29-Apr-2001

Title: A Woman Is Talking To Death 1/1
Author: TB
Archive: yes please GW Addiction
Category: angst, POV, sort of AU
Pairing: 2, Sally Po
Rating: R (?)
Warnings: VAMPIRISM, language, some slight yaoi, some angst, VAMPIRISM
Spoilers: yes
Notes: Many. Okay. The premise of this fic is that Duo believes he is a vampire-esque type thing. If you have a problem with this, you likely won't enjoy the fic. This is not, however, your ordinary vampire fic, so if you don't object too strongly, please give it a try. The story is told from two different points of view- the narrator's, and Duo's. It should be self-evident which is which. The story takes place in AC 197, but ranges back through Duo's past. I say in the "category" part that this is sort of AU; the reason it's only "sort-of" is because Sally Po, the other main character of the fic, does not believe Duo's story and comes from the viewpoint of the series as we know it. I think you'll understand better once you read the fic (crosses fingers). Any rate, enjoy. Also, many thanks to Marsh, who betaed this several times and actually encouraged me to finish it when I would have given up on it.
Feedback: you know where!
Disclaimers: I do not own, nor ever shall, Gundam Wing. People far luckier than I have that privilege. Though I suspect that in a past life, I may have been one of the original creators. Do you think that would work in court?

A Woman Is Talking To Death by Erin Cayce

Duo gestured to the table-top. "Is that thing on?" he asked.

Sally made a show of checking. "Yes. Are you ready to start?"

"Why the hell not?" Duo skittishly refused to come closer to the table, hovering instead in the transition between light and shadow, his eyes hidden from her view and his hands shoved deep into his pockets. "It can pick me up from here? If I move around, yes?"

"Yes."

But he didn't move. He was not still--one shoulder shifted constantly to ease some persistent ache, and the toe of one sneaker scuffed the floor nervously. He lifted his head, and stared at her. "How should I start?" he said. "Give you all the crazy shit first, or tell it the way it happened?"

"Whichever you prefer. Duo," Sally reminded him gently, "you're the one who asked for this. Whatever you say here is confidential. None of the Preventers medical staff will reveal any of this to anyone without your okay. Whatever you have to say, tell me in whatever fashion you please."

This seemed to prompt him to move, finally, to the table. He eased into the chair opposite hers, and drummed his fingers on the smooth chill plasiglass of the table. He opened his mouth, hesitated, then shook his head violently, as if to clear it.

"Spit it out," he mumbled to himself. "I--I'm turning myself in. Not to the police or the Preventers--to you, the meds."

Sally, to her credit, never so much as blinked. "Why?"

"I don't care what you do to me, not really. I've earned it. But the police, they wouldn't know how to deal with this. They'd lose me in the system, and the chance to learn from having a--from having me to study."

"Study," the woman repeated.

Duo shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah."

Sally posed her next question carefully. "You seem to have really thought this out, Duo. But did it occur to you that whatever you're hiding needs to be told to the proper authority?"

Duo suddenly shoved back his chair, the scraping sound making her jump. He slammed his fists into the table, tears standing out in his eyes as he screamed at her. "Will you just listen to me! You don't have the slightest clue what you're dealing with. I am going to tell you everything, everything, and then you're going to do whatever it is that doctors when they study dangerous monsters, and then I want to be so fucked I can't even move! I want to be convinced that everything I believe is a lie, so I can let it go and put it behind me and pretend that none of it is real. I'd kill myself, if I didn't already know it won't work!"

Sally had regained her composure. "Sit down, Duo," she ordered, gently, but firmly. Slowly, he obeyed, and only when she was sure he would stay there did she continue. "There are certain questions I have to ask, and you will answer them as calmly as possible, or consider yourself under arrest for assaulting a co-worker. Am I understood?"

Sullenly he nodded.

"Very well. Continue. What are you turning yourself in for? What have you done?"

Duo lifted a strand of ragged hair, twisted around his thumb, and began to bite it with sharp, small white teeth. Oh, he'd seen better days, this one, Sally thought, watching him. He was too thin, white as a sheet, eyes darting to peer into the shadows accusingly. She reached over to removed the finger from his mouth when he drew blood.

"That's what I wanted to tell you," Duo told her. "That's why I asked for a private interview. And a recorder."

"All right."

"When I was a kid," he said, "just a kid, there was an accident. My parents died. They're not important. I was still just a kid, maybe five or six--there's no records. I lived on the streets. Or rather, I was dying there. I was starving out on the streets with no clue how to fend for myself, until I met--"

The pause was too long. Sally prompted, "Met who?"

Duo sighed. "Him," he said.

Before I met him, I'd made cheap money on the street begging, or more often stealing. When I was old enough that it would have started happening anyway, I sold.

Don't look confused, Sally. You know what I'm talking about. It's amazing, really, what perfectly normal people are willing to pay money for, if you play them right. I had the looks and I sounded older than I really was. I did it until I got sick. When I was dying in the street, rotting from the inside out, he came along.

Look at my hands. Now give me that glass of water. See how the dark tan just leeches away when it gets wet? It's fake--you can buy the stuff on any street corner in the colonies, it's really rather fashionable, for a people who don't have a real sun.

All right, I'll get to the point.

He came up to my corner. I was standing next to a lamp post, huddled into my jacket, trying not to cough too obviously, hating how people took a six-foot-detour around me. I'd lost all my hair and my fingers and toes were turning black. I was a real pretty picture, let me tell you. But him, he didn't walk by me and pretend not to see me, the way everyone else did. He just came right up to me and stood there looking at me.

"I have a warm house," he said, "and I will feed you. My car is just down the street."

I was fifteen. I was going to be dead by the end of the week one way or another, and I really didn't care what he planned to do to me, as long as he followed through on the heater and the food.

He had a driver, who didn't even blink when this guy comes back with a corner whore who's barely walking on his own; and his house was a huge mansion, with ivy-covered fences all around it and perfect gardens and those big shaggy dogs that ran up to jump all over him at the door. He put his arm around my shoulders and walked me up a spiral staircase to his own room. There was a bathroom, with a marble Jacuzzi sunk into the floor. He took off my clothes and put them in the trash bin, and then he set out all these soaps and bath salts. He filled up the tub with hot water, and then left me alone while I washed. When I was done, he came back with a robe and slippers, and a toothbrush and nail clippers and all sorts of things... we were in that bathroom for hours. I didn't even recognise myself when he was done. For a walking corpse, I looked awfully clean.

He sat with me in the kitchen while I ate a plateful of leftover party sandwiches and drank two or three beers. He never talked to me, that I can remember, except to offer me more of this or that. Finally I was getting really sleepy. I honestly thought that I had already died, and somehow I'd fumbled my way into Heaven. But there were horrible heavy pains in my chest, and he just kept watching me. I didn't understand, but it seemed like it would be impolite to ask questions while he was being so kind.

Around midnight, he stood and asked me to come to his room again. I thought I knew what he wanted, so it was only fair that I warn him. I told him, I'm sick, and I could get you sick too.

"Don't worry about that," he said.

We went up to his room, and he asked me to lie on the bed. He took my clothes off, and then his, and he laid down next to me. He kissed me a little, and touched me once or twice, but he honestly didn't seem all that interested. Finally he just put his mouth on my neck, and stayed that way for a while.

He bit me.

I didn't really think about protesting, I want you to understand. I'd had a lot worse than this, believe you me, and it felt good the way he put his teeth into me. My head was really fuzzy by then and the weight in my chest was so bad I had trouble breathing, and I felt sorry for him that he'd probably wake up next to a dead boy whose name he didn't even know--not that I knew my own.

I got really sleepy. And then I felt like I wasn't even in my own body. Like I was floating, and looking down at what was happening. He was finished kissing me, and he was stroking my cheek. My eyes were closed now, and I knew I was dead.

Then he reached over me to the night stand next to the bed and picked up a letter-opener. He pressed the sharp edge into his neck, a tiny deep stab wound. Then he lifted me by the shoulders, and cradled my head, pulling me up against him so that all the blood from his wound was spilling down onto my face.

I was back in my body suddenly, and there was warmth all over my cheeks and throat and chest from his blood, and it felt delicious, because I was so cold. He told me to kiss him, and he told me again, over and over, until I finally obeyed him, even though it was almost impossible to move. He held my head while I kissed his wound, and the blood was in my mouth, pouring into me until I swallowed.

All of a sudden I was on fire. Pins and needles pricked me all over, and a spasm ran through me. I had another mouthful, and then another, and I didn't need him to hold me up anymore, I had my hands on his shoulders and I was kissing him harder, trying to do what he'd done with his teeth, even though it wasn't really necessary; it just felt right.

No, I wasn't really appalled, or disgusted. It was entirely natural to me. It wasn't real, you see. I thought it was an odd dream, if I was even thinking at all.

We did this over and over. All night, I think. He would kiss me, and I would kiss him, until the spot became too tender and we had to stop for a while. The wounds on his body just sort of disappeared after an hour or so, but my neck was on fire all along the vein, and he'd opened up both of my wrists too. Just before dawn, he picked me up and carried me into the bathroom, and washed me again, and then we went back to the bed and just lay there. He held me, and I could still smell the blood in him, making me hungry, for him, for his blood.

And then in the morning, he was gone, and the house was empty. The driver was gone. The maid who'd cleaned up the kitchen after us was gone. There wasn't a single sign that he'd been there, him or any of his things.

"I told you I was fifteen when I was made. I haven't mentioned yet how long ago this was," Duo interrupted himself, looking up at her.

Sally had been quiet so far, her folded hands and attentive posture completely un-judging. "If you were fifteen, it must have been right before the war--three years ago, at most."

"No." Duo shook his head angrily. "You don't fully understand how profound this change was. But that's all right. This is a lot to swallow."

"Why don't you tell me then?"

"I was fifteen when I was made. I never knew who did it, who that man was who saved me from death just to give me a different kind. I have my suspicions, from clues that have come to me slowly. There are only a certain number of us with the power to survive in this advanced age. Even fewer with the Power in enough quantity to make a new one who could go a week without feeding and could pass as a human by walking in the daylight. I suppose it made a difference that I was a child. Still... for a long time I held out the hope that he would come back for me, step forward and claim me, even. I think, at least in the early days, I would have been a slave gladly."

Sally hesitated. After a moment, she decided against saying anything, and let him continue.

"This was in the early days of the Colony Project," Duo continued. He was calmer now that he was being allowed to tell his tale. "Almost two hundred years ago. I was just wandering around, lost, not even knowing what I was looking for, if anything. I wasn't entirely sure what I was, even! He hadn't explained anything to me before he disappeared. I went a little mad. I didn't know who I was, or why I did some of the strange things I did, like killing people to take their blood, or falling asleep in the middle of a street sometimes and waking up in a morgue because my physical body was dead, even if *I* wasn't. After a while, it seemed sort of normal.

"I heard about the Opening of the Colonies on television. You have to understand that in those days, no one really cared about Space. The Colony Project had failed twice in recent history... people just didn't think about it much. It seemed the perfect place for me, though. It was being advertised as the new Golden Land, the place where everyone was equal and if you just signed a promise to work on this or that project for seven years, then you could get a bit of the colony for yourself, a little money, a say in the Charter Government. It was a little dangerous--but hell, I already knew that I couldn't die." He dragged light fingertips over his wrists, face soft in memory suddenly. Sally, grasping the significance of that gesture, began to tap her thigh soundlessly.

If this was a delusion, it was one hell of a detailed one. And if Duo really believed it, then Sally didn't doubt that he'd really attempted suicide. Possibly some good Samaritan had rescued him and saved his life.

What had been the catalyst for this massive--what? Hallucination? Sally wasn't sure what to label this. But then she put aside her questions for the moment, as Duo continued.

In AC 7, or 2495 AD, as we were still calling it back then, there was a plague that swept through the L2 colony cluster. It was brought in on a transport of supplies from Earth. The environmental controls had been constructed with inferior parts, and the oxygen filters contributed to spreading the disease, by recycling the infected air over and over through the entire colony group.

I was calling myself Solo back then. I had absolutely no memory of how I'd been made what I was, but then, I didn't really know that I wasn't human. I knew that it was a little strange the way I liked to drink blood, but I only killed if I wanted to and so I rationalised it away as a sort of... just a thing I did for fun. I didn't even know how I'd gotten to the colony, to be frank.

For a while I had a job, but with the onset of the plague, industry shut down as laws were passed forbidding large groups to gather. The disease had spread everywhere already, so it didn't make much of a difference. There was a gang of kids who hung around in my neighbourhood. They were dirty and crude and there were a hundred others like them in the colonies, abandoned by their parents, or the occasional baby-in-a-dumpster story. I just kind of fell in with them. I was nineteen then, though I still looked like a fifteen year old.

I found the plague to be very distressing. I didn't like death. Bodies absolutely terrified me. The gang knew that I was nuts, and they'd make fun of me when I would go out of my way to avoid a corpse, though I didn't mind dying people at all. Actually, I preferred them. I would talk to them, offer them a little water or alcohol, if I had any, and if they were really far gone, I'd feed on them so that they didn't have to die in pain. But I could never stand bodies; I couldn't bear to search them for money or jewelry. I took to bringing another of the kids with me, a little guy, with long dirty hair that he wouldn't let anyone touch. He didn't mind that I drank the blood, and when I was finished and I couldn't stand to be near the body any more, he'd clean it out of valuables, and we'd go buy cigarettes and boxed freeze-dried meals for the others.

We lasted for years like that. The plague came in spurts; it'd be really vicious one week, and disappear altogether for months after. But eventually, even us gutter rats couldn't out-run it. When the gang started dying off, I couldn't take it. I was really helpless, you know. The longer I was with them, the more I forgot about who I was or how I'd gotten that way. I was a walking blank slate. It seemed like I'd been with the gang forever and losing them would mean the end of the world--even though I didn't even know most of their names.

The Little One, the one who was always so kind to me and had watched without the slightest curiosity as I fed on the colonists for years, he was the last to go. He was much older by then--almost an adult, really, with a strong body and a husky voice... blue eyes... I had tried to stay in the gang's warehouse for as long as possible, so I could stay and care for him, but the smell of the bodies of the other kids was horrible, and finally I knew that I couldn't live in there another second. I took the Little One and we walked up the streets to the churches. I was a Catholic, or at least pretended at being one; I had a cross from somewhere, probably from one of my victims. I gave it to the Little One and we broke into one of the boarded-up temples. I wanted to kiss him until he died, because I couldn't bear that he might die in pain.

But I didn't. I made a mistake. Maybe the worse I've ever made, maybe the best--I've never been able to decide. I had taken most of his blood, and he lay in my lap like a rag doll with his head lolling back and the crimson just streaming down his neck from the wounds I'd made. I didn't really know what I was doing, Sally; but suddenly I didn't want him to die--I loved him, and I didn't want to be alone. So what I did was panicked, instinctive--I tried to make him. I don't even remember, really, what I did, but I'm sure that he drank some of my blood, because I can recall very clearly the sight of the mess I'd made in my clumsy attempts to open a vein for him. Whatever I did, though, I must have done it wrong. It didn't work, and he died.

I was a limey before, but that one death was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. I snapped completely. But in a strange way, I became more sane than I'd been in years.

I also became Duo.

"Not the Duo you know." The braided boy shook his head. He was starting to tire; the nervous energy had left him and he slumped in his seat. "I was just a killer. Though maybe I shouldn't say it like that--*just* a killer. I was much worse than that. I took satisfaction in the kill for the first time in my life. Incredible satisfaction, almost... almost to the point of sexual gratification." A look of uncomfortable embarrassment crossed his sharp features. "As much as I wish I could, I can't blot that part of my history out of my memory. It comes to me far more clearly than anything else, in fact. I can describe the face of every single person who died under my kiss for nearly two centuries."

Sally was silent.

Duo began to nibble on the tuft end of his braid again as he spoke in broken mumbles. "You see, I had this notion. It came to me over time. I was Shinigami. The God of Death. You've heard me say it. At first it was just vanity. I didn't care if they were black or white, clean or dirty, innocent or hardened criminals, wealthy or poor. I was Death. I came to them all."

I wasn't a prostitute anymore. Let's make that clear. It was something I did once, a long time ago, because I didn't have any other choice. Otherwise, I would never, ever have done it.

But--that isn't to say that I didn't sometimes use sex to attract victims. The ones who wanted me, for my looks or for my body, or even just because they thought I'd be easy since I was so small and weak-looking-killing them felt like a service to humanity. But I didn't target them necessarily. It was like a game for me. I'd walk through a city and examine every face I passed until I found one that pleased me. And then I'd stalk him or her, sometimes for hours, sometimes letting them see me coming, sometimes giving no warning at all. And then I'd kill them. For a while I went out of my way to cover my tracks. I'd make it look like a robbery or a murder--I'd mutilate the body, or strike the final blow with some handy, innocuous weapon, like a screwdriver or a broken bottle. Then a few years would pass and I'd start to get sloppy, to the point where I'd leave a dried-up husk lying right in the middle of a super-market and just walk away.

I was never really all that stable. I'd have hallucinations constantly. I liked drugs then, too, and alcohol, though I couldn't get either except through the blood of someone who'd ingested it for me, you might say. I didn't know how much time had passed until one day, I sort of came to myself, and looked around and realised that the Earth had changed and I was... antiquated. What was worse, was that I was guilty of a string of murders, some that were truly grotesque and horrible. I knew that I had to stop this, and I did. Slowly. I didn't have very much control over myself. I'd even started to look a little younger, because I was so used to gorging on a victim every night. I was very strong, and most of the time I didn't even realise when I was hurting people. Daylight didn't even faze me. And most of my questions were still unanswered--I still didn't know what I was, who I was, who had made me, if there were others like me and the one who made me.

It was AC 137. I cleaned myself up. I took a job as a waiter in a restaurant on one of the L5 colonies--that's right, Wufei's soon-to-be home. Even back then his clan was well-known and quite powerful. The genetic need for an enema seems to run in his family. Anyway, I earned some cash, rented a room that I didn't really use all that much, got a haircut, some new clothes. I stopped killing. You can feed without killing, though it isn't as satisfying and it never quite fills you. Over the course of about a decade, I changed myself completely. I had to move around a lot--it looks a little odd when a fifteen-year-old fails to grow at all over the course of a few years--but it wasn't so bad. I was still playing games. Each time I moved, I'd make a new me. Corbette, on L3; Mabry in York on Earth; Fergusson on L4. I always thought of myself as Duo, though. I'd never forgotten the man that I'd tried to make. I was finally someone that I thought he might be a little proud of, and anyway, it made me feel like I was less alone. I was very alone, though, name or no-name. I could pretend for only so long before my continual youth would start to be noticed. Every time I had to leave, it was one more reminder that I wasn't, and wouldn't ever be, a normal kid, no matter how well I'd managed to fool everyone else--even myself.

In AC 152, I became rather fascinated with the Sweepers. I really liked them. They're good people, hardy people, always laughing and easy-going and laid-back. They don't ask questions, either. I joined up with a group of them, and for about eleven months I was really very happy. The only problem was that I didn't want to hurt any of them, though I often wondered why, since it would have been easy enough to feed just a little on them each night while they were sleeping, taking it from a place where they wouldn't notice a bit of a scar. But I didn't even think of that. I knew that I couldn't hurt them, and so I waited, sometimes for as long as two weeks, until we'd dock at some colony or satellite and I could prey on some helpless technicians. By then I'd be very hungry, and I'd look quite ill-shrunken, almost, very thin--in short, the longer I went without feeding, the more I looked like the walking corpse that I was. But I did it. I didn't want to be Shinigami to these good people.

Eventually, I had to leave that group. They were getting suspicious of my frequent sicknesses, though more in the way that they wanted to help me, and I refused to see a doctor. So, I spent the night making yet another transformation--I had long hair then, so I cut it, and curled it, and I borrowed some girl's clothing from the stores in the cargo hold. Sometimes it's easier to move around when people are looking for someone of the opposite gender. I slipped off the ship just before morning, and in the rush to get out before the rest of the station got too busy, none of my Sweepers noticed that I was missing.

I haunted the repair station I was left behind on for a few days, getting my strength back, checking things out. I ditched the girly clothing after I was sure there was no one left on the satellite who would have recognised me, and then I started looking for a way off the place.

There was a group of scientists on the station that I rather liked. They were all funny-looking-- real nerds, you know the type. Not like you, Sally. I watched them for a little while, and then I decided to take a free ride with them back to the colony--L2. The free ride played into it more than anything else. I hadn't been on L2 since the plague, a century and a half ago, and I wasn't haunted by my nightmares any longer. I wanted to see it again.

So, I stowed away on the scientists' shuttle when they left.

And, almost immediately, I got caught.

The assistant who stumbled across me dragged me down the length of the cargo hold and straight into the seating area by the scalp--and very painful, that was. I kept trying to bite him, but I couldn't twist around far enough. By the time I got even close to having a good target, he'd pulled me to a stop in front of this young scientist who seemed to be in charge. I had seen him already several times, and I remember thinking that it would be funny if he ever had a cold, what with that big long nose of his. Funny--gross, since he'd probably end out snotting all over everything if he sneezed. At any rate. The assistant put me in a seat, and warned me that as soon as we got to the colony, he was going to call the police on me for trying to rob them.

The young guy, the scientist, was kind of quiet the whole time. He was watching me like a hawk, but once the assistant huffed himself off, he left me alone, more or less, and there wasn't really anywhere I could go, so I stayed sitting there. That was a very, very long flight, though, let me tell you.

Well, they didn't arrest me. The young guy put his arm over my shoulders and kept me real close to him while we were disembarking, so that I couldn't run off; and I wasn't really too sure of what was going on at that point. It was clear this guy had an agenda...

He kept me right next to him in the car, and we drove to a hotel. He kept his arm around me all the way up to his room. Then he stood me alone in the middle of the room, and walked around me in a circle, looking at me, just looking, for a long time. Then, quietly, he told me to take my clothes off.

I think he expected me to protest, or even cry. Instead, I just smiled vapidly and untied the drawstring of my pants, sliding them off; then I opened my shirt and removed that too. I could see that he was--aroused. He wasn't bothering to hide it, really. I just kept smiling. I would have killed him before I'd let him touch me.

He said, "Run a bath. Make use of the soap--thorough use."

I was a little suspicious, but if he didn't plan on coming with me, I was cool with that. I followed his pointing finger and didn't come out of the loo until I was scrubbed pink.

When I came out dripping all over, Long Nose held my clothes out to me--cleaned and brushed. I dressed under his watchful eyes, and then he asked if I was hungry. I replied that I was not. He chatted for a while, asking me questions, stupid questions, pointless ones. I didn't know what was going on, and I was starting to become nervous and edgy. I started to think about knocking him out and running.

But suddenly he just took my arm again, and I realised he was much stronger than I'd thought he was. I couldn't shake him off without hurting him. I wasn't ready to go that far, yet, so I let him pull me down the halls into a huge workshop.

"And he showed me the plans for the Gundam he was designing," Duo completed.

Sally shifted slightly on legs that had fallen asleep; she'd been lulled by the husky rise and fall of Duo's voice. She looked at him curiously now, wondering why he'd stopped.

"Not Deathscythe," Duo added after a long while. His face was turned slightly away, a thatch of tangled chestnut hair sweeping down to cover one pale, gaunt cheek; his tone was subdued. "Not anything resembling what you would call a Gundam. This was the earliest stage. A modified mobile suit, such as they were in those days, with some crack-pot additions and boosters that killed more often than they helped."

The young man fell silent for a time. Sally, aware that the recorder would shut itself down without a certain amount of audio clatter, leaned forward and prodded the pilot carefully. "I presume, from the description, that this scientist is one of the ones who was killed in the war? The ones who did build the Gundams, like Heero's Dr J?"

Duo came to himself sharply; he stared at her for a moment, obviously not remembering who she was or why she was with him. But then he nodded, a little hesitantly.

"Gene Edwards." The name sounded foreign on Duo's lips, and he grimaced, hearing it as well. "Gene--G. Toward the end he got paranoid... not without reason, though, I suppose. He was an anthropologist with an engineering minor, studied on Earth, in Germany--he had quite a resume. Nervous guy. Expelled from his graduate studies for harassing a young male intern. But he was a smart bugger, and when Space called, he saw where he could put his talents to use."

Duo shoved back his chair and stood. His pacing was slow and abstracted--but his voice, cracking occasionally now and drawing his fingers up to massage his throat, continued on, speaking in a low mumble that had the recorder straining.

"By the time he caught me on the station, Gene had a certain fanaticism about the colonial cause. The Federation was a fact of life for most people, and like any other colonist, at first he just grumbled about it. People like to have something to bitch about, and nothing is better fodder than the government. What impressed me about Gene is that once he got all that sniping out of his system, he did something about his complaints.

"There was a downside. There usually is." Duo came to a stop by the door, absently wiggling the handle. "Gene... Gene had this idea. A machine that could fly through Space, like a mobile suit, but bigger, faster, stronger, than a mobile suit... only problem was, he couldn't make it work. He knew people, not machines. Jiro--J--J was handling the engineering, where he could, and Howard was knocking about somewhere tinkering on plans for a prototype Tallgeese. Gene was just floundering. He needed a test pilot--needed results, statistics, something to send Jiro and Howard, something for them to work off of. He needed someone... expendable."

I died three times in the early flights.

Yes, we die. I die. Our bodies may already be... I don't know what to call it; but we can be pushed beyond our limits, and it takes a substantial effort to bring ourselves back when that happens. Obviously, Gene quickly became aware that I was not at all normal. We never had a real confrontation about it. Once, I came back lying on a table in his damn lab, with him and Jiro standing over me with scalpels, set to pry me open. I'm glad they didn't. I would have had to kill them.

To make a long story short, we parted ways not too long after. They had gotten what they needed, and I was ready to make my break with Gene. I knew that someday, it was possible he'd call on me again--I also knew that it was more probable that the Gundam project would never lift off the ground. Blackmail is a powerful motivator for a reluctant hero, though, and Gene knew--well, everything.

One, two, skip a few--years. I ended up on L2, again. I thought of it as home, far more than Earth. There was something that happened there; something awful, something that doesn't say much for humanity as a species... It's another story. Maybe someday, Sally, I'll tell you about Maxwell Church--but not today.

Sally glanced up at him in time to see the expression of raw grief pass over him; but it was quickly hidden, and then Duo was standing, rising to hurry skittishly away to the other side of the room. If this was some kind of confession, then obviously Duo wasn't ready to tell *all*. He had a point to make. Sally would be interested to know what else he was holding back on: his mini "history of the world" had some substantial gaps in it.

The pause became longer and longer, as though the more time expended in trying to control himself, the more Duo was losing the battle. When he leaned against the far wall, and then slid down to curl in a tight ball, Sally half rose, mouth open to say something.

"It's nothing," he muttered. "I'm hungry, maybe. It won't matter in a little while. Never mind. Let's just go on."

After--after some careful consideration, I realised that I had a grudge with the Federation. At first I wasn't sure what to do about it. I had so much anger. I killed a few men, some soldiers, some administrators--whoever I found, I murdered. It didn't really make me feel better. I just felt like one of *them*, killing without even knowing why.

But God provides. Or at least, Gene Edwards did.

By AC 191, he'd found me again. To be honest, he'd been the farthest thing from my mind, but he pointed out the advantages we could gain from working together again, and I was *very* interested in the Gundam that he'd created out of all my blood and sweat. It was really Deathscythe, by then. My beauty, my partner--a fitting complement to Shinigami. There really wasn't much more to the contract Gene and I made than that--I was accomplishing his mission, which was Operation Meteor, and he was renting me the tool to accomplish mine--bring the Federation to its knees. At least, that's what it was at first.

I said I was angry, and grieving, and I wanted to kill. But something changed. Maybe it was Deathscythe, maybe it was going to Earth and realising that not every human was responsible for what had happened to Maxwell Church. Gene and I had some awful rows about that. I was so confused, Sally. I lost sight of what I was fighting for, and once I felt that, felt it in my bones, I was ready to give it up, destroy Deathscythe, and head for the proverbial hills. What did it matter if the Federation wanted to spend the rest of its pathetic life hunting down colonial rebels? I hadn't revolted for the sake of the colony, I'd done it for the sake of a handful of dead children...

For whatever reasons, reasons unimportant to this story, I stayed in the fight. Maybe it was Heero, or more likely Quatre--I liked those guys. I admired them, as different as they were, sun and moon, you know. For every time I faltered, they were there, the other four, as opposite and different and strange as me. If they could fight, if they believed in fighting, I owed it to them to try, or at least pretend to care.

And I loved them, Sally. I really fell in love with them. Heero for wanting so badly to be human--I could understand that, after all. Quatre for his effortless compassion and sincerity. For his brightness. Trowa for that exquisite sense of isolation, that he carried like a suit of armour, even with us, especially with us. Wufei, for torturing himself for imagined sins, for looking at me with tears in his angry eyes and daring me to mention them. Was there ever anything like them before, Sally? Anything so amazing and wonderful as four kids no older than I'd been when I died, willing to live or die for a cause, when I'd've thrown myself away for a crust of toast and thought I'd struck gold.

But I'm losing my voice, and wasting it on something that isn't central to my story. So I'll get to the point.

I made a very important discovery late in the war. It should have affected me, my willingness to fight; and it did, I guess. I lost a lot of nerve, and I'm sure it showed in my performance. I didn't give a rat's ass for Treize Khushrenada until I saw his face, I mean in person, saw his face, for the first time, quite by accident.

"It shouldn't have happened. I was slow that night, exhausted. I'd been living in my Gundam and I hadn't fed properly in months, and other than that excuse I can't tell you what went wrong. I was captured practically without a fight."

Sally frowned. "How is it that we never heard about this? You were only captured twice during the war, and OZ made sure that the entire Earth-Sphere knew they had a pilot in their hands. When was this?"

"Unimportant." Duo brushed aside those details. "All that's pertinent is that Treize was there, and he took it into his head to get a first-hand look at one of the kiddies who'd been such a thorn in his side."

The pilot sighed softly, and rubbed his eyes. He leaned against the door now, hands pressed flat against its cool surface, cheek tilted away so that his hair shielded his face from the doctor. "He was beautiful," he said.

Sally wasn't at first sure that she'd heard right. "Excuse me?"

Duo laughed--or croaked something meant to be a laugh. "Treize. Oh, Sally, you have no idea. He came to me, to my dark little closet, and those broad shoulders seemed to fill the doorway." His rough voice was almost dreamy. "Tall, so tall, and lean and strong. A man. All just--so, perfectionist, every hair in place, so intimidating, and yet not intimidating at all, because there was a gentleness in his face that no uniform or title could take away. I hardly recognised him. But he knew me. He knew me in the space of a second, a nanosecond, and if his lungs had worked, he would have choked."

Sally, confused, was silent.

Duo looked up at her; a coy look, one well-suited to him. "Do you remember? Have you made the connection? No, of course you haven't. Because you don't really believe me. You do a good job of humouring me, but I know. No, don't protest. Just listen. If I have to spell it out for you, I will."

I was lying on the floor, resting. When a soldier with a handgun came in and prodded me into a sitting position, telling me the General was coming to see me, I wasn't overly enthused. And then he walked in, owning everything he set his eyes on, and I looked him in the face and didn't have the slightest clue.

But he did. He went white as a ghost and he made a sharp little gesture, dismissing the soldier. He knelt, right in front of me, getting his pretty white breeches all over dust, and he put his large hands on either side of my face. I was set to spit right in his eye, but I was suddenly as confused as you look, Sally. What the hell was going on?

He called me by name. Not the name any of the other pilots called me by, and not the name in the OZ files, 02. Not any of the many names I'd used over the centuries.

"Solo," he said.

There was nothing we could really do about our discovery. Treize dismissed my guards and freed me; we made it back to his rooms without being seen, and our reunion was unhampered in the privacy of his bedroom.

He embraced me so tightly that if I'd been a human, I wouldn't have been able to breathe. But I was holding him just as tightly, laughing and crying, and kissing him all over his face and bright beautiful hair when he knelt and pressed his head against my stomach. That I'd never known he lived and that he hadn't sought me out was forgiven then. I'd never loved anyone the way I'd loved him.

A long time later he stood, though he held my hands as if he were afraid to let me go. "But you're too thin," he said. "You haven't fed enough."

I hadn't. I'd been in isolation since my capture, though thankfully before that a slip of overindulgence had insured that I hadn't been too uncomfortable without a new source of blood. But, again, there wasn't too much he could do about my hunger. He couldn't very well call in a guard and ask him to hold still while I took what I needed.

Treize did a surprising thing. He threw off his jacket, and tore open the linen winding around his neck. He arched his head back for me, baring his throat. "Drink," he said.

I was shocked. "I'll kill you!"

He looked at me in amusement. "Hardly," he replied gently. "Haven't you ever done this with another of our kind? It's quite safe."

I was too stunned to be excited. "Others of our--"

"Drink, Solo. Then we'll talk."

"Others of our kind," Duo repeated. He shook his head. "I had never known. I've mentioned that, yes? In all my travels I had never seen another one like me, except that first one, and for all I knew, he was dead. I hadn't even believed that my Little One had lived. I was effectively alone in the universe.

"But here was evidence. Treize had seen them. Talked to them. Shared *blood* with them. It was because of me that he sought them out; weak, too weak from my insane effort to make him, something not quite human but not strong enough to be inhuman. He needed more blood. For years he searched, a shambling almost-dead thing, until he had found another."

Duo sighed. "They shared more than blood. This other one was young, younger than me, but knew things that I never had. She told Treize about the blood, about needing it to live, though he had remembered that from watching me all those years with the people of L2. She told him how to make another, and she told him why the blood makes us strong enough to walk in daylight, when our ancestors, if you could call them that, the ones who had made new ones who had made the ones who'd made us, couldn't bear it directly. She told him that he would never grow older and that we had a duty to humans, even to the ones we fed on, to protect them and try to lead them with our accumulated experience and our knowledge of the universe. She told him all the things I wouldn't have been able to tell him, even if I'd thought he'd lived. Listening to this flood of information-- things *I'd* never known, things that could have changed my horrid existence if my maker had only explained... I started to weep. While his blood was singing in me and he was already re-wrapping that linen cloth thing, I just stood there sobbing and shaking my head. All the guilt that I'd left behind when the war started came rushing back."

Duo leaned his head against the wall, eyes closed. Sally absently bit her thumbnail. "Duo..."

He looked up. "Yes?"

"Treize Khushrenada... was... what? What do you call it?"

He shrugged listlessly. "Immortal," he said. "That's as good a word as any. And it might fit even better, once I explain to you why I felt I had to tell you all of this."

We went to bed eventually. We didn't need sleep, exactly, but I was mentally exhausted. He promised that there would be no disturbances, and we lay down together. When I would have put my arms around him, he stopped me.

"Let me hold you, this once," he said. "Let me be the father, now."

Father. How wonderfully appropriate. I'd loved him, spawned him, left him, and only at long last been reunited with him. And in form, I was still the boy. He held me, and I slept, breathing in the clean smell of him, hearing his heart beat with blood as I'd thought I never would again.

I said to him, "My name is Duo now. You know I never forgot you."

He held me tighter than ever, and just before I fell asleep, it occurred to me that in the morning, I wouldn't be able to fight him anymore.

Morning came too quickly. We had to be discrete. No one could guess that he would do, whatever, with a Gundam pilot. He said his officers were loyal and would stay quiet, but there was no sense tempting fate. In the very early hours we talked, frantically really, trying to say everything we could, everything we had to.

"This war is wrong, Treize." I wasn't comfortable with his name yet, though it was easy enough to say. I'd just never placed my Little One behind the odd-sounding word.

"Humanity is worth fighting for."

"Agreed, but too many of the humans are dying. Do you really believe those things you say?"

"Do you really believe, Solo?"

I told him about Maxwell Church; he told me about Zechs Merquise, who he had wanted to make, but hadn't, knowing that immortality would ruin everything wonderful and fine about his friend. I was jealous of Merquise, incredibly jealous. I told him about Heero Yuy and the other beautiful boys who I fought with. He told me about his grand visions, about leading peace with all the wisdom that he'd accumulated over his long and educated lifetime. I told him about the dangers of staying in one place too long. I told him about L2, the way it was today, poorer than even we remembered, but with people stronger and smarter than ours had been. I told him about how it broke my heart to know that they would rather join White Fang than bow to Earth's authority, but I told him too that I understood, and I wouldn't have given in, either. I told him how Earth had oppressed the humans in Space, and I told him that it was time to stop the fighting and let them go their own way.

He told me, very gently, that he could never do that, because humanity wasn't meant to be split that way. He sounded so much like he knew what he was talking about, Sally. Lying there in the dark I could almost believe him. But I'd seen. I couldn't forget.

In the morning, he arranged some things to make it look like I'd escaped. He promised to cover for me, and he did. No one ever knew that I'd been held there. He walked through the corridors with me to the hangar where they'd kept Deathscythe, and he knelt again and pressed his face against my stomach, the way he'd done when he'd been just a child, forever ago. I began to cry again.

"The war will end someday, you know," I told him.

"I imagine so," he replied gravely. "But in the end, it will be exactly as I have promised you."

Now you know that I've never agreed with Relena Peacecraft, Sally. I agreed to send the Gundams into the Sun because I was afraid of someone using them to begin the fighting again, but I'm not a pacifist and I'll never be one. In a way, what Treize proposed was very attractive. He was a warrior, maybe one of the best out there. But he wasn't my Little One anymore. Or maybe, I'd been so insane and delusional on L2 during the plague years that I hadn't noticed him becoming like the Treize Khushrenada I knew now. As attractive as his idea about war bettering humanity was, I didn't think it was very practical.

After this meeting with Treize I went back to L2 and dropped out of the fighting for a while. I needed time to think. But eventually, I realised that nothing had changed on the greater picture. It didn't matter what Treize was, what I was. What we were to each other. Humanity was engaged in a civil war. Brother fighting brother was not uncommon. Father fighting son took on no new dimensions just because I'd made him out of my blood, not my genes.

You know the rest of it. Zechs Merquise joined White Fang, and they threatened to drop Libra on Earth. So in the end, I did fight on Treize's side. Us Gundam pilots and what was left of OZ managed to stop Libra, and Heero almost died. Zechs did. It was an awful last battle, Sally. So many dead. I don't take any pleasure in it, I mean not really. No matter what you really think of me. But as I always say... I'm Death. There's no one on Earth or in Space who knows more about Death than me. At least I can send those men and women on their way and grieve for them knowing exactly what it means.

But I haven't told you the most important thing yet. I wasn't at the right spot to see this happening. I understand you had a good view of it in Peacemillion. I only heard about it on the scrambling communications lines. There was a hell of a lot of radio noise that night. I almost missed it entirely.

I heard Wufei scream. I was worried that he was in trouble-- he was out of it, hurting bad, and I worried that he'd die. I listened carefully, over the rest of the battle, and I heard him scream again. At Treize.

I hadn't heard from Treize since that capture. We never saw each other again after that, never acknowledged what we knew. It was all beside the point. But I was suddenly deathly afraid for Wufei. I couldn't bear it if Treize killed him. The unfairness of it would have broken me. Didn't Treize worship their fragile grandeur the way I did? I knew he did! Child-killers, poet-warriors. The best of all humanity. *They* were what we were fighting for! If my heart had been capable of beating, it would have stopped.

But I never anticipated what really happened. You know what I mean. When Treize's suit exploded, I couldn't hear Wufei's screams for my own.

Duo came to the table, placing his palms flat on its surface and leaning toward Sally. He was drooping with exhaustion. His eyes were oddly haunted, and tremors racked him.

"We are immortal," he said.

Sally shook her head. "No. Duo, this... this is a dream, Duo. A dream."

"We are immortal."

"I've listened as you asked, Duo, but this is too much. You don't expect me to believe this, do you?"

"He lived."

"No." She shook her head in denial, and stood.

"Come with me." He grabbed her arm. "I'll show you!"

"Duo, you're hurting me," she warned. "I won't-- what?"

He took both her arms. "I'll show you," he whispered.

In the long silence, the recorder shut itself off. Sally did not move to reactivate it. Eventually, she nodded.

"I've done a horrible thing," he said.

"Duo... "

"Listen. Before I show you. I know what I've done is wrong. It's killing me. I want to be punished for it. That's why I'm turning myself in. I'll leave you to decide what to do with the results of my stupidity."

Sally nodded tensely. The shuttle ride to Duo's apartment had been frighteningly silent. His promise of evidence had taken on a sinister meaning.

"Ready?"

"Yes."

Duo unlocked the door, and nudged it open slightly. "Go in."

Her hand shook as she pushed the door open all the way, but her feet did not hesitate to carry her into the dark room. Gradually her eyes adjusted to the dimness, and she made out the form lying on the bed.

"Oh, God," she gasped softly.

Duo's miserable voice floated in from the door. "I searched the wreckage for him after the battle. He was worse than this, even, if you can believe it. It was crazy, but I couldn't leave him there. It was too horrible. You see, he wasn't dead."

Sally went to her knees at the bedside. Her fingers, shaking almost uncontrollably, sought a pulse in the neck.

"He's aware of me. I know he is. But he's too weak. Look at him, Sally." Duo's voice cracked. "I should have let him die--"

No pulse.

"I dream about him." Duo was approaching hysteria again, with a suddenness that was alarming. "I think he's trying to reach me. He begs me for blood. He tells me that my blood could heal him. It did, in the beginning. For a while it really seemed to be working. I'd drain myself to the dregs for him--" He came far enough into the room to grab up a handful of used syringes. "Look! And some of the wounds would almost disappear... but he doesn't wake up. He doesn't speak. He isn't strong enough yet, because I'm not strong enough to fix him. So I looked-- I searched all over for-- " He muffled some curse behind his hand, then spoke through clenched teeth. "I looked for my maker. For months. I couldn't go far. He needs me. But I'd go as far as I could, and sometimes I come back with a sick person and kill them for him, so he could have their blood and my blood together, so he'd be sustained longer and I could search farther away. The... the bodies of the sick people are here, in places. I didn't know what to do with them. I-- I searched all over... "

Sally put a hand over her mouth. The smell was beyond description, but her lungs rejected it forcefully. "Duo."

"I know he's alive. But I can't fix him, Sally. I can't. And it's horrible, what I've done, bringing him here, killing for him. He doesn't even take the blood anymore, see..."

"Duo."

"And I can't take it. I can't take knowing he's here and alive and beyond me. I want to be taken away from this, Sally. I want to be drugged out of my mind, or what's left of it, I want to be free of him. I don't ever want to be able to think about him lying here again, and it's all my fault for making him."

"Duo." Sally took him by the shoulders, forced him to look at her. His face was wet with tears.

"Please," he said.

The End

(:./erin/woman)