If I Should Die...
Interlude three: Becoming
Summary: Sometimes zero doesn't mean nothing.
Author's Note: Another look into the past, another place where we turn. Thanks to Bronze, many of the grammatical problems have been hammered into oblivion.
The first time Duo uses the Zoning and Emotional Range Omitted system, it is out of curiosity. He is in Deathscythe, preparing to skirmish with five Tauruses when he remembers the upgrades G recommended he steal. Their system works out well: G lets him know what software upgrades are ready to lift and Duo hacks into the computer system and takes them. He's just installed three new protocols and a monstrous file labeled only ZERO. Five Tauruses aren't anything Duo worries about when Deathscythe isn't in tip-top condition, so he figures now is as good a time as any to figure out what this ZERO thing does.
He runs the program with a couple taps of the keypad and time seems to stop. Space has never seemed so expansive, and so simple. He wonders why he feels distance from himself, from the approaching suits, and wonders if the ZERO program is some sort of morphine substitute.
A mobile suit moves on the port side of his cockpit, and seventeen logical responses immediately pop into his brain. Eighty-eight-point-two percent of those responses result in total annihilation of all OZ suits in the vicinity. In one of them, he destroys a nearby base as well. His fear is a far-distant thing, like maybe it's happening to someone else. He can feel his heartbeat settling, adrenaline calming.
"Oh fuck no," Duo says, and hits the self-destruct button.
Surviving the self-destruct was not one of the projected 17 scenarios. Still, two months later he is sitting shirtless on a cold metal table while Professor G listens to his heart and mutters vague things in German.
Duo has a respect for the strange doc. Any guy who would catch him trying to blow up his life's work only to suggest he steal it instead has gundanium balls. He knows G is eccentric, and he appreciates the guy's special brand of crazy.
"So that ZERO system program? The one you recommended and I uploaded into Shinigami?" Duo asks while G scribbles something onto a chart.
"Ya, ya," G says, and scribbles something else that looks like "cheese hatter rubble seven."
"What the fuck was that all about?" Duo asks, swinging his feet. G steps aside to avoid being kicked. "It made me feel like a robot. Are we letting our robot overlords make decisions now?"
G doesn't look up from his clipboard. "I am concerned for your stress levels. Lots of stress on your heart, brain."
Duo flexes his right hand, feeling the pull of healing tissues from a recent wrist sprain. "Can't you just send me some nice music? Maybe you could send me on a vacation. Oh, oh, I could use a massage." He points at G. "Those are excellent ways to help me relax! Thanks for thinking of me!"
"First you steal my mobile suit," G grumbles, pulling open the top drawer in a nearby desk and rooting through. "Now you expect me to send you on vacation."
"Well," Duo points out, "you're the one who's worried about my stress levels."
G tosses a few things on top of the desk, behind the desk, and a few items sail in the general vicinity of the trash can before he finally makes a noise of triumph and returns. He swabs some adhesive onto a silver disk roughly the size of a quarter and attaches it behind Duo's ear. "You haven't been trained for this," he says. "The G-forces, strain of war, the pressure of people relying on you for things outside your control-"
"I sound like a superhero. Do I have an action figure?" Duo asks.
G ignores him. "No human is meant to go through these things. We chose children as our pilots because of your good reflexes-" he slaps Duo on the bicep, "-and your mental flexibility!"
"I thought you chose me because I'm a little bastard," Duo said, rubbing his bicep and eyeing the professor. "And you didn't want me to blow up the hanger and kill us all."
G laughed. "Just so, just so! You have good instincts, and tough spirits... but all of that does not help your heart. You are too young for heart attacks. Come, come, try this now."
He toggles a small switch on the disk on Duo's neck. For a moment, Duo doesn't notice a difference. G stares at him expectedly; Duo stares right back, waiting. A calm settles over his mind, an almost zen state, and the two stare at each other.
"I don't get it," Duo says.
"Interesting," G replies and writes something down.
Rather than his normal curiosity or irritation at G's lack of information, Duo simply sits, patient. G pulls out the stethoscope again, and Duo realizes he can sense his own heart beat, the lull of his own breathing; they are slow and even.
"Look at this," G says after twenty minutes of nothing but poking him and making noises. He hands Duo a tablet with a battle simulation on it. "What do you do?"
"Blow the space station-it'll take out all the surrounding ships," Duo says.
"Eh?" G says, sounding surprised, but Duo isn't listening. "What about the lives?"
"Acceptable losses," Duo says, then considers G's question. Why would the professor ask him that? Duo knows that is not the choice he would usually make, and realizes that his emotions aren't functioning. At all. Destroying the space station is an efficient use of resources, and removing support for OZ makes sense when you don't care about potential innocents. He reaches up to the disk, turns it off, and feels a sudden rushing return of fear, anger, and disgust. His heart rate jumps. "What the fuck?"
"An upgrade of the ZERO system." G is making more notes on the file. "Low regards for civilian life... we didn't anticipate that."
"Back the fuck up, Professor," Duo says, and rips the notes from G's hands. "You just turned off my emotions."
G sighs. "We did not anticipate the war lasting this long. We did not anticipate the psychological cost. The soul."
Duo works his fingernails under the device and tears it off his neck. His skin burns where the adhesive rips away. "You didn't anticipate my soul?"
G has always reminded Duo of a rat: long nose, cunning eyes, sharp features, and his particular canny intelligence. He lets Duo know what to steal, emails him information, and always laughs when he hears about Duo's pranks and exploits. Now, his eyes are sad, and he pats Duo on the hand as if to say, "good boy. You're a good boy."
"I just want to make things easier, boy," G says. "Just a little easier."
Easier. Duo hears the word and examines the disk in his hand, turning it over with his fingers. There is a certain appeal to the system, the ease with which it allows you to sort through solutions, the way even things like fear and anger are pushed to the side. He bets the ZERO system would cut through the nightmares, pull back the curtain of blood from his dreams. You go to the doctor and get anesthetic before surgery, right? He thinks ZERO might be like that: just a gentle anesthetic to help him make the tough decisions. If OZ had ZERO, it's likely the entire army would be taking advantage of it.
But he also remembers why he agreed to steal Deathscythe originally. He remembers Sister plaiting his hair, and gently telling him, "It's okay to cry."
Duo slides off the bench, tosses the disc on the ground, and steps on it with the heel of his boot. He wiggles his heel until he feels the give of the casing and hears the undeniable crunch of delicate equipment. G makes a frustrated noise and stares down at the remains of the disc.
"War shouldn't be easy," Duo says. He tries not to be mad at G, but it's hard. "Killing people shouldn't be easy." He's always wondered: was it easy for people to destroy Maxwell's Church? Was that just a whim? Does anyone but him wake up with nightmares of dead priests, dead nuns bleeding and broken? "If you want to make things easier, make Shinigami's cloak last longer. Give my scythe some more juice. But don't fucking make me into a robot."
G glares at him. "Look, boy, this is a weapon just like any other-and obviously it needs some tweaking-"
"I choose what tech to steal," Duo says, and shrugs into his shirt. "Don't make any more of this shit. This is a bad idea. You don't get to turn off emotions just to make things easier. You don't get to stop feeling just so you can kill a few more people and sleep at night. Maybe you make faster decisions, maybe you make more efficient decisions-but it ain't right." He exhales. "If you're worried about my soul, well... this'll make me soulless."
G exhales on what might be a dark chuckle. "Fine, boy. But you take care of yourself, you hear?"
Duo pulls his cap on his head. "Roger that."
After he leaves, he spends five hours on his onboard computer and purges Deathscythe of any remaining hints of the ZERO system. The next time G sends him notice of an upgrade to steal, he deletes it sight-unseen. Whatever regard exists between them, whatever respect Duo has for the man's brilliance and daring and willingness to be an asshole, Duo knows there are lines they cannot cross. He runs his fingers over his long braid and decides that sometimes adults are not to be trusted with dangerous equipment.
Three weeks later, he and Q receive orders to board the OZ transport ship Vega and steal vital communiques kept in hard-copy somewhere by some high muckity-muck. "Piece of cake," Duo tells Quatre breezily.
"I hope you're right," Quatre replies.
Duo declares himself fit for duty two weeks after the Vega blows. He is only five pounds shy of his pre-Vega weight, even with the loss of his hair. His thigh throbs occasionally, and his limp really isn't so bad. He dreams nightly of Sister's dead eyes staring out from Quatre's face, but mostly he is bored with sitting around and staring at Heero.
"Don't be an idiot," Heero tells him. "You're five pounds from adequate health. Start eating and stop complaining."
"I don't take orders from you," Duo points out, stuffing some clothes in a duffel.
"What does your contact say?" Heero asks, unfazed.
"I don't take orders from anyone," Duo returns, sharp and with a touch of menace.
Heero doesn't blink. "I say-"
"I don't take orders from anyone," Duo repeats, and his hand is on a gun. Stupid to challenge Heero like that, because he's not entirely sure where in Heero's spandex shorts he keeps his guns, but Duo will not submit without a fight and he doesn't know why people keep expecting him to.
Heero studies him for a moment and, for the first time since they met, backs down. "We leave in an hour."
Every time he shares a safehouse with Q, Duo meticulously goes through Quatre's things, looking for a small silver disk. He wonders what he will do if he finds it: Steal it? Hide it? Destroy it? Confront him? The idea makes his heart pound in his chest and his stomach churn like no battle has.
He sees it once while Quatre is pulling on his button-up shirt, nestled at the base of his neck and small enough to be a silver mole. Duo feels a rush of adrenaline, because this is it: the confrontation he's been dreading. When Quatre turns, a gentle smile on his face, Duo remains frozen, cold.
"Is something wrong, Duo?" Quatre asks. His expression is puzzled, open.
Duo wonders why he's the only one who asks the hard questions, who thinks about the implications of their tools, of their missions. He feels a sudden rush of anger, directed toward Quatre and Heero and Trowa and Mei and the doctors, and most of all himself. Why is he the one to carry this load? How dare they make him bear the moral implications of this war? The responsibility is like a weight on his chest, slowly smothering him.
"Don't do me any favors anymore," he replies. "Just leave me alone."
He can tell Q is shocked and confused at the cold reception, but Duo can't stop seeing dead eyes, feeling the heat of the explosion burning the top layer of his skin. He can't help but look at Quatre and think, that is the friend who shot me.
He can't wait for this war to end.