Note: Before you freak out and send me letters and stuff (i.e. That doesn't make sense, they're only nineteen or twenty!, I thought this was supposed to be a 1x2x1, yada yada yada... ), be assured that I have not lost my sense of time, and everything in this chapter will eventually make sense.
And now I'm all alone again
Nowhere to turn, no one to go to
Without a home, without a friend,
Without a face to say hello to.
And now the night is near
Now I can make believe he's here.And I know it's only in my mind
That I'm talking to myself and not to him
And although I know that he is blind
Still I say, there's a way for us
--- Les Misérables
Requiem for the Sinners Part 11
The Space Between Stars
Heero had always had the nightmares.
They were even worse before and after missions. He writhed, tangled in dreams and sweat-dampened bedsheets, breathing in soft openmouthed gasps, eyes trembling beneath his eyelids.
He slept like that now, the trigger finger on his right hand twitching spastically as he killed the enemies in his mind, and Duo remembered that the nightmares were what had drawn him to Heero in the first place. During the first war, he had often sat awake for hours, just watching Heero toss and turn in his sleep.
Heero was dreaming again, trapped in a web of nightmares, but this time, the nightmares followed him out of sleep. Now that the waltz had begun again, it would be years before anyone but the dead would see the end of war.
Duo reached forward and brushed his fingertips across Heero's sweaty cheek beneath his eye, tracing a deep bruise there where Noventa had hit him. He had gone from their greatest hero to a scapegoat villain in less than a week, and Duo hated them fervently for that, if for nothing else.
"They betrayed you, Heero. Them. I never did," he whispered, running his thumb softly over Heero's split bottom lip.
The former Wing pilot scowled in his sleep, brow furrowing, and he turned his face away. Whatever dreams came to him, they were impervious to Duo's gentle touch. Duo's heart constricted painfully as he recalled Heero's last words before falling into unconsciousness.
::Don't call me buddy.::
Duo withdrew his hand, feeling stinging tears prick his eyes as he saw the way Heero visibly relaxed at the removal of his hand. Even in his sleep, Heero didn't trust his former best friend, partner, and lover. Duo couldn't stop thinking about the way Heero had recoiled away from his hand, even after Duo had come to rescue him. The tone of Heero's voice when he spoke for the first time since the coup d'état.
::Come to finish me off?::
And the look in Heero's eyes as Duo shot him. That was the worst.
People said Heero was cold and unfeeling, but Duo knew better. The people that said those things didn't know him at all. There had been such deep grief and betrayal in Heero's eyes that fateful night, Duo thought his heart might break from it. Maybe it still had, anyway.
They didn't know him at all.
They had never heard him laugh or make a joke. They never watched him sleep, or felt his breath on their faces as he dreamed. No one else had ever seen him collapse in the shower after a battle, legs drawn up to his chest, shoulders shaking, face buried against his knees. They could never see him curled up there while hot water sluiced across his body and swirled down the drain, tinged pink with his blood and the blood of his enemies.
Duo had.
He was the only one who knew that during the first war, if he woke from a nightmare, Heero would crawl wordlessly out of his own bed and into Duo's, falling asleep again with his face pressed against Duo's shoulderblade, buried in Duo's hair.
He was the only one who had ever seen Heero's blue eyes darkened to the color of midnight by passion, the arch of the soldier's neck as he succumbed to it.
Only Duo knew these things.
And now Heero couldn't even look at him.
// Dammit, Heero... why couldn't you just die for once? //
Things would have been so much easier, if only Heero were dead.
But he wasn't.
Duo turned back to the shuttle window, watching space pass them like a blanket of darkness, stars scattered across it like so many indifferent, distant diamonds on a jeweler's felt.
The great revolutions had begun. It only took one act of death and destruction, one desperate bloody cry of revolt, to blow the powderkeg of the colonies sky-high. Duo was responsible. He admitted to that responsibility.
But he'd do it again, in a heartbeat.
It was only hours after the fall of the doves that L2's citizens had reacted with equal violence. Its Preventers-many of whom came from the colony itself-were killed, stoned, knifed, shot, beaten... dragged bleeding into the streets. It was not even twenty-four hours before every Preventer on L2 was either dead, held captive by civilians, or had fled in a panic.
The gulf between the colonies and Earth could never again be bridged. The distance of cold, unmerciful space was too wide a void to span. Maybe it always had been.
Duo covered his face wearily with one hand.
// Why did I save him? //
Heero would have provided the necessary distraction he needed for the World Council. Heero was his catalyst for L1. But he had gone down and risked his own life to save him, anyway. Why? He didn't know. He couldn't afford the risk. He was the leader of thousands of soldiers now. They all looked to him, cheered him on. It would have decimated the cause if he fell now, especially over something so personal as a friend he had tried only days before to murder in cold blood.
~~You know damned well why you saved him,~~ Solo answered n his mind, voice mildly disdainful. ~~Not willing to let a fuck-buddy rot in jail for something you did, were you?~~
"Shut up," Duo muttered softly under his breath, unaware he had spoken out-loud. The sound of his voice in the silence of the shuttle was deafening.
~~You don't actually think you can get him to believe in you again, do you?~~ Solo continued on, unperturbed. ~~You used him to get to Relena. And he fucking knows it. You tried to kill him, really tried, and he knows that, too.~~
Duo closed his eyes. "Shut up..."
Heero moaned softly in his sleep at the sound of Duo's voice.
Duo swallowed hard and forced a smile across his face. He knew he could walk among his men with that sunny grin on his face-an expression so unwittingly charming and cheerful it was infectious-and no one, not a single one of them, would think he was anything but confident and fiercely proud of his men and his colony.
But Heero would know.
Heero had always known.
Heero could see through the jester's mask as easily as Quatre ever could. Quatre could feel Shinigami, maybe... but Heero was the only one who could see it. The only one who understood. Because as different as they were, Heero and Duo were still the same.
Duo leaned over and brushed the bangs back from Heero's face, pressing a soft kiss to Heero's forehead. Heero was still dressed in nothing but hospital flannels and bandages. His necklace, the saint's medallion, glimmered faintly in the light of the console.
Duo palmed it briefly, feeling its familiar weight a moment before letting it fall back against Heero's bruised chest.
He gently ran his hand over Heero's arm.
Heero was so cold...
Twisting in the cramped confines of the cockpit, wincing as the shoulder wound where Wufei shot him wrenched with the effort, Duo pulled his jacket off, draping it across Heero's upper body.
Duo stopped breathing for a few seconds when Heero's eyes fluttered open to meet his. Hazy cobalt regarded him in bewilderment.
"... Duo?" he whispered, exhausted.
Duo swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly dry. "Yeah, buddy?"
Heero's eyes closed again. His words were slurred, delirious. "You're... you're not Duo... Duo's dead..."
Duo couldn't do anything but stare at Heero wordlessly as he slipped back into unconsciousness.
Silently, he looked away.
// Maybe... maybe Duo is dead... but Shinigami never dies... //
Sighing softly, he pressed the relay and switched frequencies.
"L20397, this is Shinigami in Watcher. I repeat, this is Shinigami in Watcher, do you read?"
~~"Roger that. Pardon my insubordination, General, but where in the flying blue hell have you been? You just went off like that, got everybody worried about ya. We've been tearin' our hair out. Over."~~
Duo smiled faintly at the sound of that irritated, anxious voice. "I had something to take care of down on Earth. Don't worry so damned much, Harp. I'm not made of glass. How did your mission go?"
~~"10-4. Mission complete. We captured the Perfidy and the Valkyrie with no casualties. Think you'll be interested to know who the commander of the Perfidy was, though."~~
"Who?"
~~"None other than Commander Wufei Chang. Old war buddy of yours, if I recall correctly, right-o, General?"~~
Duo gaped silently at the console for a few moments. Heero shifted restlessly under his coat, muttering softly.
~~"Uh, you still there, General?"~~
"Roger that, Harper. What's his condition?"
~~"... extremely pissed off, sir."~~
Duo laughed under his breath. "No doubt." His voice softened. "How is Gabriel? He doin' okay? Give you any trouble while I was gone?"
~~"He's fine. Getting ready to take a nap. You want to talk to him?"~~
Duo smiled gently. Genuinely. "Yeah. Put him on, would you?"
~~"Roger that."~~
Duo waited. There was a shuffling sound and a brief lapse of buzzing static as Harper handed over the comlink.
A small voice came on over the radio.
~~"Hi Daddy."~~
TBC...
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