Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The One-Eared Neko ❯ MUSIC IN DARKNESS ( Chapter 7 )

Part 7 MUSIC IN DARKNESS

And that's what they did. After a quick dash back to the spare tire, Heero retrieved his supplies and was climbing back into the cabin as Duo had fished out his keys and turned the engine over. It was still dark, and the contrasts of shadow and distant, stark white gas station lights were playing strangely on the criminal's face when he crawled over into his spot in the passenger seat, notebook in his lap. Duo, however, was wise enough not to waste any more time hesitation at anything. He sufficiently gunned the engine and pulled the Isuzu truck out from the anonymous line of semi-trucks, pulled it out of the parking lot so that he struck the curb when turning, jolting the entire truck. Heero nearly pitched forward, but recovered himself and gave a quick disapproving glance over to his driver. The man whom he'd practically handed his safety over to, now jumping curbs and swinging recklessly into the opposite lane and swerving back before he collided with the glaring lights of another vehicle pulling into the station. Horns blared at him, and Duo angrily laid on his own in return.

Duo seemed a little rattled, but he masked it behind a blank, smiling face. After they had traveled a few hundred meters down the dark, emptied road, he finally gave a sigh of relief, hands loosening on the wheel. He looked over to Heero, mostly to confirm that he was still there and still alive, and offered a half-anemic smile.

"That was fun," he said.

Heero scowled. "That's your idea of fun? I'd hate to see what you call dangerous." He shifted uneasily, glancing once in the sideview mirror. "You're not worried about them following you?"

"Listen," Duo said, raising a finger as if making a point, "I couldn't give a rat's ass about them anymore. They're beat. They got their asses sorely kicked, and we'll be long gone before they wake up. Even if I weren't there, I'm sure you could have taken care of them."

He was still scowling. "I think you're just being reckless and irresponsible with both of our lives."

"Funny. I thought it was responsible enough to haul your ass around and haul it outta danger." Duo's smile was viciously friendly in the dark light.

"That's not what I meant," Heero defended with a slight in his voice. "I'm concerned about my well-being as well. If it was more than mere coincidence that they recognized you and they were tracking you, then I don't think you shouldn't have allowed them to live."

Duo laughed harshly. "You wanna decide who lives and dies? I'm not like that, okay?" Duo said finally, pinning a caustic look to Heero's face. It sufficiently silenced the traveler.

"You can't just stereotype me as some common criminal. Killing's just not my style. I would like to go without it if I could, but apparently the rest of the world doesn't want to cooperate, and I'm sometimes forced to do unpleasant things. Not my fault, in my eyes," he added jeeringly.

Heero reluctantly remained silent, his eyes absorbing it all solemnly.

The con man, clearly steadied enough to convert back to his old humor, leaned down and flicked on the radio, causing the green lights flashing 4:56 A.M. to glow brighter and a sudden jolt of playful and half-obnoxious distorted chords to leap out and assault Heero's ears like they hadn't been for a while, at least. Hn. Punk rock. What else would a deviant want to listen to? Heero recognized it vaguely as a song he'd heard some high school punk blaring on his car stereo as he had passed Heero walking home and accidentally swerved into a fire hydrant. Perhaps it caused reckless driving. And in that case, he wasn't sure if it was safe to influence Duo's already questionable driving practices.

After a few minutes of listening to the provided karaoke, Heero became disinterested and flipped open his brand new notebook. The white paper, thinly lined, stared up at him just as he stared down at it.

Overhead, the intermittent glow of murky orange streetlights shone like distant beacons, along the empty, lonely stretch of highway. They would shine down on Heero's face for an instant before whirling away and being left behind. It was a lonely sensation to behold, light after light. And in his lap, the blank, lifeless paper was still calling to him. Duo still was singing rather boldly, matching every strong note for note with the bands that followed one after the other. And Heero was trying to find a place to start.

His head was swimming, nearly overloaded with everything. This wasn't normal, not normal at all. To be here, in the custody of a criminal, to be putting himself at the mercy of a proven con man and more than capable assailant, to be sitting beside him, to sleep only feet from him. It was impossible to imagine, yet it was reality. And not only that, it was strange to be constantly thinking of him. To be so involved with his activities as to analyze and write about his movements, his thoughts, his reasons, his actual life. To think of his voice, the way it always seeped around his brain so inconspicuously, to think of his razor-white smile, to think of the cunning blue eyes that changed from emotion to emotion like a pair of glittering mood rings. Nothing was quite right here. Laughable, almost, to think at all.

He glanced over again, and Duo still was singing, proclaiming each note with a very visible Adam's apple. Not half-badly, either.

But still, he couldn't just sit here and not know anything of his captor.

So he closed the notebook again with no place to really start it anyway. He slipped it to the side of him, sitting on the seat, and limply set his hands on his knees, just watching his subject. After a few seconds, as he knew he would, Duo noticed Heero staring at him and quit at the erratic interlude of a song. He could tell from the serious, little half-stubborn expression that the traveler wanted to ask him something of relative importance, so he turned down the volume so it sifted into the background.

"What's up, Heero? Somethin' wrong?"

"What happened to your hair? It was significantly longer when I saw your warrant." As a second indicator, his eyes shifted to the relatively short, chestnut brown tresses that hung around his shoulders.

"Oh, that?" Duo gave him a mild look of surprise. There were slivers of disappointment, as well that didn't escape Heero's radar. "I was forced to cut it nearly a week ago. You know, security issues. I was simply becoming to recognizable with it and it was either my hair, or my freedom."

"Hn," Heero said to himself, thinking for a second and raking his eyes along the bohemian's chestnut brown hair. "It might throw off your pursuers. You look different without it."

The con man's face lit up mischievously. "How about better?"

Heero snorted to himself and avoided the answer by folding his arms and settling back into the seat. "It must have taken a long time to grow it." His eyes settled on the ever moving blur of dark slick blacktop beneath the wheels, punctuated by the streetlights centered on a cement separator that caused the thin sheets of water to glow brilliant shades of orange as they passed. "And it must have been difficult to part with. You must have been attached to it to keep it as long as you did."

"Yeah," Duo sighed, rubbing gently the side of his face, "but I cut it to survive. As much as I loved it, I still knew it was too conspicuous to have if I wanted to avoid being caught. I don't think it would be better to be pretty on the execution stand than a little ragged-looking and still alive."

Heero wondered where he got the idea that forging a few checks and deceiving with a few well-placed smiles and liberating some funds would get him anywhere near capital punishment. He furrowed his eyebrow, and the more he thought of it, the harder it became to understand. He could accredit it to just general paranoia or some quip of dark humor, but there was nothing but honesty in his expression when he said it and even traces of fear. There was no way that Duo should be even considered for such extreme punishment unless he'd committed murder of some sort.

He could have killed the two bounty hunters and been rid of their stalking forever, with more than four guns between them and their unconscious attackers, but he hadn't. He'd left them there, bloodied, bruised and unconscious, but still very much alive. It was impossible for him to think of Duo as a cold-blooded killer when he had returned his stolen watch, accepted his questionable preposition, offered him breakfast, and always made it clear of the danger he would be in in the bohemian's company. Protected him.

Duo was looking at Heero again, once the truck had straightened out along a straight stretch of road that cut through a grassy, unused wheat field. "I still have it, you know."

"Really."

"Really," Duo confirmed, jabbing a finger vaguely in the direction of his luggage. The bohemian displayed an affable, warm smile as he replayed on his memories. "In my backpack. Still braided, too. I didn't want it falling into federal hands or anything, and I missed it having it around, so to speak, so I thought I'd keep it for myself. Cut it myself, too. A pair of scissors, a sixty-nine cents at some thrift shop I was cruising for pockets to pick."

"You're not bitter about it?"

"What, my hair?"

Heero nodded solemnly, eyes still analyzing every last inflection that he could find, always looking for that telltale sign that would prove him so fatally wrong about his image of the bohemian, the con man, the man on the run. But it eluded him still. Duo rested an elbow in the curve of the steering wheel and propped a knee against it as well, leaning back into the seat. And another white, charming smile.

"It was my decision to cut my hair. There's no one to blame there."

"Yes," Heero said, nodding his head of disheveled dark hair in agreement. "But because of your warrant for arrest, you were forced more or less to get rid of it. You're not angry about it?"

In the fleeting orange cast, there was a momentary glitch in the infallible bohemian grin. The smooth, blue presence of his eyes flickered for a second and was replaced by the endless stare of memory revisited. The jaunty angle of his smile dulled an inch. "About my hair, no."

Heero decided to retract from that subject. "What are you going to do, now that you've slipped into the media spotlight? They're not going to relent the search for you if you keep conning people."

"Don't know," Duo shrugged as he glanced at the road, with an alarming amount of nonchalance about the future of his very existence, his survival. Heero almost flinched at the indifference he heard, and furrowed his eyebrow in what may have appeared to be anger and confusion on the outside.

"Can't you just go clean? I mean, you must have someplace to go to-"

Duo slowly turned to meet his eyes. It was unnerving to seem so pacified and neutral as he did, with a half-deceitful muse of a smile. "Why do you care, Heero?"

"I'm just asking," Heero lied.

"If you have to know," the bohemian said, with an unnatural edge to his voice, "no, I don't. I don't have a home and if there was a chance in Hell that I could go clean, I would have done so a long, long time ago." Although he couldn't pinpoint it, there was a sudden twist in the center of Heero's stomach at the cold tone. Threatening, almost. "And I'd rather if you would stay away from personal questions like that, thanks. Not everything, but I'd appreciate leaving the important stuff, like my family and my home, alone and anonymous. You understand."

Heero nodded, and the harsh edge lightened a little. The light in his eyes was slightly more innocent, a little less lethal-looking. "It's not something I discuss," Duo explained. "With anybody."

The criminal's eyes locked with his for only an instant, as he had the responsibility of watching the road, and were so raw and honest for a split second that Heero wasn't sure he was even there, sitting beside him, watching it. But it only lasted for a second, before the volume knob was turned again, sufficiently putting up a wall between him and the overly-sensitive questions he'd asked of the bohemian. Heero decided that he had cut too close to bone with the last and the last thing he really needed was to find himself in less than favorable companionship with a criminal, a notorious one who had no problems easily downing armed, grown men. At that thought, he quickly shifted his eyes away and settled on his blank paper again.

But he still couldn't write.

The road curving out before them, highlighted by the white glow of the headlights, cut through some mildly forested areas, slowly climbing higher as they left the city further and further behind them. There was no way to gauge how far Duo had sped the night before while he had slept for an unnatural fifteen hours, so Heero was unsure if they were still in the same state. The Japanese man sighed, while Duo vibrantly struck up a new chorus to the swinging punk on the radio, and propped his elbow on the window. Blurs of dark, forest green and dim, blue-black patches of sky whirred by silently, beside the noise from the driver. He let the notebook lie limp in his lap until it almost slipped out of his grasp, jarred by the imperfections in the road, and he shut it and pushed it on to the seat beside him. There was no use in holding it if he still couldn't stop the mild swimming sensation in his brain. None of this was normal, hardly any of it sane at all. But yet, despite every textbook rule, every straight, structured line in his head screaming in agony, there was still this undeniable urge to follow the criminal, if only to selfishly save himself from his own life.

Duo, meanwhile, glanced down at the half-discarded notebook; the red cover flipped open to expose empty lines. He made an unpleased face and leaned over quickly.

Heero heard a shuffling noise and shifted to look with his chin still in his palm. He was a little surprised to see his notebook in his face, being offered by Duo. He turned confused eyes toward it, then looked skeptically up to his term paper subject, smiling at him.

"Oh come on, man. You don't have to be afraid to ask me stuff, though."

The Japanese man shot him a half-barbed flat look, a little insulted somewhere in his chest that he could see in those violet bohemian eyes an expression that was calling him a sulking baby. But eventually, he took his notebook. "It's not that." Heero's eyes were still narrow while he lied. "I just don't know what to write. I'm not quite fully awake."

"What, after all that excitement? Maybe you need another fifteen-hour nap, huh?" The brunet con man casually steered with the crook of his elbow and patted his pant pocket with his other arm. "I have a few more tranquilizers if you want 'em. They pack a kick."

"No thanks," he replied flatly.

"Well then, don't just mope in the corner like that! - Ask some questions! That's why I'm towing along, aren't I?" Duo quipped, violet eyes grinning at him simultaneously in the intermittent orange lights. "Think of yourself as my temporary traveling biographer."

Heero managed a glare in the fortitude of the Maxwell reservoir of smirks and feline looks, but still relented. He repositioned his notebook on his lap again and flipped open to the first page, the dreaded first blank lines, with his pen at the ready between his long fingers. After reading himself, he looked up dully to the face of the criminal, and grunted. "It doesn't change the fact I have writer's block."

"No matter," Duo grinned. "You don't have to have some fancy questionnaire. I'll talk. You just write."

Heero wondered once again how much of a good idea this really was.

"So, what do you want to know?"

Like he had promised with his mouth and constantly affable grin, Duo faithfully answered each of his questions as long as they kept safe distance from his personal history; a subject that would promptly cause lethalness to seep in to his dark violet-blue bohemian eyes. It was suspicious, but still the lithe con man was probably more dangerous than Heero could afford to offend, and paid his suspicions no more mind. Over the constant wash of rock and roll, Duo would rattle off long, often sarcasm- and humor-littered answers. They tended to be rambling, half-morbid, and overly graphic with violence details, but they were unadulterated truth, and that's all he really expected. Heero scribbled basic facts; it was a study of criminality, he listed the details of each of the intricate cons and ingenious scams that Duo boasted, always with a bitterly white grin. The date, the amount of money or the type of spoils he received, and his multiple aliases he'd donned over the years. He wrote down the places he'd been, and both the wide and narrow escapes he'd made from authorities. The clashes with other criminals he'd had, the insanely secure places he'd infiltrated, the multiple ill-tempered bar brawls and street fights he'd either initiated or joined in. It was all data and it was all to be considered essential until Heero later went back and picked out what he wanted. Editing came last. This was raw information.

But it was the motives that interested him the most. Not only for the sake of the report, but for his own wandering thirsts for information. It was morbidly fascinating, in a way, to witness the absolution of Duo's eyes when it came to honesty and then wonder how he could be such a efficient criminal. He was still, in a sense, ruthless. No sanctity of a business or cultural norm was too holy for the radical Duo Maxwell. He would strike with zero prejudice. He could go from embezzlement of funds of a senior citizen fund behind the ruse of baking bread at a retirement home, to cold, distant check fraud, to grand theft, to pickpocket, to dark-alley robberies, with equal prowess and distinction. He was also a strange criminal. Not once had he heard of a murder or violent crime against a person. His resume, as he told it, was completely comprised of either property or victimless crimes. No record of killing another human being. So why had he feared execution? It was the single most itching question on the tip of Heero Yuy's tongue, but he feared that it cut too close to home and held back.

Duo often gave the explanation that he was only in town for a few days and didn't mean any true harm. He just needed to borrow the money until he finished his earthly business and then he would take his punishment in whatever Hell he would receive upon leaving this world. It worried Heero, to listen to the dark reasoning, but he was only writing. He had no right to interrupt. He faithfully scribbled it down and quietly circled it in his black-ink pen. Duo, once he'd sufficiently covered all the bases of fact, began to rattle on about little innate things, and flashed cocky grins to no one in particular. False ones. Heero quit following along in dictation when he felt a sharp pain in his writing and stopped to nurse it. He slipped his notebook, now filled with lines of sharp, precise ink for nearly seven pages, onto the seat beside him. Duo had quiet a few exploits that even the government weren't crafty enough to detect right beneath their noses.

With one hand on the steering wheel, the bohemian shot a swift glance down at the notebook and shot an even swifter hand out towards it while the traveler carefully massaged his aching hand. The corner peeled back playfully, as Duo leaned across the seat, ignoring the fact that his vehicle was currently speeding down a populated freeway.

"So, whaddiya write about me? Are you a mudslinger or a yellow journalist, or some shifty-tongued Inquirer writer? Come on now, lemme see it," he purred as he peeled back the red cover, ignoring the loud blaring of horns that he repeatedly received.

Heero quickly replaced his hand on it, or slapped his hand down on it to be liberal, and pulled it away from the clutches of the brunet bohemian. "No," he said, feeling awfully like a toddler immaturely hogging a precious toy or lollipop, or something ridiculous like that. He wondered if the con man knew if he could

"Why? Are you afraid?" Duo smiled slyly as if he'd told a wonderful joke.

"Watch the road."

"Don't worry about it." Duo sat up, with elbows cocked in the air and all ten thieving fingers laced behind his head. The deviant man propped up his right knee in place of two perfectly capable hands and advertised his smugness across his face. "I'm an excellent driver."

Heero snorted. "I'll be sure to tell the mortician that you were."

The bohemian gave a little round of laughter and it stirred up mixed feelings for the college student. "If I die in some tragic car accident, I'll probably be taking you with me, Heero. Sorry to say, but you can kiss that morgue visitor's pass goodbye. You'll have an appointment."

"Comforting to know." The Japanese man shifted his eyes back toward the window, where his elbow had again found a resting spot and cradled his chin unobtrusively, gazing out into the landscape. Pale, dim blue and violet light was seeping through the clouds and chasing off the silk black of night. Pre-dawn light gleamed on the passing cars and buildings as they passed through a small commute city. Unseen, Duo sported a silent raspberry and grinned playfully at Heero's back, at the nape of his neck, examining the half-wild dark brown locks of hair with his eyes. The dark hair he'd been abstained to touch upon the initial seduction. It was a standard practice, a staple of an attractive pickpocket's resume. Simply distract, and slip jewelry off them while you whisked their minds so easily away with foreplay. The memories of an alcohol-stricken traveler, disheveled in his yuppie clothing and fiercely aimless blue eyes, made him smile.

Suddenly, Heero sat up, jolted in his seat, and lifted his head from his palm. His eyes flashed quickly over to Duo's face, plastered on to his own, and were rimmed by uncomfortable white. "Uh, Duo?"

"Yeah...?" the con man asked, more pleasantly than usual. "Oh, shit!"

Duo managed to catch the steering wheel and throw it back, inching the truck agonizingly back into safety before it had a chance to swing completely over into the suicide lane and slice into an Impala that blared like a startled heifer at the hand of a frightened driver. The blatant sound of the startled horn slowly faded off and the criminal caught a few gasping breaths before he settled his hissing nerves. They had straightened out onto the road safely. Although it was quiet convenient to have the senses that he did, a drawback was the fact that his adrenaline would spike higher and last longer, lingering in his veins and pounding around his brain. And even worse than that was the reason he'd been so distracted.

Heero just looked at him across the cabin. "Let me guess. Rescheduled."

Duo tossed him a flimsy thumbs-up sign.

Soon after that, the sun inched closer to the horizon, as the tunes spilling from the electronic radio continued, occasionally cranked up at the appearance of one of the con man's favorite songs. After the morning jolt, the bump with death, Duo had grown quiet. It was apparent to see that I'd startled him, and offset whatever had been separating him from his exhaustion. The amount of light increased and the sun peaked over the horizon, golden red. That meant Heero could finally discern the dark rings under Duo's eyes. Without coffee and after a fitfully eventful early morning, it was stirring up some serious doubts in the passenger.

Heero stopped scribbling in his notebook and shut it quietly in his lap. By now, the fatigue was gleaming in the bohemian's unnaturally pretty eyes and visibly ground down his driving skills.

"Duo."

Eyes half-lidded and slack-jawed, Duo responded to his name by trying to plaster on a courtesy grin by pure instinct. "Yeah, what's up? Something wrong?"

"You've been up all night, haven't you?"

"So-o?"

"You're tired."

"Well, sorry to break it to ya," Duo said, slumping against the wheel, "but no shit."

"Let me drive for a while," Heero said, offering very little argument in his tone. "You're about to fall asleep at the wheel and kill us both."

The brunet bohemian, his shoulder-length hair looking mangled and tired in the abundance of morning light, jerkily laid back against the seat. His once fluid, feline inflections and mannerisms were now closer to that of a slightly tipsy old man. "I was jus' joking 'bout the fill-in driver thing, you know. You don't hafta."

"I want to. For my own sake as well," Heero stated.

Duo laid his face sloppily on the leather of the steering wheel, managing to drag his violet-blue eyes, haunted by unrefundable hours of lost sleep, up to look at the Japanese man again. "There you go-Not trusting me again." He giggled dizzily and it drove a stake of fear through Heero's little death-fearing heart.

"You really are trying to kill me aren't you? Didn't you learn to watch the road before? Look!"

"Fine," Duo grumbled in the manner of a disgruntled teenager, propping his head on his folded arms. "I hate backseat drivers anyway, so you can have it."

True to his word, the weary con man pulled the delivery truck over into a parking lot with tall tuffs of grass growing around the deep, watery potholes and tiredly threw it into park. With a tiny huff of general irritation, the wanted criminal rubbed sleepily at his eye while he hopped out of the cabin to make room to allow Heero to shift over into the driver's seat. The notebook was stashed away and the Japanese man readjusted himself to driving as Duo ambled around front. Golden sun spilled over the dark silhouette of buildings and caught on the side of the weary bohemian face as he vaguely shook his head and opened the door again. He managed to climb in, only to collapse promptly and lie face down in the fabric of the seat.

"Why don't you go to sleep?"

"Mmmnhh," Duo groaned into the seat.

"It'll be fine," Heero insisted. "Besides, you're more of a distraction when you complain and you should just stop whining and get some sleep. You have the opportunity."

A tired, half-sour look flashed his way. "Whining? Who said I was whining?"

"I did. Now go on."

His response was an unhappy groan of defiance and the bohemian's arms laid across his head, shielding off whatever the traveler would preach at him.

"Come on," Heero scowled. "It's just a catnap."

That got him a very quick pointed look in return. "It's really not your place to tell me what to do, you know."

"Think of it as more of a suggestion," Heero said firmly.

Duo tossed his right palm in the air, while still raggedly spread on his stomach. "Well, obviously I just can't win today, so why go through the trouble? I guess I might as well conk out for twenty."

"Might as well," he repeated, making sure the idea was firmly imprinted in Duo's rather ambiguous moods.

Duo grunted in return, obviously scraping off an imitation of his travelmate in his dull, disagreeable grumble and awkwardly hooked his foot over the seat before a low, quiet voice stopped him. His head tilted to meet two dark Prussian eyes whispering at him through the disheveled dark hair.

"Duo."

"Yeah?" He scratched at the itchy traces of stubble he'd really meant to take care off before.

Heero paused, seemingly unable to pull the words from his throat, then tactfully licked his lips and summoned whatever raw, impulsive nerves he could find in the virtually impeccably straight line that was his brain. In an inconspicuous low voice, he asked, "You're sure you're alright? They didn't-"

The inquiry made the con man stop for a moment. "Yeah," he said, resisting the smile tugging at his sly face, "I'm fine. Those dumb thugs couldn't lay a finger on me."

"Hn. Good." The Japanese man shifted in his seat and turned a steeled expression toward the windshield. "But I'm not going to do your job for you. I'm not driving the rest of the way."

"Gotcha, buddy," Duo said, giving a salute. But, unseen, the impish smile still didn't dull across his face.

The bohemian turned his head and clamored less-than-gracefully over the seat and fell on the sleeping cot with an almost disconcertingly loud thump and remained motionless. He didn't bother with the burden of actually scrounging around for the ratty blanket and just shoved the pillow somewhere vaguely under his head before sleep clawed at his travelsick brain. He yawned loudly, displaying each of his teeth in the act, and itched at his hair, which still was covered in his dark baseball cap. Duo sat up suddenly and slumped his chin against the seat, picking a location dangerously close to Heero's neck, whom was startled to see the bright-eyed bohemian hovering suddenly inches from his face.

"What?" he asked.

"Directions," Duo grunted. "You need them, genius."