Chapter 2: L'homme avec la Tresse Mordorée

(ch rewritten)

:male:

Propped against the counter, Duo leaned over, snatching a blueberry from the platter under Heero's arm.

A spatula flashed out, smacking the back of a slender hand. "HEE-CHANNN!" With a groan Duo slunk back, nursing a throbbing hand. "Was just getting a little bit. I'm hunnngryyy..." and then whining, the braided professional slid into a chair and pouted.

The black haired pilot lifted his lips in a muted grin, hidden from his friend and shrugged. "You can wait."

"I'll die, you know. Then it'll be your fault," the no-nonsense quip darted back. On it's tail end, "What's up with Wuffie? He's not up yet?"

Heero's brow furrowed and he dropped a four inch round of pancake batter onto the hot skillet, ending the drop with a flourish of his wrist to neatly catch the last drops of batter back into the bowl. Turning with his spatula in hand, he shook his head. "Hunh. He might be ill. I thought you weren't talking to him right now?"

Of course Duo would talk to Wufei eventually. It was just a matter of getting over the initial hurt. It surprised Heero that Wufei hadn't made a move yet to patch things up between the pair of them.

"Nah, you know what a stick up the butt, Wuff-bear can be. I'm gonna love him no matter what, yanno?" A broad grin crossed the heart shaped face and eyes danced as the Preventer leaned back, tucking his hands under the braid that dangled behind the chair. "Just had to make him sweat a little first. Prove that he wasn't going to get to keep me around easy. I like to be wooooo'd know what I mean?"

Heero might have replied but for the groggy sound of feet at the kitchen archway. Both he and Duo looked across the kitchen at Wufei.

"Hey babe!" Duo crowed. "You 'wake? What's up, Wuffie? You had a bad night?" Then after cocking a head to the side, the long haired officer added with a tinge of concern, "You look awful."

No, Heero thought. Wufei doesn't look awful. He looked like death warmed over. And something - something was wrong with how he just stood there staring. Something wrong about his overall appearance. The feeling was the same sensation one got when looking at a woman with a new haircut before one was certain what had changed. Something was new or different about Chang Wufei.

Wufei's face had suddenly paled. He gripped the door frame for support and breathed hard. Both of his roommates noticed a fine sheen of sweat breaking out over his brow.

Suddenly worried, Duo made his way over to the struggling man. Reaching out a warm hand, Duo murmured, "You got a fever buddy? You really don't look good."

Wufei had woken up with the same sense of displacement. After looking around his room he still couldn't quite set into his mind what it was about the sleep he'd had the night before that might have left him so discomfited.

He rubbed his face, unsure if he was completely awake. He was real enough. It was just that the colors were off somehow. Or maybe not the colors. Maybe it was... was...

Standing, he crossed the room, going to where his katanas lay across the bedroom table. Before he'd drawn them he knew. They were wrong; the wrong color, the wrong shape, the wrong weight.

After the war, Diplomat Peacecraft had, in a quiet and private ceremony, presented him with katanas belonging to Treize. They weren't blades the commander had used ever and from the way the blonde haired prince had gone about it, it seemed that maybe they'd always been meant for Wufei's hand. They were balanced perfectly, folded a hundred times, and with dragons etched into the jade stones at each end of a pommel. It was tastefully done, everything else simple but well made. And it had been a gift Wufei felt put to rest the last of his demons. His hidden relationship with the dead man tore him in two throughout the war. But with the katanas to remind him in the mornings, each morning, he had come to believe what came from an act of love and friendship, could never be wrong. They had, for a moment or two, put aside the differences that war had created in them, and become just two human beings. There was no shame in that.

But these. These were his family katanas. The same katanas he'd buried with the two letters he'd received through the war and a lock of his wife's hair. Sending his dead to rest, he'd thought it to be.

What were they doing here? Now?

Eyes wider than saucer plates, Wufei allowed himself time to glance over the room more carefully this time. The katanas had thrust through the paradigm that was his room and now that it lay shattered about him, a trained gaze could see the subtle differences everywhere.

The dream?

With a groan, Wufei sat heavily onto the chair at his desk and reached for the photograph he feared. But just like in his dream the picture remained off kilter. Here was Heero, Quatre, and beside the Arabian, Duo. Upon that body was the slim curves of humanity, yet not so rounded, not so easily touched and far more touchable in his book. Here also, as he let his eyes dance across the line, were other differences. It had been just the four of them, himself as well. He could recognize the worry, the haggard appearance on his face. Yet it was a different face, though so slight a change that only the owner of the face could have noticed it and he'd still be hard pressed to put a name to what exactly was the difference.

Letting his thumb run over the picture, Wufei tried to go back and figure on what else there had been. What other reason?

The possibility of what might have led to this was so far fetched that he simply could not allow himself the time to think about it. Instead, he stood, realizing with his internal clock ticking, that he was late to breakfast, and stumbled downstairs to face what he now considered to be a living nightmare.

"...up the butt, Wuff-bear can be. I'm gonna love him no matter what, yanno?" the chipper voice making its way to his ear left him breathing easier. For a moment. Then, again, the strangeness came back and he stiffened, hearing how even though it remained like velvet and heat, there was an undertone, like a deeply roasted coffee taste, that was wrong. "Just had to make him sweat a little first. Prove that he wasn't going to get to keep me around easy. I like to be wooooo'd know what I mean?"

He wasn't sure if he heard anything beyond that. Duo... or not Duo but someone very much like Duo, was grinning at someone very much like Heero. Swinging his legs, the person who was like but unlike Duo twiddled a fork on slender fingers and raised violet eyes painfully similar at Wufei's appearance. That mouth moved, just as beautiful as ever, and Wufei could hear nothing but his own heartbeat roaring in his ears.

As the Duo-person stood, Wufei felt his body stiffen, flush, and his heart beat stopped, leaving him in a cold sweat. No. There was no mistaking it. Duo was ...

A warm hand reaching out to his brow traced down across his temples. Shocked, Wufei focused, discovering those blue violet eyes on his and with a strangled cry stepped back, swiping across the air and shoving that hand out of the way. Instantly however, he felt sorry for it when the Duo-like eyes darkened in pain.

"Sorry man," Duo grumbled as he turned and stumped across to his seat. "Forget I asked, a'ight?"

"Wufei," came a soft voice that Wufei almost recognized, yet like everything else, was changed. He looked up, staring into the exact copy of Heero face but saw something softer there and balked once more. "Wufei.." again Heero called and leaving the stove, tossed a spatula into Duo's lap and crossed over to touch Wufei's arm. This time, Wufei didn't shy away.

"Are you okay?" came the soft query. Wufei, still voiceless, managed a negative shake of his head. "Hn. Didn't think so." Heero gave a soft smile and tucking his hand around Wufei's elbow, led him to sit down. "Here, take a seat. Let me get you some juice."

Wufei followed the directions automatically, unsure yet how to process everything that was in his brain.

Duo had taken Heero's place at the stove. He looked his friend over. "Shit, sorry Wuffie. I didn't realize how bad off you were. Sorry for snappin' atcha.."

Wufei began to shake his head to say it was okay, but the words froze in his throat as he looked up and once again met the eyes he knew so well and yet did not know. His sight narrowed into a tunnel until the only thing he could see was violet. He wondered if he was still breathing.

"Whoa, buddy. What's going on?" Duo flipped the last pancake onto the plate. Leaving breakfast behind, he pulled up a chair beside Wufei's. This time, hesitantly touching Wufei's face. "Damn, you're... cold!"

Worry was in those eyes. Duo was worried. No, couldn't have Duo worried. There were a lot of reasons not to let Duo get worried. It was bad for h- .

Wufei decided maybe pronouns weren't necessary right now. No, he had Duo's worries to concern himself with. That was something he could recognize. It was the same, unchanged from anywhere else, wherever else it was that was not this somewhere else he was in. "I-I'm sorry." His voice sounded rusty. "I think I just had a really bad night."

"Dammit Wuffie," Duo cried in exasperation. "You know better than to let me not help you in that. All you had to do was wake me up, right? I mean, I know we've been having a tough go of it, but you know I care about'cha. I'm not going to let a stupid confession on my part get in the way."

"C-confession?" Wufei stared. It hadn't been this Duo who had confessed. This Duo was wrong. Wrong in some very important places to be the same Duo who had confessed. A few rather instrumental places, actually. "What confession?" He felt his world starting to tilt.

"What confe- jeez Wufei, you're really out of it, aren't you?" And at that, Wufei lost the right to make Duo not worried anymore. Duo was really frightened now. Heero too, he realized looking to the side and finding Heero's hand reaching out for his shoulder. "Dang, Hee-chan, better call us in. Sounds like we've got an emergency. When Wuffie here can't even remember me telling him I loved him..."

Wufei gaped at the beautiful - yes, beautiful - alien before him. Loved him? But - but, this was the wrong - the wrong Duo. This Duo was a - a -

His last thought before the things tilted completely and he slid off of the earth's surface, was, "- a man."