Coming Through the Rye

By Shannon the Twisted Link Worshiper

~ Part VI ~

From Maxwell, With Love

Heero felt his eyes slowly beginning to focus as the heavy sleep began to ebb away. Propping himself up on his elbows, he looked around to find he was still lying alone in the sick bay, all the other metal-framed beds empty in the late afternoon. The heavy white drapes hanging over the tall windows were drawn tightly closed, banishing the sunlight from the darkened room. With a frustrated sigh, he collapsed onto his back once more with arms dropping off each side of the bed, his fingers just grazing the floor. A sad song wafted over the still air, its soft beat and quiet guitar chords dancing in his ears as his eyes roved the high plaster ceiling above. Gaze falling back to the furniture, he found himself tracing the sounds of the music to a small boom box sitting atop a wooden washstand beside one of the beds on the other side of the room. A few vagrant slivers of afternoon sun slid from beneath the curtains and played over the black machine where it sat forlorn and forgotten as Heero was in the solitude of the desolate room, both lamenting to the barren walls, which were all the world could offer to listen to their weeping.

[I couldn't sleep last night.
My ears were ringing in my head.
Best friends with the boogieman,
And I may be better off here dead.

Running on empty once again,
Too tired for tears I dread.
Sing deep to those magic dreams,
While I blast off in my bed.]

Turning his head, he found a small bouquet of lilacs tied with a simple black ribbon on the little bureau beside his bed. There was no card or anything; just those three purple flowers, almost as deep and rich in colour as Duo's eyes. Heero reached over and managed to drag the bunch of lilacs to his side with as little effort as possible, holding them up over his head as he gently fingered the ribbon as he admired the beautiful gift, still feeling strangely weak and nauseated. Whether it was his untamed dreaming or his wild fits from before that made him feel thus, it was hard to be sure.

Duo had been the first and only one to give him flowers since the little girl with Relena's eyes he had slaughtered. Before then, Heero had never seen a use for them aside from being a noisy eyesore dotting Earth's greenery. But then one morning, when he had just stumbled from Wing's cockpit after a long heinous mission, he had found Duo in the hangar, where he had been sitting, waiting with a red rose in his hand. Upon seeing him, Duo had bounded after him, chasing him down and cutting him off as Heero had tried to make a retreat from the hangar. Holding the rose out, its large scarlet bud drooping a bit over his hand and its one green leaf peeking out from between his fingers, he had offered it to Heero with a shy smile. Realizing the rose to be a gift, Heero had taken it apprehensively, not quite sure what to do with it as he stared into the depths of those crimson petals, crystallized with tiny water droplets. He felt for the first time, a steady warmth kindling itself in his heart as a small smile crossed his face. He had looked up in time to see Duo react to the smile with a contented one of his own and turn quickly on his heel, braid flying out behind him as he nervously took off down the corridor.

"Who could have known that I liked flowers, or that lilacs were my favourite?" Heero asked the boom box as he took in the soft scent of the flowers. He chuckled a little bit as he brought the flowers to his nose again and breathed in deeply once more. "Heh, who could have ever thought that I would feel so happy when I received flowers."

[And you know I planned it all here,
Where everyone hides their darkest shades of fears.
And I threw my whole night down the drain,
You know 'cause everyone says that I'm not the same,
Since I changed my name.]

Still clutching the lilacs close, Heero thought back to his lucid dreaming. Of all things to be reminded of, he had to be cursed with the clear memory of the way he and Duo used to use each other as a diversion from the war. They could have been called friends beyond just the sex in a sense. They had always been there for each other, sometimes to talk, sometimes just as a way to forget the unwanted pain and the needless hardships. So sure, it had started out as a purely physical relationship, even that much Heero had to admit to himself. Yes, he had been initially attracted to that slight undulating body of Duo's, the beautiful long hair and the big delightful violet wine drunken eyes. Oh, but it sure as hell changed, didn't it, Heero crossed his arms behind his head, eyes upon the ceiling, lilacs lying upon his chest, faintly rising and falling with each light breath. It turned into so much more than just sex and longing. The comfort he started to offer me began to take a more emotional form after a while. And now look; I can barely close my eyes with out thinking of him.

[Three hours later and I'm staring at the ceiling still.
Zantacs does nothing more but calm the sleeping thrill.
Turning the pillows round and round to find the cold spot for my head,
I bless my only friend.

And you know I planned it all here,
Where everyone hides their darkest shades of fears.
And I threw my whole night down the drain.
You know 'cause everyone says that I'm not the same,
And everyone turns tricks for fickle fame.]

His throat was parched and dry, strained eyes watering, his lips cracked and a bit bloody. He turned on his side towards the bedside bureau once more to reach for the glass of water that had been left for him beside the orange bottle of pills. Heero defiantly pushed the bottle to the floor, refusing to take any more of the drugs. He hated medication and stimulants and avoiding taking them whenever possible. A childhood of being forced with the stuff could do that to a person. As his fingers wrapped around the tall glass of water, he noticed something he had missed before. Lying on the table, a few stray lilac petals strewn over its black cover, was a simple journal looking book. Water glass in one hand, this mysterious new book in the other, Heero rolled over onto his stomach, cracking the book open atop the pillow.

Sipping the lukewarm water, he turned the first blank page over, only to have his heart nearly fall out of his chest. Fighting to refrain from spewing his mouthful of water all over the book, he forced a swallow and replaced the glass on the bureau and returned to the sketches of the Gundam Sandrock on the page. Who could have gotten a hold of something like this? Did the person who left me the lilacs leave me this as well? Heero could only wonder as he gawked at the precise detail with which the pictures were drawn. Each tiny ink stroke captured the full beauty and horror of the MS weapon. Heero could have sworn that if he had been feeling a bit more dazed, the suit would have seemed to have flown right off the page. Turning the page held more pen and ink drawings of the Gundam, yielding then to a set of Heavyarms sketches and then both Altron and Shenlong.

It was almost too much for him to bear, particularly in his somewhat confused state of mind. But the shock of seeing those pages held nothing in comparison to what he found next. Certainly seeing Deathscythe (a blatant reminder of Duo) and his old companion Wing was strange enough, considering the exquisite detail each sketch held, but it was the few pages that ended the small book that sent Heero on a mind trip. Astoundingly marvelous drawings of his own likeness were penned on those final pages. He had never seen an artist's rendition of himself, and found he was strangely intrigued by the pictures. Who could have known about the Gundams… about me?

He was few more curious as he flipped closer and closer to the final page of the book. Upon reaching that last sketch at length, he nearly lost his grip on reality once more, wondering what kind of odd higher powers were toying with his life at that very moment. The drawing was an exact reproduction of the half of the photograph Duo was to have had. Then he noticed at the very tail end of the book, beneath a set of verses scrawled in a somewhat messy hand a set of very startling words.

[I feel my body's lost control.
My knees get weak as I drift away.
And it gets darker, darker,
Dreaming's where I am.
Oh, oh, oh…. ]

"All drawings by Duo Maxwell."

"Heero?" he could feel someone lightly shaking him. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes again was the blurry white of his pillow obscured by the black cover of the sketchbook. It was even darker in the room than it had been when he had woken up last. With a low grunt, he turned over to see Hoshi leaning over him, a cheery smile on her face, the bunch of lilacs in her hand. She said again, "Heero, are you feeling better?"

"Nrrrggg," Heero groaned, crumpling back onto the bed. He mumbled into the soft down of the white pillow, "What time is it? What are you doing here?"

"It's a bit past midnight," Hoshi said, sitting down beside the bed, leaning up against the bedside bureau. Heero could just make out her head and neck before the rest of her body disappeared behind the edge of the mattress. "You've been sleeping here all day. I thought you might probably want to go on back to your dorm to spend the rest of the night. You don't want to wake up in here."

"My room, the infirmary," he rolled on his back, folding his hands over his stomach, pulling the sketchbook closer. He could feel the chilled metal of Duo's cross burning into his hot flesh beneath his shirt as he let one palm fall over his chest, tearing the first couple buttons of his collar open to cool off a bit in the airless room. "It's all the same after a while. Wherever I may roam, where I lay my head is home."

"What do you mean?"

"The road is my home, my bride," Heero sighed, his eyes becoming cloudy with fatigue and growing fever. His condition was obviously worse than anyone had previously anticipated, and Hoshi could see it in his body, words and actions. "I have stripped of all but pride."

"You are very proud, Heero Yuy."

"Rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond, call me what you will," he said, rolling over with his back towards her. Now that he thought on it, it saddened him to think that he never had anywhere to call home. He never knew what it was like to be wanted and loved with a place to run to whenever he was sad or lonely. He wondered to himself as he pressed his head deeper into the pillow, Does that make Duo my home? "But I'll take my time anywhere. I'm free to speak my mind anywhere. I'll take my pride anywhere."

"Hehe, you sound like a song," Hoshi giggled. Seeing that Heero was making no response, she stood and gently shook Heero again. "And you always though you weren't one to be very poetic and all."

Heero smiled almost longingly as his mind began to wander back to that place it always seemed to dwell. "Duo was the imaginative one. God, you give him a problem and he'd come up with the cleverest ways of getting through it; things that were so simple that you wondered why you didn't think of them first. He was definitely underrated and under appreciated for his skills and tact. He was way smarter than anyone ever gave him credit for."

"You're smart too. I think you're one of the smartest people I know," Hoshi stood, reaching over to aid Heero as he struggled to sit up. She could feel his flesh was searing hot, like white flame. Handing him the glass of water, she helped him drink of its refreshing tides and get up on his feet. "You know, I bet you're getting really sick. Maybe you have a fever?"

"I've never been sick before, so I wouldn't know," Heero shrugged, feeling his head swim. He could not recall ever feeling so weak and dazed before. He knew he could not blame it on the ungodly hour at which he had been woken; an entire day of sleep had facilitated any chance that fatigue was the root of this new problem. But Heero Yuy was not about to let his body bring him down. He pushed away from Hoshi and tried to stand on his own, only to sag back onto the creaky bedsprings.

"I think you do have a fever," Hoshi pursued the notion with a certain shake of her head. She got Heero to his feet once more and with an unseen strength, held his arms firmly in position around her neck and waist as she assisted him in his stumble back towards his dormitory. Heero probably could have broken free if he had been feeling top notch, but he was so weak that he barely had the vigor to place one foot in front of the other. "Don't forget this, you stupid bastard," she said, handing him 'The Catcher in the Rye.' It had been just where Heero had left it before, lying beside the cup of water on the bureau.

"No one's called me a bastard to my face in forever," Heero smiled to himself, remembering all the joking meaningless insults Duo used to refer to him by. It all meant as much as Heero's ever-classic death glares and mumbled Japanese obscenities. "But I'd bet my life that they call me that all the time when I'm not there."

"Who gives a crap what they say behind your back?" Hoshi exclaimed, smacking Heero's heartily on the shoulder. "If they're all too cowardly to say it to your face, then what should you care? It's not important what other people think of you anyway. All that matters is what you think of you."

"You're almost a female Duo," Heero grinned weakly.

"My, what a compliment. Hey, you know you're really not doing so hot," Hoshi chattered on as they reached the cool hallway, noting the way Heero could barely support himself on his own. He was probably still just really drowsy. "Did the nurse give you anything?"

"Just something to get me to sleep," Heero answered quietly, his whisper rebounding off the walls of the empty corridor. He fell silent once more.

"Oh. Well in any case you'll do better in your room with the window open than that stuffy old infirmary," Hoshi replied, that cheerful not still present in her voice. The corridors were dimly lit by the pasty yellow moon smiling serenely through the windows, casting them in an army of shadows. After a moment's pause, she went on to say, "I can't see you anymore; it's too dark. Are you smiling? Won't you smile ever?"

"Take my word that I am smiling," Heero answered quickly, reaching up to cover the saddened frown on his face as they walked through a patch of moonlight.

"Don't you be lying to me now," she smiled at him, the moonlight rippling across the floor as it shone through the tall old windows that lined the quiet locker filled hall. She could faintly make out in the dim light Heero as his tightly pursed lips slowly spread into a half genuine, half forced quiet kind of smile.

"I've tried not to," was his honest response.

More silence ensued between the pair of them as they proceeded onwards. Finally Hoshi broke the lingering stillness as they reached the school's main atrium. "Heero?" she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder as a signal to stop. "Heero, are you angry with me?"

"Why would I be angry with you?" he voiced his thoughts aloud, not even really realizing that he was doing so. Duo had always been one to be brutally honest and speak his mind whenever it suited him. After a while, a similar sort of habit had begun to form in the perfect soldier, and as of late, he had a lot of trouble restraining his thoughts to the quiet of his own mind whenever Duo was floating amongst his thoughts, which was most the time with him.

"For that whole thing during history today," she explained, the moonlight dancing in long bluish white streaks upon her long ponytail of brown hair. "I guess I sort of snapped. I know it's sort of hard to believe, but Duo is very important to me too and I… I just want to make sure that if I was going to help you find him again that you wouldn't hurt him again. That you'd… make him happy."

"Hoshi," he grabbed both her arms and spun her to face him. He had to look up a bit to meet her eyes, but his gaze was nonetheless sincere, if not heartbreaking, like he was one who had a life of things he regretted and needed to make up for. "Hoshi, I would die if that's what would make Duo happy. I never thought that one day his happiness would mean more to me than the air I breath, my missions, my life, everything."

"Heero," she put on a mock serious tone, breaking the mood like a plate being tossed idly at the wall. So much for tact on her part anyway, he thought. Maybe she really is more like Duo than I had figured before. Hell, she's just like Duo; quite lying to yourself, Yuy. Duo'd kill you if he knew! He shook himself from his thoughts in time to hear her say, "Take my word, if you died, Duo would not be long after."

"He always did say he would see me in hell," Heero threw on that weak grin again. Hoshi tried to keep a straight face, but soon found herself melting into a fit of giggles. Her jovial laughing was soon complimented by a deeper one as Heero broke out into fierce hooting as well. A few good minutes of hearty laughing passed, ending as Heero said, "Wow, I don't think I've felt like that in years."

"Laughing is good, good, good!" Hoshi bounced up and down with joy at the good spirits Heero had fallen into. "Besides, if you're getting sick, laughing will make you forget it all. Don't be miserable Heero! There's nothing to be sad about anymore!"

"Oh no?" Heero put his hands on his hips and jokingly pretended to be stern.

"That's right! Now hurry up!" Hoshi ran across the room into the hallway that led down towards the dormitory wing, still laughing as she went. Her voice reverberated in the echoing halls as she went along, stopping in front of the chapel to wait for Heero. He took his time walking over there, too busy milling over his own thoughts to pay any attention to the outside world.

"Hey, that's not the way," Heero said as Hoshi ducked into the chapel. Heero followed her through the glass doors that led into the little room, following her around the ambulatory to the altar where she finally plopped down at the base of the Virgin statue.

"Hey Lady," Hoshi greeted the statue in her way with an idle wave up behind her head. Then she gave Heero a wave to call him over and patted the spot on the step next to her, waiting for him to sit down next to her. "We're just making a little stop. I figured since it's on the way, it couldn't hurt."

"You believe in God very much, Hoshi?" Heero asked, as he got comfortable on the wood step leading up to the altar and its statue. "You seem to like to hang out here."

"Naw, not really," Hoshi shrugged. She looked up at the statue briefly, the vacant downcast eyes carved into the white marble as it gazed down upon the two of them sitting there at its feet. "I dunno, it's just that, well, sometimes I just like to have a quiet place to go and think. Nobody ever bugs me here. Whether they think I'm all prayerful and all that crap or they just don't like to come in here, I don't care, but it gives me some time on my own anyway."

"Do you keep things bottled up a lot then?" he asked. If she did, he was sure he could sympathize with her. He did that a lot, rarely ever opening up to people, even if he was supremely comfortable with them. For crying out loud, even when Duo was the closest person to him in his life, he still had issues when it came to voicing his thoughts. Thankfully the more time he wiled away with his braided lover began to cure him of that problem.

"Not when I come to places like this," she said. Pointing up at the statue, she added with a smile that Heero could not help but see as extremely forced. Duo often made himself smile like that when he was sad, and Heero knew a fake mask of cheer when he saw one. "I know that she'll always be willing listen to me quietly. Even if she can't give me any answers, it sure is nice to know that she's there to talk to when I'm feeling sad."

"So it's just comfort then?"

"I guess you could say that, but then again, that's what most religion tends to be," she shrugged. "But I guess I don't need to talk to my old friend, the Lady, anymore. Years of talking to the same old face no matter what stupid church you go into gets a bit dull after while. See, now I can talk to you when I'm not feeling so good inside. You'll listen won't you?"

"Am I a statue then?"

"Oh no, no," she shook her hands in the negative to reassure him. "That's not what I meant at all. You're much better than a statue. A statue can't say anything back, no matter how hard you cry at it. But you, you have a heart and a soul and feelings and sympathy."

"I don't like to offer pity. I don't think it helps anybody with anything. It's a weakness."

"Oh I think we could all use a little pity, Heero."

"If I thought like that, I would be dead," Heero snapped. He wrapped his arms around legs and folded them up against his chest, securing his precious bundle of flowers and books against his body, resting his chin atop his knees. Burying his face into his cradled arms, he hid himself away from Hoshi's eyes.

Hoshi was silent, not sure of how to respond to that. Conversations between the pair always seemed so disjointed with all those odd silences befalling them whenever the mood got to awkward for either of them. She reached over and placed a hand of reassurance upon his shoulder, for once not speaking a word at all. It seemed to be what Heero needed, for he raised his head up and looked at her and opened up his bodily position, a meager smiled traced upon his pale rose lips. Hoshi gave a cheerful smile of her own in return and began to remove her hand when she suddenly felt Heero's fly to his shoulder, gripping her fingers in a tight impasse.

"Heero?" She blinked her large violet eyes at him curiously.

"But what's the use? I'll be dead eventually one day… anyway," he said, his low voice barely audible in the quiet little chapel. The empty pews and mindless statues watched on as Heero gave Hoshi's arm a somewhat rough jerk, sending her tumbling into his lap. She was looking up at those almost statue-like blue eyes, seemingly empty and devoid of emotion, her breath quickening with the second. Heero leaned over, holding her delicately in his arms, his stony eyes suddenly flooded with life, half-lidded and sleepy, almost aching for some sign of affection from anyone. "I guess I have to take the cards I've been dealt. So why should I worry if…." His mouth was close to hers, so much that they could feel the warmth of the other's breath feathering out over their lips. "…If you look like Duo or not…. I…."

"You…?"

"…I…" Heero laid the tiniest, most chaste kiss upon her upper lip, a gingery taste falling upon his tongue as he did so. "I… I don't know…."

She reached up, pushing him away as she struggled to sit up again. Straightening out her skirt, she fought for words, almost too shocked by that sudden oncoming of passion from Heero. It was gone now, the moment ruined. A look at Heero found him sitting there like a gargoyle once more, staring out past the physical world into a place that only his mind could reach.

Trying to lighten up the temper of their dead tête-à-tête, she made a quick thieving grab at Heero's books and managed to nab 'The Catcher in the Rye', her speed still coming much to Heero's surprise. "Let's see, let's see," she was murmuring as she thumbed through the pages. "What would make Heero feel better? We'll read him a good bedtime story before we send him off to sleep, hehe."

"Do you really think this is a good place to read a book like that?"

"Like I give a crap. It's just a stupid old statue. It couldn't care less what we read or don't read in here," Hoshi reasoned as she came to a stop. "Ah ha, this will be fun. Should make little old sad Heero feel better. This book oozes Duo sometimes."

"Of course it does! That copy has him written on nearly every page, and I'm not just talking about what Salinger wrote," Heero thundered impatiently, referring to the notes Duo had scribbled in all the margins of the book. Then, upon seeing the look that crossed Hoshi's face right then, he found unexplainable words tumbling over his lips. "You really do know him, don't you?"

She ignored the question and started to read aloud to him. Heero had to admit that she had a very good reading voice, with nice diction and all. She took her time with the words so you could understand them well, but did not drag through it so that it took a godforsaken year to read a sentence or two.

"{I got bored sitting on that washbowl after a while, so I backed up a few feet and started doing this tap dance, just for the hell of it. I was just amusing myself. I can't really tap dance or anything, but it was a stone floor in the can, and it was good for tap dancing. I started imitating one of those guys in the movies. In one of those musicals. I hate the movies like poison, but I got a bang out of imitating them. Old Stradlater watched me in the mirror while he was shaving. All I need's an audience. I'm an exhibitionist. 'I'm goddamn Governor's son,' I said. I was knocking myself out. Tap dancing all over the place. 'He doesn't want me to be a tap dancer. He wants me to go to Oxford. But it's in my goddamn blood, tap dancing.' Old Stradlater laughed. He didn't have too bad a sense of humour. 'It's the opening of the 'Ziegfeld Follies.'' I was getting out of breath. I hardly have any wind at all. 'The leading man can't go on. He's drunk as a bastard. So who do they get to take his place? Me, that's who. The little ole goddamn Governor's son.'}"

Heero was laughing again as Hoshi folded the book closed and tossed it back to him. It was not that what she had read was particularly funny, but the memory it stirred up sure as hell was. He could remember Duo enacting the exact same scene for him once when they were off boarding together at school during the war. Crappy times called for cheerful measures, and that was certainly Duo's forte. It had been fun, and though Duo had actually gotten quite a bit out of breath (he had just had a smoke), he had managed to pull Heero along with him, and soon they had both been tap dancing like mad men in their tiny double dorm, laughing like there was no tomorrow. He supposed he probably could have still done the same thing now to cheer himself up, but he knew it would never be quite the same alone. Duo always said "Live life for the moment and dance like no one's looking," or something like that anyway, Heero was thinking to himself, not even realizing that Hoshi had stood and was walking out of the chapel until she was nearly gone. He shouted after her, suddenly wondering why he cared that she was going. "Oi, matte, Hoshi!" He cursed himself for slipping back into Japanese again. Sometimes he forgot that not all the world was fluent in his native tongue.

"Huh?" Hoshi obviously understood though, for she stopped and turned around. "What?"

"Where're you going?" he asked.

"To bed, to bed," she said melodramatically, the muted rainbows of colour produced by the light shining through the stained glass windows behind the altar playing over the floor and her body, setting her in the most peculiar light. The glass picture of an angel and a devil reaching out for the same light was illuminated over the spot where she stood. It looked like she had been ripped from a circus act with all those colours.

"You'll… I'll see you tomorrow morning?" he asked.

"Sure," she winked before skipping off down the hall. Heero hastened to his own dorm to crash onto his bed in a rush of newfound fatigue, missing the dejected look etched on Hoshi's face the minute she turned her back to him.

Heero wandered back into his room, one hand thrust in his pocket, the other carrying his books and lilacs. He stumbled into the room, not even bothering to turn on the lamp; the moon's pale white glow offered light enough to suffice. His shirt and trousers fell to the floor as he collapsed on the bed in nothing but his boxer shorts, his slender muscled frame slick with sweat. It most certainly was not hot in his room, particularly with the window open, the waning winter air wafting into the loft dormitory. He had no idea what could have brought on this fever; it was making him go mad. Groping along the edge of the bed, he found his CD player. Checking to make sure Duo's old music mix CD was still in there, he fumbled with the cord of the earphones as he fit them into his ears. He wilted back onto his back, arms and legs spread akimbo, eyes roving the flaky plaster ceiling above. In the darkness, he could make out the darkened spot where the plaster had fallen completely away, revealing a bit of the old wooden eaves overhead. There were a few cracks in the wall, radiating out from the places where he had driven tacks into the walls to keep his collection of photographs up and the floors boards were worn and uneven. Granted, the room was originally intended for servants, but age had taken quite a toll on the tired old room, but Heero decided then that he liked it nonetheless. It was the first room he could really call his own.

"The hell am I doing?" Heero wondered aloud to the spot in the ceiling, dejected and suddenly feeling more alone than ever. He had nearly kissed his newest friend Hoshi, but still, he could not forget the smiling bundle of cheer named Duo that constantly rocketed around his mind and thoughts. He had no idea what he was to think anymore. He was confused by Hoshi and her friends, confused by his still lingering love for Duo, by everything in the world that made him feel. "It's strange that… I… that there was a time when neither of us could have given less a damn about the other. And then there's now, when I can't even move on with my life without him."

[This vacation's useless; these white pills aren't kind.
I've given a lot of thought on this thirteen-hour drive.]

Without even realizing it, he was rolled over on his side, desperately feeling around the inside of the bedside table's drawer for his box of cigarettes. Pulling one of the last ones in the pack, he scuffled with the lighter, flicking it desperately as if his life depended upon its tiny fickle flame. A puff of smoke now floating lazily over his head, he tossed the lighter and the near empty cigarette box to the floor and lay down again, curling up and rolling over so his back was to the middle of the room. The CD whirled around, humming slightly in Heero's old discman, quietly singing into his ears as his eyes began to fall out of focus, his mind going back to the war, a place and time where he still lived, even now that they had won peace.

[I miss the grinded concrete where we sat past eight or nine,
And slowly finished laughing in the glow of our headlights.]

He had to admit, even before he had realized what that strange feeling that pained his chest and brain had been, he had always had fun with Duo, in one way or another. Always smiling and ready to cheer up anyone no matter how torn up he was on the inside, Duo had been a light like Heero had never seen in his life ever before. He was such an abrupt change from the sorts of people he was used to, that he could not help but be attracted to him. No one else was so good a friend to Heero as Duo had been; they revered him too much like he was some kind of god, not human. But Duo found him human. Duo knew that Heero Yuy was a human. They were so alike and yet still ever so different at the exact same time. They had been kindred spirits and polar opposites, as much of a paradox as Duo himself had been, or maybe even more so. Time only kindled his opinions and feelings for Duo.

The other pilots, maybe even Relena as well, were still his friends. That is, they had been way back during those disastrous days when they had all been together. Though he still kept pretty good correspondence with Quatre and Trowa, his lover, and even the still occasional letter or telegram from Wufei or Zechs, they all seemed to blend together after a while, especially when compared with his braided wonder. His obsession with Duo during the war could be nothing but fueled by Relena's ridiculous fixation on him. A pang of guilt had started to gnaw at him when he found himself using Duo to strike out vengefully at Relena, as if to further his point that he wanted nothing to do with her. Whether or not Relena really understood what Heero felt, he never did find out for sure. After she had found out that he and Duo had been sleeping with each other, he noticed how much harder she plagued him for affection, and how much more adamantly she ignored Duo. So he had his ways of getting at her, and she had her ways of biting him back. And then it all got even more complicated when some higher power decided to dump love into the equation.

[I've given a lot of thought to the nights we used to have.
The days have come and gone; our lives went by so fast.]

"Help me figure out what the fuck I'm doing," he whispered to the photographs on the wall. "I'm lost, addicted and obsessed. The one thing I can't have is the only thing I need to live anymore. And what's worse, I gave you away. I had everything I fucking needed to live and I threw it all away! I'm so stupid!"

"Oh I wish I could be everything you are, Hee-chan," he heard Duo's voice echoing in his head. He could still see the way Duo had looked when he had told him that, sitting on the floor of some school's dormitory just as they had packed up to leave, watching as Heero erased their student records from the school's mainframe computer that he had hacked into with such ease. A flash in his mind's eye, and he saw the crackly image of Duo's face as he appeared on Wing's transmission screen, his face sad, eyes downcast and darkened to an almost blackish-blue purple as he spoke a small speech of sorts Heero always heard replaying in his mind at the most ungodly hours of night. "Oh I wish I could be just like you Hee-chan, and you want to know, I really tried. God knows I really tried but I… I'm nowhere near as good at anything as you are. I could never be like you, even if I gave my life to do it. I don't deserve to be with someone as perfect as you and we both know it. You're so high above me, and I'm just extra baggage. What could you possibly want with a stupid rat whore like me?"

"You're not a whore. You're not a whore or extra baggage or anything like that," he could feel that delusional insanity coming on again. He quickly went back to the cigarette, its nicotine calming him for the moment. "Did you know I always thought you were beautiful, Duo?"

[I faintly remember breathing on your bedroom floor,
Where I laid and told you, but you sweared you loved me more.]

He felt his entire body quivering as he shook with a wild laughter, unable to really understand why he was doing so. Rolling back over to snuff the lit cigarette on the blackened spot on the bedside table, he fell back to the bed, staring up at the ceiling once more. Memories of that haunting dream penetrated his thoughts and for some reason, all it resulted in was a more uncontrollable laugh. "Ah," he choked out, his head falling violently back into the soft down of his pillow, "Isn't it funny, Duo, that I actually liked holding you and kissing you so much more than you ever realized, even before I told you that I… that I…." He could not say it aloud anymore. He had let him go, and that had apparently spoken to Duo that he did not care enough about him to protect him anymore. "I guess you have every right in the world to never speak to me again. You probably have good reason to hide yourself away from me for all these years. I did it to you, after all. I used you, then fooled you, and then let you go. And I am so stupid for doing it."

[Do you care if I don't know what to say?
Will you sleep tonight? Will you think of me?]

"Ha, and I bet he and Hilde are off happily together by now," he moaned into his pillow, clutching it tightly like a lost little boy. He could feel that scared and lonely juvenile that had been abandoned to the scientists of L1 crawling out from the darkest, most forgotten shadows of his mind. The perfect soldier was dead now. He was just a lost little boy once again, without anyone to love him. "Yep," he kept feeding himself the lies, "probably off and married with five kids by now, never thinking about me. And why the hell should he?! She's a better friend to him than I ever was!" he shouted, pounding his frustrated fist into the pillow, a few tears spurting from his squinted eyes, his voice cynical and condemning, "I did it to him! I told him to stay with Hilde! He probably thinks I want nothing to do with him anymore and that's not true. Of course, when I finally came around with the brilliant idea to go and find him again, it was too late. He had disappeared from the face of the Earth. Disappeared from me."

[Will I shake this off? Pretend it's all okay?
That there's someone out there who feels just like me.]

"And nothing is okay. I've just made everything so wrong."

[There is.]

{{A/N}} Oooh, intrigue! Uh, song kudos to Sugarcult for Since I Changed My Name and to Boxcar Racer for There Is. And if you caught the little Metallica reference in there, you get a pat on the head. ^__^