-albatross
(GW 2/1
ac6/2004
And every tongue, through utter drought,
Was withered at the root;
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot
Ah ! Well a-day ! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung
-Coleridge "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
i.
It had been late August of ac198 when he'd gotten rid of his priest uniform. The day was languid and hot and he was all leg, tilting his head as he attempted to braid the latter part of his hair… When he stood up straight and shook his head the tip of it swept across his hips and back again, like the rope in a bell tower. His new leather jacket fit him nicely.
He applied what philosophy he had to many things, but he couldn't find it within himself to come up with any definitive answers. There were things lacking even in the art of self-delusion and he'd stopped trying to generalize anyway. Duo looked good in leather; he saw his reflection as he fled from the store, alarms shrill in his ears.
When Sunday came he visited their grave markers and reached down to pervert the harsh white ridges with dirt-coated fingers, as if by leaving a trail he could somehow show himself that there was still something left to prove.
ii
"And it'll be a twist, see, because it'll be the guy that has to be awakened by a kiss."
"… By a kiss."
"Yes." Duo frowned. "Are you confused again?"
"I… yes."
"What's to be confused about?" he demanded. "It's like any classic. Sleeping Beauty. Snow White. The Little Match Girl."
"Duo, the Little Match Girl wasn't awakened by a kiss."
"Which is totally the reason why she's still dead."
A sigh. "Duo…"
"Look, Sally, all I'm trying to do is call you up for support. That's all I want. Can you give me support?"
"Why don't you call Hilde?"
"So she can bitch at me? She's married. Being on the phone all the time, it'd look bad. So she'll bitch."
"And this concerns you?"
"Support, Sally."
"You have my support, Duo. I'm just not sure if this is one of your more realistic objectives."
"Sally, I'm famous. Famous people need to write books. Get famous, write a book. It's tradition."
"Well, that's one problem right there, you see, you're not famous. Your Gundam is."
"Preventership has made you a complete hard-ass, you know that?"
"How's Heero?"
His mouth twisted. "I don't discuss my personal life with hard-asses."
"Duo, you live with a hard-ass. Toughen up, and maybe one day you'll get one of your own."
"He's alive."
"Good. Which is more than I can say for the rest of them."
"Sally."
"They were being ridiculous. Took far too many risks. Wufei… his was no accident."
"You think I don't know?"
"Just make sure you're looking out for Heero. He needs you now."
"I need somebody."
"Tough chiblets. The weight of the world can only be borne one turn at a time. You'll manage."
"Well anyway, I'll still have my story to work on." Duo squinted at his paper. "I'm thinking about naming the main character Oud. And the other person Heerus. That way it'd be like an ancient story, only not because it has robots."
"Duo, no."
"No, no, it's all cool, Oud would be like, this punk, and everything would be the same except Heero will stop being in the ablative case."
"What did Maxwell teach you, exactly?"
"Nah, Latin was Sister Helen."
"… I was trying not to tarnish her memory."
"What do you think about the part where the handsome prince comes to kiss the handsome prince?"
Silence. "Duo."
"Yeah."
"Don't become a writer."
He jotted it down.
iii.
"… I don't know about you, but I think it's pretty disgusting. I mean, c'mon. Mustard on pudding? Who the hell puts mustard on pudding?"
The afternoon was hot and lazy and the lines for the ice-cream parlor wrapped around the corner, overlong. Duo absently flipped the chart over on the table to re-read it; special lime-inator and bubblegum flavor, it said. Buy three, get one free. "Whipped cream, yeah, I can understand. Even, like, cream cheese or something, 'cause they have that shitty cheesecake flavor. But mustard? No way. Mustard should stay on hotdogs and, like. Turkey sandwiches. If that."
Across the table, Heero stirred his melted slushie without vigor. Despite Duo's insistence he broaden his horizons he remained averse to sweet things; his drink was still more than half-full. Duo reached over the menus and seized the plastic saltshaker from its holder on the side of the table. Its brown sides were slick with grease. Without thinking he rolled it across his napkin, raising his eyebrows in surprise when pepper tumbled out instead. "You know, man, I've been thinking," he said, replacing it and reaching for its counterpart. "Maybe it's just me, but I think we've been sticking around here a little too long. I mean, I know you as well as… well, pretty damn well, at any rate… I know it's not your style to sit still forever like this. You are getting kinda antsy, aren't you? Heero?"
Heero was silent. The child next in line suddenly broke into howls, thundering over his mother's condolences and the attendant's assurances that Outrageous Orange tasted exactly like Orange-atan. Duo set the shaker down, folding his arms on the table and leaning forward to rest his chin on top of them. "Heeeee-e-eero," he said.
Heero finally shifted, eyebrows lowering to press already narrowed eyes into slits. "Don't you ever stop running your mouth?" he said irritably.
"Yeah, but. Your voice. It's like, a bra on a stripper, it doesn't stay on long. Someone has to fill the silence."
Grunting, Heero pushed his glass aside. Duo watched the contents slosh unhappily against the side. "You know," he said, "despite the fact that the guy had about as much personality as, say, clay in the sun, you used to be a lot more active with Trowa. Not like a normal kind of active or anything, but you guys had like, tea time, for fuck's sake, you sat around a campfire. I remember when you—"
Heero looked up with such wrath in his eyes that Duo stumbled over himself. "You guys at least… did stuff together," he said meekly.
"Trowa is dead."
"Well, yeah… but…"
Heero's expression was gathering thunder. Suddenly peeved, Duo tore his gaze away and studied the tabletop sullenly. "Yeah, well, he's not the only one, Heero," he mumbled. "S'no shame in surviving. Lighten up."
The lines shortened and the slushies thinned to sugary water and Duo felt time out with his foot, beat after beat, until he no longer cared about its passage. He may have said something about that, too, but it was pitched low and directed into his drink, and Heero's eyes were fixed out toward nothing, cold and flat as glass.
iv
he doesn't need me
he needs me
he doesn't need you
the handsome prince came and said to the handsome prince, observe my handsome princeliness, would you like a kiss, my love, and the handsome prince (the second one) said, yes, stupid, that's what you're supposed to do, I'm asleep, and the (first) handsome prince said, oh yeah, and gave him a kiss, and woke him up.
there were no handsome princesses because that would just be gross.
-log; D. Maxwell, ac203
v
The field was a hazy jumble of indelicate weeds and the bittersweet remnants of the summer blossoms, weak against the stubborn green of the hills.
If he leaned down on an elbow they tickled him beneath his nose; if he fell onto his back they crunched beneath him sullenly. The sky always seemed prettier when he was relaxed, oddly, as if the clouds were somehow rendered more attractive under heavy-lidded scrutiny. "So, you've thought about the trip, right?" he said.
No reply. Duo sat up, relapsed back onto his elbows, then gave up entirely and collapsed onto his back again. His spine found a lump in the hill. "I mean it," he said, shifting. "Absolutely. It's Go time. Vroom vroom. Where do you want to fly, man, China? Maybe Mexico. Nah, China, they have better food. And clothes, their clothes are sweet. Or maybe we can go to some English speaking country to speak, like, English. For some reason I'm pretty good at that."
Heero failed to give any indication he was listening, but a moment later he said, nearly inaudible, "What?"
"Heee-e-eero." There was a power behind the name, the syllables white and fluid and sharp like wine, and sure enough a moment later Heero snarled stop it, and Duo grinned. "You just don't listen, do ya? I'm saying China, dude. As in, you know, ChinaNot like Europe-Europe, with its okay food and not-so-okay bathrooms and hot women with skanky-ass teeth? Chi-na. We can go backpacking! Hard-core, and with marshmallows!"
He wasn't really expecting a reaction, let alone a response, so he was taken aback when Heero said abruptly, "You're not actually planning on going, so it's pointless talking about it."
"Course I'm going," he shot back, disgruntled. "And you're coming too. The sticks up your ass are optional."
Heero stared straight ahead. Duo was suddenly struck by how tired he looked—wasn't in his posture, never in his expression, but elsewhere, somehow, hidden between the imperceptible and the faint bruised look of his eyes. "Perfect soldier as you are, though," he added, more slowly, "I'd bet with a little practice you could poop them into the fire with a fair amount of accuracy, and then we could have a never-ending supply of firewood."
"You won't do it," Heero said. "Don't waste my time talking about it."
"But I'm serious." For the first time he felt something twist in his stomach. "I can feel it. It can be you and me, pal, all the way. We can get out of this town and go find some adventure. We'll be like those fugitives in the movies—you know, ducking cops, stealing stuff, things like that. Then after a while we can settle down, get a place by the sea. Have you ever been to a sea without, you know, being shot down into it? It's actually really pretty. We can fry ourselves on the beach every day collecting clamshells. You can get one of those kits to build your own model Gundam and I can work on my book. The war's over, Heero. It's been over for ages. Come with me and… and see some of the earth you helped save."
For a long time there was nothing but the sound of the breeze over the tops of the weeds. At length Heero stood, shaking his wrists in an abridged version of stretching, and looked down. Duo held his gaze for several seconds before he was forced to lower it, directing it out towards the hills. "Don't follow me," Heero said. There was pause that would have been imperceptible to all who didn't know him, and then he finished, more quietly, "It won't suit you. So don't."
Duo didn't reply. After a while he felt Heero leave, striding down the hill and in the direction of the city, and he refocused back onto the sky, dry-eyed. The sun felt cold across his face.
The next morning, Heero was dead.
vi
"M'stepping out now. I figure if I hurry I can beat the rush hour traffic."
"Duo, you can't just take off without settling things. You—"
"Because I give a shit about procedure? I'll leave a few bills or something on the kitchen counter and you can drop by and get them if you're that eager for me to pay my rent. Me, I'm used to skipping out. They're just lucky I didn't burn the place down trying to keep my ass warm at night in the winter. Did you know cupboards make lousy fireplaces?"
"Would you please just wait? Honestly, I'm not even twenty-five yet and you're making me feel like I'm forty. Listen, I know how you feel, but I can't just allow you to—"
"Sally, m'sorry, but since when did you start 'allowing' me to do anything?"
"If you would just—"
"And since when did you start being my mother?"
"Dammit, Duo, if you don't stop interrupting me—"
"Moon's full tonight. I'll be on the hunt. G'night, Sally, sweet dreams."
"Duo—"
Click.
Anatolians with their heads facing Mecca; the Scythians with their Valhalla. It was still summer and Duo had done his own magic, kneeling down to try and capture any lingering breath. Quatre to earth and Trowa and Wufei to ash; Duo was the handsome prince and with a kiss could tell where the souls had fled. Wufei had gone to the fields and Quatre to the sands and Trowa among the birds, but Heero was the sky and the sea and the north and the gentler edge of wilder things: the lips were cold and the trail colder, and Duo couldn't help but wonder if he was trying to preserve something that had never been there.
It had been late August ac203 when he had traded in his leather… The day was languid and hot and his soul was a cold weight around his neck, and it was with a smile that he gave it away, to the sky and the sea and the north and everything in between.
The miles flew; the road crunched gently beneath his feet.
(fin)