It's A Hard Knock Life Part 9
Back to the Den of Thieves
Duo stalked through the darkening streets, making his way slowly back to Haven.
He stared at his feet as he walked, knowing his way back home instinctively, the same way he knew that no matter how deeply asleep the Wing pilot had looked, Heero had been listening to him, letting him sneak out. He also knew, instinctively, that he looked the part of the victim walking like this, perfect for a passing thug; hair down and tangled, exhausted from lack of sleep, head lowered and not paying attention to the things around him.
At this point, Duo didn't care if he got mugged or not. Heero had practically promised to kill him if he didn't leave. Where else did he have to go? Nowhere but home. Back to the whores and the pickpockets and muggers.
He found Haven and walked around to the side, trying to whistle into the window through his tears. No good. It was hard to whistle when you were about to cry, and no one was home, anyway. It was coming on dusk. Everyone would have left to begin their rounds for the night.
Duo pounded on the wall until what little glass was left rattled in the pane of the windowsill. "Dammit! Goddammit!"
He shrieked wordlessly in frustration and anger and pain, pounding his fists on the brick until his hands were bleeding. He kicked at it, beating at the walls. When he didn't have the strength for it anymore, he leaned his back against the wall and slid down, burying his face in his hands, and cried.
Suddenly, the broken window opened, and Solo stuck his head out. The boy's hair was spiked with gel, and his bright blue eyes were lined with kohl. He had been getting ready to leave for the night. "Huh? Duo? Stay there, buddy, I'm coming. Are you hurt?! Just, don't move!"
Duo closed his eyes, feeling fresh tears course down his cheeks. // Solo... //
Solo was suddenly beside him, kneeling next to him, touching his shoulder tentatively. "Duo? Duo, what happened? Talk to me, buddy. You're not hurt, are you?" He felt Duo's shoulders and moved down to his sides and chest, checking for bleeding and wounds and broken bones, a normal frisk for an orphan home from a bad rumble. Solo's voice became rough, a sound that didn't fit his bright, kohl-darkened eyes and easygoing face. "Did he hit you?"
Duo turned away in embarrassment, wiping the tears from his face with the back of his hands viciously, vengefully. "He didn't hit me. It was worse than that."
"Then what happened to you, Duo? I've never seen you cry."
"Dammit, I am not crying!" The harder Duo tried not to cry, the harder his sobs became. It was as if years of suppressed tears were bursting from him all in one sitting.
Solo touched Duo's cheeks, wiping the tears away that were still brimming in the Deathscythe pilot's eyes and making silver tracks down his face. "It's okay, Duo. I won't tell anybody you cried. Just tell me what's wrong and I'll try to make it right for you."
He gave Duo a fierce hug. "You know I wouldn't let anything bad happen to you, right? So what did he do to you if he didn't hit you?"
"He kissed me."
"It was that bad?" Solo asked softly, and the look on the blonde orphan's face was so honestly puzzled that Duo laughed, a grating, furious sound. He laughed, and then his laughter turned to tears again.
Solo sat down on the pavement beside Duo and pulled the pilot over to him to lay across his lap. Duo slumped on the cracked, jagged concrete with his head against Solo's chest, crying in harsh, silent sobs. Solo whispered to him, brushing bangs back from his face gently.
"It's okay, buddy... it's okay..." Duo could hear the other boy's heartbeat against his ear, hard and strong. Solo rocked him, burying his face in Duo's hair, placing soft kisses on the top of his head, stroking the pilot's back gently.
After a minute or so, Duo's sobs quieted into irregular hiccuping breaths. His eyes were closed shut, but he listened to the sounds of the distant traffic and Solo's breathing, his heartbeat. Solo was still stroking his head like a cat, brushing back the bangs that were sticking to Duo's tear- streaked face.
"Better?"
Duo sniffled, lying cradled in Solo's arms.
"... Yeah."
"Can you stand up?"
"Yeah."
"Good, because if we don't get back into Haven, someone is going to come along and kick our asses for us. I've spent too long makin' myself up to get my ass kicked all over the alley."
Solo gently shifted Duo off his lap and stood, reaching down to take Duo's hand and pull him to his feet. Duo scrubbed the last of the tears from his face, looking at the asphalt, covered with old wrappers and broken glass. "Look up at me, Duo."
Duo looked up. Solo was looking at him with a soft half-smile. "Don't be so damned stiff. It's cool. Let's go inside, and you can tell me what the hell that was all about."
~*~
Solo silently went about making coffee in a percolator that looked ancient. Duo sat at the table, holding his braid and playing with the end of it in an unseeing, unconscious gesture that showed how much of a nervous habit it was.
The smell of the coffee was familiar, and it allowed Duo to do what he so desperately wanted to do, and that was to pretend that life would, eventually, return to normal. The smell of it woke him up a little, and he began to talk.
"Well, Heero kissed me, and that wasn't too bad, I mean, he's pretty good at it, but I was so confused, you know, and then he told me about the Mission-"
That last part caught Solo's attention. Solo turned around and looked at Duo, narrowing his eyes slightly. "... Mission?"
Duo looked up, smiling sheepishly. "I guess I kinda forgot to mention that I'm a soldier now, huh? Mobile suit pilot."
"Yeah, I guess you kinda did." Solo didn't smile back. His gaze was wary and guarded now, like a cornered animal. "There's only two kinds of soldiers on L2, Duo. Ozzy greencoats go around trying to beat the hell out of us, and rebel soldiers are the ones who piss the Ozzies off and cause them to try and beat the hell out of us. Which are you, pally?"
Duo gazed back at him steadily, the smile fading from his face. "Solo... you know I'd never, ever be an OZ soldier. Ever. How could I, after what they've done?"
Solo was silent for a few moments, and turned back around to pour coffee into two slightly cracked mugs.
"You know I never lie, Solo. But I am a soldier."
Solo remained quiet, his back turned to Duo.
Duo looked at him, an expression of helplessness on his face. "You aren't gonna rant and rave at me and tell me what an evil bastard I am for giving up pacifism, Solo?"
When Solo turned back, his expression was neutral and accepting. He shrugged nonchalantly. "What's the point? Ranting and raving doesn't change things. That's Foxy's style, not mine."
There was another period of silence as Solo handed Duo his coffee, completely black. Duo would have preferred it with sugar or cream in it, but he knew it couldn't be afforded around here, and he didn't complain. They sipped at the hot drinks quietly for a minute. The silence between the two normally boisterous, loud-mouthed boys was deafening.
"So?"
"Honest to God, cross my heart, Duo, I don't know what the hell to say. Why?"
Duo smiled grimly, holding his mug in both hands. "Well, wish I could tell you I got off of L2 and found myself a profitable job on another colony, living in ignorant bliss... but it's not quite that cute of a story. Runnin' from Ozzies and stowed away on the wrong ship down at the Spaceport. They didn't kill me. They made me what I was."
Short, sweet, and to the point. Skipping most of the painful parts. Like the nights he had sat up awake shivering in cold sweat, reliving the massacre at the Church, unable to cry and too afraid to sleep, for fear of what dreams would come.
"So you're a rebel then, huh?" An idea flashed over Solo's face, and his blue eyes widened. "You're one of them... you're 02!?"
Duo nodded.
"Holy shit..." Solo kissed his fingertips and crossed himself. "There's a fuckin' Gundam pilot sittin' at my kitchen table."
Duo smiled a little. "Guess so."
Solo just shook his head, smiling. "Man... damn... I knew 02 was from L2, and I knew it was a guy 'bout your age, but I thought you were dead... I never thought it would be you. And the other guy, that Hero?"
"Heero you mean? Yeah, he's 01."
"The Perfect Soldier..."
"Yeah. I told him I wasn't going to take the next Mission, because I just got home and want to stay for awhile. He told me I have three days to change my mind and live or refuse the Mission and get killed for treason. Which doesn't leave me with a lot of options... you know?"
Duo sighed softly, pushing his coffee away after the first sip and crossing his arms on the table, laying his head across them. "I don't think I want to be a soldier anymore, bud."
Solo looked over into the corner of the dingy kitchen. "Well, guess you don't have to be, anymore. You said you don't want to fight, so you're not gonna fight. And that guy 01 ain't gonna hurt you, either. Us gutter kids may not look so tough, but in numbers we're pretty damned fierce... huh?"
Duo was asleep on the table, face slack with exhaustion.
Solo watched him sleep for a couple of minutes, just memorizing the lines of his face, then got up and picked the pilot up, carrying Duo to his room. The bed was still unmade from where Solo had gotten out of it an hour before, and still warm. Solo put Duo in it, pulling the covers up to his shoulders before kissing the pilot softly.
"Sleep good, buddy. Don't dream."
~*~
Solo walked back into the kitchen and grabbed his stolen leather jacket, stopping to take a hit of a breed of L2 drug known as Bottomside Push, or simply as push. Part mescaline, part PCP, part cocaine. Completely addictive, cheap enough for the gutter rats, and the ultimate escape from a life too cruel to be real.
He popped the pill in his mouth, took a handful of water from the rusty faucet to wash it down, then sat at one of the old metal folding chairs that stood around the card table that served as the kitchen table to wait for the drug to take effect.
The acid didn't make him trip. His stress level was so high it worked as a kind of tranquilizer to him. It make the neon lights prettier, smoothed over the ugly faces of his "clients". When the street lights hit his face when he was on the push, he felt almost as if the light of God was shining down on him. When he wasn't on it...he thought that God was dead.
He thought about Duo. A soldier. A goddamned, order-taking, gun-smoking soldier. At first, when Solo had heard, he had thought he would hate Duo. Then that he would be unable to face him anymore.
A pacifist at heart, part of Solo would always be with the war, would not go by a day without thinking of the soldiers and what they had done to the only family he had ever had. But Duo had come back, and after what they had shared, the war seemed in a bizarre way like a blessing. Because it had brought his friend back to him. Back from the dead.
When he felt ready, he left the warehouse through the back way, skulking through the alleys until he reached the Strip. The drug was thrumming through his system now; he could feel the steady pounding of his own heartbeat like a drum. He settled in with another group of young prostitutes, leaning up against the street light and shooting provocative come-hither looks at the passers by.
He smirked at one of the boys standing near him. "How's tricks?" he said casually, pulling out a cigarette and lighting a match with a practiced flick of his thumb, holding it to the end as he inhaled.
"Terrible now that you're here. How is anyone else going to make any business?"
Solo laughed. "I'm sure I'll be occupied enough for you other fellows to get a piece of profitable ass. Don't worry. I cater to a select group."
A scruffy man approached Solo, leering. A dirty mech-tech from the Spaceport just off his shift, Solo could tell from the way the man held himself, walking with a swinging, sauntering power. These men were below him...but there was money to be made. He was disgusted with both them and himself.
The man approached him. "You're the Angel, right? You for sale?"
Solo didn't look directly at the man, just cut his eyes at him, smiling a little. "You interested?"
"Maybe. What's the asking price?"
"Depends on what you want. You want to rough me up some, you're gonna have to pay extra. And if you mess up my face, I'll have some big guys give your knees and elbows a couple of new bends."
"None of that shit. Just the basics."
Solo told him the going price. Half in advance, half afterwards.
"Jesus, kid, that's a little steep, eh?"
Solo smirked. "Supply and demand, man. You're not gonna get what I can give you anywhere else. Try if you want. But I can guarantee it."
"You got a deal."
"You got a room?"
"Yeah."
"... Then let's go, handsome. I've got rounds to make."
~*~
When he was finished with his last trick for the night, he observed the man, who had fallen asleep almost immediately. Solo smoked a cigarette, fingered the rosary in his pocket, and watched the john sleep, naked and sprawled like someone taken down halfway through a crucifixion.
// Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed are thee among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our deaths... //
He looked at his mark with disgusted scrutiny as he took the man's wallet, sticking it in his jacket pocket. Rough shoulders, dirty nails, callused hands, brittle hair, faded tattoos. Stupid men, arrogant, pretentious men. He hated all of them. And hated himself for hating them.
He walked out of the hotel, heading back to Haven. He had made a pretty killing. Enough to quit early. He loved nights like that.
Back to Haven. Back to shelter. Back to a bed warmed by Duo Maxwell. Not too bad of a life, for a gutter rat.
He remembered a snatch of an old Earth poem as he stalked through the night, making his way home and smiled. // I have been one acquainted with the night, I have walked out in rain, and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed the watchman on his beat, and dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain... //
Yeah. He could dig it.
TBC...
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