Notes: Expect anything. Nothing is what it seems. So don't assume what's happened. Just wait and find out. *heh* This fic is as twisty as a snake on a griddle.
"War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun."
--- Mao Zedong
"Liberty! Liberty! Oh how many crimes are committed in thy name!"
--- Jeanne-Marie Roland
"How can you see into my eyes, like open doors? Leading you down into my core, where I've become so numb..."
--- Evanescence
Requiem for the Sinners Part 6
The Haunting of Fallen Angels
Two shots. Duo killed Heero, but there were two more shots from over his shoulder, close enough to deafen him. The girl's scream was cut off abruptly. She slumped against Heero, face going slack, blood spreading across the front of her silk dress in crimson blossoms like a magician's trick, staining her long gloves.
He whirled around and grabbed Harper by the collar, jerking him upwards, choking him, violet eyes feral. He shook the gray-eyed young man back and forth like a rag doll. His own voice sounded muffled in his ears from the gunshots. "Why in the hell did you do that? "
"You said to get rid of everybody, Duo! That's what you told us !! Those were your orders!"
"Just the councillors, you fucking idiot, not the kid! I didn't know there was going to be any kids...why the hell was she here? Dammit, Harper, don't you have any sense? Jesus!" He threw the taller man aside in disgust.
There was two more shots. Duo's eyes widened.
"Look out! Get down!!" Duo stepped in front of Harper, blocking him. He felt a poker of hot fire pierce his shoulder, forcing him to drop the gun that had ended the life of his partner. Another bullet singed his hair and clipped his ear, grazing a bloody furrow across his cheek.
Duo and Harper dived for cover behind the column, Duo grimacing in pain, looking around it. A familiar figure stood with his gun pointed at them, black eyes blazing.
"Maxwell, you dishonorable cur! What have you done?! What have you done!?!"
"Duo, you're shot..." Harper whispered.
The former Deathscythe pilot grimaced. "No shit, Sherlock."
Harper narrowed his eyes and raised his gun. "I'll get him."
Duo remembered the look in Heero's eyes as he pulled the trigger. He remembered the sound of Quatre's body hitting the marble floor.
Wufei...
No. He couldn't do it again. He couldn't. He couldn't see another one of his old friends fall.
He grabbed his guard's sleeve, snarling with the effort raising his arm took against the searing pain. "No. Enough. We've done what we came to do. The Preventers can't do anything now. Just fall back."
"But Duo-"
"That's a fucking order!"
~*~
Duo scrubbed his hands furiously at the sink. The dried, tacky blood had vanished from his hands almost half an hour before, but he still washed them. They were starting to look red and raw. He bowed over the sink, his forehead almost touching the mirror.
"Duo, you gotta let me look at that wound. It's gonna get infected if you just leave it open. And the bullet's still in it. And your face is gonna need stitches."
Duo slowly lifted his head and stared at himself in the mirror. He looked the same as he always did; the mark of what he had done left no trace on his countenance, besides the deep gash across his cheekbone. Bone shone sickly white through the wound. It was deep. He knew he would carry the scar of Wufei's retribution all his life.
He couldn't tell any difference; he could have just as easily come from a battle against OZ. It could have just as easily been Heero, asking him to come over so the Japanese pilot could attend his wounds, the air between them heavy with the smell of adrenaline, pain, fear, sweat and desire, heavy with unspoken words.
But it wasn't Heero. Because Heero was dead. Dead.
And Duo had killed him.
Duo felt a nearly silent, keening cry well up from the bottom of his throat and he swallowed it back harshly. His dilated eyes were too black in his pale face, like the eye-sockets of a skull. Sweat was beaded finely across his forehead, stinging his cheek where it collected and trickled down to mix with his blood.
Shinigami slid through his eyes like death in dark waters.
"General."
Duo turned back towards Harper. His expression had gone weary and resigned. A tear traced itself down the side of his face, collecting in the gash, mixing with the blood that sheeted down Duo's face. Duo reached up unthinkingly to wipe it away, only to get blood on his hands again.
He always had blood on his hands.
"Don't call me that, Isaac," he murmured softly, wiping the red blood indifferently into the black of his uniform. That always had been a good thing about black. It was good at hiding blood.
"But that's what all of L2 is calling you, Duo. The Ghost General. They say that you're Treize, come back from the dead to deliver us."
Duo looked up sharply, and Harper's gray eyes, usually cold, freezing away and hiding his emotions, shone too brightly in the half-light. "Please... please let me. Let me see your shoulder."
"All right," Duo said listlessly. He started to reach back and pull his jacket off, but the movement turned the low burning of his shoulder into an inferno. He groaned, trying to bite it back at the last second but not quite making it.
"Duo..." Harper moved behind him and gently shrugged the jacket off him, leaving Duo in his dress shirt. It was plastered to his back with blood. Duo tried to undo the buttons, but his hands were shaking too badly.
Harper moved around to the front and carefully pushed Duo's hands away, doing it himself before pulling the dress shirt off, wincing at the sound it made when it was pulled from Duo's back.
"You don't have to do this," Duo said flatly. "I don't want you to."
Harper closed his eyes. "You saved my life, Duo. I'm your guard and you took a bullet for me. Why? Why did you do that?"
"Because you'd do the same for me."
Harper looked at him with incredulity. "You're the leader of L2. It's my job to take a bullet for you. You're not supposed to take one for me."
Duo grinned a little, making the wound in his cheek gape slightly. "I hope that's not the only reason you'd take a bullet for me, or I'm gonna have to find new help."
Harper smiled back tentatively, not sure if Duo was joking or not. He could never tell if Duo was joking. He said the strangest things sometimes, with a grin on his face. But Duo didn't seem to be in a joking mood.
"Lean over this chair."
"Yes, Mother." Harper was glad to hear some of Duo's old sarcasm coming back into his voice. The look in the general's eyes a few moments before had scared him a little. But then again, Duo always scared him a little.
Duo did as he was told, crossing his wrists and lying over the seat of the chair. He felt the penetration as Harper's pliers were plunged into the wound.
"Motherfucker," he hissed between clenched teeth.
Harper stilled.
Duo moaned softly. "Keep going already, get it over with, you're killin' me here."
"Sorry," Harper whispered, and rooted around in the wound again. After a moment, he lifted the bullet from against the bone of his shoulderblade, pulling it out and putting it on a piece of gauze on the bed. He proceeded to stitch up the wound, working more carefully when Duo muttered and mumbled curses under his breath.
"Now your face."
Duo moved back from the chair, wincing. He sat crosslegged on the floor, and Harper sat down across from him, using a piece of wet gauze to wipe the blood from his face. They stared into each other's eyes silently.
Harper pushed the needle into Duo's flesh. "You cared about Yuy, didn't you?"
Duo gritted his teeth and was silent.
"It's all right," Harper whispered, and went back to doing his job.
Shinigami stared grimly at the wall opposite where he was sitting as Harper stitched the wound, dead violet eyes glaring savagely at the shadows moving across the plaster, hands clenched into white-knuckled fists in his lap.
Shinigami was strong. Shinigami was for him what the Soldier was for Heero. Shinigami would take over and do the job that needed to be done, no matter how fucking dirty it was or who he had to kill to get it done. That was the way it always had been, and it was the way it always would be. Solo was that part of him now.
But somewhere in those violent violet depths Duo Maxwell wept and cowered away from what he had done. What he was going to do.
And he screamed without making a sound.
TBC...
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