Returning Home The Meeting

He stood waiting. He didn't know what it was that possessed him to agree to such an outrageous idea. It was four years since they last spoke and he was still angry. Of course he missed what they had together, but he could not avoid the feeling of pain every time he though of him. Every time he though of...

...Heero.

It was autumn and there was a cool breeze in the air. Duo leaned back against a tall, oak tree and looked around, then glanced down to his watch. It was 12:28 and Heero said he'd be there at 12:30. Always knowing Heero to be annoyingly punctual, Duo had shown up ten minutes before the scheduled time. Some leaves flew by, caught up in the free blowing wind and were whisked off to some unknown place, following the small sidewalk. Taking a moment to look up after them, Duo noticed a figure coming toward him on the path. Pushing himself off the tree with his left foot, he came to a full stand.

"Right on time," he muttered with the slight undertone of anger. It was faint, but enough that Heero could pick up on it.

"Duo..." he approached, "I...." It would have been unlike the "perfect pilot" to be so bad with words after so many years of being able to get right to the point with simple messages such as, "I will kill you." But the years after the war had changed him, as had the time spent with, then without, Duo.

"You're..? What?" Duo was impatient. After so much pain that had been caused the day Heero left it was hard to connect any other emotions to him aside from anger and sadness.

"I wanted to say I'm sorry... I never got a chance to." Heero looked to the ground with sorrow filled eyes. The once cold, hard, cobalt eyes that had turned into soft, love filled eyes, were now weak. He could not even bring himself even to face Duo anymore.

"That's right... You were too busy walking out on me to even say good-bye, how could you have time to say sorry?" Duo turned away. "I can't believe I even agreed to come here. I must have been crazy." With hands clenched in fists at his side, the blue violet eyed pilot began to walk away.

"Stop, please! Let me explain... I didn't mean for it to happen that way." Heero's pleading voice tried to pull him back. "I never meant for it to... I would never have wanted to hurt you."

"Oh, so walking back into my life after four years to say 'sorry, let me explain' will work? To walk in right out of the blue after not hearing a single word from you!?" Duo had turned around and was trudging toward Heero with pain, bearing deep in his eyes. "It's not like you blew me off for lunch! This wasn't one hour - it was four years!"

Heero looked up and met Duo's sad eyes. "I know... four years, three months, one week, one day and it should be about 12 and a half hours since we last saw each other." He took another step towards the other, "I had to go... I didn't want to... and I didn't say good-bye because it was too painful to go through..."

"You had to go!? Damn it, Heero! The war is over! There's peace! We resigned! Our jobs as pilots are over, what could be so important that you'd have to go somewhere if you didn't want to go! No one owns you, you're not some puppet that will jump at strings pulled! What was so important that you had to leave me!?" Duo was furious at this point, he was screaming and tears were running down his face.

Seeing Duo like this brought so much pain to his heart, Heero had to do something. He moved forward and held Duo tightly. Heero held him, against his struggles, and whispered to him, "You were... if I hadn't gone, they would have killed you..."

~ ~ ~

To be continued...

'~'~'~'

Ahem, that was rather fluffy. In any case it was a spur of the moment thought. Are you interested in it at all? If so I could continue it. It's kind of a fix to my writer's block. I just needed something to write and, well... that's what you got there.

-Saturn

p.s. You're actually getting another chapter to this, whoo!