Disclaimer: Gundam Wing is not mine. This story is not for profit -- please don't sue.

Starry Night

by Bryony

The night was cold, the dry bitter cold that descends as quickly as flipping a lightswitch. Flip off the sun, flip off the heat. It reminded him of outer space, a little, this desert cold.

"Duo?"

Quatre's voice. Quatre, huddled under a blanket a few yards away under the protective bulk of his Gundam. "Yeah?" he asked eventually, after debating a few minutes whether or not to respond.

"Do you ever think about death?"

Shit, what was this?

Duo grunted, lifting himself up onto his elbow to look through the dark. There wasn't much to see. "We're at war," he hedged, "who the hell doesn't?"

"Yeah," Quatre agreed, and fell silent.

Duo was going to let it rest, he really was. He lay back down in the dark and stared up at the stars, blinking and winking above him. They sure did look different from down here, and he couldn't make up his mind whether or not he liked it. But things kept on gnawing at him now, and eventually he couldn't help but ask, "Why? Do you ever think about death?"

"All the time," came Quatre's answer, immediate, as if the flow of conversation had never stopped. "Are you scared?"

"Of dying? Me?" Duo tried to put the scoff into his voice, then stopped. There didn't seem much point in hiding in the dark. "I practically piss myself thinking about it."

"Then..." Some hesitancy, which surprised him. "Do you like your life?"

Duo sat up again, some indefinable feeling nipping at his heels. He thought it was anger, hoped like hell it was anyway. "You think people who like their lives go to war?" he snapped. "Fuck, no. I don't like my life." The bitterness was lodged in his chest, hard.

The sound of something shifting in the sand, and then a pale blob rose up in the darkness, Quatre's fair hair and pale face, almost eerily luminous in the starlight. He was scrabbling for the right thing to say: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to... Is there hope, do you think?"

Hope? Hope? Was this kid nuts?

"Hope for who?" he asked, and tried to grin so it would come off like an ironic joke, but it was dark and he could tell his voice gave him away. He went with it. "Seems like humans live in hope. But we always find a way to screw it up."

"And yet you're scared to die," the kid observed, the expression in his voice unreadable, but Duo could imagine it was smugness and clenched his hand into a fist.

"Well like the saying goes," he sneered, "better the hell you know than the one you don't."

Quatre's voice was back immediately, brimming humbleness and apologies. "I should be offering you my hospitality and instead I keep offending you. I'm sorry."

It wasn't worth the effort to stay mad. Duo slumped back to the ground. "Whatever," he muttered, once again hoping to signal the end to this conversation, yet once again unable to keep to his half of the bargain. "So what do you think, then?" he asked after a brief pause, surprised by how he felt almost shy to ask.

"Me?" There was a gentle, self-deprecating laugh, then, "I don't know. I used to think... but I don't know."

"That guy dying freaked you out too, huh?" Duo guessed, without noticing at first what he'd admitted to. It had come out so easily, in the dark, in the desert.

But, "Yeah," Quatre sighed, his confession seeming to slide out from between his lips and land in the no-man's land between them with a wet plop.

Duo shifted so his head was pillowed on his arms, his eyes drawn once again towards the stars, trying and failing to pick out the colonies from the mess of lights. It made him uneasy that he couldn't see the home he was supposed to be fighting for, like it might have accidentally winked out while he wasn't looking. It was all too easy to imagine, from down here. Especially now. "Yeah," he repeated, just wanting to be in agreement with somebody and not knowing any other words to say.

"Duo?" The voice was tentative again, which should have warned him, but didn't. "Can I ask...do you ever...think about your family?"

"My family," Duo repeated, surprisingly stung. "I don't have any family. You're talking to a street rat, born and bred."

"Born and bred..." The words, said so thoughtfully, hung in the air so he almost winced. "We all come from somewhere. Someone."

"That's sentimental BS," Duo retorted hotly, glaring at the sky.

"So you don't ever think about anyone, then? Anyone you...left behind?"

These questions were not innocent. There was no way.

"I never left anyone behind." What that implied, of course, he realized too late, was that he was the one that always got left. So he gritted his teeth and added, "The only thing I can see worth asking anybody's family is why the heck they'd want to bring more people into this sorry world. Seems to me you'd have to be either pretty sick or pretty stupid to want to do that." It was a dig, he knew it was a dig and he said it anyway. Not that Quatre seemed to notice.

"But then," he sounded so surprised, "why are you fighting? If you're so scared of dying, and you see so little hope for the future, and you care for nobody...then why?"

"I didn't say I didn't care." In aiming for indignation he'd managed to hit somewhere close to self-pity, which made him decide to bite his tongue. Quatre didn't say anything, but he could hear somebody crawling across the sand and then feel the warmth of another body approaching his. He didn't look, but Quatre flopped down next to him anyway. A hand hovered near his.

"I care too," Quatre told him.

The wind blew cold, peppering them with sand. He felt Quatre shiver.

"I guess it's okay to care. To hope, too," he was told. "I don't think I could do this if I didn't."

"That's probably a good way to be," Duo agreed, unwilling to say more. He didn't want to ask about what happens when you care too much. He didn't want to know Quatre's answer. Partly because he was afraid of damaging the boy's sincerity...and partly because he was afraid of what that boy's sincerity would do to him.

Eventually he went to sleep.