A Thousand Words

by The Shadow Clan

The war is over, and the pilots are once again going their separate ways. On their last night together, Duo reflects upon his past and his unspoken feelings.

Title: A Thousand Words

Author: Dark_One Shadowphyre and Shinigami_Twin Shadowphyre

Feedback: TheShadowClan@dangerous-minds.com

Fandom: Gundam Wing

Genre: General/Angst

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: 2+1, 2+5, implied 1x5x1

Summary: The war is over, and the pilots are once again going their separate ways.  On their last night together, Duo reflects upon his past and his unspoken feelings.

Disclaimer: Standard disclaimers apply.  Gundam Wing belongs to Bandai and Sunrise.  This is a non-profit work of fiction.

Notes: I had to get Shi to help me on this one, otherwise I would have made an angst fest out of what I intended to be just some bittersweet philio-sophical musings, pun definitely intended!  Because for some reason, I like the idea of the friendly and out-going one of these three is the so-called "odd man out;" too often it's Wufei that's outside the equation, with people writing the comfortable 1x2/2x1 as the starter, or else it's written with Wufei and Heero together only because they both long for Duo.  Well, I decided that I'd give this my best shot.  Usually it's Shi who writes Duo's point of view, but with the work we're doing on another series of ours (which you all will see eventually) we decided it'd be best to swap out muses for a fic or two.

Dedication: For the FiveTwentyOne mailing list, just because we need some fics here. ^_^

Distribution: FanFiction.Net profile; the Shadow Realm, the Clan's site; the FiveTwentyOne mailing list; the onetwentyfive mailing list; the SDDI mailing list; the WufeiDuoyaoiML list; the Shadowphyre_stories mailing list.  Anywhere else—ask, and ye shall receive.

          "Take a picture, it lasts longer."

          You know, I first heard that phrase from one of Howard's Sweeper buddies, back before I'd joined up with them for real instead of just hanging around waiting for Professor G to decide he'd rather dump the little street rat stowaway than deal with me and my penchant for mischief-making any longer.  I'd been watching him do these martial arts exercises – katas, I mean – and he'd seen me or felt me watching him or something, and said that.  Then he called me over and started to teach me the katas.

          He was right, too.  His name was Kage Kiyoshi.  The picture I have of him and me working through the katas that one of the other Sweepers took lasted longer than he did.  I'm looking at it now, remembering how I used to watch him move through the katas; how he'd guide me through them slowly, then faster; how he'd start out each session with his hair pulled back at the nape of his neck, even though he'd work hard enough that half-way through the second kata his hair would be escaping the band and thoroughly soaked with his sweat.

          The picture I'm looking at is of the two of us working on one of the katas, a particular move that had been giving me no end of trouble to accomplish without losing my balance.  My face is a study of concentration, arms stretched in the position of the move halfway carried through.  Kiyoshi stands behind me, hands guiding me through the move, looking down at me with an expression of fond approval.  His mouth is open in speech, and I can almost hear him telling me to keep the movement fluid, controlled but loose at the same time.  He always treated me more like a little brother than any of the other Sweepers, even if all of them eventually got to be sorta fond of me.  The feelings were more than mutual.

          When the photographer, whose name is Chad, gave me the picture, I was stunned.  For one thing, it was because I hadn't even realised that he'd been there; that made me blush with shame, and then with embarrassment as Chad chuckled at me.  When I asked him why, he'd shrugged and said cryptically, "A picture's worth a thousand words, kid."  I didn't get it then, but I understood later when Kiyoshi was killed in a freak accident with some explosives and I curled up in my cabin with that picture and wished I could turn back time.  A thousand words left unsaid for one reason or another... all expressed in pose and expression and memory, captured for that one instant in a simple colour photograph.

          My eyes sting and blink rapidly.  No.  I will not cry.  I won't.  Crying won't bring Kiyoshi back to life, won't bring any of my dead friends back to life, won't change anything but make my eyes red and my throat close up and my nose stuffy.  It will cause Quatre to ask me what's wrong, and make Heero call me baka and Wufei call me weak, and Trowa will just look at me like he knows exactly what I'm feeling even if he won't say anything about it to me.  And right now, with my emotions on edge like they are, I don't think I could handle that.

          Why are my emotions on edge?  The war is over.  It feels... final.  Oh, I know that sounds silly, but it's all I can come up with to explain.  I mean, it's great that the war is over and all, but... it means saying goodbye again.  For all the guys annoy me and I do my best to annoy them back, for all we grate on each other's nerves and just end up hurting each other – intentionally or unintentionally – I guess, somehow, they got under my skin and into my heart.

          Not that they know that, of course.  I never bothered to tell any of them how I feel.  Funny, huh?  I can talk a person's ear off, but in a thousand words I can say absolutely nothing.  I wonder if any of them noticed.

          The sound of raised voices pulls my attention from the old photograph and I stuff it inside my shirt as I turn to look in the direction of the disturbance.  Huh.  Turns out to be Relena and Wufei yelling at each other.  Wufei's voice is tinged with incredulity and Relena looks as if she could explode.  Heh.  The dragon and the princess facing off.  Sounds like a fairy tale.

          And right on cue comes the K.I.S.A. or "Knight In Shining Armour."  Heero steps into the argument right as it looks like Relena might hit Wufei.  I can't hear what he's saying, but then I'm not trying to eavesdrop.  Instead I watch as Heero speaks quietly to Relena, subtly shifting so that he and Wufei are lightly touching.  I watch as the tension seems to literally drain out of Wufei as he yields to Heero's intervention, regaining his equilibrium in the presence of his lover.

          You see?  That's how I always thought the story should go.  The knight and the dragon should be the ones to shack up, leaving the princess to do as she pleases.  Every time I heard the part where the knight killed the dragon, I wanted to scream at him that he was an idiot for choosing the bubble-headed princess over such a magnificent creature as the dragon was.

          Is.

          Damn.

          And where is the streetrat in the story, you might ask?  Where does it mention the court jester?  In every tapestry you see of St. George and the Dragon, where is the shadowy spectre of the God of Death?  Good question.  But I have eyes, and I know that in the picture of love that is the Dragon and the Knight, there's no place for the lowly streetrat.

          I don't need a thousand words to tell me that.

- Owari -