The Urchin: Part Six

By Banshi

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A week passed before Duo noticed that they had fallen into an odd sort of domestic pattern. Duo was the only person he had ever met that didn't have anything to complain about in his roommate. Trowa was even more compatible with him than Heero. More than once Trowa had started a conversation that had no information-conveying value whatsoever.

It had surprised Duo to find that the man had a gift for idle chit-chat. Before, Trowa hadn't said anything that wasn't important. Now, he was saying things that seemed only to fill the silence. Duo also noticed that these odd conversations only happened when the silence was getting to Duo himself, and at other times Trowa was content to just let him babble without telling him to shut up, or walking away. Duo found that he liked these times a lot, no matter whose turn it was to talk the other's ear off. The other day, Leslie had even said that it was cute.

They had gone to check on the two kids. The girl had been picked up by one of the rescue missions and taken to a hospital on another colony. They had never discovered her name.

The boy was well on his way to a full recovery, and the resemblance to Solo only increased when he was awake. His name was Benjamin, and he had attached himself to Trowa. It would take an entire emergency tent staff to keep him in bed when Duo and Trowa left.

"Cute kid." It came out a little sarcastically as they left for the evening, but Duo could tell that Trowa had heard the sincerity.

"Yeah. He seems like he's a fighter, good at surviving, has a killer sense of humor." Trowa turned to look at him with a mischievous glint in his eye. "Not like anyone else we know of course."

Duo grinned. "Of course."

It was still a thrill to see an answering humor in Trowa's eyes. Still, ha! It had only been a week, but it felt like forever, and yet it was still new. He had trouble imagining what life had been like without Trowa, and yet memory would remind him all too quickly. Trowa was a happy moment now.

Duo prayed that he would be more than a moment. Another glance behind him revealed Ben sitting at the entrance of the tent watching them leave, a nurse fussing at him. For a second Duo saw the wrong face on the boy, and it was Solo sitting there. The vision was gone the next heartbeat, and he knew it for what it was.

That didn't make it any easier. He waved good-bye to the boy with a grin on his face, and received a wave in return. As he turned back around he caught Trowa's eye, and they nodded. They continued home in silence.

For once the evening was uneventful. Duo even had time to re-order supplies. It was exhausting supplying care packages to the various child-gangs in the neighborhood, but he figured it was worth it just knowing that the kids wouldn't starve to death.

That had been the call that started the whole thing. Leslie had told him that children were starving and her resources were running out. And the manipulative old woman had played the trump card.

"It's not as if there's a Father Maxwell around here anymore taking care of them."

He had started planing the second the sentence had left her mouth.

So here he was, alone in a house with Trowa Barton playing Father to an army's worth of hungry mouths. Duo sighed to himself, and tallied the new supplies. As expected, the first aid and food stuffs were going fastest. He suspected that the kids were selling one and gorging on the other. Not that he could blame them, it's what he would've done when he was their age.

Trowa had the news on the radio in the other room. A TV would have ensured a break-in. So far it was all boring political stuff that he was sure Quatre and Relena would fill them in on it later.

Then there was a "special bulletin"

"We interrupt your regular programming to announce that the investigation into the vandalism at the Governor's mansion has been concluded without satisfactory answers. Authorities have concluded that the violence was caused by one or more of the child-gangs terrorizing the warehouse district. Being unable to determine which gang is responsible, the authorities have issued a mandate. All children found without proof of a home address will be detained, and shipped off to half-way houses. ID's will be issued to all minors during regular business hours at neighborhood precincts.

We now return to your regularly scheduled program."

Duo found himself staring in shock at the wall behind his kitchen sink. He had known about the vandalism in the high-class neighborhoods, but had seen no connection with the kids living there in the warehouse district. They had all been too busy selling first-aid supplies and wolfing down peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches.

Vaguely he heard Trowa turn off the radio and walk up behind him. He spoke before the taller man could.

"There isn't even a neighborhood precinct here, let alone anyone with the money to pay for all those ID's at twenty credits a pop."

"Or a home address for everyone."

Duo spun around and was caught in sad, green eyes. Trowa realized the implications of this mandate only slightly less than Duo did. And that was because Duo hadn't shared much of his street memories with his friend.

"It gets worse, I think. At least, it gets worse unless somebody changed the foster-care system around." Trowa frowned, and looked down at Duo's hands. Duo followed his gaze, and saw that he was shaking.

"Sit down Duo, and give yourself a moment to get collected. I'll make tea, then you can tell me what you think I need to know." Trowa lead him to a chair and pushed him into it before turning away to put on the kettle. Duo took deep breaths, mostly so he could inhale around the sudden swelling of his heart. Trowa understood how hard it was to share his past, and accepted that he probably wasn't going to share everything. If Duo hadn't loved him before, he had fallen now.

Trowa sat down opposite him, handing him a mug of very hot chamomile tea. Quatre had sent it a little while ago "as a calming influence." This was the first time that Duo felt he really needed it.

"When I was little, everything wasn't nearly so organized around here. The gang and I were squatting in a warehouse about three blocks down the street. It was one of the only ones without holes in the roof, so we were comfortable there. The only clinics that we knew of were those large white and steel buildings uptown. We never went near them, because we would tell each other these kind-of ghost stories about them. You know the 'and anyone who goes near the place vanishes, never to be seen alive again' type of stories. Because that's the way it was. Kids would go in, carried between two cops, and the next time we saw them was dead in an alley on our side of town with strange stuff around them. Now I know that they were hospital bracelets and tourniquet tubes and such. But the first time I saw those on anybody living was when I was with G, years later."

Duo nearly laughed remembering his reaction to the first physical G's doctor had put him through. That had been the first time G had acknowledged that Shinigami may indeed exist.

"Anyway, the point is, that these kids I knew didn't walk through those doors willingly. Not even one was stupid enough to fall for the promise of free food and medicine. Hell, we barely knew what medicine was. Usually the poor fools would get dragged away under some semblance of a social services program. They would come into the neighborhood, claiming that they were going to clean the place up by finding us all homes. It only took one round-up for us to figure out that we didn't want to get caught."

Trowa's eyes were wide and bright when Duo dared to look up again. Duo felt the bottom of his stomach drop out. He didn't want to be pitied.

"What happened to tip you off?" Looking up again, Duo saw something in Trowa's gaze that he hadn't seen since Father Maxwell's death. He had never figured out what that look meant, just that it wasn't anything bad.

"We watched them cart kids off. A week later we found them in the gutter. We didn't stick around to find out what the spin doctors did with it."

Trowa reached across the table and touched the back of Duo's hand. Duo realized that he had his mug in a death grip. Trowa snuck a couple of fingers between Duo's mug and his palm, trying to loosen his hold.

"It's alright Duo. Even if the goons here are stupid enough to ignore the Earth-Sphere Alliance mandates, they aren't good enough to get anything past the two of us. We won't let them continue their practices."

"I'm glade you said that, because they are that stupid, and I am going to stop them. It's nice to know that I'm going to have some help."

Trowa graced him with a slight smile, and Duo felt himself grinning, his emotions back in the less-depressing range. For the first time in a long time he felt like everything was going to be alright.

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Trowa watched Duo's eyes brighten, and knew that he had chosen the right words to express his intent. He glanced down at their joined hands. Well, he amended, half his intent. The tea had cooled so that it wouldn't burn their mouths, but neither touched it.

He could tell that remembering had been difficult for Duo, and that he had only shared a small piece of the whole. That he may never share the whole. And that was alright, because Duo now knew that he could share if he ever felt the need.

Trowa's smile stayed in place as they shared a comfortable silence, listening to the neighborhood hum outside their walls.

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continued in part seven