Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Cutting Out The Past ❯ Chapter 2 ( Chapter 2 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Mononoke 
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Psychological / Drama / Shounen | Type: Shounen-ai | Uploaded On: 03.27.2006 | Pages: 2 | Words: 5.3K | Visits: 258 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Psychological / Drama / Shounen | Type: Shounen-ai | Uploaded On: 03.27.2006 | Pages: 2 | Words: 5.3K | Visits: 258 | Status: Work In Progress
Holy shiznit Batman! I was blown away by the reviews for this piece! It made me so happy to know you liked it! As per request, here is (probably) the end of the story:
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They all looked at him, looked at the softness in his eyes, the way he held himself. He was not as confident as before, more timid, but no less forceful. His eyes had the passion of old, but buried under the pain of the new. He was in there, but he didn't want to come out.
"Why did you cut it Duo? You could have just --"
"No." The answer was forceful, a statement of fact. The whole truth.
"I couldn't have Quatre, I had to." He looked away, and almost as if he was trying to convince himself, "I had to."
"But Duo-" started Quatre, ready to argue, ready to be the clever businessman he was, tell Duo what he had done had been hasty, not well thought out. But before he could really get into it, Duo started to speak, and Sally knocked on the door, Heero moving silently to let her in.
"No Quatre. I'm not Duo anymore. Can't you see? He's gone. He's been gone for so long, but I kept hanging on to the past, never really living for the future. And then, Heero opened my eyes." All eyes swiveled to the quiet man in the back of the room, well away from the rest of the group.
"Quatre, can I speak with you?" Sally's tone left no room for questions, and Quatre reluctantly got out of his kneeling crouch in front of Duo and walked over to the Preventer's agent.
"What happened Quatre? All I heard from Heero is that Duo's not well, maybe even in need of restraints. What's going on? What happened to his hair?" She asked quietly, not wanting to upset the man on the couch.
Quatre sighed, trying to gather the information he had already.
"Well, about four days ago Duo got drunk, and umm, confronted Heero about his...feelings for Heero. Heero hit him, and they made plans for Duo to move out. All I really know after that was that Heero sold their car, and that Duo didn't come back home for two nights. We just found him here, like this. Sally, what can we do?"
Sally looked at Quatre, disbelief in her eyes.
"Heero actually hit Duo? And then sold the car? Maybe Duo just took it too hard.... He was rather closer to... a break... than the rest of you. You all had lives and jobs. Lovers." She smiled, glancing at her own lover, Wufei. "He didn't really have that. He had friends, he had a job that I know from his talks to me and through Wufei that he hated his job. The signs were there. I just wonder what the catalyst for such a drastic break was. What could have convinced him to cut his hair, to create an entirely new life, a new persona... I need to get him to a psychologist soon. I think that you guys should come along, and maybe we can sort this out before he really hurts himself, or one of us."
The two walked back over to the silent group by the couch. Wufei had tried to get Duo to talk, but all that he got were blank stares. The man once called Duo sat on the couch, reflecting, and beginning to fit into his new skin. He grabbed for his braid, and when his hand clutched air, he looked lost before he remembered what he had done. He felt the short strands brushing around his neck, uneven and rough.
He thought about that night, the one that started this entire thing.
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--Four days ago--
The rope of hair swung with every beat of the music as the head and body attached to it swayed and moved. It was dark, smoky, and noisy. It had to be almost midnight, and he was still at the bar, currently dancing. He came here once a week, twice sometimes, to forget. To drink and dance, and to blend in and forget. All he wanted was for one night be able to not see himself in the mirror and think "what a waste of life". To be able to look at someone and have no flashbacks to people from the past, people long dead.
He had prided himself in his "luck", he hadn't had much trouble getting over the war. But the killing had never bothered him.
It was the things he thought he saw, the phantoms of his past, that made his heart ache and his stomach flutter.
He wanted to see his roommate and not feel a pang of heartache that he knew would never be healed. Because Heero was fucking asexual for pete's sake! He never showed open interest in anything except his guns and his laptop. It was hopeless. He'd had some experience, but Heero found it prudent to not share with his best friend. That's what normal guys did, right? They would talk about who they'd done, and how it was. Shit like that. But never, never had Duo once heard Heero say anything remotely sexual, even a joke. He never even smiled at blatant innuendo!
Not that he himself bragged about any lays he'd ever had. All four of them.
But that was another sorry story, never to be told to anyone.
Tonight was about forgetting, not remembering. Not dwelling. Duo shuffled off of the tiny dance floor and sauntered unsteadily to the bar. People pushed and shoved, and he let them push him around. He closed his eyes and just let go. He felt battered and lost and strangely comforted by the thought. He wasn't a person, he was a non-entity. A half-formed thought and a figment of his own imagination. He slowly opened glazed indigo eyes, letting the world slowly come back, immersing himself in the flow of the bar. He sat on a free stool, motioning to the bartender to pour another shot of Everclear. He could fuel his car on the shit, but it got the job done. The job? The job was to get shit faced and then stumble home and sleep until he had to go to work the next day.
The liquor was set in front of him, and he stared at the little glass before shooting it in one go. It burned to his stomach, then his head started to buzz with the warmth. He smiled, and motioned for another. The bartender looked at him, obviously trying to get Duo to reconsider, but it was futile.
"I can still think, I can still talk. I'm not drunk yet." He shouted, probably a little slurred but with the noise in the bar it didn't show. He grinned, tossing back the shot, then he turned on the stool and watched the colors fade into one another.
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It was last call, two-thirty. He should have been home hours ago, but he could still feel, and he wanted to get one last drink.
"You've had half a bottle of Everclear, and a few shots of Tequila. I'm amazed you haven't passed out yet!"
Duo looked blearily at the man, smiling sadly.
"I have a high tolerance." He got his last shot, not realizing that the bartender had been giving him half water, half liquor for shots for about an hour. He tossed it, paid his tab, and stumbled out of the bar.
The street was empty, dark and cold. He was weaving, he knew it, but he couldn't stop it. He put a hand against the cool bricks, steadying himself. He heard the man behind him before that same man could come up to him. He started walking, hoping to avoid conflict, but knowing it would come to blows.
"Gimme eyer wallet!" The man tried to grab Duo, but missed. They were both drunk, and neither in any condition to fight. The man overbalanced and fell on the ground. He didn't get back up, so Duo kept going. The bar was two blocks from the apartment that he and Heero had shared for three years now. It was modest, in a middle-class neighborhood.
He fumbled with the lock, and finally got into the building. He stumbled to the elevator, pushing the button. He realized minutes later that the car was still there, waiting for a passenger. He got on and pressed the floor. The ride up made him nauseous, but he took a breather in the hall before trying to unlock his front door.
He had barely got the key in the lock when the door wrenched open and the formidable glare of Heero rained upon him.
He smiled drunkenly, trying to make light of the fact that it was three something in the morning and he had work at one.
"Heeeeeroo. Hiiiiiya. Nice ta see ya. Good ta knowya care." His statement was met with a questioning stare.
He walked in, brushing past Heero and dumped his coat on the floor, not even bothering to try to hang it in the closet. He turned to Heero and stared at the man.
"You have the most gorgeous eyes I've ever seen Heero. They're all blue and deep and pretty and blue. Like ice, or the sky or something." Heero stared.
"And you've got this look that says 'don't fuck with me! I can beat you to a pulp in two seconds'. Makes it hard for people who like you to get to know you. I mean," at this point he was right up next to Heero, his buzz making him more adventurous than he would ever dare to be with Heero. "Look at me, I've spent years trying to get you to notice me, and all you do is grunt and go split cells or something. I mean, god, do you go and look at yourself and say 'it was good for me, was it good for me?' You have to be like a sponge or a bacteria. You reproduce a-sexchually. Cuz, you never notice anyone. I've tried for ages to get you to see someone. Hell, anyone. But NOOOO. You don't want to. You don't see that there are people who want to love you."
He stumbled a bit, Heero's arms going out to steady him. Duo turned it into an embrace though, holding Heero close and propping his chin in the hollow by Heero's neck. He fit perfectly, and he smelled Heero's musky aftershave, and tried to remember what he had been talking about.
"You never notice what's right in front of you. I've been standing here for years, and hell, Relena's stalked you. And you just stare past us like we don't exist." His head turned into Heero's neck, burrowing closer to the rapid pulse in his neck.
"Duo. You're drunk. You have no idea what you're talking about. Go to bed. Sleep it off."
Duo looked up, his face close to Heero's, lips aching to kiss him.
"But Heero.... All I want is for you to see how much I love you..."
He pressed his lips to Heero's reveling in the feel. They weren't soft, they were chapped and rough and Heero. He melted into Heero's arms, hoping that this wasn't a dream, and yet wishing it was. If it wasn't a dream, he was about to get killed for this.
At least he'd die happily.
The blow felt like a train had erupted in his skull, all blinding lights and noise. He shook himself, holding a shaky hand to his pounding eye. His head spun and he could feel the lump already rising. There was a small trickle of blood oozing our of the side of his head where he hit the floor. He couldn't even sit up.
"Oi, Heero. You hit hard. I forgot that." His voice was shaky. He knew that this was it. The last time he'd ever speak. He was dead meat.
Heero looked down at him, shocked. He looked at his hand as if it belonged to someone else, and then back to the sprawled out pile of Duo on the floor.
"Oh god Duo! Are you --"
"Oi. If you're gonna kill me, make it quick. This really hurts, and I'm gonna have a bitch of a hangover tomorrow."
That was Duo, trying to make light of his probable death.
"Duo... Duo you're drunk. You said things you don't mean, and that you'll regret later. I'm not going to kill you, but I think that maybe... Maybe we need to... not be roommates anymore. This... Let's talk about it when you're sobered up."
Heero held out his hand, ready to help Duo up. But all Duo could see was his eyes. Those beautiful blue eyes were murky, filled with doubt and disgust and hate.
He let his head thunk back on the ground, ignoring the flash of pain. He could feel the alcohol wearing off, and could feel. He could feel that dark hole inside of him gnaw into his chest. That empty space where his heart had been.
"I think..." His voice was a cracking whisper. "I think I'll stay here for a while." He shut his eyes and let the feeling of complete and utter rejection fill him. It gave him a sense of worth, oddly enough. It made him feel as though this rejection were something to live for. Because even if Heero looked on him in disgust, Heero was still looking at him. Not past him, or through him. He heard Heero kneel, touch his swollen eye, and then mutter something in a language that he didn't understand. Heero walked away, his bare feet echoing softly on the bare wood floor. Duo heard the fridge door open, and heard something being removed. Heero shuffled back and put the bag of frozen vegetables next to his head.
"We'll talk about moving arrangements tomorrow."
But they never did. Duo slept in the hall, letting the peas defrost on his face as he slept, and only woke up when Heero stepped over him to go to work.
"Clean up the mess in the hall and take a shower. You have to be at the shop by noon-thirty."
The door shut softly, and that hurt more than a loud slam ever could.
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Duo looked up from the car engine he was currently inspecting, oil smudges on his face and his braid doubled back on itself and tied with a bandana. He'd been catching shit all afternoon about his eye, it was swollen and dark purple, almost black. His entire head throbbed, and he was sure that there was a brass band marching around in there, but he was still putting his best face forward. He endured the other mechanic's taunts and jeers as best as he could. Everything from calling him a beat-up whore, to asking if his boyfriend caught him cheating. He just grinned, knowing that he wouldn't have to deal with this much longer. He was looking into a new apartment. He had called Quatre about it, but the blonde had told him to fuck off and deal with it himself. Not in as many words, in fact in many many more. But that was the jist.
"You won't learn from this if I help you to just leave Duo. You need to talk to him, you need to tell him that it was the alcohol, or that you didn't mean it. I know it's not entirely true, and that you don't lie, but it's the only thing that can keep you from having to leave."
Quatre sure knew how to pull the punches there, didn't he? Duo looked up after hearing the familiar sound of Heero's engine. The one that they had built from scratch, together. It hurt to hear it, but he knew that Heero would keep the car, it meant to much to throw away after one stupid argument.
Right?
"Hey, Maxwell. Your boyfriend's here! What does he want, another go? Wants to give you a matching pair of eyes?"
Duo swore he could feel his heart shrivel. They kept throwing these horrible things at him, and as much as he tried to hide the fact that they had hit home, he couldn't keep the emotions from his face. Fear, panic, and sadness.
He couldn't hear Heero and Joe, the shop owner, but he could see paperwork.
Heero was selling the car.
To his shop.
While he was working.
He dropped the wrench he was holding, his fingers as numb as his heart. He got up, trembling. He could hear the whispered insults, and chose to ignore them. He could see Joe and Heero shake hands, saw the money. Before he knew what was going on, he was at the office, his hand on the doorknob. He paused, taking a second to think. He decided to go in anyways.
"Heero! What's up? What're you doing here?" Heero just looked at Duo like he was daft.
"Selling the car." His eyes were ice, his face stern.
"But Heero! We spent a year and a half on that! The time, the money! God Heero, the memories, the fun we had. Heero, what's going on? Just because of one stupid thing, you're throwing away a beautiful car, and a bunch of memories? How callous!"
Heero glared at Duo, his fist tightening ever so slightly. Duo cringed, his instincts overcoming his training. Heero's eyes widened minutely, almost as if surprised at the reaction.
"Duo. I sold it. It was mine to begin with, and now I don't want it. I'm getting another car."
Heero walked out, and Joe was just staring at Duo, wondering what the hell was going on.
"Heero! You bastard Yuy! How could you! Goddamn it Yuy! Look at me! Look at his! You did this! I'm not scared of you!" Duo gestured at his face, then gave Heero the bird. Joe started to chastise him for antagonizing his customer when Heero turned around and walked back stiffly.
"Duo. Shut up. You have no say in anything to do with my life. You are nothing to me. Get out, and stay out."
Duo just crumpled. He held together, but Joe saw it, saw the look of total despair. Heero walked away, and out of sight. Duo just stood there, ignoring the jeers, ignoring Joe who was telling him it was alright, and that these things happen.
But all Duo could see was another person he loved walking away from him.
He was alone again.
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The bartender took one look at his face and pulled out a bottle of Jack, mixing it with a coke. Today was a slow drink day, none of the get drunk quick stuff.
"What's up? You get mugged, or get popped in a fight?" Duo looked at him without any real expression. He was just... apathetic. He hurt all over. He was tired, sore, his head was killing him, and his heart kept beating in a funny arrhythmic way.
"Yeah. Something like that." The bartender opened a beer for another customer, but came back to Duo's seat at the bar and tried to get him to talk.
"Lover's spat?"
"No, my... friend... forgot to pull his punches. We got angry and he decked me. I was on the floor, and to drunk to fight back."
The bartender cringed, pulling out some ice and a packet of pain reliever."Here, put some ice on it. Even if it was last night, this'll numb it better than the alcohol. And here, I'm giving you these, but I can't give you anymore drinks." Duo nodded, holding the bag of ice to his swollen eye, and popping the pills back with a coke.
"That's fine. I have to go home soon anyways, get my stuff. Have to find a new place. Just akward now, what with Heero's being a bitch. He sold our car! The car we pent a year and a half building! Right in front of me at the shop! How can someone be so cruel?"
The bartender made a face, his disgust at Heero's behavior evident.
"He didn't think it all the way through probably. Hell, we all do things to spite those who hurt us."
"But... How did I hurt him? Yanno? I didn't do anything to hurt his non-existent feelings! He's the one who decked me, who told me to get out, the one who kicked me while I was down so to say. He's never been one for excess, but that's a little far, don'tcha think?"
"Yeah. But sometimes, the people we want to hurt the most are the ones we love the most. Maybe he's just... upset about whatever you fought about, and he just wants you to feel as bad as he does. I did that with the ex-wife."
Duo nodded his understanding, yet he couldn't put it together.
"See, and don't like, freak out or anything here, okay? But he and I were war-buddies, and I.... I liked him. A lot. And then.... after all these years, in one drunken fell swoop I tell him that and he pops me. He was so... disgusted, you know? And all I could think was how good he looked angry, how it made him seem alive. He's always been so stony, so chilly. But it's like a whole new person comes out when he's angry. I've only seen him truly angry a few times over the years, mostly it had to do with hurting friends, yanno? Someone hurts his buds, he gets angry, gets even."
The bartender nodded, not in the least but disgusted. He looked interested even, like a soap-opera watcher, waiting for the other shoe to fall.
"So maybe he's liked you to, and he hadn't coped with it yet. Soldiers are weird that way, no offense. Besides, you can't be more than 22 at the most, how old were you in the wars.?"
Duo didn't lie, but he told him the half-truth.
"Well, I've never known how old I am exactly, but I was about 15-16 when the war started? And after the Mariemaia incident, we got Sally, our friend in the preventers, to get us all IDs and stuff. I was never registered, war orphan and all, and the others... well 'Fei and Quat had IDs and birthdays and stuff, but me'n Heero and Trowa, we were up in the air, really. So Sally got us IDs, and she makes it so that we're legally adults, cos otherwise we'd be wards of the state. So it's all weird. I'm legally 21, but I guess in years I'm like, 18 or 19. It's odd not knowing when to celebrate getting a year older. You never really think about it until you don't have it. And no one ever celebrated birthdays where I lived, and for the Church, we were all born on Christmas. It was convenient."
The bartender looked a bit skeptical, but decided to let it slide. He had the papers, the ID, that's what counted. It wasn't a fake, so there had to be a crazy explanation for it.
"So, You're still young. Maybe, since you guys fought so young too, maybe he doesn't know how to deal with this kind of thing yet? Maybe he doesn't think he deserves love or something stupid like that. That's what you always hear on those TV talk shows anyways."
Duo laughed, a real laugh.
"You know, this is the best conversation I've had in three years?"
"Really? You seem like the life-of-the-party types. The kind with lots of connections, I balk at the word 'friends'. Like someone everyone could love."
Duo's face turned dark, his eyes far away.
"No, I'm the one they all hate, cos they see themselves in me. They're projecting, yanno? I took a psych class at night school, so I learned all about it. It made so much sense to me. I mean, that's why they're always telling me to go away, to fuck off. To shut up, even when I'm silent. And it hurts, but I think I got used to it. I got used to the fact that that was how they saw me, and as long as they were still there, I could live with that." He laughed hollowly. "As if anyone can live like that. I was this close," he held out his thumb and forefinger close together, "to saying 'fuck it'. I held that gun to my head, and I stared at my reflection. I could see myself in the window glass, and I saw how much I let them affect me. And I thought 'why do you let them do this?'. I couldn't answer it, so I didn't pull the trigger, and I went looking for the answer. I went to that psych class, and I figured it out. It was so much... not easier, but more understandable to me."
The bartender just looked at him. Duo could tell he'd said too much.
"Hey, thanks for the ice, and the conversation, but I have to get my shit before 'Ro gets home. Bye." He walked away, unable to face the man he'd just opened up to. He hadn't told anyone about that. About his almost-suicide. Hell, he'd never even spoken to himself about it. He had shoved away the memory, shoved it deep inside. But now all he could see was the reflection.
The blank eyes, the shine of the gun. The feel of the cold barrel slowly warming to the skin of his temple.
He walked home, eyes on the ground, not looking around for danger like he usually did. He was so tired, he decided. He was dead tired of this shit.
Duo Maxwell had been a great many things in his short existence.
An orphan, a thief, a choir-boy, a killer, a friend, a lover. But none of them had stayed with him. None of his persona's had stayed. He could feel them inside, dead and just taking up space in his soul. He could almost taste the dust and the rot.
He stopped, key poised to unlock the apartment.
There was the answer. There was the thing that was eating him up inside. It wasn't the fact that no one cared really, it wasn't that he was used and abused for his entire life.
It was that he'd never been able to let go of those things. Heero had let go of his assassin past, had gone into the Preventers to utilize it and to atone. Quatre made up for his actions in the war by creating charities and jobs. Wufei had finally moved on from Meiran's death, getting together with Sally. They had all moved on... And he was still stuck, whining about his terrible past.
Hell, how terrible was it?
He wasn't trained from the time he could walk to kill people. His entire colony hadn't blown itself up. He never had to deal with being a killer from birth.
He had the easy past, the one that separated him from the rest. Wufei and Quatre were raised in their families, and so had better childhoods than the other three. But they still did horrible things before puberty.
Trowa was a mercenary, he had no name, no home. But he had found Cathy, and now he had a home, a family. He had a lover who loved him, and he had moved past all of it. Heero was trained to be a killer, a perfect soldier.
That sucked. All he had was no name, no family. He was a gang-baby, an orphan who witnessed horrible crimes, but never had much of a place in any of it. The gang died, and he was alive because he had some hell of a immune system. The Maxwell orphanage burnt down, and he only saw Helen die. He tried not to acknowledge the frightening thought that maybe it was his fault, that because he had gone to get that suit...
no.
It wasn't his fault. It was another in a string of tragic, unrelated events.
Duo sighed, deciding that he'd pick his stuff up tomorrow. He walked down the street, eyes seeing only inside. He walked for hours, going nowhere in particular, yet his feet kept leading him to places he'd rather no think about.
The park where he and Heero used to play basket ball on the weekends they had free. That Italian place that they'd get take-out from on occasion.
He thought about life. Thought about love, and the past. Thought about the future. What was the future for him?
The future he would have liked to have seen would never come true, not now. There would be no happy home with his lover and friends. No dog and dinners together, no late-night talks, or steamy sex.
None of it.
He thought about the real future.
He would have to get his things. Get a new place to live. Get a new job. Even as he thought this, thought about the things that needed to be done, the things that he had to do, he thought about that one night, long ago. Back before he realized that they cared, just in a strange way. That night, the gleam of the gun, the smell of the gun powder...No what he needed was to think of what his new future would be like. His new life.
A new life.
He stopped, standing in the middle of a slow sidewalk. That was the answer, he thought. To get a new life. He'd always just gone on as Duo, as the orphan, the killer.
No. Now he would become someone new. Someone that his friends would like. Someone that was enjoyable, someone that they would laugh with and talk to and love.
Love...
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...Okay. I lied. There'll be at least one more chappie. I dunno how I feel about this one. I just spent two hours of god-awful early in the morning (it's now 1:38) re-checking, double checking, and editing and rewriting this to my sorts satisfaction. It's better than it was. I'm annoyed at myself for making it four days... but I guess I hadn't forseen the backround story to actually come into play...
Anyways, thanks a million you guys. I'm so tickled at the reviews. They're what made me feel like I had to get this out as soon as I could. I'm still putting off the essay due in two days... A ten page research paper... I still... ugh. Wish me luck!
(Passes out)
(P.S For those who were wondering, this is my Quat-there-before-Sally thing: Okay, so Quatre was probably closer to the apartment, and seeing as Sally would have lots of work and maybe patients, then as the head of a corp, Quatre can leave if necessary before Sally. It made sense to me...)
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They all looked at him, looked at the softness in his eyes, the way he held himself. He was not as confident as before, more timid, but no less forceful. His eyes had the passion of old, but buried under the pain of the new. He was in there, but he didn't want to come out.
"Why did you cut it Duo? You could have just --"
"No." The answer was forceful, a statement of fact. The whole truth.
"I couldn't have Quatre, I had to." He looked away, and almost as if he was trying to convince himself, "I had to."
"But Duo-" started Quatre, ready to argue, ready to be the clever businessman he was, tell Duo what he had done had been hasty, not well thought out. But before he could really get into it, Duo started to speak, and Sally knocked on the door, Heero moving silently to let her in.
"No Quatre. I'm not Duo anymore. Can't you see? He's gone. He's been gone for so long, but I kept hanging on to the past, never really living for the future. And then, Heero opened my eyes." All eyes swiveled to the quiet man in the back of the room, well away from the rest of the group.
"Quatre, can I speak with you?" Sally's tone left no room for questions, and Quatre reluctantly got out of his kneeling crouch in front of Duo and walked over to the Preventer's agent.
"What happened Quatre? All I heard from Heero is that Duo's not well, maybe even in need of restraints. What's going on? What happened to his hair?" She asked quietly, not wanting to upset the man on the couch.
Quatre sighed, trying to gather the information he had already.
"Well, about four days ago Duo got drunk, and umm, confronted Heero about his...feelings for Heero. Heero hit him, and they made plans for Duo to move out. All I really know after that was that Heero sold their car, and that Duo didn't come back home for two nights. We just found him here, like this. Sally, what can we do?"
Sally looked at Quatre, disbelief in her eyes.
"Heero actually hit Duo? And then sold the car? Maybe Duo just took it too hard.... He was rather closer to... a break... than the rest of you. You all had lives and jobs. Lovers." She smiled, glancing at her own lover, Wufei. "He didn't really have that. He had friends, he had a job that I know from his talks to me and through Wufei that he hated his job. The signs were there. I just wonder what the catalyst for such a drastic break was. What could have convinced him to cut his hair, to create an entirely new life, a new persona... I need to get him to a psychologist soon. I think that you guys should come along, and maybe we can sort this out before he really hurts himself, or one of us."
The two walked back over to the silent group by the couch. Wufei had tried to get Duo to talk, but all that he got were blank stares. The man once called Duo sat on the couch, reflecting, and beginning to fit into his new skin. He grabbed for his braid, and when his hand clutched air, he looked lost before he remembered what he had done. He felt the short strands brushing around his neck, uneven and rough.
He thought about that night, the one that started this entire thing.
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--Four days ago--
The rope of hair swung with every beat of the music as the head and body attached to it swayed and moved. It was dark, smoky, and noisy. It had to be almost midnight, and he was still at the bar, currently dancing. He came here once a week, twice sometimes, to forget. To drink and dance, and to blend in and forget. All he wanted was for one night be able to not see himself in the mirror and think "what a waste of life". To be able to look at someone and have no flashbacks to people from the past, people long dead.
He had prided himself in his "luck", he hadn't had much trouble getting over the war. But the killing had never bothered him.
It was the things he thought he saw, the phantoms of his past, that made his heart ache and his stomach flutter.
He wanted to see his roommate and not feel a pang of heartache that he knew would never be healed. Because Heero was fucking asexual for pete's sake! He never showed open interest in anything except his guns and his laptop. It was hopeless. He'd had some experience, but Heero found it prudent to not share with his best friend. That's what normal guys did, right? They would talk about who they'd done, and how it was. Shit like that. But never, never had Duo once heard Heero say anything remotely sexual, even a joke. He never even smiled at blatant innuendo!
Not that he himself bragged about any lays he'd ever had. All four of them.
But that was another sorry story, never to be told to anyone.
Tonight was about forgetting, not remembering. Not dwelling. Duo shuffled off of the tiny dance floor and sauntered unsteadily to the bar. People pushed and shoved, and he let them push him around. He closed his eyes and just let go. He felt battered and lost and strangely comforted by the thought. He wasn't a person, he was a non-entity. A half-formed thought and a figment of his own imagination. He slowly opened glazed indigo eyes, letting the world slowly come back, immersing himself in the flow of the bar. He sat on a free stool, motioning to the bartender to pour another shot of Everclear. He could fuel his car on the shit, but it got the job done. The job? The job was to get shit faced and then stumble home and sleep until he had to go to work the next day.
The liquor was set in front of him, and he stared at the little glass before shooting it in one go. It burned to his stomach, then his head started to buzz with the warmth. He smiled, and motioned for another. The bartender looked at him, obviously trying to get Duo to reconsider, but it was futile.
"I can still think, I can still talk. I'm not drunk yet." He shouted, probably a little slurred but with the noise in the bar it didn't show. He grinned, tossing back the shot, then he turned on the stool and watched the colors fade into one another.
-
It was last call, two-thirty. He should have been home hours ago, but he could still feel, and he wanted to get one last drink.
"You've had half a bottle of Everclear, and a few shots of Tequila. I'm amazed you haven't passed out yet!"
Duo looked blearily at the man, smiling sadly.
"I have a high tolerance." He got his last shot, not realizing that the bartender had been giving him half water, half liquor for shots for about an hour. He tossed it, paid his tab, and stumbled out of the bar.
The street was empty, dark and cold. He was weaving, he knew it, but he couldn't stop it. He put a hand against the cool bricks, steadying himself. He heard the man behind him before that same man could come up to him. He started walking, hoping to avoid conflict, but knowing it would come to blows.
"Gimme eyer wallet!" The man tried to grab Duo, but missed. They were both drunk, and neither in any condition to fight. The man overbalanced and fell on the ground. He didn't get back up, so Duo kept going. The bar was two blocks from the apartment that he and Heero had shared for three years now. It was modest, in a middle-class neighborhood.
He fumbled with the lock, and finally got into the building. He stumbled to the elevator, pushing the button. He realized minutes later that the car was still there, waiting for a passenger. He got on and pressed the floor. The ride up made him nauseous, but he took a breather in the hall before trying to unlock his front door.
He had barely got the key in the lock when the door wrenched open and the formidable glare of Heero rained upon him.
He smiled drunkenly, trying to make light of the fact that it was three something in the morning and he had work at one.
"Heeeeeroo. Hiiiiiya. Nice ta see ya. Good ta knowya care." His statement was met with a questioning stare.
He walked in, brushing past Heero and dumped his coat on the floor, not even bothering to try to hang it in the closet. He turned to Heero and stared at the man.
"You have the most gorgeous eyes I've ever seen Heero. They're all blue and deep and pretty and blue. Like ice, or the sky or something." Heero stared.
"And you've got this look that says 'don't fuck with me! I can beat you to a pulp in two seconds'. Makes it hard for people who like you to get to know you. I mean," at this point he was right up next to Heero, his buzz making him more adventurous than he would ever dare to be with Heero. "Look at me, I've spent years trying to get you to notice me, and all you do is grunt and go split cells or something. I mean, god, do you go and look at yourself and say 'it was good for me, was it good for me?' You have to be like a sponge or a bacteria. You reproduce a-sexchually. Cuz, you never notice anyone. I've tried for ages to get you to see someone. Hell, anyone. But NOOOO. You don't want to. You don't see that there are people who want to love you."
He stumbled a bit, Heero's arms going out to steady him. Duo turned it into an embrace though, holding Heero close and propping his chin in the hollow by Heero's neck. He fit perfectly, and he smelled Heero's musky aftershave, and tried to remember what he had been talking about.
"You never notice what's right in front of you. I've been standing here for years, and hell, Relena's stalked you. And you just stare past us like we don't exist." His head turned into Heero's neck, burrowing closer to the rapid pulse in his neck.
"Duo. You're drunk. You have no idea what you're talking about. Go to bed. Sleep it off."
Duo looked up, his face close to Heero's, lips aching to kiss him.
"But Heero.... All I want is for you to see how much I love you..."
He pressed his lips to Heero's reveling in the feel. They weren't soft, they were chapped and rough and Heero. He melted into Heero's arms, hoping that this wasn't a dream, and yet wishing it was. If it wasn't a dream, he was about to get killed for this.
At least he'd die happily.
The blow felt like a train had erupted in his skull, all blinding lights and noise. He shook himself, holding a shaky hand to his pounding eye. His head spun and he could feel the lump already rising. There was a small trickle of blood oozing our of the side of his head where he hit the floor. He couldn't even sit up.
"Oi, Heero. You hit hard. I forgot that." His voice was shaky. He knew that this was it. The last time he'd ever speak. He was dead meat.
Heero looked down at him, shocked. He looked at his hand as if it belonged to someone else, and then back to the sprawled out pile of Duo on the floor.
"Oh god Duo! Are you --"
"Oi. If you're gonna kill me, make it quick. This really hurts, and I'm gonna have a bitch of a hangover tomorrow."
That was Duo, trying to make light of his probable death.
"Duo... Duo you're drunk. You said things you don't mean, and that you'll regret later. I'm not going to kill you, but I think that maybe... Maybe we need to... not be roommates anymore. This... Let's talk about it when you're sobered up."
Heero held out his hand, ready to help Duo up. But all Duo could see was his eyes. Those beautiful blue eyes were murky, filled with doubt and disgust and hate.
He let his head thunk back on the ground, ignoring the flash of pain. He could feel the alcohol wearing off, and could feel. He could feel that dark hole inside of him gnaw into his chest. That empty space where his heart had been.
"I think..." His voice was a cracking whisper. "I think I'll stay here for a while." He shut his eyes and let the feeling of complete and utter rejection fill him. It gave him a sense of worth, oddly enough. It made him feel as though this rejection were something to live for. Because even if Heero looked on him in disgust, Heero was still looking at him. Not past him, or through him. He heard Heero kneel, touch his swollen eye, and then mutter something in a language that he didn't understand. Heero walked away, his bare feet echoing softly on the bare wood floor. Duo heard the fridge door open, and heard something being removed. Heero shuffled back and put the bag of frozen vegetables next to his head.
"We'll talk about moving arrangements tomorrow."
But they never did. Duo slept in the hall, letting the peas defrost on his face as he slept, and only woke up when Heero stepped over him to go to work.
"Clean up the mess in the hall and take a shower. You have to be at the shop by noon-thirty."
The door shut softly, and that hurt more than a loud slam ever could.
-
Duo looked up from the car engine he was currently inspecting, oil smudges on his face and his braid doubled back on itself and tied with a bandana. He'd been catching shit all afternoon about his eye, it was swollen and dark purple, almost black. His entire head throbbed, and he was sure that there was a brass band marching around in there, but he was still putting his best face forward. He endured the other mechanic's taunts and jeers as best as he could. Everything from calling him a beat-up whore, to asking if his boyfriend caught him cheating. He just grinned, knowing that he wouldn't have to deal with this much longer. He was looking into a new apartment. He had called Quatre about it, but the blonde had told him to fuck off and deal with it himself. Not in as many words, in fact in many many more. But that was the jist.
"You won't learn from this if I help you to just leave Duo. You need to talk to him, you need to tell him that it was the alcohol, or that you didn't mean it. I know it's not entirely true, and that you don't lie, but it's the only thing that can keep you from having to leave."
Quatre sure knew how to pull the punches there, didn't he? Duo looked up after hearing the familiar sound of Heero's engine. The one that they had built from scratch, together. It hurt to hear it, but he knew that Heero would keep the car, it meant to much to throw away after one stupid argument.
Right?
"Hey, Maxwell. Your boyfriend's here! What does he want, another go? Wants to give you a matching pair of eyes?"
Duo swore he could feel his heart shrivel. They kept throwing these horrible things at him, and as much as he tried to hide the fact that they had hit home, he couldn't keep the emotions from his face. Fear, panic, and sadness.
He couldn't hear Heero and Joe, the shop owner, but he could see paperwork.
Heero was selling the car.
To his shop.
While he was working.
He dropped the wrench he was holding, his fingers as numb as his heart. He got up, trembling. He could hear the whispered insults, and chose to ignore them. He could see Joe and Heero shake hands, saw the money. Before he knew what was going on, he was at the office, his hand on the doorknob. He paused, taking a second to think. He decided to go in anyways.
"Heero! What's up? What're you doing here?" Heero just looked at Duo like he was daft.
"Selling the car." His eyes were ice, his face stern.
"But Heero! We spent a year and a half on that! The time, the money! God Heero, the memories, the fun we had. Heero, what's going on? Just because of one stupid thing, you're throwing away a beautiful car, and a bunch of memories? How callous!"
Heero glared at Duo, his fist tightening ever so slightly. Duo cringed, his instincts overcoming his training. Heero's eyes widened minutely, almost as if surprised at the reaction.
"Duo. I sold it. It was mine to begin with, and now I don't want it. I'm getting another car."
Heero walked out, and Joe was just staring at Duo, wondering what the hell was going on.
"Heero! You bastard Yuy! How could you! Goddamn it Yuy! Look at me! Look at his! You did this! I'm not scared of you!" Duo gestured at his face, then gave Heero the bird. Joe started to chastise him for antagonizing his customer when Heero turned around and walked back stiffly.
"Duo. Shut up. You have no say in anything to do with my life. You are nothing to me. Get out, and stay out."
Duo just crumpled. He held together, but Joe saw it, saw the look of total despair. Heero walked away, and out of sight. Duo just stood there, ignoring the jeers, ignoring Joe who was telling him it was alright, and that these things happen.
But all Duo could see was another person he loved walking away from him.
He was alone again.
-
The bartender took one look at his face and pulled out a bottle of Jack, mixing it with a coke. Today was a slow drink day, none of the get drunk quick stuff.
"What's up? You get mugged, or get popped in a fight?" Duo looked at him without any real expression. He was just... apathetic. He hurt all over. He was tired, sore, his head was killing him, and his heart kept beating in a funny arrhythmic way.
"Yeah. Something like that." The bartender opened a beer for another customer, but came back to Duo's seat at the bar and tried to get him to talk.
"Lover's spat?"
"No, my... friend... forgot to pull his punches. We got angry and he decked me. I was on the floor, and to drunk to fight back."
The bartender cringed, pulling out some ice and a packet of pain reliever."Here, put some ice on it. Even if it was last night, this'll numb it better than the alcohol. And here, I'm giving you these, but I can't give you anymore drinks." Duo nodded, holding the bag of ice to his swollen eye, and popping the pills back with a coke.
"That's fine. I have to go home soon anyways, get my stuff. Have to find a new place. Just akward now, what with Heero's being a bitch. He sold our car! The car we pent a year and a half building! Right in front of me at the shop! How can someone be so cruel?"
The bartender made a face, his disgust at Heero's behavior evident.
"He didn't think it all the way through probably. Hell, we all do things to spite those who hurt us."
"But... How did I hurt him? Yanno? I didn't do anything to hurt his non-existent feelings! He's the one who decked me, who told me to get out, the one who kicked me while I was down so to say. He's never been one for excess, but that's a little far, don'tcha think?"
"Yeah. But sometimes, the people we want to hurt the most are the ones we love the most. Maybe he's just... upset about whatever you fought about, and he just wants you to feel as bad as he does. I did that with the ex-wife."
Duo nodded his understanding, yet he couldn't put it together.
"See, and don't like, freak out or anything here, okay? But he and I were war-buddies, and I.... I liked him. A lot. And then.... after all these years, in one drunken fell swoop I tell him that and he pops me. He was so... disgusted, you know? And all I could think was how good he looked angry, how it made him seem alive. He's always been so stony, so chilly. But it's like a whole new person comes out when he's angry. I've only seen him truly angry a few times over the years, mostly it had to do with hurting friends, yanno? Someone hurts his buds, he gets angry, gets even."
The bartender nodded, not in the least but disgusted. He looked interested even, like a soap-opera watcher, waiting for the other shoe to fall.
"So maybe he's liked you to, and he hadn't coped with it yet. Soldiers are weird that way, no offense. Besides, you can't be more than 22 at the most, how old were you in the wars.?"
Duo didn't lie, but he told him the half-truth.
"Well, I've never known how old I am exactly, but I was about 15-16 when the war started? And after the Mariemaia incident, we got Sally, our friend in the preventers, to get us all IDs and stuff. I was never registered, war orphan and all, and the others... well 'Fei and Quat had IDs and birthdays and stuff, but me'n Heero and Trowa, we were up in the air, really. So Sally got us IDs, and she makes it so that we're legally adults, cos otherwise we'd be wards of the state. So it's all weird. I'm legally 21, but I guess in years I'm like, 18 or 19. It's odd not knowing when to celebrate getting a year older. You never really think about it until you don't have it. And no one ever celebrated birthdays where I lived, and for the Church, we were all born on Christmas. It was convenient."
The bartender looked a bit skeptical, but decided to let it slide. He had the papers, the ID, that's what counted. It wasn't a fake, so there had to be a crazy explanation for it.
"So, You're still young. Maybe, since you guys fought so young too, maybe he doesn't know how to deal with this kind of thing yet? Maybe he doesn't think he deserves love or something stupid like that. That's what you always hear on those TV talk shows anyways."
Duo laughed, a real laugh.
"You know, this is the best conversation I've had in three years?"
"Really? You seem like the life-of-the-party types. The kind with lots of connections, I balk at the word 'friends'. Like someone everyone could love."
Duo's face turned dark, his eyes far away.
"No, I'm the one they all hate, cos they see themselves in me. They're projecting, yanno? I took a psych class at night school, so I learned all about it. It made so much sense to me. I mean, that's why they're always telling me to go away, to fuck off. To shut up, even when I'm silent. And it hurts, but I think I got used to it. I got used to the fact that that was how they saw me, and as long as they were still there, I could live with that." He laughed hollowly. "As if anyone can live like that. I was this close," he held out his thumb and forefinger close together, "to saying 'fuck it'. I held that gun to my head, and I stared at my reflection. I could see myself in the window glass, and I saw how much I let them affect me. And I thought 'why do you let them do this?'. I couldn't answer it, so I didn't pull the trigger, and I went looking for the answer. I went to that psych class, and I figured it out. It was so much... not easier, but more understandable to me."
The bartender just looked at him. Duo could tell he'd said too much.
"Hey, thanks for the ice, and the conversation, but I have to get my shit before 'Ro gets home. Bye." He walked away, unable to face the man he'd just opened up to. He hadn't told anyone about that. About his almost-suicide. Hell, he'd never even spoken to himself about it. He had shoved away the memory, shoved it deep inside. But now all he could see was the reflection.
The blank eyes, the shine of the gun. The feel of the cold barrel slowly warming to the skin of his temple.
He walked home, eyes on the ground, not looking around for danger like he usually did. He was so tired, he decided. He was dead tired of this shit.
Duo Maxwell had been a great many things in his short existence.
An orphan, a thief, a choir-boy, a killer, a friend, a lover. But none of them had stayed with him. None of his persona's had stayed. He could feel them inside, dead and just taking up space in his soul. He could almost taste the dust and the rot.
He stopped, key poised to unlock the apartment.
There was the answer. There was the thing that was eating him up inside. It wasn't the fact that no one cared really, it wasn't that he was used and abused for his entire life.
It was that he'd never been able to let go of those things. Heero had let go of his assassin past, had gone into the Preventers to utilize it and to atone. Quatre made up for his actions in the war by creating charities and jobs. Wufei had finally moved on from Meiran's death, getting together with Sally. They had all moved on... And he was still stuck, whining about his terrible past.
Hell, how terrible was it?
He wasn't trained from the time he could walk to kill people. His entire colony hadn't blown itself up. He never had to deal with being a killer from birth.
He had the easy past, the one that separated him from the rest. Wufei and Quatre were raised in their families, and so had better childhoods than the other three. But they still did horrible things before puberty.
Trowa was a mercenary, he had no name, no home. But he had found Cathy, and now he had a home, a family. He had a lover who loved him, and he had moved past all of it. Heero was trained to be a killer, a perfect soldier.
That sucked. All he had was no name, no family. He was a gang-baby, an orphan who witnessed horrible crimes, but never had much of a place in any of it. The gang died, and he was alive because he had some hell of a immune system. The Maxwell orphanage burnt down, and he only saw Helen die. He tried not to acknowledge the frightening thought that maybe it was his fault, that because he had gone to get that suit...
no.
It wasn't his fault. It was another in a string of tragic, unrelated events.
Duo sighed, deciding that he'd pick his stuff up tomorrow. He walked down the street, eyes seeing only inside. He walked for hours, going nowhere in particular, yet his feet kept leading him to places he'd rather no think about.
The park where he and Heero used to play basket ball on the weekends they had free. That Italian place that they'd get take-out from on occasion.
He thought about life. Thought about love, and the past. Thought about the future. What was the future for him?
The future he would have liked to have seen would never come true, not now. There would be no happy home with his lover and friends. No dog and dinners together, no late-night talks, or steamy sex.
None of it.
He thought about the real future.
He would have to get his things. Get a new place to live. Get a new job. Even as he thought this, thought about the things that needed to be done, the things that he had to do, he thought about that one night, long ago. Back before he realized that they cared, just in a strange way. That night, the gleam of the gun, the smell of the gun powder...No what he needed was to think of what his new future would be like. His new life.
A new life.
He stopped, standing in the middle of a slow sidewalk. That was the answer, he thought. To get a new life. He'd always just gone on as Duo, as the orphan, the killer.
No. Now he would become someone new. Someone that his friends would like. Someone that was enjoyable, someone that they would laugh with and talk to and love.
Love...
-
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-
...Okay. I lied. There'll be at least one more chappie. I dunno how I feel about this one. I just spent two hours of god-awful early in the morning (it's now 1:38) re-checking, double checking, and editing and rewriting this to my sorts satisfaction. It's better than it was. I'm annoyed at myself for making it four days... but I guess I hadn't forseen the backround story to actually come into play...
Anyways, thanks a million you guys. I'm so tickled at the reviews. They're what made me feel like I had to get this out as soon as I could. I'm still putting off the essay due in two days... A ten page research paper... I still... ugh. Wish me luck!
(Passes out)
(P.S For those who were wondering, this is my Quat-there-before-Sally thing: Okay, so Quatre was probably closer to the apartment, and seeing as Sally would have lots of work and maybe patients, then as the head of a corp, Quatre can leave if necessary before Sally. It made sense to me...)