Little Tin Flower, Red Stitches and a Rain Soaked Angel
Part IV ~ Stairway to HeavenBy Shannon the Twisted Link Worshiper
—O—
Their flight from the colony was eventless and quiet, neither of them speaking to each other for the length of the nearly twelve hour flight. Heero spent most of the time staring out the window into the depth of space, contemplating his puny existence in the bigger scope of things while Duo slept throughout a good portion of the journey, his head cushioned on a small pillow that had been provided by the shuttle's crew.
The shuttle touched down at an airport in California, from where the boys caught a connecting flight to France, where Relena had taken up office on the outskirts of Paris. Heero, ever the language master, got the two of them from the French airport down to Relena's rather spacious and ritzy apartments with little trouble and they soon found themselves sitting in an elegant parlor, waiting for their appointment.
Duo threw his arms behind his head and crossed one leg over the other, leaning back on the soft sofa. "Gee, I dunno Heero, it's all kind of… too nice here. I feel so out of place."
"You are," Heero said with that faintly traceable smile. "But I agree, it is a little overbearing."
"Since the war she must have been doing really well to be able to land herself in a dream palace like this," Duo nodded as he let his bug curious eyes roam around the lavish room. Unlike their very practical apartment back up on the colony, this room was decorated ornately with everything from extremely fine European furniture to tiny trinkets on the bookshelves for show, and though Duo liked a place with a little personality, he thought Relena's home was a bit overdone. So much that it even failed to communicate her personality at all, save that it was extremely superficial.
"She used to be a queen of the Peacecraft family, a good name in a powerful position. And then, of course, she's become Vice Minister and is apparently very popular with the people. She's a good figurehead, what with her ability to speak so well to a crowd and her former title and everything," Heero said casually, leaning back in the wingback chair that sat opposite the couch Duo was sitting on and touching his palms together. "I'd say she's got a little bit of money to throw around."
"You don't say," Duo mused as he took another look about the place.
"Hn," Heero mumbled in response to Duo's roving gaze. He never quite understood how someone who was nearly twenty years old could still act like such a little child, as if he were new to the world and had to absorb everything as if it were the first time. And when the thought started plaguing him for some time, even after Duo had stopped peeking around the room like a schoolboy, he decided he just had to ask. "Maxwell, what is it with you and your incessant curiosity?"
"What? I don't understand," Duo looked thoroughly confused at the question that seemed to appear from nowhere. Then again, he had grown rather used to that, as a lot of Heero's questions seemed to generate from seemingly nothing.
"I mean, why are you always looking at things as if you've never seen them before, or like you might never see them again?" Heero asked, his voice a little soft, as though he were embarrassed by the question and wished he could take it back. "You and I both know that you've seen things that some men lying on their deathbeds have never dreamed of seeing, even in their worst nightmares."
Duo smiled warmly as he answered, always willing to try and help Heero ease into the world of a civilian. Though Heero was pleased with the peace, Duo knew that at heart he was indeed a soldier who could only really feel in the heat of battle, no matter what he said. "Because, Hee-chan," he smiled, despite the obvious anger that was shot in his direction at the use of the epithet, "I've never had time to really look before. Now that peace has finally been attained, I have all the time in the world to just enjoy life for what it is. And you know what, now that I think about it, after seeing all those horrible things when I was only a child has taught me that everything is beautiful and that I can't dare to take anything, not even the smallest breath of wind or tiniest insect, for granted. You're always sitting around waiting for big things to happen, but when you do that, you miss all the little things, the things that make life worth living."
Heero was silent as Duo finished his little speech and ended up only giving him a grunt in return. Duo understood that Heero often did not say anything in return when whatever had been said to him had really struck a chord. Perhaps Heero would take him to heart on this. It seemed that it had more meaning to Heero than Duo (or perhaps even Heero himself) would ever know.
The perfect soldier found himself rising to join Duo on his couch. "So… maybe I should enjoy your company," he said quietly, jamming his hands between his knees as he bent forward a bit so he did not have to risk looking Duo in the eye.
Duo grinned and leaned forward as well, mimicking Heero's position as he said, "Maybe you should. You never know when I might just"—he snapped his fingers—"disappear into thin air."
"You're not planning on going anywhere, are you Maxwell?" Heero said suddenly in a voice that sounded rather fearful. "You… you wouldn't ever just pack up and go home, would you?"
"Home? Home where?" Duo laughed.
"With Hilde maybe?"
"Ha, I've burnt my bridges with Hilde no matter how friendly we may be. I could never go back to her without dragging myself there on my hands and knees," Duo clapped a hand on Heero's back and gave him a quick hug that somehow strangely resembled a headlock.
Heero pushed himself away from Duo, already angry that the conversation had become so amiable and friendly. He turned back to his cold stoic soldier-like attitude quickly, before things became too close. "Nevermind that, Maxwell. It's not important. I have no right to tell you how to live your life."
Duo laughed out loud again and grabbed Heero around the neck with both arms, pulling him closer. Though Heero was struggling slightly, trying to free himself from a gesture that he felt was far too welcoming, he soon found himself calmed and relaxed against Duo's chest. "Don't worry, Hee-chan. My home is with you. I have no where else to go and no one to go to."
"So that's it? I'm just a last resort?" Heero blurted out into Duo's black shirt, his voice losing that melancholy diction it usually carried.
Duo looked shocked as he pulled Heero away and sat him straight up, a hand planted firmly on each shoulder. "Heero Yuy, you know that you're the only person who's always been there for me, no matter how cold you like to pretend to be. You're my best friend. How could I ever leave you?"
"You will want to move on, eventually," Heero shrugged Duo's hands off his shoulders. "You'll get sick of me. Someone as happy and outgoing as you… you'll just get bored with me."
Duo grabbed Heero by the chin, forcing him to look into his eyes as he spoke. No matter how Heero tried to avert his eyes, Duo kept his grip firm, his big soft violet eyes raining down on Heero in a warm gentle shower. "You know that's not true. You know I love you too much to ever leave."
There, he had said it. Heero's eyes were wide with shock at the power of the words while Relena's eyes were wider, more like dinner plates, not because the words held any power for her, but because she had heard them just as she had walked into the room to receive her guests, catching the last phrase Duo had said to a Heero locked in his grip and gaze, totally out of context. And being as quick to jump to conclusions as she was, she took it immediately the wrong way. "Ahem, excuse me for interrupting boys, but I believe we have some business to attend to?"
Duo whipped around to see the Vice Minister standing rather apprehensively in the doorway, her long white coat falling around her britches and stocking clad legs and her arms crossed over her chest, pressing a clipboard tightly to her breast. "Ah, Miss Relena! Hiya!"
Heero just nodded in acknowledgement to her presence, unwilling to actually look up at her and make eye contact, especially after what she had just heard.
She gave an indignant snort, cleared her throat again and said, "Well boys, we have matters to attend to and time waits for no man, so let's to my offices and see what we can work out in regards to this Stella woman and her Operation DIANA."
Next thing either of them knew, they had followed Relena to a quite spacious office with a huge bay window that overlooked the magnificent French countryside. Sitting down behind the great oak desk and motioning for the pilots to pull up chairs, she proceeded with matters in an extremely businesslike fashion. The sexual tension in that room was so thick, it could have been spliced with a knife.
"So you two will be making up our Team ASTROPHYLL?" she said, her voice hard and calloused, though not in the way Heero's voice was. Hers sounded more jealous and condescending than Heero's tone, which was riddled more with confusion and misery.
"Team ASTROPHYLL, star chaser, I like that," Duo whispered to Heero as Relena went on about details of the mission that Sally had already mentioned to them via e-mail.
"So you do have a brain underneath that head of hair," Heero retorted blandly, the half grin still managing to make its way to his lips whenever he pinned Duo with a comment like that. "I'm glad to know that you actually feed it with some actual intelligent material instead of just that comic book crap of yours."
"Excuse me Mr. Maxwell!" Relena slammed her hand into the desktop impatiently in way that she would have reserved only for him. She would never dare to raise her voice to Heero, both because he was the type who would pull a firearm on her and because of her silly girl's crush on him, but Duo! Duo was just a meddling brat who was always in the way, and needed to be eliminated quickly, though there never seemed to be a way to get rid of him without angering Heero, who obviously kept Duo around for some reason or another, whatever kind relationship it might be. It was clearly the reason he had decided to have Duo with him for this mission. "Mr. Maxwell, I am trying to conduct a mission briefing here, so if you don't mind, will you please stop moving your mouth and listen? Or else I will have to ask you to wait for Heero outside."
"I'm sorry ma'am," Duo said, stretching back in his chair and folding his arms behind his head as he often did when he wanted to look cool and relaxed. "I was just commenting to Heero on the poetical and classical roots of your codename for our counter-op. I figured our star chaser might find it interesting and I wanted to tell him before it slipped my mind."
"Well anything else on the matter will have to wait," she sunk back down into her chair, reassuming that phony sense of calm. "Now please, listen to what I have to say… and no more interruption!"
"Relena," Heero groaned irritably, annoyed that so much precious time had already been wasted. "Please just continue. We still have a lot to discuss."
She straightened the scarf around her neck and started to speak again, mentioning that the starship had reached Earth's orbit and that a message from her Commander Stella had been patched to her within the hour.
"I don't think she's so good at this mission briefing thing," Duo muttered to Heero, who smiled at the comment, agreeing totally. Sally had a much more efficient way of communicating information, even through e-mail, than Relena did.
"Mr. Maxwell!" she fumed again. "If I have to say anything to you again, you will have to wait outside, or I will cut you from the mission!"
"Relena, please, calm down," Heero said in his unwavering monotone voice. "Duo's just being Duo, so just let him be. If you cut him from ASTROPHYLL, I'm afraid I will have to withdraw as well and act on my own accord."
"You could never hope to do this on your own," Relena argued. "If you heard what Stella had told me, you would never want to try and attempt this without the government's help."
"I have alternate means of getting around the galaxy," Heero said calmly. "The Preventers can aid me, as can the Winner family and the three other pilots in addition to Duo, so don't threaten me with cutting us from ASTROPHYLL. Now if you will, show us what Stella patched to you so we can get a sense of what her motivations are."
Duo pulled a grin on his face, not able to resist hissing into Heero's ear, "I thought we were too good for help from other people, Mr. Yuy."
Shaking her head, upset by Heero's cold and brutal words, she pulled up the video message that had been sent to her. She hated the way Heero would always come to Duo's defense, no matter how wrong the stupid American prat was. Opening it up, she turned the monitor on her computer around so that the pilots could see clearly and played the communication to them. The image was full of static and her voice sounded mechanical, however, both boys knew a threat when they heard one, and Stella certainly offered that.
"Miss Relena, former Queen of the Cinq Kingdom, I am Stella, the head of an organization created within the Barton Foundation soon after the eradication of Operation METEOR. We broke away from the Foundation soon after the Gundams were sent to Earth from the colonies and took to the stars to escape the humdrum of Earth and her peaceful colonies. I am told that war ensued because of the Gundams descent and I am terribly sorry that I missed so many magnificent battles fought in the name of peace. You say that you have finally attained it, but how can you be sure? Do you really know what peace is? Just to prove that there is no such thing, we have hatched out the plans for Operation DIANA, which has already been put into motion. Despite a few minor setbacks, everything has been going as originally intended. But we of course, need you to keep our plans rolling smoothly. Our spacecraft is fitted with a plasma cannon, which we will use to attack an unspecified location in either space or on Earth every three days until you turn yourself over to us. From there we will proceed with DIANA until you and your puny United Nation cronies have realized that there is no such thing as peace."
"That's it?" Duo asked, resting his head on his folded arms that lay on the desk. "No explanations about why or who or what. Just… to prove that there's no such thing as peace, that's their motivation?"
"She just wants to see bloodshed," Heero said reflectively. "She and her group were probably angry that the original Operation METEOR was not carried out. Evidently she wanted revenge on the space colonies because of family members who were died during the first colonial launch. There were a lot of accidents during those experiments, and her friends are probably people who had similar situations. Where she and her group differed from the Barton Foundation was that while the Foundation wanted revenge for the real Heero Yuy, Stella wanted to see the colony drop to make a statement about her hate for the whole idea of living in space. I looked it up in the old Barton Foundation databases. It's all there, before her alleged death. They considered her quite dangerous to their cause, even before METEOR was abandoned."
"Obviously she's not dead though. I can't blame them for their anger, but revenge is not the course of action they need to let the people of Earth know about it," Duo said thoughtfully.
"Not everyone is willing to be peaceful. That's why there will always be war," Heero said, standing up as if he were preparing to go. "It is human nature to crave things like murder and revenge. Violent as it is, it's what they like to see, no matter how twisted it may seem. Stella just happens to be an extremist in that respect."
"But look at how far we have come with our peace now, Heero," Relena said, looking up at the distant face of Heero. "There has to be a peaceful way to get around this. Maybe I will just turn myself in to her to avoid bloodshed."
"And then what? You'll just let them go on with DIANA?" Duo asked her, his voice rising passionately to a decibel that was much louder than probably necessary. "Think about it Miss Relena, why would you do that and play into their hands? You don't know what they'll do when they have you, or how many other people might have to die after that. You know it's absurd to think that once they have what they demand they'll just take off into the stars as quickly as they came. It's naive to think so, and you know it, ma'am."
"He's right," Heero agreed with a nod. "The best security we can offer you and the people of the United Earth Sphere is that you stay right here."
"But here I can't do anything for the people!" she protested as she ran around the desk, past the pair of them and to the door so she could cut them off. "I must do something!"
Heero walked right up to her and smacked her hard across the face, barely batting an eyelash as he did so. "Relena, the only something you can do is to lay low and keep quiet. This situation is obviously more dangerous than we had previously assumed. Do you want to see DIANA commence? Do you want another Operation METEOR?"
"But I—"
"If you're not content with this arrangement, I'll contact Sally or someone else who you can stay with," Heero said coldly. She was still standing in his way, blocking his only exit from the room.
"But I want to go with you!" she protested, hanging in the doorway and staring up at him with pleading eyes. Her imploring look had no effect on Heero; it never had, no matter how much she liked to think so. "I want to help."
"Duo is coming with me, not you," he said in that drab monotone, as if he were commenting on the weather. It was not an excuse or anything of the like, just a statement, a pure fact of life.
"Why is it always Duo this and Duo that?" she looked as if she might throw a hissy fit at any second with the way her eyes were become puffy and wet, her skin red and blotchy as her blood pressure boiled with ire. "Whenever I call or try to visit, it's 'Duo and I are doing this,' or 'I can't go out until Duo is back' or something, but it's always you and your stupid whore, Duo!" She covered her mouth in shock at what she had just said the moment it came out, regretting it instantly.
"Now just you listen here, Miss Relena," Duo started to say, his face the very picture of offence, though he found himself sending a look at Heero that said Oh really? Heero neatly avoided seeing the stare he knew was aimed at him, a little embarrassed that Duo had found out about his way of excusing himself from her presence… though it was true he would rather spend time with Duo than her any day of the year.
"Forget it, Duo," Heero silenced him with a sharp glare. "If Miss Darlian does not want to listen to reason and would rather attack her team on a personal level to gain whatever she is angling for, then that's her problem. Quite frankly, I don't have time to listen to this bullshit."
"Heero," she said, pressing her hand against her breast, an idiosyncrasy that Heero had found incredibly annoying since the first time he had seen her. She stared at him for a moment, before regaining her composure and then snapping back into attack mode. She frowned as she spoke. "Why him instead of me? What makes him better than me? Tell me! That's an order!"
"An order?" Duo raised an eyebrow. "I didn't think you were in the position to make commands like that. I'm pretty sure that instructions can be limited only to the mission restraints."
"This is part of the mission. It regards me and the two men carrying out ASTROPHYLL!" she argued in that politician sort of voice. "I want to get anything out of the way that might hamper a smoother operation."
"You're getting in the way of a perfectly fine friendship is the only thing hampering the operation, Miss," Duo said, leaning on Heero's shoulder, much to the perfect soldier's apparent distaste.
"A friendship, is it?" she crossed her arms, staring at the pair of them suspiciously. "You think that after all the kissing and the little sweet nothings I hear from you, Maxwell pointed at my Heero that I'm supposed to believe that this is just a friendship? Duo Maxwell, you even told me yourself that you enjoyed kissing my Heero."
"Yours?" Heero frowned, her reference to him as such so insolent to him that he even forgot to glare at Duo about the mention of taking pleasure that kiss, as he started to make his way towards the door, with every intent to shove Relena as harshly as he could out of the way. "Excuse me, Miss Darlian, but I belong to no one, least of all you." With that, he heaved her from the doorway, wrenching her backwards and sending her careening into a surprised Duo.
"Eh, excuse me Miss Relena, but I got to go catch up with my buddy," Duo unceremoniously detached himself from the seething woman and slinked towards the door. Just as he was about to disappear around the doorframe, he leaned back into the room and said with a wink. "Hey Relena, don't take it personally. You and I both know that a guy like Heero wouldn't know how to make a move on anyone even if he wanted to, so don't worry. No matter how beautiful he is, no one will ever get much closer to him than 'friend' if they're lucky! Not you, not me, not anyone, and that's no lie!"
"Hey, Heero!" Duo skipped down the front stairs of the mansion two at a time to the foyer where Heero was standing, his denim jacket draped over his shoulders and his arms crossed as he stared at the stairway, waiting for Duo to hurry up.
"Let's go," he said simply. "We can find out anything else we need to by our own means. The Preventers obviously don't understand that I like to handle things my own way. If it hadn't been for their orders, I would have probably done a lot more on my own. It figures that coming to see Relena would be of no use. Something like this was bound to happen."
"Maybe I shouldn't have tagged along then," Duo said, shoving his hands in his pockets as he followed Heero out of the front door. "She wouldn't have gotten all huffy if I hadn't been here with my big stupid mouth."
"She'd find a way to make the situation uncomfortable no matter who was with me," Heero responded insipidly as he led the way down the gravel drive that wound up to the house, idly kicking dust and stones with his sneaker clad feet as he walked. "She just doesn't like you, I guess."
"Yeah, 'cause she's jealous," Duo laughed, his voice rich and bursting with an overabundant cheer as always. He was so good at finding comedy in even the most unfunny of occasions. "Who could be jealous of poor little old me, aside from the fact that I have looks to die for and a sense of humour to boot!"
"Why would she be jealous of you?" His voice was laced with the coldness and inexperience of his usual unfeeling personality.
"Why do you think Mr. Perfect Soldier?" Duo bounced into Heero's path, grabbing him by the shoulders and smiling a big wide grin. "She's jealous that you spend more time than humanly possible with loudmouthed uncouth American me instead of her, Little Miss Refinement."
"But that's part of what annoys me about her," Heero said, still not quite sure if he understood the competition that was going on between Relena and Duo. "…And it's part of what I like about you. You're not fake like she is, with all her rehearsed words and such. You're more interesting to be around. More genuine…."
"Am I now?" Duo said, casually trying conceal his surprise at the comment.
"I guess," Heero replied blandly.
Duo felt his spirits waver slightly at his brush-off. Aw, just when I thought we were getting somewhere… at least a little chink on that cold rock façade.
"So let's go get something to eat and we'll head back to the hotel, alright Maxwell? I'll even treat you to make up for this dishonour." Heero was saying, sounding ridiculously like Wufei, interrupting Duo's little mental tangent. "Maxwell? Let's go! I want to get out of here. As soon as possible." Heero was already far ahead of him when Duo realized what was happening, waiting for him now at the gate that barred the edge of the property.
"Coming Hee-chan!" Duo exclaimed happily, covering for his previous moment of reality lapse, bounding out the gate after Heero to where they had left their rented moped parked underneath the shade of a large oak. "Can I drive, please, please, please?"
"What, after that little incident with my car on our way to the spaceport? Are you nuts?" Heero said, his attempt at sounding playfully angry falling through the roof with his slightly nasal monotone still rippling in the words. "You were going so damn fast, we could have been airborne and flown down here in the car!"
"You're a dreadful liar," Duo said as he muscled his way around the moped and made a grab at Heero's waist pocket, where the silver ring and its little key hung tauntingly. "Aw, come on!"
"Damn Maxwell, just let me drive. Get on back," Heero said with a roll of his eyes, no longer quite sure what he had been talking about when saying that he liked Duo's immaturity. Yeah right, he's easy to live with… and I'm the Queen of England. His mouth faded into that faint smile for a split second at the thought, a gesture which he was sure that Duo could never have seen, though even such a tiny motion could never be lost on Duo's eyes.
"Fine, fine, have it your way, you selfish prat," Duo mumbled as he slammed his helmet on his head with all the flourish of an embellished and faked moodiness before hopping up on the back of the moped behind Heero. He would have wrapped his arms around his companion's waist to hold on, but figured that it was probably a bad time to try Heero's patience, so he settled for holding on tight to the back of the vehicle.
"Are you ready?" Heero called over his shoulder as he revved up the purring motor.
"Hell yeah, buddy!" Duo roared with an enthusiastic throw of his fist in the air. "Born to be wild!"
"Good. Hold on, 'cause I'm not slowing down if you fall off, Maxwell." He eased the moped off its kickstand and then threw his feet up onto the sides before hightailing it as fast as he could away from the Darlian estates.
Relena stood in the large bay window in her office, watching as they walked hastily away from the house, Duo buzzing gleefully in circles around Heero, who seemed to favor whatever the American boy was prattling on about with a series of nods and occasional stops in his pace to speak before they disappeared down the quaint little countryside road that ran in front of the property on their moped in a cloud of dust and the roar of an excited engine.
"Heero," she said to the diminishing silhouette of their moped as it vanished over the hill, though this time her voice was not the dreamy wistful one usually reserved for such utterances. Now it was bitter, it was angry, and Relena found herself almost quivering with resentment at the thought of Duo Maxwell. She was envious, envious of a boy, and she knew it. She leaned her head against the glass, staring down at her feet as she muttered under her breath, "You think that you can just get away with that? I see the way you look at him, Duo, and I know he notices it more than he's ever noticed the way I look at him. And then you think you can just pop in here, smile, and then it will all go away? Your stupid smile doesn't work on me! I'm not Heero!" She was nearly screaming by the time she finished her out-loud thinking and practically banging her head on the window as she moaned, realizing what she had just admitted to herself about Heero's sentiments towards herself and that braided loser from the slums of L2. "I wish… I wish I could just make that stupid smile go away forever. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!" she sobbed, sinking down to the floor, leaning back on her desk, the crumpled form of a desperate and covetous woman who was unable to let go. "I… hate… your stupid smile…."
—O—
"Hey Hee-chan! Catch!"
Heero turned around abruptly, still he fumbling with the lock on the door of their Parisian hotel room just in time to see Duo wing a baseball at him from beside fold-out sofa-bed. Absently catching the ball with his one bare hand, Heero turned the key around in the lock again, pocketed the key and then promptly took the baseball and threw it into his duffel, which sat beside his feet.
"What the hell, Maxwell?!" he said in his annoyed I-Don't-Have-Time-For-Your-Shit voice, his eyes radiating with that death glare of his. "Aren't you a little old to be playing games?"
"It's baseball, Hee-chan," Duo shrugged. "American pastime. You're never to old for baseball."
"Hn," Heero grunted as he shouldered his bag and made his way to the adjacent bedroom to drop his stuff, pushing past Duo on his way to the door. He reappeared in the other room again, only to lean on the doorframe and stare at Duo blankly.
Duo, a bit weirded out by Heero's hard unchanging glare, felt himself caving into that chipper annoying disposition, just to get Heero to lighten up a little, which would eventually save the both of them a lot of heavy-heartedness in the long run. "You know, Hee-chan, baseball?"
Heero turned and walked back into his room, pulling the door closed behind him most of the way without a word, not in the mood to converse about the nuances of baseball with Duo. Truth be told, he did not want to be embarrassed by trying to talk baseball with Duo, because, quite frankly, he had never tried the game out and barely knew the rules. It would just be a gloat-fest for Duo that he really did not need to attend.
"You've… uh… never played, have you?" Duo's voice infiltrated the room. Heero looked up from the baseball that he had found himself tossing from one hand to the other in the darkness of the barely sunlit room to see Duo's outline bathed in a bright corona set off from the light spilling in from the other room.
"So what if I haven't?" Heero snapped, quickly shoving the ball beneath the pillow of the bed. "It's a silly game for children. We're on a mission. There's no time for… baseball…."
"I told you Hee-chan, it's an American pastime! Okay, lesson number one about real life: There is always time for baseball," Duo said as he walked into the room and switched on the lamp beside the bed. He sat down beside Heero, who was curled up cross-legged on the edge of the mattress, staring out of the large Parisian window at the shining city of lights that sprawled out before him. Duo cupped his chin in his hands and stared out the window as well, saying with a sigh, "Though I'll have to admit… I haven't had as much time for baseball lately as I would like. Never really have much time for anything anymore."
"What are you talking about? You have days to waste with nothing to do," Heero commented, wondering what Duo could possibly do with himself that kept time away from him to play a game.
"Heero, baseball is a game that you play with friends. You can't play it alone," Duo said, staring intently at his friend. "Sometimes you're gone so long, that I don't have anyone to play with."
"There are many other people on the colony who I'm sure would be more than happy to play baseball with you," Heero said somewhat cruelly.
"Heero, it would be nice to do fun things with you too," Duo shrugged. "Sure, we play baseball a lot when you're gone, but I like to do things with you! Of all my friends, you know that you're my favourite and—hey stop looking so shocked, you know it's true—and it would be nice to play a game with you once in a while. It's what friends do," Duo said, reaching under the pillow for the ball. "That's why this is the American pastime, Heero," Duo went on, holding the baseball up, "because people always would get together as friends and play a pleasant game with one another. It's kept people together for generations."
"How can a game do that? Why would you keep a stupid game around to keep friends?" Heero wondered aloud, not even realizing that he was voicing his thoughts until Duo was responding to his questions.
"People've been playing baseball forever, years and years before the first space colonies were ever launched, before people had even gone into space at all," Duo was explaining as he spun the ball around in his fingers. It was an old tattered ball, the red stitches somewhat loose and the white canvas wrapping dulled and brown, so much that the word Rawlings could barely even be seen on the thing's surface anymore. "This ball, well, I've had it for a long time. It used to be… well, Father Maxwell… ah, nevermind."
Heero, no matter how ignorant he was pretending to be, was alert and listening to every word Duo said, watching his every move from beneath heavy eyelids. He found himself urging Duo to say more, his voice gentle and friendly, a tone that surprised not only Duo, but him as well.
And Duo, deciding that he had to reward Heero for being so patient and kind for once in his life, carried on to explain to him the history of his baseball. "Ah, well this one used to belong to Father Maxwell way back when I was still living at the church," he said, his eyes clouding over for a minute as if he were journeying back in time. He seemed to be in another existence all together, and when he spoke, it sounded like he was talking about a life that did not belong to him, a life he only wished were his. "Yeah, and me 'n' Solo would always go and play catch in the ratty old yard behind the church. Sometimes we'd get the other kids to play with us and we'd make a whole afternoon of it. Father would be the umpire and Sister Helen kept everyone fed… well as much as rations would allow. I remember once I pitched a ball for Solo, which he nailed hard, making it fly way over the fence. The son of a bitch had hit some old lady on the street with that stupid ball and dammit Heero, you would never believe that some grandma could yarn together so many cuss words in one sentence!" Duo laughed at this, the memory obviously an important one to him.
"So what happened then?" Heero said, his voice slipping back into that darkened slightly nasal Yuy monotone.
"When she got over it and realized it had just been a bunch of orphan kids from the church playing a game, laughed, gave us back our ball and a little packet of mints she had in her purse. She was glad that we were trying to make the best out of a dark time. She said she liked seeing kids at play, especially since it was so rare to see happy children back then," Duo said, his smile melting into a sad, sort of reminiscent look of past days long gone. He tossed the ball to Heero, saying, "Yeah, that little ball sure has seen a lot. It's got so many memories stitched into its dirty old body, it's no wonder it's falling apart."
"This is that ball? You still have it?" Heero asked, turning it over in his hands. For the first time, he noticed that written beneath the Rawlings logo was a message scrawled in the messy hand of a small child. For Duo, so he can always have a friend to play ball with. –Solo
"I like to hold on to things like that… so I won't… forget who I am and where I come from. It's the same with the transistor and the braid, you follow?" he fingered his long chestnut plait lovingly. "The future evolves because of our pasts. I don't think that you should let the past dictate who you are, but it should certainly be a part of who you become."
Heero was silent for a moment, slowly sucking in deep breathes as if he were gathering up the courage to speak. After a while, he finally opened his lips and let out his thoughts. "A wise man once said to me: 'However carefully you plan you never know if some fool is going to change the future." He stopped for a moment, staring out t he window with his eyes glazed over by the glow of the city lights as he sucked his forefinger nervously, still contemplating whether or not to go on. Duo had to slurp up the tiny trickle of drool dripping from his lips as he watched Heero sitting there, looking so sad and yet so beautiful at the exact same time, like a melancholy angel, the one who's tears made it rain. He was about to urge Heero to go on, when Heero slowly began to speak again. "'So you may as well do as your heart tells you… so you won't regret it later. That's the right path, for people who live life in the present.'"
"That's a very beautiful piece of advice, Hee-chan," Duo reflected, his soft voice only deepening the mood of their conversation. "Do you live by it?"
"I try," he responded in a voice that was equally tender and muted. "It was the last advice I ever got from the man who was about the closest thing I ever had to a father. It is all I can do to honour his memory."
"But you believe it, don't you?"
"Hn," he grumbled, his usual response when he did not have the right words for an answer. It came to him eventually though, and after a few more minutes of that reflective silence, Heero said, "Of course I do. That's why I don't think you need to be so unhappy because of things that happened in your past, Duo."
His expression became forlornly peaceful as an unreadable smile spread across his face. "But Hee-chan, my past doesn't make me sad. Of course, there are things that happened that were not good. It was all just my bad luck. Luck's what's kept me alive so long anyway… that and my bargain with Death." He laughed at that before going on. "But I think that there's always a reason for why fortune decides to draw the lots she does. If Maxwell Church hadn't been destroyed, I'd have never met Professor G, which would have meant that I would have never stolen Death Scythe and would have never met you." His smile became more cheerful at that. "I'm glad that I met you. It was probably the best thing that ever happened to me."
"I don't believe in luck," Heero said simply in response. "I believe that I am here because I chose to be here. Luck is just a lazy man's excuse."
"Ha, typical of anyone who's just had too much of it," Duo said smugly. "Fortune smiles at some and laughs at others. How does she favour you?"
"I don't know," he said, not quite sure what to make of that statement. Once again, Duo's values were confusing his carefully disciplined emotions. After enough of listening to Duo talk, Heero never knew what to think anymore, which was often why he would just grunt and walk away after Duo said something that was particularly life questioning.
"I think she laughs at me," Duo said darkly, staring down at his fisted hands, white at the knuckles and covered in sweat. He looked up to see that sad angel lightly fingering his old baseball, trying to grasp the true meaning of being alive. Twenty years old, that angel is, and he still has no idea why he was born, Duo thought with a smirk. Poor angel….
"Hey, Hee-chan, why don't you just keep it," Duo said, that smile erupting on his face suddenly, startling the angel's fingers away from the ball, the moment immediately gone when that more shadowy Duo, the real Shinigami, had emerged. "Gotta keep the dream alive! Hand to hand, friend to friend. That's the story of that baseball."
"No way I can keep this, Maxwell," Heero said, rolling the baseball quickly back to the other boy. "I can't take something that precious to you."
"Yes way, Yuy. You can take it because it's that precious to me," Duo said, mocking Heero's tone. "Here, look what I'll do. You'll have to keep it now." He jumped off the bed and bounded out of the room. Heero watched him skip around the corner into the other room. There was the rustling noise of Duo rooting through his duffel bag and then the faint sound of a pen clicking. When Duo returned about five minutes later, he tossed the ball into Heero's lap without a word and sat at the foot of the bed, waiting for the perfect soldier to speak.
"For my Heero, so he'll finally understand what it means to be friends. –Duo," Heero slowly read the new message penned beneath the old note from Solo. He looked up at Duo, who was still kneeling at the foot of the bed, his head cradled in his arms. "My Heero?"
"My Heero, my Hee-chan," Duo said, closing his eyes, his sly I-Know-Something-You-Don't-Know-Haha smile barely visible in the poor light. "Just take the damned baseball Heero. You can't forget; it's a promise between friends. You'll always have to be my friend, so we can play baseball together, one day when there finally is real peace. That's a promise, okay? We threw the opening pitch; can't just leave it like that when there's still so many more innings to play."
He nodded, saying nothing, as was his way, obviously taking time to reflect on the oath before he spoke again. Then Heero, for the first time that day, really smiled as he said. "Would it make you happy to go out and have a catch?"
"Yes, Hee-chan, it would!" And Duo smiled back, leapt on Heero to give him a huge tight hug, much to Heero's discomfort, before tugging him gently by the arm towards the door.
Heero was one of those who would once in a while cave into Duo's whimsical wishes, usually after the braided American had smoothed over Heero's perfect soldier attitude with a philosophical word or two about the importance of "carpe diem," or to seize the day, about not letting life pass you by and the wonders of the littler things in life, like the baseball discussion of earlier that day. But every time Heero let himself slip from the emotionless stature of a soldier because of Duo's ever chattering mouth, he would get this sense of guilt, like he had betrayed the reason he existed (not that he knew for sure what that was outside of war), and lock himself up alone in the dark to let his seeming weakness diffuse out of him. That is what happened after about an hour of throwing the baseball back and forth on the street corner in front of their hotel. They had talked, laughed and had one the most genuinely good times they had ever had together in a long while playing a seemingly useless game until Heero decided that an hour was far more than enough and robotically stalked back inside with hardly a word only to fade away into the darkness of his room... with the baseball….
After Heero had wandered back inside to wash himself of the stench of normalcy, Duo was left standing on the street corner with nothing to do. He was not quite sure he wanted to burst into the room when Heero was so tense. He was always tense after times like these, no matter how enjoyable they were. Yeah, but that's just Heero being Heero. Typical Hee-chan, Duo thought as he found himself walking down the street, not really paying attention to where he was going. It was a bad habit of his, when lost in thought about Heero, life, ego, commerce, art and other such random ponderings, to go walking and not keep his feet, never knowing where he would end up. There were times when he would end up on completely other colonies, particularly when he was trashed and homeless after the war, not even caring about it so much. And though he considered his home with Heero now, sometimes home with Heero was not the safest place to be, especially when he was in one of his… moods….
Next thing Duo knew, he was jamming his hands in his pockets, fishing for that little slip of paper Hilde had given him at D. Maxwell's what seemed like ages ago. Finding it, though the blue ink numbers were a bit faded and the tiny scroll of paper kind of worn and delicate from so much time in his pockets and the washing machine, he picked up the handset of a payphone about ten blocks from the hotel (his feet had gotten carried away again, and he had meandered kind of far… again). Yeah, it's a whim… but a long walk like that, thrust in thought will do that to you. Dammit, all I've done is confuse my emotions more, he thought, fingers flying over the keypad, he shoved the paper back into his pocket, cradling the phone between his shoulder and his chin as he waited for her to pick up.
Ringing… ringing… dull ringing….
"Yep?" her voice was soft amid the static of the long-distance call.
Kind of sounds like she's playing on that stupid transistor radio with all this noise, Duo thought grimly to himself as he opened his mouth to speak, while at the same time thinking. Damn, this call is probably costing a fortune too.
"Duo?" she said, her voice cheerful all of the sudden. Obviously she liked having something different happen to her out of the blue once in a while that interrupted the dullness of routine.
"Yeah, hey Hilde," he said, fishing around in his pockets for no apparent reason, jangling a mixture of American, Japanese and French coins around with his fingers for lack of anything else to do with his hands. "Uh, what's up? Still hammering the old company?"
She laughed, evidently happy to hear from her friend. "Yeah, it's just like the way you left it, though now we've moved off the colony. Nothing out of the usual, except for you calling me out of nowhere like this." She laughed again, "Business going on as usual, a little slowly without you, but still going nonetheless."
"Well anywhere that lacks a wonderful ball of good looks and cheer like me is bound to get a little boring once in a while," he said, his commentary idly crackling over the telephone wire. "But at least Paris gets to have a little taste of Shinigami goodness."
"Paris?" Hilde exclaimed, her voice dripping with romance at such a magical city. "Ooh, what are you doing in Paris Duo?"
"Ah, you know, this and that," he said indistinctly, not wanting to say too much over a public phone line. Glancing quickly around though, he figured he could risk it a little, not wanting Hilde to be totally in the dark. He dropped his voice low and cupped his hand over the receiver as he whispered into the phone, "To tell the truth, me 'n' Heero are here tying up some loose ends on our information about a new threat. We've been given another mission."
"No way," Hilde gasped. "Even after all that warring and fighting to get peace, there's still a threat?"
"It's fairly new," Duo explained. "We're not even really sure what their true motives are yet or even how detailed and well thought out their planning is, however, we know they have their eyes on Miss Relena, and have threatened to use force if she isn't turned over soon. I'm kind of worried that we're running out of time."
"What's there to do? Anything I can help with?" she asked, her voice wrought with worry suddenly. "God Duo, I sure hope it's not as bad as you make it sound."
"I really dunno," Duo said with a shrug, still folded up against the wall where the phone hung, trying to make his conversation as quiet as possible just in case someone came wandering by. "That's the thing. We really don't know much at all, and I couldn't tell you how much danger there really is at this point. But… uh… Hilde?"
"Yep?"
"There is… uh… something you could do for me," he said, his voice becoming so inaudible that Hilde had to strain her ears over the weak connection to hear his voice.
"Sure, anything to help out the mission," she responded jovially. "It'll be just like old times!"
"Err, not really," he confessed, his mind straining to remember what had possessed him to ask of Hilde what he was about to. He just could not figure anything out on his own anymore. He had to talk to someone… fast. "It's kind of personal. In fact, it's got nothing to do with the mission."
"It… what?" she sounded confused. "Duo, what could you possibly need from me? I thought things were going so well."
"They are… and then they aren't," he shook his head in frustration, unable to explain to her what he was experiencing inside. "What I need from you is your friendship, Hilde. I got to talk to you. God, where should I start?"
"From the beginning, of course," she said as if it were obvious. "Duo, what's wrong? You suddenly sound… distant."
"My mind likes to take breaks without letting me know in advance," he quipped. "This is so hard over the phone. I can't explain it right."
"Why not just talk to Heero about it? I thought you two were so close." Hilde sounded like she was not quite sure where Duo was trying to go with this conversation. And she wanted nothing more than to help Duo in whatever way she could, but she somehow felt that whatever it was, Duo would end up being the one to help himself. He had always been like that, as far as she could remember anyway, no matter whom he hit up for advice. Usually he just liked to get his feelings out on the floor before he self-destructed from the inside out.
"Heero," Duo muttered, sliding down to the ground beneath the phone. "No… no I can't talk to him about this. You don't know him like I do. Not only would he not care but he…."
"He what?"
"He's the one," Duo gasped, his eyes wide with shock that he had actually blurted that out. "He's the one who's been making my emotions do things I never dreamed they could."
Hilde sucked in a breath, not quite sure how to take that last comment. It could have meant so many things, and Duo sometimes had a way of being vague about things that made him nervous or were secrets. She decided to nudge him further, perhaps getting a little more information under the pretense that there was no way for her to help if he was going to be so unclear about what was bothering him. "What did Heero do to you, Duo? I swear if that heartless son of a bitch laid a single finger on you I will tear him apart!"
"Hilde!" Duo cried, his voice cracking, becoming somewhat hoarse. "Don't say things like that! Hee-chan would never hurt me. He didn't do anything…. It's… nothing like that…. He might be a coldhearted emotionless bastard but I…"
"Hee-chan?" she cut him off. Never before had she heard Duo refer to Heero with the nickname before, and it caught her slightly off guard, really making her wonder what it was that Duo was calling about. It was definite that there had been some subliminal motive for Duo's call; it had been a little strange for him to call so randomly, so casually, so soon after they had just patched things up between them and returned to being friends, and in the middle of a top secret mission no less!
"Ah, sorry. Heero," Duo cursed to himself at letting the pet name slip out in front of someone other than Heero. God, if he finds out about that… this whole conversation… I'll be sushi by afternoon.
"What about him?"
"I… I think I…." Duo just could not bring himself to say it. It had been that damned kiss that began it all. Innocent of course, just to clear their apartment of unwanted company, but that taste of the rain… Duo wanted it more and more everyday. And as each day went by, he kept thinking that his futile efforts to break into Heero's universe were beginning to pay off, noticing the Japanese boy warming up to more and longer conversations about more than just politics and the weather. He saw the way Heero had begun to take his thoughtful ramblings more to heart and the way his eyes were not always so hard when he stared at him. It made Duo want to sing. Closer to the only person he really had left to be close to… the only person he wanted to be close to anymore.
"You what? You think you what?" Hilde cut him away from his thoughts, desperate to know what Duo was trying to say. She had a sinking feeling….
"I… can't say it," he admitted, leaning back against the wall, staring up past the chimney topped Paris rooftops. "I just can't say it like this. It's too important for me to just say so plainly long-distance. Goddamn, I'm so lost, Hilde. Can't you hear it in my voice? I'm lost."
"Duo," she breathed.
"You really aren't that busy over there, are you?" he sort of whined and begged at the same time. He was sending so many mixed messages!
"Well…." she said, suddenly realizing what Duo was aiming for.
"Please, Hilde," he sounded so pathetic and she was sure that if she had been standing there with him, he would have been flashing those big sparkling sad puppy dog eyes shining beneath those knitted brows. "You gotta get over here. We're going back up to L1 in a few days and I just have to talk to someone before I got insane. You know I can't keep my feelings bottled up forever without cracking…. You learned that the hard way."
She bantered back and forth with him about it, haggling money issues and moaning about air travel until he finally convinced her to relent (granted that he pay her back for the plane ticket eventually). She did have to admit that she could not bear to sit all cozy at the helm of her successful New York business knowing that her friend Duo, her old partner, her one love, was going crazy and she had been too busy to help. It was killing her thousands of times over as she said goodbye to the braided idiot in Paris. After all, in the back of her mind, she had known it forever… that Duo had always loved Heero Yuy.
The nights in Paris were beautiful, with a shimmering display of white lights dancing over the rooftops and the romantic hum of the late hour crowds on the streets. Heero found himself skimming like a flat stone over water between the world of dreams and the dreamy world of Paris, unable to settle down into a restful sleep. He kept having the same dream, like he was plummeting past thousands of stars into the dark of space, with no one to hear him and no one to save him. It would frighten him awake, that fear of being forgotten and alone. He would never, never in a thousand years were he at gunpoint or whatever, admit to anyone that he was afraid of being alone. Least of all Duo. It was a thing that neither of them would like to consider, Heero upset that it would phase his perfection and Duo… well Duo would just probably cry, like he always did when the feet were knocked out from underneath him.
"Holy gods," Heero rolled onto his back, throwing his arms behind his head as he stared straight up at the ceiling, the sounds of the city still ringing in his ears. It was not an unpleasant sound to hear, but this night, it was distracting. It kept him from falling back asleep. It kept him from falling, kept him from being weak, kept him from sobbing and screaming out into the night. He turned onto his side so he could stare out of the tall window out over the city and at the magnificent splatter of stars on the inky blue sky, shoving his arm beneath his mess of brown hair. "The hell am I doing here? There's a spaceship somewhere out there that might just blow everything we know to pieces if we don't act soon, and I know next to nothing about how I should approach this. They're so careful about everything, that Stella and her ship. She's even crippled the perfect soldier…."
"I'm finding my way back to sanity again,
Though I don't really know what I'm gonna do when I get there.
I take a breath and hold on tight,
Spin around one more time,
And gracefully fall back to the arms of grace."
There was a new sound mingled with that Parisian traffic suddenly. Heero propped himself up on his elbows, his ears suddenly aware of the new voice. It was Duo, of course, singing quietly as he strummed expertly on his guitar in the other room, his husky voice quiet and melodic, and yet it seemed to echo all around Heero, draining out all other sounds in the busy city outside. His song was soft, almost mournful and full of longing, most unlike the loud punk songs he had heard him play at the club.
He slid silently out of bed, the crisp white hotel sheets rolling off his body with every little motion his body made. Standing straight up and running a hand through his hair, still staring out at the city and listening to the lulling hum of Duo's guitar just on the other side of that door, Heero closed his eyes and lost himself in deep thought.
"'Cause I'm hanging on every word you're saying,
Even if you don't wanna speak tonight,
That's alright, alright with me.
'Cause I want nothing more than to sit outside heaven's door,
And listen to your breathing.
It's where I wanna be, yeah.
Where I wanna be….
Still quiet, almost as silent as Shinigami himself, Heero padded around the bed and towards the door, pushing it open as noiselessly as he could. He found himself staring through the crack between the door and the wooden frame at the bright image of Duo, dressed in his midnight attire of sweatpants and the Nirvana shirt, his nighttime hair falling free of confinement in its braid as he sat in the brightly lighted room on the ground, framed by the open doors of the huge window, his black acoustic guitar mounted on his lap as he played on, still not aware that Heero was watching him. Heero found himself picking up tiny details about Duo that he had never bothered to notice before, like the troubled murk that clouded his eyes' violet orbs beneath those long black lashes, or the exact way his chocolate hair melted over his ears and over the back of his long neck, the exact shape of his thick pretty lips and the curve of his nose and the way his long fingers curled round the neck of the guitar as he gently caressed the strings. That damned white devil, Heero found himself commenting to himself as his fingers gripped the door tightly, I gather he doesn't realize what a sin he is…. Heero bit his tongue almost hard enough to draw blood as if to punish himself for daring to think such a thing. Damn white devil…
"I'm looking past the shadows in my mind into the truth.
And I'm trying to identify the voices in my head.
God wish, won't you?
Let me feel one more time what it feels like to feel,
And break these calluses off of me one more time.
"'Cause I'm hanging on every word you're saying,
Even if you don't wanna speak tonight,
That's alright, alright with me.
'Cause I want nothing more than to sit outside your door,
And listen to your breathing.
It's where I wanna be, yeah.
Duo was staring out at the star littered sky, the space colonies nothing more than large bright glowing points of light in the sky from his vantage point here on Earth. He was so far from home down here, and beautiful as these old Earth cities were, he felt so distant from the places that really mattered to him. So far from home… though what's a home where Heero isn't? He wondered to the heavens, still caressing the strings of his guitar and singing softly. Heero is my home. Where he goes, I'm gonna be the idiot following in his tracks. It's where I wanna be….
"Oh I don't want a thing from you.
Bet you're tired of me waiting for,
The scraps to fall off your table to the ground.
La da da da…
'Cause I just want to be here now.
"'Cause I'm hanging on every word you're saying,
Even if you don't wanna speak tonight,
That's alright, alright with me.
'Cause I want nothing more than to sit outside heaven's door,
And listen to your breathing.
It's where I wanna be, yeah.
Where I wanna be…."
"Maxwell?" Heero finally gathered enough courage to open the door all the way and step into the room.
Duo snapped up, his fingers slamming hard against the still quivering strings, silencing the guitar's dying strains. "Heero? Damn, I thought you were sleeping."
Heero just shrugged, settling down on the fold out sofa bed, crossing his arms and legs as he stared at the American bathed in the moonlight. "Couldn't sleep," he said simply.
"Hmm, couldn't sleep either," Duo said with a nod. "I don't know what it is…. Goddamn, yes I do! It's just everything! Stella, Relena, this whole stupid mission! … And then there's you…."
"What about me?" he asked, not even bothering to look up at him.
"I'm so confused by you," Duo said, shaking his head, not wanting to say anything to Heero until he had a chance to meet up with Hilde. He was so afraid of Heero's unpredictability, though the man was seemingly about as easy to read as a book on the outside, one never knew what he was really thinking or how he truly felt about anything. Duo knew that he was one of the few people who had realized just how layered Heero's personality was, and he was beyond certain that Relena had never bothered to dig beyond skin-deep to search out Heero's emotions, which was probably what kept Heero from opening up to her in the first place.
"How so?" Heero was really drilling the questions tonight. It was probably the most inquisitive Duo had ever seen him about something outside of a mission. Sure, it was about himself, but Duo also knew that human sentiment was something that Heero knew nothing about, even his own.
Duo sighed, staring back out at the stars, though his eyes slowly wandered back down to Earth, gazing at Heero's hazy reflection in the window's glass. "You know, I heard somewhere that unhappy people fall into two categories. There's the people who are immersed in life too much, and then the people who don't live at all. Somehow I feel like the two of us are in the same boat except one is at the stern and the other at the bow, you follow?"
"Are you trying to drop another hint?" Heero asked, looking up at Duo's reclining form for the first time in a while, noticing for the first time in a while, how much he really liked the way Duo's hair spilled down the sides of his face and cascaded over his shoulders and back in chocolate coloured rivulets. "You're suddenly into telling me all these points of view on life."
"Because I think it's time we started to realize that we're here on Earth to live, not to throw ourselves away in some stupid battle," Duo answered, barely even stopping to think about his reply.
"Funny thing for the God of Death to say," Heero said, raising one brow.
"Even the God of Death can realize the importance of life. He takes it away so that people can learn to appreciate it more. Things that get taken away are always the things that people cherish more," Duo shot back. "So I've decided that before I go back to Shinigami, I'll give my life meaning. I want to die knowing that I was worth something."
"But you are worth so much," Heero found himself saying softly. "Much more than me."
"That's a lie and you know it, Heero Yuy," Duo said, gripping the neck of his guitar tightly as he spoke with such adamancy that Heero almost did not recognize Duo's voice. "You're worth everything… to me at least."
"…To you…?"
"You're my… best friend, after all," Duo said quietly, looking down at the ground, a wistful smile traced on his pale rose lips. "I would die if anything happened to you, Hee-chan. You're all I got left in this godforsaken universe."
"What about Hilde… and Trowa and Quatre, Wufei and all the others? Aren't they close to you as well?" Heero's monotone voice asked as he sat down cross-legged across from Duo. "Don't you have them too?"
"Not like I have you," Duo said. "It's different with you, Hee-chan. Don't you get it? I love you more than all of the others together… even Hilde. I don't see them every day! And even if I did, I would trade it all to be with you."
"You… love me?" Heero's eyes were wide, even though he had heard the exact same words from that bow shaped mouth earlier that same day. He was not sure if Relena had ever even told him that. Now he was hearing it from his… best friend…. "Why?"
Duo chuckled, his face once again unreadable, like he knew something Heero could never hope to guess. "Okay Hee-chan, time for lesson number two on life. People are ruled by emotion and love. It's a blessing. It's a curse. But it's what makes a person human."
"What's that got to do with you wanting to stay with me all the time?" he queried, still not grasping what Duo was going for.
"Hmm, let's just say that it hurts to be with you, hurts more to be without you," Duo said, looking up at the bottom of the balcony above that reached over top of their window. "Sister Helen told me once that a nun from the before colony era once said that love was a paradox that way. When you love someone so much it hurts, it only leaves room for more love."
"Then why do you stay with me?" Heero asked, wondering what Duo meant. It was all so confusing to him and sometimes he felt that Duo's poetry was the most complicated code he had ever been assigned to break.
"To that, well, let's just say that I've elected the way of less pain," Duo answered with a devious smile. "I want to stay with you because you make my life have meaning. I don't feel empty when I'm around you."
"How could that be when my heart is empty? I can't fill you with anything, Duo." Heero spoke sincerely, his soldier half and his human half becoming entwined and confused with each other, which only left Heero as a whole completely lost.
"You can't really believe that, especially if what you said about following your heart is true," Duo pointed out quickly. "Ah, ah, no protests Hee-chan. You know I'm right, as usual."
"But I don't know what to feel around you!" he exclaimed, rising up on his knees. He was so close to reaching forward and shaking Duo in frustration and Duo could see it in his eyes. It was almost frightening to see the perfect soldier so broken down and emotional, tears nearly brimming in his eyes. It was not that it was particularly disturbing or anything, but it was certainly something that Duo was not used to seeing Heero doing. "You're annoying and loud and everything in a person that should drive me absolutely insane but I… I don't like to do anything without your stupid aggravating laugh or that dumb smile you get on your face. I like seeing it… your smile makes me happy and your songs give me peace, even when the world is raging on some ludicrous pointless war. I guess it just reminds me that there's… still things worth living for."
"Well I don't know what to feel around you either, so we're even," Duo shrugged with a smile, idly strumming his guitar. "I don't know why I would want to be friend with someone who you would have to literally beg to speak and can barely tell the difference between human emotion and weakness!"
They sat there, watching each other in silence. Duo had taken to playing his guitar absently, his eyes still roving over Heero, wondering if he would ever get the perfect soldier to understand what his feelings really meant… that they went beyond the duties of a soldier, beyond the love of a friend… beyond everything. It seemed to Duo that every day his love for Heero transcended space, time and all physical reality. But he swore to himself that he would never say anything to frighten Heero away from him, no matter how ridiculously out of proportion his feelings became. He would never let it become an obsession that would smother Heero's want of a relationship of any kind, friendship or otherwise, just as it had happened with one Relena Darlian.
"So Heero," he said offhandedly, his eyes still watching him, bathing the Japanese boy in the torrent of his warm gaze. "Have you been thinking about it?"
"About what?"
"What you want in life," Duo explained. "What is it that you really want?"
"I don't know."
"Still?"
"Still," Heero confirmed with a sad nod of his head. Duo found himself thinking again, Poor angel. "Always."
Duo shook his head violently as he spoke, his voice rising with passion. "No Heero, not always! You'll figure it out one day. You'll know one day."
"So, what do you want, Duo?" he asked suddenly, looking up from the floor with those beautifully poignant cobalt spheres of blue glimmering dully in the night air beneath his long thick eyelashes.
"Can't tell you," Duo replied with by far the most devilish I-Know-Something-You-Don't-Know-Heero smile he had ever put on that cherubic little face of his. He winked at him, a gesture that did nothing to Heero but confirm that Duo certainly had something going on between those elfish ears of his that he was not going to say right away, no matter how much his mouth moved in idle chatter. "Not yet anyway. You'll just have to wait."
"I guess I will, though with my self-control, I'm afraid that whatever you're trying to hide isn't going to work as a bribe or anything," the corner of Heero's mouth rose in a wily smirk.
"Don't plan on using something this important on something so childish," Duo mimicked the expression on Heero's face, knowing how ironic that sounded. "Wished it on a falling star, you know Hee-chan? It's really is very important to me."
"I don't doubt it."
More silence ensued, as did their staring contest, Duo still absently plucking his guitar to an extremely old American song that Heero vaguely recognized as "Stairway to Heaven," a song that Duo had overplayed to the both of them for years. Now whenever he heard it, be it when Duo played it on his guitar or on that metal red transistor radio with the roses all over it, he always, always thought of Duo and their time fighting OZ, the Barton Foundation and the treasure trove of other enemies that had popped up during the war.
"Why do you like music so much, Duo?" Heero asked after Duo had managed to play almost all of the eight-minute song.
Duo stopped playing, the sound of his first name coming from Heero's mouth so easily catching the attention of his ears so quickly that Heero might not have even realized what had made the other boy suddenly look up at him, his mouth already moving in response. Not that a quick answer was unusual or anything, but that look of relief and happiness on Duo's face really imprinted itself on Heero's memories. "Music… it's like any other art, Hee-chan, self-expression. With music I can never be alone. I can hear other people's stories, their pains and triumphs, happiness and sadness, 'cause that's what art's about, Hee-chan, life. And sometimes, I can even hear my own story in other people's music. I like being reminded what my life is about. It's so easy to forget."
Heero was mesmerized by the passion with which Duo spoke. He could see the fire dancing in Duo's bright violet eyes and the ardor in his expression. Of course, Duo always spoke with passion, but never quite like this. Music was his burning zeal. Of course he would speak with the utmost passion about it. Somehow, Heero felt himself comprehending what Duo meant, for the first time in his life. "I think I understand."
"Am I getting through to you?" Duo asked, a hopeful smile on his face. When Heero nodded, Duo had to do everything in his power to keep from leaping up, throwing his guitar aside and pouncing upon Heero to attack him with kisses. With a very reserved look on his face and a deep swallow, Duo said in lieu a simple, "Finally."
Heero smiled, a smile that soon faded into an aching line of indifference. He rose silently and started to walk back towards his room, though he found himself unable to walk the whole distance knowing that Duo was left sitting behind him, waiting for a response. He sat down on the edge of the sofa bed, his back still to Duo, figuring that it would be good enough until he found something to say. It was probably one of the strangest silences they had ever shared.
Duo, realizing that Heero was at a loss for words, something that often happened when Heero was in deep thought, rose as well, carrying his guitar along with him as he bounced onto the bed, plopping down cross-legged behind Heero. He knew that Heero was aware of his shift in positions even though the perfect soldier had barely even made a move to turn around. It was just his nature to know. He took to quietly strumming the guitar again, the notes fading into the reminiscent sound of "Stairway to Heaven" once more.
"Why do you like that song?" Heero asked quietly, still not bothering to turn and face his companion.
"It's just very beautiful," Duo shrugged. "I like the lyrics and the way it sounds. Besides, it fun to play."
"Oh."
"Do you like it?" Duo asked, stopping his skilled fingers from dancing over the strings as he asked the question.
Heero was silent for a long time, and it was not until Duo had begun to play again and come to the end of the song before Heero gave his reply. "Yes."
"Hmm," Duo smiled, as he went about changing the tuning of the guitar, pretending to be far more absorbed in getting the sound just right than the heavy notes of Heero's breathing. Looking up for a brief moment to steal a glance at Heero, his face became flushed with embarresment when Heero turned to see what had made him stop playing, his deep indigo eyes falling back to the dexterous fingers that were nervously playing over the black guitar's strings.
The nothingness of the random chords once again began to melt into the strains of another song, one that Heero had never heard before, but immediately decided that he liked. Soon the sounds faded away, much to Heero's dismay. He heard the rustling of sheets behind him as Duo moved across the bed and he soon found the braided idiot's right arm snaking around his neck, his hand sliding down his chest as he brought his left around Heero's waist, his hand clutched around the neck of the guitar. Settling the instrument on Heero's lap, his arms still wrapped around the perfect soldier, Duo whispered, "Let me teach you, Hee-chan."
He did not even react to the name anymore. He would never ever in a thousand years tell Duo (he's sooner inform Relena that he would like to see her drop dead), but he secretly decided that he liked the name… Hee-chan…. It's very Duo anyway. I can't take away his charm about him and the name is definitely a part of that charm. "Okay," he found himself saying in that softened dull voice of his.
He could feel Duo pressed against his back, his lithe muscled body well defined beneath the flimsy cotton of his Nirvana shirt. Moving his fingers over the strings on the proper frets and sliding his right hand from Heero's chest to the strings that stretched over the guitar's body, he played the chords slowly so Heero could see how it was done. The resonance of the vibrating strings resounded the beautiful song that Duo had just been playing, the one that Heero had right away fallen in love with. After playing the sequence twice, he reached for Heero's fingers and arranged them on the fret board, his other hand guiding his right hand to the strings that lay over the guitar's round cavity, his own fingers still lying on top of his as he guided a surprisingly adept Heero through the music, singing the words softly in his ear.
"I think about you all the time,
But I don't need to sing.
It's lonely where you are.
Come back down,
And I won't tell 'em your name."
Duo lead Heero's hand in a few quick strums to finish off the song before giggling into his ear; "Heh, Hee-chan, you're not bad for a beginner. It's almost annoying how perfect you are."
"I'm not perfect," he stated in that sweetly bland voice of his. Duo nearly dropped all his weight on Heero's shoulders in frustration at Heero's attacks at himself, his dignity towards the other boy being the only thing keeping him from doing so.
"You just say that 'cause you wanna hear me tell you that you are," Duo playfully flicked Heero's cheek. "Stop fishing for compliments you loser! It's not becoming of the perfect soldier."
"Stop it," Heero moaned in a voice that would have sounded annoyed to an untrained ear, rolling his shoulders back to push Duo off. He suddenly was aware of just how close Duo was to him. And he was also aware of how easily Duo had latched onto the true intent that little verbal maneuver. "Why is it that you always know what I'm thinking, Maxwell?" he asked, turning around to face the boy behind him while thinking back on all the times that Duo had nailed him on other such occasions.
"Because we're friends," Duo shrugged with an innocent look on his face. "A friend is someone who knows everything about you and nevertheless, still wants to be your friend." He grinned smugly at that. "And dammit Yuy, if some people knew what I knew about you, they would either run away screaming or freak out and die of a heart attack."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Heero said inquisitively, his eyes narrowing as he tried to beat his way into Duo's head with his icy stare.
"It means that it's pretty hard to find someone who would put up with as much of your shit as I do," Duo retorted tartly with his hands on his hips, though his mouth was wide and grinning. "Have you ever watched yourself in action? I'll be damn honest Hee-chan, but you can be a real bitch sometimes."
"Why should I care what you think of me?" Heero snapped, suddenly setting the guitar aside as if it were kryptonite. It was Duo's after all; in this situation, Heero figured he didn't need to be fondling the stupid instrument on his lap. "I'm a soldier! I don't need to waste my time thinking and worrying about emotions. You of all people should have realized by now that the perfect soldier could not possibly be human!"
"That's just what's so thoroughly twisted about you," Duo said in reply, openly trying to fight down the clear fever in his voice. "The way you were raised to think and live, that's not normal, Heero. I've told you once, and I'll tell you again: LIFE IS NOT PERFECT!"
Heero said nothing. He knew Duo was right. Duo was always right when it came to the matter of his waking life.
He even started to appreciate what Duo was trying to communicate to him when the braided American started to speak again, his voice now calmed and sounding as it naturally did, somewhat raspy and deep, but somehow melodic. "Hn, and no matter how hard you try to pretend that your life is so damn perfect, well, don't take me for the fool I seem to be, Heero Yuy. I can see behind the mask. I bet I know you better than you know yourself."
He was not about to argue Duo there.
And Duo was still talking. Heero really did have to hand it to the man; when he got going on a subject that he felt strongly about, not hell or high water was going to get him to shut up. Ah, but that mindless prattle is what makes Duo… Duo….
"So you just ask yourself again, Heero, what the hell do you want out of life?" he was saying, his hands moving in wild gesticulations to further accentuate his points. "Because if you keep living in that stupid little egg shell of yours, you'll never see the light of the sun or feel the warmth of the stars on your back. I swear to God, I've made it a personal goal to be the one to slam that damn shell to tiny little shards and make you a real person."
Heero was suddenly listening. "Do you really think you can do that?"
"Fuck yeah," Duo said, his brows raised and his voice riddled with a tone that seemed to dictate Duo's one thought about the question, Well duh!
"Why would you even waste your time trying?" Heero frowned, crossing his arms and looking with hard questioning eyes at Duo. He really wanted to hear what Duo had to say. And knowing you, you wouldn't dare lie… especially to… me….
"I don't know how many times I have to say this," Duo said, the tiniest hints of frustration beginning to shine in his tone. He was suddenly on all fours, leering in Heero's face, his nose inches away from that of the perfect soldier, his eyes zinging their violet radiant passion into that of Heero's unchanging Prussian blue stare. His voice words were chopped for emphasis as he said again. "Heero. We. Are. Friends."
Duo could feel the moment starting to slip through his fingers, and without another thought, not even bothering to think what Hilde would think when he told her, he kissed Heero's brow, friendly of course, but it was damn apparent that Heero was shuddering beneath his lips. Why aren't you reaching to rip my lungs out, Heero? Duo wondered as his lips slid down the gently curve of Heero's nose, gazing his mouth briefly against the other boy's. The instant was brief, short-lived and gone before Duo even realized what he had done. He was rocking backwards on his haunches, watching Heero's sullen reaction with great curiosity.
"Why did you do that?" was the darkened reply to Duo's proceedings.
"Actions speaks louder than words," Duo said, waving his fingers around as he said the old phrase. "And as far as you're concerned, well, actions are the only things that seem to get any points across to you. So there you go. Friends, got that yet, Hee-chan?"
"Friends…." Without warning, Heero smiled at the word. "Yeah, I got it."
"Good." Duo gave him a curt nod. Then, shoving him quite unceremoniously off the bed, sending the perfect soldier into a crumpled disorganized heap on the floor, he said. "Now get your ass to bed and catch up on some shuteye. Something tells me we've got a long few weeks ahead of us."
Heero rose from the bed silently and walked to his room, closing the door behind him, pressing his back hard against the door, sunk to the floor, his hands pressed against his face, and spent the night confused and unsure of where to go from there.
—O—
The next two days found Heero being dragged all over the city by tour-happy Duo, much to his unwilling displeasure. He was glad when Duo announced that he wanted to spend the next day relaxing before they took off into space that night. At least it would give him time to catch up on some much needed information on Stella. The government was not going to be much help in this mission, and Heero knew he would need all the time he could to work out the kinks of whatever plan he would come up with. This time, he was working from scratch, from the ground up. No orders, no mission restraints from any authority. Just everything his way, and no one, not even God, was going to stop him from carrying this mission out for the Preventers.
So there was Heero, sitting with his back pressed straight up against his chair as he mechanically went about his work on his laptop, Duo flopped on the now folded up sofa bed, reading.
"But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?" Duo started reading aloud from the pages of the worn old manuscript that he held lovingly in his hands. He saw Heero stiffen with irritation at the disturbance and he thought to himself, Mission successfully commenced. He kept at it. "It is the East, and Juliet is the sun! Oh rise fair sun and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief that thou, her maid, art far more fair than she."
"Quiet Maxwell," Heero growled, his eyes locked on the screen on his computer. The mission came first, and he was in no mood for Duo's games, especially since he had favored the braided brat's incessant whining that they hit every tourist spot that Paris had to offer.
Duo made a loud stage gasp, his eyes still wide as he continued to read from the page, rising to his knees as he fell into the part. "She speaks, yet she says nothing! What of that? Her eye discourses. I will answer it."
"Let's see, Barton Foundation records," Heero was muttering to himself as he scrolled through a list of old databases and reports.
"I am too bold! 'Tis not to me she speaks!" Duo flew backwards with the words, his exaggerated (and loud) collapse onto the sofa gaining him a sharp glare from Heero, one that dictated insane vehemence. Still, Duo persisted, keeping in mind that he was out to make Heero notice what it was like to live a little... and him while he was at it. His feet still stuck straight up in the air, the book held aloft over his head, Duo skipped down through the speech a little and read some more. "As daylight doth a lamp; her eye in heaven would through the airy region stream so bright that birds would sing and think it were not night. See how she leans her cheek upon her hand? O, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!"
"Ay me," Heero said in that deep guttural monotone of his, a smirk on his face as he kept at his research.
Duo smirked as well, dropping his legs over the sofa's arm as he read the line to himself just as Heero spoke it. "She speaks," he read as launched right into the rest of Romeo's speech, after a while not even bothering to read it out of the book, his arms flying around for emphasis as he dictated the love oration from memory for Heero's audile pleasure. No matter how little credit Heero would give him, Duo was more intellectual than he liked to let on. "O speak again, bright angel, for thou art as glorious to this night, being o'er my head as is a wingèd messenger of heaven onto the white upturnèd eyes wond'ring eyes of mortals that fall back to gaze on him when he bestrides the lazy puffing clouds and sails upon the bosom of the air."
Duo paused, waiting to see if Heero would take up the cue and go on with Juliet's next line. When the only sound that responded to his act was the incessant tap, tap, tap of computer keys beneath Heero's manipulative fingers, Duo sighed. Couldn't count on being that lucky. He stood, folding the book up and laying it ceremoniously on top of his duffel, which sat packed and ready to go beside his guitar bag beside the sofa. "Well Hee-chan, I'll leave you to your ways. I have a date with Hilde before we sail out of here into the stars and probably our deaths, so if you don't mind, which I'm sure you don't, I'll just be going for about an hour or so." He chuckled, having fun with this teasing, rolling his eyes at Heero's seeming obliviousness. "Oh don't bother to get up, I can let myself out. See you in a while, Hee-chan. Have fun being perfect!"
Heero heard the door close behind his partner, silencing that mindless chatter. Oh yes, he had heard every word. He was going to meet up with Hilde. Awful nice of her to fly all the way over here for a visit, Heero thought to himself with a wistful smile, not able to think of anyone he liked well enough that would do that for him… except for maybe Duo. And then he could not help but wonder why he felt the tiniest surge of jealousy in his leaden heart that Duo, his one real friend in the known universe, had just taken off to see one of his friends, one of zillions, he was sure, for God knew what. I shouldn't care what Duo wants for himself. It's his life. He can ruin it with love if he so chooses…. And refusing to think on it any more (because it was starting to hurt his head) Heero threw his whole mind and being into his work, the perfect soldier half of him dominating his brain once again as he lost himself in his work, the only thing that kept him from immersing himself too much in Duo's waking life, the world of the living.
"He that jests at scars that never felt a wound," Heero whispered bleakly as Duo's vociferous footsteps faded down the hall.
"I know it was a lot of trouble for you to come all this way," Duo said, staring at his rippled reflection in the dark pool of coffee that sat in the warm mug between his hands. He was sitting across from Hilde at a small round table in a classy little French café near the River Seine. "And I really appreciate what you're doing for me. I hope you know how much it means to me that you're a good enough friend to come all this why on my whim."
"That's what a friends does, Duo. You of all people should know that," she said. She went on with the rest of her statement, though she knew what the answer was going to be, and that it had to do undoubtedly with Heero. Otherwise, why would he have bothered to call on her, when she knew that he and Heero were much closer friends than she could ever hope to be? She was not blind. She could see it. She always had. "So what exactly is this whim you're calling me out on anyway?"
"Uh, it's—"
"Heero isn't it?" she finished for him. She ignored his dropped jaw and wide eyes as she calmly sipped her coffee. "That much I knew the moment you called me up a few days ago. Hell, I knew that much the day you walked out on me. It's always been Heero with you."
Duo shrugged modestly, a habit he often preformed when there was a lack of anything to say. Duo was never one to just let a comment go without a reaction. He swigged his coffee quietly for a few more moments, just letting the steam curl around his face in the oncoming winter chill around them before actually speaking. "It just didn't feel right without him," he said simply.
"Doesn't feel right without you, but you don't see me wandering the streets looking for a man that was as good as dead to you four years ago," she answered, mimicking his shrug.
"There's where you and I are different," he said, turning his head slightly to the side and looking at her from the corners of his eyes with a self-satisfied look on his face. "Aw, Hilde, you're just one to be content wherever you are. But me, I'm always looking to make it better. I won't just accept things because someone told me that's the way it's supposed to be. If I don't like it, then hell, I'm gonna change it."
She smiled. "Typical. You always were a more a 'doer' than anything."
"You know it," he smiled back, going back at his caffeine energy filled mug with a rude slurp and a wink. More silence.
"Duo, why is he so important to you?"
He smiled down into his mug again, before saying softly, his violet gaze still fixated on the brownish liquid still steaming before him. "He completes me."
"What?" she looked at him quizzically, gripping her large yellow mug tightly by the handle as she stared at him, at his long mess of a braid falling over his shoulder and his pretty lashes sweeping out over his misty eyes. He had never said anything that deep about her, even when she had the faintest hopes he might have loved her.
Duo finally looked up at her, sifting his hand through the warm steam that rose from his mug. "Can't have the light without the dark, nor the dark without the light. The dark angel of heaven and the rosy God of Death, that's us," Duo smiled his wide innocent smile at Hilde. She could see there was still more to this than Duo had said yet. He liked to have people beg information out of him. He never changes.
"Hmm," she whistled, not sure what to make of the comment. It was one of those deep philosophical comments of Duo's, and while his words were not as lost on she as they were on Heero, often what Duo had to say was so beautiful, that she had trouble coming back with something that would give the statement the credit it deserved. "Is that why you left me then?" she just spat the question out. There was nothing else on her mind but that, and she had to know for sure, even after all this time.
"I didn't love you… not like that," Duo answered honestly, his eyes riddled with a mysterious tone that Hilde had never seen before. "You're my friend, and damn good one at that, Hilde. Don't forget it, okay? I'll love you a lot forever… but there's just… something more that I need… that I feel…."
"You love Heero?" She said it without even thinking. The language just flowed from her lips without even bothering to think what Duo would say about it. What if that's not it at all? She wondered for one brief horrible moment, Duo would drown me in that river out there for saying something like that about his best friend.
All her fears and hopes about Duo were both confirmed and shattered with only one little word. "Yes," he breathed. "I've fallen head over heels in love with Heero Yuy, the most callous bastard in the entire universe, and there's nothing you or I can do about it. Not even the Vice Foreign Minister could sway me away from him."
"Duo…."
"And don't you say anything Hilde," Duo held up a hand, his eyes closed and downcast. "I know you're thinking that I'm crazy to want him and even crazier to try. But you said it yourself. I'm a 'doer,' and I'm going to do anything I can to let Heero know how I feel."
"So why did you call me here? Just to tell me that?" Hilde could feel a lump forming in her throat.
"No, that's not all," Duo dropped his hand limply to his side. "Hilde, I need your advice. Dammit, Hilde! You know Heero! I can't tell him! I'm deathly afraid to!"
"You're afraid? You, the God of Death, are afraid of one man?"
"God, Hilde, you'd be afraid to talk to Heero Yuy too, if you realized that you were in love with him, knowing full well he would pummel you with six rounds of lead before he would even consider forgiving you for saying so," Duo crossed his arms. He swore again, that frustrated gleam in his eyes as he smacked the tabletop, making everyone in the café jump and turn around to stare. "Dammit Hilde! He's my fucking best friend, and here I am wishing I could be so much more to him. I just don't want to be another Relena to him. God, he would hate that. I would hate that! And if that happened, then who the hell would be around for him? He's all alone, Hilde."
"He's got friends. What about the other pilots?" Hilde wished she could have said that again in a kinder voice, but it was too late to take it back. "You don't always need to be the one there to support him when he's falling, Duo! You have other obligations too!"
He raised one brow, curious as to where she was going with this. "Yeah? Like what?"
"Like to those very same other pilots! To me!" she exclaimed, her voice getting louder with every word. The whole damn café was staring, much to Duo's dismay, though he figured they probably deserved the whole room of Yuy death glares with all the commotion they had been making.
"But unlike you and the other pilots, Heero can't work on his own!" Duo argued back. "The man may claim being the perfect soldier and all that shit, but the truth is, that guy couldn't make it for a day in the real world without someone else there. God, three years of living under the same roof as him has definitely proven that."
"But why does that someone have to be you?" Hilde asked, calming down once more. She sounded like she might cry, and for a second, Duo wished he had not been so exorbitant with his overreactions.
"I'll say it again, who else has he got?" Duo asked very seriously.
"Well what about Miss Relena?" she asked. She had a look on her face that gave away the name was the last ditch effort she could throw Duo's way to argue her feeble case. She knew Duo was right. Duo was always right.
"We've talked about this before," Duo said idly, reclining in his chair, throwing an arm over the wooden back. "There is no way Heero would lower himself enough to go crawling to her door. Not only is it totally not his style, but the last thing he needs is her simpering possessive and damn obsessive self running rings around him. He would think the whole idea weak."
"He would think you were weak for loving him, friendly or otherwise," Hilde grumbled under her breath, not really intending for Duo to hear, though by the way he was pouting at her, she knew he had anyway.
"You're right, he would," Duo said in response to Hilde's mutterings, smiling grimly at the fleeting thought that Wufei would find this whole conversation on weakness delightfully amusing. "Which is exactly why I won't tell him what I feel, because he would think I was weak. I will not be weak in front of Heero Yuy!" Duo slammed his fist into the tabletop as he said that last sentence. More death glares from the other customers and a sheepish wave from Duo as he regained control of his passionate outburst. He turned back to his friend and went on. "And you know better than anyone Hilde, that I can't keep my emotions bottled up for long. I had to tell someone, even if it was only you."
She smiled weakly, sadly, her eyes unfocused and blurry as she fought to swallow he sorrow and her sobs. "Even if it were… only me. I understand Duo, even though it's only… me…."
He cocked his head to the side, looking at her strangely. "What's wrong Hilde? Why do you look like you might burst into tears? Tell me."
"Because what you want isn't what I want," she said with that softened subdued smile. "You might not have ever loved me Duo, but I did. I loved you a lot, even though you were never there. You were always out amongst the stars, with Heero."
"I'm a dreamer, what can I do?" Duo shrugged. "I could get lost in outer space, just floating past all the stars, dreaming, watching them just fall to Earth, full of hopes."
"You're a falling star, Duo," Hilde said, cupping her chin in both her hands. "You're just falling faster and faster, waiting and praying for Heero Yuy to catch you. You know he won't. No matter how much you love him and care for him, he'll never catch you."
"That's not true at all!" Duo exclaimed, jumping to his feet with the sound of chair legs screeching on the tile floor and the clattering of mugs and teaspoons. "He would so. He's caught me thousands of times before and I swear to God that I'll always be the one to catch him, no matter what. He might want to take off to the skies and become a star and I want to be ready to catch him should his light begin to flicker. So even if he's too thick to notice that I'm always there for him, or too cold to realize that I love him, I'll always be there, only for him. That's all there ever has been for me."
"I know," she whispered. "I know it all too well. But Duo, is that what you really want? You're content to be just right there at his side, waiting for a moment you know will never come?"
"I want to be there, so it won't pass me by. Life is so much bigger than any of us, you know? Something as small as this could be swept up into eternity before I even knew it had come," he said, picking his chair carefully back up and sitting down again. He thought he could hear someone complaining about rude Americans under his breath, though he chose to ignore the commentary, not wanting to lose the mood of the conversation. He was finding more emotions inside that he never knew that he had. "And even if it did, I think I'd still be standing there, stuck in that moment forever. It would be worth waiting until the rest of my life if it meant that I might one day get to hold him and kiss him and love him without fear of death or loss or anything. It's all I want."
"If it's what you want," she began to reply slowly, taking her time with the words, clearly having trouble getting the emotions in her heart right and the courage to say the one thing she knew would destroy her, but keep Duo nearby for a least a little longer. "If it's what you want, Duo, then it's what I want."
"Hilde…."
She smiled again, that melancholy look still upon her pretty face. "Duo, you have to tell him."
"I can't," he started to protest before Hilde cut him off, rattling the table as she smacked her hand against it in frustration.
"Goddamn it Maxwell!" she shouted, gripping the edges of the round table so tightly, her knuckles were white. "You complain that he's distant and cold, but look at you! You're making the biggest mistake a person could ever make, and that's keeping your emotions a secret. Can't you see what suppressed emotions did to Heero? Do you want to be like him?"
"He never notices anything I do," Duo said with a subtle gesture of his hands. "Why should he notice if I told him that I wanted to make him mine? He wouldn't care. He'd just… smile that cold knowing smile of his and turn away…. He would walk away."
"How do you know that?" Hilde quarreled back. "You've never tried. You've called him your friend, you've told him you'd always be there for him, but that's not enough. You have to tell him all of the truth. It would be a lie if you didn't. And Duo, you don't lie."
"You're right, I don't," he frowned. "I don't lie, but there's a difference between a lie and withholding the truth, Hilde."
"Duo," she whispered, her voice hoarse and ragged. "Duo, the biggest mistake I ever made was not telling you that I loved you that day you left. I guess I was just expecting you to come back one day, but you never did. I never got a chance to tell you what I really felt, and I thought I had lost you forever. Not that I could ever be more to you than Heero is, but you know, I blew any hope of ever spending my life with you because of two seconds of pride and hesitation. I… I let the moment pass me by. If you really want to make sure that Heero won't leave you, tell him what you're feeling. Even if he does seem aloof for telling him so, well, that never means a thing. You said it yourself that Heero is never one to show what's going on inside his head. A reaction like that would almost guarantee that he's hiding something else. You never know, he just may love you too."
"Maybe…." Duo pondered the thought, seeing the wisdom in what Hilde had to say. I knew she'd come through, he thought as he mulled over it in his head, debating what he was going to do. He smiled, not wanting Hilde to notice how much more depth she had just added the whole situation.
"And you know, you're not much better," she went on to say. "You say Heero hides behind a mask? So do you, Duo Maxwell. Perhaps his mask is just a white face with no emotion painted upon it, but the cover you wear, you know, the smiles and the laughing, just to hide what you don't want other people to know…. Don't think it's something I can't see around. I can tell when you're hurting and the bigger you smile, the cheesier that grin of yours is and the louder your laugh, the more torn apart I know you are."
"I'd never let anyone see my real face," Duo said darkly in response. "Heero hides himself more blatantly than I do, but I've got my own secrets to hide, though I guess mine aren't so obscure anymore. You could see behind the mask, and I didn't even let you in." He laughed cryptically. "You knew I was in love with someone else."
"You let Heero in, though, didn't you?"
"I try."
"And?"
"He's still standing out in the rain without an umbrella," Duo answered with a flick of his wrist. "He doesn't want to be let in. I told you before Hilde, he doesn't want anything to do with my love. He'd rather die in the cold than come in where it's warm."
"So all you two are is a pair of lost little boys, looking for a place to hide," she summed up briefly. "Just hiding behind each others back in the shadows, hoping that no one will see who you are."
"So what are you trying to tell me?"
"Step out into the light," she smiled at this, the first real genuinely happy smile she had flashed Duo's way since she had arrived, "…and pull Heero with you by the hand."
—O—
