Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or Sailor Moon.

An: I am so sorry! During a late night of editing, I got confused and accidentally replaced this chapter with another story. I lost the edited chapter and ended up deleting the fic to start over, so for everyone who had this saved or on alert you don't know how much I'm beating my head over this. Especially, since I have to retype eighty percent of this chapter.

Warning: English is not my first language, so please forgive me if they're any mistakes grammar or spelling wise. I'll try to catch as many as I can. The tone of this fic is much darker, too.

Summary: This is a short sequel to my other fic "Cat for a Week," Please check it out if you haven't yet.

A Tendril of Magic

Prologue

Hilde told him once that his eyes made him look older than he really was. It was in the way he tiredly looked at the world around him (especially after a rough mission). His eyes aged him, she said, and a few years down the road Duo will look back on that one moment and he will remember the expression on her face as she studied him. Pity. Sadness, Exasperated fondness.

Hilde had been his salvation. Hilde was his rock. When everything else sank around him, she was the only thing keeping him afloat.

It was four in the morning and Duo still has blood on him when he arrived home. His clothes was stained with sweat, dirt, a whole host of other things he tried not to think about. He favored his left leg, limping into the kitchen. He smells as bad as he look and the odor of smoke and burning metal clung to him. It would probably take days of scrubbing before it fade, but to Hilde's credit she never batted an eye. She took the seat across the kitchen table as Duo slumped into one of the kitchen chairs with a tired slouch. Hilde pushed a plate of bacon and toast in front of him and Duo practically inhaled the meal in a couple of rapid bites.

"How did it go?" she asked.

Duo gave her a winning smile.

"Of course it went well," she muttered under her breath. Duo's self-confidence was about as big as the moon. The word humble wasn't even in his vocabulary. He could tell from her expression that she didn't know whether to find it charming or annoying as she grabbed for the first aid kit.

In the middle of getting his wounds treated, he nodded off peacefully.

That moment in his kitchen, drifting off to Hilde's gentle touch, was the last good memory he had before everything shot to hell. If he had known what was going to happen, he might have burned that memory a little deeper into his brain.

...

The comm by his ear cracked to life.

"Maxwell? What's going on? Where the hell are you?"

"Kinda busy right now," Duo wheezed. The string of annoyed swear words in his ear was ignored as he scrambled through the twisted, unfamiliar territory of the colony swamp. He heard the sounds of his pursuers right behind him and it spurred him to go faster through the thick bristles of foliage and bushes.

Duo flinched every time his boots hit the puddles with a noisy splash. Wet vines slapped at his face and he felt swamp water rolled down the back of his shirt to mingle in with the cold sweat he felt breaking out. Bullets whizzed by him. It was a miracle that he hadn't been hit so far, but some of the smaller branches of the old trees explodes on the impact. The wood became like shrapnel, slicing at his face and clothing. He ignored the stings as he hopped and jumped his way over fallen logs and tree stumps. Duo never noticed the upturned tree root until he tripped over it. He lurched wildly forward, off-balance, and he fell head first into the murky waters.

He cursed through a mouthful of swamp grass.

Realizing that he didn't have a choice, Duo yanked the comm out of his ear and he jammed it into the mud. Wufei's thin voice was garble, then lost as it was swallowed in the bayou. Seconds later, Duo was hauled to his feet when his chasers caught up. They cuffed his hands together and began intrusively patting him down.

"Hands!" Duo protested. He cringed when his privates was grabbed roughly in the search. They confiscated his Bible and all his weapon (even the Maxwell Special in his hair). With a jab into his back as a warning, Duo was escorted out of the swamp at gun point.

There was an armored truck waiting on the outside.

Right before he was shoved into the back, Duo allowed the pendent he had saved from Silver's collar to fall to the ground. He subtly kicked it underneath the truck.

"Get in," one guard ordered. With a cocky grin, Duo did as he was told. He climbed in and the door slammed shut.

The entire back of the truck was windowless. In the dim light cast by the one bulb, he kept searching for an escape route or an opportunity. The only exit was bolted tight and his captors watched his every move with unwavering blank stares. Glumly, Duo settled himself against the wall. He wasn't looking forward to Heero's death glare or Wufei's 'Are you an idiot?' lecture when he gets rescued.

"Let me guess, we're going to Disney land?" he quipped.

He got a 'shut-up or we'll gag you,' in return.

No one in White Fang seem to have a sense of humor.

The only thing that made the long, boring ride entertaining was the guards flinching as their noses was assaulted. Nothing quite took the sting out of a situation like the smell of the swamp festering in the small, heated space. The odor rose from Duo's wet clothes and it hung in the air like a petulant fart. The guards practically spilled out the back in relief when the truck finally stopped with a jolt hours later.

Duo only managed to catch a quick glimpse of cold gray stones before he was hustled into the White Fang headquarters.

...

For the first few days, they did nothing. They sat him down in a small white-washed sterile room that had nothing but a table and a chair. His interrogators threw question after question at him as they deprived him of food and sleep.

'Who are you?'

They threw the fake id that had been tucked into his Bible on the table.

'We know your name isn't Jack Dawkins. What's your real name? Who do you work for? Where is your base? How many of you are there?'

Jokingly telling them that he was from Krypton got him a punch in the face. When it became clear that he wasn't going to answer anything willingly or truthfully, they resorted to more drastic measures.

Duo was escorted to the part of the building that smell heavily of blood.

...

He had been beaten, threatened, and drugged. He had his fingers snapped one by one, his nails pried and pulled, and his skin torched until the smell of burning flesh made everyone in the room sick.

There was a brief respite between the more vicious torture when they allowed him to heal in his holding cell. They didn't want him dying prematurely before they got what they want. As soon as he was well enough to continue, everything would begin again.

The guards who had to dragged him back to his cell grudgingly respected him.

"You've got a lot of gumption, kid," one fatherly looking guard said. "I would have given up by now."

Duo grinned through his split lips. His hair hung wet from the waterboarding.

The next day, they hung him by the arms from the ceiling. They flogged him raw until there wasn't any skin left on his back and all he did was just grin as his captors grew more frustrated at his silence. Even if he had to bite off his own tongue, he would never give up any information about the gundams or the other pilots. Duo stubbornly refused to talk. Through the one eye that wasn't swollen shut, he watched carefully. He heard them whisper to each other as they debated on their next move.

...

They held a gun to some innocent girl's head.

Duo doesn't think the girl was more than eighteen. She had a spring of curly brown hair and big brown eyes that were currently wide and fearful. She trembled as the safety latch was released. Her eyes pleaded with Duo.

I don't want to die, her expression said. Please save me.

'Who are you? Who do you work for? Where is your base? How many of you are there?' They asked. 'You have to answer or this girl will die.'

Duo hesitated.

The trigger goes off and her body pitches forward, falling into a bloody mess on the ground. Her head was turned up and he could see her eyes sightlessly stared at him.

In a sad, twisted way, Duo understood Heero now. Just like how Heero could never forget the little girl and her dog he had buried beneath the rubble, Duo will never forget the girl he had just sentenced to death. He will never forget the elderly man who followed her or the little kid who looked painfully like Solo.

The Interrogators finally realized that Duo would never talk.

But what do with an uncooperative gundam pilot who might still have some value?

...

He was woken from his cot in the middle of the night. They hustled him down the hall and through several corridors. He was taken down a flight of stairs until they finally reached an old door. Through it and around the corner was his new home.

They tossed him into a solitary prison somewhere underground. The clanging sound of the cell's bar-door closing echoed and he was left alone in complete darkness.

He reached out a hand and blindly made his way around carefully, trying to gauge the dimension. The stones of the walls were bitingly cold beneath his palms, but he managed to work his way around until he hit the metal bars again. Eleven by nine. It was a little bigger than the cell he had before. He gave the bars one shake, but the metal rods held firmly, anchored to the ground below.

"Trying to wait me out, huh," he muttered. His voice echoed around him. He spoke louder. "It's not going to work!"

He doesn't know if anyone could hear him.

Duo took a seat in the dark and he waited.