Title: Like the Wings of Michael

Author: Stacey-Marie

Part 1/3

Pairings:  1+2

Warnings: hmm…well it’s odd, just odd. Also there’s a twinge of shonen ai, for those of you who didn’t read the parings line. Heero POV.

Disclaimers: Gundam Wing, its chara, mechs and all other miscellaneous stuff doesn’t belong to me; they are the property of Bandai, Sunrise and

the Sotsu Agency. So don’t sue because you have a better chance of finding a live cabbit in my room than something of value unless of course you

like dirty socks… piles and piles of dirty socks…

Note: This was written for Under the Bridge’s The Color and Shape contest. Enjoy and wish me luck! (P.S. all author notes will be at the end of

part three, wouldn’t want to spoil my dramatic endings with explanations you know ^_^)

 

 

 

Like the Wings of Michael

 

 

            It’s hard to tell where it started. Maybe it was when a bullet tore a line of fire through my arm or maybe it was when the shell of the entry

 shuttle tore away. I don’t know, maybe it’s better that way. Maybe not knowing where it started will make it so that I don’t have to find an end.

_______

 

Part One:

            The clouds that day were a steely gray. They type of gray that had hints of blue, but also hints of white if you really looked at them. They were

light clouds the kind that did not guarantee rain, but teased you with the idea. Duo sat contemplating such clouds when I came upon him. He was seated

on the sidewalk with no grace or thought in the position, seemingly lost in those clouds. He was absolutely silent, absolutely still…absolutely mystifying. To

me the clouds were just that: clouds. Possibly they would bring rain, but they were nothing as utterly absorbing as Duo’s gaze would suggest.

            I sat beside him; my legs stretched out into the street and looked up. I looked and I looked and I looked. I didn’t get it, but I wanted to. Duo was so

wrapped up in them that I wanted to know why. I didn’t want to break his spell by my attention so I only watched him out of the corners of my eyes. There

are no answers in his profile so I looked again. There was nothing really interesting about those clouds, just a wide open expanse of them left by the road

curving downhill. I focused on the color; picking out each of the subtle hints, trying to find where each one fades to another. Then I felt it. The world had gone

totally still in those moments, I was not Heero. I had no constant thoughts about…about anything. My mind was a delicious blank save for the color of those

clouds. The world was silent, even the faint breeze was no more than a compliment to the cloud’s color.

             A car heaved itself over the crest of the hill and shattered the moment. I came back to myself with a jolt and looked sheepishly at Duo. He blinked

with a slight disoriented look on his face then slowly rose to his feet looking as if a great weight had settled on his shoulders. He gave the clouds one more intense

look, muttered something to himself. Then he started in the opposite direction up the street, eyes downcast at the pavement. I jumped to my feet quickly and

followed. We walked in silence a few moments before stopping at a crosswalk. Duo pressed the button and settled back to wait for the signal. His eyes strayed

 once again to those clouds, not quite as visible as they had been before.

            “What is it?” I broke the silence. He shook himself like he was coming out of a fog, which I suppose he was.

            “Hmm?...oh. An old friend was calling me. That’s all.” The mood was gone and he asked me quickly about getting some coffee. The air had a slight

 chill and it seemed like a good plan. We crossed the street and Duo chattered on about the old machine he was restoring. Some detail of his caught me and we proceeded to the coffee shop theorizing about how to tweak the thing to make it work. Eventually he wandered home having remembered a call he needed to

make and I stayed in the shop with a paper and the dregs of my coffee. My thoughts drifted and returned to those clouds and I couldn’t help but mourn the

broken moment. Not just for the feeling it had given me, but for the mystery of what those clouds had given to Duo.

_______

 

            When we met I barely spared him a second thought. I was focused on how to prevent the enemy form getting Wing. He was an obstacle to that.

Of course there was a small part of my mind which told me I was taking the easy way out. Just blow the suit up and I would have no reason not to go on

living on Earth. Peaceful and free, with no more orders and no more blood on my hands: innocent or otherwise. Then he appeared with my mobile suit in tow.

He was different from me I noticed immediately. I was prepared to kill Relena, yes yes this was the same person who wanted no more blood, just to be secret.

He was different. He wanted to save her from me and then used a simple light to keep his secret from her. I knew the direction, the sound of a large mass

breaking the surface and knew he had Wing, but she didn’t. And he protected her. Looking back I can comment on our different attitudes toward going about

Meteor and analyze what feelings ran through me on that deck, but then…then I wanted my secret kept no matter the cost and so I leapt. He shot at me a third

and fourth time of course as I jumped onto the torpedo launch pad, but I was quick. The blast knocked me backwards creating with hard impact with the water

which caused me to pass out, along with the two bullet wounds he had given me. I remember thinking that it was over. I wanted it to be over.

            I didn’t know then why he came to rescue me, now I know he couldn’t abandon one of his own no matter how tenuous the connection. I almost killed

myself then too, and regretted bitterly that I hadn’t. For some reason he wanted to be my friend, I looked down on him for that. Friends in war were liabilities,

friends meant pain. I was right on the second account, but that doesn’t mean I would take back our friendship or our meeting. Duo chattered constantly and

seemed baffled about my drive to fix my mobile suit now that I hadn’t destroyed it. He voiced this several times, but I ignored him. I think that Duo didn’t talk

to get me to respond but more so out of some need of his own. A presence in the room was enough to get him talking to no one in particular. One comment I

remember had made me bristle like a hedgehog. He told me to “stop pretending to be human.” Then it irked me because that was what J had wanted, a soldier

who could pretend, but not really be, mentally at least, human. Ironically his human façade was just as artificial as mine if one bothered to poke beneath the

surface.

            We did not easily become friends. He tried and he tried, and I refused and refused. I felt that he was weak and a dangerous connection: a joking

demeanor and a memorable face. But then there were times when he was all mission. He surprised me with his quick thinking, reflexes and his own drive to

win. He became a puzzle, one that I consciously tried to ignore, but subconsciously was desperate to try and solve. Years turn and two wars have passed, but

I still haven’t solved it.

            At the end of the first war when Libra no longer threatened to rain destruction upon the Earth, we had stumbled from our suits blinking in the sunlight

and unsure of what was next. Duo quickly left and hid himself. Something which I thought so very, very odd when considered next to his almost desperate

attempts to reach out for friends. He showed up again though when Relena went missing in ’96. Dammed if I know how he found out and was able to get to

me so quickly. I was still partially in touch with Relena and her staff knew to call me if something like that ever happened, but I have no idea who contacted him.

He looked good when he showed up. Really good. But there was something different about him, a wariness that had muted his personality. It was odd, but I still

trusted him totally. A comrade in war, especially on the terrorist side of a war, will have your back no matter what his personal outside issues when a fight starts.

He thought I loved Relena and in a way I suppose I did, but not the way he suspected.

            After Mariemaia, he tried to fade away again, but this time I would not let him. It was odd that now it was me who was fighting for his friendship, but I

had changed over that year. I had done some wanderings, not quite like after New Edwards but for the same purpose. Then I wanted someone to take revenge

on me, now I wanted to start over with a clean slate. Metaphorically I suppose you could say that falling to Earth with Libra had burned away my guilt and

remade me anew as a hero. That however is crap. I had no one to tell me what to do, how to reconcile what I’d done or even who I was, so I had to make

myself. I backslid to AC 195 during the second war, not fully, but enough to get the job done. After the incident I wanted to be his friend, now that I actually

understood the meaning of friendship, but he wanted to leave. There was a quiet desperation in him to be gone, not from me, but from something. I let him retreat

to his scrap yard with Hilde, then I followed him.

            I wasn’t the only one who followed and I soon found out why he had tried to run after both wars. Duo had been captured during the first war: his face

and connection to the black mobile suit Deathsycthe were known as public fact. I don’t know why we never thought of it, but the War Crimes Tribunal soon

found Duo. You see no one could prove the involvement of the rest of us or point out which pilot went with each suit and which covert attack. Except Duo.

Duo was public knowledge if people wanted to remember and people did. Just because we triumphed, does not mean we do not still have enemies who wish

and plot for our deaths. These enemies latched onto Duo as the sole source of their retribution and people who had lost family members to the Gundams’

attacks soon rallied to the cause. They were going to crucify Duo and make him take the fall for everything that had gone wrong in that war. It did not matter

if it was him, the rest of us or some other organization that was responsible, everything was to be laid on Duo’s shoulders. Quatre and Relena, the aces we

pulled from our sleeves in desperate need, were powerless: Quatre was just a guilty and Relena needed to uphold the law. Both of them had people depending

on them. But what about the rest of us? While hating the idea of becoming fugitives from the government we’d fought so hard to create, we tried to break him

out once. It was a real quiet operation and no one ever knew we were there. Duo had stood up as I opened the door, looking so much like the first time I’d broken

him out of prison that it was unnerving. Duo didn’t asked me to kill him this time, he asked me to leave him.

            I was angry; I didn’t know why he would let these people destroy him with their bitterness. He was quiet, listening to me in one of those silences which

were a part of his puzzle I’d never solved. Then he told me he deserved to be there, he was guilty and needed absolution the same way I had upon waking from

my coma. Why couldn’t I understand that? Realization had hit me then and I told him he couldn’t stay because I wanted him with me. I blurted it out with no real thoughts attached. Very simply it was the reason he couldn’t stay and I couldn’t leave him there. I wanted him with me. It wasn’t the shock of true love like in

fairy tales, but a need. A need not be without him, to never be lonely, to let me be a part of his puzzle. Still in that strange state where all his restless energy was

bound and hidden, he walked toward me gave me a gentle kiss and pushed me out the door. With manacled hands he pushed it shut, and I could do nothing but cry

for him with silent tears as Trowa, WuFei and I stole out of the compound.

            Duo played an excellent trial. He neither asked for, nor needed a lawyer. Verbally he was a quick as the pickpocket he’d been as a child, turning their accusations back on them. He showed the scars from his torture in prison, told of our beatings and oxygen deprivation on the moon, recalled the horrors of the

Alliance against colonists which prompted Operation Meteor. Why he asked, why were they condemning a child, which legally he was, who’d fought for the

freedom they enjoyed, when not a single member of the Alliance or Oz had been asked to answer for their crimes? He’d demanded it in an angry scream,

slamming his fist on the wood of the witness stand and with tears pouring from his red accusing eyes. The prosecutors had no answer, the judge had no answer.

In that moment of silent contemplation Duo stood and took a shuddering breath. His handcuffs dropped to the floor and he announced that he was leaving; no

one stopped him as he walked out the door.

            Bolting from the courtroom when it finally erupted, I caught up with him very soon after. He was just walking; walking out of the city, walking to

somewhere he couldn’t define. I followed in silence. Eventually night fell, we continued walking until we could barely see each other and then Duo finally

stopped. Turning in a circle, he took stock of our surroundings and then headed off in a new direction. Curious, I followed. Eventually we arrived at a house,

one that still had lights on downstairs. Duo quickly went up the walk and knocked at the door. The man who answered it was wary and sized the two of us up.

Duo asked if we could stay the night, said we’d been walking. The man was surprised and confused, as was I. Surely no one would let two random strangers

spend the night in their home! Logically it was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. It was all Duo. I mean why couldn’t someone extend that type of kindness?

Then the man’s wife stepped in. She asked who it was and the surprised man answered her. She was a kind soul and told him to let us in…then she mentioned

that a Gundam pilot was out there just wandering and that she wouldn’t want children out with that kind of danger.

            Duo had been smiling the whole time, but then it faded. In the lights of the front porch I saw his eyes mist with tears before he turned back to me and

started to leave the house. The woman finally came to the door and gasped. Her husband had not been following the pre-trial, but she had. She recognized Duo.

Duo stopped in his tracks at her gasp. He partially turned his head toward them and said in a low, polite voice that he was sorry to have troubled them. At his

command I followed him out of the yard. Our feet had just touched the pavement of the road when the woman’s voice rang out in a shrill command to wait.

Duo stiffened, but turned with sad eyes to face her nonetheless.

            “You are that pilot aren’t you?” she asked. Without waiting for Duo’s nod she continued, “Even though they said you were only 15 during the war, I

never really realized how young you were. How awful it must be for a child to have had to live like that, to do those things.” She invited us in after that; gave us

the night’s leftovers and made up the folding couch despite her husband’s angry whisperings. Duo had murmured his thanks to her, but had said nothing more.

Then in the dark on that little chintz couch, he had curled himself up in my arms and cried. I’d never seen him cry in that type of desperate bawl and never have

since, but that night he cried. He cried for the people he’d lost or killed, the innocence that had been torn from him and the guilt he carried for it all. He continued

to shake even after he had no tears left, and I just held him.

            In the morning I called Relena. She helped us buy a house in the middle of nowhere and sent an unmarked car to drive us there. We disappeared.

 

End part one.