"Gloomy darkness is wrapping the world,
What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield.
--- Milton, Paradise Lost
Death is nothing to us, since when we are,
death has not come, and when death does come,
we are not.
--- Epicurus
Only Butterflies Part 6
Abandon
"I'm done."
Wufei looked to the corridor where he heard Duo come into the kitchen, feeling his heart sink at the words, but not really surprised by them. He had seen it in Duo's face the night before, heard it in the hard sobs that had come straight from the American's heart. He was finished. Maybe not with the war entirely, but at least with them.
They were all drinking coffee at the small card table that served as the kitchen's table, even though Wufei couldn't remember ever wanting to be less awake in his life. Quatre looked up at Duo at the sound of his voice, shocked.
Trowa scowled. "What do you mean, you're done? Duo..."
"You heard me." Duo's voice was flat, as smooth as blown glass, but Wufei could hear the fire beneath it. He didn't think he'd ever seen the Deathscythe pilot so furious. "I said I'm done. Finished. Adios, amigo. It's been real." He walked across the room and grabbed his bag, which was sitting by the door. He slung it over his shoulder like a purse.
"But where will you go?" Quatre asked, looking to Trowa and Wufei frantically. /Say something, won't you?/ his eyes said, pleading. /Say something to make him sit down. Say something to make him stay. Don't let it end this way./
Duo's eyes, dead indifferent amethysts, flickered over Quatre's face without seeing him at all. His face was composed, but pale. Wufei was reminded of the eye of a storm. But one wrong step would send them all flying into the highwind.
"Going back to space." He closed his eyes a moment, then continued, his voice barely more than a whisper. "He broke the rules, you know? I kill people. That's what Death does. I can handle that, you see? But people who are mine don't just die. Not without my say-so. And they sure as hell don't die for me."
"What are you talking about, Duo?" Wufei asked, scowling. He remembered Duo saying something to that effect the night before, half-drugged with grief. His eyes widened slightly when Duo took a step forward. So much contained, controlled violence, it was like a dance and a rumble all mixed into one.
Duo laughed, and the low rolling sound sent a rill of ice water down the Chinese pilot's spine. "Don't you get it, Wuffers? He died for me."
He glared at them, shoulders shaking almost imperceptibly, hands clenched at his sides, but Wufei could see his eyes glittering under the overhead light. "He saved my ass. He's the one who should be standing here right now, talking about how much of a fucking moron I was, not watching my left quandrant like I should have. You see?!"
Wufei didn't know what to say. And even if he had, there was a hot, hard lump in his throat, making it too hard to swallow, much less to speak. He glanced over at the others. Quatre looked on the verge of standing up to touch Duo, to help their friend, but fear held him back. Trowa was watching Duo with the fascination of a mouse watching a rattlesnake.
"Duo, calm down."
"He asked, Trowa. Now I'm going to say. I'll say, because I don't want to be branded a coward. I just want to leave." Duo's voice broke a little, but he ground it out. "My best friend is dead. I just want to go home."
"No one's calling you a coward, Duo," Quatre said softly, standing up. He tried to reach forward, but Duo moved away from him, recoiling. He closed his eyes, shaking his head in violent negation.
"I am," Trowa said, his voice firm. Quatre and Wufei looked at him disbelievingly.
"Barton," Wufei said, angrily, but Trowa pretended not to hear him. He only had eyes for Duo. "I'm calling you a coward."
Duo gazed at him, his eyes hard and narrowed. "Then fuck you, Barton, I don't take orders from you, and I don't need your permission to leave. Hell, I'm not even a real pilot. I stole my suit. So give your patriotic liberty-for-all speech to some other sucker."
"And if you walk out that door, you'll be that much more a coward. Hiding and running and lying and stealing for the rest of your life," Trowa replied softly.
"Then I'm a killer, and a coward," Duo whispered, turning his back on them. He turned the doorknob. "...At least I don't lie about it."
~~Those that see a Gundam shall not live to tell about it.~~
As Duo started to open the door, Trowa stood. Before Wufei or Quatre could even see it, he had his pistol drawn and cocked. His sight on the back of Duo's head. His hand didn't tremble in the slightest.
"Trowa " Quatre cried out, starting to pull his own gun, but Wufei stilled him with a glance and a gesture. /Down, Winner,/ the look in those sloe black eyes said. /This is a matter that doesn't concern you./
Duo stopped moving, like a deer caught in incoming headlights. He had heard the gun, but he didn't turn around. Didn't rise to meet the challenge; his hand stayed far from the butt of his own pistol. The four of them stood like that for almost a minute, frozen statues of soldiers, before Duo shattered the silence.
He laughed softly, but the sound still seemed loud. "You think you can do it, Trowa, then fire away. Be the coward or the killer. It doesn't matter a fuck difference to me. But Heero came to kill me and couldn't do it. And you aren't half the soldier he was. If you think you can succeed where he failed, knock yourself out."
Quatre could hear the venom in the words, knowing they were meant only to hurt. They were the closest he could come to violence without a gun himself.
/He wants Trowa to kill him. Allah help us./
And Trowa saw it, too, that violence, that snapping, snarling fury. He had experience with wild animals. He wouldn't fall for the bait.
"I'm not kidding, Duo. I'll kill you."
Duo's back was still turned to them, but Quatre could feel the rage in him like a forest fire. He wasn't entirely sure if Trowa didn't have a gun that Duo wouldn't kill him where he stood.
"I'm not kidding either. Kill me, or let me go."
Wufei stood up and moved forward. "Duo, look at me."
Slowly, Duo turned his head, cutting his dark gaze at the Chinese pilot.
Wufei looked into his eyes. "You can't change what happened," he whispered. "Yuy would not want you to run and hide. Not this time. And no matter where you go, no matter what you do, he'll still be gone. We've buried him, and it's over."
Duo's shoulders slumped suddenly, and Wufei thought he might have gotten through. But when he heard the steeled resolve of Duo's reply, he knew that there was nothing he could do to change the American's mind. Either Duo would walk out and they would never see him again, or he would end his life in a broken, bleeding heap in the doorway, shot down by his own comrade with his tools scattered across the hardwood floor.
"It's not over. I may not...I may not be able to change what happened, but I can change what will happen," he replied, and before Wufei could ask him what he meant, he continued. "You already sent your mission report in, didn't you? You and Heero are so alike. You even sent it to J, to notify him of a man down. What did he say back?"
There were many things that Wufei had expected Duo to say, but this was not one of them. He was startled into the truth, heat rising in his cheeks. Whether it was shame or embarrassment or anger or both, he couldn't tell. Anger at whom...he couldn't tell that, either.
"...Acceptable," he whispered.
"Expendable is more fucking like it," Duo said, the quiet tone of his voice belying the hatred there. "Well, you guys have fun turning these forests into toothpicks, picking off those gun-baby maltrained Ozzie recruit nitwits that don't know their assholes from their elbows. And while you're out here busting your collective asses, J will be up there somewhere, finding another little lifeless kid to turn into one of his stone-cold killers. Just another kid with another number, another code name. Someone to replace Heero."
He laughed, a halfway hysterical sound, and when he spoke again, the mocking growl of his voice was so like that of J's it made Wufei's blood run cold. "Want to become a Gundam pilot? That's all it'll take, Wufei. And somebody else is going to get dragged into this hell because I made a mistake. Well fuck that."
"What are you going to do?" Quatre said. His voice was trying to be calm and failing miserably. "Duo, you aren't thinking of-"
"You just let me worry about that, Quat," Duo quipped lightly, and if it wasn't for the fact that Duo Maxwell looked like a man about to jump off a cliff without even looking back, Quatre would have mistaken the tone of his voice for humor.
His voiced darkened, a sunset fading into twilight. "I'm sick of this bullshit, buddy. I really am. So tell me what you want carve on your headstone, guys, I'll make sure it gets put on there, if I don't buy the farm first. What do you want? Died For Democracy And Democracy Didn't Give A Shit? One More Broken Toy Soldier?" Duo sighed, and Quatre could sense a terrible exhaustion in it. "... I can't do this anymore."
"And I can't let you do what you're planning, Duo. I'm sorry. But we have to protect Mission." Trowa's voice was weary, but immovable.
"Then kill me. But either way, I'm leaving this place." Duo opened the door and started to leave. Trowa's finger squeezed down on the trigger, but he felt a warm hand touch his wrist, pushing it downwards, firmly but gently. Quatre was looking at him, a plea in his eyes.
/Don't. Please./
"Let him go," Wufei said, finally, and Trowa did lower the gun, finally. It was trembling in his hand now. He swallowed hard as he pointed it at the floor, and it hit the hardwood with a clattering sound. That sound came in echo as the screen door to the cabin slammed shut.
Duo was gone.
Trowa turned to Wufei, uncertain. He looked back and forth from Wufei to Quatre. First they were five, then four. Now only three. It seemed like a dream to him, a nightmare that he couldn't wake up from, no matter how hard he tried. His comrades were falling into shadow all around him, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
"Why did you do that? How could you both do that, knowing what he's going to do?"
Wufei looked out past the screen door. He could barely make out the form of the walking Deathscythe pilot, as he melted into the burned forest almost as if he had never been there at all.
"You don't understand, Barton. You really would have had to kill him, you can't control him. There was no way you could talk him down," Wufei murmured, his dark eyes never leaving the rattling screen door, the fading shadow of their ally in retreat.
"... Death walks where it wants."
TBC...
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