Chapter 67: To Make Amends

Nervous, Heero raised his hand to the door and knocked five times evenly, followed by a pause, one soft and quick knock, and four even ones subsequently. The wait was excruciating.

When the door swung open the speed was almost violent. Duo stood blocking the entry to his home, one hand still on the door ready to shut it at any trigger. He frowned, and his eyes bore into Heero with intensity.

"What do you want, Yuy?"

Heero winced at the use of his last name as well as Duo's icy tone. The confidence he worked hard to build crumbled immediately and his mouth felt dry. Somehow, he found his words.

"I would like to talk with you."

Duo's frown deepened and he eyed Heero up and down. "Bold fucking move to think I'd wanna talk to you after more than five weeks of silence."

Heero bit his lip and looked away, having had no idea what to say next. All of his preparations for this conversation were thrown straight out into the vacuum of space when met with immense hostility from the one person who was always so kind to him. Running a shaky hand through his hair, he couldn't bring himself to look Duo in the eyes as he made his case, barely containing his desperation.

"Just a few minutes. Please. I'm not here expecting to win you back. I don't even deserve your time right now. But I'm asking for a few minutes."

Finally, he looked up, and thought for a moment he saw sympathy in those eyes he loved. Quickly they hardened again, but Duo silently stepped aside to allow him passage. "Guess you did finally use the secret knock I taught you in boarding school. Only took 13 years. That earned you one minute."

For as small as the room was Heero had no idea where to go. Sitting down would signal a comfort not currently shared between them and the only other options were standing by the window or near the kitchen, just a few paces from the door. He chose to stand by the kitchen counter and turned back to see Duo leaning on the front door with his arms crossed, looking displeased.

He studied Duo. The former Deathscythe pilot looked well for the first time in a long while. It thrilled Heero to see him with color back in his complexion, and that perpetual darkness under his eyes alleviated from rest, but it also tore his heart out. Duo looked well, and he managed it without him in his life. It stirred further doubts about his plan to speak with him. Maybe the American was better off without him after all.

He cleared his throat. "Duo. I can't even begin to apologize for my behavior—"

"So don't." Duo's voice cut through him. "Just leave instead. You're good at that."

Those words ignited something in Heero, and he snapped. "You're the one who left without a word for four years!"

Duo slowly shook his head "Oh, you sonofa—"

"Four long years when I didn't know if you were alive or dead! You're just as good at leaving as I am! Better, even!"

Pushing off the door and aggressively stepping forward, Duo retaliated. "After you left me!"

"I never left you!"

"You emotionally checked out long before I left. And you legitimately ghosted me. I never left you out of the blue, I did what I had to so I could move on with my life! Did you expect me to just wait around forever while you increasingly ignored me?"

Heero couldn't help himself, and unleashed equal fury. "You never gave me enough time to figure out what I wanted! I was trying to come up with an answer for you about why it was so hard for me to let others know about us! I was trying to come up with a way for us both to be happy, but I needed time! I thought I finally had a solution and you left."

Duo's eyes flashed with a dark and intense wildness Heero hadn't seen before.

"Maybe you hesitated because you knew deep down you never loved me."

Heero thought he knew pain. He'd self destructed his Gundam. He broke and set bones, got shot, stabbed, and experienced countless blunt force trauma injuries. None of those compared to Duo's words. They brought him to a complete halt. Heero was certain that not only did his heart stop, but his blood stilled, too. He couldn't feel it coursing through his veins whereas seconds before it was all he felt. He couldn't feel anything until a tremor began in his hands. It was subtle, but to Heero it may as well have been violent shaking. Duo was staring daggers at him, not about to back down. He steeled himself and spoke in his soldier's monotone.

"You don't mean that."

"I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it."

Any delusion Heero had that Duo's words hurt him before was tossed out the airlock when he doubled down. He became hyper aware of his body, with his skin on fire and ice in his veins. He wasn't able to hide a shiver.

"Never? " He hissed. "How... how can you possibly...?" Heero struggled to keep himself breathing. "Why would you ever think...?" He couldn't manage to finish what he was trying to say. For better or worse Duo picked up on it.

"Because your love comes with terms and conditions. And they aren't something reasonable like mutual respect, or sharing our lives. The terms are that I give up parts of myself to accommodate you!"

The air was vibrating. Duo looked like Shinigami again, and Heero couldn't wrap his head around how things turned out this way. He'd come here to apologize, not fight.

"Duo, I... I never asked..."

"Fuckin hell you didn't ask Heero! First you ask me to hide our relationship and lie to our friends while we casually hooked up for years. Then you ask me to have an exclusive relationship, but the only fuckin way you'd be with me was if we still kept things a total secret, and I did that for you until I realized I deserved better. And then? Then you smooth talked and charmed your way back as this new and improved man, in touch with his emotions and ready to announce he loves me, but the only way this version of you will be with me is if I change my entire life for you. Do you know how fucked up that is? To drag me along for years while you completely avoid coming to terms with your own feelings, and then claim you're all good but now I'm not good enough for you?"

Heero could see Duo's explosive anger radiating off his body. It was like waves pulsating outward, and he wondered just when his imagination became so in tune with his perception. But Duo's rage sparked an anger of his own and before he knew it he was shouting back without really thinking, gesturing wildly with his hands.

"Damnit, I never once thought you weren't good enough for me! You're the best person I've ever known! You've always been the best person in my life! Yes, I avoided coming to terms with my feelings for a long time, and yes, I struggled immeasurably to come to terms with the idea that loving someone meant having an exposed weakness. I struggled so much with that! I should have gone into therapy when it started hurting our relationship, but I was young! We were child soldiers, barely out of our teens. The war was hardly far enough away to think peace might, maybe be possible. I was scared, I was having emotions I never thought I could have, and I didn't know how to handle that. But I'm an adult now, Duo. You can damn well see evidence that I did the work."

One of his hands flew up to his chest and tapped over his heart.

"Who I am today came about after a whole lot of personal struggle and perseverance. I'm fucking proud of who I've become. Do not pretend I failed to grow! I've come to terms with my feelings, I tried multiple therapists before one clicked with me. And when I finally thought maybe we could talk about it and maybe I could face how I felt, you were still gone, working some insane job for Une and living underground!"

Heero pointed an accusing finger at Duo. "You just left when all I needed was time to sort myself out!"

Duo was as angry as Heero had ever seen him. "You never indicated you needed time!"

"You should have known!"

"How the fuck could I?"

"You could've asked!"

"I did ask! You never gave me real answers!" Duo was almost shaking with anger. "You pulled further and further away until you were just gone and all I ever felt was alone!" Heero saw something break inside of Duo at those last words and he felt his own anger break, too. This wasn't what he wanted. He didn't want to hurt Duo. When his baka spoke next the tone of his voice was filled with so much pain it shocked him.

"I'm really tired of being alone."

"Duo..."

"Everyone leaves me. Even you."

Those words hit Heero like a tsunami of grief and he found it hard to breathe. A lifetime of loss was in that statement, and he wasn't sure he could make up for the hurt he added. It was the first time they'd really dug their heels in and communicated anything substantial about the end of their previous relationship. More importantly, it was evident Duo said more than he intended when his eyes showed actual fear. He never meant to talk about those feelings, and it occurred to Heero that maybe ignoring the ways they hurt each other was a mistake. For all the times he expressed concerns about falling back into old habits and repeating the past, Duo never once tried to discuss what exactly he was attempting to avoid.

It was this.

He was trying to avoid exactly this.

And that meant he let Duo down again. He broke eyes contact and found a spot on the floor to focus on. Without a dialog how could he know what paths not to take? There was no excuse for not talking openly about how things ended 4 years earlier. If they'd done that when things were good they wouldn't be shouting repressed anger at one another now. They could've figured it out in an open and sincere discussion rather than a shouting match.

Heero needed to get this conversation back on track before it caused them even more suffering. He took a deep breath and decided it was now or never to explain his actions.

"I took a leave of absence from work to figure out how I could let my guilt for shooting you go. I did that after I had a panic attack the last time I saw you." He wasn't yet looking up at Duo and missed the flash of fright and concern in violet eyes.

"I did that for you, because I really have grown, and because I love you" he finally made eye contact. "And you were right that I needed to get over myself. Turns out I wasn't the man I thought I was, and I wanted, I needed, to rectify that. And I should have told you instead of trying to do it all on my own in secret, I should have recognized that because my therapist and I spoke about that tendency to shoulder everything alone at length, but I lost my way. I slipped backwards. It was so important to get right... and once I realized what I had to do I was hyper-focused on it."

He watched as Duo's eyes snapped into alertness to truly take him in. The pain on his face receded. It seemed no one told Duo that he'd stepped back from his Preventers duties. Part of him was glad, because if Duo knew he took a leave of absence and didn't contact him to see if he was okay it would speak to a lack of care. The Duo he knew would check up on him if he did something major like step away from his work.

Even angry, Duo would check in on him.

"Reading about how to cope with guilt didn't help like I'd hoped. My former therapist is retired now. So I spoke with Une and Milliardo. They both said similar things about how you can't hate yourself for making choices that appeared correct at the time. I thought about it a long while, and just like you were right to shoot me the day we met I was right to shoot you in that warehouse. But intellectually knowing didn't help, so I wasn't ready to face you. It wasn't like that time I assaulted you undercover. I couldn't reason it away as an action to save both our lives while tending to your wounds. I nearly killed you, and it took a lot of effort to begin to process that."

The tension in Duo's frame seemed to max out and he looked terribly pained. "You had a panic attack?"

That was not what he expected Duo to focus on, and he nodded, embarrassed.

"You don't panic. I've never known you to panic. Are you okay?"

There was an odd quality to Duo's voice and Heero was afraid to assign too much meaning to it. Once again he nodded. It did not appease the other man.

"Don't just nod. Tell me, and be honest. Set everything else aside, forget for a second all the shit between us, and tell me if you're okay." Duo took a small step forward. "And it's all right if the answer is no. You don't have to pretend. You can break down when you need to. You're more than allowed to panic. That's part of being human and letting yourself feel is one of the strongest actions you can take." He took another half step forward, his arm began to come up but aborted the motion early. "Please tell me how you're feeling, or I can't help make things easier, and I can't avoid what I did that overwhelmed you."

When Duo spoke he became increasingly intense. It wasn't a display of anger or superiority. Heero recognized genuine concern when he saw it, and for Duo to shift so naturally into worry for his well-being when they'd been yelling and fighting just moments before astounded him.

"I'm okay now. I called Sally and she talked me through it and took the edge off." He didn't mention that he'd experienced something similar, but much less severe, at the Preventers holiday party in December. That was how he knew Sally would help. She talked him through the very beginnings of a panic attack after Wufei confronted him and he discovered that everyone knew he had a relationship with Duo prior to his disappearance. "The work I did to process my guilt was more useful than anything. I can't say it's completely better, but the crushing weight is gone. When I think about it now, it feels different."

Duo eased up at his response, looking wholly relieved but still on guard.

"That's good. I'm really glad you're taking care of yourself and I'm really glad you called Sally." He paused, seeing something new in Heero's eyes, and made a scrunched-up face as though he was recalling something strange. "You... got advice from Zechs?"

Heero nodded, thankful Duo was purposefully providing him a way out of another heavy discussion by adding levity.

"Seriously? Zechs? The same Zechs you punched in my hospital room, and once swore was more useless than a saltshaker in zero gravity?"

Heero's lips quirked into the tiniest smile and he fought the urge to reach out and hold Duo. "I would do anything necessary to make sure I never made you feel undesirable or less ever again. I still have a hard time asking for help for myself, but it was easy to ask for help when it was for your benefit."

The light in Duo's eyes shifted at that and Heero felt real, tangible hope for the first time since the braided man opened the door. He watched as Duo's mouth kept moving as though he wanted to speak, but nothing came out. Heero couldn't help the tiny smile widening at the corner of his lips. It wasn't every day that Duo Maxwell was speechless. He liked the feeling it brought.

"When that wasn't enough I read more. And then one day my koto teacher asked me what was wrong." Duo looked confused by that but Heero plowed on. "She said I was carrying obvious sorrow. We talked and..." Heero took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was an exceptional Preventers agents and a former Gundam pilot. He had the skills to explain himself. "She listened. She told me that the type of guilt I was feeling served one purpose, which was to deprive happiness. Keiko says guilt can be used to motivate someone into making amends but that once you are forgiven it's important to accept that forgiveness and move forward. If you don't, you're only making things worse and leaving wounds open so they never heal."

He looked once more into Duo's eyes and clearly saw how afraid he was to let his guard down. He was trying to hold onto the last vestiges of his anger and as his resolve began to fail Heero recognized just how much love was still between them. It scared him how many chances Duo was willing to give him. It scared him even more when Duo finally spoke.

"So..." the tentative response threatened to shatter him. "You... accept my forgiveness for the whole justifiably shooting me thing?"

The pull to hold Duo won, and Heero stepped forward but quickly realized what he was doing and forced himself to stop short. He tried to get through the rest like he would a mission and reverted back to a no nonsense monotone. "Yes. You don't lie. At least not to others. When you say you hold no grudge, I believe you. At this point there's no amends to be made for nearly killing you so the only thing left for my guilt to do is take away happiness. And I cannot allow that."

Duo seemed a little confused at the shift in tone but listened patiently. He eyed Heero critically before asking "So what does that mean?"

It was a fair question.

"It means I've finally accepted that I can't deprive myself of happiness. And I can't allow myself to deprive you of happiness, because that's so much worse." His voice dropped down to an intimate whisper. "I know that I am only responsible for myself, but your happiness means the world to me, too. I'll be okay as long as you're happy." With Duo simply looking at him without reacting Heero continued to explain.

"I know you can find happiness without me, and I would never stop you from doing that. If that's what you want, if you're still done with me, tell me and I'll respect that decision. You need to follow whatever path brings you the most joy. You deserve that more than anyone. And I'll support any path you take to the colonies and back. But I think we can still find amazing happiness together. That is... if by some miracle you are still willing to be with me."

Duo's demeanor shifted again. It worried Heero how he could not read what that meant.

"I think you just used the word 'happiness' more times than you ever have since we met."

Heero fought hard again not to reach out and hold Duo, they were close now. Temptingly close. When the man he loved concluded with "I also think your one minute is well over and done," he fought hard not to cry. Duo didn't deserve to put up with him crying. Giving a nod he made his way to the door, feeling the blood rushing through his body as his heart beat faster and his lungs begged him to give them more air. This wasn't how he wanted things to go, but he said he would respect Duo's wishes and he meant it with every fiber of his being.

He was out the door and halfway down the hall, crushed by the full weight of heartbreak, when an urgent voice called after him. "Hey, Heero!" He stopped dead in his tracks. "You're... you're rushing out of here pretty quick for a guy who wasn't asked to leave. Call me on Saturday, will ya?"

Spinning around he saw Duo leaning at a near 45 degree angle out his front door, suspended only by one arm as his hand gripped the door frame. Though he was at a funny angle, his braid was hanging straight down, falling free from his body thanks to gravity. That hope Heero thought he saw earlier had returned to guarded violet eyes.

Duo gave a small smile and Heero couldn't help thinking how fortunate he was to see that expression on his face once more.

"Since we're both, yanno... doin well... other than whatever just happened... it would be real nice to catch up. Things have been kinda good for me lately and... well... I think I'm in a pretty good place, you know? More grounded, I guess. Less, I dunno... Stormy inside. Like I've got this emotional confidence I just didn't have before, if that makes any sense." Duo's smile grew a little crooked. "I never fooled myself into thinking being with you would be easy. I knew from the start we'd both flounder while tryin to figure things out. But I'm real tired of us figuring things out on our own. I'd like to work on improving ourselves together, if that's okay with you. No more running away. Not from you, and not from me. I think maybe we've each grown up enough to finally handle us, yeah?"

Duo's eyes lit up to match his smile and he looked more than a little amused by whatever words were on the tip of his tongue. Mirth was in his voice when he spoke up again.

"You asked, like some kind of moron, if I was still done with you. Didn't I tell you that you're stuck with me? You weren't supposed to forget that."

With a small wave Duo disappeared and the door swung shut behind him. It took walking three city blocks for Heero to realize he'd been sporting a bright smile ever since Duo called him by his first name again.