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"Heero Yuy, L6, and the Second Suit Wars "Part 3Written By: ELLE Disclaimer: I don't own the characters from Gundam
Wing (unfortunately) and they were used without permission, but all
the words are my own. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: occurs post-EW, language, angst, sex,
hopefully acceptable OOC, 1st person POV (*shudder* sorry, no way
around it!), plus a ton of minor and a few major OCs (since it's 1st
person, you get to avoid dealing with them too much.) Pairings: 1x2x1 plus others TBD Summary: Jack Kaufmann has no recollection of the braided man who claims they were once more than friends, but his quest to recover his memories leads him to discover a plot much larger than himself that is a threat to the peace he'd once fought to protect... The lovely Miss-Murdered beta'd this for me and frankly this story wouldn't exist without her encouragement.
"Restitution of a Former Life " 3.2 The Past
I stared absently at the wall and the stupid spackled hues of blue as Duo ran his fingers slowly up and down my side. The level of disgust I felt at myself was at an all time high. I wanted to rip Duo's hand off of me, I wanted to smack him and ask him how he could even look at me, let alone let me bend him over the bed and have him like that. I couldn't believe I gave in to his touch, I couldn't believe he kissed me, let me fuck him again, like I was a decent human being. Like I was worthy of him, his body, his love. God, in those low moments following post-orgasmic high, I fucking hated myself. "Heero." I didn't move as his hand stopped at my hip. What could I say? I didn't deserve this. I didn't deserve him. "Heero." His voice was a little more insistent this time. It wasn't until the singular word was said and reverberating in the silence did I even believe I spoke it. "Why?" The question was simple but Duo was clearly confused. "Why what?" Now that I had started myself down this path I supposed I had to follow it. "If not for your charity, why do you love me?" Duo made a strangled sound from behind me. I sighed, feeling profoundly stupid. It was hard enough to ask, knowing I'd get ridiculed, but to actually be subject to it... We didn't ask questions like this. We didn't talk about shit like this. "Christ 'Ro uhhh..." I felt the bed shift as he sat up, muttering that we might as well get married with all this for better or for worse shit we were doing and I heard him scratching his head. "Why does anyone love anyone? Why do you love me?" I snorted. As if that weren't obvious. No one had the power he did to destroy all my resolve. With a touch he had me up here, distracted, giving in to his pleas, pounding into him despite myself, my anger. "No, seriously," Duo countered. "Why? With you, I don't know, sounds stupid but at first I was just damn impressed by you. I never met anyone else like me - trained for this inevitable war, so far superior to the average person. God, I wanted to be your friend so bad it hurt, just to have someone who understood, ya know? Even when you hijacked ol' 'Scythe, all I could really think was what a damned dedicated asshole you were and in the end I couldn't be mad. I had to be impressed. "Then things started changing... You let me get closer. You broke me out of that prison, you took shit for me on lunar base - yeah I knew about it, though you tried to hide it - dumb move too, they could have decided to use me against you but we both know you wouldn't have let it go that far." I was surprised, though I didn't let it show. I always assumed he was floating too close to unconsciousness to know how I distracted the guards from him. How I constantly checked his wounds. I wondered if he knew how disgusted Wufei was with me, too, how he believed I was letting my emotions override the mission. "And then watching you destroy Libra... It was like my heart stopped. I never felt that way before. Like I didn't know if I could survive in a world without you in it. It seemed stupid - all this fighting and your death would bring me down? What kind of sentimental bullshit is that? Fuck. But I couldn't run from it. I couldn't deny it. I fucking loved your scrawny ass and fuck if it wasn't way too damn late to say anything." His confession made my heart squeeze and I shut my eyes tight, hoping he couldn't tell how he was affecting me. "Thankfully, I came to my senses somewhere along the way and realized I couldn't just go blabbing I loved you despite the joyous post war party atmosphere. But fuck if I didn't dance around my whole apartment the day you called and requested my help on L1. And, well, you know..." Yeah, I did know. I knew how easily we fell into a physical relationship. How desperately we needed each other, that familiar comfort of someone who understood without a single sound what each look, what each wordless posturing meant. It was overwhelming and I guess maybe a part of me knew it was love but that part was buried so deep it never got a chance to see the light of day. But I knew I needed him, needed that touch to keep me here, grounded in reality. "I loved fucking everything about you - even the shit that sucked, that no one else wanted to deal with, because it made me feel okay. It made my breakdowns normal. You understood." To say we were fucked up after the war would be an understatement. Probably should've taken Sally up on all that counseling bullshit in that time before Preventer, before enforced normalcy, but no. We were stupid, stubborn kids suffering together through the nightmares, the desperate attempts to un-holster weapons we long ago learned not to carry in public if we didn't want to blow someone's brains out on the way to the grocery store over a car backfiring, the mind numbing grief at every casualty report on the news - every poorly funded restoration attempt. I guess I never truly forgot that. I guess that's why I was so scared of ZERO. So scared of myself. "When you backslid after Mariemaia, I... My love made me angry, made me irrational. I left to punish you, thinking it would make me happy, but it was wrong. And it wasn't fair." So Duo came back to stick with my shit, though looking back it clearly hurt him. "Every day was like agony, trying to protect you from yourself, thinking I was losing you to her, fucking you in the desperate hope that it meant something more. So many times I wished I didn't but I couldn't stop. I thought maybe one more day, maybe one more day would mean something, maybe it would be one more day to remember you by before you threw me out." He paused and pushed out a long sigh, scooting to the end of the bed and letting his feet hit the floor. "I love you because you get me. In your own way. You know what I've been through, you know my past, and none of it matters to you. I'm no war hero, I'm just me. I love you because you do what has to be done regardless of self-doubt, regardless of fear, and I admire the hell out of that. I love you because you don't make me do all this talking from the heart bullshit. You don't question me. You don't make me try to feel all the highs and lows of romance. You just trust me to be there and as long as you do, I always will be. I love you because despite everything you're still a stupid fucking optimist and you always, without fail, expend every piece of you to bring out the heart of humanity." He paused again. I think he turned his head to look at me, though I couldn't see it. "I love you because you're a good goddamn person Heero Yuy and maybe you got some screwed up shit going on in that head of yours and maybe you don't believe it right now but I do. I always will. So if what you're really asking me how I can love you right now, in spite of everything, then fuck you." He stood. I didn't move. My breathing stopped. My eyes focused unflinchingly at the wall. "Fuck you for doubting yourself when Quatre needs you. Fuck you for doubting yourself when Lizzy and Lennon and all those fucking people on L6 need you. Fuck you for doubting yourself when I had the strength to believe in you when you showed up as a different fucking person three and a half goddamned years after you walked out of my life." Duo stormed into the bathroom then, slamming the door. I didn't move but I heard the shower start and I heard him banging things around. I waited until I thought he was safely under the water until I sat up and rubbed my face. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was being a touch melodramatic. Unfortunately, no matter how much therapy I underwent, my external need for perfection would always war with my internal flaws, my own self-deprecation. I needed a plan. A plan would make me feel better. A plan would give me something else to focus on other than my own astronomical fuck up. It would give me a solution. An end. A way to fix this. I sighed and got up, walking carefully into the bathroom to clean myself off. I really needed a shower to get at the gross scabs on my face from my own fingers but fuck if I was going to get in there with Duo and I really just needed to sit down with Quatre and figure this out. Duo was right. Quatre needed me. He needed me seven and a half years ago and yet he turned to Sergio instead. I was probably too fucked up to help. Too lost in myself. And here I was, going down the same damn path, rejecting the people who needed me, getting caught up in my own internal bullshit. Duo was right. Fuck me. I listened to the water and Duo's hair slapping wetly against his body. My heart ached to think of everything he said. We'd been through so much together. I wondered if it would be possible for us to ever move on from each other now, or if we were too codependent. And I realized with a pang that made me hate myself anew, that I had forced Duo to move on four years ago. I was selfish. So damn selfish. But not him. He was still there, faithful, waiting, accepting of every hell I put him through. "I never answered your question," I said, forcing as much calm indifference as I could into my voice, when it became clear he wasn't ready to leave the safety of the shower to face me. "I love you because you are everything I admire about humanity." I saw so much shit as a child, so much violence and hatred. The way people treated each other was so negative. I couldn't understand it. The only emotion I felt was pain and when Odin told me to live by my emotions I didn't know what else to do but to accept Dr. J's offer and channel my pain into war. When I met Relena, when I started to see that people could be good - stupidly, blindly, unreservedly good - I began to see something else in humanity. Kindness, sympathy, compassion, love. Things that had been locked away from me, hidden from me for most of my life. But where I was war, and Relena peace, Duo was the complex reality of the two, the perfect mixture. He was realistic but hopeful, kind and hard, strong but yielding. I heard a low noise from behind the curtain and I paused, concern keeping me in place. I didn't think it was the kind of confession that would bring him to tears, but then this had been a rather difficult forty-eight hours. "Heero?" he called and I heard a desperate note in his voice. I stepped forward and pushed open the shower curtain to look at him, his eyes wide and blue and sad when they turned to meet mine. "Duo?" I asked, my brows narrowed in apprehension. "I knew they were using children but I just... I didn't realize it, I didn't want to believe it." He bit down on his cheek and I stepped into the shower then, wrapping my arms around him and holding him underneath the warm spray. He trembled against me for a moment before he took a deep, shuddering breath and let it go, his emotions reigned in for the moment. "This is so fucked up." I kissed him then, slowly, taking my time to appreciate this little moment we had, a moment we might not have again for a long, long time. Maybe I didn't really understand how he could accept me, flawed as I was, but I found I didn't want to regret our sex even if it was only a desperate attempt to get me to calm down. It was still a moment with him, a moment we had together. He pulled away from me and ran a thumb across my temple, dislodging dried blood with his fingernail. "Fuck, your face is so fucked up." I scowled but let him take a washcloth to it, stupidly gentle as he sloughed away blood and skin and picked it out of my hair. And when he was done and pleased with his handiwork I kissed him hard and helped him wash the shampoo from his hair. ~ * ~ tbc |
