Author: CleverYoungThief
Rating: R
Warnings: Yaoi, Angst, Duo POV, Supernatural?, Shounen ai, gore, Language, Death, schizophrenia(?)
Pairings: Implied 1x2x1, implied 3+4, Solo+?
Archive: Gundam Wing Addiction
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Don't sue. College kids are like L2 kids; we got nothin'.
Author's Note: This fic obviously wasn't done with me yet... Oh yeah, and W.F.A. stands for "White Fang Affiliates".
"Long lost words whisper slowly to me
still can't find what keeps me here
When all this time I've been so hollow inside
I know you're still there..."
- Evanescence, "Haunted"
Dualities
Those horror movie ghosts are bullshit.
I'm curled up in the corner, my back to the wall. Trapped in the darkness.
Cornered.
Solo is sitting in the opposite corner, knees pulled up to his chest, hair concealing his face, almost a mirror image of me. Watching me. He's not saying anything, not moving, not breathing, just... watching.
The door opens slowly. Just about a foot or so. Quatre is on the other side of it. His eyes are scared. I know he can't see my face, can't see anything of me but a dark shape crouching in the shadows, bangs falling in my eyes.
"Duo?" he says. His voice is barely a whisper.
"Go away, Quatre."
Quatre's voice is a little stronger now. More insistent. "You have to eat, Duo."
I don't answer him. He doesn't know. Doesn't have a fucking clue. Eventually, he sighs and closes the door behind him. I hear it shut with a soft snicking sound.
I whisper into the darkness. "It's not real. You're not real." But I know better. So does he. He's always been there. He's been there all along. And I can't take my eyes off him now. I can almost see his face. But it's cloaked in the shadows.
Just like mine.
"Solo, you're dead." He didn't say anything, but since he died... he doesn't say a lot. He just sits there with his arms wrapped around his knees and his cloudy blue marble eyes staring at me from under his bangs. There are brownish-maroon stains on his headband now.
He never changes. He's just the same as he was the last time I saw him. The same big bloodstain on the front of his ragged white tee-shirt with the messages scrawled in permanent marker on the front: "Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Yuy" and "All The Way With The W.F.A."
He never fades, either. Never grows older. Hasn't changed a bit from the days when OZ soldiers were only starting to be called "greencoats" and it was only starting to get to the point where you couldn't say anything bad about them without getting shot.
I can even smell him sometimes, smell the Millennium Marlboros he used to smoke until the fragrance of the tobacco was just another part of him. But once I tried to touch him and he disappeared.
He's dead. I'm not crazy. I know he's dead. He's a ghost and the dead alleys he walks now are just the ones in my head.
He died once, but now he won't die at all. He had laid across Jeremiah's lap with his heart's blood puddling on the cement, laid crumpled there while Jeremiah's tears fell on his paling face.
But ever since Heero blew himself away, Solo came back. And now he won't go away. He had been gone for so long, I hadn't seen him since I came down to Earth, but now he was back.
"Why are you back, Solo?" I whisper, and I think I see him smile a little.
I start to cry a little. I can't help it, I just start bawling like a little kid. Solo's Kid. He just kind of has that effect on me. "Please say something, Solo. Is he over there with you? That dumb trigger-happy fuck? Answer me!"
My shout just echoes in the room.
Nobody's there.
But Solo's there. It's Solo. It's the same guy who took care of me when I couldn't take care of myself... the same guy who used to steal fruit for me from the corner shop, the guy who comforted me when soldiers jumped me in an alley and broke my nose, the guy who told me stories about when he was a kid and how he saw soldiers drag a storekeeper out of his shop and hang him on a lamppost with an extension cord. He said he never forgot it.
That makes the two of us, buddy.
// Solo can't come back from the dead, // the rational part of my mind said. Heero-mind. // People don't come back from the dead. The dead don't walk. And they can't talk. You're going crazy. //
But it's dark. Things change in the dark. And even if it wasn't dark, he'd still be there. He doesn't need shadows for me to see him.
The door opens again.
"Quatre, I told you to-"
I can't breathe. I can't think. All I can do is cry. And I can't look away. Solo is the furthest thing from my mind.
Heero?
"Duo," he says, and the way he says my name... I'll never forget the way he says it. He actually says it with feeling, this time. Some emotion there... pity? Or maybe something more... maybe I'm only hearing what I want to hear.
"Heero..." I whisper. My mouth moves, but nothing comes out.
He doesn't turn the light on as he throws the door open and strides across the room. I press myself further into the corner, covering my face.
"No, you're dead. You're dead!"
He stops in the middle of the room. Just stops. Watching me like Solo.
"No!!"
I scramble to my feet. Throw myself at him, knowing if he isn't real that I'm going to go flying to the floor. Probably break my jaw in the process. But I don't care.
I meet a solid wall of hard muscle and skin the texture of flawed silk. He's there. He's real. He's not a ghost. Ghosts don't breathe, they're not hot to the touch, don't hitch their breath in when you throw your arms around them. There are bandages on him. Ghosts don't bleed.
I throw my arms around his neck, cover his neck and cheeks and lips with fierce kisses, and he tenses under my touch, like when you try to pet a wild animal. His hands jerk back and he's touching my chest, touching my chest over my shirt, but I needed to feel his skin against mine. I needed it to be warm and breathing and alive.
At first he draws back, but then his arms are around me, his hands against my shoulderblades, pulling me against him. He's breathing fast.
I pull him over to the bed, pull him down onto it with me. The door is still open a crack, but I don't care. I let my hands run all over him, up beneath his tank top, feeling his muscles quiver under my hands. He's touching my arms, cradling my hands, feeling the bandages where I cut myself on the glass.
"I love you, Heero. I love you, I love you..." I can't keep my hands off him. My words are muffled against his skin, my lips brushing over him, as if every place I touch him, I can protect him somehow. I press my ear to his chest, just listening to his heartbeat. Alive. He's alive.
And I don't even care if he loves me back.
He lays there, letting me lie over him. He doesn't push me off. He doesn't call me an idiot. He just holds me. And lets me hold him. I'm shaking, all over, and it feels like I can't breathe. I almost burst into tears again, I'm so close, a lump in my throat so tight I can't breathe, but I don't have to anymore.
Because he's here.
I open my eyes, my ear still pressed to his heart, and look into the shadows of the corner.
Solo's gone.
OWARI
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