Title: Stand By Me
Pairings: 1+2
Warnings: Duo dying in interesting ways. No, this isn't a deathfic. I don't think I'll ever write one of those. OOC Heero. Angst in later parts.
Disclaimers: The GBoys aren't mine. I'm only borrowing them, and promise to return them in their original state, heads intact. Highlander belongs to Rysher and Panzer/Davis.
Summary: Duo Maxwell hates dying. A GW/Highlander crossover. You don't need to know Highlander to read this - all will be explained.

Heero OCCness: I've made him a little more light-hearted, less perfect. It strikes me that throughout the series there's more evidence of him doing stuff that the perfect soldier shouldn't than of him actually being the perfect soldier. It's like he WAS the perfect soldier, but the series charts the crumbling of that particular identity as Heero becomes more human. Added to which, if Duo and Heero are going to be best friends, they can damn well act like it. This story just won't work if he's as cold and distant as he's usually portrayed.

My HUGE thanks to Rainbow for her support, suggestions and feedback on this. Who would have thought a prologue could drive me insane???


"Speech"
*Italics*




Prologue.

Duo Maxwell inhaled suddenly and painfully, rasping as his lungs sucked in precious air.

God, he *hated* dying.

He lay there for a few minutes, eyes shut as he concentrated on breathing, and tried to remember what the hell had happened this time. He had memories of the mission, infiltrating an OZ base with Heero, triggering some kind of hidden alarm, which was promptly followed by a rushed and not-so-smooth retreat and the explosion of the base. Not the most successful of missions, and their escape had been hampered by the remaining OZ soldiers shooting at them like ammo grew on trees or something.

Memory stirred.

Ah, that was it. He'd been shot this time.

He cracked open an eyelid, and stared at the ceiling. The fact that he was staring at any ceiling was a source of confusion. He'd assumed he'd still be on the grounds of the destroyed base, staring up at the sky. The fact that it was the familiar cracked and yellowed ceiling above his bed was even more puzzling. It meant one thing. Heero had brought him home.

Duo shut his eye again and groaned. He was up the proverbial creek without a paddle, with no idea what state he was in when he was deposited here. For all he knew, he was dead at the time, and he'd been put here before they buried him; or he'd been severely injured and unconscious, and died when he got here; or maybe the guys didn't even know he was dead, that he'd died and revived without them even knowing. Whatever the reason, he was in serious trouble. He'd have to explain either why he was alive again, or at the very least healed so quickly.

A headache began to brew, viciously stabbing at the nerves behind his eyes.

Being Immortal really sucked at times.

Deciding it was too complicated and painful for him to deal with at this moment, Duo Maxwell did the only sensible thing he could think of. He went to sleep.

***

The pilot of Deathscythe awoke later to the sound of Quatre's excited voice in the hallway. "I'm telling you Trowa, we were mistaken. Duo's alive! He's breathing!"

Duo's eyes snapped open. "Oh shit," he cursed under his breath, the question of whether or not the other pilots had seen him dead answered.

"Quatre," Trowa said patiently, soft voice sad, "Duo is dead. He didn't have a pulse, he wasn't breathing. No one could have survived that gunshot wound."

"I'm not delirious. I'm telling you, he was breathing and asleep when I came in here a few minutes ago."

"Quatre "

"Oh, just humour me, please?" Quatre asked snappishly.

Duo whimpered, struggling out of the covers, and dived over to the window. He had to get out of here. The last thing he needed was to get caught and have to answer a lot of questions. Noting with relief that he was still dressed, albeit in slightly tattered and bloody clothes, he twisted the catch on the window, flinging it open, peering down at the ground. One storey wouldn't be a problem, he'd flung himself out of higher buildings and survived. He climbed onto the sill, and prepared to jump.

"D-Duo?" Trowa stammered behind him.

Oh, *shit*.

Duo twisted around on the window ledge to look at Trowa's wide-eyed and dumfounded expression.

"I told you he was alive," Quatre said, pushing the taller boy from behind, trying to get into the room. His own eyes widened when the other boy stumbled forward, and he caught sight of the braided pilot. "Duo, what are you doing there? You're seriously injured, you should be in bed!" he admonished, visibly concerned.

Duo sighed resignedly, and climbed back into the room. He rested his backside on the window ledge, and flashed the confused pair one of his brightest grins. "You know, Q, I'm actually feeling *way* better now. I don't think it was as serious as you thought."

"You were dead," Trowa stated flatly. "I checked myself, several times. You were definitely dead."

Duo grimaced. Oh well, he hadn't expected them to swallow that one anyway. But a guy could hope, right?

"Why were you climbing out of the window?" The blond pilot was obviously confused.

The violet-eyed boy sighed again. "To get away before you found me alive."

"I don't understand why you would want to." Hurt flashed in Quatre's eyes.

"To avoid questions like this," Duo explained. Quatre opened his mouth again, but Duo cut him off before he could get a word out. "It's *complicated*, Quatre."

"I think we deserve an explanation," Trowa stated, green eyes boring into Duo.

Duo's gaze dropped to the wooden floor, unable to take the scrutiny of those emerald eyes. "Yeah, I guess you do. Just not now. Later, when you're all here. I don't want to have to go through this more than once."

"Fine," Trowa said softly. "We'll hold you to that."

"Yeah, thought you would." Duo looked up again as a thought struck him. "Where's Heero?" he asked. For some reason, out of all the pilots, Heero was a bit special to him, and he considered him his best friend. Perhaps because, deep down, they were kindred spirits. Neither had known their parents, both had experienced a rough childhood, and both hiding pain and insecurity behind masks - Duo's joker and Heero's soldier. They had much in common, and it was important to him that he let Heero know what had happened personally.

He sighed mentally, realising that he probably would end up explaining the whole damn thing twice.

"He's locked himself in his room," Quatre informed him, a little uneasily. "He's been ignoring us for the past few hours. I don't think he took you dying very well."

To Duo, it didn't look like either Trowa or Quatre was taking him being *alive* very well. Both were pale and wide-eyed, gazes fixed upon him. Duo chewed his lip, thinking, then, decision made, he pushed himself up from the windowsill.

"I need to talk to him," he said, stepping around the pair of motionless boys, making his way down the hall to Heero's room, wondering just what the hell he was going to say to his partner.

***

"Heero?" Duo asked, knocking softly on the door for the third time. He still didn't get a response. Growling softly to himself, he knelt down to peer in the keyhole. It seemed that Heero had removed the key after he'd locked it. Squinting, Duo peered into the room, spying Heero at his desk, in front of his laptop as usual. The eerie thing was that Heero wasn't typing. He was staring blankly at the wall above the monitor, hands lying limply in his lap.

Duo frowned, and pulled his braid over his shoulder. His fingers probed gently before plucking a slender pick from his hair. Inserting it into the keyhole, he worked at the lock for a few moments, grinning as he heard it click open. He'd always been good at picking locks. He'd had years of practice.

He peeked through the keyhole once more, disconcerted to see that Heero was in the same position as before, apparently unaware that the security of his room had just been breached. Duo was worried. Normally, at the first odd sound, Heero would have been out of his seat with his gun at the ready and demanding who was there. This was far from normal.

The braided pilot rose to his feet, opening the door carefully, and peering round it. Heero still sat there, staring at the wall. He coughed to get the other boy's attention.

No response.

Sliding fully into the sparsely decorated room, Duo shut the door behind him, and moved over to Heero. He stopped inches away, studied the boy for a few moments, and then gently placed his hand on a cool shoulder.

Slowly, Heero turned to look at him. Gradually, after a minute or so, the vacant expression transformed into one of awareness. "Duo?" His voice cracked, his eyes suddenly shining hopefully.

"Yeah, it's me, buddy." Duo confirmed, pulling back to give Heero some space.

"You're alive," he stated, voice barely above a whisper.

Duo looked down at himself, at the torn and blood-soaked t-shirt he was wearing, absently wondering what had happened to his jacket. He smiled wryly, looking up again at Heero, and patted himself as if making sure he was real. "Yup. Definitely looks like I'm alive."

Heero stared at him for a moment longer, before he was out of his seat, and Duo found himself suddenly in Heero's arms, being crushed against the other boy's chest. "Oh, god. I thought I'd gotten you killed," Heero murmured into his hair, breath catching in his throat.

He'd thought Heero's unresponsiveness had been strange. This sudden display of emotion was frankly unnerving. Duo returned the embrace anyway, providing his friend with whatever tactile comfort he needed.

They stood like that for several minutes, until Heero gathered himself, pulling away, schooling his features to their usual stoic expression. He studied Duo critically, a small frown creeping over his brow. Hesitantly, he reached out, pulling the gaping hole in Duo's t-shirt apart, staring at the blood-caked flesh. His fingers probed tentatively, his frown deepening. "No wound," he commented at last, transfixed on the flawless flesh.

Duo nodded. "I know."

"Why?" Heero's eyes flickered up to Duo's, more intrigued than anything else. "Did G do something to you?"

"No." Duo sighed, and moved to sit on Heero's immaculately made bed. He smirked, wriggling his bottom vigorously to make a few more creases.

"Then what?" Heero shot him an irritated glance - for messing up his bed, or not answering his question, Duo wasn't sure. He suspected it was the bed; Heero knew him well enough that he'd get to the point in time.

"That's what I came to tell you." He gestured to the chair, "You'll probably want to sit down. This might take a while."

Heero responded by straddling the chair backwards, watching Duo intently.

"I'm guessing you figured I was dead?" Heero nodded in response, and Duo continued, a little sheepishly. "Just to fill you in, Trowa and Quatre caught me alive and trying to sneak out of the window." The others would have told him if he hadn't. Better he told him himself.

"Trying to avoid awkward questions?" Heero guessed. Duo gave him an irritable look. Obviously Heero knew him a little *too* well. "Would you have come back?"

Duo shrugged. "Honestly? I don't know. It's complicated, not something I'd really want to get into if I had a choice. But I'm stuck with telling it now. Kind of gave Trowa my word, so I'm not going back on that. Besides, you guys are the closest to family I've got. I guess I owe you the truth."

"The others know?"

"No. Told them I'd tell you all later. I just felt that, I dunno, I needed to tell you first, in private. You're my best friend, and I feel kind of bad that you had to find it out like this."

Heero's eyes seemed to soften for a moment, acknowledging the importance in Duo's words. It didn't stop him getting right to the point, though, "Find what out?"

"Aah, how to say this " Duo grimaced, staring at the ceiling to try and find some form of inspiration. He noted absently that Heero's ceiling was in a worse state than his own, and that it wasn't forthcoming with any inspirational wisdom, either. The direct approach, then, he decided. Squaring his shoulders, he looked Heero in the eyes, his own expression earnest.

"Heero, I'm Immortal." There. He'd said it.

Heero blinked slowly, opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again.

Not exactly the response Duo had been hoping for, but it was still better than incredulous laughter, and accusations of being insane. It had happened to him before.

"Would you care to elaborate on that?" Heero asked carefully.

"What?" Duo blinked, slightly confused by the question. "You know what immortal means, right?"

"Yes, I know what it means. I was also there to see the mess those bullets made of your body, I was there when you were plainly dead. Yet here you are now, alive and uninjured. The evidence suggests that you're telling the truth. I'm asking you to elaborate on it."

Duo gawped at him. "You believe me, just like that?!"

Heero nodded sharply in assent. "So, what exactly do you mean by Immortal?"

"Heero Yuy, you are one strange guy," Duo muttered, then began to explain before Heero became impatient with him. "I mean that I can live forever, won't age, and I won't stay dead. Shoot me, stab me, poison me - I'll keep coming back for more. Well, most likely I'll hightail it outta there so I won't have to die again, because dying *really* bites, but you get the picture."

"What made you this way?" Heero asked after Duo had finished babbling.

Good question. "I wouldn't mind knowing that myself," Duo admitted. "No one knows. We're all in the dark."

The other boy's eyebrow shot up. "All? There are more like you?"

"Yeah, more like me, wandering around Immortal and clueless. Only thing we know for sure is that we're born that way."

"What about your parents, surely they know something?"

Duo smiled sadly at his partner. "We're all foundlings. None of us know our parents, or if we even have any. Hell, the stork could deliver us for all I know."

Heero snorted in amusement, then turned to stare out of the window, apparently lost in thought. After a moment he asked softly, "How old are you, Duo? Really? You look fifteen, but " He trailed off, and shrugged.

"I was around sixteen, when I died for the first time," Duo replied, just as softly, then explained before Heero could ask, "Dying the first time seems to trigger Immortality. We age like normal people up until that point, not even knowing we're different. Then after we die that first time, we don't grow any older, we don't get sick, and we can't die."

"How old?" Heero asked again, barely acknowledging Duo's words with a nod.

"I don't know exactly. I never knew how old I was to begin with, and I've lost a few years down the line, just because it can get so hard to keep track of all the dates "

"Duo." Heero cut him off in mid ramble. "Just tell me."

"Fifteen hundred years," he sighed, "Give or take a couple of decades."

Heero's head snapped around, eyes wide with shock. Obviously he hadn't been expecting him to be that old. "*Fifteen hundred*?!"

Duo shrank back under Heero's gaze, suddenly uncomfortable. "Hey, quit staring at me like that! I'm not a zoo exhibit!"

"But the things you've *seen*." Heero whispered, awed.

"Surprisingly, not that much. And there are older Immortals than me, it's not that big a deal. Especially since we stopped killing each other off."

Heero frowned. "You said you couldn't die."

He should have known before he'd said it that Heero would pick up on that. "Me and my big mouth," Duo muttered testily, "I just had to go and mention the more complicated stuff before I'd even gotten done with the basics. Okay, to put it simply, for a good few thousand years Immortals went around whacking each other off. God knows why, it's just something we were all told, that we were all in some crazy game where we had to keep fighting each other until there was only one left."

"Sounds delightful," Heero said dryly. "So, how can you be killed?"

Duo regarded the other boy suspiciously for a moment. "If I tell you this, you have to promise you won't do it to me in a crazy homicidal moment when I've driven you completely insane. Promise?"

Heero nodded.

Duo narrowed his eyes. "Say it."

Heero sighed, rolling his eyes as he spoke, "I promise not to kill you in any permanent manner. Satisfied?"

"It'll do." Privately, Duo was amazed and relieved that Heero was able to be as light-hearted as he was about it. "Decapitation," he informed Heero in a hurry, to get it over with.

"I cut off your head, you stay dead?"

"That sums it up," Duo nodded, not quite able to believe he'd just voluntarily given his trigger-happy partner a method of making him dead as a dodo. There was such a thing as giving out too much information, even to your friends. Duo couldn't help but wonder if he'd opened his mouth once to often in the past few minutes.

Heero looked at him appraisingly for a moment, and the braided pilot began to worry about just what was going on behind those cool Prussian eyes.

"You say you can't die?" Heero asked. His voice was casual, but his eyes were calculating. Duo groaned mentally. He knew that look.

"Um, pretty much." The American boy eyed the door, wondering if he'd be able to get out before Heero could reveal what dastardly plan he was plotting.

"That's good." Heero nodded to himself, shooting a glance at his laptop. "See, there's this suicide mission "

"What?!" Duo rose suddenly from the bed, fixing Heero with a heated glare. "No way, uh uh. How could you even *think* of a crazy idea like that." Duo trailed off suddenly, eyes narrowing suspiciously at the slight twitch of his partners lips. "Did you just make a joke?"

Heero flashed him a small smirk. "I'm not completely devoid of a sense of humour."

"Why, you " Duo growled.

"Still, it bears thinking about," the Japanese boy mused. "Factoring your ability into mission plans would "

Duo didn't let him finish the sentence, shutting him up with a well-aimed pillow.

"Alright, I'll stop." Heero laughed softly, throwing the pillow back on the bed where it belonged. "What are you going to tell the others?" Heero questioned, turning serious.

Duo pondered. Heero's evil sense of humour aside, explaining about his Immortality had been easier than he'd anticipated. He only hoped telling the others would be even half as easy.

"I don't know," he said after a while. "The same I told you, I suppose."

"You might want to plan what you're going to say beforehand. It might make things easier." Heero advised.

Duo shot him a sour grimace. "This isn't something I do on a regular basis, you know. I haven't had much practice telling the whole world my deepest, darkest secrets."

"I'd noticed."

Duo scowled. "If you think you can do any better, go right ahead."

Heero smirked, then imitated Duo's drawl, "Hi, I'm Duo Maxwell. I'm fifteen hundred years old, I won't grow old, and I can't die, unless you cut off my head."

The American pilot arched a brow. "Well, it was concise, to the point, and got the message across," he admitted, "But the accent *really* needs working on."

Heero shrugged. "It's best to keep it simple, to the point. You don't need to tell them your life story."

"It'd take years to tell," Duo snorted.

The Wing pilot rose decisively to his feet. "Come on," he said. "We might as well go and explain this whole mess to them."

Duo blinked at him. "What, now?"

"You've got to do it sooner or later," the Wing pilot pointed out reasonably, pulling a reluctant Duo to his feet.

"Yeah, might as well get the ordeal over with."

"Oh, and Duo?" Heero asked, dragging him to the door.

"Yeah?" he replied, trying not to stumble in Heero's determined wake.

"Don't mention the head thing. It's disturbing."

"Fine, fine." Duo nodded his agreement, "Wufei owns a sword, anyway. I wouldn't want to risk getting on his bad side if he had that knowledge." He shut the door behind him, heading towards what he could only view as his impending doom.

***

It was a long night, filled with probing questions, and the painful provision of proof, but it didn't go too badly. That is, if you didn't count the fact that Wufei delighted in a brand new hobby of studying, questioning, poking and prodding at Duo, if given half the chance. Being a guineapig was not high on Duo's list of priorities.

Sometimes, being Immortal sucked.

But having trustworthy friends who knew made it a damn sight easier.