Evidence

Trowa had been sitting quietly at the kitchen table watching Duo for some time. Duo was making hot chocolate, rambling on about nothing in particular and leaning against the counter while Trowa listened. To what, exactly, Duo wasn’t entirely sure. Certainly Trowa nodded occasionally at something he said, but the look on his face was much too steadily intent for him to be focused on Duo’s trivialities.

They were alone in the kitchen. Wufei was outside somewhere meditating on strength, and Quatre and Heero were off on a mission. A less-perilous one, Duo thought with some relief. Sure, Quatre was fine, nothing would ever happen to him if one of the others could prevent it – even Heero seemed to have a soft spot for him, miracle of miracles – but Heero! The man was suicidal. He had no regard whatsoever for his own well-being where it related to a mission – hell, where it related to life! He’d sooner fling himself over a cliff and break bones than not, he wouldn’t even open a parachute unless you startled him into it!

Staring into his hot chocolate, Duo shut his mouth, aware he’d still been babbling and hoping he hadn’t said anything too blatantly stupid. He sipped the drink, suddenly feeling less like talking.

Silence spread through the kitchen, intangible and comfortable as the air. Trowa was still watching him, but the thoughtful gaze didn’t weigh on him, like some would. Like Hee –

“Heero’s in love with you, you know.”

Duo breathed hot chocolate.

A long quarter minute of choking and coughing later, he turned watering eyes to glare at Trowa.

“Man, don’t say things like that, you nearly killed me!”

“I don’t think he knows it himself, but it’s true,” the other boy said composedly.

“Look,” Duo said, trying to grin, “I know you and Quatre like each other, even if you’re not doin anything about it yet, but just because you two are paired off doesn’t mean the rest of us are gonna. Who’re you gonna stick Wufei with, and can I watch?” Damn Trowa anyway, Duo’s heart was beating harder from that little comment all the same.

“The evidence is in,” Trowa said patiently. “Should I lay it out for you?”

“Huh. Yeah, this should be priceless. How about cannibalizing Deathscythe? I’m sure that’s proof – like a five-year-old – ‘Tommy hit me!’ ‘Oh, he likes you!’”

“He deactivated the self-detonate function in your cockpit.”

Duo jerked upright, hands clenching on the counter’s edge behind him. “He what?! That was him? He did not! Heh,” he settled back against the counter, speaking with relieved certainty, “Heero of all people would respect the right to self-destruct.”

“But you don’t really want to die. And apparently he doesn’t want you dead. Howard found the footage of it from an unattended vid-line to the hanger. Did you know Heero talks to himself while he works, if no one’s around?”

“Footage – no I didn’t – Howard? What’d he say?”

Trowa interpreted this correctly as the other “he”. “Nothing so obvious as to be proof in a court of law, but it was clear enough to me. We’ll see if you agree. I assume you would like to see the recording?”

“Hell yeah!” Duo followed close on Trowa’s heels as the taller boy walked into the living room, pulled a disc out from one of Quatre’s notebooks in a cupboard, and slid it into the vid-player. Duo sat on the sofa and did his best to lounge unconcernedly, but it was hard with his heart tap-dancing at the base of his throat. Suddenly he frowned and leaned forward.

“Wait a sec. You said Howard found this? How come he didn’t tell me about it?”

“You were away when he found it, and he said I was level-headed enough to take it in stride and decide what to do with it. He wasn’t sure you ought to watch someone going through your Gundam like that.”

“Hmph.” Maybe he was right. Steeling himself, Duo turned back to the screen as the disc began to play.

Empty hanger, but for a lone figure on one of two Gundams. Not Deathscythe, Duo realized with some relief. Trowa pushed a couple of buttons and the disc skipped forward, to where the figure was gone. Frowning, Duo searched the picture and grimaced as he caught a flicker of movement in Deathscythe’s cockpit. Trowa hit something else and the view zeroed in on that area until Duo had a close-up view of Heero’s shaggy head ducked over something in Duo’s Gundam.

A moment later he straightened up, slate-blue eyes narrowed. His lips moved inaudibly and Trowa hit another button. “…perfect fit. It’s all exactly the same. Very suspicious. But useful.” Square hands moved to a keyboard and Heero started typing, murmuring to himself just as Trowa had said. “So disconnect this… reroute the channel through the other lines… Hm. Keep it steady… excellent safeguards. Typical. Transfer the overflow to the backup wiring… work it through the redundancy, then take over the guidance system… No problem.”

“Huh. Smug little…” Duo cut himself off in a growl. “Gives me compliments while he’s stealing from me. Trust the Super-Nutso.” I designed those damn safeguards myself. Sure they were good, but obviously not good enough. Wonder if you’d be able to get through ‘em quite so easy now.

Of course, the difficult thing about the whole matter was that it hadn’t quite been theft. Duo had freely offered, earlier that day, to let Heero use parts from Deathscythe to repair Wing, but he’d turned it down, the same way he ignored other offers of assistance. He’d let you help him walk when he had a broken leg, at least when you didn’t actually ask permission, but help with his Gundam – hah!

So Duo’d gone to bed late that night, secure in the knowledge that Deathscythe would be whole and functional in the morning. And while he slept, Heero had changed his mind and taken advantage of Duo’s earlier offer. Duo had woken up to find his Gundam, his best and closest friend taken apart without his knowledge or assistance. He would’ve been fine with it, if only he’d had some warning! If he’d been allowed to take the parts out and hand them over himself! But of course not. Things were never that simple with Heero.

“Fix the wiring… hn. Self-detonate off,” said the engrossed boy onscreen, and Duo snorted.

“Yeah, that’d be smart when you’re messin with the wiring. But he musta done somethin else, I’d’a noticed it if it were that obvious, huh?” Trowa nodded. Duo looked glumly back at the screen and squinched up his face. Watching Heero blithely sail through his safeguards like this made him itch to get to Deathscythe and rework them yet again. Damn Heero Perfect Yui. It was depressing, was what it was.

Onscreen, Heero raised his head to look at nothing in particular. “He doesn’t need a self-detonate function.” He glanced around the cockpit, frowning at the displays like it was all their fault. “He likes living.” He shook his head, muttering something of which Duo only caught, “…that stupid braid… sticks out too much.”

“Oi!” Duo glared at the screen, then snapped upright and froze in disbelief. “Trowa, pause it!”

With a very small smile that went unnoticed by Duo, Trowa froze the screen. Duo slid off the couch and leaned across the floor on his hands and knees to get closer to the vidscreen, squinting at the picture. What was that expression on Heero’s face? The frown was smaller, and there was something around the eyes that almost suggested… It had to be a trick of the light, he thought, staring. There was no way Heero Yui was smiling, and he sure wasn’t smiling over Duo’s braid!

Shoving back to plop onto the couch again, Duo waved a dismissive hand at the screen. “All right, play it.” He stared covertly at Heero’s mouth, trying to soak up the last frozen second of almost-smile. It didn’t go away.

“Are you sure?” Trowa’s visible eye was bright with amusement, his finger hovering over “play”, and Duo grinned in embarrassment. Of course Trowa knew. Why else would he have brought the whole thing up? “Heh, yeah, s’all good…”

The screen unfroze and Heero’s face was blank and unsmiling as ever. Duo slowly shook his head. Had to’ve been a trick of the light.

“How much time does he waste daily maintaining that hair?” Heero muttered, head bent over the keyboard as he typed. Duo rolled his eyes. It’s not a waste, it’s a commitment, an investment of time in living, which you wouldn’t understand anyway, would you, Mr. Self-Destruct? You don’t even brush your hair.

“He’s not going to need the self-detonate,” Heero said to the empty air. “He probably wouldn’t use it even if he needed to – he’d try to find some way out of it. May as well deactivate it entirely.” His typing sped up and he fell silent.

Duo glared at the screen. “That’s some pretty screwy logic for a smart guy to go by. I’m not smart enough to use it when I need it, so you may as well take away any chance that I will?! Huh, and maybe I will use it when I get caught and it just won’t work, what about that, Heero? Jerk.” He glowered, pride rebelling at Heero’s low opinion of him, and remembered when he had been cornered by OZ, Deathscythe’s power reserves gone and scythe-arm shot off.

He’d hit the self-detonate button with the sharp thrill of imminent death snapping through his veins like lightning, then felt the dark tide of despairing relief seep in when it didn’t go off. This one final choice taken out of his hands, no choice left but to go with the flow. In the middle of a fight, that abrupt and severe a reversal of fortune has a pretty dramatic effect on a guy. By the time Deathscythe was docked under guard at Barge, he’d been homicidally depressed, and the OZ soldiers who pulled him out of the Gundam had had a hard time of it. They’d finally knocked him out for easy handling.

“Man, no wonder he got me out of there! He owed it to me – was his fault I was there in the first place!”

“But he could have paid off the debt by killing you. That would’ve been easier, too; you were hurt, weren’t you?” Trowa said reasonably.

“Yeah…” I did kinda slow him down, too. Wonder why he went to all that trouble? Thought he didn’t like me much?

Onscreen, Heero’s typing slowed to a more deliberate pace. “If I just reroute the output through here, he won’t be able to tell unless he looks in exactly the right place, which he won’t know to do. There aren’t enough Gundam pilots to afford losing one.” Strong fingers flew as he tapped in a last spate of instructions, then pulled his hands away to scan the cockpit again like he wanted to memorize it. Probably succeeded without even trying, Duo thought sardonically. “Even one who’s a squeamish loudmouth with too much hair,” Heero finished, with the actual trace of a smirk.

“Hey!” Duo yelped, slapping his hands down on the sofa, wide eyes glued to the screen, “where the hell does he get off calling me squeamish?! Arright, so I complained about him setting his own leg the day before, but that was just gross! Honestly!” He finally turned away from the screen as the last hint of smirk vanished, and looked appealingly to Trowa. “Don’tcha think?”

Trowa gave a minimal shrug, watching him with that amused expression again. “I don’t know about squeamish or too much hair,” he observed, and Duo snorted.

“Heh. So you agree with him about the loudmouth part, huh. I dunno, guess it’s not too far off… But I shot him twice before that, so ya gotta admit the squeamish thing is dead wrong anyway.”

Heero was climbing out of the cockpit and Trowa hit the stop button. “After this he starts working and stops talking. Apparently he only thinks out loud at a keyboard. I assume you’re not interested in watching him refit his Gundam with yours.”

“Yeah, you got that right.” Duo favored the onscreen Heero with a moody look, then turned to Trowa with a raised eyebrow, realizing. “So that’s it? That’s your absolute, solid proof that Heero Yui is in love with me?” A pause, while Trowa smiled at him. “It sucks!” Duo burst out. “It’s got more holes in it than the last Leo you shot up!”

“You’re not thinking it through,” Trowa pointed out. “Yes, we need all the Gundam pilots we’ve got, but the Gundams are outfitted with a self-detonate switch for a reason. There comes a time when the best option a soldier has is to self-destruct and take as many of the enemy with him as possible. As you pointed out before, Heero of all people knows that.” Trowa paused, watching Duo’s face before continuing. “He told me that the only way to lead a good life is to act on your emotions. It looks to me like that’s what he was doing, he just couldn’t understand why, so he tried to rationalize it.” He shrugged, lips curving up. “You have to admit, you made an impression on him.”

Duo snorted again. “Well, I shot him, dropped him over a cliff, yelled at him for tryin to commit suicide, and hauled him an his Gundam off to get fixed; yeah, I prolly made an impression.”

“He also likes your hair.”

Duo looked sharply at the other boy, wondering how such a bland face could not-smirk so effectively. Shaking his head, he laughed, shrugging the whole thing off. “Nah, he thinks it’s a waste of time.” He stood up and stretched at length, then clapped Trowa on the shoulder. “Nice try, Tro, but you’re just lookin for somethin that’s not there.”

“Everything Heero does, he does thoroughly,” Trowa said, leaning back against the couch, visible green eye intent on Duo’s face. “But when you were captured by OZ, he went in without an escape plan. Heero tends to be more subtle than blowing things sky-high when slipping in and out of a place; he knocks guards out, which attracts less attention; but he resorted to explosives that time.”

“So he was really eager to kill me. Probably worried about what I would tell em. ‘Heero Yui never brushes his hair, he wears spandex shorts, and he likes this old green tank top of his waaaay too much.’ I dunno, Mr. Superhuman is cracked, we know that – I dunno how he thinks.”

“Duo, he was only thinking about getting to you. Maybe he thought he would kill you, maybe he wasn’t sure what he would do, but the fact remains that Heero, ruthless soldier, couldn’t kill you. He got you out instead. Why?”

“He said why,” Duo retorted, wishing Trowa would just drop it. Thinking of all the reasons Heero had to not-like him wasn’t much fun. “There’s only five of us, we can’t spare em that easy.”

“That logic’s a bit spurious coming from the one who does keep trying to self-destruct, don’t you think?” Trowa pointed out. “He got himself in, thinking that you had to be killed, we’ll assume. Then he got you both out under the different logic that you couldn’t be spared. Do you not see the disjointed reasoning here?”

“Mm…” Reluctantly Duo listened, cursing Trowa’s level-headed logic for making him believe something this impossible.

“Heero tends to be smarter than that. I suspect he wasn’t using anything as fallible as logic on the way out. He realized that he didn’t want you dead and reacted accordingly, improvising as he went.”

“Fine,” Duo sighed, aching, “but there’s a damn big gap between not wanting me dead and Heero Yui being in love.”

“You think so?” Trowa tilted his head so his bangs fell back, and regarded Duo with thoughtful green eyes. “He doesn’t just not want you dead, he wants you alive. There are few people in whose continued living he is actively invested. Few specific people he particularly, desperately wants to live. Take it as you will.” He got up and pulled the disc out of the player. Duo watched as he replaced it in the notebook, then slid the book back into the cupboard. Then Trowa turned to look at him again.

“He’ll act on his emotions most of the time, but it doesn’t mean he understands them. And love is difficult in the first place. You know that.” Hands in his pockets, Trowa walked out.

Duo stood there for another moment. His hot chocolate would be cold by now. Shoving his hands into his own pockets, he turned to slope back to the kitchen.

“Yeah, I know it, Trowa,” he muttered. “A hell of a lot better than Heero Yui does.”