"Close your mouth, man, you look ridiculous," the new hallucination muttered to Duo.
Duo closed his mouth, but it didn't help. The creature still stood there, a petulant little frown on it's face - his face - again...
This Duo, however, was definitely not on the Side of the Angels.
It was the same slim figure, same boyishly beautiful face, same long braid. But that's where the similarities ended. This delusion had sleek black jeans that fit it like a second skin. A black shirt, long sleeves rolled to the elbows, unbuttoned enough to show a flash of red tank top underneath, and God help us all, leathery black bat wings that began a good foot above the golden brown head and ended near his calves. The demon Duo raised one eyebrow and smirked at the pilot.
"Damn fine lookin', aren't I?" it purred, crossing it's arms in front of it. "Oh yes, I'm stylin', can't deny that, uh uh." It was shaking it's shaggy head now, the little smirk growing larger.
The self-satisfaction, however, was short-lived. The creature seemed to suddenly remember that it had just started an argument with the hallucination across the alley, and replaced the smirk with a scowl.
"Can you believe him?," it asked the real-life Duo, pointing a long, slim finger at Angel Duo, "mooning around over that bastard that stole the parts from our mecha?"
"I'm not mooning," Angel Duo responded, somewhat defensively, "and besides, he was completely on his own, he must have really needed those parts."
"Hah!", cried Demon Duo, "what he needed was a good, swift kick in the-"
"Hey!", the real Duo shouted, looking back and forth between the two hallucinations. "What am I, chopped liver? You two are talking like I'm not even here!"
"And besides," the demon put its fists on its slim hips and glowered at the angel, "he was about as responsive as a slag heap! I can't believe you could see anything good about him and here you are acting as if you've lost your one true love! Well knickers to that!!"
"Knickers?", the real Duo puzzled. "Now look -"
"His eyes," came the soft but commanding voice, "you could get lost in those eyes. And there was more, inside, much much more than he let on. Some part of him that wanted to reach out..."
Here the angel's reply trailed off, the wistful face gazing off into the distance.
The demon paced back and forth in it's half of the alley, fists in little balls by its side, the long braid twitching like the tail of an annoyed cat.
"Oh, brother," it said, "yeah he wanted to reach out, alright. He wanted to reach right into our machine and take our parts to fix his own damn gundam! There's depth and complexity for you, HAH!"
Here it stopped and made a face, counting the sins out on long, slim fingers.
"Tried to kill an innocent girl, jumped on a torpedo to commit suicide, tried again when he," nodding to the real-life Duo, "took his life in his hands and rescued the bastard, and then, to thank us for all of our help and generosity, he robs us blind! Oh, yeah, he reached out - uh huh, sure."
Having ended it's little tirade, Demon Duo crossed its arms again and glared at the angel.
The real Duo seized the rare moment of silence to make a move.
"Ok, just you both wait one cotton pickin' minute."
The two creatures looked at each other, then at him. Each raised a golden brown eyebrow in a gesture of supreme skepticism. The pressure was really on now. He turned to face the demon.
"You're absolutely right about him, ya know. He was a real jerk. He was ungrateful, unhelpful, and about as friendly as the sharp end of an army knife. I'm not denying that, and I'm the one who counts, right?"
The demon blinked at him, then slowly nodded its head. The angel looked, if were at all possible, more hurt that it already had. Duo swung around to face it.
"But damn if I don't know exactly what you mean, too," he said quietly. The angel's large violet eyes were shining with unshed tears.
"You do, don't you," it said softly. "You wanted him; you saw the same thing I did, didn't you. That dream, it wasn't some random thing. He got to you. He got in deep...and you thought you might have gotten into him, too."
Duo's own eyes were feeling a bit prickly. He blinked furiously for a moment and then said in a small voice, "Yes, damn him to hell."
"That could be arranged," a sarcastic voice offered from behind him.
"Look," he addressed the demon over his shoulder, "I'm trying to do somethin' here; will you work with me, please?"
The demon crossed it's arms and looked off into the distance huffily.
Duo looked at the angel again. It's eyes were downcast and the expression on its face made him want to cry.
"Maybe it just wasn't meant to be, huh?", he offered in a shaky voice. "Maybe we were wrong about him. Maybe this guy with the bat wings has a point."
He had the demon's attention again.
"Whaddaya think, eh? Should we just cut our losses now? Not get involved any deeper? It doesn't look too hopeful from where I stand."
The angel lifted its eyes to Duo, a soft silvery light coming now from the edges of the wings, the body, the hair.
"It may be worse, Duo," it said. "It may be hopeless. But from where I stand, its inevitable. You knew life would change for good when you got here. Well, like it or not, he's part of the change."
Duo let the words sink in and then glanced over at the demon. Now it was the boy in black's turn for downcast eyes. Duo spoke to him.
"If that's true, how can you help get us through this?" he asked of the demon boy. "What can you give me to make it not hurt so much?" His eyes were locked onto the demon's, challenging and pleading at the same time. The demon thought for a moment, and then looked back at him.
"Well," it said, "there's nothin' like a good sense of humor to get through life's absurdities," and here it looked pointedly at the angel, a lopsided grin spreading slowly across its lovely face.
Another grin, almost identical, just a bit of sadness coloring the edges, formed on the face opposite the demon.
"Thanks," murmured the angel. "Thanks for understanding."
"Oh, hell, I don't understand it," said the demon, drily, "or you, for that matter. But who am I to stand in the way of true love?"
With one last smirk, it faded back into the wall it had come through.
"Lemme know when the next battle begins - you'll need me then..."
The boy in black was gone.
Duo faced the angel.
"This isn't going to be easy, is it? With that guy, I mean."
"No. It won't be easy at all. Actually, it's going to be very, very hard. So hard you'll want to give it up, sometimes. But you won't be able to. You reached in too deep. You've gotten snared on something that's twisted and tangled inside of that boy. He may not realize that now. But he will...he will."
Duo followed the angel back out of the alley, into the glare of Earth's sunlight.
"Does he want me too?," he called to the boy in white.
"I only know your heart, Duo. I have no way to see into his... Actually, he may need some help with that, if I'm not mistaken."
By the time the last word was out, the boy had blended in with the sunlight, and Duo was alone.
"Hey kid," a man called from inside the hangar. "The boss wants you for some tests on this suit of yours."
"Cool!," Duo grinned back, "what is this guy, a pit mechanic? He said six hours!"
The man looked at him, a suspicious expression on his face.
"Yeah, well, it's been six and a half hours. Where have you been, kid?"
Duo's grin faded slowly as he turned to look back down to the end of the alley. He realized slowly that he couldn't actually see the end of the alley. There was an enormous garbage bin, stacked with metal scrap, and oil drums piled next to it, blocking the way to alley's far end.
"I don't know," Duo murmured under his breath, "Where have I been?"
He shook his head and followed the man into the hangar where Shinigami waited for their next mission.
xoxox owari xoxox
(:./kumiko/2shot9)
