like he’d ever breathe again. He couldn’t. He didn’t want to. Trowa was gone, and Heero…. Oh, God. Heero was a crumple of blood and bones and sightless eyes.
Searchlights blazed into the loading dock, piercing white beams that circled like vultures before centering on Quatre. He hardly noticed. His lungs burned as he sucked in a deep, gulping breath and dropped his flight helmet into the rubble. The helmet rolled away, grit crunching under the faceplate.
“Hold on,” he said, looking for a way to pull Heero free. “Please, just hold on.”
*
Sitting in the opulent, cavernous room that served as his temporary office, Treize drummed his fingers against the arm of a leather wing chair. He wasn’t accustomed to being taken by surprise, not by men who had thrown away tradition for the glittering mirage of power without consequence.
Filtered newsfeeds from a half-dozen sources scrolled across his computer monitor. He skimmed them, flagging interesting topics as they came up, but as the sky outside the windows grew darker, the words on the screen turned into nothing more than a constant stream of shapes.
The blinking red light of an incoming call at the corner of his screen jerked Treize back to alertness. Smoothing the irritation from his features, he hit the button to accept.
Tsuberov’s heavily lined face wavered into being, static interrupting the feed and causing his words to lag by a heartbeat. “Pack your bags, Colonel Khushrenada,” he said. He smiled unpleasantly — Treize doubted the man could smile any other way — and the camera pulled back enough to give Treize a view of the military commander standing at Tsuberov’s shoulder. Behind both of them, the room was stark; streamlined and simple, the bare walls were indicative of the minimalist design of a structure built in orbit. “It’s my pleasure to inform you that you’re being moved to a more…secure location.”
“Tonight, Colonel,” Tsuberov interjected hastily before Treize could disconnect the call. “Say your good-byes to your syncopha-”
The screen went black.
So, they would exile him from the Earth itself. Aged leather creaked as Treize’s sat back in the chair and crossed his legs. The jingle of the horses’ harnesses had scarcely faded from his ears and already the militant “progressives” of Romefeller were moving to block his influence entirely.
Treize propped his elbows on the arms of the chair and steepled his fingers, tapping the tips against the point of his chin. Precious few pieces remained at his command to thwart them. Zechs no longer stood beside him as his able knight. Une was no longer enthroned at his left. Treize could only hope to rely on what loyal soldiers remained in the ranks.
Sigh heavy with regret, Treize pulled the laptop off the desk, and prepared to make the best of what freedom he had left.
*
The whine of the engines changed as the shuttle neared its destination. Now that the view outside the window was more than just an endless parade of stars, Quatre lifted his head. The cratered surface of the moon stretched out grey and barren, curving gently along the horizon. The gentle blue glow of the earth was nowhere to be seen.
Lights blinked at the tips of a high, perimeter fence that surrounded a subsurface military installation. To the right of the runway that they were approaching, there was some sort of manufacturing plant. Quatre counted the vents belching excess heat into the thin ghost of lunar atmosphere. By the looks of it, the place was in full production.
“Time’s up” said the OZ soldier standing at the foot of the field gurney.
Quatre nodded and abandoned his vigil. His palms were sticky with sweat as he stepped away from Heero’s prone body. He had held Heero’s hand the whole way, and had spoken to him until his voice felt raw. There had been no signs of anything, no twitch of muscles in Heero’s eyes or Heero’s fingertips, only the regular but feeble blips of the monitor assigned to his vitals.
“Thank you,” Quatre said. He stood out of reach of anything potentially dangerous and held his arms out before him. The soldier said nothing while refastening the cuffs so that Quatre’s arms were behind his back again.
“There was an incident a few days back,” the man said. He didn’t look Quatre in the eye, just continued with his task of turning Quatre around and fastening a short chain to the bar between the cuffs that held Quatre’s wrists. “People aren’t happy about a lot of things. The guards on cell-watch especially.” The man’s greying head stayed bowed, and from the corner of his eye, Quatre saw the muscles in the man’s shoulders tense up. “Just…keep your head down, okay, kid?”
Whatever had conspired to allow Heero and Trowa to pilot those suits, Quatre was now more certain than ever that he wouldn’t be given the chance to do the same.
The shuttle landing was surprisingly gentle, and Quatre felt only the slightest lurch beneath his legs as it touched down inside the hangar. He stood to the side as ordered, feeling very much like an animal with the leashlike chain holding him in place.
Silently, he watched a pair of medics come in to load Heero onto another gurney and wheel him away. There were no kind words from the men who took him. Nothing at all to ease Quatre’s mind and let him pretend to go through the motions of being comforted.
The weight of guilt had never threatened to crush him as it did now. His feet were leaden as he preceded his escort down the ramp; the firm hand on his shoulder was the only thing that kept him moving. He craned his neck around as he was urged towards a pair of sliding doors, but wherever the medics had taken Heero, he was already out of sight.
*
“Enjoy your new home.”
Quatre didn’t move, not even after the door was audibly locked behind him. His new cell was narrow but deep. The space to his left held a narrow, uncomfortable looking cot pushed up against the wall, and at the very back was a quarter wall, partitioning off a low toilet, a sink bolted to the tile, and controls for what appeared to be a shower unit built into the ceiling.
Everything seemed clean and hardly used at all, and when Quatre finally did venture in further, he wrestled with the absurd feeling that he was intruding on someone else’s space.
The neat square of linens left folded on the cot’s bare mattress revealed a packet of essentials in the centre of the pile. Quatre sorted through them quickly, laying aside a toothbrush, a grainy bar of soap, a washcloth, a towel hardly larger than the washcloth, and a pad of paper with a stub of a pencil hardly big enough to grip with his fingertips. There was also a set of clothing in prison greys.
It hit him then, the reality of the situation. It punched him in the gut and left him struggling for air. He had always known that capture was a possibility, but it was a distant one, like the possibility of his own death. Quatre busied himself with putting the toiletries in their proper places, focusing on the mundane task so he wouldn’t just keel over and vomit up whatever was left in his stomach.
Later, he sat on the bed, pad of paper balanced on one knee, and wondered if they would read whatever he put down, or if they would afford him the privacy of a journal. In the end, he decided to write nothing, and the lights turned off only minutes after he tucked the pencil and paper under his pillow and lay down. He wondered if they were watching him; had had seen no obvious cameras. Heero might have been able to spot them, but Quatre’s experience with surveillance came primarily from information and plans bought and paid for.
His first night in his cell was a sleepless one. Quatre couldn’t switch off and take sleep where he could like he knew Rashid and the other Forty did. All the sounds here were familiar, at least, the quiet hum of the air vents no different than the ones on any of the mining facilities his family owned.
Thoughts of his family and of Heero made his chest feel tight, and Quatre curled on his side. He couldn’t dwell, not on them or on the people — Trowa — who had so freshly died by his hand, if he did, he knew he would be eaten alive. Instead, he prayed, for each of their souls, and finally his own.
*
“Welcome to Outer Space.”
Spindly fingers curled under Treize’s jaw and forced his face up. The entire right side of his face was scraped raw, his eye had swollen shut, and blood was dried to rust at the line of his hair. Blunt nails dug into bruises too fresh to ache.
The pair who had been charged with the task of collecting Treize and delivering him to his new prison had proven to be little more than thugs in the trappings of rank — perfect specimens to demonstrate what Romefeller had become. Treize curled his lip back in disdain, the pull tugging painfully at the split that had just begun to clot. The salt warmth of blood dripped down his teeth.
“Not the most hospitable welcome I’ve enjoyed,” he said. He licked his teeth. The sharp taste of his own blood spread across his tongue. Already, he had become far too familiar with the flavour.
“I’m afraid you don’t get a private room,” said Alston, the bigger of the two. “You’ll have to share.” Shouldering his cohort Daniels out of the way, he crouched down in front of Treize and set his hands on Treize’s shoulders. His pockmarked face twisted itself into mock concern. “I hope they stick you with someone who appreciates your pretty face as much as we did.” He patted Treize fondly on the cheek and stood.
“But,” Alston added, fisting a handful of Treize’s hair to bring him to his feet, “you’re not so pretty now, are you?”
*
Despite the sniggering threats, Treize found himself sharing a cell with a skinny young man roughly his own age who seemed more than happy to ignore Treize entirely. Unstable was Treize’s first estimation, and as the days dragged on, his cellmate’s erratic behavior only confirmed it. After one week had gone by, and then another without a single word spoken between them, the silence grew unbearable. Despite his own misgivings, Treize attempted conversation.
“Do you know where we are?” Treize asked. He could guess, of course, based on how long the transport had taken, but L3 and L4 were each as likely as the other, and even L1 was possible if they had taken a circuitous route.
“Don’t look at me,” the man hissed. He curled an arm around himself and scratched nervously at a scab until it began to bleed.
That was the end of that.
Treize lay down on his bunk and stared at the ceiling. There were two hundred and eighty tiles, as many as graced the floor, each of them painfully nondescript and the mirror image of its neighbors. How long would it be before he was the one huddled in the corner with madness in his eyes? Treize sighed inwardly and slid his eyes closed.
*
“Good news,” said Sato.
Quatre’s hands closed into fists. As the muscles of his forearms bunched, the wire that bound him to the back of the chair cut cruelly into his skin. Each week it was the same. His arms were striped with angry marks that were going to scar if they left him alive long enough.
His torturer smiled, and yet Quatre got the sense that he didn’t honestly think it was good news. Sato dropped his uniform coat on the back of a chair and sat himself on the corner of the table. His long legs spreading wide, he leaned over until he was close enough that Quatre could smell the pickles from his lunch on his breath. “We’ll be having some company during your special little visits with me.”
The muzzle of Sato’s gun nudged aside Quatre’s hair and pressed to his temple like a kiss.
“He’s a little crazy, but you know all about that, don’t you…”
Sato sighed when Quatre continued to stare straight ahead.
“My time is precious,” said Sato, his soft voice falling into a hiss. He tapped the gun against the side of Quatre’s head. “If you don’t start giving me any useful information about that Gundam soon, I’ll have to really get nasty.”
Quatre turned his face away and said nothing. He’d had no training for this sort of thing, but he’d swiftly become very good at saying nothing. He would play music in his head, picturing his violin and each note that would sing at his fingertips, but Sato’s threats had been many and varied, and the one that had succeeded in turning his bowels to water was the idle suggestion that Sato take a hammer to his fingers. Quatre found it more difficult to lose himself in music after that.
Funny that he worried over that more than death.
*
Every third day a pair of guards came and took Treize’s cellmate away. Treize didn’t know to where, or for what purpose, and the length of time he spent alone varied drastically. He felt adrift. All the things he didn’t know — about the current conflicts with the colonies, about the production of Tsuberov’s dolls, about his own confinement — they were more than just frustrating, they made him feel fear in a way he had never experienced before.
There was no strategy to formulate. His enemy — such as it was — could be considered neither solid nor predictable.
For all he knew, they planned to leave him here until they forgot about him.
For all he knew, they already had.
Treize ran his hands through his hair and drew in a deep breath. There was nothing to do but keep going. He wasn’t the sort to give up. If he had been, Dermail’s pistol would have found some use. Though the circumstances had changed, he still understood Romefeller’s desire to keep him from sight. He would do what he had been; he would wake each morning with no regrets and bide his time.
When his cellmate returned, Treize watched despite already knowing the routine. The man was near catatonic each time he was brought back, half-dragged in and dumped unceremoniously either on his bed — pushed against the wall opposite from Treize’s — or on the floor beside it.
He would sit where he had been left for hours, staring blindly at the space in front of him, and his hands would twitch like a junkie’s.
Treize tried to feel sympathetic, but it was difficult when he didn’t even know the man’s name or for what purpose he was imprisoned here.
That night, Treize woke with fingers around his throat.
Losing his breath in surprise, Treize knocked aside the man’s hands before they could tighten and caught him by the wrists when he didn’t retreat.
“What are you-” Treize didn’t even finish before he saw the whites of the man’s eyes as they rolled back and his cellmate crumpled to the floor.
They didn’t come to claim the body until morning.
*
Boredom was Quatre’s worst enemy in this place. Left alone with his thoughts plodding in endless circles, there were only so many ways he could manufacture to pass the time. He had already filled the pad of paper given to him, had written for the sake of writing and filled both sides of each page and all the margins. It was a sick feeling that settled into his stomach when he realised how desperate he was to see the slide open at mealtime because it meant someone was there.
It was a worse feeling when he actually began to look forward to the days that Sato sent for him.
And eventually, as Sato had warned him, the rules changed.
There was no longer a way to tell time. The lights turned on and off at random intervals, and meals came with equal irregularity. He woke one morning with a cottony taste in his mouth that said he’d been drugged and discovered his clothes had been taken. He sat for days in nothing but his shorts, but eventually dragged on the square-cut grey prison clothes that he’d been using to pad his pillow.
Quatre took to pacing the length and breadth of the space, and soon, every inch of the place was numbingly committed to memory.
On the day he shouted himself hoarse and beat his fists to bleeding against the windowless door, they took him out, hosed him off, and sat him down — nearly naked and shivering — in front of Sato.
“How did you do it,” asked Sato.
The men who had dragged Quatre here remained in the room. They had put gravirestraints on him this time, and the weight of them left the bones of his thumbs aching and the skin there chafed and sore. The change in routine was enough to make him panicked and short of breath, and it took all his willpower to sit still and project some manner of calm.
“How did you pilot that thing without losing your mind?” Sato had taken off his jacket and was slowly rolling up his sleeves. His mouth was turned down at the corners.
Quatre laughed hoarsely, nervousness raising the pitch of his voice. He remembered the haunted eyes of the prisoner that had sat in this room with him only briefly. “Now, what, you’ve decided that I’m sane?”
“Sane enough.” Sato reached for his back pocket, and his eyes flickered away from Quatre to the men standing behind him.
Light flashed off brushed metal and large hands clamped down on Quatre’s arms before he had a chance to scream. Quatre struggled furiously, but the guards forced his hands onto the tablet, pried his fingers apart. They held his palms so tight to the wood that he thought his wrists might break before Sato even got near him.
“Last chance to talk,” said Sato. He swung the hammer lazily, tapping it against the tabletop until Quatre’s eyes bulged and rolled to whites.
At the first crunch, he lost control of his bladder.
At the second, he lost consciousness.
*
The moment Quatre opened his eyes, he recognised the leader of OZ.
But it wasn’t until Quatre was shoved inside the cell and the sounds of the locking mechanism echoed through the walls that he noticed the brownish-red stains on the rich blue gabardine of Treize’s uniform. The surprise did a lot to clear his head and dim the lingering throb of pain in his hand.
“You’re a prisoner?” Quatre rasped. He’d spent a week that felt like a year in a tiny cell that was literally made up of four walls and a bucket. It was as if he had forgotten how to speak in there, and each word had to be carefully shaped.
“So fate has written me,” Treize Khushrenada said slowly. He sat on the edge of a familiar looking cot, his long legs bent and bare feet flat on the floor. His hair hung nearly to his stubbled jaw, and his eyes were shadowed as he watched Quatre with his head cocked to the side.
Burning with questions, Quatre hovered near the door. This cell was doubly large than the one he considered his. He couldn’t guess at why they’d moved him.
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
“Roughly five months, at my best estimation.” Treize gestured at the cot across from him; Quatre’s now, presumably. “Sit down before you fall over.
“I’d apologise for their treatment of you, but…” Treize spread his hands and shrugged helplessly.
Feeling more steady and more human than he had in days, Quatre sat down opposite Treize. He gnawed at the inside of his cheek and decided it didn’t matter if he stared; Treize was surely sizing him up, as well. “My name is-”
“If I may guess,” Treize interrupted, “Quatre Winner, the pilot of Zero Four?”
“How did you…?”
Treize’s lips turned in a slight smile. “I had my suspicions early on. The trajectory of your entry suggested a colony in the L4 cluster; there are few organisations with the facilities and material wealth to build such a large mobile suit in that area.
“Also, your father apologised rather forcibly about your absence at a function only a few days previous.”
Quatre’s heart twisted in his chest. “You knew my father?”
“Not well,” Treize admitted. His eyes had narrowed slightly at the ‘knew’ and Quatre realised that he might not know about the incident. Maybe it had been covered it up. At the time, Quatre hadn’t been in any shape to pay attention to the media.
“Regardless, I enjoyed several lively debates with him in the past,” Treize said.
“Mm.” Quatre lay down, adjusting the pillow under his neck with his good hand, and murmured an apology. He didn’t really feel like talking anymore.
Closing his eyes, Quatre wondered if Treize was unaware of the destruction of the colony, too.
*
Quatre was still sleeping when Treize woke. He showered as he normally did, but before he was done, the door to the cell opened and three guards entered. Two stood point, weapons trained on him, and Treize stood naked and dripping on the tiled floor until they nodded and let him reach for a towel.
It was his old friend, Alston, who stood there sneering with a bundled up wad of grey cloth in his hands. He tossed it to Treize, who caught it easily. “Time for a change of clothes, sweetheart,” he said. “Miss me?”
“Who wouldn’t,” Treize replied dryly. Alston grinned and blew him a kiss.
Treize left the bundle on the corner of the stainless-steel sink and finished wiping down before shaking them out and dragging them on.
“Where are we going?” he asked when dressed.
Alston scratched at his bearded chin and lifted an eyebrow. “Who says we’re going anywhere?”
From the corner of his eye, Treize could see that Quatre was still lying in the same position, but the boy was clearly no longer asleep. There was an unmistakable hum of tension in his body.
“Don’t tell me I got all dolled up for nothing,” Treize said.
“Heh. Aren’t you the clever one.” Alston pulled a pair of barred cuffs from his belt and ordered Treize to turn around. Treize heard the man’s bootsteps coming closer like a countdown. “Did you ever wonder where we were taking Proust?” Alston said into his ear.
Proust. Treize finally had a name for the unfortunate with whom he’d shared so many months. Solemnly, he committed it to memory.
“No? Well, either way, now you get to find out.” Alston tightened the cuffs, then shook out a thin canvas hood, tugging it roughly over Treize’s head.
Treize heard Quatre’s breath catch as they led him out.
*
At first, Treize thought it was Gundam 01, but the closer he got, the more he saw the differences. They were all subtle things, and he doubted that he would have caught them on a visual level if he hadn’t spent so much time studying the same five mobile suits.
A strong-jawed Lieutenant with slicked back hair looked up from a bank of diagnostic computers. “Who’s this?” he said, glancing briefly at Treize before fixing on Alston. “I asked for Prisoner 45-992-C.”
“Sato says you’ll find this one more useful.”
The officer took a longer look at Treize. “I went through each of the prisoner records personally to fin-” he cut himself off and stood up straight. “What game is Sato playing at withholding files?”
Alston shrugged and planted a hand in the middle of Treize’s back to shove him forward. “Ask him yourself, Trant, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. This one has piloting experience.
“Ain’t that right?”
Agreeing with a slow nod, Treize could practically feel the dark amusement dripping off Alston when no one else seemed to recognise him. He couldn’t fault the others; he hardly recognised himself most days. He hadn’t been granted a razor for a week, no haircut since Earth, and a good twenty pounds was gone from his frame.
“I have experience in all models save the most recent, of course,” Treize said. It was stupid, maybe, making this easy for them, but there was something in him that wanted in that cockpit. He wanted to know what made it so dangerous, and there was a niggling fear in the pit of his stomach that worried whatever they wanted from it would make Tsuberov’s mobile dolls all the more loathsome.
*
“Ready yourself, second wave.” Trant’s voice faded out from the speaker tucked in Treize’s ear, but Treize caught a faint ‘he’s good’ before the signal shut down.
So far everything had been routine. They were the usual training simulations, some of which were based on battle data, and some which ran in patterns he recognised because he had helped create them.
Targets swarmed on the radar. Treize swung around to face them. Without being hooked up to a proper simulator, the lack of momentum or the kick of thrusters was disconcerting at first. Still, in seconds he had dispatched the incoming enemies.
“Third wave. No, scratch that, you’ve obviously had a decent amount of training.” There was silence for a moment, and Treize lifted his hand from the controls to tuck his hair behind his ear. Trant’s voice was louder when the speaker turned on again, as if he had leaned in closer to the mic. “Loading data from a live engagement.”
Treize recognised the formation instantly. He’d fought in this battle. He’d lost men in this battle — Evans, Hong, Bostwick. His fingers tightened around the controls and he calculated his position relative to where the majority of his squad had hid themselves in the orbital path of the colony.
The opposition would come from above him, at two o’clock. Treize took aim and counted down the seconds.
When the suits appeared and an alert flashed red for an incoming missile, ZERO slammed into his mind.
*
Treize was still reeling when he stumbled out of the Gundam’s cockpit. He’d destroyed the targets all right, but he’d also come close to rounding his beam rifle on an enemy hanging directly in front of the simulated colony.
There was a sour taste in the back of his mouth. He clutched at the railing of the platform.
Cockpit AI was supposed to supplement the pilot, not overwhelm him. Whatever was loaded into the Gundam had insisted that was the clearest path to victory. But, that was no victory at all. Winning a battle at any cost was…inhuman.
And what about the stream of images, the memories that were dredged up and filtered through, and the things that weren’t memories but seemed just as real. Treize shook his head to clear it. The unit couldn’t have been predicting more than just battle data, could it? There was no way those could have been the paths of his future unfolding like budding flowers only to bloom and curl in on themselves as another took its place.
He clutched at his skull with one hand and it was minutes before his heart had stopped racing.
*
Some of the time the guards took both of them at once to Sato, and at others Quatre was left here to wait and wonder if they would bring Treize back at all.
But, one thing never changed; they never took Quatre out alone.
He fought paranoia and the very basic human instincts that clawed in his stomach and said that surely, Treize was giving them some sort of information to go out and come back without a scratch on him.
To go into Zero and not come out shaking and shivering.
*
As Treize began to understand the way the AI worked, it was easier to both control and circumvent it. Treize had never been lacking in willpower, and though it was as mentally exhausting as true piloting was physically taxing, he quickly learned how to pick the proper path and deny ZERO all others.
Trant was excited; understandably so, as Treize could count on his hand the number of pilots he knew who would be capable of mastering the system. He regretted giving Trant so much data, but as he fought through the simulations, he was soon able to harness ZERO’s strange, prophetic capabilities to his own benefit. So far, however, each scenario for escape he fed into the thing was deemed fatally disastrous.
Treize’s eyes flickered to the upper corner of the main monitor. There it was again, a strange glitch in the communications system. He’d said nothing about it to Trant, but for the past several sessions, a few minutes into each run a screen would pop up like an incoming message yet always remained black and silent. It never lasted more than fifteen seconds, and Treize considered the possibility that it might be more than a simple artifact of Trant’s attempts to hack the system to better understand it.
This time, Treize gave more of his attention to ZERO before the little screen disappeared. He wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of data. Raw information poured into his mind, and it was only with ZERO’s help that his brain began to sort it out.
Sound echoed in his head, as crisp and clear as if he’d spoken the word himself, and yet his teeth were clenched tight and the voice clearly did not belong to himself. “Hello,” came the voice again.
Treize almost answered aloud. He stopped himself at the last second. If this were an outside source, and this their only method of contact, speaking so that Trant would hear was foolish. Treize’s head ached, and he tried to figure out how to respond. He settled on picturing a word as written. ::Who?::
“Builders.”
Treize puzzled over that. He had little time, though; the next squad of enemies would appear on his radar within seconds.
“Leave it to us.”
The controls began to move independently, and Treize realised that whomever they were, they had successfully hijacked the Gundam’s entire system remotely. Builders… Had they built this thing? Treize felt a chill that was both hope and fear claw at his spine. ::Friends?::
“Stupid question. Instructor H wants to know how badly you’re banged up?”
::Instructor H?::
The connection shut off.
*
“It’s been a while,” Sato said.
Quatre felt even more uncomfortable in these sessions now with Treize in the room. During the hours he’d endured with the man who he’d learned had been Treize’s previous cellmate, there’d been no irrational sense of wanting to keep up a brave front for anyone except himself. Now he cringed inside every time there were questions and he was the only one who answered.
It was even worse when Alston and Daniels were in the room. Sato held them on a short chain, but the foul aura of sadism hung over them like a shroud. For all his cruelty, at least Sato didn’t appear to take overt pleasure in what he did; he was simply good at it.
“Sweet little mouth on this one,” Alston said. He’d finished cuffing Quatre to the chair and settled a hand on the top of Quatre’s head. “Don’t you think, General? Oops, pardon me, Colonel.”
Quatre kept his eyes away from Treize in case he would see sympathy there. He curled his fingers behind him, the ache of mending bones a welcome distraction for once. The hand on his head drew away, but only briefly, and Quatre flinched as rough knuckles dragged down his cheek.
“No? Then maybe I should bloody it up a bit until we can both agree.”
“Enough, enough,” Sato said. He waved the other man away and slapped a photo of five aging men down on the table. “Tell me, Quatre, do you know these men?”
Two of them were instantly recognisable. Feeling sick and horrible as he answered, Quatre nodded and told Sato he did.
“Have they tried to contact you?”
“Contact me? How?” Quatre was as confused as he was hopeful. That Sato was asking this must meant he believed they were, or might, and that meant the possibility of rescue. He shouldn’t let himself get excited, but the flame that flickered into life blazed hotter by the second.
“I’m not in the mood to play games today,” Sato said. “There’s no more room for give and take. Answer the question.”
“No,” Quatre said.
Sato stood up. He looked agitated, and there were lines beneath his eyes like he wasn’t getting enough sleep; Quatre tried hard not to read too much into it. Pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket, Sato shook one free to hang on his lip. “Make sure he’s telling the truth,” he told Alston. His brows drew together as he flicked open his lighter and brought the flame up to light his cig. “And don’t break anything unless you need to.”
*
Nearly all the hope that was glowing warm in Quatre’s stomach vanished, drenched cold by the fear of being left alone to the whims of two men that hardly deserved the title.
“O-ho!” Alston kicked off the wall. He threaded his fingers together, turning his hands palm-out to crack all his knuckles at once. He lolled his head to the side and eyed his partner. “What do you think, Daniels. No fun if we can’t break him.
“‘Sides, the kid isn’t lying, just look at him. He’s ready to piss himself again.”
Alston’s jibe did as intended, and Quatre’s face burned hot. When they’d stuck him in that stinking hole of a room after they broke his fingers, they’d stripped him naked first, but they’d tossed his pants in with him still stinking of his own urine. He couldn’t forget having been forced to make the humiliating choice of remaining naked or putting them back on again.
“How about a show to pass the time,” Daniels said, his long, bony fingers going up to scratch at his throat. “Our pretty little faggot over here is probably dying for a fuck.”
Again, Quatre went from hot to cold, his face instantly draining of blood. It wasn’t until Daniels had set his foot on Treize’s chair and shoved it away from the table that he realised they weren’t talking about him.
“Oh, the stories we’ve heard about you,” Daniels said. He planted his boot between Treize’s legs and dropped forward to prop his arm on his knee. “Your old buddy Zechs as good at fucking as he was at flying?”
Quatre watched as a cold smile spread across Treize’s lips. His eyes were guarded daggers, and Quatre could feel the hate crackling around him like lightning. “As a matter of fact, he was,” Treize said, evenly.
*
Treize could guess what they planned before they had Quatre bent over the table. He sat stock still in his chair, wanting to struggle and yet knowing that the metal was too heavy to lift even with the adrenaline singing in his veins. He felt helpless, more than he ever had since he had been put in this place.
Arms free, Quatre was taking desperate swings at Daniels, who laughed when they connected and did nothing, or, to the man’s great delight, left Quatre gasping as pain shot up his arm from his damaged fingers.
Finally, Daniels caught Quatre’s wrists and re-bound them with barred cuffs. With a chain snapped between them, he hauled forward, pulling Quatre off-balance and stretching him out over the table. Quatre’s toes strained for purchase on the floor. “Didn’t think you weren’t going to be part of the fun, did you?”
“Lookit that, Colonel, he’s squirming. Should make for a good time.”
“Not like this,” Treize said. “I want his mouth.”
He didn’t know if it would be harder for Quatre this way, or if they’d even agree. Treize felt time hang until Alston stood up straight and tall.
“Guess I was right, after all,” Alston said. “Don’t ever say I didn’t do anything for you.” He grinned and held his hand out. Daniels tossed him the chain and he yanked Quatre backwards off the table again. In seconds, Quatre’s arms were pulled over his head and down until the bar between the cuffs rested like a yoke against the back of his neck. Alston shoved him down to his knees.
“I’d be nice and knock his teeth out for you, but since orders are orders, don’t blame me if he bites.”
Daniels got Treize to his feet, hands secured in front of him. Daniels threaded his fingers into Treize’s hair, and maneuvered him roughly to stand in front of Quatre.
“Do a good job boy,” Daniels said, nudging Quatre with the tip of his boot. He didn’t let go, and kept a firm, eye-watering grip on the hair at the base of Treize’s skull.
When Quatre’s eyes stopped darting around and fixed on him, Treize put his hand to Quatre’s face. It was the best he could do to ask if Quatre would endure this along with him. Quatre’s eyes lowered, his lashes fanning downward, and he nodded, although the silent assent was so subtle, Treize couldn’t be sure of it.
His hands shook as he thumbed open the button at the waist of his pants.
Treize couldn’t deny that there was some part of him that wanted this. That wanted to kiss that milk-pale skin and bury his fingers in hair as fine and blonde as Milliardo’s.
Another time, another place… His conversations with Quatre, kept carefully guarded for fear of surveillance, were engaging nonetheless. Quatre was slight enough that it was difficult to tell just how old he was, but whatever his age, he was as intelligent as he was beautiful.
Treize let his hand slide down to Quatre’s neck lest they think him stalling. He thought back, summoning up all those secret, treasured memories of past encounters that never failed to speed his pulse, and tried to forget the circumstances of here and now.
“I won’t hurt you,” Treize assured, feeble though that assurance might be.
*
Treize kept his eyes closed through most of it, focusing all his attention on the slicksweet heat of a mouth tight around his cock. Twice he forgot himself and pushed his hips forward with an urgency that came with months of no relief save his hand.
“Not much of a show,” he heard one of the thugs — Daniels? — say. “Make sure you shoot right on his girly face.”
When Treize looked, finally, there was the wet shine of tears clinging to Quatre’s lashes. Had he pushed too far and brushed the soft tissues of Quatre’s throat, or was the humiliation of being forced to knees at those bastards’ will too much? Had Quatre even had another before, man or woman? Treize tried not to dwell on it all; this would take all the longer if he did.
He put his fingers to Quatre’s cheek, felt the give as he thrust in again. Quatre’s lips were flushed cherry red, and his jaw had tired, slacken now as the length of Treize’s cock slid in and out of his mouth. He was moaning, but the sound was not of pleasure, and for a moment Treize regretted his choice.
But with his eyes focused on the stretch of Quatre’s mouth, it was hard for Treize not to acknowledge the thrill threading along his spine. He always did love a hot mouth on his cock, with the roll of a clever tongue or the enthusiasm of eager inexperience. This was neither, but he could pretend well enough. His cock swelled and a groan rose in his throat as pleasure knotted in his belly. Blood was roaring in his ears, drowning out the sounds of rough laughter and heavy breathing from the other men in the room.
“Keep your mouth open,” Treize said. He thumbed Quatre’s lower lip, pushed his fingers inside to touch the glistening pink of Quatre’s tongue, and fisted his cock with his other hand.
His nerves felt alive, pleasure skittering along his skin, and as it grew more and more intense, dizziness made him feel as he was floating. A half-dozen vicious strokes of his cock and he crashed back down, coming hard enough that he had to pull his fingers from Quatre’s mouth and reach behind him to brace his weight on the table.
Treize’s vision had dimmed, but he had seen Quatre flinch when the first shot of come landed squarely in his mouth. The rest was spattered on his face, sliding down to slick his swollen lips and dangle in strings from the point of his chin.
Breath coming quick and shallow, Treize had forgotten the hand still clenched tight in his hair, and he yelped when he was yanked to the side. Daniels swung him around, snapping cuffs around his wrists before he could blink. The man’s breath washed warm against his cheek and Treize lifted his chin to avoid a sloppy lick.
“My turn,” he said, and drove his fist into Treize’s stomach.
*
By the time Sato came back, Quatre had gotten to the point where he couldn’t keep his limbs from shaking. He smelled come with each breath, tasted it, felt it cooling on his face, and couldn’t wipe it away.
His arms were still forced bent above his head; they’d gone dead ages ago, but he could feel his shirt shiver as they twitched. His jaw ached terribly, so much that when they were done with him, he knelt there with his head hung, mouth open and panting like a dog. Quatre was sure the past half-hour would catch up with him, but for now, he mostly felt numb.
From the corner of his eye he could see Treize. His hands had been cuffed to the table leg, and he knelt on the floor, knees splayed wide and his chin tucked to his chest. There was misery in the slump of his shoulders, and Quatre wished he could say something, to say thank you for how much Treize had struggled when the others wanted their turn, to tell him how much easier it had been when their eyes had locked and Treize never once looked away.
“Take the kid out of here, I’ve got business with Khushrenada,” Sato said.
Quatre snapped his head up. Come dripped down his throat and slid beneath the neck of his shirt. He didn’t want to go with them. Not alone.
*
There was activity in the halls as Treize was escorted back to his cell. Soldiers weren’t scrambling, precisely, but they were moving in teams with a deliberation that made Treize curious. He kept his eyes and ears open, catching snippets of dialogue between the men and over their radios.
For the first time, a soldier did a double-take upon seeing him, and Treize grinned viciously when Alston snarled and told him to keep his head down.
The lights were off inside the cell, but with the door open, Treize could see the silhouette of Quatre’s crumpled form; he was naked, curled on his side with his back pressed up against the half-wall by the shower. As the door closed, the fan of light reduced to a sliver and then nothing. Treize waited for his eyes to adjust before picking his way towards Quatre.
The cell itself was a mess, the mattress of his cot half on the floor, and the frame of Quatre’s askew as if someone had banged into it. Had Alston been walking stiffly?
“Quatre, I’m coming towards you. I’m going to check your wounds,” Treize said, keeping his voice as calm and even as he could. As he got closer to the dim, ever-present lights near the toilet, he could see that Quatre’s eyes were open.
Treize gave Quatre a cursory glance before he snagged a washcloth draped over the tile and went to the sink. He turned the tap to red and dampened the cloth with warm — it was never truly hot — water, then returned to crouch beside Quatre.
Silently, he wiped the mess from Quatre’s face. The washcloth turned pink where spittle and drying come had mixed with blood. Quatre had a split lip, but no worse than a few loose teeth, no bones had been broken although there was a bruise already darkening along the curve of his jaw.
Treize went to the sink again to rinse out the washcloth. He stood there for a moment watching the water swirl down the drain, his fingers curled white-knuckled along the stainless-steel lip of the sink. Sucking a hissing breath through his teeth, he wrung out the washcloth and spun on his heel.
“Did they sodomise you?” he asked. He swiped the cloth down Quatre’s throat and over the sweep of Quatre’s collarbone, cleaning up the drying come that was doubtless mixed with his own. Quatre’s chest was as hairless as a child’s but sculpted into smooth lines and angles that said he would find his height some day.
Quatre surprised him by answering. “No,” he said. His lashes fluttered, and Treize thought his eyes might snap into focus, but his lashes stilled as quickly as they had come to life, and he continued to stare blankly.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
“No,” Quatre said. His eyelids slid closed and Treize saw tears leak from the corner of his eyes.
Treize sat down heavily beside Quatre. With a sigh, he wadded up the washcloth and tossed it away from them. He stripped off his shirt and draped it over Quatre’s hips. Tipping his head back to rest against the tiled wall, Treize stretched a leg out and smoothed his his hands down his face. “They want me to train them how to use it,” he said, as much to himself as to Quatre. “If I don’t, it’s you who’ll suffer.”
“I know,” Quatre whispered. He pushed himself up and crawled closer to Treize, laying his head on Treize’s lap.
He trembled and shook, and his slim fingers curled tight into the folds of Treize’s pants. Treize bit his lip to bleeding. Slowly, he dropped a hand down, rested it light on Quatre’s back, and Quatre eventually stilled.
Sato’s impossible demands echoed in Treize’s head, and Treize pulled Quatre tighter. The boy was frail in his arms, featherlight and pale like a wisp of fog. Treize pushed the hair away from Quatre’s eyes with gentle fingertips. Fair brows knit tight.
“God forgive me,” Treize breathed into the silence.
*
Quatre was still in Treize’s arms when he woke. He had been dreaming of his father, and when he looked up, he almost expected to see the strong jaw he remembered being fascinated with as a child.
“Treize,” he said, as the world came back into focus. He hurt everywhere, inside and out, and the sound of his own voice in his head seemed strangely echoed.
“I need to ask you something,” Treize said. His arms slipped away, and Quatre nearly made a sound for Treize to stop, to keep holding him, but then the low, urgent tone of Treize’s voice penetrated.
“What?”
“Were you brought here alone?” Treize asked.
Corners of his mouth turning down, Quatre shook his head. He regretted it instantly; the ache behind his eyes flared white-hot. “No,” he answered past the pain, “Heero, the pilot of Zero One was with me. Why do you ask?” Pushing himself to sitting, Quatre scrubbed at his face. His skin felt stiff and scratchy in places, and a sourness rose in the back of his throat as he realised why.
“Injured or otherwise incapacitated, I presume,” Treize pressed.
“Yes, injured.” Quatre knew he didn’t have to say it, but he did anyway. “By my hand.”
Treize looked at him for a long moment, deep blue eyes alive with an intensity Quatre had never seen in them before. He swiftly recognised it as determination. “I have reason to believe he has recovered.”
Tears sprang immediately to Quatre’s eyes. He wiped them away with the heel of his palm before they had a chance to spill. It could be nothing more than a rumour, but if it were true… He hoped with all his heart that it was.
“Did Sato tell you that?” Quatre asked, suddenly wary.
Treize shook his head. “No, and I have one more question to ask you,” he said. He paused, clearly choosing his words carefully. “I think the answer will be yes, but I understand if you don’t trust me enough to confirm…
“Quatre, do you know an Instructor H?”
Quatre’s stomach flip-flopped. Whether or not to put his trust in Treize was not an easy decision to make, particularly when Sato had been waving pictures around and had tossed him to the dogs in the end. It could have all been a ploy, orchestrated to get an honest answer out of him when he felt most vulnerable — and there was no denying that Treize was the closest thing he had to a friend here.
He could search for guile and deception in Treize’s face for long minutes, or he could go with his instinct.
Instinct won. Quatre nodded a yes.
“Tell me everything you can,” Treize said.
*
Trant introduced Treize to the officer he hoped to train. In less than ten seconds flat, Treize could tell the young man wouldn’t be able to cut it. He said as much and Trant sneered at him.
“I don’t need advice from a prisoner,” Trant said. He gestured and an assistant began attaching sensors to Treize’s pulsepoints. “You’ll be doing the Orion set of missions today.”
“No,” Treize said. He was pushing things, he knew, but it was the only way he’d get a man like Trant to do what he needed. “Load the live data from the assault on MO-XIV on November 17th 193.”
“MO-XIV, the ghost suit mission?” Trant laughed harshly. “I want you to show Lt. Barton here what that machine can do, not-”
“That’s my intention,” Treize interrupted smoothly. He jerked his chin to indicate the bank of computers Trant was sitting at, ignoring the irritated hiss of the assistant still busy taping wires to his skin. “Check the battle data. I’ll show you how to take out forty heavily modified Space Leos and a Gundam with a single suit.”
“A Gundam?” Trant’s eyes narrowed. Curiosity piqued, he swiveled around and pulled up the information scavenged from a squad that had met near destruction. “Well that explains the variable here… But the Orion missions are-” Trant broke off and looked up as Barton scooped up the VR helmet off the console and tossed it to Treize.
“Let him do it,” Barton said. His eyes, flat and unreadable, held to Treize’s for a moment before he turned to Trant. “If that is a Gundam in that data, I’d like to see how things match up.”
*
Treize wasted no time the moment the simulation came to life. If those men were monitoring Trant’s experiments, he could only hope they were paying attention right now.
::Khushrenada:: he thought with all his might, picturing his name in the very front of his mind even as ZERO screamed for him to pay attention to the suits pouring out of the asteroid like bees from a hive.
Half the Leos were wreckage by the time he saw the screen pop up. The voice was just as disconcerting as it was the first time and Treize circled around, needing distance to keep going. “Quatre alive?”
::Yes. Help with sim.::
Just like that, the controls were once again moving on their own. Treize breathed a quiet sigh of relief. ::Disable audio feed?::
Treize saw the lights on the panel flicker and Trant’s voice went live in his ear. “There’s a transmitter problem. Continue on. Fire twice to acknowledge.”
Two shots lasered out, and Treize cleared his throat. “Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear. Quatre’s alive then, good, good.”
“He’s suffered. Do you have allies?”
“Some. Most of them thanks to you, General.”
“More good news for you, perhaps,” Treize said. “Heero Yuy had been in the prison medical facility. He’s gone missing.”
There was silence, then laughter. “A few more days then, General. Keep that seat warm for our little time bomb, and when the lights go out, keep your head down.”
*
It took a lot of struggling, but Quatre managed to push the two cots in the cell together side to side. His hand throbbed from all the effort, and he stared at the darkly flushed tips of his bound fingers. They’d been healing well, or so Treize had proclaimed some days ago, but after yesterday, Quatre feared a fresh break.
He wasn’t sure what Treize would say when — Quatre wouldn’t think if, not anymore — they brought him back. He wasn’t sure he would be able to explain it, either, but he needed this closeness after an hour spent in near darkness had left him terrified that he was going crazy. It had felt as if there were a thousand ghostly fingers plucking at the threads of his mind, and that it wouldn’t take much to unravel him.
He showered in the time he was alone, fighting down the feeling that he had to keep one eye on the door. Whatever had happened yesterday when he had pushed, he felt pretty certain that Alston and Daniels wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon.
Clean and warm and dressed in the old uniform they’d allowed Treize to keep, if not wear, Quatre sat in the middle of the bed with his back to the wall. He drew his knees towards his chest and closed his eyes, curling his arms over his head as he waited for the time to pass. He wondered if Treize had been able to contact Instructor H successfully, and if Heero really was okay.
He drifted into a fitful sleep where he hung in a field of stars littered with enemy mobile suits. His arms had become weapons and it took little more than a thought to take aim and destroy the suits that posed a danger to him. He felt like he could see them all, but at one point, an enemy had snuck up on him. He swung his arm around, fingers forming a knife that sliced the Taurus’ cockpit in two, and for a moment, Quatre dreamed that Trowa was fighting beside him.
He woke feeling more tired than he had before. He counted the stitching in the cuff of Treize’s jacket to keep himself occupied. He didn’t want to fall asleep again and risk another dream about Trowa. It still hurt, shamefully more than the lives of millions of innocent people, that he had taken the life of a friend.
*
Quatre was relieved when Treize said nothing about the cots.
“Thank you again for lending me the clothes,” Quatre said. He hadn’t even had to ask. The gesture meant more to him than it probably should have, but maintaining a healthy distance had become secondary to everything.
Treize nodded and perched on the metal frame of the cot. “You’re welcome. Keep it for as long as you’d like, a few days until they deign to do our laundry, or what have you.” He smiled gently and stood up again, turning his back as he stripped his shirt off and went to the sink. “It’s a bit big, but it looks good on you.”
“A bit big…” Quatre said wryly, lifting a hand that was completely swallowed by the length of the jacket sleeve.
“You would’ve cut a fine figure as an officer,” Treize said before he dunked his head under the tap. He let the water run cold over his head for a moment before pulling back and taking a long swallow straight from the faucet. “Although,” he added, picking up the towel folded neatly behind the tap and draping it over his head, “a red like Col. Zechs’s uniform might suit you better.”
“Is it true that you an-” Quatre broke off, mortified that he’d begun to ask without even thinking. His face felt warm. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
Treize shook his head. He held either end of the towel looped around his neck and smiled again. Quatre couldn’t tell if it was forced.
“It’s fine,” Treize said. “We were lovers for a time, yes.”
His face felt warmer for it, but Quatre had to look away. He knew it happened, of course, even in the Maguanac Corps there were those who looked at one another as more than comrades, but he’d never before heard a man admit to loving another romantically. It made him feel strange and uncomfortable.
“Do you still want to sleep in the same bed with me?” Treize asked.
“I don’t want to sleep alone,” Quatre answered quickly. He regretted the way he’d phrased the sentence the moment it had fallen from his lips. “I don’t mean to say I’m afraid, not of you, anyway.”
“I understand,” Treize said. He moved to pick up his shirt again, and Quatre thrust a hand out to stop him.
“Don’t,” Quatre said. “Don’t put that back on for my sake.”
Beneath his own, so faintly that he hardly noticed it, Treize’s hand began to shake.
*
Like they had each time he’d come back from seeing Trant, the lights clicked off an hour after Treize’s return. But this time, he lay awake in the dark long past the point that sleep would have normally claimed him.
For the third night in a row, Quatre was nestled close to him, the bare skin of Quatre’s back so tight against his chest that Quatre could surely feel his heartbeat. The air beneath the blankets had warmed quickly, and each time Quatre shifted, Treize felt cool air rush in to tickle against his skin.
“What’s it like to love another man?” Quatre asked, suddenly, his voice quiet enough that even in the silence it had been difficult to hear.
Treize made a thoughtful sound. He’d wondered how long it would take before Quatre broached the subject again. He extracted his arm and rolled onto his back, folding his hands behind his head. Quatre followed, turning to face him and snuggling up against his side. “A lot like loving a woman,” Treize answered.
The silence stretched, filled his ears with the strange rush of not-sound that reminded him of summers spent at the shore.
“I’ve never been in love with a woman,” Quatre said hesitantly.
Treize clenched his jaw tight and swallowed. It grew increasingly difficult to deny his attraction to Quatre, and he could hardly continue to blame it on a resemblance to Milliardo when they had been young and pledged foolish boyhood love for eachother.
“Quatre I don’t know what you expect of me.” But he did know. Not in a situation like this, not precisely, but he remembered what it was like knowing he was different and wanting someone to tell him that it was normal. To show him.
“Would it be that hard for you? To have me willing?” Quatre raised his head, and Treize shivered at the soft drag of lips along his side.
“No, it wouldn’t, and therein lies the problem. I’m old enough t-”
Quatre’s hand touched light to Treize’s belly, trailed up ghostlike to his neck, until the whole length of Quatre’s arm rested hot against him. “To be my father?” Quatre laughed. “Hardly.”
Treize chuckled and twisted his head, mouth brushing against the heel of Quatre’s hand. He groaned quietly and drew his arms out from under his head. “I was going to say, ‘to know better’.”
He’d intended to put his hands to Quatre’s shoulders, to gently push his back, but his resolve wavered when Quatre’s leg slid between his own. And when Quatre pulled himself up until their bodies were aligned so perfectly, Treize moaned his defeat into the soft hollow of Quatre’s throat.
“Kiss me?” Quatre whispered, his breath fanning against Treize’s cheek.
“Gladly,” Treize murmured, and then their mouths were together, dry lips rubbing together, catching, teasing, until finally the slick of tongue turned the kiss wet with electric heat. Treize lifted his head from the pillow and cupped the back of Quatre’s head. He deepened the kiss, desperate to taste as much of Quatre as he could.
There was a buzzing whine echoing in his ears, and Treize thought it nothing more than the shivering, shaking thrill of a warm body in his arms, but the sound grew louder and louder. When it died, suddenly enough that it left his ears ringing, so did the remaining light. Without the dim halo of orange above the sink and toilet, the cell was as black as pitch.
“Get down,” Treize said, and dragged Quatre to the floor.
“What’s happening?”
“I don’t know. Under the bed.” The space was too narrow for Treize to flatten himself beneath it like Quatre had. Crawling on his elbows, Treize positioned himself by the door instead.
He heard it then, a sinister hiss, and with adrenaline flowing fast and hard in his veins, Treize warned Quatre to hold his breath.
*
The guards had wasted no time, but they weren’t prepared for an airborne toxin; the moment they opened the door and came inside, their eyes bulged wide and they gagged horribly. They fell to the floor in a spill of twitching limbs. Quatre felt ill.
His lungs burned with the effort of holding his breath, and he was glad that the red glow of emergency lights from the hallway meant there was no painful stab to his eyes as they needed to adjust.
“Look,” Treize said, and Quatre followed the point of his finger up to where the red light bounced off clouds of something wafting in the air. It hung low, but dipped no more than four feet from the floor of the cell.
Quatre filled his lungs greedily and inched out from under the bed, biting back a yelp when something sharp caught and tore along his shoulderblade. Treize had rolled onto his back, and was kicking one of the bodies. Wincing at the pain and the feel of blood trickling down his back, Quatre almost shouted at him to stop until he saw there was a gun trapped beneath the man’s chest and hardly enough room to crawl out unless the body was moved.
“Leave it,” Quatre said, untangling the other guard’s gun. He passed the SMG to Treize, lifting a pistol from the man’s belt for himself.
“Stay close,” Treize said. He spun around and kicked hard against the floor, sliding himself out into the hall with the gun trained in the direction more soldiers were likeliest to come from.
Quatre followed on his elbows. The bodies of unconscious men were littered here and there. As effective as using the vents was, some of the soldiers were bound to have been able to take measures. “We need masks,” he said.
“At the checkpoint,” Treize said. He rolled onto his belly and started moving.
It was slow going, torturously so, but there was no opposition all the way to the sealed doors. The posted men were slumped against the wall. Quatre found one of them with a keycard tucked inside his uniform. “Here!”
“Pray they’re up to regulations,” Treize said, snapping the card off the lanyard around the man’s neck. “Pray that idiot Tsuberov never changed the override codes.” He took several deep breaths, then one more, and stood, swiping the card quickly through a reader.
The panel of buttons lit up, and Treize punched in a series of numbers. Nothing happened, and Treize lost a bit of air in a frustrated puff. Quatre held his breath right along with him as he gave it a second and third try, on the fourth, Quatre felt like his head was going to burst if the code didn’t work.
A wave of dizziness hit him, thick and swirling like it had when Alston had tried to kick his legs apart, and Quatre lost all his breath at once. He rolled onto his back, panting roughly, and when he opened his eyes again, Treize was crouched beside him with a gasmask in hand.
“Quickly, if you can,” Treize said. His voice was tinny through the filters, and his hair flared out beneath the straps.
Quatre took the mask and nodded. It wasn’t easy to put on with his aching fingers, but he got it secured while Treize was stripping the two sentries of their body armor.
*
It took both of them to wrench the doors open far enough apart that they could each squeeze through. “I need to get to a computer,” Treize said, as they set off running. There had been none in the prison proper, and the ones at the outer checkpoint had been fried.
Quatre summoned up everything he could remember about the layout of this place. He’d done his best to commit as much of it to memory as he could when he’d been brought in, but these halls were unfamiliar, and they couldn’t really risk slowing down long enough for him to try and get his bearings.
They were coming up on a T-intersection, and Quatre caught Treize’s sleeve. “This way,” he shouted, and led them to the right. Something told him it was the proper way to go.
Treize didn’t slow, rounding the corner with no hesitation. And there, at the end of hall, a set of doors stood open to a control room of some sort.
“Good job,” Treize said, slowing as they neared the room. He flattened himself against the wall, gun held at the ready.
“Watch out,” Quatre said. He knew they were there before he saw them, and he’d fired before they were out from behind the doors. Two shots and each man went down, identical bulletholes smoking in their foreheads.
Quatre stared at the gun in his hand. He’d never fired a pistol before at anything other than a paper target, and even then, with nothing resembling this sort of accuracy.
“Quatre, get inside,” Treize was urging him. And with the strange droning hum in his head fading away again, Quatre did as he was told.
*
The doors shut with a hiss, and Treize stripped off his gasmask. The prison appeared to be on a separate ventilation system and they were far enough away that if the men in here had been safe, so were they.
A few hasty queries told him the computers were also on a separate system, and Quatre was disappointed when he couldn’t confirm if Heero had escaped or not.
Treize pointed to a section on the map spreading across the monitor. “This is the main hangar, it’s your best chance for getting out of here.” He drew the tip of his finger along a parallel line, then downwards, tracing a path to where a blue square indicated the room they were currently in. “I’d go along this route; there are enough easy detours that you shouldn’t get turned around if you encounter resistance.”
The taste of filtered air was chalky in Quatre’s mouth, and his tongue felt even drier when Treize’s words sunk in. Realising that he too could remove the mask, he undid the straps. It was much easier to get off than it had been to put on. “Where are you going?” he asked, shaking his head as soon as the gasmask was off.
“The manufacturing facility,” Treize replied. He picked up the SMG from where he’d set it atop the monitor and slung the strap over his shoulder.
Quatre bit his tongue. He wanted to say he’d go with Treize, but it was a stupid thing to do. Getting out of here was his first priority. Instructor H had said as much in orders relayed to Quatre through Treize.
“Be careful,” Quatre said.
Nodding firmly, Treize gathered back his hair, securing it with a rubber band scavenged from the mess of a drawer laden with office supplies. “You too,” he said, and their eyes caught for a moment.
Quatre didn’t waste the time to wait and watch him leave.
*
There were only a few dolls left in the factory by the time Treize got there. The airlock was closed, and through the 30 metre wide pane of reinforced plastiglass, Treize could see a pair of heavy transports gearing for takeoff. He swore darkly until he caught sight of a small cluster of men on the floor.
Dressed in crushed velvet and satin, Tsuberov was easy to pick out.
Treize loped along the walkway, bypassing two sets of narrow stairs with his eyes set on the third. He needed to be close enough that he could take them out but far enough that there would be a chance they’d never even see him coming.
*
Getting to the hangar was easier said than done. Quatre ducked into an alcove and waited for the scuffling sound of footsteps to fade. His heart pounded in his chest as he dared a quick peek around the column. He didn’t have much further to go, but he only had four rounds left in the clip.
“Now or never, Winner,” he breathed, and started running.
*
Everyone was still. Tsuberov’s mouth was moving, but there was no sound that Treize could hear. As he approached, the engineer coughed wetly, and blood and spittle flecked his thin lips.
Without a word, Treize rolled over one of the fallen bodies and took the soldier’s belt knife. He caught Tsuberov’s jaw and forced his head back, making one swift, deep cut that split the man’s throat open in a red, gruesome smile.
Blood hot on his hands, Treize left the knife beside the body.
With Tsuberov dead and the remains of the mobile dolls sabotaged to the best of Treize’s ability, Treize scavenged extra clips and a spare weapon from the other bodies. He took one last look at the transports firing up their engines and knew there was nothing he could do about them. He’d have to leave them to Heero, presuming the boy had managed to take control of the Gundam as the mysterious voice had assured him would happen.
*
Treize found Quatre holed up not more than fifty metres from the main hangar.
“There’s resistance in there,” Quatre said breathlessly. He looked pale, his cheeks spotted with pink. “At least thirty men.”
“Could you see their sleeves?” Treize asked. They’d been warned to look for friendlies.
Quatre shook his head. He closed his eyes for a moment and Treize saw his throat bob as he swallowed. “I didn’t make visual contact. I just- I just know… somehow.”
“All right,” Treize said. Quatre had trusted him and believed in him, and it was the least he could do to honour Quatre with the same.
“How are you doing on ammo?” he asked.
“I’m out, actually,” Quatre said. He still had the gun clutched in his hands, but Treize didn’t blame him for not ditching it. An empty weapon could still make for a good bluff.
Treize reached behind his back, pulling a stolen pistol free from the waist of his pants. “Full magazine,” he said, spinning it around and holding it out for Quatre to take.
Nodding at Quatre’s quiet thanks, Treize took the other pistol from him and tucked it in his pants. “We can’t stay here forever,” he said, and peered around the corner quickly.
Treize counted to ten, and then to ten a second time. His finger tightened on the trigger.
“Not yet,” Quatre said, and clutched Treize’s arm. “Wait.” Treize looked over; Quatre’s eyes were open, but there was a strange unfocused look in them.
“Now,” Quatre said, and pushed.
There was an explosion in the hangar, and the walls shook like a wounded thing as he and Treize charged down the hallway with the floor bucking beneath their feet.
“What did you do?” Treize shouted as he hit the panel at the door. It slid open jerkily.
“Called for help,” Quatre said.
*
Wing Zero had torn through the hangar wall. The floor was littered with debris, great chunks of metal warped and twisted, some of it still red hot and sizzling. The handful of men who had rounded to fire uselessly at the Gundam were taken down in seconds by a trio of soldiers with white strips tied around their biceps.
The three picked their way across the hangar floor, the one on rear guard keeping a close eye on the far exits. Quatre politely took a step away from Treize as they came near.
“General!” The shortest of them made a hasty salute, his eyes skipping briefly over to Quatre and giving him a nod. “We’ve secured 80% of the facility. I can radio for more men if you’d like.”
“If you can spare another four to secure….”
Quatre really didn’t need to pay attention to Treize’s orders, and it was with a relieved sigh that he sat himself down on the low edge of a carrier truck’s flatbed. Hands hanging limply between his knees, he looked up at the monster he had built.
He was still staring when Treize’s hand came down on his shoulder. “Can you tell your friend to move so we can get one of these shuttles onto the launch track?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Quatre said. He wasn’t really sure how it did work, but it wasn’t easy, and he couldn’t really just do it on command. He was about to try and explain further, but Zero’s cockpit hissed open and he saw Heero’s familiar slim frame step out onto the hatch.
“Treize,” Heero shouted, and Quatre saw a gun in his hands.
The shot rang out before he could do anything. Time slowed to a crawl, and Quatre watched in horror as Treize staggered back.
Quatre caught Treize’s arm. He looked frantically for a wound, but there was no blood, just the flattened shine of a bullet that had burrowed into the black body armor right where Treize’s heart would be. Treize held up a hand, shouting a hoarse order for his men to stand down. They did so, reluctantly.
“Zero One,” he said, and pried the bullet free with his fingernails. He clenched it in his fist and Quatre saw the very corners of his mouth tug into a smile.
“Next time, if you’re my enemy, I’ll aim for your head,” Heero said. He tucked his gun away and half-turned, his face falling into shadow. “Quatre, I’m taking your Gundam. Trowa wants you to know the shuttle to your left is still operational.”
“Trowa’s alive…” Quatre breathed, and he held tighter to Treize’s arm as relief made his legs feel weak. He hadn’t killed his friend, after all. And he understood then, that those dreams had not been dreams at all; Trowa had been in ZERO and Quatre had fought with him.
*
Treize glanced over as Quatre slid into the co-pilot’s chair. There was a calmness to him that hadn’t been there before. Not so much because of the escape, he guessed, but rather that both of his fellow Gundam pilots, and therefore the hopes of the colonies, had survived despite all odds. He still looked tired, however, and whatever had awoken inside of him was not easily tamed.
“Can’t sleep?” Treize asked. The Lunar Base was a solid day behind them, but it would be another 12 hours before they were aligned for a good approach. He’d been reading the feeds for hours on the simple onboard computer, and sat back, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand.
“Not really.” Quatre drew his feet up onto the edge of the chair, his toes curling and flexing against the upholstery. “I suppose I’m just going to have to get used to it.”
“Sleeping alone?”
“Yeah.”
“You could always try a teddy bear,” Treize said. He chuckled when Quatre shot him a dark look. “Just a suggestion.”
“Maybe I will,” Quatre said. He closed his eyes and rested his cheek against his knees.
Treize watched him for a long time, measured the steady rise and fall of his back with each breath. He wouldn’t ask where Quatre planned to go after they touched down. He couldn’t know, not if he were to fulfill his destiny and lift the crown from Relena’s head to show the Earth its true potential.
The controls beeped as the autopilot performed a course correction, and Treize was tempted to cancel the order and put in a new set of coordinates, to fly the both of them to some half-developed colony that would be ignored for years. He drew in a breath so deep it made his lungs ache and pushed himself to standing.
“Come on,” he said, plucking at the sleeve of Quatre’s shirt. “Let’s get some sleep.”
But Quatre didn’t move, he was already fast asleep, and Treize slowly sat back down to watch him for some time longer.
*
“She’s waiting for you,” Treize said to Quatre. Standing in his uniform again, clean-shaven and smelling of good soap, there was a distance between them.
Quatre looked out the window to where the limousine was parked. The light streaming in from the outside made his hair shine golden. “I know,” he said.
“If we are both alive at the conclusion of things, I would wish our paths to cross again,” Treize said. He hesitated, struggling to find a proper way to say farewell. In the end, he held out his hand for Quatre to clasp.
Quatre hesitated in turn, but when he took Treize’s hand, his grip was warm and firm. “So would I,” he said.
*
End
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