Title: Shadows in Your Moonlight 2/? 'Glory Like Circles in the Water'
Author: Ryoko no Shinigami
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Includes the mentally unstable, cruelty, and strangeness. Also includes implied boy/boy relationships.
Pairings: 1x2, and 3x4 in other parts, implied only
Notes: After finishing the first part of this series, 'And They Wail Endlessly in My Ears, And is it Not Glorious?', I had to question where exactly I wanted the rest of the story to go. I floundered for more than a week, but my muses hit suddenly, and this is what they came up with. Admittedly, this is nothing like I thought this story would turn out. The quotes in Duo's monologues are from various works of Shakespeare, among them, 'Julius Caesar'. And yes, it *is* spelled 'Caesar', not 'Cesar'.
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Over the next several days, all four pilots tried to deal with Duo. His condition seemed to deteriorate every day. Heero sat and watched as he stormed up and down his room, gesturing with his hands and shouting about nothing, jumping wildly from one tangent to another. This was broken by crying fits, spells when he sat shivering in a corner and backed away from anyone who tried to comfort him. Sometimes, he seemed maniacally happy. When he slept, he was fitful and restless. It was draining Heero, who stubbornly refused any aid from the others.
They were sitting in their room, side by side on the bed. Duo had been silent for about an hour, after having screamed for ages until his voice was raw. He turned to Heero, a touch of hysteria in his whispered voice.
"Did you know, Heero? About Caesar? They killed him in cold blood, for no reason other than they thought he was a threat to their power. Stabbed him to death in his own Senate House. His own friends! He worried them. But he got his own back. Brutus was troubled, tormented by visions of the ghost of Caesar. Eventually he committed suicide, on the run, alone, and friendless." He leapt away and threw out his arms. "'Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him! The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones!'" and he broke into wild gales of laughter, ignoring his real audience in favor of one that only he could see.
Heero shuddered at the cruel humor in Duo's voice. The smaller boy sat and threw his arm around Heero's shoulders, speaking between giggles.
"These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die. In triumph they die, Heero, just like us! Like the fire and powder which as they kiss consume. Just like fire, Heero, which consumes everything…everything…" and he was off, hair streaming around him, tears running down his cheeks, looking strange on his bright, laughing face.
Heero had to get out. When Wufei came up to check on them, as he regularly did, Heero stumbled to the door. "Take care of him, I'll be back," was all he said, and he was gone.
Wufei stood blinking in the doorway. Duo seemed terribly interested in the coverlet on the bed, and was picking at it fretfully. Looking up at Wufei, he murmured, "O for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention…" Wufei started, then realized that Duo's eyes were glazed over. He was not really seeing him. He walked carefully over to the bed, and knelt beside the boy, who stared still at the door.
"Duo? Duo, do you hear me?"
"I hear you, Wufei. I hear you."
"What's wrong with you? Why are you acting like this?"
Duo didn't answer, instead, he turned to Wufei, a small smile playing on his lips. "What do you think of justice, Wufei? About why we're fighting?"
Wufei blinked. "Justice is what we live for, Duo. You know that. For our existence to have any meaning, we must defend justice. Many people have given their lives so that I can further justice for my clan. I live so that others can have justice."
"But it's all really pointless in the end, isn't it?"
Wufei was too shocked to move. "How can you say that? It is for justice that we are all fighting. So that others don't have to go through what we did and…"
"But it will never work." Duo walked to the window and sat down on the seat, "We'll die for this, and eventually the very people we're fighting for will start another pointless war, and there will be more martyrs, and it will happen again, and again, and again."
"That's not true."
"It is, and you know it." He sneered at Wufei, every word punctuated with scorn. "You just don't want to see that everything you've based your life on is foolishness. You don't want to think that your little wife gave her life so that you can further the idiocy in which you are now so steeped, you can't even see how stupid it is. And to top it all off, you didn't even succeed in saving your people!"
"How dare you! You don't know what you're talking about! Merian was noble and brave and strong!"
"And that master of yours. So brave, sacrificing himself and everyone so that dear Wufei can further spout about justice!" Duo spat, "It's sickening. He wasted his life so that you can waste yours, so that you can soak your hands in useless blood of other stupid soldiers."
Wufei felt his fists clench as he stood. "My master gave his life so that other people on other colonies could finally have justice. He was willing to do anything so long as he was never beaten."
"So what? He's still dead, isn't he? All your people are dead too. You couldn't save them. Your wife died so that you could protect them, and you couldn't even do that. So what makes you think you can save anyone else? What makes you think they want to be saved?" Duo fixed him with a cold stare, "And why do you think you, a weak child who never wanted anything more than to be a scholar, could ever be worthy of saving them? The good is oft interred with their bones, Wufei. And any small good you have done will go with you when you die. You sacrificed everything, your hopes, your learning. And your wife, and so many others, gave everything they had. And it will all go to nothing."
And what could Wufei say to that? It was true, he felt it in his heart. He was unworthy. He had never had the strength, never had the right to pilot Nataku. He stumbled back, falling against the wall in his shock.
"So, you see now that it's true. Your wife died in vain, and your master, and all your people. And so will you." And that cruel smile still lingered on Duo's lips as he began chanting, a toneless mantra. Wufei staggered to the door. Out in the hall, he slid down the wall to sit in a boneless heap. Weak. He was so weak. And through the door, he heard the rhythmic chanting of a soft, mad voice.
"Glory is like a circle in the water, which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, till by broad spreading it disperse to nought"