Title: Like the Wings of Michael

Author: Stacey-Marie

Part : 2/3

Pairings:  1+2

Warnings: hmm…well it’s odd, just odd. Shonen ai and strange time shifts. Deal. 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!

 

 

Like the Wings of Michael

Part Two:

 

            The next morning I woke up to rain. Water poured from the sky just like the clouds’ teasing color had promised. It was a calm rain, the kind

that made you want to stay in bed, awake but not moving, rather than an angry rain which flung down peals of water to bang against the roof. After

registering the rain, a series of small sounds eventually made their way from my ears to the part of my head that could recognize them. Duo was down

in the garage tinkering, alternately begging and cursing at the machine.

            After the war I had been surprised to find that I was a late sleeper. While often being semi-conscious early, I liked to doze off, stretch and

generally laze about in bed if I could. It was a good half hour before I made my way out of bed. I dressed quickly, brushed my teeth and slipped out the

door quietly. Even though Duo and I technically owned a coffee maker, the plain fact was that the shop two blocks down made better coffee. This was

the same shop we’d been in yesterday afternoon and everyday I would walk down there just after rising to get coffee for the two of us. It was as much

a part of my wake up ritual as stretching my arms over my head and curling my toes before lifting the blankets.

            We didn’t always get the same coffee, each day as the mood struck me I would get something different for each of us. That day was one for old

favorites. I got Duo a medium cup of ca brew with very subtle undertones of nuts with one sugar and plenty of cream; for me it was a small pumpkin spice

coffee, two sugars, a dash of cinnamon and slightly less cream. I walked carefully back to the house my purchases in a paper bag in my left hand and a

worn red umbrella in my right. Duo climbed out from under the machine as soon as I stepped into the garage. The scent of coffee was wonderful and had

filled the room the moment I opened the door. He held the bag for me while I closed the umbrella and then gave it back so I could take out the coffee while

he wiped the grease off his hands more thoroughly than a quick swipe on his pants.

            We said nothing until the first sips were drunk and contemplated. Since I got the coffee  each morning with no input from him, it always had to be

considered. Sometimes he sent me back when I got something that did not fit the mood or his taste. Sometimes he would give me strange looks over the cup’s

rim as if judging my mood by the coffee. Today he burst into a brilliant smile almost immediately and brought me over the see the latest improvements on the

machine’s restoration. It was a good sign that I had chosen right.

_______

            The house that Relena had helped us buy was quite literally in the middle of nowhere. We would have been hard pressed to find a neighbor within a

mile radius at least. It had seemed a good choice: a place to get away from the police and from people’s fear, suspicion, and anger. A place to regroup mentally

 and hide out until the whole thing blew over or was forgotten. A place where we didn’t have to look over our shoulders. It sucked.

            We only lasted three days in that house before it got the best of us. We had practically run out of it in an effort to get to the car and back to civilization.

The hotel we stayed in that night was one the edge of town, but it had what we were looking for: the soft, constant sounds of people. Both of us had grown up

on colonies, in places where someone was always awake somewhere and there was no such thing a total silence. We couldn’t take the woods; it was just too

unnerving for us. Yes we’d been alright when forced to stay there during the war, but most of the time we were too exhausted to notice the lack of human noise.

            The town we ended up in that night was an old one on the side of a mountain. It was a bit of a tourist stop in the summer months as people passed

though on their way the other peaks for hiking and sightseeing views. When we came fall was just starting to turn cold and the shops were starting to close for

the winter. Relena had chosen it for this every reason: people came and went so often that our stop-ins for supplies could go relatively unnoticed. That night we

didn’t know any of that, all we knew was that we could sleep instead of staring at the ceiling for hours listening to the silence.

            We weren’t lovers. We had shared the couch after the trial and a bed in both the house and the hotel, but we weren’t lovers. I don’t think it entered

our minds, not with what had happened. The kiss in Duo’s cell had been the closest we’d come to that sort of thing and it had not been the kind to inspire naked fantasies. Both of us had been quiet for all of those three days, not really speaking at all. It was almost as if the silence in the woods had become a physical

impediment for our tongues. The silence drove us mad, but at the same time there was a sense that it was like a fragile glass barrier which kept the world at bay.

I was afraid for Duo. I feared that the incident had broken something in him and that I would not be able to fix it…that is if he wanted it fixed.

            It is not easy to come to terms with blood on your hands after a war is over. No one returns from that the same person who originally set off. I don’t

know how the others dealt with their personal demons in that first spell of peace. I had received absolution from Sylvia Noventa and others by handing them a

gun and offering my life, but I have no idea about the rest. Even after Sylvia I had work to do, mostly it involved me just thinking and replaying memories. I won’t

get into that, but I imagine the process had to be different for each of us. Of course, I don’t really know if any of us really recovered. We are so crisscrossed with mental and physical scars that it is impossible to ever let go of that time in our lives. All we can do is start to move on, not forget, but use what we’ve learned and

move past it. In the days immediately following the trial I feared that the past had sunk its claws too deep into Duo. I feared that memories were smothering the

bright parts of his soul. I feared that he was not the Duo I had known, but a broken puppet in the shape of him.

            I think it was the car which did it. Shortly after our escape to the hotel while wandering the streets of the town, I found a man selling an old beat up car.

The thing couldn’t really start, but the body had a nice shape to it which I liked immediately. Listening to the man sheepishly try to get the motor to turn over, I got

the wicked idea that this would be a great challenge. Duo had always liked mechanics. I told the man I would buy it and practically ran back to the hotel, bursting

to tell Duo my good news. When I got there he jumped a little at the sound of my voice, he’d been starting out the window with a blank expression. I was excited

and told him all about my find, but it didn’t do anything. Somewhere about halfway through my story Duo turned his attention back to looking out the window,

resting his chin on his upturned hand. I stopped and deflated a bit disappointed.

            “What exactly do you think a car is going to fix Heero?” he asked me after a few more long minutes of silence, still facing the window.

            “You, me, this.” I swept a hand around the room. The minutes stretched by as we stared; me at his back and him out the window. Finally spoke again:

            “When do you suppose we’ve repented enough?” I had no answer for him and we continued to stare.

 

End part two.