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"Friends "Written By: Karina
Series: Friends Pairings: 2+6 Ratings: M 15+ [In Australia] Rated in the event of bad language and violence. Disclaimer: I don’t own Gundam Wing or the characters. That’s the way it is. Warnings: Not a death fic despite how it starts.
Aussie spelling and unbetaed. Summary: When Milliardo Peacecraft is abducted
and left to die a solitary death Duo Maxwell decides to take a hand
in the proceedings.
Chapter 19 Duo fed wood to the flames, gaining time to think, biting his tongue to refrain from calling the man a dreamer in a not so nice way. “So you are saying, because the mountain is singing, the blizzard is ending?” He tried to keep his tone neutral, uncertain if he succeeded. Marquise’s eyes were hooded, but he knew the man was watching him. He could feel it. He was laughing at the gullible Colonial, and even as he thought it, he knew he misjudged his companion. Marquise did not strike him as the sort to find so base an amusement. There was more to this man than to gain pleasure from a warped joke. “You will find the blizzard will abate in a matter of hours. From past experience I would estimate the wind would be much reduced here in four or five hours, and in an hour or so in New Port the wind would be negligible. It has always been so once the Elf Kings give voice. The snow will fall, perhaps for as long as another two days, but by dawn the wind will be down.” Duo glanced at his watch, leaning back from the fire. Enough talk about Elves and weird assed superstitions belonging in the Dark Ages. “So I should be able to dig out the chopper when it gets light.” Zechs inclined his head in agreement and shifted his weight. Duo noticed and dusted off his hands, thankful for the chance to change the subject. The rescuer had obligations to the rescued, if the rescued party was injured, and he was neglecting said obligations. “Need to pee? I’ll get us something to eat shortly, but first things first.” Marquise nodded. “You are ever practical, are you not?” Duo shrugged. “What is, is. Most times can’t help it, sometimes can’t understand it, but usually always notice it. It just is, so I deal.” One pale eyebrow arched regally. “An interesting philosophy on life.” Duo snorted, amused. “You think? On L2 you learn to call a spade a spade, and to keep your dreams down to surviving from one day to the next.” Through the necessary procedure of relieving his bladder Marquise watched his companion. He shivered at the cool air and was thankful to be tucked back into the sleeping bag, and through it all Duo was the ever practical, down to earth man he claimed to be. There was something there though, in the blue-violet eyes. Something lurking in the depths Zechs recognized. He knew the look; knew the expression. “Do you dream at night?” He could not mistake the shudder. Yes, he could see, Duo Maxwell did dream, and rarely pleasant dreams. He had been there, suffered through haunted nights, and faced the horrors of a past best forgotten. He had been there, and he recognized another who had witnessed the darkness and the terror. “You don’t forget the past, Duo, but you can’t permit it to rule you.” The blue was replaced by a resentful flash of violet. It was odd how the man’s moods were reflected in the colour of his eyes. The colour shifts could be quite subtle, but if you made a point of looking you could not miss it. “What would you know about it?” “As much as you, I expect, perhaps more.” He met the wide eyes, careful to give no hint of judgment. He had been there, and he had not enjoyed his sojourn in the shadowy places. “I’ve been there, in the dark where the voices call to you; accusing and demanding answers to questions they never actually ask. There is only one question the untimely dead ask. I think it the only question they can ask. I’ve heard it too often. Why. The dead always want to know ‘why’.” Duo’s mouth worked for a few strained seconds as he tried to get words past the constriction in his throat. Wanting desperately to tell the man to shut up and unable to get the words out, Duo finally fled the pantry. He wanted to scream at Marquise, to tell him to shut the fuck up, that he knew nothing. How could someone like Marquise, in his cushy comfortable life, know about the darkness and the endless ‘Why’? Somewhere in the darkness there would be voices asking questions, but he could never quite hear them. He only ever heard the ‘why’. How could a man like Marquise know of his personal purgatory? In the pantry Zechs sighed, rolling his head across his shoulders slowly, trying to ease cramped muscles. It would take a few minutes for Duo to recall who it was who had spoken those telling words. Though they were separated by their births, each had faced hell, and Duo would remember that. Eventually. He had walked those shattered, crumbling halls. Duo would return and accuse him, possibly become defensive and verbally abusive. He knew it would happen, after all, he had done the same thing. “You get used to it after a while, Mr. Maxwell.” He murmured. “You learn to exorcise the terror. In time you learn to control the dreams, and if you don’t, you go insane.” Duo would learn. No one wanted to become a gibbering idiot, and he assumed Duo had already started treatment. He doubted the nightmares were a recent thing, and given Duo was still sane and looked healthy he had to be seeing a psychiatrist. It was one of the first, and best steps, he could take. It was not an easy step, no one wanted to admit they were afraid of their dreams, that they saw the dead; that the dead accused them. “At least you have friends to help.” He waited, patient, half dozing when Duo did not return immediately. He had not felt the air pressure change in the pantry as it did when the outer door was opened, so he did not fear his companion had caste caution to the wind and run out into the blizzard. Duo struck him as being entirely too sensible to take so foolish a step. He could wait. Duo would return and either abuse him verbally for interfering where he had no right, or he would ignore the matter entirely and get on with the business of surviving. Maxwell was nothing if not practical. For those who had walked through Hell there came a time of resolution. Some resolved their problems by taking that final and terrible step. A step he could never take himself. He had been taught suicide was no escape, that it presented more problems for those you left behind than you presented to them alive. No, to end it all was not his way, and he doubted, from what he had observed of Duo, that it would be his way either. “My shrink says I need to face them. Well, It, she says, not Them. She refuses to give Them an identity.” He did not look up from studying his hands. He waited, half expecting further comment to be made, and when he heard rummaging in a pack he stirred. Duo was checking through the meal packs, being careful not to look at him. The firelight stuck off the fine boned planes of his face, turning him into something closely resembling the elves Duo scoffed at. He was a good looking man, and Zechs wondered if the nightmares had reached the stage where Duo chose to avoid liaisons with the fairer sex. Even Amazons like Noin could not indefinitely cope with the terrors that visited during his nights. He had learned to keep a distance, not for himself, but for the safety of his partner. Sex was much overrated anyway. “There were thousands of them in my dreams, always accusing me, damning me. Asking the infernal question. Always ‘Why’.” “Yeah.” Duo separated a food pack and scratched at the stubble forming on his chin. “I have a lot. I wonder if I could really have killed so many.” He needed hope, Zechs could see. Some small hope the dreams would one day be gone, and he could find rest in sleep. He might be able to help there, though surely Maxwell had had this discussion with his friends? They would face it together, his friends backing him up, and for Duo there would be no need for some of the dead to take pity on him. Still, he could give Maxwell hope. “I only have one now. He wears Treize’s face, but he speaks for them all. He doesn’t ask why anymore, he just watches, and every now and then he tells me to get a better life.” Duo sat on his heels and studied the blonde, the food pack clutched in his fingers. “You had thousands and now… now you have one?” “Yes.” The big eyes were wide and very blue. Maxwell had unusual eyes, not merely their colour, but their size. They served to enhance that elfish look Duo would refute, should Zechs mention it. “I don’t… how?” He was all attention, eyes bright, forgetting his discomfort. There was such a need in him to learn a way to escape the horror. Zechs could not help the twisted smile, wondering if Duo would name him insane. “I resolved my issues with them.” “You resolved… How? They’re dead. Not real. Figments of imagination.” “That is why you dismiss the use of imagination?” Zechs shifted slightly, seeking to make himself comfortable and wishing for his own bed. He felt he owed it to this younger man to reveal his catharsis, the turning point in his slide to insanity. He was sane during the Libra affair, though no one would believe him. He had known exactly what he was doing; exactly what conditions needed to be met, for the human race to wake up to itself. But it was much more convenient for the world to think he was insane. “Something snapped one night, and I screamed at them, not because of them. While I was screaming I told them exactly why they died; why some of us live and some of us die. I was ready to beg them to just leave me alone, and somewhere in the dream, I believed. At some point I believed they would understand, and they would leave me in peace.” Duo stared at him. “And it worked?” Watching him Duo could not miss the flicker in the ice blue eyes, the momentary look he would have named as being somewhere between amazement and wonder. Marquise was being honest with him. The man believed every word he said was the truth. “Yes.” The deep voice seemed to fill the pantry. “It can’t be that easy.” He breathed. “It is far from easy, Duo.” Zechs eased himself up, relieving his backache. “We have to deal, as best we can, with our pasts and our present, to attain something better for the future. The first thing you need to do when you become aware of yourself in the shadow places is admit who you are. Admit to yourself who you are, and what you are, and that you are real. If you are real then you have control. You are in a dream and it is your dream, and you are in control of everything that happens there.” “But I’m not.” Duo whispered. “But you will be. You need to be. Stop is a wonderful word, Duo. It is a command word, a word that says it all in one simple step. The second thing you need to do after you become aware of yourself, is to tell your tormentors to stop. You have to mean it, Duo. You can’t be terrified, you must be firm. You must be in command; your word must be law. It’s your dream, after all, and who else should command it?” Duo was a statue in the flickering light. Zechs watched him, noting the flicker of his eyes, seeking out the dark corners of the pantry. Duo was on edge, hyper aware, listening with every fibre of his being. He was not dismissing any of what he was being told, not yet. “When you have their attention, when you have them silent, that is the time to tell them.” “But what do I tell them? I’m sorry? I don’t know why it happened the way it happened? I don’t know why I am alive and they are dead? What do I tell them to make them go away?” “Sometimes people need to die to achieve. For a goal to be reached some will die; some will be hurt, and some will never understand. For the greater good. They are words I loath, Duo. How often in the past, in the name of the greater good, have millions died? In the name of the greater good, man abuses man. In the name of the greater good, I screamed my lungs out every night for years, until I understood.” He found his fingers were clenched tight and he relaxed with a visible effort, feeling drained and tired. He only hoped Duo listened and believe. “I understood I was not seeing the dead haunting me. I understood I was not listening to the dead ask me why. I didn’t need to hold on to those horrible words any longer. For the greater good.” He shook his head, a wealth of blonde hair falling over his shoulders. “I didn’t need to see everyone who had died, whether at my hand or not, to know people died. I did not need to be haunted at night, every night, for years on end, to know I had taken part in horrors unimaginable by those who see only what they want to see. When I finished screaming at the dead, when I finished telling them why I had held on to them, there was only Treize there.” Blue eyes were covered by lowered lashes and he whispered. “He was applauding.” Duo found his hands were hurting, so hard was he holding the food pack. The man rugged up in the combined sleeping bags was dead serious. He believed what he said. “That’s just…. Weird, man.” “I choose not to wallow in the past, Duo. I am not one to consider taking my own life though in the past I thought my future would end in death. Eventually it will, though it appears, not yet. I had reached a breaking point. It was better after that. Treize comes and goes through my dreams, but I don’t scream myself hoarse at night. I still have incidents of nightmares, don’t think I am free of them entirely, no one is; not even those who have never known war. My nightmares are no longer haunted by the dead demanding to know why. They are just nightmares, sometimes memories of incidents I deeply regret, but which needed to be done. I know they are dreams, and I have enough control now to know when it gets bad I can stop it. I have the control to say ‘stop’, and mean no more. There are some memories harder to deal with than others, especially the blurred times from when I was too young to affect the outcome of massacre. Those nightmares are different, and not even Treize can help me, only time can; and me retaining control.” “You think if I scream at my dead they will go away?” Ever practical Duo, who could not seem to take the step around fact, into something else. There was an imagination in that bright inquisitive mind. He needed to find it and exercise it, and above all, learn to enjoy it. Zechs smiled gently. “No. Perhaps some might, but screaming does not have to be your way. Telling my dead my life’s history worked for me, and there were times I howled my frustration at them; and other moments when I wept. The dead did not haunt me, I held on to them. I needed to understand that and let them go. You are not me, but the principle will be the same.” Duo scowled. “So why bother telling me about it?” “Because you needed to hear it. We do not ask to be born, Duo. I was born into the Royal Family, it was not something I asked for; unless in some other life, or place, these things can be arranged.” He grinned at Duo’s glare. “I did not ask for it any more than you asked to be born to L2.” “Well, that much is fact.” Duo muttered. “Have a little faith. Embrace your imagination. It is a release from the everyday realities we need. It can enable you to look at things from a wider perspective.” “Never a good thing on the streets. Here and now, the next meal, a place to sleep that was safe. That was your concern on the streets.” “You are not on the streets now.” He murmured. “I did not ask to survive the massacre of Sanc, but I did. I can dimly recall my nurse telling me we are born for a reason, and we die for a reason. Sometimes we never understand why things happen the way they do, and other times we see all too clearly. No two people live the same life, but there are some things we can do to help others. We can help or harm, that is our choice.” Duo met the intense blue gaze and this time he did not look away. “I fought to bring Peace to the colonies.” “I fought for Peace for everyone. Next time your dead visit you, talk to them. Don’t run from them; don’t hide. You may find those amongst them who are not there to ask that infernal ‘why’. They are the ones who will be there to help you deal with it; the one’s who will be there when the masses are gone.” “Kushrenada was there for you?” “Yes. Otto and Walker as well. They are names of people you don’t know, but they were my friends and colleagues, and it seems even in death, they cared. Don’t run from your dead next time. Assert your authority in the dreamscape and stop the chaos. Bring it to order. When you have done that, you can face them. Have you ever tried to see individual faces in the crowd demanding your attention?” “No.” Duo whispered. “Then try. You might be surprised.” He was surprised, but not about his dead. He was surprised Marquise would talk to him like this.
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