26-Nov-2000
Title: Inferno's Touch ~ Chapter 13
Author: Ravynfyre
Archive: GW Addiction, Darkflame
Category: Angst
Pairings: ?
Standard Disclaimer: All parts of Gundam Wing are Not Mine. It's all Theirs. *sigh* Too bad, but otherwise, I guess I'd never get anything done *happy hentai thought*. Anyway, not makin' any money offa this so dun sue me. You'd only get some college debt, a few dogs, and a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers anyway. Ya know. blood. Turnip. Do the math.
Rating: PG-13
Warning: None
Spoiler: None
Notes: Terms defined at the end if necessary. Also. There are two intentionally inserted book titles in this chapter (although not inserted AS book titles). If you can find them, and then e-mail me with the author of those two books, I'll send you a prize for being an even bigger firegeek than me. And that's the only hint yer gonna get about it. *gryn* And if you can even one up that one and give me a title of another book by the same author in the same sort of genre, I'll send ya TWO spifty keen cool prizes...
Feedback: Yes, please. All comments welcome (although flames may be fed to my dogs, which, since they have notoriously gassy intestinal tracts, will be spending the night with the flamer afterwards)
The scent of cheap beer and the sound of tortured aluminum filled the air as Duo's expression seemed to freeze.
"What?"
That single word dropped into the silence like the crash of a shattering iceberg in still seas. It burst the stillness with waves that fled outward, threatening to drown them both in a tsunami of ice.
Heero flinched, wishing he dared drop his gaze before the braided man, but knowing that the tenuous eye contact he was struggling to maintain was the only thing keeping his sanity afloat, even as it threatened to engulf him.
"Odin Lowe wasn't responsible for St. Mary's. He was too busy killing someone else that night."
The stars hadn't returned quite yet, but lightning flashed in the turbulent violet depths of Duo's gaze. Heero narrowed his focus on those flashes of suppressed rage, immersing himself in their heat, sucking up the hate. It was merely his due as the protégé of the arsonist long known to firefighters everywhere as The Demon.
"After that part. Back to the part where you explain who he was. To you."
"The man who raised me," Heero replied simply. There was no need to glaze the truth anymore. There was nothing in the world that could make that bitter pill any easier for either of them to swallow anyway.
"He was... your... father?"
"Not by blood. But, yes."
The braided man's eyes blinked rapidly as he fought to assimilate the information into his worldview. Heero almost forgot to breathe again as Duo wrestled with the concept, coming to terms with his partner's past.
Duo's whole posture, which had been tense, like a cat ready to pounce, suddenly deflated as he slumped back onto his pillows. A pair of startled tears slipped down his cheeks unheeded as that same blank, dead mask settled over his face.
"Why are you telling me this?" he whispered at length.
"You deserved to know the truth. Tsuberov is still out there somewhere. Lowe's gone. Killed in one of his own fires. But Tsuberov is still out there. I'll find him someday. I swear it," he hissed vehemently.
"Why?"
"To make him pay. For what he's done."
"No. Why you? Why do you have to be the one to find him?"
Heero glanced up and met Duo's gaze, surprised by the question. He could see no condemnation in the braided man's gaze, no anger, no judgment. All he could find was the shadow of a specter of long held fear, and a calm sort of curiosity. A forgiving sort.
Heero glanced away quickly, uncomfortable with the hint of exoneration in that amaryllis gaze. His fingers betrayed him, plucking guiltily at the blanket on his lap as he considered his reply.
"There was a time... before Lowe bought it. The Demon and the Machine used to work together. Not all the time. Occasionally. I grew up knowing...
"One of his contraptions backfired on him once. Odin was gone. There was only the fire and myself. And the Machine. I had his life in my hands. I could have prevented it all right then. All I had to do was... walk away. Just walk away. I hadn't learned about the responsibility of holding a life in my hands," he said, the unspoken "yet" hanging in the air between them.
"I thought about it. All I had to do was walk away. But I didn't. I let you down. I let them all down. I failed."
"Heero. We're the same age," Duo observed almost wryly.
"So?"
"I was nine when St. Mary's burnt."
Heero looked up, not comprehending where his partner's train of logic was headed. Duo saw the confusion and shook his head sadly as he continued.
"Twenty-one is too young to be debating the morality of ending someone's life. Let alone nine. Nine is too young to even be considering the debate. You were just a kid," Duo said gently, although, in truth, he had a hard time equating the intense Japanese man with ever having been 'just a kid'.
Heero glanced away hurriedly, refusing to meet Duo's eyes anymore.
"Heero, how could you have known-"
"Don't."
Duo stopped, stunned by the coldness of that single word. He blinked again, peering at his partner.
"Don't what?"
"Don't try that argument with me. Lowe was the only father I ever knew. Don't you get it? I was raised by an arsonist. My earliest memories were of cinders and smoke, glitter and ash. How could I have NOT known one of the two of them. They were both murderers. I knew it even before I had his life in my hands. I failed."
"I'm sorry, Heero."
"I didn't tell you to get your sympathy," Heero growled.
"Why did you tell me?" Duo snapped, growing frustrated.
"I told you that already. You deser-"
Duo waved him off sharply.
"That's not it, Heero! That may be part of the reason, but that not the whole reason... Why?" he demanded.
Heero stared down at his hands, the hands that must have been stained since his very birth. The very righteous rage that even now seemed to radiate from the braided driver, even through his silence, seemed a thousand times more pure by comparison. He considered the question, considered the source, considered even that righteous rage. And it was there that he found his answer.
"Because. Tsuberov is still out there. I will find him. It's my duty as the heir to Odin's legacy. I will not fail again. Besides," he said as he glanced quickly over to Duo's face, "Twelve years is a long time to hold onto a nightmare so tight that it chokes the breath from your sleep. You. Lowe and I. We. we don't deserve anything as pure as your hate," he murmured quietly, finally dropping his eyes back to his lap and the can he clutched there.
Duo's head jerked up, his amethyst gaze seeking Heero's face.
"'We'? What do you mean 'we', Heero? Why would I hate you?"
Heero didn't bother to look up again at the surprise in Duo's voice. He was afraid he'd see that same absolution Duo had tried to give him before. He wasn't going to answer. He wasn't even truly certain why he'd told Duo as much as he already had. He'd never been loquacious about even mundane things, and even less so about his past.
Maybe it was the alcohol, even though he'd like to think that he could handle five beers in an hour better than that. Maybe it was the pain he could still feel in Duo even as the braided man tried to offer him forgiveness for the unforgivable. Maybe it was the same weakness that had landed him in the hospital in the first place. Maybe it was, as it said in the book which he had no faith in, that for everything there was a season, and this was the time to harvest his guilt. Even as the words poured out of him once again, he couldn't finger a single reason.
"I learned everything I know about fire from him. How it burns in almost any environment, on almost any material, how to keep it burning, how to keep it from spreading. How to turn a match into a flashover, or a backdraft into a campfire. He even taught me about firefighters. How they worked, how they thought, what tools they used and when. That's why I scored so high on all of the tests to get into the Academy. I already knew everything they'd planned on teaching me. All the books they gave me in Academy. They made great paperweights.
"Odin's classes never used books."
Duo's eyes narrowed as he studied his partner for a long moment. He could taste the guilt in the air, almost as palpable as the smoke from the fire a week ago, choking and noxious.
"That's why you became a fireman, isn't it? Yer still trying to redeem yourself for stuff some whack job who raised you did twelve years ago. That' s nuts, Heero."
"As 'nuts' as becoming a firefighter to save people who've been dead for sixteen years?" the Soldier retorted mercilessly. Heero bit his lip as he listened to the words falling from his lips.
Stony silence dropped over the room. It stretched on uncomfortably, prompting Heero to dart a furtive glance over at his roommate.
Duo had drawn his knees up to his chin, with his arms wrapped around his shins and was staring forlornly towards the curtained window. His jaw trembled, as if he was fighting back words of his own, and what Heero could see of his eyes. made the Japanese man want to grab the nearest knife and cut out his own tongue. Damn the Soldier's brutal efficiency.
"Duo-sama. Gomen nasai."
"What?" the barely audible whisper quivered in the quiet.
"I said I- I'm sorry, Duo. I had no right."
"No," Duo stopped him, shaking his head with a self-depreciating snort, "Yer right. I... I need to quit kidding myself."
Heero turned, the blankets sliding over his legs as he shifted to sit on the edge of his bed, his deep blue gaze spearing the braided man in the other bed.
"I mean. nothing I do. will ever b. bring them back. Maybe this was. was my cosmic wake-up call," Duo stammered, indicating the hospital room with a wave of his hand.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying... maybe it's time for me to move on."
"Move on? You mean quit?" Heero asked incredulously.
Duo shrugged painfully, turning so that he couldn't see his partner even out of the corner of his eyes, hiding from the Japanese man's penetrating stare.
"Why not? Not doin' any good anyway."
"Bullshit!"
Heero surprised him into turning back towards him, frowning at the outburst.
"How many lives have you outright saved? Let alone had an impact on?"
"Impact he says. Yeah, I had an impact. A whole churchful of people for a start. How's that for impact?"
"You can't honestly think that that was your fault."
"If I'd been there. I never used to sleep well. I might have been up. I might have seen something-"
"And you'd be dead now, too," Heero replied bluntly, "The Machine wouldn 't have hesitated to take out any witnesses before he left."
"Maybe I should have been with them," Duo whispered.
"Then why did you bother saving my life at that warehouse? Why didn't you just sit down? Then we both could have ended up where we apparently belonged."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Duo snapped as he spun around and glared at his Japanese roommate.
"Sounds like you're bound and determined to die. To quit. If either of us really deserves it, it's me. You want to blame the church on someone? Blame me. I'm the one who failed you. Not you. You couldn't have affected that night, but I could have. And yet you saved my life. And yourself. Why bother if you're so set on giving up?"
"You couldn't have done anything, Heero. You were a kid!" Duo responded heatedly.
"So why do you get to be special? Why is it wrong for me to take blame for that, but not for you?" Heero pressed.
Duo opened his mouth to answer, but his thoughts deserted him, leaving him stranded in the face of Heero's logic.
"Because you weren't supposed to be there," Duo finally said weakly, knowing even as he spoke how flimsy his response was.
"And maybe you weren't supposed to be either."
"Fuck. I don't believe in that fate shit," Duo spat, turning away again, his back stiffening in suppressed anger, "It can't be true. Fate can't be real. It can't. What kind of fucked up universe would destine all those people to die?"
"I don't know, Duo. All I do know is that it's okay to have survived. There was nothing you could have done to prevent it, and nothing you do now will bring them back. But that's no reason to give up. It's all the more reason to keep going."
"Why?"
"Because you've come this far. You have the skills and the training to try and keep that from happening again. You had the will to walk into hell with nothing more than a few hundred gallons of water and a rookie on the end of the line. A rookie whom you ended up saving."
"You saved me first. You pushed me out of the way."
"That's what firemen do, Duo. At least until they give up."
Duo sat silent for several very long minutes, digesting Heero's words and trying to order his thoughts. He finally half turned back towards the other bed, glancing from Heero's face to the floor nervously.
"I. I can't bring 'em back. but maybe. maybe I can still make 'em proud."
Heero's expression softened minutely as he nodded.
"Hn."
Duo was silent again for a few minutes, his amaryllis gaze still slightly pensive until he turned and tossed Heero a perplexed glance.
"What's with you all'a the sudden? Since when did you become so sensitive?"
The question struck Heero like a physical blow. Had he become such a monster that a little simple concern was so strange coming from him? Then again, Duo had a point. Since when had he been so concerned with anything more than his own efficiency? Duo's performance hadn't been impaired before by his past, other than his propensity for night terrors. In fact, by giving into his impulse to comfort the braided driver, Heero had let far more about his own past slip than he ever had before. Duo effectively held Heero's life in his hands now.
What had he hoped to accomplish by doing what he did? What was there to have possibly accomplished?
Other than to comfort his partner.
He felt his mouth go dry and his breath hesitate in his throat. He'd comforted Duo. He'd wanted to comfort Duo. He. cared?
What the hell was happening to his neat and ordered life? What the hell was Duo doing to him?
Duo seemed to read his sudden confusion in his silence.
"Hey... Sorry, man. I... I'm just not used to hearing so much from you at a single sitting. Yer usually so quiet."
And now he'd broken that personae for some unfathomable reason. What exactly was it about the braided driver that seemed to be able to turn his ordered existence upside down and dig past his carefully crafted defenses? Defenses that he'd erected as much for everyone else's safety as for his own. Did Duo realize what kind of fire he was playing with?
"Yo. You listening to me?"
He was the son of Odin Lowe, one of the most notorious serial arsonists in the history if fire prevention. That kind of darkness alone should be enough to ward off even the most persistent distractions.
Yet... it hadn't. Duo had still managed to get past it all, dig past the shell.
"Heero!"
He shook himself back to the here and now, turning his wide-eyed stare on his partner.
"Yo. You okay there? You looked lost in thought there."
Unbidden, the memory stabbed at him, assailing him from the darkness.
//"Are you lost?"
"I've been lost all my life."//
He turned away, deigning not to answer.
Duo snorted and leaned back into his pillows, settling himself once again.
"Guess so. Back to the ol' silent thing again."
"Hn."
"Guess we should at least try and get some sleep tonight, eh? Get out of this place tomorrow. It'll be nice to sleep in my own bed for once."
Heero could see Duo watching him closely, the question sitting almost visibly on the braided man's tongue. The Soldier sprang to his rescue.
"Away from your snoring. You're right. Sounds great."
"Yeah. Right. I'll remember that when we're back at the firehouse in three days and you're the one keeping everyone up, sawing logs," Duo snorted, relaxing back into his bed and snuggling down into his blankets again.
"Hn."
"Night sweetheart," Duo cooed, falling back on comfortable teasing habits.
Heero snorted derisively as he, too, settled back into his bedding, content to let the matter drop.
Duo, however, had to get the last word in.
"Thanks Heero. You. Yer not half bad when you wanna be."
Heero frowned, shifting to glance over at the other bed's inhabitant. Duo had already closed his eyes and seemed to be concentrating on falling asleep.
When he wanted to be. Did he really want to be? Like a small rodent trapped on a wheel, the thoughts kept turning over in his head. Like his life that seemed to be spinning out of his control, they revolved, rattling around in his head over and over. And at every turn, the linchpin remained the same. The center point around which the whole mess orbited reduced itself to a single word. A name.
Duo.
Everything came back to Duo time and again. Never had a single entity consumed this much of his life before. Except for the Machine. Tsuberov. His mission.
Heero frowned suddenly as he realized that Duo had come to take up the same amount of his time and attention as he used to expend on nothing other than a mission. Did that make Duo a mission too? What kind of mission could the braided man possibly represent? Perhaps a focus, an external symbol of Heero's obsession with bringing justice to the Machine. Yes. That made perfect sense. Justice to the one person whom it would matter the most to.
Except that it hadn't been until a scant hour before that Heero had even found out about the braided driver's connection with his old nemesis. So how could Duo have possible figured into his mission before that?
Scratch that theory.
Perhaps as a less literal symbol. But again, that would still come back to Duo's painful past, which Heero hadn't been privy to until too recently to use it as an excuse.
Maybe he had it backwards. Maybe, rather than Duo being Heero's mission, the Japanese man was the braided driver's mission. Duo seemed bound and determined to humanize Heero at any cost. And he was damned persistent, too.
A frustrated growl burbled up from his throat as he flipped over on his side to stare at his roommate contemplatively.
Duo lay curled on his own side, facing Heero, with a slight half-smile gracing his slack features. The tip of his braid lay cradled in one hand, which was drawn up to his cheek. Heero could see his chest rise and fall regularly as Duo had apparently surrendered his consciousness up.
Heero felt the impulse rising within him to slip from his bed and tiptoe over to touch that woven rope of chestnut. He frowned as he analyzed the sensation of. want. There was no logical reason for this sudden desire.
Desire?
He blinked in sudden confusion. Perhaps that was the reason for the pure strength of the distraction that Duo represented. A physical attraction combined with the amount of time the two had been forced to spend together, even before their injuries, would explain a large part of the intensity of Heero's focus.
Of course, that would mean admitting to a physical attraction.
As he shifted his attention back to Duo, he had to grudgingly admit that Duo did look rather. quaint, curled up like a housecat within his cocoon of blankets. Especially when his face, rather than being pinched with anxiety as he fought off another nightmare, was quiet, with that curious little smile teasing at his lips.
Heero heaved a sigh and flipped over onto his other side, resolutely turning his back on yet another distracting sight, courtesy of Duo Maxwell.
Although, Heero mused as he felt himself dropping off to sleep, this was the most serene he'd ever seen Duo sleep.
Ninmu ryoukai.
Click, click, tap.
Heero's eyes snapped open as the faint sound intruded upon his consciousness, halting his attempts at sleep.
Click, click, tap.
The Soldier's memory instantly supplied an image to accompany that sound, dredging up a recollection that was far too recent for Heero's comfort.
Click, click, tap.
The sound grew louder as its source drew closer.
Click, click, tap.
As it drew even with their room, the sound paused. Heero snapped his eyes shut and feigned sleep.
Click, click, tap.
"You may as well open your eyes, boy. I know you're awake."
"What do you want, old man?" Heero growled as he complied, lifting himself to lean back against his pillow.
"Now, now, now. Is that any way to greet and old teacher who's come to visit his favorite young student? I'm really disappointed in you, my boy. You never called to let me know you were hurt. I had to find out by reading it in the newspaper."
Heero glared darkly at the aging man standing at the foot of his bed, leaning upon a cane. His eyes traveled briefly over the prosthetic arm, and the braces on both legs, visions of where Heero would like to forcibly shove said appliances dancing in his head before he snarled a reply.
"I'm not 'your boy'."
Behind his special goggles, the man's brows shot up in surprise and amusement.
"Such hostility." he admonished, "And here I'd come to check and see if you were doing all right. I can see that I'm no longer loved."
"I'm fine. You've seen. There's the door," Heero growled, pausing to spare a glance at his still sleeping roommate.
"Tut tut. Such a hurry to usher an old man on his way. I thought you'd be more pleased to see the man who's come to offer you your old job back."
"I already have a job."
"Yes, yes, yes. Your little. 'firefighting' fantasy. Well, my boy, don't you think it's time you woke up and returned to reality? This isn't where you belong. You're letting your real talents fester."
"How about I practice my 'real talents' on you?"
Heero's visitor shook his head, sighing with vexation at the Japanese man glaring at him from the hospital bed.
"The old guys at the Foundation really miss you, my boy," he continued on blithely, ignoring Heero's growing ire.
"Too bad. They can keep right on missing me."
"Your position is still empty. Finding anyone with your particular skills has been quite difficult. You are quite the commodity, my boy."
"I told you, I'm not 'your boy'," he snarled again, pitching his voice to not disturb Duo across the small room.
"Heero," the old man sighed, "I don't understand why you're passing on such a golden opportunity. You have them all by the proverbial 'short hairs' here. You could name your own price! Don't you see?"
"There is nothing," Heero growled, "that any of you could ever offer me, to make that worth it again. I'm not going back there."
Heero watched as the old man's attention slowly shifted to the braided driver sprawled and softly snoring in the other bed.
"Everyone has a price, my boy."
Heero reigned in the sudden flash of insane rage that threatened to swamp his cognitive ability. He clamped his mouth down on the rabid hiss sitting so hotly in his lungs, calling on his iron-willed control. He wouldn 't give the bastard the satisfaction of rattling him that much.
"Mine's too high for you," he finally replied, voice a deadly whisper.
"You underestimate their resources, my boy. No price is too high for them. One of these days, they'll manage to make you an offer even you just won't be able to turn down."
"You'll forgive me if I scoff."
"Heero."
"Get out. Leave. Our conversation is done."
"They won't take no for an answer."
"Well then, you can tell them I said no. And then you can tell them that I said they can all go to hell. I'm not going back," he replied, his icy tone making it quite clear that a wise man would steer clear of the Japanese firefighter.
The old man shook his head, turning to leave as he muttered darkly under his breath. At the door, he paused, turning back to stare at Heero, before tossing a rather significant glance at the room's other occupant.
"He is rather beautiful, isn't he?" he asked, his grating voice now smooth with velvet menace and veiled desire.
Heero wasn't even aware of his own movement. He didn't even feel the cool wash of air strike him as he leapt from his mound of blankets to cross the distance between the two of them in a single bound. He wasn't even aware of the solid smack of flesh as his fist impacted the old man's shoulder and reached up to seize him in a crushing grip at the waddled throat. All he knew was the blazing flash of red that erupted over his vision, and the maelstrom of rage that flung his reason into a primitive well of animalistic action/reaction.
As the old man's body slammed up against the wall, Heero shifted his grip, lifting the withered body off the floor and pressing a bony forearm against a trembling throat. The cane clattered, forgotten, to the floor.
"If you," he snarled, his voice so deep with the struggle to suppress his sudden need for blood that he barely recognized it, "If any of you touch him. If any of you touch any of them," he continued, giving the old man a savage shake for emphasis, "I will hunt you down myself. There will be no Foundation. I will raze it to the ground and piss on the ashes. I will bathe in your blood and leave your broken, bleeding corpses to feed the ghouls in the night. Every plan, every plot, every grand scheme you and your ilk have spent your lives arranging and building, will come crashing down, and I will be the first in line to squeeze the trigger on their twitching. writhing. broken. useless. skeletons."
With an almost negligent flick of his wrist, he threw the cyanotic body forcefully from the room, watching as the old man landed in a tangle of braces and limbs in the abandoned hallway. As an afterthought, he kicked the cane out the door, a small corner of his mind smiling in glee as it slammed painfully into the old man's side.
"Tell them. There will be no more warnings."
Without even waiting for the man's reaction to his incredibly uncharacteristic, and highly descriptive, outburst, Heero turned on his heel and strode back to his bed. Settling himself in the embrace of the blankets once again, he spared a moment to will his body to quit pumping him with adrenaline, and slow his breathing and heart, assuming a familiar mantle of calm and stoic determination.
That had been a mistake. He shouldn't have allowed himself to lose control like that. A faint tremble along his psyche confused him for a moment.
Fear. The tremble was a whisper of half-formed fear.
When was the last time he had truly felt that strange quiver within him? Years. It seemed like ages.
No. That was wrong. His gaze swung sharply over to his partner's slumbering body, surprise widening his eyes as the realization struck him.
He'd felt that same tight wire shiver of fear a week ago. Right after the world lit up in a ball of fire and a demon's scream. When he thought that Duo might be killed.
Back to Duo.
Why did it seem that every complication arising in his formerly simple life lately stemmed somehow from that braided baka?
Even now, while he was blissfully sleeping away, he was still doing it. Without uttering a single word, Duo was derailing his train of thought, distracting him from the more immediate concern: the Foundation's renewed interest in Heero's whereabouts.
Why did it seem like the foundation of his whole world had started smoldering into ash ever since Duo had appeared in it? As he shook his head and relaxed back into his pillow, Heero privately wondered what other complications Duo would toss his way. With a snort, Heero figured it would only be a few more hours before he found out. Dawn wasn't far away.
Dawn, and freedom. And one hyperactive driver.
As he willed himself to sleep, Heero spared a brief moment to treasure the calm before the storm.
~TBC~
RavynFyre
Please send comments to: ravynfyre@hotmail.com