Title: Within You, Without You
Chapter: Epilogue
Author: Link Worshiper
Pairing: 1=2, hints of 3=4
Stuff: Duo language, fluff, sap, post-EW, pseudo-death, Duo POV
Disclaimer: Mobile Suit Gundam Wing is copyright Bandai, Sotsu and Sunrise Agency. I've only written this to show love of my favourite characters and for Bura's very Halloweeny birthday - she's the slickest nighttime ninja I know!
Notes: Happy birthday to the ninjas of the night, and thanks to Natea for helping me flesh out the ideas - this story is just as much for you as it is Bura!

Thanks to Fancy Figures for the beta-test.

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“Maybe I will never be
All the things that I want to be.
Now is not the time to cry;
Now's the time to find out why!
I think you're the same as me;
We see things they'll never see.
You and I are gonna live forever.”

-- Oasis

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Bzzt!

Sitting at Heero's desk, hunched over his computer, I could still hear the infernal doorbell, but I made a point to ignore it. In about two and a half seconds, which was when the brat would probably press the button again, Heero would be there to open it, anyway. Sure enough, just as the bell started to ring again, I heard the sound of our door creaking open on its loud hinges and the exuberant cry of, “Trick-or-Treat!”

I grinned to myself and returned my concentration to Heero's computer. Superficially, it felt like the ritual I'd established every year at Halloween, but this time, I knew my purpose was different. I ran a quick search of the computer's hard drive, pulling up every record of the Coquin mission onto the screen, and with a feeling of supreme happiness bubbling inside, deleted all of them.

Just as I was about to shut down the laptop and rejoin Heero downstairs, I heard his voice two feet behind me: “What are you doing, Duo?” He scared the living shit out of me; I hadn't heard him come into the room or even enter the room.

The black feathered wings strapped to my back caught on the chair as I startled and jumped to my feet - or at least, attempted to. “Holy fuck, Heero!” I exclaimed, gripping the patch of fabric over my thrumming heart. “The phantom act is scary as all hell!”

He shrugged, a wise-ass smirk toying with his black-tinted lips as he moved to sit on the edge of his bed. “Sorry,” he said quietly, peering at me from behind his long, thick bangs. He was wearing a baggy, white outfit and a pair of similarly coloured devil's wings. The white paint on his face glowed blue in the dim light of the computer screen, and his Prussian irises flickered even brighter than usual, especially with the way they were set in the black makeup around his eyes.

Blindly, I reached behind me and closed the laptop's lid as nonchalantly as I could, casting the room with eerie, moonlit shadows. His white face flicked to pale yellow in the moonbeams filtering through the windows. “Duo, you're all jitters,” he said, looking at me questionably. “Sit down; calm yourself a little. What's wrong? You've been acting like this all day.”

“I - uh - well,” I stumbled over the words, never feeling so inadequate at speaking as I did right then. I don't think I could have explained to him the depressing and frustrating story of the past few years without him thinking I was a fucking nutcase. I groped for the chair I'd just been sitting in and fumbled with it as I tried to turn it towards him in the pale light. So far, the chair was kicking my ass; the legs kept getting tangled in the hem of my costume's long, black cloak.

“Duo, it's okay,” he reassured me, patting the spot on the bed next to him. “Tell me what's on your mind.”

Feeling a little better, I neared the bed and sat down beside him, pinning my wringing hands between my knees in an effort to subdue them. I guess I was still nervous that something would happen to snatch Heero away from me, even though I could feel his body heat and the mattress moving beneath me whenever he shifted his position. I caught his eye, noting his quizzical expression, and realized that he was still waiting for me to say something. Finally, I was able to blurt out, “That thing with Coquin - it was a close call, wasn't it?”

He blinked at me in such a way that made it impossible for me to figure what he was thinking. “That's what's been bothering you?” he asked, sounding skeptical.

I could only nod vigorously.

“I thought we'd talked about this,” he mused quietly, touching a gloved hand to his chin as he fixed his eyes on the tips of his shoes. Only Heero could get away with wearing white flip-flops on winter's doorstep.

“We kinda talked about this,” I interjected, also watching Heero's feet. I could tell he was a little offset by the situation; he kept flexing his big toes. “You never told me what exactly happened.”

Heero shrugged again, covering one foot with the other. “I don't see why it matters. I'm here, aren't I?”

“Yeah, but….” I hesitated, still unsure of how to explain it without sounding crazy. The hand nearest him slid behind him and I pressed my arm against his back, the closest thing I could get to hugging him with the cumbersome costume wings on our backs. “I wanna appreciate what I could have lost.”

“Ohh,” he hummed with a sage nod. My arm was pushed away as he collapsed onto his back, spreading his arms out on either side and staring up at the ceiling. As he started speaking, I tentatively laid myself out on my side next to him, resting the side of my face in my palm as I watched the moonlight flit over his profile. “Coquin went ahead while I was talking to you - remember, you were upset that day, too? Anyway, when I went to catch up, I caught him conferencing with a group of men I didn't know. So I decided to check it out and did a little sleuth work from the shadows; it turned out the bastard had gotten these four guys to help him take me down - some anti-Gundam thing he had, I suppose. You were right to be concerned about him after all.”

I turned a bit more onto my stomach, reaching out with one arm, which I draped across Heero's chest. I was much more reassured feeling his body rise and fall with each breath; his warmth still clouded around me.

“I managed to take one of them out with the element of surprise,” he went on, not minding this new display of closeness. “Then they all rushed me, though Coquin hung back - I guess he knew what I could do and didn't want to risk his cowardly neck. One thing led to another, and between the three others, Coquin and his gun, I found myself in a rather dire situation.”

“Heero, you are the biggest fucking idiot I've ever met!” I couldn't help but interrupt, jolting up and holding myself over him as I glared down into his beautifully deep eyes. “Why the hell didn't you radio for help or something? You might not have been so lucky!”

His heart was pounding beneath my palm, which was flattened against his chest. “It was a matter for fate to decide, not you or the Preventers,” he said quietly. That was one thing that always got me about Heero: he had this morbid, almost creepy acceptance for whatever cards he was dealt; he was the only motherfucker I'd met who could seriously look Death in the eye and not be afraid - and I would know! I'd always wished I could be as fearless as Heero, even the times when it was so glaringly obvious that he was just a scared, little boy.

“Coquin got his in the end,” Heero assured me, his steady gaze not leaving mine as I held myself there, waiting for him to go on. “He kept trying to shoot me while his men and I were brawling, but his aim was awful and the two times he did graze me, it was hardly enough to bring me down.”

I think he caught the infuriated look brewing in my eyes, because he hushed me and laid his index finger across my lips, even though I hadn't made a single comment. The fact that one was on the tip of my tongue was beside the point.

“His mistake was cursing out my training as a Gundam pilot,” Heero continued, his finger still pressed against my parted lips. I could taste the salt of his skin mixed with the residue of sugar from the candy he'd been handing out all night. “His three men stopped attacking me as soon as they heard him slip. Apparently, he had them under the impression I had been with White Fang, not a Gundam pilot. And it was clear that changed the situation for them entirely.”

The tip of my tongue poked his finger as my jaw fell open a bit more. “Are you saying they turned on the little weasel?”

“More than just 'turned on him',” said Heero with a look of disturbing smugness. There was a momentary pause, and then he asked, “Was it wrong of me to step back and let them beat him?”

A wide smile rode my lips, which seemed to console Heero's unrest about his choice. “A bit unprofessional, sure,” I said, “but hell if he didn't deserve it!”

He laughed, pressing his finger a bit harder against my mouth. “That's what I thought, too.”

Eyelids slipping down a bit, a sly expression turned my features as I replied, “What is it, exactly, that you're thinking now, Heero Yuy?”

“How lucky I am,” he murmured, a similar countenance crossing his face. “If I'd never come back from that mission, you'd have never kissed me in the middle of that meeting, and I would have died with a large, regretful hole in my being.”

“Your death would have been mine, also,” I said, knowing first hand how true that was. Back then, I'd been dying a little bit every day; it would have only been a matter of time before I just stopped getting up in the morning without him.

“Duo….”

I wasn't about to just let this moment sail on by. I had a lot to make up for - a lot of things to tell him that I never had the chance to before. I wanted him to know the things it had taken me too long to understand. “A life is so small - no one seems to think that the end of one really means anything. Life goes on without you, you know? And yet, for me - you and me, that is - if I lost you, I wouldn't be the same. It'd be like that whole flow of life thing, even if it goes on all around me, it'd just stop without… you.” My arms bent and I lowered myself carefully onto his chest, pressing my cheek against his breastbone and trying hard not to destroy his costume.

“You know, Duo,” Heero said, his voice more of a rumble beneath my ear than an actual sound, “no one else could help you to realize that. Not even me -“

I jolted again, turning my head so the bottom of my chin was lying on his chest. “But you are me!” I insisted passionately. “If it weren't for you, I wouldn't know who I was supposed to be at all.”

“But who are we?” Heero always did have a knack for proposing the most philosophical questions with even the simplest of words. But I always felt like I was a better person for it. “You could be me, and I could be you - but still, we could be anything.” Five points of pressure gently massaged the back of my skull as he ran his fingers through my thick hair.

I didn't say anything for a long time, choosing, instead, to think about what Heero had said; if I was going to respond, I figured he would appreciate a real answer, and I wanted to give him the best one I could come up with. Gently, I rolled off his chest and molded myself against the side of his torso, hoping to God I wasn't destroying those beautiful, white wings on his back. My palm lay across his clavicle. He didn't try to rush me, though I can't say he was really even expecting me to say anything at all.

At last, I said, “But isn't that the point?”

He made a small grunt of curiosity. His eyes had slipped closed, but there was a tiny smile on his face, and I knew he was listening. He always was.

My fingers curled against his neck, and I could feel his lively pulse thrumming vibrantly beneath the warm skin. “That we can be anything - that we're everything!” I said, excitement in my voice, despite its hushed tone. “We're different, but the same: a circle - completion!”

“Maybe,” he laughed softly. I think he knew what I meant, though. He knew most things, whether you expected him to or not. But then again, who could ever predict Heero Yuy?

“Heero….” My hand rose from his neck and cupped his cheek, turning his face so he was staring into my eyes. I saw the twinkle spin around the rims of those deep, blue puddles, somehow transforming his gaze into something more serious. “We fit, you know? Two unique halves of a whole - meaningless in pieces, but a full image when together.”

Another one of those quiet chuckles fell from his lips, that sparkle returning to his eyes. “I know, Duo,” he affirmed. He paused for a moment, lingering as he chose next words. “But, really, I don't think it even matters,” he went on slowly, one of his hands coming up to press mine more firmly against his face. “What matters is that you're here with me. Thinking too philosophically can weigh you down, when I think I'd rather just enjoy the flight - flying with you, Duo.”

Of course he was right - he always was. I found a smile yanking at the corners of my lips, too. “Then to the sky we go,” I said, inclining my head so our foreheads were touching.

“Yeah….” He inhaled deeply, like he was taking in the world around him with that single breath. “To fly.”

In that moment, I knew that both of us were truly alive and that, yeah, we were gonna live forever.

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Owaru

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