Disclaimer: Gundam Wing isn't mine. Duh.
Warning: I don't actually know dick-all about science. Creative liberties have most certainly been taken.
"Choices are the hinges of destiny." - Pythagoras
For Mischievous Kitsune.
Summary: In a world where everything has gone horribly wrong, Duo busies himself with a last-ditch effort to escape – and perhaps prevent. But Duo's last-ditch effort pulls him to a different dimension, and he finds that everything he knew no longer exists.
The Hinge of Destiny
Chapter One
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Everything started just a few months before Operation Meteor, but no one paid attention to it then. War destroyed so much on its own that all other destruction was blamed on it, as well. And then the war ended, and there was so much waste that a new pile didn't make anyone blink. And of course Maremaia's little siege distracted everyone enough.
And by then, after things settled enough for people to notice, it was too late.
At first, the extra weapons in the abandoned Alliance buildings were shipped out to be sent into the sun, and no one thought for a second about the uranium or plutonium in them. No one considered what might have happened to the soil, the air, around these abandoned, unchecked sites. And then, after all that had already had its way, no one thought what might happen if a few surviving White Fang members decided to explore some of these buildings without first testing to make sure the old safety measures had been turned off.
By the time Quatre first started coughing, it was too late.
Duo shivered slightly in the cold; the heating had needed to be shut down the day before in order to ensure there was enough energy for the jump. He leaned heavily on the metal table before him and closed his eyes. He was insane to even think this. Heero would have laughed at him. Well. Smirked. Quatre would have laughed, and that would have made Trowa join in.
Duo's heart hammered in his chest. No. He couldn't think about any of that. How much time did he have? Not much. Maybe none. Maybe White Fang had already found him, and they were closing in on his pathetic little base, and he would end up dead like the rest.
He closed his hands into fists. No. If he could just get this ridiculous machine of the doctors to work, then he might have a chance to set things right. And if not... if not, then at least he wouldn't be alone.
He looked behind him, toward the door. The bar holding it latched remained untouched as the world outside rattled. Duo held his breath, a ridiculous instinct as the underground station trembled. The ceiling, already bent alarmingly in the middle, groaned a bit.
The room shook again, and a couple papers slid off the desk. Whatever. He didn't have time to care about them; they were old news, anyway. If he hadn't managed to get this to work, then it wasn't going to. And because he needed it to, it damn well better.
He turned to the only other furniture in the room – he'd gotten rid of the bed when he'd run out of screws and springs. The thing was a monstrosity; he hadn't been able to go out and get good, solid, reliable materials, since White Fang had decimated the entire damn planet and had all the shuttles off-world locked tight. As if the colonies were even inhabitable now, the radiation from the uranium oxide drowning each one in deadzone soup.
But of course, of the few who found themselves surviving the radiation, Duo had to be one of them. White Fang members had to account for several, as well. Because why not.
Another rumble, and they were definitely getting closer. Dust drained down from the ceiling. He rushed to the shower-stall-come-transporter and turned the thing on for the first time. The dashboard within lit up, and he let out a relieved sigh. He didn't have the time to mess with the wiring again. He turned back to the desk, to the old laptop – Heero's old laptop. Duo's lungs burned, looking at the thing. Maybe he should have gone out with Heero that day, but it wouldn't have made a difference. Only Heero wouldn't have died alone, and Duo would be standing in an underground maintenance shaft about to do something as stupid as try one of the doctor's old blueprints like he was the freakin' Doctor and the shower stall the TARDIS.
"Okay. Okay." This time when the world shook, it wasn't from above. Duo grimaced. "Fuckin' bastards won't leave me alone for five minutes. Five years should be enough, right?" He bit his lip. Five years in the past. That would work, right? He could stop all this from happening. "Right." He pressed it in and turned back to the shower stall – gods, he needed to stop calling it that, or else he'd never be able to make himself do what he was about to do.
"Not like this isn't nuts to begin with," he muttered. His voice echoed in the room, as it always did. It was answered by no one. He shivered. "Oh, well. If I'm crazy, then there's no one left to care, anyway."
The words nearly propelled him forward on their own. He went to the shower – the TARDIS (and he managed to laugh a bit at his own joke) and booted up the system. The lone light in the corner flickered, then finally died. Another thump rained more dust – and what looked like far too much plaster – on top of the machine. The thump came from outside the room, and he cursed. Must White Fang use every single last missile and rocket in their now-overstocked arsenal? He was just one fuckin' man. They couldn't possibly consider him a threat anymore.
Of course, if he got this stupid, ridiculous machine to work, then he could very quickly become a threat – before they ever had the chance to become one themselves.
But at the moment, getting the damn thing to work was mission number one.
"Right, Heero?" he said, and hated how hollow his voice sounded in the empty room. The TARDIS only amplified the echo. He took a deep breath. The dashboard was little more than an old video recording monitor and a keyboard. Wires slid from it all to the computer chips plastered to the walls of the shower stall, then twined around the metal bars that tried to stabilize the shower stall's frame out to the wall, then to Heero's laptop. If things went well – and even now, he wasn't holding his breath – the entire contraption would portalize to the new time – old time? – with him. And in order to prove to the doctors that he wasn't mad, he would need the laptop and the videos he'd recorded on it.
He shifted from foot to foot as the rumbling got worse. He heard an audible crack from up above. The stupid shower stall / TARDIS shook. He ended up having to pull his hands away from the keyboard for a moment as the thing shook. If he typed the wrong coordinates in, the backspace button wouldn't be able to fix the mistake. Once the earth calmed down, however, he heard a banging on the door. He cursed. "Come on, come on..."
The tiny monitor was too small to read everything he typed, and he just had to hope that he didn't mess up as his fingers blurred over the keys. The crashes against the door got louder, then changed to a creaking boom. Duo slammed his hands on either side of the keys, nearly falling out of the damn thing. He pulled the damn stall door – reinforced now with metal from a spaceship, the metal still brownish with old blood – closed.
It seemed to be what the stupid machine had been waiting for, because suddenly the lights changed to a blueish color and a humming started. The wires off the monitor sparked. He couldn't see what was happening outside the TARDIS, didn't know how Heero's laptop was taking the strain. He imagined it busting, burning, melting, crackling apart, his last tether to Heero gone, and nearly tore the damn door open again. But the metal beneath his feet was trembling, and it was too late.
He heard the maintenance door wrench apart. The screech of twisted metal tore through the rising sound of... TARDIS. Duo winced at the noise, then covered his ears as the sounds of the TARDIS... pulsed. It was like he could hear the actual soundwaves, like he was listening to space, the high-pitched whining of the Earth circling around its axis. He hissed as his very skin reverberated with it.
Another screeching sound, and a wave of force blasted against the TARDIS. Duo rocked on his feet, finally losing his balance and banging his shoulder against the stall. Something cracked. He didn't know if it was the TARDIS or something much less tangible. Then he stumbled and smacked his head against the side of the stall, and he wondered if maybe the cracking sound was his body breaking apart. He couldn't tell. It was too loud to feel pain.
Something banged on the outside of the TARDIS. It was definitely probably not a normal time-jumping bang. Something screeched. He thought he heard something on the door. Then the world tilted upside down. The thing clawing at the door stopped.
The silence then was so sudden and oppressing he thought he eardrums might burst. As if in a vacuum, the stall seemed to float. Like it was drifting, unweighted. There was absolutely no sound at all. When he breathed, the noise was like a shotgun blast. He held his breath.
It only took another moment, but then sound returned, ripping like the shearing of metal, the echoes of it thrumming through the air like heartbeats, until the TARDIS shook in its own earthquake and finally stilled once more.
Duo's head split, and he crumpled to the floor of the stall.
A few months after Maremaia and Dekim Barton surrendered, Quatre started coughing. He wasn't the first, but he was the first in Duo's circle. It soon became apparent that it wasn't just a cold or a bad reaction to the renovations that began nearly before the end of the war, as Quatre had claimed. Lied. And every day that passed by that Quatre got worse, and worse, Duo saw Trowa backing away, leaving, turning more and more into the stolid man he'd been before Quatre had melted him. Then Quatre had died. Two months later, Trowa had died, too, in a suicide run against the growing White Fang force. Duo had watched both of their deaths.
It had been the dying White Fang members who'd made the trip into the irradiated weapons bases on Earth and in the colonies. Their efforts made the radiation worse, exposed the air to more unsecured uranium oxide. And then those dying bastards had gotten their hands on missiles that hadn't fallen into disrepair, and they'd staged war on everything. On the Gundams, for stopping them the first time. On Earth, for existing when it was the colonies that should rule (and damn Milliardo for letting that idea gain any sort of foundation; once validated by him, there was no stopping it). Wufei and Heero and Duo had all set out to stop them. For a while, it had been like the war, minus Duo's best friend, and they'd managed to route much of the campaign. They saved refugees from Libra's attack when White Fang sent a missile there, calling the bombing the anniversary or justice. They'd saved a few more when they destroyed an entire bombing center, and they'd even kept the radiation from the huge blast contained.
But it wasn't enough. Even with Sally Po's help – Sally Po, who had gone on an iron lung before the hospital she'd stayed in was bombed, Wufei loyally by her side at the time – they'd been rerouted. It soon became about keeping themselves alive – something Heero couldn't stand for.
Two weeks after Wufei's death, merely ten months after Maremaia's uprising, Heero went out on his own suicide run, barely giving Duo time to do more than splutter, "you've got to be kidding!" before he took to a shuttle alone and headed for outer space. Duo, disbelieving and unaware of Heero's follow-through, only learned of Heero's death through a recorded video White Fang proudly showed two days later, complete with a taping of Heero's body as it froze in the vacuum of space.
And that was how Duo came to be alone, hunkered in an old bunker of Quatre's deep in the desert, desperate enough to read one of the doctors' old blueprints and come up with his own suicide run.
Duo decided to call the time lapse a few minutes, because saying he may or may not have lost consciousness was not nearly manly enough. So after a few minutes, when his head felt less like it was trying to rearrange itself in the confines of his skull, he stood – and he didn't wobble or have to grab the sides of the stall to hold himself up, no, sir, he did not – and checked the tiny monitor. There was plenty of text. He was certain it would be useful if only he could read it.
Well. Then the only way to find out what the hell had happened was to get the stall door open. Not so hard. The thing was kind've pathetic, anyway.
And then he noticed that some of the metal had kind've welded itself together. And by kind've he meant completely. Great.
Trying to get the leverage to open a door welded shut was difficult in and of itself. Trying to open a door that had been welded shut was a whole 'nother problem. The door might have budged. An inch. Possibly. Duo decided to be optimistic on it and finally collapsed back. He heard the ground rumbling, a different kind of rumble than the psychotic acid trip that had happened after he'd instigated the TARDIS. It took him a good five minutes to realize the shaking was due to a train passing by. His heart leaped to his throat. The trains were running. He'd managed it. Or, well, he'd managed something.
Oh, then like hell he was staying in here.
He tried again, pushing like hell against the door – maybe another inch – and then trying to shimmy his weight back and forth to get the thing to tip. It might have jiggled a tiny bit. Okay. He looked around his little TARDIS – he could really use that space-time dimension thing that made the inside of the real TARDIS bigger – and thought. Wires. Best not to pull them out. One loose wire in his mini-TARDIS and his trip could be cut a little short.
He rubbed his chest absently and turned in one complete circle. There was a little less metal on the ceiling, and though it nearly brought him physical pain – he rubbed his chest again and wondered just how many bruises the trip had been happy enough to give him – to destroy the TARDIS he'd spent over three months building, he twisted himself upside down into a handstand and kicked up. The ceiling gave slightly to his kick with a loud groan, and four kicks later, his foot broke straight through the top. His attempt to switch his position had him momentarily on his back flailing like a dying turtle, but finally he was up and reaching on his tip-toes for the opening. Another rumble passed outside his rather well-made prison (nothing like a good self-pat on the back), and he wondered how long he'd been at this ridiculous attempt at escape. Who knew traveling through time could be so hazardous? Ha ha.
After some pushing and pressing and a little more odd maneuvering, and the top of the TARDIS was open wide enough for him to shimmy himself through. The edges of the stall scratched along his back and chest and thighs as he crawled out, and he thought he heard something tear. Wonderful. He hadn't had time to pack extra clothing, so it was now the hobo look for him. He couldn't wait.
It was as he finally landed outside the TARDIS that he stopped cold. It was definitely the same maintenance room as before. The electricity worked – there was more light than the dingy bub Duo had kept going on the dying generator. But instead of the usual switchboards, there were buttons. Duo went up to them. They were locked in plastic cases, but please, locks were always a joke to the great Duo Maxwell. They lit up the entire room in blues and, in two spots, red. Duo cocked his head as he considered it. Obviously they were supposed to work like the switchboard; The things were lined up in neat little rows, and each little group sat under headings of LW-5 and LW-6, blah blah, straight across. He wrinkled his nose and forfeited his give a damn to check and see what lie beyond the tiny room.
The subway station was no longer a dead tomb of darkness. There was light. All up and down the thing, illuminating the tracks and the walls and... Duo's heart pounded. It was so normal. So bright.
He hurriedly stepped out. He had no idea what time it was, where Howard or Doctor G was... the laptop.
He ran back inside, horrified he'd nearly forgotten it, and stilled. The laptop, the last surviving piece of Heero, of his time, of his life, was cracked straight down the middle. He closed his eyes. Okay. It wasn't the end. He grabbed the hard drive, though it was split like the rest of the machine. He rubbed his chest and looked out of the room again. No trains that he could hear. He had to just keep looking forward. So Heero was officially gone. He'd been gone for months.
He hurried away from the room, hugging the edges of the station. The texture of the walls was the same as from whence he came, and the knowledge was oddly jarring. Everything was the same, but it was different. Seeing everything as it had once been, after so many months of destruction and debris and death... when he finally came upon a subway platform and hauled himself up – and there were the looks, the silent shifting of bodies that said 'stay away from the hobo' better than any words – he had to stop and stare for a few moments. People. Well, obviously people, it was a subway platform, so there were probably always people. But people. People looking down at their phones, reading magazines, conversing within small groups. Their clothes were new, not ratty or torn – though why were women wearing belts over their shoulders and men around their wrists and thighs? And why did their phones make strange blipping noises whenever they passed close by one another? – but they were obviously unafraid of any potential danger. They weren't trying to crawl into hidey-holes much too small for them in order to escape the thunderous quaking that should have been happening, but wasn't.
The world down here was calm, still, even as the floor rumbled, signaling another train, and suddenly there was a pattern to everyone's movements as they hurried to the yellow line. Duo let the movement shake him from his stupor, and he moved toward the exit. As he went, he marveled over the clean air, the lack of dust or grit, the lack of sickness on people's faces as they slowly died of cancer or tumors or just plain malnutrition. He thought he could smell fresh bread, and when he exited the subway, nearly bumping into a racing man as he nearly vaulted down the stairs, he saw a bakery just in front of the subway station, luring in hungry commuters.
And then he saw the rest, and he paled.
The cars on the road were sleek, slim, a style he'd never seen before. Several of them had people talking on phones or eating or reading, for crying out loud, and he realized many of them were automated. He was fairly positive the technology had been there, during the war, but the money had been appropriated to war funds. The money had been used to start reconstruction before... well, before reconstruction had no longer been an option.
But when he looked around, he saw other peculiarities. A stop signs' letters blinked on as a car came near. The crosswalk signal chimed, and people who were reading and texting simply started walking across the street, most not even bothering to look up. Then there was something slightly off about the clothes they wore; women wore shirts with high necklines. Men wore pants that nearly revealed the ridges in the bulges of their pants. Duo looked up and shivered. The subway he'd chosen was now surrounded by skyscrapers, where before there had been nothing but rubble. Few buildings had been over three stories tall, and the top stories had been uninhabitable, crushed beneath the weight of broken beams and crumbled plaster. Every skyscraper looked like a death trap, both for those within and those nearby. He decided to search for some sort of transport and crossed the street.
He felt like a tourist, taking in all the familiar and unfamiliar things around him. It was odd enough, having actual buildings and people, everyone perfectly fine with walking around, no one hunkering down and glancing furtively left and right. No one running to him and begging him to help them, save them, as gunfire rapport nearly drowned out their voices.
Everything was normal, and while it made his heart pound in anticipation of an attack, it also felt... liberating. Calming. It was difficult to let the idea of it seep into his skin, but as it did, it felt nearly soothing, at the same time he thought he might throw up. He hadn't known what it was he would do when he ended up in the past, but he hadn't thought he would stay still. He was so used to running and fighting, he had just thought he would be doing that as soon as he stepped out of the TARDIS.
Or, really, if he were honest with himself, he would admit that he hadn't thought much of anything at all. He'd only thought how badly he needed to move, to do something, to try to save some places that might not have been salvageable before. He hadn't really thought he could save the world, but he had thought that, just maybe, he might be able to save that which was most important to him.
It was the knowledge that the other pilots could very well be alive that made him hurry his pace.
Of course, he couldn't help but notice that most cars stopped at red lights without anyone touching anything. All cars turned on their blinkers when they turned, and the blinking sounded slightly different for left or right. Store signs obviously written by hand still blinked, and he even saw one man say, "broad sign, erase," and he stared with wide eyes as the sales and specials just disappeared. He might have stared a bit too long, because the guy asked him what he wanted to order. He waved the question away and kept walking, wondering if they even accepted normal cash on this alien planet.
There was a thought, he considered. Had he ended up on some different planet where everyone just looked human? He thought again of Doctor Who, then chuckled at himself. Had he lost his damn mind? He must have hit his head on the ride through time. Or maybe he'd been found by White Fang, and this was all a very elaborate delusion before he went six feet under.
Somehow, despite everything, the idea of having failed made him angry. He needed to find G, or maybe Howard. He needed to find out what the hell was going on.
He stopped. Turned. Stared. That stupid weather sign by the gas station. That couldn't be right. Granted, it certainly felt like a balmy sixty-seven degrees, but there was no way in hell that could be right.
AC 204.
He almost puked.
If the sign was wrong, it wasn't the only one. And every single newspaper had a seriously bad editor. And also every magazine. And packaging slips. And envelopes. And calendars.
Duo stopped looking around after he finished seeing the nearest post office's little decorations. Every box people brought in was time stamped July 17, AC 204. The calendars by each service lady said the same. Even the stamps. Oh, and when did people start putting their fingerprints on the card scanner? Because that was what they were doing – fingerprint, ding, payment accepted. No cash, no cards.
But at the same time, there was no sign of White Fang. He'd searched those newspapers for news of them, from them, orders, maybe, or demands. Maybe just news on the leaders Duo vaguely remembered. Nothing. Nothing anywhere. No mention of White Fang. Had they been defeated? Had Duo's time jump been for nothing? Had it all been unnecessary?
But it didn't matter, because the one thing he'd planned on, the one thing he'd wanted to do, couldn't be done. The other pilots were still dead. Trowa. Wufei. Quatre. Heero. He hadn't managed to save any of them.
Almost, he thought to return to his TARDIS. But why bother? The thing would need to be recreated, and he obviously hadn't managed to do something right. What if he tried to go backward again and ended up fifty years in the future? Seventy years in the past? His chest burned, ached, nearly tore. He rubbed it hard. Even if he could get the thing working again – and, well, parts would no longer be a problem, since the world was apparently once again in working order – and...
And he stopped there, too, his brain finally pushing through the empty about of 'wtf' that it had slogged through for the past couple of hours.
There was no way that all of this could possibly be rebuilt in just five to six years.
Even if the battle with White Fang – well, the resistance against White Fang's overwhelming supremacy – suddenly ended the moment Duo disappeared, this many skyscrapers couldn't possibly be rebuilt. No way, no how. Even if every single person corralled themselves on this particular city, there still wasn't a way in hell. And the technology – that wouldn't be possible, either. Ll the money for such things would have been spent on the reconstruction – which would still be going on. And while Duo had traversed the city up and down, nearly wandering in a daze, he hadn't seen a single sign of any major construction anywhere. There had been a section of road closed off for rebuilding, and that was it. It.
Maybe he really was on the brink of death, and this illusion was extremely long and extremely boring. Or maybe he was dreaming? He pinched himself, though he had no idea why that was supposed to work; he felt the sensation of pain in his dreams, after all. He looked at a sign, then away, then back again, because he'd heard that in dreams, if you look away from something, that something will turn into something else. But the sign remained the same – fast food joint, fish burgers on sale. Which didn't sound appetizing in the slightest, despite his constant raw desire for food. He'd run low on rations a few weeks before he'd finally finished the TARDIS.
So it was real, and none of it made any sense.
Howard, he told himself firmly. G. If they were even alive. Which, he supposed, G wouldn't be. Which left Howard and the Sweepers. Or at least what was left of the Sweepers after Howard had been killed.
He covered his face with his hands. No, there was no point in going to the Sweepers, even if any of them were left (and what were the chances? Duo hadn't heard a word from them for months before even the time jump). What did he have to go on? Nothing. He was in the middle of an impossibility. A future impossibility.
He took a deep breath. Okay. What was he supposed to do when in enemy territory, or when about to embark on a difficult mission?
Stake out the area. Learn the enemy's movements. Observe.
So. He would do exactly that.
Five days later, and he thought he might have actually lost his mind.
Yes, it was, for all intents and purposes, AC 204. The war, however, had only been won a few years ago. Maremaia's uprising never occurred; it seemed the young teenager hadn't been so easily swayed by Dekim Barton, and he had been thrown in jail for attempting to incite war. The Gundam pilots had come through and stopped the war, but no one hardly knew who they were. Relena Peacecraft had suffered burns on the right side of her face and neck from trying to stop her brother on-board the Libra. Her opponents called her Two-Face. Her constituents called her martyr.
Duo wondered where Heero had been.
But a simple internet search showed him that the Sweepers still existed, and Howard's face greeted him on their site – they had a site! – so it was almost certain that the old goon still lived.
So Duo had shipped himself off to L3, where the Sweepers had apparently made their main base of operations (not on Earth?). The shipping yard was huge, way bigger than Duo would have expected for Howard and his crew. It was like one of Quatre's Winner outposts was made entirely for them; and while Duo blinked stupidly at it all as his little shuttle approached, he saw two ships hauling in and another one departing. Was there more members of the Sweepers than there'd been before? Had Howard and his crew merged with other shipping companies?
The dinky little shuttle was stopped at the landing gate, and a freakin' code was demanded of him. He sighed, rolled his eyes. "The god of death is the most fearsome, miraculous beast in the universe, and we shall prostrate ourselves before his infinite glory."
There was dead silence from the other side of the comm link, but then uproarious laughter broke through the ship. Duo laughed, too, and the sound was so foreign it sent shivers up his spine. Shivers that hurt. It had been a long, long time since he'd last laughed. "Maxwell! Why the hell aren't you in Death's Hand?"
Duo could only assume that was the name of some ship of some sort. "Long story," he said, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest. He rubbed at the ache there and worried through his list of ways to bring up... whatever the hell needed to be brought up. His psychosis? His nervous breakdown? His TARDIS? His... dimension traveling?
He pretended the last one wasn't the only one that explained the unexplainable without making him out to be a madman.
Who was he kidding? He was definitely a madman, no matter what.
"Oh, God," the person on the other side of the comm said, and Duo jumped. He recognized the voice. Greg, a guy about ten years Duo's senior. No, in this time, he'd be fifteen or sixteen years older, about. And the man had died in the first months of White Fang's assault.
His heart doubled its pace, and this time it wasn't in apprehension, but with hope. If Greg was alive, if Howard really was alive, then the other pilots could still be here. And if White Fang wasn't a problem, then he wouldn't have to fight. He wouldn't have to anything! He could just... relax. Enjoy peace like he'd been hoping to since Maremaia had been defeated. Hook up with Heero again, even though they'd done nothing more than hang out and get Heero a personality and... talk about things going further.
Oh. He rubbed his chest harder, scarcely daring to believe it. Had he traveled to a dimension where things didn't suck nearly as much?
Please let it be so.
"Oh, God, what?" Duo heard, and sucked in a sharp breath. Howard.
"Duo's in a civilian shuttle. Says it's a long story."
"Maxwell, if you broke that damn ship again, I will kill you!"
Duo laughed again. It nearly turned into something else, and he had to stop before the waterworks started. "Howard! Man, it's good to hear your voice."
"Don't try to butter me up, Maxwell! Just how totaled are we talking?"
Duo closed his eyes, even as his shuttle was given the green light, letting the voices wash over him. Greg was laughing again. It was like he'd been given a second chance. His world – there was nothing left. Even if he'd gone back in time, there was that time-divergence issue; he might have created another dimension in his going back in time, and he might have done altered nothing in his time. Or there was the idea of not altering the thing, or altering things so drastically they lost the war, or Zechs destroyed the planet, or...
Though it was painful, and heartbreaking, and made his insides twist until he thought he would puke, maybe it was for the best that he'd never arrived in another time in his world, because no matter what, it would have been nothing more than an attempt to follow after Heero, or to try to make things right in the memory of him, and maybe... maybe that wasn't necessary here.
Maybe there was still a chance for them to take it to the next level.
The thought made him jumpy, and he suddenly felt like the shuttle was taking too long, even though it was sliding securely home into the docking pit. Duo hardly had to touch the controls; the strange technology that had somehow infected the entire solar system had also infected his ship, and the thing aligned itself as if it was difficult or something. He snarled at it. It felt good. Light. Like... like he wasn't having to run anymore.
Like his friends were alive.
But then he realized they were all talking to him as if they knew him, and the idea clogged his mind for a little bit as it dawned on him that they were expecting another Duo – another Duo lived here. Somewhere. And had a ship? Or borrowed one from Howard? Or something? Which meant there was another him. He felt his brain sort've twist around and start nibbling on itself right around there. It produced a rather pounding headache.
The docking pit was huge; a few ships were docked to his right, and he started to maneuver the damn ship before something overrode everything and started leading his damn shuttle forward, as if he couldn't see that the first few ports were already filled with another ship. He sighed loudly.
"That's what you get for totaling your damn ship again." Howard outright groused. It made Duo grin, even though it was somewhat confusing. He and Howard had only really gotten to start knowing each other near the end of the war, and his time with the Sweepers afterward had gotten them a bit closer. But he'd only been with the man for a few months before he'd gone with Heero, and they'd never gotten to the point where sighs could be readily interpreted.
Still, Duo smiled. Because there was something who could understand him. He felt like he'd been given a second chance. Maybe his curse couldn't reach all the way out here. Maybe he could be safe to live a happy life here. Maybe. Hopefully.
It felt a little bit like running away, and he hurt for the world he'd left. But the place was nothing but ashes for him now. Someday, some group of rebels would rise up from those ashes and take out White Fang. Wasn't that how it always was? But it wouldn't be in Duo's time, and it wouldn't be Duo's group of rebels. Those were here. Duo rubbed his chest. He wouldn't go back, even if he could. There was nothing left for him there.
Suddenly, just as Duo's shuttle hooked into port, alarms went off. Duo jumped, his hands already slipping down to pull off his harness. Something trickled over the comm, a short static burst, and Duo suddenly feared White Fang had somehow infiltrated the Sweeper base. "Howard? Howard!" Nothing. His heart in his throat, he tore himself from his seat and raced to get a vacuum suit. The idea of losing him again...
Then the static turned into a hiss, and Duo trailed the vacuum suit behind him as he raced back to the comm panel. "Howard? I swear to Death himself, if you don't answer this godforsaken thing–"
"Who the hell are you?" Howard snapped, his voice suddenly sharp. Duo nearly reeled back. "You're not Maxwell."
Oh. Well. That meant the alarms were for him, then, didn't it? Somehow that brought nothing but relief. "I am Duo. But not your Duo. I was gonna explain this once I was on-board." He let the vacuum suit go and scratched the back of his head. The vacuum suit floated idly behind him. The alarms still blared. "I swear, old man, I'm me. It's all a little confusing."
"Shut your trap," Howard said, and the words were so not like the Howard he knew he actually did. For once. "My men are going to secure you and your vehicle. If you so much as twitch, they are under orders to shoot. I didn't tell them where to aim."
Duo blinked. "Wait – I thought this time period was peaceful?"
"The shutting up started a minute ago."
Duo snorted, nearly making a quip about him never knowing shutting up. But he decided to go with it; if he got too bad a danger feeling, he would take down Howard's men and force their talk at another time.
Duo heard them, even though they were trying to be quiet. It almost made him laugh; the Sweepers were anything but quiet, ever, and there was no way that was different here. He turned to them as they entered the shuttle, unsurprised to find Stefano, the adrenaline junkie, leading the way. He gave a jaunty little wave. Stefano had been one of the ones to die with Howard near the beginning of White Fang's insurrection. Here, it was like none of that happened.
It was almost comical how every last one of the Sweepers met his gaze and stopped stark still in the middle of the entrance. Duo threw out a snarky grin and waggled his fingers again. "Hiya, guys."
Stefano actually shook his head and blinked his eyes. Duo had to bite his damn tongue to keep from laughing. "...Duo?" he asked.
Yoshua, a skinny, tall man who had actually survived the first few months of the attack in Duo's dimension, snorted. "No way, idiot. He's too short."
Stefano squinted. Duo scowled. Make fun of him for his shortness, huh? He beamed Heero's glare at the man and actually watched him shuffle on his feet and raise his gun again. Huh. Maybe Duo had gotten better at it. "The braid?"
"Fake, idiot!"
Duo snorted. He couldn't take it anymore. "You guys sure were smarter in my dimension."
A couple in the back, two Duo didn't recognize, actually exchanged looks. Stefano was the one to lift his chin – and his gun – and snarl at Duo. "Just get moving."
Get moving, huh? So there was most likely another ship coming. Why else would they be in such a hurry to get Duo out of the docking pit? None of the men were in vacuum suits, after all. So Duo rolled his eyes and obliged, fairly positive none of them were going to shoot him. His headache, at least, dimmed at the adrenaline in his system. Nothing like guns in his face to get him reacting quicker.
The walk from the shuttle through the pit to the strip was interesting. While Stefano had apparently decided to believe Duo was nothing more than an illusion, the others kept sneaking glances at him like he was going to molt into some alien beast. It was amusing. It was entertaining. It beat the hell out of hunkering down in an abandoned subway tunnel putting together bits and twine for a sci-fi blueprint that only had a ten percent margin for victory.
Well, not to say that his plans had gone off successfully, per se, but hey, they were good enough.
The strip was much more chaotic than Duo had been prepared for. He'd thought there would be some sort of Sweeper armed guard to meet him, the place cleared out of any civvies, or maybe a wall of Sweepers prepared in case he made a run for it. But as soon as he stepped out of the pit, he understood how all of that would have been impossible. When he'd seen what had looked like a number of ships entering and leaving port, he'd apparently missed that the pit was still chock-full of ships and cargo and people. One look around the strip showed him there were more people that could ever be cleared out in just a few minutes. Right down the long aisle of merely this one landing dock had about three different ships loading up cargo, and another couple refueling for takeoff. Even with the guns and the frowny faces, Stefano and his men had to slow down their little procession as people simply continued on their merry way, completely unperturbed by the myriad of Sweeper guards escorting Duo. Hell, one person turned, looked, and outright grinned. "Pissed off Howard again?"
Duo grinned and shrugged, even as Stefano and his entourage growled. "What can I say? It's a skill."
The man snorted and shook his head. He readjusted the box in his hands before walking away. Sedately.
Duo nearly laughed.
Stefano upped the pace then, which was a joke, since he nearly had to stop stone-cold still four times before they made it through the strip to the outer bay. At least there the place had been cleared, and no one was nearby save Jonah and yet another Sweeper Duo didn't recognize. But the point of clearing the place out was lost when they'd just gone through so many civilians to get there, and the reactions of those civilians made Duo snarky enough to waggle his fingers and say, "hey there, Jonah." The man's eyes had widened progressively from the moment Duo had stepped through the bay doors, and they nearly popped out of his head then. This time Duo did laugh. "This is great, you guys, thanks so much for the celebrity treatment."
"Shut your mouth," Stefano said, and Duo rolled his eyes.
"Stefano, you and I both know damn well I could rip that gun from your hands and blow your brains out before your friends had a chance to do more than blink. We both also know that the only reason I'm not doing that is because I don't want to. Keep messing with me. See what happens."
Despite how much the man had decided to believe Duo was a fake, he still paled at the words. Because instinctively, Duo guessed, the man knew Duo was right.
The bay was large, and boring-white, everything white, with no paintings on any of the hulls. Totally, completely impartial. Military precise. It made Duo's back straighten, made the adrenaline starting to simmer down rev right back up again. Maybe he'd been wrong to think this time was peaceful? Howard certainly didn't seem to have calmed down any. Or maybe it was PTSD? If the man had ever suffered from any such thing.
Their footsteps nearly echoed in the damn place, and Duo made a little game out of trying to make a beat between his footsteps and the Sweepers', until Yoseph found out what he was doing and started deliberately messing up the rhythm. It felt so good to have someone glare at him like that again. Like coming home.
He rubbed his chest. His headache was coming back.
He caught sight of several Sweepers as they made their way around the bay, many of them with backs turned to him as they dealt with someone trying to go the way Duo and his entourage were headed. There were more than a few cure words bandied about before Duo was escorted into the inner bay.
Here was where everything was lit up, and he relaxed once more. Colors finally painted themselves over the wall, and they were in the usual Sweeper mess of splashes of paint on each wall, one bright red, the other grass green, another so light a blue it was almost white, and a painfully large amount of horrible pictures, like kid's drawings on a refrigerator, decorating every square inch of the walls and even parts of the ceiling and floor. One of the guys had obviously been adding something before the alarms sounded and the 'breach' went up, and the paints sat idly beside a picture that may or may not have been intended to be a sort of dog, or maybe a goat, and the Sweeper beside it was blinking rapidly at the picture Duo himself made as he walked past. He pointed to the wall. "Goat?"
The man mutely shook his head.
Duo tilted his head. "Dog?"
Another mute shake of his head, and Stefano snarled some more. Duo was ready to pat his head like a dog and say, 'down, boy.' "I'm lost, dude; what the hell is it?"
The man opened his mouth. Closed it. "Horse."
Duo laughed good-naturedly. "The hell it is!"
Yoshua hurried him along then, and Duo didn't even care that the man was glaring steel bands down on him, because just then he saw Howard. And it didn't matter to him in the slightest how angry Howard was, or how his hands sat on his hips like he was some battalion commander about to order a man's execution, because Howard was alive and it was so good to see his face. Duo grinned like the Cheshire cat. "Howard!"
The man did not look pleased to see him.
Duo noticed the man stood in a niche – he couldn't say small, even though it was small compared to the rest of the base – that housed the communication hub. Greg sat slightly behind Howard and to his left, speaking to someone through the comm link in hushed tones. And then there was someone else, a gun in her hand, glaring at him like he was slime on her shoe. The glare only faltered for a moment before she held out her gun, an obvious warning to stay where he was. As if he had any inclination at the moment to muscle his way through a sudden blockade that was Stefano and Yoshua and their team.
Howard looked him up and down. "Wow, you really worked at this, didn't you, boy?"
He wasn't one hundred percent certain what 'this' was, but since they obviously thought he wasn't actually himself, he figured 'this' had to do with the braid and the looks, which gee, they bore an uncanny resemblance to Duo, didn't they? Go figure.
Duo held up his fingers. "Did you guys take my fingerprints? I mean, I know you did where I come from, because you thought I was just some thief – G did, I mean – and you had it on file." Howard frowned, and Duo wiggled his fingers. He seemed to be doing that a lot. "Take my prints."
Howard's frown deepened. "As if I'm stupid enough to come that close to you."
Duo rolled his eyes and grabbed Yoshua's gun from his grip. Stefano nearly shot him, and he ducked down and kicked the thing from his hand. Two others wavered, not knowing if they should shoot or not, and Duo ignored them for the last two, who looked at him with wide eyes and raised their guns on him on instinct. He knocked one out with a karate chop, carefully using the man as a meat shield from the woman beside Howard, who looked about ready to shoot him down. Then he held out Yoshua's gun. "There. Now you have my fingerprints, right?" He tossed the thing out of arm's reach. "Now I'm going to let this gentleman go, and you're not going to shoot me." He let his gaze go a little Shinigami for a second, enough to make the men waffling on what to do drop their guns to their sides and not. The woman looked ready to spit. "Put your gun down, lady."
Her eyes flashed fire, and in that instant, Duo jumped. Because, even though the clothing was different, the height different – she'd grown a couple more inches – the hair a bit longer, and the attitude completely off, more like Noin or Sally Po than the woman he knew, it was her; he knew it. That fire was the exact same. Still, he squinted and turned his head as if he was inspecting an alien creature. "Hilde?"
She snapped her gun straight back up, as if she hadn't lowered it at all. "You don't get to call me that, you fake," she snarled, and the fail insult was the clincher. It was her. She seemed to catch the look in his eyes and narrowed her own. He seriously thought she just might shoot him.
Just what the hell had happened to her in this dimension?
Well, whatever it was, at least she was alive, too. Even with her distrust – hell, downright hatred – he couldn't help the giddiness fighting the pain in his chest. She was alive. Anything else could be worked through.
But while his antics had earned Hilde's ire, Howard had begun studying Duo from head to toe, eyes narrowing, lips thinning, hair flapping in some nonexistent breeze – no, really, there must have been a fan or something on the consoles behind him, because his hair was moving, for some reason.
And Howard finally gestured toward the gun. "Someone bring that here."
Yoshua was the one to do it, smart enough to avoid handling the part Duo had touched, and kept well out of Duo's reach before sliding back to hand the weapon over to Howard. The man turned to someone else, finally showing Duo his back – well, his shoulders. That weird goatee-beard quivered as the man murmured to the person standing beside Greg. Whatever he said made Hilde tense.
Someone took the gun away. Duo nearly rubbed his hands together with glee. Then, of course, came the question of whether fingerprints were the same for the same person in two dimensions. Maybe they were different? How could he know? It's not like people were ever able to test the idea one way or the other. Hm.
Howard lifted his head. "Tell me something only I would know."
"You snip your goatee beard every day," Duo said automatically. A couple of men around him actually chuckled. These men were not the ones Duo had easily disarmed. The chuckles might also have been a little nervous.
"Something the rest of my men don't know, Duo."
It was the first time the man had called him Duo, and he wasn't the only one to notice. Hilde gave the codger a scandalized look. Duo outright grinned. "Old man! I knew you weren't that stupid. Okay." He thought for a minute, even as Howard seemed to lean back and forth between annoyed and amused. Like he didn't know which was more appropriate to the situation. "Let's see. I don't know for sure what we talked about together here, sorry. Normally I would bring up us talking about the moon, how it looks from the colonies, you know? Because it was the first time you and I really had a serious conversation, at least, where I'm from." But Howard didn't seem to know quite what Duo was talking about, and he hurried on, kind've hurt that he was still the only person with that memory. "You absolutely, one hundred percent despise Tallgeese. You think it was a work of art for its time, possibly immortal in having been the first Gundam prototype. But you think the thing is clunky and top-heavy and needs serious re-writing. You even rewrote it twice – where I'm from – simply because the thing gave you headaches. Screw what Zechs ordered. The thing was a beast. Oh, and you thought the Wing Zero was spun from gold. And the Libra was another clunker; the thing was pathetic, lumbering–"
"How do you know about Tallgeese?"
The question wasn't one Duo would have ever expected, and he looked at Howard like the man was a loon. "Um, because it was on the battlefield? A lot?"
Howard frowned. "You're what? Eighteen? Twenty? You haven't even seen the battlefield, son."
Son? Duo nearly crowed. Howard had only called him that a couple of times, in private, but it was a word Howard only used for his men. For the Sweepers. "What are you – oh, right, the battle started late here. We fought in 195 where I'm from."
Someone snorted. Another person cocked his gun again. Duo glanced at the man out of the corner of his eyes, ready to take him down the moment he got too rambunctious.
"And... where you come from," Howard said, mimicking Duo's words down to their very intonation (which sounded hilarious coming from him), "Tallgeese was... used?"
"Uh, yeah? By Zechs. The final form was used by Treize."
Howard made a strangled sound.
Duo blinked. "I guess that's not what happened here?" Maybe he should have done a little more research. Cracked into a couple of databases, looked into some military reports. But he'd just wanted to move, to find something he could relate to. A port in the storm. Or perhaps just some sort of proof that he hadn't failed completely; that he was no longer horridly, horridly alone.
He rubbed his chest and looked around. He still had his meat shield, not because he was holding the man down, but because the man didn't seem able to make himself move. Yoshua was beside Howard, apparently turned defensive from his loss of his weapon. Stefano had picked his own gun back up, but he didn't aim it t Duo anymore. The man seemed lost, like a big, brawny puppy. Stefano probably knew Duo well enough to recognize his skill, which meant Stefano had fallen sharply on the 'it is Duo' side of the fence.
The others, those Duo didn't recognize, seemed confused more by Howard's lack of fear than by Duo's abilities. That would work out for him if they tried to fight him off. He would be able to take care of them in no time at all. Stefano would be easy, as well. Duo couldn't believe it, but the biggest threat in the room was Hilde. And that twisted his brain into Rubik's Cube knots.
"You know I hate Tallgeese how?" Howard asked.
"You ranted about the thing. Then you ranted about the people piloting it. Said the thing should have been scrapped years ago."
Howard's face contorted oddly. "It was."
Huh. Oh. Hm. Well. That explained why no one had seen the thing in this dimension. He guessed. Maybe.
"By who?" Duo asked, and it seemed their light conversation had gone on quite long enough.
Hilde plastered herself in front of Howard, her gun pointed straight at Duo's heart – well, there was something that hadn't changed, at least; the woman was still emotional (unless she couldn't aim for the head here, which would make her less of a crack shot than her now-dead counterpart). He didn't know whether to smile in relief over finally finding something familiar in her, or frown at the memory of the Hilde he'd known.
It was a relief, being here with these people. It was. But at the same time, he couldn't help but notice differences – the least of which being these people's ages. He'd still lost those precious to him. But there was something here. There had to be; he had to believe it.
"You're not Duo," she declared, and he found that something similar there, for an instant, in the quick assertion she spat at him. The woman was nothing if not strong in her convictions. "Who are you?"
"I am Duo," he said. "Just not the Duo you know." He sent Howard a look, beaming it past Hilde's left shoulder. "You know the most about what the doctors worked on, don't you? All that fancy shit they threw to the wayside. Right where they kept the blueprints for Wing Zero, they left blueprints for something a little, um..." He waved his hand in the air. "Well, the blueprint for the Zero system was weird enough, I guess, so what the hell? A time machine."
The man's eyes narrowed. "And you come from the past."
The man's tone was dubious, and Duo couldn't help but snort. "Yeah, 'cause that makes sense with what I've been saying." Howard didn't seem surprised by what Duo said. Not at all. In fact, the old man actually seemed to be considering it. And apparently, that managed to hit all up and down Hilde's nerves.
"You're trying to tell me – tell us," she said, glaring shortly at Howard, "that you're... what? Traveling with the Doctor?"
Duo grinned brilliantly. Well, that was certainly something that hadn't changed. She was still a fan of Doctor Who. It had been through her that he'd been (forcefully) introduced to the show. The very, very long show. He blamed her for the name of the TARDIS. If it weren't for her, he wouldn't have even know which references to make to make fun of himself for his harebrained scheme.
"Wouldn't that be awesome?" Duo said. "Me as the Doctor? Actually, it might not be the best idea. I'm a little more violent than him. Don't you think? I mean, the man absolutely hated guns. I look at a gun and go, 'hey! Free souvenir!' It's not very Doctor-like."
Hilde didn't seem what to do with that response.
There was some sort of commotion behind him, and he wondered if the hall was no longer cleared out. It sounded almost like someone tearing down a warpath. Hilde looked relieved. Duo acted automatically, twisting around the man still willingly staying as Duo's meat-shield and posing the guy in front of him. He was fairly positive Howard would do something about Hilde, but the new person...
Then he blinked. And blinked again. It was kind've creepy. The man standing in front of him wasn't anyone Duo would recognize, and yet the face was the exact same he saw in the mirror every day. But older. And scarred a little! There was a scar on his lower lip. Why? What had happened?
But it was definitely himself. Duo. Well, another Duo. Some Duo other than himself but still himself. And oddly enough, this Duo had an even longer braid than Duo. And he was taller! Only by a couple of inches, but they were a couple of envious inches that made Duo would to squeeze the information on how the man had managed to get them. Was Duo some sort of late bloomer growth-wise? Maybe he would get another inch or two before the year was out.
Of course, that was going on the assumption that the him staring at him wasn't going to flip ape-shit and kill him. Or maybe just kill him without going ape-shit? So long as Hilde, who was looking rather vindictive, if Duo's peripheral vision was to be trusted, didn't pull the other him into some sort of frenzy.
Wait. His heart pounded thick in his chest, and pain blossomed from every beat. There was another him. Well, of course there was another him. But there was another him! He – why was there another him here? "Why are you here?" he asked, and couldn't believe the words had the audacity to come out.
"Why wouldn't I come back to work?" Duo – the other Duo – asked, and the words clanged around in his skull. He worked for the Sweepers? Which made him a Sweeper. Which... was confusing. He had a job? Like, a normal job? Like normal people.
His mouth opened. Closed. A couple unintelligible sounds may have emerged. He shook his head. "What?"
The other Duo put his arms on his hips and tilted his head. And narrowed his eyes. He took in the looks on the faces of those in the room, the men Duo had defeated, the look on Howard's face, the scowl on Hilde's. The other Duo's eyes lingered on her for a bit longer than necessary. Duo wondered if there was some sort of silent conversation going on between them.
The other Duo came closer, looked him up and down, lifted an eyebrow. "You really tried, didn't you?"
It was so weird to hear his own voice. And to look at a him that was similar – but not quite exactly like – his own. Like looking through a cracked mirror. He had more than just that little scar – he carried himself with the tiniest bit of a limp, as if he was fighting to not let it show. Well, obviously he wouldn't; why would he? It was a weakness.
It was so odd to see someone look like some big brother and know they was actually him.
Duo turned in a circle, very slowly, acting as if he was showing off his 'outfit' and instead taking the moment to take in the rest of the room. Stefano had lost all fight; his eyes were nearly round with wonder, looking from Duo to the other Duo and back again. There was less wonder and more confusion in the rest. Howard neatly sidestepped Hilde as she did that silent-communication thing with the other Duo some more. She barely bothered glaring at Duo now; apparently the other Duo was going to make everything all right again. And that was so much like the Hilde he'd known that once again, he found a tether for his hopes, and by the time he was facing himself once more, he'd steeled himself from the worst of his fears.
He grinned. "So? Whaddaya think? Pretty good, right?"
He wasn't bothering to argue with himself. Why would he? If the other Duo was half as observant as he himself was, he would have noticed the lack of surgical marks on his face and skin. The hair wasn't dyed or extended. There were no contacts in his eyes, and he'd been told several times (mostly by Quatre, and with a weird awe) that his eye color was fae-like. He had no voice implants. He had ratty clothes on, dirty, faded jeans with holes in it and a torn shirt – nowhere to hide anything that might have altering his appearance. The evidence of a fight showed that even if he did have something like that on him, it would have glitched or been jostled be the battle.
So it was unsurprising when his other self narrowed his eyes and looked at him again.
He gave the other him time. It would probably be weird, he thought, if both he and the other Duo were called Duo. And which of them would be the 'other Duo,' anyway? Probably him, and that rankled for some reason. He wasn't a freakin' alien. Well. Was he technically an alien? His head pounded, and he abandoned the thought.
Guh. His heart pounded so hard in his veins it hurt. And he was having the slightest trouble breathing. Only a tiny bit. Enough that he couldn't quite manage to get a deep breath. And his head. Make it stop.
There was a thought. Had he injured himself getting here? The pain had been on the sidelines since he'd arrived, and was only getting worse and worse. Maybe coming out to space had instigated it more? Or maybe it was some sort of side effect from hopping dimensions like he had the slightest clue what he was doing.
He came back to himself when the other him – Duo One? Duo Two? Older Duo? – finally seemed to decide something. "How old are you?" he asked.
Duo laughed before he could help himself. "I dunno. How old are you?"
The other Duo actually shared his grin. But unlike Duo, his grin fell quickly, as if the scar made it hurt. But of course that wasn't the reason why. Duo wondered what had changed.
But when the other Duo shrugged, the gesture was as familiar as the old grin. "Around mid-twenties."
Duo nodded. "Around twenty for me."
The other Duo crossed his arms, sized Duo up. "You're scrawny. And short."
Hilde made a strange noise. Duo didn't bother to look at her. "How the fuck did you get tall?"
the other Duo just shrugged again. "Did G not feed you enough or something?"
It made Duo grin, even as his brain staggered under the weight of... of... something. Suddenly he found himself moving forward, ignoring the rest of the people in the room to look closer at the man like him. Taller, scarred, but there was something else a little different, too. Duo couldn't quite name it. But while he was looking for something different, it seemed the other Duo was looking for something, too. Only, while Duo kept a small grin on his face, the other Duo frowned openly.
Duo wanted, so very badly, to ask what had happened to him.
"Do you remember her?" the other Duo asked, suddenly serious in a way he hadn't been before. From somewhere behind and to Duo's left, Hilde made a sound that seemed almost to be a warning. Like from a mother when a child tries to leave a plate of vegetables untouched.
There was no doubt who the 'her' could be. Not to Duo. He touched his braid. "Of course I do."
"And the hair?"
"Expectations," Duo answered, because people always thought he was a girl at first glance, and then they thought he was a pansy, weak, because real men didn't have long-ass hair pulled into a braid. And then no one expected him to have lockpicks and weapons stored in said hair.
The other Duo nodded. "Where do you come from?"
"Gallifrey," he quipped, and they both shared a quick, identical grin. Duo hid a sharp wince. The other him narrowed his eyes. "Earth," he said, this time making vague gestures. Meaningless gestures, he'd been told. He rubbed his chest, waved an arm in the general direction of Earth, then in a larger sweep as if encompassing the universe. "Somewhere else. I didn't mean to. It was supposed to be a time machine. But the scientists never finished the thing, so I guess maybe it wasn't supposed to do anything. But it was the only thing I could think of to do. The only thing that might help."
The other him wrinkled his nose. Duo was alarmed by how correct Quatre and Trowa had been the one time they'd called the action from him "cute." He swore to break the habit. "Help what?"
So he told them. It was like talking through a firestorm, and he became more and more certain that he'd managed to screw himself over somehow, traveling in a freaking shower stall to another dimension. Maybe the mode of transportation caused ulcers, or cancer, or something, and the only reason the Doctor wasn't affected was because he was an alien. Or maybe because humans were making the whole stupid thing up.
He told them about the end of the rebellion – then had to back up and explain that Operation Meteor started in AC 195, not AC 200, just three years after Duo had been caught in G's shuttle, and the other Duo hummed a low, "so he didn't have time to fix you the regimen, huh? That explains your height," which made Duo want to punch him. Then he explained the problems, the gases being leaked from unmaintained weapons caches – "stupid," Howard remarked – and how it all fell apart when White Fang grabbed a couple of said weapons caches before Une and the Preventers, hardly formed, could secure every location.
The battles. The war. The death toll. Quatre. Trowa. Wufei. Heero. And as he mentioned each one, he saw a tensing, a confusion, in the other Duo that he couldn't understand. And finally he finished, and no one was holding their weapon on him anymore, and there was a strange, humming sort of silence while everyone blinked and tried very hard to not believe a word. Except for the other him, who seemed to believe. Because, he thought with a smile, there was no denying they were the same person. And he may run and hide...
He hitched in a couple of silent breaths and looked to the ground, wondering if he could get away with sitting – his feet were starting to hurt – and putting his head between his knees.
"And what happened to you?" the other Duo asked. The question made him look back up, focus again on the other him, the taller, more rugged him. Maybe he would look like that in a few more years. But then again, he hadn't been put on G's 'regiment.'
Which ticked him off like no one's business.
"Has White Fang given you guys any trouble?" he asked, ignoring the other Duo's question, tensing despite himself. Though the question was intended for everyone, it was the other Duo he watched. The taller him frowned more deeply, but said, "nothing. The leaders staged a final stand in the Libra, and they went down with the ship." Duo wanted to ask just what that meant, but he continued too quickly for him to ask. "The stragglers were idiots, and Oz had rounded up the Alliance's armaments before Operation M even began. Whatever remained, Treize cleaned up before White Fang or Romefeller could get their greedy little hands on them."
Treize? Duo tilted his head. "That's right. They were having their own little mini-war while we were attacking, weren't they? What came of all that on your end?"
But the other Duo waved the question away and glared at Stefano, who looked about ready to answer. He stepped closer, leaned down – completely unnecessary; the bastard had maybe two inches on him – and asked again, "and what happened to you?"
Was he that pushy? He didn't think so. He hoped not. "Nothing. Well, not over there. Maybe. I think. Which reminds me, what happened to your leg?"
The other him grimaced. See? Neither of them wanted to talk about their weaknesses in front of others. So stop pushing.
Except the other him pushed. "You think?"
"Did it start when you got here?" Howard asked, cutting into the glaring contest before it could even start. The man even walked up and stood between them. But while he just gave the taller him a warning glare, his gaze, when it turned on him, lingered for a while. "Like you're breaking apart?"
Duo hadn't thought of it that way, but when he let the words sink in, he thought they might have been perfect. His heart seemed to be trying to break through rib cage and make some sort of bid for freedom. His lungs, on the other hand, tried to be shrinking. His head seemed ready to burst and leak brain matter out his ears. And, he realized with bemusement, even though he'd hardly eaten anything, his stomach hadn't spoken one word of protest since the first time he'd nibbled on a sandwich. He'd thought it was because the thing was from a rest stop, but he should at least be getting hunger pangs or something.
"Uh," he said, realizing everyone was waiting for him to answer Howard. "Yeah, I guess."
Howard frowned. Almost outright scowled. "Duo?" Despite the fact that the man had no doubt in his eyes, he still tripped over the name. It made him smile.
"Yeah?"
The man nodded and bulled forward. "You traveled through dimensions, Duo. There are a lot of theories on that – on what could happen. You might cause an imbalance in our universe, make it start breaking apart." At Duo's wide-eyed, breathless look, Howard said, "there would be signs of it by now. Earthquakes, hurricanes, storms, fluctuations in the sun's radiation." Duo nearly collapsed in relief. "There are others, though," he said, his tone saying, and one of them's happened. "a merging of the two dimensions, the destruction of the old one. Irreversible futures. The destruction of the bodies found in the wrong dimension." Howard's gaze pierced him, and Duo knew the last was the one Howard believed was happening. His gut dropped to his toes. "The dimension, like a living thing, would reject the person who didn't belong, and they would die unless they returned to the dimension in which they belonged."
Duo staggered. The very idea of returning made him feel sick. He couldn't. There was nothing there. And even if he had the will, what were the chances he had the way? No.
So he was going to die.
The thought rattled around in his brain, making it ache all over, until he had to close his eyes as little spots blinked in his vision. Shit. "How long do I have?"
Howard waved him forward, and he started walking away, leading Duo somewhere. Hilde made another noise, but this time the taller him turned to her and motioned a quick 'stay' military signal, and punctuated it with a sharp glare. They actually had a battle of wills before Duo was ushered by his big-brother clone after Howard.
He glanced back as the Sweepers made way for them, all of them wide-eyed and gaping. "What's up with her? She was so much more... innocent when I knew her."
But his older brother clone actually doubled back and blinked down at him like he'd just asked who the alien in the room was. "Hilde? Innocent?"
"Uh... yes?"
Clone Brother seemed lost for words for a moment, first as if Duo had stunned him with a beam, then as if actually considering Duo's words. "You fought five years before us, didn't you?"
Even though that had already been established, Duo nodded. "Yeah. She'd just signed up for the military."
The other Duo hummed as if that explained everything. "The Hilde I knew had been in the military for several years by the time I met her."
Duo thought about that. Thought about meeting Hilde in the recruitment office, no naivete, no blind trust. "Was she suspicious of you at first?" At the other him's nod, grudging respect on the press of his lips and the squint at the corner of his eyes, Duo followed the line of reasoning to its conclusion. Hilde wouldn't have been a suck mobile suit pilot. She would have been able to hit the broad side of a barn. "Did you protect her?"
Big brother Duo gave him a 'you're kidding, right?' look, and Duo had to work through that piece to get to the 'got captured anyway' bit. Probably because, when Hilde came into her own, she actually became a pretty good shot. So Hilde had brought him in?
"Of course she did," other him said when he asked. "You think those other idiots would have gotten me otherwise?"
Point.
"Then how the hell did you get to the lunar base?" he asked.
"She'd become disillusioned," other Duo said as Howard turned them out of the room and into a short, fat hallway that ended abruptly at a door. Howard pulled out a set of keys. "We talked. She asked why I was fighting for the colonies when they'd thrown in their lot with Oz. I asked her if the colonists were smiling yet." A small smile flickered over his face. Duo remembered, vaguely, his own conversation with her. He thought he might have said something similar to her. "She helped me escape. Not that it helped – the doctors were reviving Deathscythe, so I stayed and waited for him to be born again."
Duo frowned again at the wording. Gods, his chest hurt.
Howard put a key into the slot beside the door, then placed his hand over the pad and said, "open the damn door. Myself plus two."
Duo snickered as the door opened and stepped through behind Howard and in front of the other Duo, forced to show his back. He shot a knowing glare at his other self as the door slid closed behind them.
"All right, stop babbling," Howard said the instant the door closed. The old man waved the other Duo away, and the taller him huffed and plopped down in a chair in front of a huge wooden desk – extravagance made to impress anyone who made it into Howard's inner sanctum. He wondered how often it was a Sweeper initiate, a Sweeper vet, or even a business associate. Behind him were several cases containing who only knew what, all locked up in case the gravity was lost. A computer sat on lockdown on the desk. "Hey." Howard snapped his fingers in front of Duo's face, and Duo focused once more. Howard gave him another assessing dressing down, and Duo feared the loss of concentration could get to be a thing before he died. Somehow, the idea of losing his mind was far more terrifying than his body slowly failing. "You asked how long you have."
Oh, yeah. More of that. He nodded. "Yeah." He pulled his braid around and fiddled with it. He stopped when the other him gave him a knowing look. "So what's the prognosis, doc?"
"How long have you been here?" he asked.
"Five days, six some hours. I don't know the exact time; I can't be sure it's the same as it was in my dimension, and every piece of electronic was destroyed in the room I arrived in, so I didn't see the time for a while. I still have Heero's old laptop, though I haven't been able to save anything. Maybe you and your fancy pants crew could rig something up. I didn't try to pull the best equipment out."
Howard seemed to let most of Duo's information blow right past him, but the old man always looked like he wasn't paying attention when he was mentally filing things behind that crazy hair. "And the pain?"
"Getting worse," Duo said, confirming something they all knew. "It was just a minor ache when I first arrived, but now it's a consistent pounding." He rubbed his chest again. "About a .5 at first, probably a four to five now." He smiled. "So maybe another week?"
Howard didn't say a word, but there was no mistaking the frown, the steady gaze, the firm, tense lines of the tendons on the back of his hands.
So little time. But longer than he'd had in his dimension. He could work with that.
He turned to his other self with a big grin, mustering it up from the darkest depths within him. The other him didn't seem to fall for it, even as Howard relaxed slightly. "You know what this means, right?"
The other him let him get away with the false cheer and cocked his head. "And what does it mean?"
"You have to help me prank Wufei."
The other him's eyebrows lowered. "You mentioned him before. Who are you talking about?"
