Part IV
When Duo next opened his eyes, he was back in Heero's bed. At first he thought that the whole daughter mess might have been just a dream, but then he noticed that he was still dressed and Wufei was sitting calmly by the door. Damn. There went that idea.
"What the hell happened?" he asked Wufei as he sat up.
"You fainted," came the answer.
Duo shook his head and tried to sound superior. "I did not. Fainting, as you well know, implies weakness. It would be beneath my dignity to do such a thing."
Wufei snorted. "If you ever had any dignity, it's all gone now. I might as well tell you that Relena's security staff found you duffel and began searching it, thinking it contained a bomb."
Duo groaned. "What next?"
"I believe everyone in the building has been acquainted with the fact that you possess a pair of heart patterned boxers."
Duo blushed crimson. "They were a gift, okay? I can't believe they searched my bag."
"What on earth possessed you to leave it just outside the gate? Of course they thought it was a bomb."
Grinning cheekily, Duo replied, "Well, they wouldn't let me in since I didn't have and invitation, and I couldn't very well climb the wall with it, now could I? Come to think of it, I should have known that Heero wasn't in charge of security anymore; he would never have let things get that lax." He glanced around the room, then asked, "Speaking of Heero, where is he?"
"Off trying to recover your stuff, I believe."
"Ah."
Silence filled the room. Wufei was perfectly content not to talk, and Duo stopped asking questions. He was afraid of bringing up the most obvious topic: his daughter. He was trying very hard not to think about her and all the implications she brought with her.
It was obvious that Heero knew by now that after they had parted, Duo had sought relief from loneliness with women. Not just one either, although possibly Heero didn't know that. But Duo figured that it should also be obvious that those attachments hadn't meant much to him. After all, he hadn't even stayed around long enough to find out that he'd knocked up one of his lady friends, right?
More daunting than the issue of who he had slept with was the child herself. Old relationships could be explained away, but there was no way that little girl was leaving. How in the world had Heero ended up with her? Not that that was necessarily a bad thing; of all the people in the world that the girl could have gone to, Heero was one of the better choices, even if it did put him in an uncomfortable situation. Still, Heero was the last person Duo thought of when he imagined a parent.
Speaking of Heero and parenting.
"Come on, sweetheart. I'm not going anywhere." Heero's coaxing voice came from the hall. "You can let go."
"No!"
The door opened, and Heero came into the room. His progress was rather slow and awkward, as he was weighed down by Duo's duffel on his shoulder and Duo's daughter on his leg. She was sitting on his foot with her arms around his knee, clinging like a burr so that Heero was forced to drag her along with each step he took.
Wufei raised his eyebrows at the scene. "Eleanor, why are you hanging on Heero's leg?"
/Eleanor,/ Duo thought. /Her name is Eleanor./
Heero dropped the duffel, reached down, and detached Eleanor from his leg. "Elly," he said gently, "I'm going to hand you off to your Uncle Woofy for a minute, okay?"
"Yuy!" Wufei yelled. "No wonder she always says my name wrong!"
Heero ignored him. "Okay, sweetheart?"
Eleanor shook her head, threw her arms around his neck, and hid her face in his shoulder.
"No?" Heero sighed in defeat. "Wufei, could I ask you to wait outside for a few minutes?"
Still grumbling about the injustice of it all, and the indignity of being called Woofy, Wufei left the room and closed the door behind him.
Heero pulled the chair Wufei had vacated closer to the bed where Duo sat, and sat down. Putting Eleanor in his lap, he turned her to face Duo. "Duo," he said, sounding rather shaky. "This is you daughter, Eleanor Maxwell."
"Yuy," Eleanor piped up. Heero's gaze flicked down at her, then jumped back up to meet Duo's.
"Hi Eleanor," Duo said. She simply stared at him and didn't say anything.
Heero sighed as he watched Duo try to cover his disappointment. "All right. You don't have to talk to him. But I need to. So let's take you out to play with your uncles."
Eleanor suddenly let out a wail and flung her arms around her foster father. Her large, violet eyes glimmered with tears. "No! No! No!" she wailed.
"What's wrong, honey? What's wrong?" Heero was distressed by her sudden breakdown.
"I don't wanna leave!" she sobbed. "I wanna stay with you!!"
"Honey, it's just for a few minutes."
"No! I heard Uncle Quatre talking! I don't want to leave with him," here she pointed at Duo, "I wanna stay with you! You're my dad!"
Heero patted her awkwardly, looking nervously at Duo. He'd imagined a lot of scenarios involving Duo's return, and thought that he had exhausted all the possibilities. In the worst one, Duo was horrified by Eleanor and walked out, leaving Heero to deal with a broken heart and a daughter with security issues. Never, never had he imagined that Duo would leave and try to take Eleanor with him. Now the thought scared him more than anything.
Fortunately, Duo was quick to allay those fears for both of them. Leaning over, he reached out to pat Eleanor on the back soothingly. She stiffened and squirmed away from him. Duo paused and withdrew his hand slowly, looking hurt, but said, "Don't worry. I'm not gonna try and take you away from your daddy."
"Hear that?" Heero asked, immensely relieved. "No one's going to take you away."
Eleanor sniffled. "Uncle Quatre was talking to Aunt Sally about custody or something. He said I wouldn't live with you any more."
"Well, he was wrong," Duo said firmly.
"So calm down, sweetheart. Now dry your eyes and go out and play with you Uncle Woofy. Maybe you can draw me another picture of him, hm?" Heero set her down gently and patted her back. "I'll be downstairs in a few minutes; I just need to talk to Duo, okay?" Still sniffling a little, she nodded and went out the door, closing it behind her.
As soon as she was gone, Heero turned back to Duo. "I'm sorry about that," he muttered. "I know that was something of a shock for you."
"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Duo answered. "Why didn't you tell me about her the minute I walked in the door?"
"Scared," Heero answered. "I didn't know how you'd react, and I didn't want to scare you off. Besides, I'm selfish. I wanted to know if you came back for me or for Eleanor."
"How did you end up with Eleanor anyway?"
"Well, that's a long story," Heero said, then winced as he realized that he'd unconsciously repeated the social worker's words.
"Give me the abbreviated version," Duo prompted.
"Well, a social worker showed up on my doorstep wanting to know where you were, and I asked her why she wanted to find you. Then she told me about Eleanor. She said that Eleanor was going to go to a girl's home if you weren't found. I knew you wouldn't want that, so I adopted her."
"How did you know she was mine?"
"I didn't at first." Heero shifter uncomfortably. "The only proof I really had was the name on the birth certificate. I had my doubts at first, but then I saw Elly. She really does look a lot like you."
Duo sat in silence, so Heero kept talking. "She's a sweet child. She's a chatter box, like you, and she loves to make other people smile. She's active, and you can't keep her out of anything, but she's not a bad girl at all. I took her in for you, but then I started to think of her as mine. I think I did the right thing, but for the wrong reason."
Heero realized that he was babbling, and stopped. Silence settled once again over the room. Heero was afraid to ask the question that no buzzed around in his head. Afraid of the answer.
Oddly enough, it was Duo who finally asked the dreaded question. "So, what now?"
"I don't know," Heero admitted. "I guess when the reunion is over, I go home with Elly, and you." he trailed off, since he really didn't know what Duo was going to do. He'd thought he'd know last night, but having Eleanor in the picture changed everything. In his chest, something was bouncing around frantically, fueled by the hope that Duo might stay and fear that he would leave. But that choice wasn't his to make. The ball was now in Duo's court.
Duo realized it. He sat quietly deliberating. Finally, he said, "The choice is mine, huh? Just like that. Don't you even want to know where I've been all this time?"
"I do, and I intend to grill you about that later, but Eleanor's future seems more important."
Duo nodded solemnly, but remained silent, and Heero started to get panicky. "Look, it's your decision, but you don't have to tell me right now. Think it over."
"Well," Duo said, "now that I've been found, no one's going to insist that I take custody of her, are they?"
"I don't know, but I doubt it. I adopted her, and I have the paperwork to prove it."
"Well," Duo said, looking thoughtful, "I should probably stick around just to make sure that no one tries to take her away from you."
"Oh," Heero said, not really knowing what else to say. It was a mixed blessing. Duo was staying, but out of a sense of obligation towards Eleanor.
"Heero," Duo said. "Look at me."
Heero, whose eyes had been fixed on the carpet, looked up to find Duo smirking at him. "Your chain is way too easy to yank, Heero," he said. "I was already hoping you would let me stay with you last night, before I even knew that Eleanor existed."
Before he even realized what he was doing, Heero was up and over by the by the bed, kissing Duo. When they broke for air, Heero sat down on the bed next to him leaned against his shoulder. "I love you," he murmured.
Duo squeezed his waist in response. "There's still the problem of Eleanor's reaction."
"Well, you've got a little less than a week to get to know her before we go home," Heero told him.
"We," Duo repeated, wide eyed. His breathing was coming a little faster than normal. "We. I've never been a father before. What if I do something wrong?"
Heero squeezed his hand reassuringly. "I'll help you. It's really not so bad, once you get used to the extra responsibility, and the rewards are great." He stood up and drew the now slightly panicky Duo along after him. Heero could sympathize with Duo and his new fear. The same panic had attacked him shortly after the adoption had finally gone through. The implications of what he had done had finally hit Heero the next day. Eleanor was his, completely under his care, and he'd been startled to realize that he didn't have a clue about child rearing.
"You learn as you go along," Heero said, in what he hoped was a soothing tone. "With Eleanor, prior experience is useless anyway, since she has the ingenuity to come up with all sorts of new trouble to get herself into. Case in point," he added, as Eleanor came running towards them. She looked like a small ghost, since she was completely covered in a fine, white powder.
"Hi Touchan," she said cheerfully, then, without a hint of her former uncertainty, she turned to Duo. "Your name's Duo. Relena told me you're cool. She told me that you got in a flour fight with Uncle Woofy, and to cheer me up, she let me have one! I got Uncle Woofy good!"
Duo looked down into her bright eyes and smiling, flour-covered face, and gave her an almost apologetic smile. "That's very nice, and I'm sure Woofy deserved what he got, but did Relena mention the part where I had to clean up everything afterwards?"
"Oh yeah," Eleanor said gloomily. "I forgot that part."
Duo laughed. "C'mon. I'll help you and Woofy clean up, since it was my idea in the first place."
From the kitchen, an enraged yell rose. "MAXWELL!!! Stop mispronouncing my name!"
Duo and Eleanor looked at each other and giggled.
~*~*~
Later that night, after Eleanor had gone to bed, Heero once more dragged Duo to his room, this time demanding that Duo explain to him exactly what had happened after they had parted. Duo hedged a bit, insisting that there wasn't really much to tell, but Heero insisted on hearing it anyway, so he began.
"Well, after the whole Mariemeia thing ended, I was planning on going back to L2 to work with Hilde. I was hoping that you would want to come with me, but then, before I even got a chance to ask you, you told me about your plan to accept Relena's job offer to become head of security. Of course, I could have gone with you two, but I thought that you guys were a couple, and that I would just be intruding and hurting myself as well."
"Oh Duo," Heero said. "It wasn't like that. She had all but given up on me by then. You would have been welcome with us"
Duo gave him a sad smile. "That wasn't what I thought," he said. "I didn't want to intrude, but I knew that you would feel guilty about driving me off and might try to follow me, so I decided not to go to L2 after all."
"Where did you go then?" Heero asked. "And why didn't you say anything to anyone else?"
"Because I figured that the only way you would learn to be with Relena without feeling bad about me was if I vanished completely. That way, you wouldn't have to be reminded of what had gone on during the war by the sight of me, or by hearing about me from any of the guys."
"But that sounds so lonely," Heero said sadly.
"It was," Duo said. "But I was already lonely, so I figured a little more solitude wouldn't matter. So I just started drifting around. I never stayed anywhere long enough to really get attached to the place or the people."
"Or the girlfriends," Heero added dryly, before he could stop himself.
"Or the boyfriends, such as they were," Duo admitted. "I took whatever happened to come my way. I'd tell myself that I didn't really need anyone, and that no one could really make me happy. I seemed to be right about the second part, but I just couldn't be by myself all the time. Nights were the worst, since I didn't have whatever job I did to distract me. It'd start, and I'd feel lonely, and I'd get this urge to just be around other people, especially if they were happy themselves. So I'd go to whatever nearby bar was open all night, and hang out, and next thing you know, someone would try to pick me up, and I'd be so desperate for human contact that I'd let them. I'd wake up in an unfamiliar bed the next morning.
"Some times I'd stick around and actually try to form a relationship, but it never seemed to work. I was too fixated on what I'd lost to really be a good partner, and in the end, I'd just leave and move to someplace new, and then the whole cycle would start again."
Heero nodded, trying not to let the idea of Duo sleeping with other people wound him. After all, Duo had just said that none of those relationships really lasted or meant much. "So Eleanor came out of one of those failed relationships."
Duo just looked sad. "I never fathered any children that I knew about. I was always careful, you know, using protection and all that. Of course, Eleanor is living proof that that doesn't always work. Looking back, I can guess which one Eleanor's mother was. I knew I shouldn't have believed her when she said she was on the pill."
"I have a copy of Elly's birth certificate, if you want to confirm your guess," Heero offered.
"Maybe later," Duo replied. "I would like to know who her mother was, not that it matters now. What matters now is what Eleanor thinks of me."
~*~*~
Duo soon found that he got on quite well with Eleanor. She happily accepted him as another one of her "uncles", and Duo didn't push for more. He dreaded her reaction when she found out that he would be living with her. The others tried to be helpful and supportive, although they didn't always succeed.
"It could be much worse," Sally told him. "Eleanor's still young enough to take this all in stride. Imagine if you'd come back ten years later and had to deal with a teenager."
She quickly dropped that line of inquiry, seeing that the thought of Eleanor as a teenager gave both Heero ad Duo the creeps.
Finally, when the end of the reunion was only two days away, they decided to broach the subject of Duo's staying with Eleanor. They found her sitting alone in the garden, adding to an enormous chain of clovers.
"Look!" she said happily. "I made jewelry." She held up her arms to show them the bracelets made of clovers on each wrist. Around her neck was a necklace of clovers.
"You aren't still trying to take over the world with clover chains, are you?" Heero asked. (1)
"What?!" Duo wasn't sure he had heard correctly.
"Some idea Hilde gave her," Heero explained hastily.
"Touchan, you forgot the part about wreaking havoc on all my enemies," Eleanor reminded him.
"Sweetheart, do you even know what that means?"
"Sort of," she said.
Heero sat down in the grass and drew Eleanor into his lap. "Your Aunt Hilde is a bad influence on you," he said.
"You always say that."
Heero smiled slightly. "And it's always true." A thought occurred to him. "Sweetheart, you know how your Aunt Hilde sometimes comes and stays at the apartment for a while?"
"Mm hm." Eleanor nodded, but she wasn't really paying attention; she had gone back to her clover chains.
"You don't mind when she does that, do you?"
"Nope! Aunt Hilde's cool!"
"And Uncle Duo's cool too, right?"
"Right!"
"Damn straight I am!" Duo said proudly.
Eleanor giggled while Heero just shook his head. Then, mentally crossing his fingers, he asked, "So you wouldn't mind if Uncle Duo came and stayed with us for a long time, would you?"
Eleanor looked up from her chain. "But where will Aunt Hilde sleep when she comes over?" she asked.
"Oh, she can still sleep on the couch," Heero reassured her.
"But then where will Uncle Duo sleep?"
"He'll sleep in the bedroom with me," he explained.
That confused her. "But you never let Aunt Hilde sleep in the bedroom."
Heero's face went crimson. He carefully phrased his next words, reminding himself that he was dealing with a five-year-old. "I like your Aunt Hilde very much, but not enough to let her sleep in my bed with me. But Duo." he trailed off, and his face got (if possible) even redder than before.
"So Uncle Duo and me are special 'cause we get to sleep in your bed, right?" Eleanor asked helpfully.
"That's right," Heero said, mentally slapping himself with a reminder to get his mind out of the gutter. "You and Duo are very special to me." He shot a meaningful look at Duo, who was making odd strangling sounds in an attempt not to laugh. Clearly, his mind worked along the same lines as Heero's.
"So," Heero continued, "you wouldn't mind?"
"Nuh uh."
Smiling with relief, Heero pressed her into an embrace. She returned the hug for a moment, then went back to her flowers. Looking up over her head, he caught sight of Duo giving him a "come hither" look, and realized that Duo had gotten ideas from his little conversation with Eleanor.
"Uh, honey? I'm gonna leave you to your clover chaining now. I'll be upstairs if you need me," he told Eleanor rather hastily.
"Okay." She didn't sound particularly interested.
As the two men walked back to the house, Duo asked, "You don't mind leaving her alone?"
"Not here," Heero answered. "She'll be perfectly safe here."
"Good," Duo purred. "I don't want to think that having a child around would ruin our love life."
"That's what locks are for."
An hour later, after Heero had proved that a child wasn't necessarily a deterrent to a love life, Duo was surprised when there was a knock at the bedroom door.
"What is it?" Heero called, feeling too lazy to get up, much less prepare to open the door and greet a visitor.
"Um, Heero?" It was Relena. "Why is my garage covered in clover chains?"
~*~*~
After surreptitiously taking several pictures of Relena's newly decorated garage, Duo joined Heero in scolding Eleanor. Heero seemed more amused than angry, and it looked for a while like Eleanor was going to get off with a light sentence, until she admitted that she had used a ladder to climb up onto the garage roof to string up some of the chains. Relena almost made Wufei call the paramedics, since it looked for a moment like both Duo and Heero would have heart attacks.
"Climbed on the roof?! Elly, what if you had fallen?!" Heero finally managed to gasp.
"But I didn't." Eleanor couldn't understand what the big deal was.
Duo finally managed to find his voice, and said, "I think you had better go to your room, young lady, and stay there for a while." He was relieved when she didn't question his authority, but trudged off to her room looking sulky.
"That girl will be the death of me," Heero said, watching Eleanor's retreating back. "She has no fear of heights, and I've watched her pull stunts a spider monkey wouldn't attempt."
Also watching Eleanor's back, Duo nodded distractedly.
~*~*~
Eleanor looked up in surprise at the knock at her door. It opened, and Duo came inside, closing the door behind him.
"I thought I'm not supposed to have people in here," she said.
"Not necessarily," Duo said. "You're just supposed to stay in here."
"Touchan usually makes me stay alone. He says it's to make me think about what I've done."
"Well," Duo said, "I'll leave you alone to think in a minute, but first I want to ask you something. Do you know why your Touchan and I were so angry?"
"'Cause I clover chained the garage," she said as though it was obvious.
"Well, that's part of it. That wasn't very nice to Relena. But that's not the main reason. Do you know the main reason?"
Looking solemnly into his face, she shook her head slowly.
"It's because you scared us. Climbing on the roof like that was a dangerous thing to do by yourself. You might have fallen and hurt yourself."
"But if I'd asked for help, I would've got in trouble," she said reasonably.
"Couldn't you have found another way to get the chains up there without climbing on the roof?" Duo almost immediately wished he hadn't asked the question. He could practically see the wheels in Eleanor's head turning as she thought about it.
/Great going, Maxwell,/ he thought. /Encourage her to get into trouble, why don't you./
/What the heck,/ another part of his mind snapped. /What harm can she do with clover chains?/
"Anyway," he said aloud, "I just wanted you to know that your Touchan isn't being unfair. He makes rules 'cause he's trying to make sure you stay safe. Think about that." With that, he headed for the door.
"Uncle Duo?"
He turned to find her regarding him thoughtfully. "Yes, Elly?"
"Did I really scare you?"
"Yes," he said quietly. "You did."
She walked over to him, and he knelt down to put himself at a height closer to her own. Reaching up, she hugged him and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Sorry," she said. "Tell Touchan sorry for me too, 'kay?"
"Okay."
~*~*~
Two days later
Duo squeezed Heero's hand as the door swung open to reveal the small but neat apartment. Eleanor bounced up and down next to them, practically singing, "We're home!"
"Home," Duo repeated. "I could get used to this."
Fin
The idea of the clover chains was actually M.E.'s. In seventh grade, she and I would hang out together during PE and plot to take over the world with clover chains and wreck havoc on all our enemies. Unfortunately, every time they mowed the law, our clovers got torn to shreds. ( Sadness.
When Duo next opened his eyes, he was back in Heero's bed. At first he thought that the whole daughter mess might have been just a dream, but then he noticed that he was still dressed and Wufei was sitting calmly by the door. Damn. There went that idea.
"What the hell happened?" he asked Wufei as he sat up.
"You fainted," came the answer.
Duo shook his head and tried to sound superior. "I did not. Fainting, as you well know, implies weakness. It would be beneath my dignity to do such a thing."
Wufei snorted. "If you ever had any dignity, it's all gone now. I might as well tell you that Relena's security staff found you duffel and began searching it, thinking it contained a bomb."
Duo groaned. "What next?"
"I believe everyone in the building has been acquainted with the fact that you possess a pair of heart patterned boxers."
Duo blushed crimson. "They were a gift, okay? I can't believe they searched my bag."
"What on earth possessed you to leave it just outside the gate? Of course they thought it was a bomb."
Grinning cheekily, Duo replied, "Well, they wouldn't let me in since I didn't have and invitation, and I couldn't very well climb the wall with it, now could I? Come to think of it, I should have known that Heero wasn't in charge of security anymore; he would never have let things get that lax." He glanced around the room, then asked, "Speaking of Heero, where is he?"
"Off trying to recover your stuff, I believe."
"Ah."
Silence filled the room. Wufei was perfectly content not to talk, and Duo stopped asking questions. He was afraid of bringing up the most obvious topic: his daughter. He was trying very hard not to think about her and all the implications she brought with her.
It was obvious that Heero knew by now that after they had parted, Duo had sought relief from loneliness with women. Not just one either, although possibly Heero didn't know that. But Duo figured that it should also be obvious that those attachments hadn't meant much to him. After all, he hadn't even stayed around long enough to find out that he'd knocked up one of his lady friends, right?
More daunting than the issue of who he had slept with was the child herself. Old relationships could be explained away, but there was no way that little girl was leaving. How in the world had Heero ended up with her? Not that that was necessarily a bad thing; of all the people in the world that the girl could have gone to, Heero was one of the better choices, even if it did put him in an uncomfortable situation. Still, Heero was the last person Duo thought of when he imagined a parent.
Speaking of Heero and parenting.
"Come on, sweetheart. I'm not going anywhere." Heero's coaxing voice came from the hall. "You can let go."
"No!"
The door opened, and Heero came into the room. His progress was rather slow and awkward, as he was weighed down by Duo's duffel on his shoulder and Duo's daughter on his leg. She was sitting on his foot with her arms around his knee, clinging like a burr so that Heero was forced to drag her along with each step he took.
Wufei raised his eyebrows at the scene. "Eleanor, why are you hanging on Heero's leg?"
/Eleanor,/ Duo thought. /Her name is Eleanor./
Heero dropped the duffel, reached down, and detached Eleanor from his leg. "Elly," he said gently, "I'm going to hand you off to your Uncle Woofy for a minute, okay?"
"Yuy!" Wufei yelled. "No wonder she always says my name wrong!"
Heero ignored him. "Okay, sweetheart?"
Eleanor shook her head, threw her arms around his neck, and hid her face in his shoulder.
"No?" Heero sighed in defeat. "Wufei, could I ask you to wait outside for a few minutes?"
Still grumbling about the injustice of it all, and the indignity of being called Woofy, Wufei left the room and closed the door behind him.
Heero pulled the chair Wufei had vacated closer to the bed where Duo sat, and sat down. Putting Eleanor in his lap, he turned her to face Duo. "Duo," he said, sounding rather shaky. "This is you daughter, Eleanor Maxwell."
"Yuy," Eleanor piped up. Heero's gaze flicked down at her, then jumped back up to meet Duo's.
"Hi Eleanor," Duo said. She simply stared at him and didn't say anything.
Heero sighed as he watched Duo try to cover his disappointment. "All right. You don't have to talk to him. But I need to. So let's take you out to play with your uncles."
Eleanor suddenly let out a wail and flung her arms around her foster father. Her large, violet eyes glimmered with tears. "No! No! No!" she wailed.
"What's wrong, honey? What's wrong?" Heero was distressed by her sudden breakdown.
"I don't wanna leave!" she sobbed. "I wanna stay with you!!"
"Honey, it's just for a few minutes."
"No! I heard Uncle Quatre talking! I don't want to leave with him," here she pointed at Duo, "I wanna stay with you! You're my dad!"
Heero patted her awkwardly, looking nervously at Duo. He'd imagined a lot of scenarios involving Duo's return, and thought that he had exhausted all the possibilities. In the worst one, Duo was horrified by Eleanor and walked out, leaving Heero to deal with a broken heart and a daughter with security issues. Never, never had he imagined that Duo would leave and try to take Eleanor with him. Now the thought scared him more than anything.
Fortunately, Duo was quick to allay those fears for both of them. Leaning over, he reached out to pat Eleanor on the back soothingly. She stiffened and squirmed away from him. Duo paused and withdrew his hand slowly, looking hurt, but said, "Don't worry. I'm not gonna try and take you away from your daddy."
"Hear that?" Heero asked, immensely relieved. "No one's going to take you away."
Eleanor sniffled. "Uncle Quatre was talking to Aunt Sally about custody or something. He said I wouldn't live with you any more."
"Well, he was wrong," Duo said firmly.
"So calm down, sweetheart. Now dry your eyes and go out and play with you Uncle Woofy. Maybe you can draw me another picture of him, hm?" Heero set her down gently and patted her back. "I'll be downstairs in a few minutes; I just need to talk to Duo, okay?" Still sniffling a little, she nodded and went out the door, closing it behind her.
As soon as she was gone, Heero turned back to Duo. "I'm sorry about that," he muttered. "I know that was something of a shock for you."
"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Duo answered. "Why didn't you tell me about her the minute I walked in the door?"
"Scared," Heero answered. "I didn't know how you'd react, and I didn't want to scare you off. Besides, I'm selfish. I wanted to know if you came back for me or for Eleanor."
"How did you end up with Eleanor anyway?"
"Well, that's a long story," Heero said, then winced as he realized that he'd unconsciously repeated the social worker's words.
"Give me the abbreviated version," Duo prompted.
"Well, a social worker showed up on my doorstep wanting to know where you were, and I asked her why she wanted to find you. Then she told me about Eleanor. She said that Eleanor was going to go to a girl's home if you weren't found. I knew you wouldn't want that, so I adopted her."
"How did you know she was mine?"
"I didn't at first." Heero shifter uncomfortably. "The only proof I really had was the name on the birth certificate. I had my doubts at first, but then I saw Elly. She really does look a lot like you."
Duo sat in silence, so Heero kept talking. "She's a sweet child. She's a chatter box, like you, and she loves to make other people smile. She's active, and you can't keep her out of anything, but she's not a bad girl at all. I took her in for you, but then I started to think of her as mine. I think I did the right thing, but for the wrong reason."
Heero realized that he was babbling, and stopped. Silence settled once again over the room. Heero was afraid to ask the question that no buzzed around in his head. Afraid of the answer.
Oddly enough, it was Duo who finally asked the dreaded question. "So, what now?"
"I don't know," Heero admitted. "I guess when the reunion is over, I go home with Elly, and you." he trailed off, since he really didn't know what Duo was going to do. He'd thought he'd know last night, but having Eleanor in the picture changed everything. In his chest, something was bouncing around frantically, fueled by the hope that Duo might stay and fear that he would leave. But that choice wasn't his to make. The ball was now in Duo's court.
Duo realized it. He sat quietly deliberating. Finally, he said, "The choice is mine, huh? Just like that. Don't you even want to know where I've been all this time?"
"I do, and I intend to grill you about that later, but Eleanor's future seems more important."
Duo nodded solemnly, but remained silent, and Heero started to get panicky. "Look, it's your decision, but you don't have to tell me right now. Think it over."
"Well," Duo said, "now that I've been found, no one's going to insist that I take custody of her, are they?"
"I don't know, but I doubt it. I adopted her, and I have the paperwork to prove it."
"Well," Duo said, looking thoughtful, "I should probably stick around just to make sure that no one tries to take her away from you."
"Oh," Heero said, not really knowing what else to say. It was a mixed blessing. Duo was staying, but out of a sense of obligation towards Eleanor.
"Heero," Duo said. "Look at me."
Heero, whose eyes had been fixed on the carpet, looked up to find Duo smirking at him. "Your chain is way too easy to yank, Heero," he said. "I was already hoping you would let me stay with you last night, before I even knew that Eleanor existed."
Before he even realized what he was doing, Heero was up and over by the by the bed, kissing Duo. When they broke for air, Heero sat down on the bed next to him leaned against his shoulder. "I love you," he murmured.
Duo squeezed his waist in response. "There's still the problem of Eleanor's reaction."
"Well, you've got a little less than a week to get to know her before we go home," Heero told him.
"We," Duo repeated, wide eyed. His breathing was coming a little faster than normal. "We. I've never been a father before. What if I do something wrong?"
Heero squeezed his hand reassuringly. "I'll help you. It's really not so bad, once you get used to the extra responsibility, and the rewards are great." He stood up and drew the now slightly panicky Duo along after him. Heero could sympathize with Duo and his new fear. The same panic had attacked him shortly after the adoption had finally gone through. The implications of what he had done had finally hit Heero the next day. Eleanor was his, completely under his care, and he'd been startled to realize that he didn't have a clue about child rearing.
"You learn as you go along," Heero said, in what he hoped was a soothing tone. "With Eleanor, prior experience is useless anyway, since she has the ingenuity to come up with all sorts of new trouble to get herself into. Case in point," he added, as Eleanor came running towards them. She looked like a small ghost, since she was completely covered in a fine, white powder.
"Hi Touchan," she said cheerfully, then, without a hint of her former uncertainty, she turned to Duo. "Your name's Duo. Relena told me you're cool. She told me that you got in a flour fight with Uncle Woofy, and to cheer me up, she let me have one! I got Uncle Woofy good!"
Duo looked down into her bright eyes and smiling, flour-covered face, and gave her an almost apologetic smile. "That's very nice, and I'm sure Woofy deserved what he got, but did Relena mention the part where I had to clean up everything afterwards?"
"Oh yeah," Eleanor said gloomily. "I forgot that part."
Duo laughed. "C'mon. I'll help you and Woofy clean up, since it was my idea in the first place."
From the kitchen, an enraged yell rose. "MAXWELL!!! Stop mispronouncing my name!"
Duo and Eleanor looked at each other and giggled.
~*~*~
Later that night, after Eleanor had gone to bed, Heero once more dragged Duo to his room, this time demanding that Duo explain to him exactly what had happened after they had parted. Duo hedged a bit, insisting that there wasn't really much to tell, but Heero insisted on hearing it anyway, so he began.
"Well, after the whole Mariemeia thing ended, I was planning on going back to L2 to work with Hilde. I was hoping that you would want to come with me, but then, before I even got a chance to ask you, you told me about your plan to accept Relena's job offer to become head of security. Of course, I could have gone with you two, but I thought that you guys were a couple, and that I would just be intruding and hurting myself as well."
"Oh Duo," Heero said. "It wasn't like that. She had all but given up on me by then. You would have been welcome with us"
Duo gave him a sad smile. "That wasn't what I thought," he said. "I didn't want to intrude, but I knew that you would feel guilty about driving me off and might try to follow me, so I decided not to go to L2 after all."
"Where did you go then?" Heero asked. "And why didn't you say anything to anyone else?"
"Because I figured that the only way you would learn to be with Relena without feeling bad about me was if I vanished completely. That way, you wouldn't have to be reminded of what had gone on during the war by the sight of me, or by hearing about me from any of the guys."
"But that sounds so lonely," Heero said sadly.
"It was," Duo said. "But I was already lonely, so I figured a little more solitude wouldn't matter. So I just started drifting around. I never stayed anywhere long enough to really get attached to the place or the people."
"Or the girlfriends," Heero added dryly, before he could stop himself.
"Or the boyfriends, such as they were," Duo admitted. "I took whatever happened to come my way. I'd tell myself that I didn't really need anyone, and that no one could really make me happy. I seemed to be right about the second part, but I just couldn't be by myself all the time. Nights were the worst, since I didn't have whatever job I did to distract me. It'd start, and I'd feel lonely, and I'd get this urge to just be around other people, especially if they were happy themselves. So I'd go to whatever nearby bar was open all night, and hang out, and next thing you know, someone would try to pick me up, and I'd be so desperate for human contact that I'd let them. I'd wake up in an unfamiliar bed the next morning.
"Some times I'd stick around and actually try to form a relationship, but it never seemed to work. I was too fixated on what I'd lost to really be a good partner, and in the end, I'd just leave and move to someplace new, and then the whole cycle would start again."
Heero nodded, trying not to let the idea of Duo sleeping with other people wound him. After all, Duo had just said that none of those relationships really lasted or meant much. "So Eleanor came out of one of those failed relationships."
Duo just looked sad. "I never fathered any children that I knew about. I was always careful, you know, using protection and all that. Of course, Eleanor is living proof that that doesn't always work. Looking back, I can guess which one Eleanor's mother was. I knew I shouldn't have believed her when she said she was on the pill."
"I have a copy of Elly's birth certificate, if you want to confirm your guess," Heero offered.
"Maybe later," Duo replied. "I would like to know who her mother was, not that it matters now. What matters now is what Eleanor thinks of me."
~*~*~
Duo soon found that he got on quite well with Eleanor. She happily accepted him as another one of her "uncles", and Duo didn't push for more. He dreaded her reaction when she found out that he would be living with her. The others tried to be helpful and supportive, although they didn't always succeed.
"It could be much worse," Sally told him. "Eleanor's still young enough to take this all in stride. Imagine if you'd come back ten years later and had to deal with a teenager."
She quickly dropped that line of inquiry, seeing that the thought of Eleanor as a teenager gave both Heero ad Duo the creeps.
Finally, when the end of the reunion was only two days away, they decided to broach the subject of Duo's staying with Eleanor. They found her sitting alone in the garden, adding to an enormous chain of clovers.
"Look!" she said happily. "I made jewelry." She held up her arms to show them the bracelets made of clovers on each wrist. Around her neck was a necklace of clovers.
"You aren't still trying to take over the world with clover chains, are you?" Heero asked. (1)
"What?!" Duo wasn't sure he had heard correctly.
"Some idea Hilde gave her," Heero explained hastily.
"Touchan, you forgot the part about wreaking havoc on all my enemies," Eleanor reminded him.
"Sweetheart, do you even know what that means?"
"Sort of," she said.
Heero sat down in the grass and drew Eleanor into his lap. "Your Aunt Hilde is a bad influence on you," he said.
"You always say that."
Heero smiled slightly. "And it's always true." A thought occurred to him. "Sweetheart, you know how your Aunt Hilde sometimes comes and stays at the apartment for a while?"
"Mm hm." Eleanor nodded, but she wasn't really paying attention; she had gone back to her clover chains.
"You don't mind when she does that, do you?"
"Nope! Aunt Hilde's cool!"
"And Uncle Duo's cool too, right?"
"Right!"
"Damn straight I am!" Duo said proudly.
Eleanor giggled while Heero just shook his head. Then, mentally crossing his fingers, he asked, "So you wouldn't mind if Uncle Duo came and stayed with us for a long time, would you?"
Eleanor looked up from her chain. "But where will Aunt Hilde sleep when she comes over?" she asked.
"Oh, she can still sleep on the couch," Heero reassured her.
"But then where will Uncle Duo sleep?"
"He'll sleep in the bedroom with me," he explained.
That confused her. "But you never let Aunt Hilde sleep in the bedroom."
Heero's face went crimson. He carefully phrased his next words, reminding himself that he was dealing with a five-year-old. "I like your Aunt Hilde very much, but not enough to let her sleep in my bed with me. But Duo." he trailed off, and his face got (if possible) even redder than before.
"So Uncle Duo and me are special 'cause we get to sleep in your bed, right?" Eleanor asked helpfully.
"That's right," Heero said, mentally slapping himself with a reminder to get his mind out of the gutter. "You and Duo are very special to me." He shot a meaningful look at Duo, who was making odd strangling sounds in an attempt not to laugh. Clearly, his mind worked along the same lines as Heero's.
"So," Heero continued, "you wouldn't mind?"
"Nuh uh."
Smiling with relief, Heero pressed her into an embrace. She returned the hug for a moment, then went back to her flowers. Looking up over her head, he caught sight of Duo giving him a "come hither" look, and realized that Duo had gotten ideas from his little conversation with Eleanor.
"Uh, honey? I'm gonna leave you to your clover chaining now. I'll be upstairs if you need me," he told Eleanor rather hastily.
"Okay." She didn't sound particularly interested.
As the two men walked back to the house, Duo asked, "You don't mind leaving her alone?"
"Not here," Heero answered. "She'll be perfectly safe here."
"Good," Duo purred. "I don't want to think that having a child around would ruin our love life."
"That's what locks are for."
An hour later, after Heero had proved that a child wasn't necessarily a deterrent to a love life, Duo was surprised when there was a knock at the bedroom door.
"What is it?" Heero called, feeling too lazy to get up, much less prepare to open the door and greet a visitor.
"Um, Heero?" It was Relena. "Why is my garage covered in clover chains?"
~*~*~
After surreptitiously taking several pictures of Relena's newly decorated garage, Duo joined Heero in scolding Eleanor. Heero seemed more amused than angry, and it looked for a while like Eleanor was going to get off with a light sentence, until she admitted that she had used a ladder to climb up onto the garage roof to string up some of the chains. Relena almost made Wufei call the paramedics, since it looked for a moment like both Duo and Heero would have heart attacks.
"Climbed on the roof?! Elly, what if you had fallen?!" Heero finally managed to gasp.
"But I didn't." Eleanor couldn't understand what the big deal was.
Duo finally managed to find his voice, and said, "I think you had better go to your room, young lady, and stay there for a while." He was relieved when she didn't question his authority, but trudged off to her room looking sulky.
"That girl will be the death of me," Heero said, watching Eleanor's retreating back. "She has no fear of heights, and I've watched her pull stunts a spider monkey wouldn't attempt."
Also watching Eleanor's back, Duo nodded distractedly.
~*~*~
Eleanor looked up in surprise at the knock at her door. It opened, and Duo came inside, closing the door behind him.
"I thought I'm not supposed to have people in here," she said.
"Not necessarily," Duo said. "You're just supposed to stay in here."
"Touchan usually makes me stay alone. He says it's to make me think about what I've done."
"Well," Duo said, "I'll leave you alone to think in a minute, but first I want to ask you something. Do you know why your Touchan and I were so angry?"
"'Cause I clover chained the garage," she said as though it was obvious.
"Well, that's part of it. That wasn't very nice to Relena. But that's not the main reason. Do you know the main reason?"
Looking solemnly into his face, she shook her head slowly.
"It's because you scared us. Climbing on the roof like that was a dangerous thing to do by yourself. You might have fallen and hurt yourself."
"But if I'd asked for help, I would've got in trouble," she said reasonably.
"Couldn't you have found another way to get the chains up there without climbing on the roof?" Duo almost immediately wished he hadn't asked the question. He could practically see the wheels in Eleanor's head turning as she thought about it.
/Great going, Maxwell,/ he thought. /Encourage her to get into trouble, why don't you./
/What the heck,/ another part of his mind snapped. /What harm can she do with clover chains?/
"Anyway," he said aloud, "I just wanted you to know that your Touchan isn't being unfair. He makes rules 'cause he's trying to make sure you stay safe. Think about that." With that, he headed for the door.
"Uncle Duo?"
He turned to find her regarding him thoughtfully. "Yes, Elly?"
"Did I really scare you?"
"Yes," he said quietly. "You did."
She walked over to him, and he knelt down to put himself at a height closer to her own. Reaching up, she hugged him and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Sorry," she said. "Tell Touchan sorry for me too, 'kay?"
"Okay."
~*~*~
Two days later
Duo squeezed Heero's hand as the door swung open to reveal the small but neat apartment. Eleanor bounced up and down next to them, practically singing, "We're home!"
"Home," Duo repeated. "I could get used to this."
Fin
The idea of the clover chains was actually M.E.'s. In seventh grade, she and I would hang out together during PE and plot to take over the world with clover chains and wreck havoc on all our enemies. Unfortunately, every time they mowed the law, our clovers got torn to shreds. ( Sadness.