Warning - A lot more swearing in this, a lot. A little dark.
Sweet Roses Wither Ch. 2 - Trust Betrayed and Burning
Duo scanned the paper in his hand before stabbing the dry earth with the sickle and embedding it in the dirt so that he could hold the paper with both of his shaking hands. It was a crumpled newspaper section of an L2 obituary. Hilde Schbeiker, 22, had been found dead in her apartment, her throat slit. Hot tears coursed down Duo's face as he continued to read. He saw that her fiance, Heero Yuy, had been missing for over a week, and was presumed dead. The apartment had been overturned, completely demolished. 'Just like Relena's,' Duo thought to himself. He cast a sweeping look over the fields, and his stinging eyes rested on the lean figure of Heero Yuy as he walked toward the windmill to fix one of the arms damaged in a storm that Duo hadn't had time to repair. Heero's eyes were as blank as they were five minutes earlier, when he had seen Duo grab the obituary with Hilde's picture on the top of the column.
Duo retreated to the old willow by the pond for a late lunch. His thinking spot was shaded, and no one bothered him. He sat underneath the waving boughs of the old tree, and watched as they skimmed the water in the unusual May breeze. He wiped away the last of his tears with the back of his wrist. So Hilde was dead. And Heero was supposed to be too. He scooted up against the gnarled trunk of the willow and finished his lunch slowly. A rustling in the leaves above his head half an hour into his meal averted his attention, and he looked up. Heero had perched precariously on on of the willows slim branches. Duo jumped up, and Heero said,
"So you think I killed her?"
"Just like you killed Relena," Duo was shaking again, he wanted nothing to do with Heero.
"Whatever makes you happy," Heero replied simply.
Duo turned and walked away as quickly as he could without breaking into a run. The breeze that had been there minutes before had disappeared, leaving humid, stale air that was almost suffocating in its thickness. He turned up loose dust with every foot tread, and returned to the field where he had planted his sickle firmly in the ground. Pulling it out of the dirt, Duo continued to walk quickly toward the rice paddy, hoping the water might cool him off. The wind coming off the lazy river swirled around Duo in the characteristic pattern preceeding a storm. Duo hacked away at some of the rice, before realizing that harvest was still a month or two away. Throwing the cut stalks back into the shallow water in frustration, Duo waded out of the water, and smoothed his pants down from their rolled up position. He cast a troubled look to the west, where thunder clouds were massing. On the far side of the cotton plot, another storm was massing. Duo snorted in disgust as he saw Heero disappear into the one room house. The time would shortly come when the two men would face each other, no longer as friends, but as two enemies that shared a past.
Duo tossed and turned in his bed that night. Rain coursed down the windows of the house, and thunder rolled over the land. He kept having the same dream over and over. First of the day he broke up with Hilde, and then falling into Heero and Relena's old apartment. He tried counting sheep, but that only reminded him of the days he had spent breaking his back over this land. He tried singing himself to sleep, but that only reminded him of when Hilde sung him to sleep when they had been together. He even tried reading, but that reminded him of the obituary from the L2 newspaper. He finally gave up and went down to his almost empty kitchen. Nothing enticed his appetite, so he just sat at the table, and scanned the rest of the newspaper he had bought while he had gone to town for more supplies. It was an old edition, from a few days ago, and the ink was starting to fade and the paper didn't have the 'hot off the press look' anymore. Duo sighed and tossed the paper aside. Nothing interesting anymore. Duo had found that with the total pacifism policy, there was nothing to do anymore. Nothing to read about. Now that Hilde was gone, there sure as Hell wasn't someone to fight for.
A particularly fierce bolt of lightning ripped through the sky, and was immediately followed by a crash of thunder that shook the table, and the pictures on the walls. The pictures were haunting images painted of the plantation years ago. When it had looked good. Duo realized it probably hadn't looked that way for hundreds of years, and poor old Lady Maxwell had this picture painted so that she wouldn't have to see the crumbling steps and the deteriorating brick. Duo rose from the table and stretched his arms, in doing so cutting his hand on the lamp hanging above the table.
"Shit!" Duo swore softly, bringing his hand down to look at the cut that now oozed dark red blood.
Duo stared at the blood, feeling adrenaline rushing in his veins. He was bleeding. That meant he was alive. He was alive damnit. That scared Duo. He needed to bleed to feel alive, and that couldn't be good. He grabbed a crumpled napkin and pressed it hard against the wound. Blood slowly soaked through the thin paper, and Duo began to relax. He sat back down, and looked out the window at the lightning coursing through the clouds, blazing trails through the sky. Thunder continued to roll out of the clouds, and every so often, the angry clouds would part and reveal a bit of the crescent moon.
'God the moon looks so small from here. Just a few years ago, I could have destroyed it. Damnit I have to stay in the present."
Duo rose again, this time being careful of the lamp hanging precariously above his head, all the while making a mental note to remove it. He flopped down on a couch in one of the rooms, he didn't care enough to pay much attention to what room he now rested in, but that he was now exhausted, and badly needed sleep.
The morning came all too quickly from the time Duo fell asleep. He threw a worn burlap sack over his shoulder and stalked to the vegetable garden where the young plants were soaked with rain water. Duo walked with his thoughts trailing absentmindedly and eyes on the ground. When Duo reached the first row of vegetables, he lifted his head, and froze. Heero was there. He was silently weeding between the long row of onions, and didn't look up. Duo turned on his heel to walk away, until Heero said in his monotonous voice,
"You know we'll never get anything done if you avoid me."
"I'll do as I goddamn please, and hell, I have a reason to avoid you," Duo started to shake again; why was he afraid of this man?
"You're wrong you know."
"What? All of a sudden I can't come or go as I want? Don't forget, I hired you. You're lucky I don't have the fucking guts to fire you. Hell, you'd probably come after me and slit my throat."
"Not about that, and you know it." He finally looked at Duo, "Why don't you just face the fact that I didn't kill them."
"Then why are you here? Your legally dead. How the hell can you be here?"
"You think I wanted to stay on L2? Where the most important woman that was in my life was killed?" Heero's voice rose, "What did you do in my situation, Duo? Hilde was practically dead to you."
"You took her, you bastard, and then you killed her," Duo clenched his hands into a fist and took a step toward Heero.
"Listen to yourself, Duo. Just listen. I didn't take Hilde. You think I took Hilde?"
"I saw with my own eyes! Damn you, I saw it! I even have nightmares!"
"Can you tell dream from reality anymore. Tell me just what you saw, Duo. I think you're going to find it very difficult to separate concious from subconcious."
"That morning Hilde told me she was leaving to be with you. You came with her," Duo's voice shook as he began to recount the ugly scene in Relena's apartment, and when he finished, he glared at Heero and said, "Then I ran out the door, and there were you and Hilde, making out as though there was no tomorrow."
Heero glared back at Duo and said, "Go read the paper, see what really happened. I think you'll find a different account."
Duo dropped his fist to his side in defeat, and knelt in the muddy ground, and then began to pull out the offending weeds with ferocity. They worked in silence, but Duo was now more confused than anything. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs that clouded his mind. Heero looked at him and said,
"What?"
"Nothing," Duo snarled.
Heero shrugged and continued working. He would get through to Duo. He had to. Duo was the only person he had left in his life. Duo continued to pull weeds from the soft earth, avoiding Heero's eyes. He could feel the Prussian blue pools boring holes into the back of his head when he turned his back. Finally, feeling as though he was about to explode, he did,
"What!?"
"What?"
"What do you want? What? Why do you keep staring?"
"I'm not staring."
"Yes you are. Just, God, just talk."
Heero smirked to himself. He said casually, to break the ice a bit, "When do we harvest the rice?"
"Two months. When it's ready, I'll tell you."
"Do you want me to tell you about Hilde?"
"No," For once Duo didn't seem to talk as much.
Duo looked at Heero briefly. Heero seemed hurt very deeply, or in great pain. Duo felt his throat catch, and regret welling inside him for his sharp words. Immediately, the reminder of Heero's heinous deeds shattered the remorse Duo felt, and he ripped a large, thorny weed out of the ground violently.
The afternoon was not as hot as the previous. A cool breeze leaned the cotton stalks, and Duo happily left Heero in the vegetable garden to talk to the manager of the bank that handled the plantation money. The man was dressed in a sufferingly hot suit, and looked like a funeral directer against Duo's light colored clothes. The man spoke almost in a pained voice, and constantly bit his lip. He shuffled his papers together, and leaned forward to face Duo.
"Mr. Maxwell," he began slowly, "You do realize that you are in serious debt?"
"Yes, I do," Duo tried to keep from strangling the man who kept telling him things he knew.
"How do you, expect to pay all of these, accumulating, debts?"
"Well, as you know, Lady Maxwell recently passed away, and we're still attempting to locate some inheritance money she received from her late husband and family. I presume she kept her maiden name when she married, Sir?" Duo said impatiently.
"Yes, a most, unfortunate circumstance. We do have some of the inheritance money in her secret bank account that she used for all her inheritance."
"Use that then!" Duo's voice rose.
"Her inheritance money was specified to be used only for the plantation itself," the man bit his lip again.
"THIS IS FOR THE PLANTATION DAMNIT!!!!!!!!!!!!" Duo yelled slamming a fist on the table around which he, the bank manager Mr. Smith, and old Mr. Carson sat.
For the first time in the conversation, the old man spoke, "For God's sake, Maxwell, keep your voice down. Mr. Smith, these are debts for the plantation right?"
"That is true, and I could work through the red tape to get the money out," Mr. Smith, shuffled through his papers and said, "There should be enough to cover most of these if not all."
"Then do it," Duo replied, a little more calmly.
When the suited man had left, Duo breathed a small sigh of relief. He collapsed on the bed in his room, and let his body relax. When night fell upon the land, Duo slept fitfully until a faint scratching at the bottom of his door interrupted his sleep. He looked at the space between the door and the wooden floorboards. An envelope stuffed full of something was wedged under the door. Duo pulled it out and opened it quickly. They were pictures. Pictures of Hilde. Pictures of Heero. Pictures of Relena. And Pictures of himself. There was a note with it.
'Duo, I thought you might like these pictures from our apartment. Some of the ones of Relena and I are burnt or wrinkled because of the condition that Relena's apartment was in.'
Duo hands began to tremble again, and he took the pictures out to the fields, and burned them. Heero watched from his window, and felt pain catch in his heart. Duo wasn't going to give in that easily.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ya, I know! Cliffie! I really wanted to get this out, and I hope that this is better than the first chapter. I'm going to try to make the future chapters even longer, but thought this lenght to be good for now. Please R&R!!!
~Gothica Angel
Sweet Roses Wither Ch. 2 - Trust Betrayed and Burning
Duo scanned the paper in his hand before stabbing the dry earth with the sickle and embedding it in the dirt so that he could hold the paper with both of his shaking hands. It was a crumpled newspaper section of an L2 obituary. Hilde Schbeiker, 22, had been found dead in her apartment, her throat slit. Hot tears coursed down Duo's face as he continued to read. He saw that her fiance, Heero Yuy, had been missing for over a week, and was presumed dead. The apartment had been overturned, completely demolished. 'Just like Relena's,' Duo thought to himself. He cast a sweeping look over the fields, and his stinging eyes rested on the lean figure of Heero Yuy as he walked toward the windmill to fix one of the arms damaged in a storm that Duo hadn't had time to repair. Heero's eyes were as blank as they were five minutes earlier, when he had seen Duo grab the obituary with Hilde's picture on the top of the column.
Duo retreated to the old willow by the pond for a late lunch. His thinking spot was shaded, and no one bothered him. He sat underneath the waving boughs of the old tree, and watched as they skimmed the water in the unusual May breeze. He wiped away the last of his tears with the back of his wrist. So Hilde was dead. And Heero was supposed to be too. He scooted up against the gnarled trunk of the willow and finished his lunch slowly. A rustling in the leaves above his head half an hour into his meal averted his attention, and he looked up. Heero had perched precariously on on of the willows slim branches. Duo jumped up, and Heero said,
"So you think I killed her?"
"Just like you killed Relena," Duo was shaking again, he wanted nothing to do with Heero.
"Whatever makes you happy," Heero replied simply.
Duo turned and walked away as quickly as he could without breaking into a run. The breeze that had been there minutes before had disappeared, leaving humid, stale air that was almost suffocating in its thickness. He turned up loose dust with every foot tread, and returned to the field where he had planted his sickle firmly in the ground. Pulling it out of the dirt, Duo continued to walk quickly toward the rice paddy, hoping the water might cool him off. The wind coming off the lazy river swirled around Duo in the characteristic pattern preceeding a storm. Duo hacked away at some of the rice, before realizing that harvest was still a month or two away. Throwing the cut stalks back into the shallow water in frustration, Duo waded out of the water, and smoothed his pants down from their rolled up position. He cast a troubled look to the west, where thunder clouds were massing. On the far side of the cotton plot, another storm was massing. Duo snorted in disgust as he saw Heero disappear into the one room house. The time would shortly come when the two men would face each other, no longer as friends, but as two enemies that shared a past.
Duo tossed and turned in his bed that night. Rain coursed down the windows of the house, and thunder rolled over the land. He kept having the same dream over and over. First of the day he broke up with Hilde, and then falling into Heero and Relena's old apartment. He tried counting sheep, but that only reminded him of the days he had spent breaking his back over this land. He tried singing himself to sleep, but that only reminded him of when Hilde sung him to sleep when they had been together. He even tried reading, but that reminded him of the obituary from the L2 newspaper. He finally gave up and went down to his almost empty kitchen. Nothing enticed his appetite, so he just sat at the table, and scanned the rest of the newspaper he had bought while he had gone to town for more supplies. It was an old edition, from a few days ago, and the ink was starting to fade and the paper didn't have the 'hot off the press look' anymore. Duo sighed and tossed the paper aside. Nothing interesting anymore. Duo had found that with the total pacifism policy, there was nothing to do anymore. Nothing to read about. Now that Hilde was gone, there sure as Hell wasn't someone to fight for.
A particularly fierce bolt of lightning ripped through the sky, and was immediately followed by a crash of thunder that shook the table, and the pictures on the walls. The pictures were haunting images painted of the plantation years ago. When it had looked good. Duo realized it probably hadn't looked that way for hundreds of years, and poor old Lady Maxwell had this picture painted so that she wouldn't have to see the crumbling steps and the deteriorating brick. Duo rose from the table and stretched his arms, in doing so cutting his hand on the lamp hanging above the table.
"Shit!" Duo swore softly, bringing his hand down to look at the cut that now oozed dark red blood.
Duo stared at the blood, feeling adrenaline rushing in his veins. He was bleeding. That meant he was alive. He was alive damnit. That scared Duo. He needed to bleed to feel alive, and that couldn't be good. He grabbed a crumpled napkin and pressed it hard against the wound. Blood slowly soaked through the thin paper, and Duo began to relax. He sat back down, and looked out the window at the lightning coursing through the clouds, blazing trails through the sky. Thunder continued to roll out of the clouds, and every so often, the angry clouds would part and reveal a bit of the crescent moon.
'God the moon looks so small from here. Just a few years ago, I could have destroyed it. Damnit I have to stay in the present."
Duo rose again, this time being careful of the lamp hanging precariously above his head, all the while making a mental note to remove it. He flopped down on a couch in one of the rooms, he didn't care enough to pay much attention to what room he now rested in, but that he was now exhausted, and badly needed sleep.
The morning came all too quickly from the time Duo fell asleep. He threw a worn burlap sack over his shoulder and stalked to the vegetable garden where the young plants were soaked with rain water. Duo walked with his thoughts trailing absentmindedly and eyes on the ground. When Duo reached the first row of vegetables, he lifted his head, and froze. Heero was there. He was silently weeding between the long row of onions, and didn't look up. Duo turned on his heel to walk away, until Heero said in his monotonous voice,
"You know we'll never get anything done if you avoid me."
"I'll do as I goddamn please, and hell, I have a reason to avoid you," Duo started to shake again; why was he afraid of this man?
"You're wrong you know."
"What? All of a sudden I can't come or go as I want? Don't forget, I hired you. You're lucky I don't have the fucking guts to fire you. Hell, you'd probably come after me and slit my throat."
"Not about that, and you know it." He finally looked at Duo, "Why don't you just face the fact that I didn't kill them."
"Then why are you here? Your legally dead. How the hell can you be here?"
"You think I wanted to stay on L2? Where the most important woman that was in my life was killed?" Heero's voice rose, "What did you do in my situation, Duo? Hilde was practically dead to you."
"You took her, you bastard, and then you killed her," Duo clenched his hands into a fist and took a step toward Heero.
"Listen to yourself, Duo. Just listen. I didn't take Hilde. You think I took Hilde?"
"I saw with my own eyes! Damn you, I saw it! I even have nightmares!"
"Can you tell dream from reality anymore. Tell me just what you saw, Duo. I think you're going to find it very difficult to separate concious from subconcious."
"That morning Hilde told me she was leaving to be with you. You came with her," Duo's voice shook as he began to recount the ugly scene in Relena's apartment, and when he finished, he glared at Heero and said, "Then I ran out the door, and there were you and Hilde, making out as though there was no tomorrow."
Heero glared back at Duo and said, "Go read the paper, see what really happened. I think you'll find a different account."
Duo dropped his fist to his side in defeat, and knelt in the muddy ground, and then began to pull out the offending weeds with ferocity. They worked in silence, but Duo was now more confused than anything. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs that clouded his mind. Heero looked at him and said,
"What?"
"Nothing," Duo snarled.
Heero shrugged and continued working. He would get through to Duo. He had to. Duo was the only person he had left in his life. Duo continued to pull weeds from the soft earth, avoiding Heero's eyes. He could feel the Prussian blue pools boring holes into the back of his head when he turned his back. Finally, feeling as though he was about to explode, he did,
"What!?"
"What?"
"What do you want? What? Why do you keep staring?"
"I'm not staring."
"Yes you are. Just, God, just talk."
Heero smirked to himself. He said casually, to break the ice a bit, "When do we harvest the rice?"
"Two months. When it's ready, I'll tell you."
"Do you want me to tell you about Hilde?"
"No," For once Duo didn't seem to talk as much.
Duo looked at Heero briefly. Heero seemed hurt very deeply, or in great pain. Duo felt his throat catch, and regret welling inside him for his sharp words. Immediately, the reminder of Heero's heinous deeds shattered the remorse Duo felt, and he ripped a large, thorny weed out of the ground violently.
The afternoon was not as hot as the previous. A cool breeze leaned the cotton stalks, and Duo happily left Heero in the vegetable garden to talk to the manager of the bank that handled the plantation money. The man was dressed in a sufferingly hot suit, and looked like a funeral directer against Duo's light colored clothes. The man spoke almost in a pained voice, and constantly bit his lip. He shuffled his papers together, and leaned forward to face Duo.
"Mr. Maxwell," he began slowly, "You do realize that you are in serious debt?"
"Yes, I do," Duo tried to keep from strangling the man who kept telling him things he knew.
"How do you, expect to pay all of these, accumulating, debts?"
"Well, as you know, Lady Maxwell recently passed away, and we're still attempting to locate some inheritance money she received from her late husband and family. I presume she kept her maiden name when she married, Sir?" Duo said impatiently.
"Yes, a most, unfortunate circumstance. We do have some of the inheritance money in her secret bank account that she used for all her inheritance."
"Use that then!" Duo's voice rose.
"Her inheritance money was specified to be used only for the plantation itself," the man bit his lip again.
"THIS IS FOR THE PLANTATION DAMNIT!!!!!!!!!!!!" Duo yelled slamming a fist on the table around which he, the bank manager Mr. Smith, and old Mr. Carson sat.
For the first time in the conversation, the old man spoke, "For God's sake, Maxwell, keep your voice down. Mr. Smith, these are debts for the plantation right?"
"That is true, and I could work through the red tape to get the money out," Mr. Smith, shuffled through his papers and said, "There should be enough to cover most of these if not all."
"Then do it," Duo replied, a little more calmly.
When the suited man had left, Duo breathed a small sigh of relief. He collapsed on the bed in his room, and let his body relax. When night fell upon the land, Duo slept fitfully until a faint scratching at the bottom of his door interrupted his sleep. He looked at the space between the door and the wooden floorboards. An envelope stuffed full of something was wedged under the door. Duo pulled it out and opened it quickly. They were pictures. Pictures of Hilde. Pictures of Heero. Pictures of Relena. And Pictures of himself. There was a note with it.
'Duo, I thought you might like these pictures from our apartment. Some of the ones of Relena and I are burnt or wrinkled because of the condition that Relena's apartment was in.'
Duo hands began to tremble again, and he took the pictures out to the fields, and burned them. Heero watched from his window, and felt pain catch in his heart. Duo wasn't going to give in that easily.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ya, I know! Cliffie! I really wanted to get this out, and I hope that this is better than the first chapter. I'm going to try to make the future chapters even longer, but thought this lenght to be good for now. Please R&R!!!
~Gothica Angel