Date: 6-14-2001
Pairings: 3x2x3
Warnings: Mild angst. Reference to pilot's death, past-tense.
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. So there!
This story is a follow up to the songfic "The Captain and No One." Trowa decided he wanted a name of his own and Duo renamed him Victor. Just to avoid any confusion.
Trowa/Victor's POV
Every two weeks, Duo and I took the van into the closest town, Coviette, for supplies.
Neither of us liked the run very much. Even with Duo's scar repaired somewhat, people still tended to stare at him. It probably bothered me more than it did him, and I'd sent a few people scurrying for gaping too long. Heero's Glare of Death became my weapon of choice.
For another thing, even a small town like Coviette seemed noisy and crowded and dirty compared to our paradise on the mountain top. I always found myself counting the minutes until we could head out on the long drive back.
It was fun riding with Duo. What radio stations we could pick up at all were weak and faded, but we sang along the best we could, making up words when we couldn't understand them. Duo's natural wit took over, and he often had me in stitches with his ad-libbed lyrics. He told me that I looked so good laughing that he just had to try every chance he got.
We lived together in a simple wooden cabin hidden from the main road by tons of thick, green pines. Just over the rear ledge was a small lake that was always teeming with fish, and a wonderful place to catch a swim or just relax by with a book. Duo had tied a rope to a tree branch above it and we would swing far out over the water before letting go. Of course I usually had to show off when he was watching, and add twists and somersaults to my falls, and he would cheer and applaud from the ledge.
The cabin itself was a one room job with an attached bathroom off to the side. The bed took up most of one corner, the stove and table most of the rest of the cabin. There was a cozy fireplace for the winter, and a generator humming out back. In addition to the supplies from town and the fish we caught, we also had a decent vegetable garden, as well as cross-bows for hunting. We read a few books on tanning and stitching, and Duo had made us both neat looking clothing out of deer skin. "Duo Crocket, king of the semi-wild frontier" he dubbed himself.
He admitted to me that Heero had picked it out. He had wanted a timeshare somewhere in the Bahamas, but after Heero had dragged him up here he had fallen in love with it. And after Heero's death, this was where he had come to heal. This is where he brought me to heal when my own heart was broken, and this is where we discovered that our hearts could heal better together than apart.
So we were happy, the two of us, living a life that neither of us had ever expected to lead.
It was Duo as well that came up with the idea of holding a funeral service for Trowa Barton. We tried to make it a solemn event, but we couldn't stop giggling. My "coffin" was a grocery box. We tried to think of something to substitute for a body, but finally just gave up and wrote the name on a piece of paper and put it inside. Then we took the box down to the lake and set it on fire, giving Trowa Barton a Viking funeral.
This was followed by Duo baking me a birthday cake and hanging up banners all over the cabin proclaiming "IT'S A BOY!" I think it was then that I started falling in love with him.
We didn't become lovers right away, although we slept in the same bed. And that being the case, we soon became privy to all the bad little things that snuck into our dreams. He would talk to Heero sometimes in his sleep, and I didn't know what was worse; hearing him curse at his dead lover for abandoning him, or hearing him plead with Heero to come back and hold him, even if it was just for a little while.
I don't know what I spoke of in my sleep; I never asked him and he never said. All I know is that some nights I would awaken covered in sweat and trembling, and he would be holding me tightly, muttering "It's okay, Vic. It's okay. It's over now."
That was when I knew I was in love with him.
Making love to Quatre had been a sacred, draining experience. Good, very good, but approached with the solemnness of a parishioner taking communion. Making love to Duo was fun. Oh, we had our serious times, but it was usually filled with laughter and I believe that more relationships would end in happily ever after if more lovers were willing to laugh.
When Duo decided to get his first surgery on the scar, he was afraid. I don't think he was afraid so much of the operation, as he was of the fact that maybe getting it fixed would remove his reason for living apart from the world. Still, he went, making jokes and with his head held high, and I went with him, holding his hand.
While he was in surgery, I went down to the hospital gift shop and looked for something to give him. There were rows of teddy bears and fluffy rabbits, and then there was a huge, orange frog. Yes, an orange frog. It was hideous, and marked down to a quarter of it's original price. I think the next step was to force it on some unlucky 8 year old having her tonsils removed.
I spared the child. I bought the frog. I tucked it under Duo's arm while he slept off the drugs, and it was the first thing he saw when he woke up. I watched his violet eyes widen and take in the sight.
"Wow." he said groggily. "I must have had a LOT of beers to make HIM look pretty." He loved it. We went home two days later with Archie Frog between us. I asked him "Why Archie?" He said "Why not?"
Archie slept in our bed, although a lot of nights he ended up on the floor. If he minded that, he never said so, and although I am a reasonable man I do not prefer to share my lovers with orange stuffed frogs.
Duo had four surgeries in all, and each time Archie and I went with him. In the end, his face was almost back to normal, but you could tell that he'd been hurt. It was good enough for him, and a scarred Duo had been good enough for me, and he was tired of being sliced up, he said.
I think the biggest tension was when Quatre dropped by the cabin.
He wasn't expecting to find me there. He had heard that Duo had gotten his scar repaired and he wanted to see how he was doing. I watched him take in my presence, as well as the single, rumpled bed holding the imprint still of two bodies.
Duo was cool to him at first, for my sake, but that wasn't his style. He loved Quatre, and I told him that he didn't need to pretend he didn't to spare my feelings. So he softened and let my old lover spend the day with us.
Quatre's soulmate had left him for another man, and he was obviously unhappy about it. As he was leaving he pulled me aside, where Duo could not hear, and asked me for another chance.
I could have hurt him badly there. I could have used words and cut him into pieces, crushed his heart like he had tried to crush mine. Instead, I hugged him. I told him that I would always care about him, but that he had loved Trowa and Trowa was dead. I was Victor now, and Victor loved Duo with all his heart. He said he understood, and was grateful that I was still willing to be his friend.
Then, with a wave he was gone, gone back to the world of mobile phones and limos and flavored coffees and computers, and once again the mountain was silent except for those of us who belonged there.
We lived there for nearly three years before we decided to give the real world another chance. We packed up our things, and our "son" Archie, and drove back down toward the city. The cabin would wait for us, for we would not be selling it. It would forever be our escape when life became too much to take.
I enrolled in a local college and took a course in animal medicine, in time becoming a vet. Rather than house cats or dogs, I worked at a zoo, treating the big cats and other creatures, mostly ill from the garbage tourists snuck and fed them.
Duo, remembering his days on the streets, became a counselor for lost children. When the shelters were too full, he simply brought them home to us. Some stayed for a little while before going on to other relatives (Duo would NEVER return a child to someone who had abused them). Some of them stayed for good. We were foster parents to dozens, and adoptive parents to six, although not all at once .
Quatre finally find someone to love, and married her. They had two daughters together, and the eldest married our son, Michael. Michael, born to a drug addicted mother, and living inspite of the odds, was able to stand with his head held high as his bride shyly approached him. And Duo and I wept openly, remembering the frightened three year old found quivering in a dumpster, who was now a college graduate, and who would make a wonderful husband.
We expanded the cabin, and now we often go there with our grandchildren, watching them swing out over the lake, and splash each other.
Some say we are old, and Duo laughs in their faces. We only in our mid fifties, we still have a half a life to go, he tells them.
Then he turns to me. "Let's make it another good half." he urges. And I agree.
So does Archie.
End
(:./lasha/genesis)
