Soul: How Duo Lost His Legs
by Nix Winter
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing, The boys are just helping me out.
Notes: this is part of Soul, which is part of Duo 21
He'd been twenty that morning, still having the occasional nightmare motorcycles and Heeroes that just stood there staring at him as he bled out his soul. Nightmares weren't all that uncommon on L2. There were more ads for good sleep than wrinkle creams.
It hadn't been a good week at Maxwell House. Morning found Duo on the couch with Alex on top of him and Maggy between him and the couch. One foot braced on the floor kept them all off the floor. Alex had a grip on Duo's braid and the time was well after average families were up.
They were really average though. Duo both the girls had been with him about three years. Maggy was thirteen, looked half her age and clung to Duo as if he were the only safe adult she'd ever known.
Duo didn't know her history, didn't feel any need to tell her that he'd been a mecha pilot. She was terrified of any kind of weaponry or mention of war and Duo couldn't defeat her demons, for all he knew, his actions in the war might have affected her somehow. Now, now, he was her dad and her knight protector and she and Alex were his little princesses and they were his family, his reason for getting up and breathing when the weight of guilt and loss wanted to eat him alive.
Alex had been younger when Sister Alice had brought her to him. A four-year-old little creature of big eyes a screaming temper. For the first year they'd been a family, her only sound had been to scream. He didn't know more than that she'd been picked up in an escape pod and her relatives on Earth weren't interested in an angry child that screamed at the top of her lungs even when she was happy. So she ended up with Duo and Maggy and she liked Duo's goats.
That morning, he woke first, yawning as he sat up, Alex held in on arm, Maggy clinging to his shirt. "Dad! Sleep more."
"Go on, you sleep," Duo said, patting her head. "You can always finish your school work after the sun powers down."
"I'll do it! I'll get my work done!"
"Know you will." He said, dark brown bangs hanging over his eyes. Yawning still, he set Alex down
Alex had one arm around his neck, other hand on his braid. He gave her a hung and set her down. Eight and she still didn't really talk, but she didn't scream so much. She was really good at math too.
A few minutes later, she was at the table, a bowl of cereal and a stack of math pages. Duo had coffee and he was feeling slightly less like pop with the top left off too long. His first thought of the day had not been about Heero. He just wasn't going to admit it.
He shaved in the first floor bath. Maggy got up. The day was as normal as L2 ever got.
Then the phone rang.
"Maxwell's Castle," Duo answered, touching the accept call button as he passed by.
"Duo? This is Trace. Come back by the screen. I gotta talk to you."
"Daddy's making pancakes," Alex said, smiling at her daddy with big violet eyes.
"Yeah, honey, we'll have pancakes for lunch." Duo gave her a wink right before he activated the privacy screen.
Trace was a handsome man. Bleach blond and maybe Persian ancestry. He and Duo occasionally had coffee and playtime, but that was really before Trace became Chief Security Office, married his boyfriend, and made like a nice respectable person. "What's up, Trace?"
"I need your help."
"What's going on," Duo asked, in a ask me if care or if I'm really gonna save your ass Trace.
"Wolf Team One brought in a big salvage pull last week," Trace said.
Duo put a hand behind his head, rolled violet eyes. "I don't do salvage work anymore. Too dangerous. I have kids now, you know?"
"I know you have kids," Trace said, resentfully. "And I know our deal. It still stands. No one is going to bring up your past. It's quiet, like I promised, but this haul, it's the Black Spade. You remember that name?"
"Shit." Darkness settled over Duo's shoulders like the war had come back to him as a shroud. "I blew that up, a long time ago."
"Yeah? Well, some of it didn't go very bang and was a solider in a cryo-pod who now thinks the war is still on."
"So dart his ass and he'll wake up in a much better world," Duo said, cold, the voice of Shinigami.
"Duo," Trace said, "He's taken hostages. They're in salvage dock 12, and he's asking for you."
"Shit." Duo's mouth had gone dry. He didn't want to fight anymore. "So the plan is, I show up, and you dart him?"
"Sounds like a plan to me. If he moves back into the Black Spade, even half blown to space weeds, you know that ship better than anyone except maybe him. I'm sorry to get you involved in this, Duo. I am, but you can get in there, dart him. Think of it like big game hunting. It's the closest you're gonna get here on L2."
"I'll come. Twenty minutes." Duo couldn't remember why he'd been interested in Trace. Asshole. Whatever.
Both his daughters were watching him like the world was hanging by a thread when he came back out of the privacy screen. Alex screamed, mouth wide, louder than she had in months.
"Hey," Duo said, voice soft, gentle for being the killer he was, and when he held out his hands she threw herself into them. "It's okay. It's alright, Alley. It'll be okay. Daddy's just gotta go fix up a bit of something."
He held out his hand to Maggy, easily holding Alex with one hand. Maggy slipped under his wing and he bounced Alex who wasn't screaming anymore and danced them around the kitchen a little, as he sang them a silly little song.
"Daddy? Why do you have to go? Is it about your stories?" Maggy asked, looking up at him.
"I have to go because, well, do you remember the time you left Dollie and May out in the yard and the system turned on the rain?"
"Yes," Maggy said, face grim. She hated the rain. "I left them out there. I had to go get them."
"This is like that. I forgot to give someone a whole project, now I gotta finish it up. It wouldn't take long."
"Promise," Alex whispered.
"Promise. I'll be back as quick as I can."
They watched him leave after Hilde got there to stay with them. On his black motorcycle, braid protected by black leather, leaning over it as if it could go as fast as the rocket Duo swore it wasn't, really. That red. That was just tail lights. That's all.
But he wasn't back quickly.
HIlde made them pancakes for lunch and complained that it was right to eat pancakes for lunch. Alex watch the window. Maggy did two weeks worth of school work so she could show her dad when he go home.
Hilde missed a movie with her boyfriend, who came to keep them company instead.
Trace came instead, at nearly nine that night. Maybe, he said, it would be better, if the girls didn't come that night. There had been an accident. He just wanted to let them know, in person, that Duo would be alright. He wasn't going to die.
Alex screamed. She didn't stop until they got in the car to go.
She and her sister walked, hand in hand, fully sisters even if they didn't share genetics, down the battered and mostly sterile halls of L2's only hospital.
Maggy could still remember, six years later, how hard Alex had held her hand that night, how long the halls had seemed, endless. The sounds of people crying and machinery, of mismatched lighting, and the smell of things that couldn't be sanitized. In the present she could tell herself how it hadn't really been that bad. They hadn't really been that small as they stood in the door and looked at those same machines clicking by their dad.
She could remember reaching her arm around Alex's shoulders and how quiet Alex had been, almost no sound and the sudden intense fear that Alex would never speak again if they lost their dad.
"He's going to be okay," A woman said, squatting down behind them and startling Alex so she ran behind Maggy. "He has a special friend who is sending medical supplies for him. He was very brave and saved many lives today. Don't be afraid of the mecha that's helping him stay alive until we get those supplies, okay? He's not in any pain and you can sit with him, if you want."
"My daddy wanna wants to come home," Alex said, glaring around Maggy's arm. "He don't like it here."
"I'm sure he doesn't. Duo Maxwell's never been one for hospitals and we'll get him home as soon as we can."
"We should tell Heero," Hilde said, holding Aaron's arm. "What if?"
"Let Quatre tell him," Aaron said.
Maggy couldn't remember why she'd remember that, thinking back. It hadn't been of any importance that day.
As she'd walked into the room, the thin blanket over her dad had been wrong, too flat, and she had wanted someone to hide behind. Her dad was the strongest, most powerfulest man in the world and he could do anything! She just couldn't get her mind around why the blanket was flat where his legs should have been. "Come on, Alex. Daddy, needs us to keep him company. He might be scared by the machinery and stuff. You know how he doesn't like stuff, and we have to be brave and be helpful."
"Helpful. Where are Daddy's legs, Maggy?"
"We'll buy him new ones," Maggy said firmly, not really knowing where she could get money because the way she earned money before Daddy became her Daddy hadn't really earned her much money.