"I don't want to get married in a church."
Hilde, leaning comfortably in the swinging bench on Relena's porch, didn't look up from her tablet.
"Why is that, Duo?"
He lay on the wood floor of the porch, spread eagle, and every now and then would reach over to play with the laces on Hilde's shoes. They had been like that for about an hour, escaping the stuffiness of the house, more imagination than dust, while the others sat inside with sandwiches and glasses of lemonade.
Duo shrugged, even though he knew Hilde couldn't see.
"I'm tired of feeling like a..."
He didn't know what, really. A stereotype? An archetype? A destructive force with Religion as its opposite?
When Solo died, Duo had taken the kid's memory into himself in an effort to maintain that reckless survivalism that was so necessary in the hidden corners of L2. I won't take shit from nobody, just like him. But then, of course, he had been taken in by the Maxwell Church, and he pushed Solo to the back of his mind, crowding him with "Please" and "Thank you" and "Lights out now, children." He had even gotten to the point where he didn't hide bread in his baggy pants, and he took that as a sign he should let a family adopt him.
Solo wouldn't be so contained, and within months his foster family had sent him back to the church, to Father and SisterMother, who smiled and hugged him and braided his hair better than anyone else.
Duo tried to be the hero, and Solo backed him up on this one, because he had been good for so long that he thought that might be his role, the reformed vagabond who relied on his street wiles and mended heart to save his family, friends, and home. He had returned with what turned out to be the worst literal deus ex machina ever, to find blood and ruin and a new last name, and there was no hero in sight, least of all him.
Shinigami seemed to suit him better than Deus because if he embodied death, then no one else had to, no one else could. He loved Hilde, he really did, and he wanted her to finally have whatever she wanted in life, but he had to keep the balance or else it wouldn't work out.
Duo shrugged again. "It just doesn't suit me."
Hilde reached down to grab the hand that had thoroughly tangled her shoelaces.
"As long as we're both standing there and your shirt is tucked in, I couldn't care less if we got married in the middle of a junk yard, baby."
Duo smiled, "That's my girl."