"Walking Wounded"

Written By: Impish

Rating: PG

Pairings: unresolved 1+2+1

Warnings: Some angst, masochistic undertones

Summary: A Preventer-era ficlet… it’s really too short to describe.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Gundam Wing, etc., etc.

"Walking Wounded"

 

“Hey,” he says from the doorway. His voice is soft in a way that hits Heero’s heart like a stone thrown against a pillow. The office is deliberately dark, so all Heero can see is his silhouette, leaning there on the doorframe. As always, his eyes are the brightest part of him.

“How was it?” Duo asks, meaning, Are you okay?

He’s not loud, not like he was moments before, when he was laughing with some other agents in the hall. Years of boisterous charisma are tucked away, as if Duo can feel the ice about to crack over the cold current of Heero’s emotions.

Heero wonders if it would make things easier or harder if Duo had never come to understand his tangled psyche so well.

“It was fine,” Heero answers. His voice is dark, like the room. “The same.”

Heero closes his eyes, a lump growing in his throat, hard and suffocating. Everything is suffocating him.

Of course it had been the same. He’s been trained to inevitable perfection. The men under his command know it. They follow him, devotedly. They take pride in it.

He wishes he could, but he takes pride in nothing.

He is not this hero. He does not want to be treated like this person, this person who can save anyone, save the world. Again.

It’s all become an ever-mounting pile of faith, worship, glorification. It stacks endlessly higher, and as it does, he feels himself diminish, piece by piece. Whoever he is under this mantle given to him—Heero Yuy—grows smaller, weaker. He has all but disappeared.

He would question if that person was ever there at all, if it weren’t for the ceaseless memories of his training. The endless rituals of torture and endurance, of penalty and perseverance. It was the punishments that had made him strong. The pain that had made him real.

Accolades leave him cold, confused, lost. He craves derision.

“Can I help?” Duo asks. His eyes say You love me.

I can’t.

I love you.

It doesn’t matter.

“No,” Heero tells him. You won’t give me what I need.

I know. I still love you.

Duo shifts, straightening, and Heero stiffens. He can’t have Duo close to him. When Duo comes close, the air leaves and the walls shrink in, because Duo makes him feel things he’s not meant to know, things he can’t handle.

But Duo understands, so Duo never leaves the doorway. He will never enter the room.

“Can I do anything?”

Hurt me. I want you to hurt me. I want you to give me what I can understand.

I could never hurt you.

That’s the problem.

He needs the pain. Pain is the only thing that makes him remember who he is, what he is.

He aches for it.

“I’m here,” Duo says. I’ll always be here. No matter what you think, no matter what you do.

“I know,” Heero says. Thank you.

It was enough.

It would have to be.


~end~

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