Duo Maxwell AC204 April
Still gaping at the serigraph, Duo could hear Leo chuckle and shuffle somewhere behind him.
_ Want a drink?
Leo was leaning over the opened door of his mini fridge, one beer already in hand.
_ Anything soft sans fizz.
Instead of getting another can, Leo fished a bottle from under a lettuce.
_ Cold cocoa?
Duo accepted the offer and returned to the painting as Leo poured him a glass and opened his own drink. A few footsteps later, he could feel a shoulder grazing his and cold glass brush his hand. He grabbed the drink and tried a sip.
Duo grimaced, dairy... He was used to the hazelnut milk. He hadn't thought...
_ Sorry, I forgot spacers weren't used to dairy. I might have some juice somewhere?
Duo swatted the worry away and took a second sip. He should be able to digest one glass of the drink. It was unusual but not bad, once the surprise passed.
_ So, that painting, that's exactly what I wanted to ask you about. It does look like him, Lowe. Or... Heero Yui. I still can't believe I met the legend and never knew.
_ Yeah, it's him, mostly. I still can't believe he became a Preventer, much less a General. And he would hate you tagging him as a legend. War took too much of him, that's not something he would want to build a reputation over.
_ That's why he changed name?
_ Odin Lowe is his real name." Duo retorted, then took a seat at one end of the convertible. "But, if you don't mind answering me first? Where did you get that?
Leo seated himself too and nodded, rolling his beer between his hands.
_ At the 'end of year' exhibit of an art school my grand-father asked me to attend.
Duo dropped of his shoes and snuggled himself more comfortably in the sofa, that sounded like a long story.
pickaboo
Leo's grand father was a Venete soldier who had married a Swiss and moved to the Alps for her sake. He entered labor work, and spent his free time painting the mountains around. They had three children, their second being Leo's mother.
She married a German engineer and followed him further North, near the Baltic. Leicht, Leo had a weak constitution and respiratory trouble. As he needed as much pure air as possible, he spent most of his childhood with his grand-parents. Until it was only his grand-father left and they moved back to his hometown. Leo graduated from high-school and went abroad for a two years scholarship.
Some when in between, war broke. His parents became casualties, as a veteran, his grand-father had been called back into the ranks despite his age.
And five boys with their Gundam, backing up a young, strong-willed Princess, ended this war (after making it worse for a while, Duo would say: they had been young, they went with their hearts, and not too much brains).
Leo hadn't finished his studies. He offered his grand-father to come back early. The man had declined, told him his future was the most important. Himself was fine spending the next couple years devoting his time to painting.
Later, when he finally came back his diploma passed, Leo leanrt his grand-father hadn't been on his own and taken a boy under his wing.
To increase his meager retirement income, and because he simply love to draw and paint, Guido had take to spend his days on the San Marco Plazza, offering, like several other artists, to draw portraits for the tourists.
It was a nice kind of job, when you didn't need to rely solely on its income to make a living. It was forcing him to go out of his too still apartment and allowing him to discuss with many different people on a regular basis. Off season, when the tourists would get scarce, he would dig out his colors and wander around town to paint whatever caught his gaze.
He could never tell exactly when the boy appeared. There had been too many people during the Carnival. So, either during, or just after the Carnival. All he knew was that, one morning there was a boy standing close to his usual spot. And he spent the say, silently looking over his shoulder.
He hadn't thought too much about it at first, plenty of people used to spend some time looking at how he committed the life around him to canvas. A whole day was a bit much, but maybe the boy was bored as his parents, who came for the Carnival and stayed a bit longer were lurking around.
The boy came back the next day, and the following. Until a week slipped by in silence.
The last tourists went away, the city settled in its half asleep state between seasons and the boy was still there. No longer all day, but every day, wherever Guido decided to put down his easel the boy would come by and stay for a while.
Until he spoke.
Spring was slowly coming around.
_ How do you do that?
Guido looked at the boy who had surprising blue eyes in a noticeably Asian figure. He could either be twelve or forty for all Guido knew. His eyes sure looked old, much older than he ever imagined.
_ Paint? Haven't you watched me enough to figure that out?
The boy shook his head.
_ How do you say so much, without words? Can you teach me?
Guido shook his head. He could teach the boy about colors and techniques, the importance of light and composition. But it didn't seem to be what the boy needed.
_ What do you want to say? If you had a brush, and the technique, what would you want to say?
The boy opened his mouth but didn't seem to find a suitable answer.
_ Then why do you want to learn painting?
The answer, in all its candid simplicity told Guido much more than the simple sentence did.
_ I'm not good with words.
Guido nodded and told the boy to come back meet him the next day by the Rialto. He would bring another drawing set.
The boy was already there when he arrived. After a long evening thinking, Guido had decided against bringing the boy oil paint, the technique was complicated and it wasn't his purpose. Aquarelle, offering no much leeway for mistakes was out. So he settled on Pastels. It held like any pencil and, even if it couldn't be completely erased, the mistakes could more easily be corrected.
Blue eyes stared blankly at the pad of thick paper for a while at first. He didn't seem to know what to draw. Then, somehow, the boy settled in drawing Guido himself.
The firsts tries were admittedly abysmal. Angular, nervous and horrifyingly tense. The Asian had most likely never drawn his whole life, however long or short it had been. But he was stubborn, and day after day, he would come back, untiringly drawing Guido, again and again.
Pastels didn't suit the boy's nervous hand, he was pressing too much, crunching the lean against the paper, saturating the blank space in clashing colors. Dark colors. It wasn't only the boy's hand that was heavy.
So Guido tried felt pen, acrylic, pencils. Anything of color. He was partially afraid of how a black and white painting from that hand would look like.
After three month, he could count on one hand the number of times he saw the lad smile. Usually during one of his short conversations on the com, in a language Guido didn't know, with the kind of higher pitched voice people used to take when talking with children.
Once, the boy told him he wouldn't come for the next four days. He never said why. Guido didn't ask. He came back looking tired, but in a lighter mood than Guido ever saw him. It showed on his few next tries. It occurred again, three and six months later.
Surprisingly, painting with a soft brush seemed to suit the boy most. Like, aware of the delicateness of his tool, he would alleviate his own strength not to break it.
It hadn't been easy at first, the drawings were just that much bad, but soon, the boy's untold words started to show under his brush. It spoke of misery and loneliness. But not just that, there was hope too, and kindness.
It was terribly sad and reminded Guido of his own feelings, after the first war, when he was struggling to recover. Before he finally met his wife. Guido wondered his the boy was old enough to have participated in the last war between the Colonies and the Alliance or if he was simply one of its many casualties.
Did it really matter? The boy was a broken soul stubbornly trying to find a way to mend and be whole again.
Blank sheet after blank sheet, the boys learnt how to talk, without words. He was rough and unskilled, but the meaning was becoming clearer. His obvious frustration from the beginning had steadily turned into mild satisfaction.
_ Now you know." Guido said during a warm summer day. The boy silently agreed. "Do you want to learn more about the techniques?
_ If you don't mind.
Guido wouldn't teach the boy, he was no teacher and had limited skills himself despite his love for the art. So he called a friend of his, an art school director, to recommend the boy to him for the next semester, in September.
As a parting gift, the boy gave Guido his last, and best, portrait of the man. A seemingly peaceful Aquarelle with shadows lurking at the edges, etched deep in the man's wrinkles.
It takes one tho know one.
Leo came back from school the next summer. That was when he learnt about his grand-father's protégé. And when he was asked to come with him, take a look at his progress. So they packed up light baggage and took the train to Milan.
The school year had obviously already ended, but the school was now open to visitors, to create vocations or promote their most promising students. The year's best arts and those the art-students were willing to show, or even sell, were lining the walls.
They had been warmly welcomed by Guido friend, and as the two men kept on reminiscing about people and situations older that Leo himself, boredom pushed the young man to wander on his own among the hallways.
Most paintings were fairly good, but none were very appealing to him. Modern art wasn't his thing, neither was the naive kind of pictures drawn by dreamy kids.
It was in a remote corridor, facing the inside garden of a former cloister, he found a young man, maybe just a little younger than him, silently crying in front of one of the paintings. Leo's footsteps had faltered, it didn't feel like the Chinese in a crisp suit would like to be found out.
But curiosity had him, what kind of painting could make so many tears run down such a young man's cheeks? He softly stepped forward, mindful to keep his gaze on the canvases instead of the beautiful (because from up close those high cheekbones, soft eyes and fine features were stunning) crying man.
Leo didn't go as far as crying. He still felt a huge lump lodging his throat looking at the paintings. Several obviously came from themed assignment and were unassuming both in quality and topic. Others...
They probably didn't come from a student in their last year, too little skills. They were eye catching, taut thinly stretched figures in dull colors, contrasting with too full, too brightly colored people, with too dark shadows.
It was a haunted kind of painting.
The only seemingly peaceful one was the very canvas that was making the Chinese man cry. A person with silky dark hair brushing their shoulders sitting at a windowsill, looking out to the faintest trace of a dark night: a few stars, some tree shadows and a bone white road disappearing in between.
The focus was mostly on the reflection on the window, the man's face was a blur, but everything else in the room behind the watcher was extraordinarily clear. It was a study of sort, full of light wood shelves bending under books and knick-knacks, warm carpets and plush armchairs.
And a woman with long dark hair.
The sign besides the painting said it had been done for an assignment with the theme "Hopeful future" and it was not to be sold.
It didn't look full of hope.
The one who caught his attention was "Kindred", a black and white serigraph, with two figures ready to pounce onto whatever threat was coming to them. It wasn't supposed to be sold either.
_ Do you really like that picture, or just my face?
Leo almost jumped at the sudden comment. The other laughed softly.
_ You were staring a bit." He answered the unspoken question, amusement coloring his voice.
_ May I say both?" Leo asked. You can't win if you don't play, do you?
The other shrugged easily.
_ If you don't fear being disappointed.
Of course, the guy was a straight arrow. Shame...
_ And yes, I find that painting catching.
The technique was far from perfect, one arm was too long, the shoulder angle of the figure in the right was awkward, some lines a little trembled, but they felt full of ruthless, determined, life.
_ Chang WuFei." The Chinese man offered with his hand. "They were... precisely like that.
_ Who?" Leo asked dumbly. Chang smirked at him, if he didn't know, no point telling him. Only later, much later, did Leo realize the long haired one looked quite Relena Darlian. When he met the officer who sent him to L2. The other figure on the serigraph.
_ Ciao Leo, seems like you found your way to our boy's work on your own." It was his grand-father and the director finally coming their way.
Apparently the director already knew Chang WuFei and introduced him as a friend of his student, Toya Torii. Leo idly thought it was odd for a Chinese to be friend with a Japanese guy.
_ So you just happened to become a Preventer and meet WuFei again?" Duo finally asked.
_ No, Chang and I kept in touch afterward, he convinced his friend to give me that painting. I followed him to the Preventers. I liked the way he talked about his job. It seemed... meaningful in a way my commercial studies weren't.
_ And maybe you could be able to bend that arrow, given enough time?" Duo teased, knowing how shameless Leo tended to be about his means to find a sexual partner.
_ I only thought that for the first three months. Then I learnt to respect him. And I can't offer him anything worth abandoning his hopes for getting a family. The rebirth of his clan is very important to him.
Guess Duo now knew why WuFei had been so rude when he said he didn't want children, at all, never. Despite Hilde's own desire to have some, someday.
_ So... your turn. What's the connection between Toya Torii, Odin Lowe and Relena Darlian?
Duo smirked, an eyebrow raised. Leo thought out his last comment before huffing softly.
_ Heero Yui and Relena Darlian.
_ Right..." Duo drawled, put that way, the answer was much more glaring, obvious.
_ I don't see them being as similar as the painting show them. Makes me wonder how well Toya Torii knew them.
_ Very well, trust me. And you haven't looked closely at those live show where Relena is pitted against some fool thinking they can cow her. During the war, only their means were different, but not their goals, nor their convictions. And they definitely had the same strong will.
This time it was Leo who settled for a story on his own.
_ Leo, I don't have much to tell that WuFei wouldn't already have.
_ Chang WuFei is my senior officer, not my friend. We had chats, but he's never willing to talk about the war and your lot.
_ You think I would be more willing?
_ Maybe, I don't want to pry, but... you made history. The five of you.
_ We were five pilots, but history was made by many more people, and... we were just stupid kids, fed up to see our colonies being strangled by Terran economy, with too powerful weapons. We also didn't want to see Earth get destroyed by a falling colony. That's why between the Romfellers and the Bartons, we took the third option. What other choice did we have?
They had been an uncoordinated mismatch of young will, too insecure to entrust their unbeatable weapon to anyone else than themselves. Too green to really know what they were doing. They did so terrible things, killed so many people, some they didn't mean to.
Whatever, they did what felt right, then did their best to straighten up their mistakes, clean the mess up.
The question was : did the Gundam and their pilots do more good or bad? Would the world be better if someone else had fought those battle?
They would never know. And they had to live with it.
_ You didn't make the choice to create the Gundams, and from what you're saying better be you guys than those Barton's goon.
Then Leo gaped, connecting some dots.
_ Trowa Barton's not his real name either." Duo shrugged. "He doesn't remember his real name, so he kept that one.
_ You still haven't told me where Toya Torii fit in all this.
_ It's Heero's nom de plume. And the name he uses when he doesn't want to attract attention.
Leo stared, kept on staring, then blushed.
_ I never said that before, I never thought I would ever say that, but : I almost wish I was straight. Good thing he's so much above my grade." Then after a moment musing about it. "I wonder what Grand-da would have said about that. He knew Torii had been damaged by war, but I can't tell if he knew he had fought in it.
Heero hadn't fought only in the war. He, like Trowa, had fought his whole life.
No wonder neither knew how to live. Even Duo and his dozen of failed attempts at fostering had more experience than those two combined. He had Father Maxwell and Sister Helen who took care of him and treated him like the child he wasn't really. Even before, their little group of street rats cardinal rule was to take care of each other.
Not that he would tell any of it to Leo, Heero's and Trowa's stories were theirs to tell.
Later, once back home, Duo swore he would never drink cow milk again.