Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing

Deceptions Part 14: The Meeting

By Symee-Sama

The raid had been quick, efficient and brutal. Doctor J was dead, but he had taken the entire Preventors team with him. The damn fool was too stubborn to go down with out a fight, but he had finally bit it. Duo thought grimly as he massaged his sore shoulder. They hadn’t been expecting the myriad of traps. They had actually been locked into the lab. Doctor J had so many traps in there that it was a miracle that any of them had got out alive.

* * * * *

Duo sprinted down the hallways of the lab, cursing himself for not thinking ahead. They hadn’t been expecting any real defences here, and man, had they paid for it. His entire team was trapped in a room, slowly suffocating. He glanced at the man beside him. Wufei had a grim look on his face as he ran down the halls. “Go to the communications room, and tell Une what happened.” Duo told him. “Left here, second right, and then first right.” Wufei nodded, and turned around the corner. Duo continued on alone.

Duo cursed again, and ran faster. He had to find the Doctors, and turn this whole thing around. He followed the directions that Heero had given him. Left, then right, skip the next two hallways, and then left again. This place is a friggin’ maze. He thought as he finally reached the centre of the lab, and pulled out his gun, aiming it at the old man who was sitting at a table in front of him.

“How are you, Duo?” J asked, not surprised in the least to see him. “I haven’t seen you since you helped us get to Libra during the war…”

“I’m not big on small talk,” Duo cut the Doctor off impatiently. “Tell me what you did to Heero, and I’ll let you live.”

“What I did to Heero?” Doctor J chuckled. “I improved him. I made him a better soldier than he had ever been. You saw how efficient he became. He could function with three stab wounds.” His mechanical hand clicked together. “He is truly, my most successful experiment to date.”

“Experiment?” Duo yelled at him. “You played God with his life before the war, experimenting and enhancing him, but after the war he started to live like a normal person again. He was happy…” Duo trailed off miserably for a moment before he could control his anger. “And then you had to go a screw it up! You had to take him, and do all your experiments on him! He was happy!”

“I know he was happy.” J said calmly, not affected in the least by Duo’s outburst. “That’s why I did it, you see. That’s why I took him back.” Duo shot him a confused look. “Heero is a weapon.” J began, in a tone that sounded like it would be put to better use lecturing a small child. “He’s not allowed to have feelings. Happiness, sadness… he’s not allowed to feel. So I made sure that he couldn’t. I erased all his distractions.”

“That’s sick.” Duo grimaced. “So what did you actually do to him? How come he can talk to Zero in his head? How’d you manage to do that?”

“I implanted a chip with the Zero System into the base of his skull.” Doctor J boasted. “Not only did he survive the operation, but it functioned perfectly as well! None of the other scientists could see my vision. None of them could understand. It wasn’t about how much money we could get from creating the perfect soldier, but the very fact that we created him that mattered!”

Duo shook his head slightly. This guy was nuts. “So… if we removed the chip, then he’ll go back to normal?”

“If you removed the chip, it would kill him.” Doctor J informed the braided pilot, shattering all his hopes. “The Zero system is part of him now, and he can never escape it. He could never be more than a soldier, a murderer, so you might as well kill him.”

“No!” Duo shouted at him. “I refuse to believe that! He has the potential to be normal! He succeeded in being normal before you waltzed in a screwed up his life! There’s got to be a way to turn him back!”

Doctor J shook his head. “There is none. This Zero system is stronger than the one in the Gundams. There I no way that he can escape it. He may have been able to resist it temporarily, but it will keep coming back. It is tireless, and it will win. It is the perfect system.” With movements that belied his years, he pulled out a gun and shot Duo in the shoulder. “You will just have to accept that.”

Duo looked at his shoulder in disbelief; unbelievable pain was radiating from the tiny wound. “What the hell is this?” He asked weakly as he pulled at the tiny dart imbedded in his skin until it came out. He was already groggy. This was not good. “What did you hit me with?”

“A sedative.” The Doctor informed him. “It will wear off in a few hours, and by then you will be a new man, Mr. Maxwell.” Duo’s eyes widened. He couldn’t mean… “It will be interesting to see how you are affected by the Zero system.” J continued. “You didn’t manage to master it-”

Doctor J cut off as pain engulfed him, looking down in shock at the growing red stain on his chest. “No way in hell I’m gonna be one of your experiments.” Duo slurred. “You should have seen what you did to Heero… screwed him over real good.” The gun clattered to the ground, and Duo stared dumbly at it, before switching his attention to the fallen man in front of him. “There’s no way in hell.” Duo repeated slowly, as he watched the Doctor die. “That you’re gonna get the God of Death.” He smiled slightly, and collapsed to the floor, the darkness slowly overtaking him.

* * * * *

Duo grimaced. He had been a fool. It was his fault that his team had died. It was his fault that they had suffocated. He had gotten emotional, and had screwed up royally. He was lucky that he had managed to get that shot at J or else he could have ended up like Heero did. It was also lucky that Wufei found him or he would have bled to death from the wound in his shoulder.

His shoulders slumped forward in surrender. It was all over, and they could clear Heero’s name, but they could never rid him of Zero’s influence. He forced a smile as he walked towards visiting area of the prison, and waited until they brought Heero out so they could talk.

“How ya doing, buddy?” Duo asked as Heero sat down, and continued before Heero could reply. “I know, I know. It’s a stupid question, but-”

“That’s not what I was going to say.” Heero interrupted the braided man. “I’m all right.” He looked into his friend’s eyes, noting the hopelessness and guilt in them. “What about you?”

“I’ve had better days.” Duo admitted, the guilt in his eyes intensifying. It was his fault that that his team had died. “I got good news and bad news. What do you wanna hear first?” He waited for an answer, but got none, so Duo chose for him. “All right, the good news is that the doctors are dead. All of them. So you don’t need to worry ‘bout them anymore.”

Duo waited for a reaction, a flicker of emotion on Heero’s face, but there was no response. They had really done a number on him. Finally moulded him into the soldier that they wanted. Even during the war he had shown more emotion than he did now, and before he’d disappeared, he had been able to show and understand his emotions just like any other person. But now… Duo hated thinking about his best friend this way, but with that chip in his head, it was no different from talking to a machine.

Heero still hadn’t said a word, he’d waited patiently while Duo collected his thoughts, and made no movement or sound. “I just spaced out, didn’t I?” Duo asked and Heero nodded. “For how long?” Heero told him, and Duo gaped. Twenty minutes! And Heero hadn’t moved for the entire time, he hadn’t even blinked. Duo shuddered. They had to find a way to bring the old Heero Yuy back.

“The other good news is that you’re going on trial again.” Duo continued, wishing that Heero would do something that would show that he was human. “The evidence that we found at the lab gave rise to the suspicion that you weren’t in full control of your body or mind. So you might be cleared of all the charges against you…”

“I don’t want to be.”

“What?” Duo yelled, and Heero repeated what he had said. “Why not? You really want to live in this jail forever? You wanna rot here, Heero?”

“I deserve this.” Heero said tonelessly. “For everything that I’ve done. I’ve killed too many people to be freed, Duo.”

“It was the doctors that made you that way!” Duo yelled at him. “They were the ones that made you do those things!” He reached over and shook Heero by the shoulders. “So stop it with the guilt trip! Stop blaming yourself for everything! It was their orders that made you do all that stuff!”

Heero’s encircled Duo’s hands in an iron grip, and pulled them away from his shoulders. “The doctors may have given the orders, but I was the one who pulled the trigger. I’m the one with their blood on my hands. I can’t just forget that and move on. I’m going to stay here. End of story.”

Duo knew better than to argue with him, once Heero made a decision he rarely changed his mind. Duo sat back in his seat, unconsciously rubbing his sore wrists. “So you want the bad news now?” Heero nodded. “You’re stuck with Zero.” Heero stiffened slightly. “If we take the system out then it will kill you.”

“Then kill me.” Heero said calmly. “As long as that system is active, I am a danger to everyone around me.” Duo shook his head. “Do it Duo! What happens if Zero wins? What happens if I lose control? If I escaped I could kill all of you. I could kill Hilde.”

Duo froze at his last words and sighed. “I know, but I’m not gonna kill you for something that you had no control over. So deal with it.” Heero glared at him, but Duo ignored it. “You mastered the system before, so there’s no reason why you can’t master it again.”

“This system’s different.” Heero said dully. “It’s stronger, and-”

“You can’t escape it.” Duo interjected and Heero nodded. “I know that it’s hard, but you have to try. I don’t want to kill you, and I don’t want you to waste away in here…” Duo looked down at his hands.

“There’s something that you’re not telling me.” Heero noted. “What is it Duo?”

“Uh…” Duo rubbed the back of his head. “You’ve got another visitor.” He grinned weakly, and walked to the door, opening it slightly to talk to the guards outside. “She needs to talk to you about some things.” Duo said after he closed the door.

“Relena?” Heero said in a strained voice, and Duo nearly sighed in relief. A human reaction! It was ironic that she was the only one who could affect him like that, especially after this whole fiasco. He smiled sadly at his friend. He hoped Relena could help him. She had always been the one who made him human. She was the one who had found his buried humanity in the first place, and had brought it to the surface.

“When?” Heero asked in the same strained voice, and Duo grinned. What he was going to say would really punch a hole in the Perfect Soldier’s composure. He glanced at his watch, and then at the door, before his gaze swung back to his friend.

“Now,” Duo said calmly as Relena swept through the door, and sat in the chair across from Heero.

* * * * *

Relena felt terrible. She knew that she shouldn’t have felt so guilty, but she couldn’t help it. She had looked over the evidence that Duo and Wufei had brought back from the raid on Doctor J’s lab, and had seen a video recording of the fabricated memories that had been shown to Heero.

She had been terrible in them, and for some reason, she felt incredibly guilty about it. She shook her head slightly, this was ridiculous. She hadn’t killed Duo, and she hadn’t cheated on Heero. So why did she feel so bad about it?

It was horrible. The things that she had read and seen in the documents were beyond belief. The surgery for the implant had been described in great detail, and it had made her stomach turn. How could someone treat a human being like that? Like they were nothing more than an experiment. They had twisted Heero into something unrecognisable.

And it was killing her. It was because of her intervention that his life had been saved, but he was still going to spend his entire life in jail for a crime that was beyond his control. He hadn’t been able to control his actions. He had been manipulated by the Zero system. All these thoughts ran through her mind.

It wasn’t his fault. None of it was. Not really, and yet, she was still wary of him. She still wanted to see him punished for his actions, even though he had no control over them. She felt terrible for that too. For wanting him to suffer because he had been manipulated by a machine, but-

How could she look at him and not remember the insane look in his eyes? How could he not remember his coldness as he took her to the shuttle that would take her to her owner? How could she forget these things? She had promised herself once that she would forget, that she would put all of her troubles behind her, but she couldn’t.

She had tried. She had buried herself in activities. Diving right back into the role as Vice Foreign Minister despite the protests of her brother and Noin, and she had been able to forget temporarily. She had been able to push her experiences to the back of her mind during the day, but what about at night? How could she forget about her experience at night? When the softest sounds scared her witless, making her remember the days when she would sit up late at night, miserable and alone, listening for the sound of His footsteps coming down the hall towards her room.

How could she escape the dreams that would make her wake up screaming? The ones where Heero died, or worse, the ones where he watched as James touched her, laughing all the while. She couldn’t forget. No matter how hard she tried to, and she didn’t think that she would ever be able to forgive him. No matter how many times she told herself that he had been manipulated, she couldn’t forgive him. She had read about all the terrible things that had been done to him, and she could pity him, but she couldn’t forgive him. She could never forgive him.

All these thoughts ran through her head as she stepped into the visitors area, taking a seat across from Heero. She smiled at Duo, saying hello to him before her gaze swung to Heero, and she looked past him, focusing on the walls behind him. She couldn’t look at his face. She was almost afraid to. What if she looked at him and he was sneering at her? What if she looked at him, and there was the insane glint in his eyes that had been there in the cell when Zero had been manipulating him? Or worse, what if she looked in his eyes and saw nothing? Nothing that resembled the Heero Yuy that she had known and loved. She didn’t know if she could handle it.

“All right,” Duo smiled slightly, trying to break the ice. “I’m supposed to lay down some ground rules.” Heero looked at him impassively, nodding for him to continue. “First off, I can’t leave the two of you in here alone. I have to be within reach of both of you at all times. Basically, I can stand about four feet away and that’s it. So, I hope that you have no objections to having a third wheel here-”

“That will be fine, Duo.” Relena cut in with a politician’s grace. “Is there anything else that we should know?” She asked calmly, still unable to look at Heero.

“Yeah,” Duo took a deep breath. “If any threatening or provoking words are said by either of you, Heero will be sedated, and you will be escorted from the premises. If I suspect that you are in danger, I am to sedate Heero and escort you from the premises. If I am attacked by Heero, you are to run for dear life to the door, where another guard will meet you and escort you from the premises. There are a lot of other things that I’m supposed to tell you, but the gist of it is, if there is trouble, he will be sedated and you will be escorted from the premises. Got that?” Both Heero and Relena nodded, and Duo pushed his chair back from the table.

“Then I guess I’ll give you two a little privacy.” He stood up, and began to walk away. He made it six feet from them before he remembered what he was supposed to do and turned back to them. “Sorry,” he gave an apologetic smile as he walked towards them again, positioning himself within arms reach of them. “I forgot. Privacy is not an option.”

Relena smiled back at him. “No apology is necessary.” She said earnestly. “I trust you not to repeat what was said in here.” She noticed the torn look in Duo’s eyes. “Although, if you feel the need, you may repeat some of it to Hilde.” She could understand the need to share information with someone. It helped to alleviate the pressure of knowing, if someone close to you knew too. She had done the same thing with Heero many times before he had disappeared.

She turned her attention back to Heero, studying the wall behind him. “So,” she began, still avoiding his eyes. “I suppose that Duo has told you that Doctor J is dead.” Heero nodded, and she continued. “Did he tell you that I read the documents on your treatment?” She asked him.

“No.” Heero said, and she opened her mouth to continue, but he held up a hand, stopping her. “Relena, if you’re going to talk to me, then I want you to actually look at me.” She suddenly discovered a stain on the table, and stared at it as if it were fascinating. “Relena.” His voice pulled at her, willing her to look at him, but she resisted the pull. What if he wasn’t there? What if the man that she loved wasn’t there?

“Relena,” he said again, and his hand cupped her chin. She tried to shie away from the contact, but he held her in an iron grip. “Look at me.” He forced her to look into his eyes, and she could see the pain in them and the guilt. He was still Heero. He was older, and tireder, but he was still Heero. Relief washed over her, and she let out a breath that she hadn’t known she’d been holding.

His eyes were still scanning hers, and he grimaced suddenly. “You’re afraid of me.” It was a statement, not a question. She nodded, and he released her chin, slumping back in his chair. “I wanted to see many emotions in your eyes, but fear was not one of them.” He said softly, and she opened her mouth to speak, but he didn’t give her a chance. “I know what you’re going to say.” He said in his cool monotone.

“You’re going to try to convince me that this wasn’t my fault. That it was the fault of the doctors and that I was merely a pawn, so I can’t be held accountable for my actions, but I can. I was the one who did all of those things. I was the one who killed all of the people.” Relena shook her head violently, but he ignored her. “I could’ve fought the system, but I didn’t even attempt to.” Relena was still shaking her head, and he reached out to stop her, hurt filling his eyes when she flinched away from his touch.

“I can’t escape the system.” He said softly, pulling his arm away from her and closing his eyes. “I’ve tried, but I can’t escape it.” His eyes snapped open, and against her will, she flinched again. “You saw how dangerous I was. You saw how uncaring, how insane I was when Zero was in control. I nearly strangled you, and I thought it was fun.

“That’s what you see when you look at me isn’t it? That’s why you flinch away from me. You see the monster that I was when I was under the influence of the Zero system. You know what I’m capable of if I’m not in control. You’ve experienced it first hand. So that’s why I’ve got to stay in here.”

Relena nodded slightly, in complete agreement with him, but the naïve little girl inside of her gave one last effort to convince him to leave with her. “But you’ll be wasting your life in here.” She said quietly. “Life is precious, remember? So why would you willingly waste it?” This time, he was the one who flinched and she knew that she had struck a chord.

With agonisingly slow movements, he placed his hand over hers. “It’s not a waste.” She resisted the instinct to pull her hand away, and relaxed into the simple comfort of human touch. “As long as I’m in here, you’re safe, and protecting you could never be a waste.” She glanced up at him, startled by his confession.

“I’ve ruined too many lives.” He went on, forgetting about Duo, forgetting about the prison, forgetting about everything except for her. “I almost ruined your life. Let me do this for you. You deserve someone better, someone who you can trust. Someone who you can look at without fear in your eyes. I can’t give you that, Relena. So forget about me and find someone who can give you what you deserve.”

I don’t want someone else, I want you! Her heart yelled, but Relena ignored its cries. Nodding sadly before she removed her hand from his, and stood up. “I’ll visit you.” She said softly, trying her hardest to smile, and show him that this wasn’t really killing her. To shield him from her pain because she knew that he would feel it just as acutely as she did.

He nodded slowly. “I would like that.” He said, watching as she turned away from him and was escorted by Duo to the door, ignoring the vice that had gripped his heart. Outside, he looked unconcerned and bored, but inside, he was a whirlwind of emotions, all of them tearing him up. For the first time in his life, he wanted to weep.

She stopped at the door, looking back at him. “Goodbye Heero.” She said, and he opened his mouth to reply, but she was gone.

Goodbye. He leaned back in his chair, ignoring the wetness on his cheeks and wondering why it felt like something had died within him.