True North

by Miyabi

A follow-up loosely based on a GW doujinshi called "The Eternal Rhapsody." Now that Heero has been revived from coldsleep, he has an older Duo and a teenaged daughter, along with an almost alien time setting, to contend with. Completed 121204

8. Chapter 8

True North
Chapter 8
Entire story archived at under Miyabi
Feedback: Yes!
Pairing: 2x1
Category: AU
Warnings: OC kid
Gundam Wing copyright Bandai, Sunrise, and Sotsu Agency. "Eien no
Rhapsody" copyright Midori Saiha/Ringo Zaidan.

Thanks to Diamroyal for beta reading!

"Let me tell you about people my age. The worst thing is others
assume you have developed your character by now." –Michael Ondaatje,
The English Patient

"The recently dead are always exhausted. There's so much to absorb,
so many things that need to be undone. They have their whole lives in
front of them." –Kelly Link, "Lull".

Duo didn't know that Spanish wine could taste so good. He was
normally a beer guy when it came to alcohol; he drank Blue Wolf (the
top choice for college keg parties) most of the time, and when it was
a really good occasion, a bottle of Guinness did the trick.

But this bottle that Relena had sent home with him was really
something. It was an AC 256 Rioja Reserva, according to its label.
They'd only gotten home about an hour and a half ago from celebrating
the new year at Relena's, and this was Duo's third or fourth glass. He
wasn't sure. All he knew was that the Rioja Reserva was a damn good
wine; not too sweet, but pleasantly spicy and easy to sip, and this
was something that had to last as long as possible.

If someone could put fall in a bottle, Duo thought, it'd taste just
like this.

"Hey, come on. Sit down." He beckoned to Heero, who was sliding books
in and out of the shelf across from the couch, where Duo was currently
sitting. When all Duo got was a baleful glance, he grinned and patted
the cushion invitingly.

"If you come here, I'll let you try some of this," he tempted, waving
the glass, sloshing the wine around so much that the deep red liquid
threatened to spill over.

Heero's eyebrows drew together as he frowned disapprovingly. "Go easy
on that," he grumbled, turning back to the shelf to pull out a few
books. "That's your fourth glass already, and I'm not nursing you
through a hangover in the morning."

Duo grinned. "You're just mad because you caught our kid trying to
drink."

"Yeah, well, if I hadn't, who knows what would happen? I wasn't
planning on spending tonight holding her head over the toilet." Heero
went over to the couch, setting what he'd pulled out on the coffee
table before sitting down himself. Duo noticed that those weren't
books, but photo albums. He remembered taking them out to show Heero
after they'd gotten back from the hospital, but there'd also been the
same photos on disks or memory sticks, and the albums had been put
back onto the shelves the next day.

Duo opened his mouth to ask something starting with the word "why"
when Heero said, "It's been a while since I looked at the pictures you
gave me, and I don't feel like firing up the laptop."

"You sure you don't want any of this?" Duo held out the glass. "It's
really good; never though Relena would be a wine aficionado."

"I'm too young to drink."

Duo blinked for a few seconds. "Oh," he said, "you're right..." He
felt old all of a sudden. In November, he'd celebrated his
thirty-first birthday, and while that really wasn't so old, realizing
that Heero was lagging behind him by thirteen years made him feel
ancient.

"God," Duo said, "now that I think about it, it's been ten years
since I started drinking. Holy shit." He chuckled, taking another sip
before setting the wineglass down. "Here, let me show you."

Duo reached for the top album in the stack and opened it up, flipping
until he got about three-quarters of the way through. "Ta-da," he
sang, pointing at one of the snapshots on that page.

It was of himself at age twenty-one; he was sitting by himself at a
bar, knocking back with one hand and giving a thumbs-up with the
other. He'd turned to the side, giving the viewer a full view of the
short ponytail that barely came down to his shoulders.

"I got hammered. Luckily, my birthday was on a weekend, and Relena
was able to watch Moira while I dealt with the hangover." He snorted
affectionately at Heero's disgusted expression. "Hey, don't look at me
like that, it was only once. When you've got to keep up with a
five-year-old, there's no way you're getting wasted that much."

He turned the page, which had a snapshot of Moira in front of a
snowman she'd just built. She was nearly swallowed up by the huge pink
and purple coat and blue snowpants she wore; all that was visible of
her was her eyes and a few strands of dark hair poking out from her hood.

Another one of Moira. This time she was with Duo, a grim expression
on her face as he hoisted her upwards. That was for two reasons; one,
someone had mistaken her for a boy thanks to her short hair, and two,
she'd just lost a tooth that day and didn't want to show the resulting
gap.

"Y'know, she looks exactly like you in that," Duo said, tapping a
corner of the picture with his ring finger. "I saw that look on your
face so many times before we got together, like your default setting
was irritated', and the only other option was pissed off.' I'd say
you had something up your ass," here, he smirked at Heero, "but I
found out for myself later, didn't I?"

Heero didn't answer, but instead glared at Duo and whacked him upside
the head. Duo was unfazed by the gesture. Instead, he cracked his neck
a few times before eyeing Heero again.

"I think I like you better with something up your ass, from what I
know now," he said.

This time, Heero landed a solid punch on his shoulder.

"Owwww. Jesus Christ, you've got one hell of a punch. I didn't know
your knuckles were that bony," Duo moaned. He was doubled over,
clutching his shoulder where he'd been punched.

"Your fault." Heero took the album out from Duo's lap and placed it
on the coffee table.

"See, this is what I'm talking about. You're so cranky. I can't
remember how many times you've whapped me upside the head. Now you're
going to punches. Man," Duo's fingers dug into his shoulder as he
tried to massage himself.

Heero snorted. "I couldn't have been that bad, Duo." He saw Duo
mock-deliberating what he'd been saying, grasping his chin and tilting
his head this way and that.

Finally, Duo straightened, saying, "Nope, you were that bad." He
smiled. "Once you gave me that first parting shot about how I'd rape
you if I got a chance, I knew it wasn't going to be easy."

"What would you do if your lab assistants kept sexually harassing
you?" Heero grumbled. Duo only laughed and pulled him over so that his
head was now resting on the other man's chest.

"Point taken. But everything turned out okay. You're here, so am I,
and nobody's dying." Duo's voice was muffled, thanks to one of Heero's
ears being mashed against bone, muscle and skin, topped off with Duo's
T-shirt.

Heero stayed like that, counting Duo's heartbeats. When he got to
sixty-two, he looked up at Duo and asked, "Why'd you keep going after
me?" He knew his social skills weren't the best—to be honest, they
were downright awful. He hadn't minded; it kept people away so he
could do his work.

"The disk, I guess...no, it was something more than that. The disk
only gave me an idea of how things turned out." Duo paused, and Heero
felt him rubbing his back with long, slow strokes as he was thinking.

"You know," he said, "once they found out I was a prodigy, I got put
with people a lot older than I was. I wound up in the UL2 when I was,
what, eight or nine. And then from on, that was it, I was with adults
all the damn time. That is, until I met you." He pattered his
fingers over Heero's shoulders, starting at the top and then ending
underneath the scapulae.

"You were the only one my age. I guess it was the little kid in me
jumping up and down because there was another little kid to play
with, so to speak." He shifted on the couch, so that now they were
both lying down.

"There's something comforting about having someone your own age
around," he continued.

Then, murmured so low that Heero almost didn't catch it: "I wish we
were the same age now..."

"It doesn't matter to me," Heero replied. Duo's fingers had stopped
moving on his back, and his hands lay still on the middle of Heero's
spine.

"Yeah, well, I care." Duo craned his head upwards, messy strands of
hair framing his eyes. "I liked that we were sixteen and then
seventeen together. I wanted to grow up with you." He lay back down
again, shifting onto his back and letting Heero scoot into a more
comfortable position before talking again.

"So much lost time. I keep wondering what it'd be like if I'd been
able to find the cure quicker, like five years back or ten years back,
or maybe even when I'd just gotten to AC 246. We wouldn't be exactly
the same age, but we'd be closer. Sometimes the gap feels so wide."
He held his hands apart for Heero to see; the hair on his arms was a
reddish-gold in the lamp's warm light.

"Isn't that funny?" Duo laughed, but it wasn't normal; there was a
note of regret shot throughout that tugged at the heartstrings. "I
want the past more than the future."

Heero shook his head. "I don't think it would have really mattered.
That only means we'd be reunited earlier."

"More time to spend together, at least. I...I wanted more memories of
us." Duo sighed, clenching his hand into a fist when he said, "us."
When Heero merely blinked at him, waiting for an elaboration, Duo
rolled his eyes.

"I mean, getting drunk together, for example. Going through all the
rites of passage, maybe even going on a road trip while Relena watched
the kid for a while. I don't know. More time together. More of us
doing everyday things, like watching TV or waking up next to each
other every morning. Even fights; there's always the chance you can
look back on them and laugh later." Duo closed his eyes and sighed again.

Heero stared at the silkscreened photo on the fabric of Duo's
T-shirt. He hadn't known Duo felt this way; for a period as long as
seven months, Duo had managed to hide it pretty well. Still, Heero
thought, this conversation would have happened sometime sooner or
later. Fifteen years alone wasn't exactly too pleasant, after all. He
couldn't imagine being in Duo's place and going through it.

"So you were lonely," he said, his words a little unsure. He didn't
know whether Duo was getting at that, or if it was something more. Duo
missing him was a given, hell, the time he'd returned to AC 246 was
one of the rare occasions Heero saw tears streaming down his face. He
hadn't thought it was that bad at first, because Duo would eventually
return, but as the days went by, he felt more and more worse lying
there on his hospital bed as he waited.

Then one day, Dr. J and Professor G came in and talked about their
work in cryogenics, followed by their offer to put Heero in a
coldsleep pod so that his chances of surviving were greater when (and
if) Duo came through with the cure. He'd taken it, signed the papers
that very day. Until now, he never knew why he'd made that decision.

"I was lonely too," he murmured into Duo's ear. "I thought I could
wait for you while I was awake, knowing that you'd come back. I
couldn't. I missed you too much. Coldsleep sounded better. I could
wait for you while I was asleep, and then I wouldn't have to miss
you." Heero slid his arms around Duo's waist, enjoying how the T-shirt
moved against his skin.

Duo stared at him, eyes wide, taking in what had been said. His mouth
opened and shut, but finally he lay there, at a loss for words. Heero
took this as a signal to keep talking.

"But I don't want more memories. I don't need them, not with you." He
put a hand over Duo's mouth as he was about to ask something. "I've
got enough being here with you right now. What matters to me is that
we're together. That's why I didn't care when I got revived, as long
as you were there."

"I wondered if I'd ever be able to find you again," Duo said.

Heero smiled. "You never had to look in the first place."

"That's how it is with significant others." Duo started to rub
Heero's back again, slipping his hand underneath Heero's pajama top.
"You're not supposed to look, you let them come. Course, that doesn't
mean I still didn't have to work my ass off trying to get through
those barriers you put up."

Heero didn't reply. Instead, he snorted, nuzzling into the crook that
Duo's neck and shoulder made. His scent was more intense there;
coffee, soap, shampoo, and now the wine that he'd been drinking. A
bittersweet fragrance, but comforting in its presence.

"I didn't mind, though. If you'd just hooked up with me right then
and there, I'd think there was a catch. At least I knew up-front that
it was going to be hard, and then when you finally came around," here,
Duo reached upwards, his fingertips barely brushing the back of
Heero's neck, "I could relax. There's something satisfying about
hard-won things; you really feel like you deserve them, because of
how much you had to do for whatever it was. Of course, it was too bad
we had to wait until you woke up to get married."

In AC 196, they'd both been too young to apply for a marriage
license. They'd remedied that in August with a quick trip to the city
clerk, but other than a small celebration with Moira and Relena, they
hadn't commemorated that day. For Heero, it was only making things
official long after the fact.

They lay there like that, content, until Duo spoke up. "You sure
there aren't any memories you'd have liked to have? Just anything
during the time you spent asleep?"

"...I don't know." Heero reached out with a finger and began tracing
along Duo's collarbone, idly wondering if he'd be able to see bone if
he made the shallowest cut with a scalpel. "I'd have to think about
that. With you, you'd be the same person no matter when I was revived,
I think."

Duo arched an eyebrow. "Even though you said I'd grown up?"

Heero nodded solemnly. "You know how a tree grows, right? If you look
at a cross-section, you'd see a ring for every year the tree had been
alive. But the core is still the same. That's what it's like with you.
No matter how old you were when we met again, I'd still be able to
find the you I saw in AC 196." He reached the end of Duo's shoulder
and started heading back. "I know you that well, Duo."

It occurred to Heero that he could have been blind and deaf and still
able to know who Duo was with his remaining senses. There was the
scent, but it was possible that there were others who smelled just as
strongly of coffee, though Duo had a faint spicy scent underneath
everything else that was just him.

No, he'd have to say that one of the most intimate ways he knew Duo
was through touch. He knew everything from the planes and angles to
the curves and bumps on Duo's body. As expected, Duo had gotten
leaner, with less give to his flesh, thanks to the loss of baby fat
after fifteen years, but it hadn't taken long for Heero to reacquaint
himself. Some things were still there, like the bones that still stuck
out at his ankles and wrists in little hard knobs and the bumps of his
spine at the nape of his neck. There was that scar he'd gotten from
falling out of a tree when he was a kid on the inside of his elbow;
Heero had tried to brush it off at first, thinking it was dirt. The
face had lost its softness; the curves weren't so gentle anymore, and
the chin had become firmer, but the features—eyebrows, eyes, lips and
nose—were the same.

And the hair, always the hair. Heero couldn't forget how it slipped,
slid, and tangled in his fingers like silk, how the ends brushed
against his body when they had sex. Even after they'd done it so many
times, Heero would always grab a handful as Duo began to enter him to
steady himself. The pictures of Duo after he'd sawed off his braid
were so painful that Heero didn't bother to look a second time. The
sooner the images could be erased, the better; Duo looked so
vulnerable and weak with his hair gone.

Much as he loved the hair, it wasn't Heero's favorite part of Duo. He
liked the hollow between the Adam's apple and the suprasternal
notch—the V-shaped area between the collarbones—that he was tracing
over and over in circles, feeling the skin tighten and relax with
every breath. The area was slightly longer than someone's little
finger, in the shape of an inverted teardrop, tapering to a point at
the collarbone.

"This is mine," he said to nobody in particular.

"Sneh?" Duo blearily opened his eyes. He'd been dozing.

"This." Heero circled the hollow again. "I want this place. It's my
favorite part of you, so I'm claiming it."

Duo chuckled lazily. "Oh, thanks for asking permission. Nah, kidding.
You can claim all of me if you want. But why that place?"

"The hollow at the base of your neck?"

"Yeah," Duo said, "someone called it the vascular sizood' somewhere
in a book that I can't remember. Couldn't have been more far off.
Nothing vascular about that area. Anyway, it's a crazy place to pick.
Most people say they like someone's hair, chest, legs or hands." He
shrugged. "I'm just curious. There's nothing too special about it."

Heero pressed his fingertip in the middle of the hollow. "Take a deep
breath," he said. Duo inhaled, and the skin caved in, forming a
shallow cup.

"Good. Now let it out." As Duo exhaled, the skin relaxed, and the cup
was gone. "See, it moves every time you breathe."

"So does my chest."

"Sure. But the way your chest looks and feels will change. It's
already changed, like here," Heero slid a hand over Duo's ribs, where
they were now snugly covered with wiry muscle. "This," he said, "has
and always will be the same. You'll get older, and your body will
change more, except for this."

"One thing that still remains from AC 196, huh?" Duo yawned. His
hands had stopped roaming over Heero's back a long time ago, and they
were currently clasped around his waist. The hollow at Duo's neck kept
expanding and contracting with each breath.

That was another reason why Heero liked that place; it was always
visible, but not so visible that it was the first thing anyone noticed
about Duo. Instead, it was hidden, tucked away under the shadows of
his chin, but if one really wanted to look, it was in plain view at
the same time.

He liked that; the hollow was intimate, something he'd only really
see or touch if he was close to Duo, but also something he didn't have
to peel off clothing to get to.

Nestling in that area made him feel at peace, able to rest. Speaking
of rest...

"Duo," Heero said, "we should go to bed."

Duo didn't answer. An upward glance indicated that he'd fallen
asleep, and now he was snoring softly. Heero considered waking Duo up
to go upstairs, but the more he thought about it, he realized that he
didn't really want to move upstairs either. Spotting a plaid blanket
that Moira had folded under the nearby coffee table the night before,
he reached over and pulled it out, spreading it over himself and Duo.

"I am never letting you drink this much again," Heero muttered
dryly. He bent over, gently kissing Duo's collarbone before turning
off the light.

"God, I cannot believe you got away with that."

"I did."

Heero heard Moira whistle for the second time over in the foyer. Her
friend Amy had arrived, and they were leaving for a movie and then
dinner, so she wouldn't be returning home until late. There were only
four days of vacation left before school started again, so they were
trying to make the most of it. As soon as Amy had walked in the front
door, she'd pulled down the waistband of her pants and proudly
revealed a tattoo of butterfly wings on the small of her back, even
showing Duo as he passed by.

"My parents took it okay," Amy said. "Mom was saying that at least I
didn't put it somewhere people could see all the time."

Moira laughed, and Heero saw her toss her long hair back out of the
corner of his eye. "I wouldn't get a tattoo. I'd get a piercing either
on my eyebrow or my bellybutton..."

"Not until you're at least eighteen," Duo called out from the
kitchen, while Heero simultaneously growled, "No."

"I'm joking, I'm joking," Moira protested, giggling, before she
turned to Amy. "Let's go. We're gonna be late." The girls linked arms
and went out the door, Moira yelling, "Bye!" and waving to Heero
before Amy yanked her outside.

It then occurred to Heero, as he watched them saunter down the
walkway, that it was a very real possibility that he'd never know
Moira as well as Duo did. That would have been one benefit of waking
up five or ten years earlier; Moira would have been a child, and he'd
have been around to watch her develop and grow.

But he hadn't woken up five or ten years earlier, he'd woken up
now, and Moira was nearing adulthood too quickly for him. In five or
six more years, she'd have a Ph.D in physics at the rate she was
progressing; slow compared to himself and Duo, but still fast
nonetheless compared to others in her field. By that time, she
probably wouldn't be living here—she'd probably think about moving
someplace else on Earth, or maybe one of the colonies.

"Duo?"

He heard Duo's footsteps coming down the hallway. "Yeah?"

"Remember that conversation we had on New Year's?"

"Yeah, what about it?" Duo came up next to him and looked out the
window.

"There are some memories that I'd want." They were standing next to
each other, watching the snow gather on the ground. As soon as it
stopped falling, they'd have to shovel the sidewalks again.

"What?" Duo asked.

"I'd want to see Moira grow up. She's going to be an adult soon, and
I think I'll never know her as well as you do."

At that, Duo crossed his arms, nodding knowingly.

"That's true, I guess. Fifteen years is a lot of time. But," Duo
said, raising his eyebrows, "didn't you also say that you'd still be
able to know someone no matter how old they were?"

Heero snorted. "That was you. Moira was a baby when you left, and
she wasn't fully formed, and she is now."

"Heero, that girl has a ton of growing up to do." Duo laughed, and
reached behind him to tighten the elastic on his ponytail. "Hell,
sometimes I feel like I'm not grown up yet. You've got a while to get
to know her. Trust me on this; at least you missed out on the crazy
stuff. She didn't calm down until she hit twelve." His ponytail swung
from side to side before he grabbed it and gave it one last yank.

Heero shook his head. "It's not the same. You got to see her grow up."

He looked down at his hands, not really seeing them or anything else.
"She's everything and nothing I expected her to be," he whispered, so
softly that he hadn't realized that he said it until Duo shrugged in
response.

"Only half of it, really. She's developing at a slower rate than we
did; she's getting to go through high school and college and she's
only three years ahead. I'd say compared to us, she's a normal
teenager, and that means that you haven't missed much."

When Heero made a skeptical grunt, Duo put his hands on his hips.
"All right. Look at it this way; she's always going to be my little
girl, no matter how old she gets. She could be my age and I'll still
think of her as a kid. You, on the other hand, get to know her as a
person. You'll be closer to equal ground to her because of that."

Heero didn't say anything. Duo sighed, releasing his arms. "Means
that much to you, huh? Don't worry about it. You'll get to see her
grow up. She's not going anywhere for a while."

He then turned and headed back to the kitchen while Heero stared out
the window, waiting for Moira to return.

Note: the "vascular sizood" remark is from The English Patient by
Michael Ondaatje. It's corrected in the movie, but not in the novel.