22-Sep-2002
Title: Magic Happens/Part 15
Author: Ebonydove
Archive: aenai.steelsong.com
Warnings: language, yaoi, mild violence, angst
Spoilers: none that give away anything from the series.
Author's Notes: Duo and Heero are on earth trying to keep a very secretive code from falling into the wrong hands and trying to fall in love themselves.
It only took me five miles to remember just why I was in this particular situation to begin with and it had very little to do with the state of my lovelife currently. Depressing as that was. The driver hadn't really gotten his truck up to speed yet and was still giving me sidelong glances every few seconds to make sure I wasn't going to turn into some raving monster next to him, so I took a deep breath and plastered on a bright smile.
"Uh... I hate to do this to ya, but ya think you could pull over and let me out?"
I knew he had to be thinking I was nuts, but I hadn't really given him any other indication that his assumption wasn't the case. So I just shrugged when he frowned, and thanked him as he started downshifting through the fifteen gears it was going to take him to slow the truck back down to a stop.
Two minutes later I found myself thanking him again as he mumbled something incoherent about stupid kids, and started walking down the shoulder of the road with my hands in my pockets and my mind spinning. I recognized the sound of Wufei's car engine as Heero crawled along about ten feet behind me. It took less than a minute of following me for him to get fed up, and only few minutes more before he finally got out, jogged up to where I was, and started to walk beside me.
I know he was waiting for me to say something, but I had only just gotten past the initial shock of what he had told me not more than twenty minutes earlier and it was still stuck in my head like a disk skipping. A piece of my brain knew from the very beginning that something like this was lurking in wait for me, but I also had hoped that it wouldn't be what I had feared from the beginning. But too bad for me, because it was both of those things. Try as you might to convince yourself that the truth isn't, and it's sure to bite you in the ass all that much harder.
I thought back to how Relena had looked at the night of the party on L1 and then about all the events that had lead up to Heero and I finally, after so long, getting together. It was blindingly clear that it had always been like this between us. Under diress. Under overwhelming circumstances. All or nothing. There was no slow getting to know one another, or finding comfort in the little things that people normally did while dating. There was running, wild sex bred from desperation, danger, threats of bodily harm, death...
I don't know if it was the last of the sedatives finally running their course in my system, or my over taxed brain, but I was suddenly very tired of fighting the inevitable. I stopped short and turned to face Heero with my arms crossed over my chest defiantly. I was trying to be as calm as I could, but I think it was too late to try to hide the fact that I was shaken by what he had told me. He just looked pensive and slightly worried.
"Duo... let me explain... "
He started to speak, but I cut him off with a quick glare and a deep frown. "Stop." I needed to get this all out of my system before we could move past this. "When I came to L1, I came to make sure that you were happy, living the life you wanted to be living. You weren't honest with me from the very start. You should have told me that very day that you were engaged to Relena. But you kept me in the dark; you let me fall even deeper in love with you than I already was. You've hurt her, and now you've hurt me by not telling us how you really feel. I don't want you to explain. I want you to understand... it's about trust. It's about faith in the person who you're committing yourself to. I can't love you if I don't trust you."
He took a step closer and I couldn't help taking a step back. The look of hurt and panic that flickered in his eyes made me pause. "Heero...I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But I want to do it for the right reasons. I won't be responsible for Relena's broken heart. I had too much trouble dealing with my own to take on that kind of mission."
"But I do love you and I want to be with you, Duo."
He looked almost angry as he balled his hands into fists at his side. I couldn't help the small smile that slipped out at seeing him look like a child that just had his favorite toy taken away and then was scolded about it on top things. "Look. We need to get off the highway before someone sees us and stops. We still have to keep a low profile and standing on the side of a two lane highway in the middle of nowhere arguing about our love life might seem safe, but I don't like leaving ourselves open to chance." I had to chuckle at the absurdity of this conversation. It wasn't what I had ever pictured Heero and I doing.
"Then you're still going to help me? You'll come with me?"
I did laugh out loud at that as I flung my arms wide and twirled around slowly. "And just where in the Hell would I go? I have not a friggin' clue where we are, and on top of it... Wufei would kick my ass six ways to Sunday if I let you take his car and disappear." He still looked mildly hurt still and I found myself finally walking up to him and giving him a tight hug. When Heero plays that innocent child shit it always turns me to mush despite how I try to ignore it. "Let's not talk anymore about you and me right now. We'll find a hotel or something and sort it out, all right?"
He nodded and walked me back to the car, still frowning. When he tried to open the car door for me I paused and gave him a scathing glare. "Knock it off 'Ro. Save the chivalry for when you really need to pull a rabbit out of your... hat."
He frowned more, which only made me chuckle again. Quatre would have appreciated my humor. Gods, I missed him. I could have really used his black and white sensibilities right about now. I hadn't even had a chance to ask him how he was before taking off from Wufei's after leaving the hospital.
We drove for a long while in silence after getting settled in the car. I was letting the soothing sounds of some blues station float through the car as Heero drove. The music was a nice distraction, even when it fuzzed out now and then, but I was feeling melancholy by the time we pulled off the highway and started down a long, dirt road.
"Where are we?" I looked around, but the scenery hadn't changed that much. Still acres of farmland, a scattered building or house now and then. I had seen two cows in a pasture about a half-hour ago, but not much else than that. I turned to Heero and saw the oddest look on his face followed by a beautiful, serene smile. He didn't answer me.
We came around the bend of the road and at first I only saw the few scattered willow trees that framed the huge, white farmhouse we were driving up to. The house itself looked... well lived in. The roof was a greenish gray where the moss had settled into the grooves of its shingles, and the paint was starting to peel in places. It looked like there had been a garden in the front and side yards, but now the burgundy colored roses that crept up the sides of the building, were being overrun with weeds and tall shoots of grass. Some worn out and half broken wooden fencing wrapped around the other side of the house to the rear and the swing on the front porch was set on the floorboards, obviously taken down off it's sagging frame with the chains coiled around the base like sleeping snakes. It was quaint, and a sudden feeling of calm seemed to simple wash over me.
I got out of the car and stood on the dirt road, stretching and letting all my little aches and pains voice their opinion of me sitting in a car for so long, as I took in the rest of the yard. I think at one time it must have been a very large farm, and I felt mildly saddened that it had been left to rot.
Heero walked up beside and gave me one of those sidelong glances.
"I'm sorry about before."
I let out a little huff and listened to the crickets and watched a few barn swallows duck back and forth from the trees. "Nevermind. Just tell me where we are."
"I... " He took a deep breath causing me to turn and look at him. He was fidgeting.
That nagging in the back of my mind I hadn't heard in a day or so began again because Heero does not fidget. "What's wrong?" We were in the middle of nowhere, no one knew where we were, myself included, so I knew his nervousness had nothing to do with the goon squad that StarQuest had sent after us. Wufei didn't even know where we were despite Quatre's insistence that Heero tell them in case of an emergency. But Heero had been resolute about not giving away our position to anyone much to both their disappointment.
"I wanted to do this all so much better."
"I'm not following you, 'Ro. Do what better?"
"It was back during the very beginning of the war. Only a few days after I had first met you and after I had fled from Relena and the first school I had been using as cover when it had been attacked. She had almost been killed. It was after I stole parts from you and disappeared... "
These were all things I remembered vividly. Some good, some bad. As I thought about those times, his soft voice had trailed off. He was lost in thought too as he remembered those first days before he suddenly continued speaking.
"Wing was a remarkable piece of engineering, Duo. I could fly around the world in a few hours time. I could do anything in him... " He smiled fondly and turned to face me. "It was difficult those first few months on earth. I was not sure who to trust and who not to. I had my mission, but had not expected encountering others like you who had been sent to earth to fight for the freedom of the colonies. I had not expected to meet Relena, who would ultimately aid me in my objectives. Those were confusing times for me. I had found this place when I had been traveling, and it was a good place to sort out my thoughts and keep Wing from discovery. There used to be a large barn across that field that I kept him in. There was a barn owl that lived in the loft, and deer that used to come out from the edge of the cornfields and graze near those willows. It was the closest thing to peace I had found during those days while I was on earth."
He took my hand and started moving us towards the sprawling front porch. "After the wars, when I finally had a moment to think about my future, I bought this place. I had thought that it could be the place where I could live with... the person that I loved. The one I wanted to spend my life with."
When we got to the steps that lead up to the porch he stopped and sat on the third step, pulling me down next to him. I had been in awe at what he had been saying. That way back then he had been thinking of life after the wars, when I had thought he wouldn't ever survive to see the end of them, or cared. I had been wrong about a lot of things in my life though. So this time shouldn't shock me as much as it did.
"Duo, I love you. I want to be with you. I bought this house with you in mind. It has a good foundation, but needs lots of work. I thought we could rebuild it together."
He was looking at me so intensely and still had my hand firmly gripped in his. I looked past him at the ruined remains of the barn, then to the peeling paint and sagging floorboards. Damn... it was going to take a lot of work, and I wasn't just thinking about the house.
"Say you'll stay with me, Duo. I am not marrying Relena. I didn't even establish a life on L1 because I had this in mind all along. I was going to come to L2 for you after I had dealt with our current situation with StarQuest and Milliardo, despite knowing that you were with Hilde. But then Wufei had called, and told me that you joined the Preventers and was planning to come to L1 instead. Please, Duo. I only ever wanted to be with you. I just was waiting for the right time."
Time is fleeting I reminded myself once again. I had come so far in such a short time since leaving Hilde and L2. My future was staring me down and I was being pulled towards him like the gravitational field of a supernova. How many times could I leap off the cliff and expect to land on my feet? My self-preservation mode was down, Shinigami was laughing his ass off in the back of my skull at my sudden lack of response when I found myself whispering a quiet 'okay' to his pleading look. Then he kissed me sweetly and pulled me closer to him and whispered in my ear.
"Welcome home Duo."
End Part 15
(:./ebony/magic15)
