05-Apr-2001
Title: Heritage
Author: TB
Catagory: Character study, mostly
Pairing: 2+1, 2x3
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: Spoilers for middle of GW episodes
I dried my hands on the grease rag. Trowa handed me a water bottle, and I drank. I hadn't realised how thirsty I was.
"Come inside." It was an order of some sort, but I knew he wouldn't force me if I really resisted.
But I went; there wasn't much point in arguing. I was ready to collapse, and maybe I could cajole Trowa into cooking for me. He wasn't exactly a gourmet chef, but it was a damn sight better than what I'd be able to make for myself with peanut butter and pickles.
My oil-slick fingers slipped on the door-handle. I cursed, and grabbed it again, only to find it wouldn't turn properly. And suddenly I felt like crying. Why the fuck wouldn't it open?...
I saw him looking at me, worried, if you'd call the slight dilation of his pupils and the darkening of green to hazel-brown of his irises any kind of compassion. He put a hand on my shoulder, lightly, so lightly I barely felt it. Would that half-assed movement comfort *him*? because it sure as hell wasn't doing much for me. I shook him off, and punched the door, getting satisfaction from the solid thunk and the pain that lanced up my arm.
"Come inside," Trowa repeated, and this time, he was pleading. I heard it in his soft voice. He was begging me to stop-don't make him face panic and shame and tears, because he won't be able to run from it then, either... come inside, Duo, don't do this. Not you.
He opened the door, and I followed him in, silent.
We're all different people. The pilots, I mean. I mean, that's a no-brainer, right? Five men (kids) who're from completely different walks of life, different cultural heritages, different issues and widely different motivations for being pilots. I like to think I'm a simpler case than the others.
Name: Duo Maxwell. Duo for a dead pick-pocket, Maxwell for a dead priest who failed to give me God.
Age: anywhere from fourteen to eighteen, I figure. I don't suppose it matters.
Race: Caucasian.
Place of Residence: A shanty on Delta Colony. Assuming that someone else hasn't taken up in there; though they're welcome to it.
Why It's Important To Fight For Dead People And A Shit-hole-In-the-Wall Shanty: Because they're my dead people and shit-hole shanty.
That's the name of the game, peeps. Alliance, OZ, Romafeller-hell, even Relena Peacecraft-threatened my turf. And I'm in no mood to let them.
Make sense? Yessur. Thank you very much.
I wonder sometimes why we try to be a team at all. Wouldn't it be enough to agree to some basic strategies and then go our own way? Take Heero Yuy. I'll admit, there was something about him-maybe the completely insane way he tried to bosk himself when I caught him trying to bosk the Peacecraft idiot. Maybe I felt a little loyalty; I didn't rescue him because I felt bad about scaring him into suicide. I guess I didn't think that anyone who maybe had some turf, somewhere, that Alliance was walking all over should be stuck in a hospital, unable to go out and kick some ass. There've been days when I just really wanted to shoot someone. I can understand that. But, ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom, no sooner do I save his ungrateful Eur-Asian hide than he robs me blind, fucks with my baby (that's Deathscythe, by the by), and takes off never to be seen nor heard from again until he tries to bosk himself yet again, but with a bigger audience.
I got tired of that pretty fast. If I hadn't been so busy falling into those depthless cobalt eyes, I probably would have tried to smack him around some. Knock some sense into him.
Heero'll never really be a "team effort" kind of guy. He's got to do it all himself, or it isn't done right. I don't think he really trusts any of the rest of us... except maybe Trowa. But they're a lot alike in that respect. Maybe they trust each other because they're both so anal and perfectionist.
Quatre wants us all to be one big, happy family. I don't blame him. He's entitled to his dreams. But I'm entitled to my opinion, and my opinion is that his dream is bunk. He's nice. He's sweet. He's made of sugar and puppy-dog-tails and all that good stuff. But no one fights a war because they honestly believe humanity is worth saving. Do they? I mean, hell... even for Quatre, it became a revenge issue. He succumbed. They took his dad, and he went out and shot the hell out of a lot of people for his old man. I don't know why he felt guilty. He should have talked to Wufei. Wu understood revenge, whatever name he called it. But Quatre--him and those schmucks, Zechs Merquise, and Mr. Arch-Nemesis, Treize Khushrenada-I hope they'll learn their lessons. You don't fight a war on ideals. That's how you get a lot of unnecessary deaths on your hands.
You kill only as many as you absolutely need to, to win. After that, hands off, buddy. None of this "make the people so sick of war that they'll never fight again" shit. People forget. That's why Mariemaia almost won.
So this is my story. I'm something of a cynic, though I'm often pleasantly surprised when things go my way. On the other hand, when they don't, boy, they don't.
I don't like to remember how I got here. Maybe some other time, far in the future, when I'm ready again or just stupid enough again to open a door that should probably stay shut, I'll let myself remember it. Here's what you need to know.
You know about the moon base, and all that hoop-de-la? Yeah. So, there I was with Heero and Wufei. Wufei didn't like me all that much. He doesn't really like me now. It was just starting to hit me that Heero didn't like me too much, either. I was feeling kind of small and alone. And I hurt. That huge monkey G set on me, to make my "capture" look "realistic" hadn't gone easy on me... bones I didn't know I had ached, as if the marrow was boiling and cooking my intestines up nice and extra-crispy.
How did I deal with that? Simple. I took it out, fair and square, on my pet Ozzies.
Whenever those whoresons stepped into my humble abode, I let 'em have it. I'm a street rat, and I have insults down to an art-form. I was enjoying picking apart those gooney egos, and had started in on the antics and sexual preferences of their probable ancestors. Then I got a shock. One of my pet Ozzies was Trowa Barton.
I didn't know him. Not really. And for all I knew, he'd defected. We'd all been given the chance. Maybe he was the only one smart enough to take it. I didn't know.
Trowa told them to cut off my hair. He said it would shut me up. He was right.
I don't remember them doing it. I don't remember if they did it there, in the cell with Heero and Wufei who would probably understand how humiliated I was, or if they gave me the dignity of dragging me into a closet somewhere with pruning shears. I remember sitting in a corner, a long time later it seemed, tugging on the ragged ends of my shorn hair and maybe almost crying.
It's just hair, isn't it?
I walked around in a daze after that. I functioned. I even went back to normal, on the outside. I didn't stop pushing the guards, didn't stop babbling escape plans at Wufei, didn't stop making Heero review everything he'd learned this time out in the real world beyond our prison bars. I did a lot of goofy stuff, to reassure the other guys. To reassure myself. It was only hair.
I remember one night that Wufei plaited it, what was left of it, just enough to have tiny tail at the scruff of my neck. His hands were gentle, surprisingly so. I don't remember why he did it or if I thanked him. I hope so. It helped, though I never stopped expecting the comforting weight of a braid along my spine.
Trowa made me some kind of noodle thing. He cut the noodles for me, the way you do for little kids, added extra shredded cheese and kept refilling my lemonade. We ate in silence.
He feels guilty. Well, too bad. He can keep feeling guilty til the day he dies. If he doesn't regret anything else he's done in his entire life, he'll regret what he did to me.
He didn't know me. For all he knew, I'd never even miss it. He didn't know.
It didn't matter sometimes that Trowa's eyes were green, not blue, and his hair was lighter than Heero's and silkier. It didn't matter that he really didn't want me.
"I'm not, you know, gay," he said to me.
"I don't care." I unzipped my pants, and pushed them to my ankles. "I'm not either, I think."
What about what I did to him? He'd crossed my turf. Duo, for the dead street rat. Maxwell, for the dead priest. Braid, for the woman who'd loved me, the only love I'd ever had in all the universe.
It wasn't all about revenge. And maybe someday, when I'm lying dying somewhere, I'll tell Trowa I'm sorry for hurting him, and ask if he liked my kisses. I'd always thought he did. I was the only love he'd ever had, which is one of the saddest things I've ever heard.
Don't do this, Duo, not you. Not you.
He scrubbed my oily fingers with the hot wet washcloth. He held me gently, hip leaning against mine gracefully, chin resting lightly on my shoulder. I closed my eyes. "Better?"
Maybe someday.
The End
(:./erin/heritage)
