CLOSE PROXIMITY

Chapter 5

Day Two 08:30

The trailer creaked as I turned on my bed and bumped carelessly against the outside wall.

I groaned.

The morning light sneaked in through the blinds sheltering my small bedroom and threw zigzags across my covers. I peeled a grudging eye open to it and let consciousness creep back in. I lay on the top of the bed, fully dressed, spending a couple of minutes trying to re-orientate myself. I remembered dozing off on the floor of the lounge in the small hours of the morning, before finally dragging myself in here to try to get some proper sleep. I remembered nightmares about exploding buildings and barking dogs. And sundry bedtime memories that had blessed me with an aching, not-so-good-morning hard-on. I considered the specific characteristics of a cold shower with vindictive thoroughness until my body calmed down again.

Then I remembered who else was at home.

I thought if I got up swiftly, I might avoid my new houseguest for a bit longer. Like I always rose early! I stumbled in and out of the tepid shower as best I could without making a hell of a racket, and dragged on some soft grey-fabric sweat pants and a tee shirt that had missed this week’s ironing duties. But by the time I got to the kettle – my particular Holy Grail - he was there before me. I’d obviously missed him rising from the couch. The blanket was folded neatly on the cushion; the coffeepot was warmed already. There was the smell of toast in the small, ill-ventilated room, to say nothing of the smell of freshly-washed, clean-clothed Heero Yuy. Despite his whole life having been demolished within the last 48 hours, he had clean jeans and tee shirt on, and was still managing to look as fresh as a chain of daisies.

“Unhh,” I managed. Thought I ought at least to be civil, though I felt nothing like it. He looked way too good for the time of day – the tee shirt was attractively tight across his muscled torso, and slightly caught up at one side; there was a sliver of dark skin showing above the low waist of his jeans. I tugged at the sweats that hung casually round my hips, feeling less than sparkling in return. I’d lost weight since I moved in here – nothing seemed to fit quite the way it used to.

He put the mug of coffee into my hand, and I blanched at the suddenly familiar gesture.

“I put two sugars in,” he said. He sounded defensive – like I’d accuse him of poisoning me otherwise. “It’s strong.”

“Fine,” I growled. I knew how he made coffee, didn’t I? I’d had a bad night; I’d had a lot to think about – I was tetchy. I looked at this man in my kitchen, tall and dark-eyed and too fucking close for any kind of comfort, and I felt a nausea that almost scared me. His mouth was pursed, like he gritted his teeth. I wondered at what hour he’d got up in order to avoid me! Any other time, I’d have laughed at the situation we found ourselves in.

“I made some breakfast - I was hungry, I’m afraid.” His eyes didn’t exactly reflect the apology, but never mind. “I didn’t realise that was the end of the bread, though.”

I shrugged. “You slept through a couple of meals, I guess. Pity they didn’t bring you with a packed lunchbox. I can’t exactly pop out to the store at the moment.” I knew I sounded abrasive, but I didn’t seem to be able to get the right tone.

“Look, Duo, I don’t like this any better than you do,” he said, quickly. He frowned. “How many times do I need to say it? But I don’t have a choice. Some bastard tried to kill both me and Wufei, and I’m not keen on him taking another shot. At least, not until I get a chance to organise some kind of counter-attack. So let’s just grin and bear it, right? The sooner we find the troublemakers and eliminate them, the sooner I’m out of here.”

“Suits me,” I said. I went to leave the kitchen, but he’d moved around slightly while he spoke, and his body was halfway across the narrow opening. I paused before moving forward - only for a fraction of a second - assuming he’d shift out of the way. He didn’t. I twisted sharply to avoid him, but our hips almost grazed. And as he turned his head away from me, his breath brushed across my neck, my skin still damp from the shower.

Fuck.

I caught my shoulder on the doorframe, biting back a curse, and then I strode back into my lounge.

I really didn’t know how this was gonna work out, I really didn’t. There was just too much going on – petty stuff like the lack of bread for breakfast toast, then big stuff like the attacks; the worry about the other guys; the disturbance of my sanctuary; the tension between me and Heero; the soft, earthy smell of his body up close and personal -

I’d missed a hell of a lot more than the Team – than good friendships. And it all concentrated round this man. The memory of my morning erection threatened to become a reality again, and I hoped he hadn’t seen my shiver as I passed.

I’d felt it through every damned nerve I possessed.

*

“So what’s on your agenda for today?” I sat down heavily on the couch, nursing the coffee which was – as always – just as I liked it. That hadn’t changed. “I’ve got a couple of satellite channels – not many books, I’m afraid. Radio works a bit fitfully – music system is shot to pieces from the move, and I never got time to get it fixed…”

He frowned at that. “Funny to think of you without your music.”

I shrugged. Felt warm, like I was blushing. “Wasn’t sure how long I’d be staying here. Might have been moving on. You know.”

He stared at me like it was the last thing he’d know. “It’s up to you, of course.”

You said it. I didn’t like him staring at me like that. The familiar couch felt awkward underneath me, and I fought an urge to wriggle with irritation.

He stepped across the lounge and his gaze darted over to his boxes. “Anyway, I’m not after that sort of entertainment - I have to get to work. There are some papers that Relena found for me, some transcripts of the last communications that Trowa intercepted just before the attack on the apartment. He apparently had some idea of where the threat was coming from.”

“But -?” I prompted. “Quatre said he was out in the field.”

“Yes,” Heero replied. He frowned, looking disturbed. “Ever since the first attack, Trowa’s been monitoring some unusual satellite signals – some coded messages that were underlying the Department’s routine communications. They alerted him somehow. You know how he has a sixth sense for that. Then a few hours before the explosion at Westbridge –“ He was swallowing a grimace - I could see it, though to other people he’d have seemed perfectly calm. “Just before that happened, apparently he discovered something fairly urgent. None of us were around, so he left a secure mail for Relena and went out after the source himself.”

“They let him go, without backup –“

Heero shook his head with annoyance. “Duo, the Department has been in a state of barely controlled panic ever since the attacks started. A lot of the standard procedures have moved down the priority list. Relena had most of the guys out in the field, or in deep cover – even the junior ones. Yes, Trowa shouldn’t have gone without either seeking her sanction or taking one of us with him. But then you weren’t around –“

I grunted, crossly.

“And Wufei and I were working on the toxin report after the attempt on Relena’s life –“ Now my brow furrowed in shock, but he continued as if he hadn’t noticed. “And although Quatre should have been around, everything spiralled out of control within the next hour or so, and he was pretty fully occupied then, as you can imagine –“

Pulling you out of the wreckage. Right. I felt mean, but I didn’t feel up to admitting it.

“I have the message records and Trowa’s notes here with me. Relena had them couriered over from the Department – I insisted I wanted to look through them as soon as possible. Perhaps I can find some clues there, find out how they traced us, what their plans are. Who and where the hell they are! Quatre’s also working on it, but from within the Department with the resources he has there.”

“Has he been targeted too?” I asked, tightly.

Heero grimaced slightly, but not because of me; his mind was scanning other thoughts. I knew the look. “No, he seems to have been safe so far; no threats against him specifically, so it seems safe enough for him to remain in place. But any of us who’ve been hit already – well, we’re either under police guard or in hiding, as you’ve gathered. I preferred the option of remaining on the case, so they had to find me somewhere to go.” He looked uncomfortable again - must have been galling, the thought of staying with me! I bristled, but he didn’t seem to see any change in my response – didn’t take the bait. “So where’s your table, Duo? I need to spread out the printouts.” His eyes flickered over the small card table beside the couch. “Don’t tell me that’s the only work surface you have available?”

I sighed under my breath. Heero was a guy who rarely relaxed like the rest of us. Well – like me. He did everything with intensity, and at times like this, he lived for his work. He saw it as his responsibility to equip us all for either offence or defence – to protect us all. We relied on his analysis of the enemy’s military strengths and his plans to neutralise the threat. Nuke ‘em before they nuke us, I used to joke. Went down like a lead balloon, humour like that. I’d forgotten what it was like to be around him when he was in mission mode.

Tiring, I thought, sceptically. Consuming. Selfish.

Lonely…

*

He was looking back at me. There was an odd look in his eye, and it had been there ever since I rushed out of the kitchen. This whole thing was damned awkward for him, and I could sympathise with that – last time we’d been together, we’d thrown a lot of flak at each other, and he’d said a few things about me being off the Christmas card list forever. Or words to that effect. But this was even worse, of course. Heero Yuy had been injured in the line of duty – with no fucking idea of whom to blame. That was eating him up, I’d imagine.

His eyes kept flickering over my body; he looked like he’d swallowed a couple of lemons and then bitten into the peel. It’s not that I hadn’t seen that look before, y’know? Just not for a while.

And it still hurt.

“What do you do here all day, Duo?” His voice was calm but I knew its deception. Heero always seemed calm and controlled – until he got pushed over the line. I’d been a past master at that, of course. Why did you run away to a pit like this? he was really saying, I’m sure. Why are you such a loser? Why am I trapped here with you when I’d rather be anywhere else?

Hell, it wasn’t like I didn’t agree with him. I snapped back without thinking – or else I might have kept my mouth shut. “That’s none of your business, man. Hasn’t been for a long time. That’s how we both wanted it – that’s how it is. You can spread the papers out on the couch, right? I’ll move off and we can have a look at it.”

“We?”

“Dammit, it’s not like all the Secret Spy stuff is your specialised subject, is it? I have more experience than you in the Nancy-Drew-invisible-ink business – hell, it’ll take you a couple of hours to decode Trowa’s handwriting, let alone the message underneath.” And you’ve been hurt, I wanted to say, and nearly bit my tongue off to stop myself. Someone tried to blow you up. Your brains are gonna be like scrambled eggs for a while. The mix of emotions that thought raised in me was disturbing.

Then it was a clumsy scrabble by the both of us to clear a space. Heero flipped open a couple of boxes, sending dust and the waft of damp cardboard across the room, and I started sweeping the cushions back and clearing the coffee mugs back off to the kitchen. He scowled; I scowled. But we got on with it. When I came back into the room, he had the files he wanted, though he was still clutching them to him like precious family heirlooms. I swore and tried to snatch at them – did he expect me to have X-ray vision? – and he growled and started to protest his irritation. A file got caught in the middle, and its edge tore open with a loud complaint - a sheaf of paper tumbled out on to the floor.

Neither of us moved to pick it up. We stood paralysed, facing each other, breath panting, eyes wide with shock. We’d both reached for the slipping file together, and both missed it. But our hands had caught at the nearest alternative – each other’s palm.

*

I couldn’t move for a few seconds. Every sense was elsewhere.

His skin was cool – rough on the pads under his fingers, smooth along the life lines. Skin against skin – it was something I’d not had for a while. And certainly not his. Memories slid cruelly under my defences – my eyesight blurred; my heart raced.

Then I thought I saw Heero suppress a shudder. I snatched my hand out of his death grip, if only to save him his coronary and me my pride. We both still stood there, at a loss what to do next.

“Been a while, eh, Heero?” I was baiting him, I knew. I hadn’t had any communication with him, let alone seen him, for months now. The others had tried to keep in touch – to support me, despite my own desire for exile. But Heero and I hadn’t spoken since the day I left. And for a while before that.

Baiting him and tormenting myself. Ridiculous. What made me think I could joke about it?

He took a tight breath, and his hand fell back to his side. He took a step back – I’d like to think it was a little uncertain. “Don’t be so facetious, Duo. You made your choice. We both got the same suspension period. You just chose…” He paused. Bit at his lip. Christ, he hated it when I provoked him to speak without planning it all out first!

“Yeah?”

“You chose to take your suspension away from the Team. You hid yourself here – you abandoned it all.” His eyes caught mine, glaring suddenly. Of course, he was totally loyal to the Department; he had no sympathy for my defection.

I didn’t know why I thought I saw pain in his eyes as well as fury.

*

Heero had moved back, a decent distance away from me; he was trying to relax the tension in his body.

I picked up some papers and laid them on the couch. They may have been upside down - I still wasn’t focussing too well. I scowled. “If that’s how you see it, that’s fine with me. I don’t have to explain anything to you. You stayed, of course. Hanging around the Department, working out your after-class detention. Committed to the cause to the bitter end.” Guess you had other things to stay for, though. ”So you’ve been back at work for a while?”

He didn’t answer directly. He leant back against the wall – there weren’t a hell of a lot of other places to rest while still keeping a safe distance from my contagion. “It’s you who talks like a kid, Duo. I haven’t had any special treatment, if that’s what you mean. I’m still in the last stage of my suspension, same as you. But I’ve been in touch with Relena all along. Like you say, I’ve been hanging around the Department, in case I was needed. When the attacks started, she called me in. For a while, we thought I might have a clue as to the motive behind it all, and I could add my knowledge to the investigation.” He sighed, as if annoyed that the words were being dragged out of him. Justification for his behaviour. He’d rarely seen any reason for it before. “Everyone in the Team has a role to play, Duo. We’re all needed, especially at this time. That’s more important than any internal disciplinary matters.”

“Yeah,” I said, dryly. Maybe his dressing down hadn’t been so humiliating; maybe his session with the Board hadn’t been so heated. Maybe, at that particular time, his mind hadn’t been quite as white with fury as mine. “Guess when you told Relena just what a shit I’d been, the sympathy vote was with you, anyway –“

“I never told her anything,” he said, sharply. I raised an eyebrow – and the bitter words fizzled out in my throat.

He stared at me, challenging me. “She just saw the fight and disciplined us accordingly. I never told her anything about the reasons it started – nothing of what was said between us. It wasn’t relevant to the mission – it wasn’t for her to know.”

It was private, I thought. Yes, I thought so myself. Well, well, well. Perhaps I’d misjudged him. Mind you, the mood I was in then, I’d have misjudged the Archangel himself. But that didn’t stop me feeling a little ashamed now.

“OK,” I said. ‘Sorry’ kind of stuck in my throat.

“We were – dammit! - we behaved appallingly, you must have realised that!” Heero’s expression was grim. “We were unprofessional. We jeopardised the surveillance, however routine a mission. They couldn’t let it go unmarked. But it’s all over, now.”

I saw him grimace, even as that superbly pragmatic remark slipped out from his mouth, even as he realised how his words - all over now - could be taken on several levels. His eyes flashed a shade of dark that I could have drowned in. He was angry with himself. Angry with me, too.

“Sure is,” I said, smoothly. “All over. Wipe the slate clean of it all, right?”

“Don’t be such a brat, Duo,” he snapped in reply. “Running off like a scolded child … did you expect someone to come begging you back?”

“Shit!” I growled back, though I knew it was what I deserved. “I had to get away – you’d know that, if you had any idea about me at all!”

“Which I thought I did!” he said. His face was flushed now. “I could say the same about you, too. Imagining how I felt. You think I’m not ashamed of the whole thing?”

“Ashamed?” I fired back.

“Of the fight!” His eyes were cold. “We’ve hammered anything else to death, I’d say, and I don’t need any extra helpings of death wish right now.”

“That’s why I left!” I groaned. “Like I don’t need the trouble myself – the abuse – the misery –“

“That’s what it all was, then?” Heero’s eyes were like flint. “Trouble? Misery? You give up that easily?”

“Yeah! Maybe so.” I was warming up now. My heart was thudding; my flesh felt hot. My fingers itched to grab hold of something. “Far as I can see, I’m out on my ass, and a disappointment all around, and now I can’t even hide in my seedy little sanctuary without being hounded down –“

“For God’s sake, Duo, I knew where you were all the time!” he snapped. “I tracked you down pretty quickly.” He must have seen my wide-eyed outrage. “Duo, I didn’t mean it like that –“

“Like what?” Like he was a stalker? Like he wanted to prove something? Like he cared?

“I mean that it was a security issue. In case – anyone needed to find you.”

“Security issue. Right. So why did Quatre and Trowa bother tracing me as well? Could’ve just come to you –“

“I didn’t tell anyone,” he said, too quickly. The anger still bubbled in his expression. “I assumed you’d run here to be alone – it was up to you what you did then.”

I was trying to read any underlying feelings in his tone, in his eyes, in his body language, but he was a sharp guy. Fuck all to go on at the best of times. Of course, it could just have been indifference.

The absence of care.

Heero was shaking his head again, forehead creasing with irritation. “Oh, the hell with it!” He looked disgusted that I’d wrung the emotion out of him. Bemused. Pained. “What’s the point of all this digging over the past, Duo?”

I stared at him, my anger leeching away like water through a sieve. He’d been near death – his ordered life had been thrown up in the air like a handful of confetti, and he was standing amongst the drifting pieces. He didn’t need my arguments.

What was my point?

*

He’d mentioned the fight – and I guess you need to know what that was all about. Or maybe just that it happened. Heero and I had a falling out – like a rather major one. In the middle of a mission. We fought, physically – and I’ll have you know I put up a creditable defence – but the Board took a dim view of it, at work and all. Damned bureaucrats, right? We were both hauled over the coals and suspended for three months.

There you are. My fall from grace in a nutshell. Not only that, but the end of my affair – the end of Heero and me. With not a whimper, but a rather impressive right hook. His.

So what did it matter now whether I’d been humiliated or angered or hurt? It was past history. Neither of us was going back there. What did it matter whether Heero knew where I was all along? Had I wanted him to - or not? What he thought and what he knew – well, that was all his problem now, wasn’t it? And what he knew about what I knew - shit, here I was again, going around in that spiralling way that leads to plenty of sleepless nights. That’s what it’s like at the end of a relationship, after all – no new revelations there. It’s the loss of everything, including the right to know anything about your ex – to share anything with them – to have anything but a supporting role in their future life.

Heero obviously had it sorted out well. It was me who was behaving badly.

There was silence for a while. Oh, lots of other little questions popped into mind! His, as well as mine. I could see the slight shock in his eyes, that I’d drawn him out so quickly; I could see his mouth form words, then clamp shut without releasing them.

“Why did you get drawn back into it all, Heero?” I was curious, despite myself. “Couldn’t they manage the investigation without your inimitable help?” Maybe if he’d kept withdrawn like me – kept out of the line of fire while he did his time – well, maybe he’d never have been targeted in the first place. What sort of masochist was he?

He bit at his lip again. I watched the plump flesh ease out from under his even, white teeth. “I don’t know why you want to know, Duo. You’ve made it clear you want to be kept out of it all.” He took a deep breath. “But I guess it’s now important that you do know. The Board should have contained the situation after the first attack – it was at one of the supposedly secret locations used for the peace talks, a minor act of sabotage. There were plenty of personnel available to cover the problem – there was plenty of opportunity to identify the culprit. Personally, I think they underestimated the threat – they thought it was an isolated event. The work of an amateur. Then when the next attack came in, and the next after that, all in such quick succession, there was too little time to regroup. So Relena herself pitched in, suggesting she revisited some past notes and mission files to see if there were any connections – any reason for a specific vendetta against the Department. To see if there was anyone who might have threatened the Team or its members in the past I was only called back into active duty because I could identify someone who fit that criteria –“

“Shit, Yuy,” I snapped. “I’m not bothered that you were Mr. Popular while I languished out here! Don’t bother about trying to massage my ego, because to be honest, I don’t have a hell of a lot of time for one nowadays –“

“Dammit, I wasn’t!” he snarled back.

I swallowed back a retort, and then engaged my brain instead of my tongue. “Wait a sec. The guy you could identify – the threat against a Team member - you don’t mean it was that kid who stabbed you?”

Heero’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Yes.”

I cursed myself. That time had been one of the most distressing … for us both, despite whatever arguments we may have had subsequently. Hi, Duo, I mocked myself. Meet Mr. Foot-in-Mouth. I steadied my voice. If he could talk about it so coolly, well, so could I. “So – does she think it’s not political at all, but a personal attack? On the Team – all of us? Or just you?”

He shrugged. He was looking weary again. Despite that exhaustive sleep, he still bore the scars of his ordeal. “I don’t know – I really don’t know. I checked out the boy and he’s still in the youth detention centre. It couldn’t have been him.”

“Other family members? Associates? The guy who ran the club where we found him -?”

“I don’t fucking know!” I flinched back a bit from his anger. Whoa, when Heero let loose, he let loose! He growled with frustration, trying to rein it back in. “No, there was nothing else on that particular exercise to give us a lead. But Relena has other cases to examine, other people we’ve brought down or exposed or just generally pissed off – and anyway, that may not be a motive at all. Shit, I don’t know where to go from here…”

I looked at the papers on the floor and the couch. “Make some sense of this discarded rain forest and we’ll see if it gets us any further. OK?”

And then the cell phone rang. The one that Relena had left behind for us. For him.

His eyes flashed to mine, and I stared back. Then he grabbed it from a back pocket and flipped it open. We stood there, paralysed like some kind of living tableau, as he listened to whatever greeting it was. His eyes came back to mine, and there was a strange kind of wildness in them.

“It’s Wufei,” he said, rather woodenly. He might have been reading the weather forecast on the news for all the emotion he showed in his voice. But I read him far better than that. “From the hospital – they’re going to operate tomorrow.”

It was a shock – and I found myself wanting to snap back at him again. What was he, some kind of cold fish? How serious was it for God’s sake? What hospital? What operation? And then it occurred to me that he might have been holding back on the concern for my benefit. Hospitals were a difficult thing with me. Not that I’d spent much time myself in them – I’d rarely had a broken bone or serious illness in my life. But Heero had.

You see, six months ago, I’d nearly got him killed.

*

OK, so I guess I knew it wouldn’t be enough just to skate over the story of our prize fight as some kind of lovers’ quarrel! It was actually at the end of a time of great stress – a culmination of a strange, painful, slowly tightening spiral of misunderstanding and hurt and bitter disappointment. It had been threatening for months.

Things were tangling up between us personally, unpleasant and unsettling. Things were coming to a head, all throughout the last mission, Mission Dove. And that’s where Heero’s stabbing was also woven into the mix, the time he’d just mentioned.

I’m getting ahead of myself, of course.

The preliminary work for the Mission Dove peace talks started a long time before the actual event; we spent months preparing the locations and protecting those chosen to take part. That had led to the discovery that one of the more prominent politicians was spending his Saturday nights in a downtown gentlemen’s club. Nothing new, you might say, being as cynical as myself. I mean, that in itself that wouldn’t have merited the attention of the Project Team, except that it turned out the pimp offered access to a special suite of rooms full of kids - children who were way too young and way too unwilling for anyone to let it pass. The Department was called in, and because of the sensitivity of the politician concerned, so was Relena.

Heero and I had been together for a few months by then, more or less living together, wrapped up in each other’s bodies and very much an item. At first, this early work only involved him and Wufei, with Quatre on support. It didn’t take them long to round up the politician, send him discreetly home, and close down the club. They’d already alerted the police to mop up the remains of the staff, and to take the pimp into custody. But then I got a call from Quatre, asking me to come and join them – he was worried that the kids would need some emotional support, to help them trust the Department. I think he was just a little overwhelmed with it all, to tell you the truth.

And so I need to be honest with myself, now. You see, I seriously misread the situation. I had some poor, misguided idea that the kids would be grateful for their release; that they’d be innocent and weak and ready to follow our lead, that they’d be glad to leave behind the life of beatings and abuse and twisted, emotional torture in their current home. It was just a matter of reassuring them and offering lollipops, or something like that. I’d had plenty of experience with adults – I had a talent for judging many a sticky situation.

But I was frighteningly unprepared for what was there. I’d not worked with kids before – and not in the sex industry. There were all sorts of shocks in store for me. I had no idea there’d be boys as well as girls; no idea of the youth of some of them. Naïve, eh? So sue me. As the emergency services did their work, and Heero and Wufei were off doing whatever they did, I stood like an island in the middle of a sea of scum. The room was still scattered with the tools of their trade: the sex toys; the bondage gear; the copious supplies of needles. All mixed in with brightly coloured blankets and stuffed toys and boxes of jumbled, tattered old children’s puzzle books.

My heart went out to them – without realising that they’d not know what to do with it. I had no idea how harsh some of them were – how broken their minds were – how hostile they were towards us. I swallowed the bile in my throat and tried to acclimatise to the distorted little faces around me – but it was an alien experience. Some lay crying for their moms; some spat in my face, shouting that they hoped I got hideous, fatal diseases from it; and some just stared. There was a blankness there, and little sense of reality. I wondered who would be able to peel those children’s souls back out into a worthwhile life, because I knew I sure as hell wouldn’t be the one.

Well, I did my best. I saw some of the kids out to social workers and aid helpers – I directed many more to see doctors. I felt I was on top of it, though the room was still full of unpleasant bodily odours and sobbing kids, and I guess I was still a bit shocked. Whatever the reason, I lost my connection with the ones still left for a few critical moments.

And that was long enough for one of them – one of the older boys – to decide we were another version of the common enemy. He started crying – he pushed at my helping hands, slapping me away, swearing at me. He yelled at Heero and Wufei, refusing to be taken out of the building, accusing us of kidnapping him, threatening him, bullying him – all sorts of stuff. I was conscious of Heero turning from the other side of the room and hurrying over towards me. The boy was thin and blond and scrawny – although he was obviously a teenager, he didn’t look like he could lift his own body weight, let alone take me on. But he was very distracting, very loud, and very aggressive. He was moaning, too, about his older brother, demanding to know where he was, shouting that he should be there with them, he wouldn’t let us take the kids away, he always looked after them all –!

Next minute he’d pushed past me with an astonishing strength, there was a knife in his hand and he’d sliced it upwards with all his strength into Heero’s side.

Heero turned to me just as he fell. There was a look of pained shock on his face, as if he’d expected me to know it was about to happen. As if I should have anticipated the kids were under the influence of something more pernicious than distress – that they might be armed, as well. As if I should have been watching out for him.

Guess I should have been, of course.

Then he sank to his knees, hand clutched to his side. He coughed; blood seeped out between his fingers. His face went deathly pale.

I thought I’d lost him.