---------------------
      Sometimes
~ A Moment of Haven ~
---------------------
	Duo waited until the suspect had been taken away for booking at 
the local station before he allowed himself to yawn widely.  Sleepiness 
so killed the tough guy interrogator image.  His day had been far too 
long.  They'd gotten into work that morning expecting nothing but 
another easy day of data analysis, interpolation and extrapolation.  
Instead, they'd gotten a lead, which led to some on-site investigation, 
which led to a small chase, which led to an arrest, which led to an 
awful lot of interrogation, which would lead to a stack of paperwork and 
a performance review by their commanding officer.  Fortunately, those 
last two could wait until tomorrow.  The suspect's confession and the 
information he had given them about some of his other hits had been 
properly documented, and none of it seemed immediate enough to warrant 
any more overtime.  They'd figure it out tomorrow.

	Duo gathered up his notes, threw away a couple of styrofoam 
cups, picked up his jacket, and headed out the door, tossing his head 
this way and that to stretch out a kink or two as he followed the path 
that would lead him out of the holding area and on towards the agent 
offices.  Several long hallways and three floors later, he was at their 
office, and he dumped his papers on his desk and planted himself in his 
chair with a sigh, absently wondering what had happened to Heero as he 
turned on his computer.  Tabulation could definitely wait until 
tomorrow, but for the present, it was necessary that he send a brief 
update of the case to their CO.

	When that was done, he sat staring at the screen for a while as 
the computer went through its shutdown sequence.  Where was Heero?  
Studying his partner's side of the office, he could tell that Heero had 
come and worked here for a while during the interrogation, which the 
suspect had insisted he not be present for.  Heero's notes were neatly 
stacked and squared away for the day, and his chair was in a different 
orientation than it had been when they had left in the afternoon to 
visit the offices of Parson-Andersen Financial.  Perhaps he'd gone back 
to their quarters?

	That sounded like a good idea.  Duo picked his jacket up again 
and was about to head out the door when he paused, turned around, and 
looked at the papers recently deposited upon his desk.  Should he bring 
them with him?  Heero would probably want to know what the suspect had 
revealed to them.  Granted, Duo could remember most of it, but he might 
want to look up a detail or two.  Then again, he could probably persuade 
Heero to wait until tomorrow before delving into the details of the 
case.  Honestly, he had sort of expected Heero to be waiting on the 
other side of the one-way mirror, having been there the whole time to 
witness the interrogation for himself.  A couple of agents had informed 
him that Heero had been present during the questioning of their victim, 
Ellison Davis, but it had wrapped up about two hours before Duo had 
finished up with his man.  If Duo had to guess, he'd say Heero probably 
then observed the questioning of their burglar for a while, saw that 
matters were proceeding without incident, then returned to their 
workspace to apply what he had learnt from Davis to their data.  In the 
end, Duo decided to just take the notes with him even if they weren't 
opened for the rest of the night.  There was no harm in being prepared.

	Down three stories in an elevator, which he normally would have 
covered via the stairs, but it was after hours and he had his hands 
full, out a side door, halfway down a covered walk and off the path to 
the right to the next building over and up another flight of stairs, and 
he was finally only a couple of hallways from what they were calling 
their home while in the city.  How terribly blah.  But, he supposed, it 
was home enough if Heero were there.  And speaking of Heero, he wasn't 
in their rooms, either.  Curious.  And here he'd been working himself up 
to a good, long complaint on how rude it was to retire before one's 
partner.

	He left the papers on his desk and sat down on his bed, trying 
not to get too comfortable before he divined the whereabouts of his 
errant partner.  If Heero had been off doing something important, he 
would have left a note somewhere or with someone, so logic dictated that 
Heero had to be shooting the breeze somewhere on the grounds, only Heero 
didn't 'shoot the breeze' with anyone.  Getting dinner?  Duo's tummy 
spoke up with high hopes, but his mind had to disagree.  Heero wouldn't 
unless he knew exactly when Duo would finish up, and he would only know 
that if he had been watching, which he hadn't been.

	Not in the office, not in their rooms, probably not shooting the 
breeze... shooting the breeze... shooting... shooting...  Duo blinked, 
and behind his eyelids he saw the memory of Heero calmly holding a gun 
to their suspect's head.  Inspiration followed soon after, and Duo found 
himself out the door, down the stairs, out another door, back to the 
covered walk, over to the other building, and down another flight of 
stairs.

	Two swipes of his ID later, and he had his suspicions confirmed.  
He picked up a pair of earmuffs from the rack on the wall, slipped them 
on, then went through the last door separating him from his partner.  
Walking down the firing line towards the only person in the room, he 
kept his approach obvious and non-threatening, stopping a respectful 
distance away to wait for Heero to finish emptying his clip into the 
target.  After he had spent his full complement of bullets, Heero 
reached down for his next clip, reloading the gun with smooth, precise 
motions that he didn't even have to look at as he performed.

	When his gun was once again empty, Heero lowered his weapon, 
stared at the shredded target for a few long seconds, then sighed and 
set the gun down on the low shelf in front of him.  When he removed his 
own set of earmuffs, Duo took that as his cue to follow suit and glide 
forward to his partner's side.  Heero didn't look up, so Duo used the 
opportunity to hit the button on the wall of the booth, triggering the 
sound of gears that would bring the paper target up to them.  Duo knew 
what he would find before he got a good look at it, though.  Nearly 
pinpoint accuracy, yes, that was to be expected, but the precision 
wasn't the remarkable thing.  It was the odd fact that not a single one 
of the shots had been aimed at the head or the heart.  The ragged holes 
were clustered on the shoulders.  Heero hadn't been shooting to kill, 
only disable, and if Duo was any judge of anatomy on the 
not-quite-anatomically correct human-shaped outlines, the shots probably 
would have missed shattering the clavicle, too.

	It seemed Heero was in no mood to speak first, so Duo began.  "I 
watched you do this before.  After the war.  I never did ask why."  He 
could make a few reasonable guesses at it, of course, and they would 
probably be reasonably accurate, but he could get the explanation 
straight out of Heero as well.

	Several seconds passed in silence before Heero stirred and began 
to clean things up for departure.  His hands moved slowly, but surely.  
"I just wanted to make sure I could."

	"Could...?"

	"Could aim for something non-lethal.  After the war... you only 
caught me at it once.  I was down there a lot more than just once."

	"...Practicing?"  Duo hadn't given it much thought at the time.  
Immediately following that last battle, when the government had locked 
them all down in that base and before they'd been shipped off to school 
for their probation, Duo hadn't given his odd teammate much thought at 
all.  Heero was simply a bizarre enigma prone to strange behavior, and 
he hadn't wanted to get involved.

	"Practicing," Heero echoed.  "Trying to train myself to aim 
somewhere a little less deadly.  In case something came up.  Some 
emergency.  And I shot before I thought.  And I shouldn't have."  He 
slid his gun back into the holster he had laid upon the shelf.  "Some 
mistakes you can fix.  But dead is dead.  There's no coming back from 
that."

	Of all the mistakes that haunted Heero, it was pretty obvious 
sometimes to Duo that New Edwards ranked pretty high on the list.  "And 
tonight?"

	"Today," Heero corrected quietly, done putting his gear in 
order, but not quite ready to leave.  He turned around and leaned 
against the low shelf his equipment was resting on.

	"Today..."  Again, the image from that afternoon flashed across 
his mind's eye.  "You wouldn't have done it, Heero.  I know where you 
pointed that gun, and I know you threatened that man, but you wouldn't 
have pulled the trigger."  Not unless you had to, Duo added silently.  
He knew Heero didn't want to have to take any more lives, but he also 
knew that, in a tense situation, Heero would do whatever was necessary 
to safeguard the lives of others, particularly the lives of people he 
cared about, and his morals, his conscience, his eternal soul be damned.  
He would kill if he had to.  They both would.

	"I don't think I would have, either," Heero answered, and Duo 
did not fail to notice the slight degree of uncertainty therein.  Heero 
looked over his shoulder at his holstered gun.  "But that gun in my 
hand... the feeling was a little too familiar."

	Duo took a step closer and drew his partner's attention forward 
with a single finger to his cheek.  "That feeling will always be 
familiar, Heero."  Taking advantage of their solitude, he snuck his arms 
around Heero's waist and embraced him.  The smell of cordite was 
disturbingly comforting.  "I don't think there's anything we can do 
about that."

	One of Heero's hands disengaged from the shelf to settle low on 
Duo's back.  "Sometimes I ache for active duty," he confessed.  "I want 
to be out there, making a tangible difference.  I want to do what I was 
trained to do."

	"Sometimes," Duo answered as a whispered reminder.

	"Sometimes... I never want to do any of it again.  I want to be 
one of those silly, oblivious fools that can't see past their own 
noses."  He stared blankly over Duo's shoulder at the safety regulations 
posted on the opposite wall, not registering the text.  "...Sometimes, I 
hate myself for wanting that."

	"You can't, Heero," Duo answered, his eyes sliding shut so he 
wouldn't have to stare at the paper target filled with holes.  So much 
emptiness punched into that human facsimile, but not enough to kill.  
"If you hate yourself, then I have to hate myself, and if there's 
something I've learned from you, it's that that will do no good to 
anyone."

	"Sometimes.  Only sometimes."  He meant it to be a comforting 
affirmation, but it wasn't, really.

	"Sometimes..."  Duo swallowed, but felt compelled to say what 
was on his tongue anyway.  Heero had gotten him into the mood.  
"Sometimes I wish I were still that bitter little boy who joined the 
cause.  Things were so much simpler then.  Cold, hard, but simple."

	"Sometimes it bothers me... that I sometimes want to be able to 
just ignore it all.  Not because that's hiding my head in the sand, but 
because I never want to be just a simple person enjoying the peace.  The 
peace is fragile, and there's no 'sometimes' about it."

	"Sometimes... sometimes I'm not sad that they all died."  No 
real need to ask to whom he was referring.  "Because they all put me on 
the path to something better."

	"Sometimes I wonder if Treize was really right.  I wonder where 
we would be if I hadn't... if I hadn't taken down that shuttle by 
mistake.  I wonder if it would have worked, if we would have peace 
without such a bloody road."

	"Sometimes I want to go back to where I started, fix things so 
people like me don't happen.  But then I think that's impossible, and 
that's depressing.  And then I realize that I don't want that the rest 
of the time, that I can't bring myself to go back there and do it, that 
I don't even want to try, and that's even more depressing."

	"Only sometimes."  But sometimes 'sometimes' was several times 
too many.

	Duo sighed.  He hadn't come down here for this.  He'd only 
wanted to find his best friend, his partner, his almost-lover, and put a 
quiet, soothing cap on the end of a busy day, but sometimes it was hard 
to stop once one got started.  "Are we done with this morbid little show 
and tell?" he asked with a nervous chuckle, not quite sure how they had 
gotten to such a depressing place to begin with, but knowing he wanted 
to get away from it as soon as possible.

	Heero squeezed him with his one arm, then pulled back to look 
apologetically at him.  "Sorry.  I shouldn't brood so much, I know."

	Duo shook his head slightly.  "You're allowed to.  Sometimes," 
he added wryly.  "Don't make a habit of it."  And the same went for 
himself.  He took a hold of Heero's weapon, stepped back, and handed it 
to his partner.  "All these 'sometimes' don't make us good or bad 
people, Heero.  They make us... just people."

	He accepted the handgun with a nod and a faint smile.  "People 
that are unfortunately aware.  Aware of ourselves, and of the world.  
There is no happy ignorance for us."

	"That just means we can be people who can do things to keep 
things the way we like them."  It was a somewhat weak attempt at finding 
the silver lining, but he tried.  That was important to him.  "Being a 
mover and shaker of the world is a blessing and a curse.  No surprise 
there, right?"

	"Right."  Heero glared down at the holstered gun in his hand for 
a few seconds, thinking dark thoughts on the mechanisms and balance of 
defense and offense before shaking his head sharply to rid himself of 
the notions.  "I'm done here.  You?"

	"Yup."  Duo put a little bounce into his step and moved a few 
feet towards the exit, twirling his earmuffs around one finger because 
he knew it was a cheerful, careless gesture.  "Dinner?"

	He nodded and followed as Duo led the way, but when they got to 
the wall rack and put away their borrowed equipment, Heero snagged him 
loosely by one wrist and kissed him, and ended it with their foreheads 
pressed together, sharing the air between them.  "You're an always for 
me, Duo."

	Why did that not fill him with happiness?  "Always," Duo mouthed 
silently against his partner's lips, frightened of how it would sound 
uttered aloud.  The word turned into another soft kiss, but soon enough 
they parted, put their public faces back on, and left the lonely firing 
range.



_________________________________________
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Kyuuketsuki Miyu, et al., is the property 
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http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html

last modified : 11/21/2003 03:21:30 PST