Through the Vortex
Bane's Desire

Warnings: yaoi. Okay, let's have some fun! This is an after-the-war, non-alternative, alternative universe fic, and yes, I'm following through on my promise of a 1x2 fic, though it might not seem like it for awhile, and Duo will find himself in sexual situations with others. I enjoy reading stories where the pilots end up in another dimension. Unfortunately, many of those stories were dropped by their authors before they finished, so I decided to try my hand at it and let my imagination go where it wanted. As an added warning, during the writing of Duo's tale, the movie Junior came on and I thought, why the hell not? So, with those warnings stated, let's begin.

Chapter 1 - A Very Bad Day

I can recall with absolute clarity the day that my life changed forever, and it's as if it happened just moments ago instead of the six plus months that have passed since then. The day was 22 March 200AC. I don't remember if the sun was shining or if it was a cloudy day, but I do recall that my mood was gloomy. It was my lunch hour and I decided that my hair needed a trim. To be honest, I think I was seeking out the sympathetic ear I always got when I visited the hair salon situated across the street from Preventers' headquarters.

The sound of the bells above the business's door was cheery, a complete contrast to my glum mood. I was greeted by the smell of hair products and the sight of Linda Taylor, owner and head stylist of the popular Up and Adam hair salon that catered to men. I estimated Linda to be in her late forties and her slight drawl easily identified her as coming from the American southern states. She wore her long, glossy black hair, streaked here and there with strands of white, up on top of her head, with loose curls springing from it that softened the sharper angles of her face. She typically wore quite a bit of make up and I remember that she'd painted her lips a soft pink color that day to match her smock and blouse underneath. She always wore a smock so I could only guess that she had a moderate figure, not thin but neither was she overweight. That day she was bent over, sweeping up a multi-colored pile of hair from off the floor and into a rather wide dust pan as I entered her business. Lifting her head at the sound of the bells, her eyes lit up and she smiled broadly as she watched me walk through her door.

"Well hello there, stranger. Time for your bi-yearly trim?" she teased, giving me a friendly wink. She'd often told me I was one of her favorite customers but I was pretty sure she said that to all the good-looking guys that sat in her chair. Still, her easy manner made me feel as if I were special to her.

I managed to send her a smile in return, but even I could tell it was tight and forced. "I'm fine, Linda. How's business shaping up?"

She waved away my poor joke, and I could tell by the tilt of her head and the look she was giving me that she sensed that something was off. She paused to study me, probably taking in the dark circles that were under my bloodshot eyes and noting that I wasn't my usual chipper self. Yet instead of grilling me she simply said, "Come here, darlin'." She pointed to the chair in her station, indicating that I should sit down. "Looks like we need a little heart to heart." She pulled the gray cotton drape over my Preventer shirt and fastened it underneath my thick braid.

Reaching for the bottom of the long tail of hair, she quickly unwound the elastic band and began to unravel my braid of cinnamon-colored hair that ran down my back. I heard her sigh with longing as she combed her fingers through it. "I know I've said it before, but this hair really is the envy of most women. Same as usual?" she asked, getting down to business before the real conversation began.

"Six inches," I told her, causing her hands to stop moving. She looked over my head to meet my eyes in the mirror.

"You sure? That'll bring it up to belt level."

"Yeah, I'm sure," I replied glumly.

Pulling a brush out of her drawer, the middle aged woman began to brush my long tresses, wavy from being put into the braid after I washed it the night before. "All right. Out with it," she said in an affectionately demanding way. "What's troubling you, the job or your fella?"

It never ceased to amaze me how well she had me pegged. Maybe she was just talented in reading moody men. I debated whether or not I should tell her my problems but I knew that some part of me led me there that day, needing to talk to someone. Because I'd chosen an early lunch hour I found myself in the unique position of being the only customer in the shop. Looking at my reflection, I caught a glimpse of just how unhappy I appeared. I did need to talk to someone, and Linda had always proven to be discrete. "Just between us, right?"

"You have my word," she answered solemnly.

"Then to answer your question, how about both of them are a pain in the ass at the moment. My job and my lover."

Linda continued to brush my hair and got out a spray bottle and began to wet the lower half. "Go on," she urged.

Just then, a younger woman came into the salon from a back room, and my eyes darted to her. "Jennie," Linda addressed the other in a casual manner. "Why don't you take a break? Mr. Maxwell washes his hair at home so I won't be needing you."

The twenty-something girl with spiked, magenta-colored hair and enough metal piercings on her face to make anyone question her sanity grabbed up a pack of cigarettes and gave a wave of her hand as she bolted out the front door of the shop, the bells ringing in her wake.

Once the door shut, Linda's eyes met mine in the mirror once again. "Okay, spill."

As she finished spraying my hair, I let out the deep sigh I'd been holding in while reining in my anger and frustration that had been building for a couple of weeks. "I hate my job, Linda. I'm sick and tired of dealing with the scum of the Earth and colonies. I just... I don't know." I resisted the urge to comb my fingers through my hair, something I did out of habit when I was flustered. "I just want to quit pretending that I'm making a difference and forget I'm part of this race. It makes me sick to know how much pain we people cause others just because of a need for money or power." I was disgusted.

The woman didn't know all that much about me, but she'd gathered from our past conversations that I'd been in the past two wars and that my job reminded me too much of those bad experiences.

Instead of giving me the lecture that I would probably get from my close friends, that I could make a difference by helping stop those people who hurt others, Linda simply asked, "Then why don't you quit; find something you do like?" She lifted sections of my hair by layers, drawing most of the mass up into a clip and fastened it to the top of my head.

"Heero loves it there. He honestly feels like he's making a difference while keeping up his skills."

"How are you and Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome doing?" Linda pried a little deeper. A minimal shrug was my answer. "Not so good?" she guessed. She then picked up her comb and scissors and proceeded to cut my hair, and with her attention elsewhere I felt more comfortable in spilling my troubles out to her.

"We joined Preventers together, you know? He came to L-2 shortly after the Barton incident and asked me to start a new life with him, working as partners for peace with the Preventers and sharing much more than an apartment."

Linda was looking over my shoulder, studying me in the mirror. I met my own eyes there and could see the pain I felt in them as plain as the nose on my face. I closed them, not wanting to see my own misery so clearly visible. "Damn," I swore softly, "but I'd loved him for so long that when he asked, I'd have gladly gone to Alaska, lived in a hand built igloo and fished for my dinner from a hole in the ice if he'd asked me to."

With the snip of the scissors, long thin chunks of hair began to fall to the floor. Linda didn't look up from her work as she guessed, "But something's changed recently, hasn't it?"

She let loose the hair from on top of my head and sectioned another part, then clipped the remainder back up.

"Yeah, things have changed," I answered, my voice sounded subdued even though my heart was aching. "It's not that I don't love him anymore, because I do, probably more than ever. But after what's happened, I'm not sure what to do. I can't sleep, can't eat or focus my thoughts or attention either. I'm falling apart, Linda, and I just can't keep going on like this. I feel like my life's imploding, and it's affecting everything I do. I... I think I need to quit my job, and then maybe I can concentrate on I should do about my relationship with Heero."

"You haven't told him about this, have you? That you hate your job?"

I shook my head. "His job means everything to him, probably even more than I do. I think if I were to quit it would probably be the end of us." I sought her eyes out in the mirror, my own looked sad and desperate. "I can't bear to lose him any more than I already have."

The scissors paused again. "And how have you lost him?" she asked. "The two of you seemed devoted to each other for the past... what? Two years?"

"Yeah," I answered, feeling low. "You know he's partnered at work with our friend, Trowa, right?"

"Yes, I remember Mr. Barton's cowlick very well." Linda grinned with the memory of the tall and slim auburn-haired young man in question.

"He's the life partner of my best friend, Quatre Winner."

"The rich guy, right?"

"Yeah," I replied. "About a month ago, Quat called me and asked if I knew where Trowa was. I didn't. Then he asked if I knew where Heero was. Of course I knew, Heero does laundry every Tuesday night, and while the clothes go through the machines, he stops in and visits with Mr. Katsumori on the first floor of our building. He's been doing that for the last six months, just after the old Japanese guy moved in. Then Quatre asked me about his Thursday nights and I told him that Heero was taking a community college night course on Japanese History that night. Of course, I was confident of my answer because I had complete trust in Heero, and then my best friend dropped the bomb." I looked into Linda's green eyes in the mirror and saw that I had her complete attention. "He said Trowa had been going out every Tuesday and Thursday night for the past two months. When Quat ask him where he was going, Trowa told him he was just out walking, that he need some time and space to think. That didn't explain the smell of cigarette smoke that clung to Trowa's clothing when he got home, even though his breath was free of the taste of tobacco. Quatre said he could tell something was bothering Trowa and that he'd been acting different since his accident at the circus last yearand thathe'd beenoverly secretive. Whenever he pushed Trowa to tell him what was wrong, he evaded answering. Quat told me he suspected Heero and Trowa were seeing each other behind our backs, that both of them missing on the same nights and time was too much of a coincidence not to be suspect."

"No way," Linda gasped, eyes wide with disbelief.

"I didn't believe it either and told Quatre to have a little faith in Trowa. Those two were meant for each other, two sides of the same coin. But you know," my eyes met the older woman's and the ache in my heart increased as I said, "he was right. His suspicions became my own as I started to take a more careful look at where Heero was going on those nights. I made point of having a little drop-in visit with Mr. Katsumori. The old guy said that Heero did drop by regularly for a short visit, and with a little questioning he told me that the visits usually lasted ten minutes, not the two and a half hours that Heero was usually gone. I became more suspicious than ever after that and called the college. I found out that there wasn't a Japanese History class on Thursday nights. He lied to me," I said, feeling crushed all over again. "I tried to think of how long it had been since he said he'd been taking a class and figured it had been about two months, the same amount of time that Trowa had been stepping out in the evenings. I don't have any tangible proof other than that, but I think Quatre's right, that my lover and his are cheating on us."

"I'm so sorry," Linda said, her sympathy for me could clearly be seen in her watery eyes. She turned away and refocused her attention on finishing the last section of my hair.

"Heero knows something's up," I told her, needing to get it all off my chest. "He's been watching me and says he's concerned about my lack of sleep and appetite. He's asked me to tell him what's wrong, but I just can't bring myself to confront him." I closed my eyes, suddenly so very weary of it all. "I can't sleep, I'm distracted at work and making mistakes. At home, I keep losing things, burning meals and I just want to sleep all the time. It seems that when I'm not sleeping, Heero and I are arguing."

"You need to tell him what you suspect and get it all out in the open," Linda advised, looking at me from the mirror. "You might even find that you're assumptions are wrong."

I shook my head at her suggestion. "I can't. I can't take the chance that he'll walk out and leave me."

"Then talk to someone before you fall apart."

I gave her an indignant glare. "I'm stronger than that. I don't fall apart. Well, not completely, anyway."

She rolled her eyes, basically saying, yeah right.

"You don't get it, Lin, Heero is the strongest person I know, physically and emotionally. His picture could be tacked alongside the word fortitude in the dictionary. He doesn't put up with fools or weakness, so I can't fall apart. Yet as hard as I try not to, I'm crumbling right before his eyes. I think it's only a matter of time before he boots me out, especially with all our fighting lately, but I just can't let go until that happens."

Apparently my personal advisor/hair dresser didn't know what to say to that, so she concentrated on cutting the last section of hair and then combed out the ends. "I still say you could be wrong," she said in a no-nonsense tone. "He could have a reasonable explanation for his absence."

"And the lying? He knows I have a thing about lying and, as far as I know, he's never done it before. He's covering up the fact that he's meeting Trowa. What other explanation could there be?"

Several moments passed where neither of us spoke and only the steady ticking of the clock on the wall was heard in the shop. Linda stood back to examine her work and nodded her head. "So you're just going to suck it up and be a martyr?" That was the last thing I expected her to say and I couldn't help but give a dark chuckle in reply.

"Yeah, it's one of the things I do best."

But before she could tell me what a shit-head I was being, a large deafening explosion ripped through the air and the building rocked violently, knocking the Linda to the floor. I shot out of the chair and pulled her to her feet, then hastily placed fifty credits in her hand before running out the door, leaving it open behind me.

"Be careful," Linda shouted after me as I ran towards the street. I stopped to take a quick look around and I saw large numbers of people spilling out of businesses and shops in large numbers. Traffic had come to a sudden halt with drivers and passengers jumping out onto the street to join everyone else in looking up into the sky at the large plume of black smoke that was coming from the northwest side of the city where most of the industrial businesses were located. Running as fast as I could, past the growing numbers of dazed and worried civilians, I finally made it to the front door of the Preventers' building. Because people were coming out of their offices and the elevator to see what all the commotion was about, I took the stairs, two and three at a time all the way up to the fourteenth floor. I was flushed and panting as I reached my office and saw Wufei Chang, my partner, on the phone.

"What the hell is going on?" I asked, a bit breathless and sweaty from the rapid climb.

Putting his hand over the mouthpiece, the uniformed Chinese man answered. "There's been an explosion at the Leavesly Laboratory," he explained, his ear still to the phone. "We don't know exactly what the experiment was that went wrong but there are numerous 911 reports of a strange phenomenon over the site, a swirling cloud coming out of the ruined roof of the lab. We need to get out there. Heero and Trowa are in route; their ETA is ten minutes."

"If the chopper is on the roof, we can take it and beat 'em there," I suggested while bringing my loose hair forward to braid it.

Wufei passed the idea along to whomever was on the other end of the phone line, and during the conversation I realized he was talking to Director Une. "We'll report back on our arrival," he told her, then hung up the phone. Grabbing his cell phone and wallet from off the top of his desk, the dark hair and eyed man gave me a nod. "Let's go. Who pilots?"

"Me, of course," I snorted, then gave him a cocky grin as we left the office. "After all, Heero says I'm the best at piloting."

Wufei rolled his eyes at that comment and the two of us began the jog from our office to the stairwell, where we quickly climbed the remaining three flights of stairs to the heliport on the roof where the Preventers' helicopter awaited us.

Continued soon