Happy Birthday by Maaya
Standard disclaimers apply

Gift-ficlet to Agent Midnight

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"Duo!?" Helen shouted as loud as she could, but she didn't receive an answer. She shouted again. "Duo!"

Still, no answer. As she stood there, wondering where that young trouble- maker could be, the blond woman suddenly felt a tugging at her sleeve. She looked down and was greeted by the sight of two Prussian blue eyes, belonging to a small boy with untidy, brown hair. "Oh, Heero. What do you want?"

The small boy just looked at her for a moment, before replying. "Where's Duo-chan?"

The older woman blinked in surprise at the pet-name, then smiled slightly. When Heero had been new at the kindergarten, he had been very quiet and lonely and Helen had been worried about him. Then, one day, she had found him together with Duo and Wufei in one of the playrooms - painting the walls green with felt-pens. She never thought she'd be happy to find the kids doing mischief.

Unfortunately, the master of mischief - Duo Maxwell, six years old, was gone. It was definitely *not* a good sign.

However, she crouched down until her face was on the same level as

Heero's. "Duo-chan?" She asked, unable to keep her curiosity out of her voice.

The small boy nodded as he answered in a clear voice. "He doesn't know what it means so I call him that to tease him."

Some of the adorability immediately disappeared because of the statement, but Helen kept her smile. "Do you know where Duo is?"

"I asked you first."

Helen sighed, then stood up and took the boy's hand in her own. "Let's go and see if we can find him, yes?"

Heero didn't answer, but he tripped alongside her, his hand in hers, as they searched through room after room, but they still didn't find the braided boy.

As Helen opened one of the doors, she found Wufei sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, playing with a small toy-car together with

Meiran. He made small sounds with his lips as he imitated a real car, and a thin drip of saliva hung from the pouting lips because of the effort. The little girl beside him steered her own car towards Wufei's and collided with it. Wufei stopped immediately and glared at the small Chinese girl who giggled back.

"Stop that!" He said, his lips still pouting but now from another reason, anger and annoyance.

"What?" Meiran asked innocently.

"You stopped my race."

"You didn't have a race!"

"Did!"

"Not!"

Helen decided to stop the two quarrelling children before they became violent, as they had earlier on several occasions. Those two drove her crazy, and they were always together, like Duo and Heero. And she had absolutely no clue why, whatsoever.

The woman managed to grab the back of Meiran's Scooby-doo T-shirt before the small girl had a chance to raise her fist. Helen knew that Meiran had a quite powerful left arm. Wufei knew that too.

"Meiran, why won't you go out and help Sarah with the younger ones?"

She asked as pleasantly as she could, but was met by the girl's angry glare, though with a calm expression in her pale face. The girl nodded, still pouting, and was out of the room in no time, leaving an angry Wufei behind.

"She's stupid."

Helen couldn't come up with anything good to answer, and Heero was certainly not helping - standing beside her with a blank expression in his face, so she decided to ignore Wufei's comment. "Wufei, have you seen Duo?" she asked instead, and watched as the small Chinese boy picked up his toy- car again and went after Meiran for an unknown reason. She just couldn't understand those two!

In the doorway, Wufei realized that he never answered the question, and he turned around slightly. "No." Was the only statement before hedisappeared.

Helen groaned.

Heero seemed to decide that the nurse wasn't helping him in his search for Duo, so he let go of her hand and disappeared out of her sight before she could react. When the blonde woman realized that he was gone, she looked around in the room, without result.

'Must have learnt how to do that from Duo.' was her only thought before she went off in search for the braided boy again, this time alone.

*******

Heero wandered off alone, looking to the left, then to the right, as people always did when they searched for someone in the movies that Duo liked to watch. If Duo liked to watch movies, then Heero was of course together with him. It was a bad thing to separate them, indeed.

He was surprised when he found that he *couldn't* find his braided friend (and troublemaker). It just wasn't like Duo to disappear like that because he was always in the centre of happenings; like when Quatre lost his first tooth, or when Meiran fell from a tree and broke her arm. Today Trowa had been able to do ten somersaults in a row, and Duo hadn't been there to cheer at him. That was very strange, and Heero hoped that the braided boy wasn't sad or hurt somehow.

As the brown-haired boy rounded the corner of the building the kindergarten was in, he thought he heard something - something that sounded suspiciously like a sniffle, and came from a suspiciously shaking line of bushes.

Sherlock Heero Holmes had to investigate!

He went down on his knees as he crawled under the bushes until he saw the building in front of him, and he sat down in the small space between the line of bushes and the building. He took in the boy beside him - a small boy with dirty face, hands and a braid that was more dark brown that chestnut-colored because of the dirt. It looked like Duo had been crying, and then rubbed his face with dirty hands only to make the face dirty too. It was mysterious how the braid had gotten dirty too, abut Heero refrained from asking.

Instead, he waited until his friend had calmed down enough to speak properly again. It took a while, but finally, the usually cheerful boy spoke, in a miserable voice. "Th-they.. forgot my birthday a-at home."

The short-haired boy growled when he heard this and he leaned closer to his friend, as if trying to sooth him with just his presence. It seemed to work, at least a little, because Duo took a shaky breath and gave him a watery smile. "Guess I shouldn't complain 'more though. They always do that anyway."

"I have something for you." Heero said in a 'try-to-cheer-the-other-boy-up' tone. He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a glass-jar with water and small tadpoles swimming around in it. Duo lit up as he saw the jar and he took it from Heero's hands, almost trembling, but Heero didn't know why.

"Are they gonna be frogs when they are older?"

Heero nodded and leaned backwards to rest against the stone building as he watched Duo play with the tadpoles with a happier look in his face.

*******

The End

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