13-Jan-2002
Title: Magic Happens
Author: Ebonydove
Pairings: 1+2
Warnings: none
Author's notes: told in Duo's POV, which may or may not work, you'll have
to let me know what you think. Begins some time after the wars, including the
Mariemeia Incident.
I was convinced. I didn't know how or when it happened, but they were right. Everyone I knew had told me I wouldn't last six months on my own without the structure of missions or the obligation of duty. The feeling of adrenaline pumping through my body I used to get at the beginning of a gunfight was like a fix, and I thought I could handle the withdrawal on my own. I had become what everyone had said I would, and what I denied. I was complacent.
I looked at the clock that sat blinking ten a.m. and realized that there was no blaring music playing, no annoying buzz or screech to draw me out of my slumber to the cruel light of day. I woke on my own from a dreamless night. I think somewhere in the back of my mind I heard Hilde leave this morning on some task or another, but I hadn't woken fully up like I would have before. It was weird; but then again, it had been the third day in a row I woke like this.
Throwing off the covers, I made my way to the bathroom and not looking in the mirror, brushed my teeth and splashed some water on my face. I heard her behind me purring a little in the doorway and smiled. The cat. "Hey sweetie. Ya want breakfast?" It was the other thing that had me convinced that I was finally losing it, other than the complacency that had somehow settled with me like a pair of comfortable shoes. I've never been complacent about anything in my whole life, so that was disturbing enough. But when I realized that I was also talking to a cat, I knew I was crazier than a rubber crutch. The final realization came at breakfast. Hilde had left me a little note next to the coffee maker in the kitchen;
Duo -
I left you some breakfast. Don't eat it too fast.
Make fresh coffee, that's from yesterday.
Meeting Brent, be back tomorrow.
Much love, Hilde
I poured myself a cup of the cold coffee, stuck it in the microwave, heated it up and drank it anyway. Then I took the cake plate and went to eat the last piece of chocolate cake in front of the vid. Damn I love that girl, only she would leave me the last slice for breakfast. She was really too good for me. Munching happily away I felt myself being watched.
The cat. She was a scrawny thing, that I had found in a bombed out shell of a building one night walking home from Hilde's salvage yard. She looked like she was in a constant state of disarray, with long dark fur and streaks of brown on her face like a tiger cat. She had enormous greenish-yellow eyes that blinked at me cautiously in the dim lights of the L2 evening. I loved her immediately. When I stooped to pick her up she hissed and tried to bite me. I smirked. I was about to stand and leave the thing thinking: 'fuck you cat' when she relented and crept her way over to where I was crouched on the sidewalk. I guess patience won out. In the next few minutes I came to the understanding that I now had a pet. I never had much luck with pets growing up on L2. Not with being on the run, and I never wanted to have to make the decision Solo once had to. 'Do we starve or do we eat the cat?' he had said. Hilde wanted to call her Hope, but it wasn't a good name for a cat I found eating scraps from the garbage in a hole of a building that used to be a place where children played. It also happened to be where they died. So I didn't name her.
Okay, so bad memories aside, I sat eating my breakfast with the cat. She waited for me to finish before licking all the icing from the plate. It was the plate that got me thinking again about where I was in life. I know it sounds really weird, especially because to me it made perfect sense. I was like that plate. Empty with nothing left to offer anyone or anything but a few little crumbs of chocolate cake. Then I saw the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. Laundry in the basket where I had left it from a few days ago, various bits of old technology I had been playing with, pieces of broken mecha, the place was a wreck.
I took the plate away from the cat and put it in the sink with the others. I walked down the short hallway towards my room, stopping at Hilde's and looking through the half- opened doorway. Hilde's room was neat and clean, reminders of her military training with her bed so neat you could bounce a coin of it. I walked in and glanced around. She had pictures on her dresser of what I assumed were her father. A soldier too, proud and strong in his uniform. Another picture showed the two of them beside an old propeller plane. I mean, damn the thing was ancient! He had her on his shoulder; they were smiling in the sun, her hair was long and flowing behind her in the breeze. It was beautiful. She had many more of friends and family. All I had on my dresser were empty magazine clips, some misused manga, an old wooden box with a button and my cross in it, and a picture of Heero and me. Heero.
Leaving her room and closing the door tight behind me, I went to my room and looked at the chaos I lived in. 'An absolute sty' Sister Helen would say. I went to the dresser and picked up the only photo I had. I ran my fingers over the image. The corner was ripped where I had shoved it in a bag, after making a hasty exit from a safehouse, and the bottom edge was slightly burned from another mishap that curled it a bit. I smiled. That constant scowl, those dark icy eyes and that messy top of dark hair.
It was like an epiphany that whole morning. Everything around me was screaming for me to snap out of the funk I was in. I knew what I had to do. I had to go and get myself a life. The others had moved on. Wufei was with the Preventers; Quatre was running his fathers' affairs with the help of his family. Trowa went back to the circus troupe and Catherine on L3. Hilde found someone she could really talk to not just exchange sarcasm, and Hell, even Heero found something to do. He watched over Relena. He was still protecting our carefully won peace. What was I doing? Sitting around feeling sorry for myself, talking to a cat for Christ's' sake! I got up and did some things I hadn't done in a while. I showered. I got dressed. I picked up the apartment for Hilde. Then I called Wufei.
End Part 1
(:./ebony/magic1)
