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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 5 “I wonder how spiders survive such weather?” The howling wailed eerily and Duo suppressed a shiver Just listening to the wind seemed to lower his temperature to uncomfortable levels. “Maybe it takes something like this to make a person notice the smaller mysteries of life.” Duo knelt in the entrance to the tent, torch raised to illuminate the ceiling of the room. Cobwebs spanned the ceiling from corner to corner, hanging in broken strands, waving in draughts penetrating the hut. Broken and tattered victims to the human invasion of their isolated realm, the webs might have been restless ghosts in the darkness. While there were plenty of spider webs in evidence there was a noted dearth of actual Spiders. Duo sighed as he withdrew into the tent and zipped the flap. Settling back to his place beside the unconscious man he wondered if screaming at the top of his lungs would stir Marquise to wakefulness. He was bored. He was so bored he was beginning to frighten himself. He checked the intravenous drip and moved on to check his patient had a pulse. “Sucks to be trapped here in this weather, man. Can’t even play a vid game.” He was bored and desperate to distract himself and finding anything to talk to Marquise about, even though he knew there would be no answer. He had nattered on about a hole in his best pair of socks and the artistic darning he had accomplished to retain the use of them. He had commented on the last seven meals he had eaten, the amount of washing powder on the market now containing enzymes, and how unfair it was his preferred band of powder had changed to an enzyme based formula. He had discovered he was susceptible to being eaten by the enzymes in washing powder. Not even excessive rinsing of his clothes after determining what it was giving him a rash had stopped the allergic reaction. Just talking about the rash set him to scratching and he had decided a change of subject was in order. He had broached the matter of DeathScythe’s penchant for pulling right when submerged in water. He had smiled when he thought of his mobile suit, knowing the other man, had he been awake, would understand his longing for what had been a friend. Most people saw only a robotic exo-suit, though calling DeathSythe that was hardly doing justice to the mechanics of the Mobile Suit. Another elite pilot could understand just what a suit such as the Gundam meant to him. Marquise would understand. They were an elite group, the men and few women who had piloted Mobile Suits. Be they Alliance, Oz, Oz Specials or rebels, only the best had found themselves in the cockpit of multi million credit mechanical wonders. He missed DeathScythe. Thinking of the suit had brought to mind a memory he duly shared with Marquise, unconcerned the man was unconscious. The cobwebs strewn about the building had brought the memory of the spider he had found spinning a web in the cockpit. It was an odd thing to remember, given all he had survived with his mechanical friend, that one little brown spider he had given short shrift to for daring to invade his territory. It was the memory of the small brown creature which had caused him to break the seal on the tent and stare at the webs. Where did spiders go when the weather turned this bitter? “If there was room enough for me to fit, and it was warm, I’d be inclined to join them.” He stretched slowly and blessed his thermal underwear without which he would surely be a Popsicle. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been this cold before. That’s saying something because space is cold, much colder than Earth. You can’t get much colder than absolutely nothing, you know, and that is what space is… nothing. An abundance of nothing.” He spoke directly to Marquise, rubbing his gloved hands together vigorously in an attempt to gain a little warmth. “Well, not quite true, I guess. There are planets in space; asteroids and dust floating around. There are dozens of moons and one should not forget the colonies.” Isolated fully self contained habitats designed to preserve the human species and there were gases and debris from the very active sun that heated this world. Millions of people lived their lives completely unaware of the little dramas in the cosmic order which could wipe them out with little warning. Duo scratched at his chin. “Well, damn, where did that come from? I guess that exhausts that conversation. I don’t think either of us is up to a heavy discussion on the life and times of a Solar Flare.” He was doing it again. Bored out of his brain he was reaching for anything and everything to rescue his sanity. Fingers flicked against his knee in rapid succession, a growing beat; a nervous mannerism he had not used for years. It was a carry over from his days on the streets of L2 and with a great effort he planted his hands firmly on his knees. “Will you hurry up and wake up and talk to me, damn it?” It was barely three minutes before Duo gave up trying to keep his hands still. He found himself flicking his braid about the tent, using it in a manner reminiscent of fly fishing until that too bored him, a process which took only a few minutes. The night was dragging by and if not for his watch he might have thought it daylight already beyond their shelter. Minutes crept like hours and the hands of his watch barely moved. “You are not the talkative sort, Marquise, but you sure are pretty to look at. Which is just as well because the walls of this tent are damn boring.” Silence but for howling wind, he sighed and found his fingers plucking at the tie on the end of his braid. “Sooo, then… What are we going to talk about to while away the hours, hmm?” His fingers crept across his knee to finger the gossamer fine strands of pale hair resting within easy reach of him. “What shampoo do you use? Bet you go through loads of conditioner. I do. I always use more conditioner than shampoo.” His fingers combed experimentally through the long pale mane and he ran the strands over his sensitive fingertips, feeling for any remaining residue of the conditioner used. “You rinse well. What kind of brush do you use?” Not waiting for an answer and certainly not expecting to get one, Duo proceeded to gather up a long hank of hair, bending forward to examine the heavy lock in the poor lighting. “Your hair is finer than mine to feel. Lighter, but you have so much of it.” He gathered up the silver strands tinted gold by the lantern and allowed it to slip between his fingers, watching it fall in a constant flowing cascade. “Very fine. Ever had a problem with fly away hair? Sure you have. And I bet you have a frizz problem. Do damp days get your hair frizzy? I know what bad hair days are like. Man, do I know what a bad hair day is!” Duo sighed and sat back. “You are a veritable font of wisdom on hair care. You regularly trim your ends too; no sign of split ends. Do you ever gel? Trowa gels all the time and I want to know what secret formula he uses. Did you know not even the g forces in lift off from Earth flatten that forelock of his? Makes me want to try bouncing things off it to see how far they will rebound.” Duo sighed and wondered if it was too soon to make himself another soup pack. He had limited hot packs and he really should conserve them. The chopper had been equipped with sufficient survival rations for a crew of five to last three days, but given he was locked in by a mountain blizzard he was not inclined to waste the resource. Blizzards here had been known to blow for a week or more. He wished he was not alone in the night with the unconscious man. If Trowa at least had accompanied him… Quatre was the only one who knew he had come. Given the extreme weather conditions and their refusal to head into the blizzard, he felt sure the others would have expected him to back down. He would need to ensure no one blamed Quatre for his decision. Trowa at least of the three might have a few harsh words to say to Quatre for providing him with the means to accomplish this rescue. “Not that any of them seem to care too much about what I do. I’m pretty much a wild card. I do what I want, when I want, and to hell with what anyone says. That’s why I’m not so keen on being a Preventer. Being this independent has its perks, but it sure as hell has its downside.” Sitting and twiddling his thumbs had never been a favourite pastime. The exception had been when he had had his Gundam. He had liked to sit quietly in Scythe and just float in space, completely unseen. “I liked that, you know? Sitting in the darkness, with only life support and stealth mode active. Seemed someone was always after me and I got no down time unless I went into space and hid. G was mad as hell with me when I sat outside the resource satellite for fifteen hours straight once. Hell, I can’t even recall what I was in a snit about.” He ran his braid slowly through the fingers of his right hand, considering the memory which seemed to belong to another person in another lifetime. “Can’t have been too important if I can’t remember what it was. You know, contrary to popular belief I don’t like to talk just to hear the sound of my own voice. I keep hoping I will get an intelligent answer. You know something a bit different to ‘baka’, ‘shut up, Maxwell’ or ‘hnnn’. “ Duo sighed and wound his braid around his hand before unwinding it only to wind it again. “Real talkative bunch, the other pilots. Half the time Trowa just looks at me and Chang is inclined to walk out or threaten to cut off my braid if I don’t shut up.” He snorted softly and unwound his hair, fingering the long rope. “What’s with his thing about my hair, anyway? They’re a great bunch of guys in a tight spot but sometimes I think they are socially challenged to the point of being… well… Ah hell. Quatre doesn’t tell me to shut up; he understands about ‘feelings’ too. He has them all the time. Not your everyday run of the mill feelings, you understand, but the sort that brought me out here chasing down your sorry butt.” The wind howled and the hut creaked alarmingly and Duo shuddered, wishing Marquise was conscious so he need not feel so alone. Natural weather was simply beyond his experience. “He’s running that multi billion credit monster called Winner Enterprises so I don’t see him nearly as much as I would like. He’s the richest man in the Earth Sphere… if he’s not he must be just about at the top of the list. He works the most incredibly long hours and he’s regained most of the company after it was divided up during the war. That happened after his dad died.” He scowled, clenching his hands into fists. “That was a bad business. People can be so fickle. They turned on his dad and sucked up to Oz. Why do people only ever see what they want to see, and not what is really in front of them?” Duo glared at the still form beneath the lantern, willing him to at least twitch. “Hope I’m not boring you. This has so got to be the longest day I’ve ever lived through and let me tell you, I’ve lived through a lot of long days. Some days on L2 seemed to go on forever, but at least I wasn’t freezing my arse off. Even the streets of L2 were warmer than this.” Picking up the empty cup resting on Marquise chest, Duo rolled it from hand to hand before setting it on the floor beside him. Playing with the tail of his braid for a few minutes and then a round of blowing at his ragged fringe occupied a few more seconds. The silence grated on his nerves. The wind howled and the shack rattled and he could hear the ice coating the structure cracking. “I have got to talk to someone or I’ll go bonkers, honest. Sorry, but you are it. I can keep quiet, in fact I like to be quiet, but I don’t have a reputation for it. Quite the contrary. They all think I’m a chatterbox, that I don’t know when to shut up and that it is impossible for me to go two minutes without saying something. Don’t know what gives them that impression.” He shivered at a particularly threatening crack from beyond the shelter of the tent. “Sorry for bending your ear, I just don’t like storms. I think it’s the wind. We don’t have real weather on the colonies. Every now and then on L2 the climate control would break down and all sorts of weird things would happen. It would even snow sometimes, because the environmental unit would get clogged with pollution and it could take days to fix. It wasn’t as cold as this though, but in the slums a lot of us died. That was just par for the course.” He shivered wishing the building had not looked so ramshackle. He would feel safer if he could be sure the roof was not about to fall on him. “If there was wind on the colonies it was likely to mean a hull breach and we could be sucked out into space. Feel a breeze on your face and if you are colony born you tend to look for the closest shelter. Maybe that is why I have this thing about wind. Not exactly fear, you understand, just… wariness. The first real storm I lived through on Earth frightened shit out of me. Living on a planet takes some getting used to, but I guess its okay. At least a wind does not mean you are going to eat space. It’s better than L2’s back streets. Mind you, Earth’s cities have their back streets.” He was getting dry in the throat and sighed. He would end up talking himself hoarse. “I can hide in back streets, no matter where I am. They feel like home. I hated it, you know, but I can’t get them out of my head… or my blood. I was a street rat, but I don’t know what I am now. I don’t remember anything before the streets and Solo, but I know there was more. I sometimes have this flash of hair. It’s like mine but there is like a scent I remember… it was my mum. Don’t laugh, I can’t help it. It is sort of nice to know I had a mother. Gives me warm fuzzies.” He stared at his watch face, knowing beyond the hut it would be approaching dawn. From the howl of the wind there would be no let up in the storm, and all he could do was hope the snow did not bury the helicopter. “I don’t have a lot of warm fuzzy moments to remember, so I treasure the few I do recall. Like when I would sit in Scythe and let the silence fill me. It would either quiet the nagging feeling that said I had to be somewhere, or make it clearer so I could get it done and be free of it. I had other feelings than the one that got my butt out here to rescue you. Some were good, others bad… real bad. I answer the feeling when it comes because it’s not usually so bad if I responded quickly.” Duo shivered and pulled his arms tight to his chest, rubbing his cheek against his shoulder as he remembered past occasions when he had answered the incessant feeling. He did not want to remember some of those instances, and he had discovered it helped to talk to Quatre. “I used to like sitting in Scythe. Not just in space, but here on Earth too. I’d find a quiet place somewhere; hide my buddy and just sit there, listening to the silence. Scythe always listened if I had anything to say, but he understood the silence too. Never judged me and found me wanting, you know? Scythe was my buddy. I trusted him. Was Tallgeese a he or a she to you? Scythe was a he, I’m sure of that. Howard says all mechanicals are she but Scythe was definitely a he. What about Epyon?” Marquise did not so much as twitch, but Duo felt he had gained the unconscious man’s attention. Something seemed a little different and he could not put his finger on what, but he sucked in a deep breath. Someone had told him once that an unconscious or comatose patient could hear everything said to them, and often it was the voice that could draw them back. If he was getting through to Marquise, that was good. “That was a wicked scary bitch of a machine. Heero won’t talk about flying Epyon. He’s not easy to spook, you know, but Epyon spooked him. It seemed alive whenever I saw it. I could always feel Deathscythe and he seemed alive to me. He felt strong and warm and safe and don’t you go thinking I’m a wuss because I said that. It is true, Scythe felt like… my best friend. Like… home.” He sighed. It was as close to describing what he had felt for the Gundam as he could possibly put into words. DeathScythe had never been just a matter of circuits and mechanics to him. “What did Epyon feel like to you? I tested the Zero system once, you know? Man; that was so not cool. How Heero could use it… I still have nightmares about the test. I refused to use it, but when you are a prisoner you sure as hell don’t have much of a say in it. I’m glad it was never installed in Scythe. Zero sent Quatre around the twist and I felt like it was eating into my brain.” He scowled at the flickering light of the lantern and reached to adjust the wick. “It doesn’t make me a wimp, you know. Just sensible. I don’t like anyone or anything messing with my head, and I feel the heebie-jeebies just thinking about Zero. There are days I can feel it inside my head, the cold chill and the weirdness that hit me just before the visions started.” He rubbed his hands together slowly, staring into nothing and feeling the creeping tendrils yet again. If he slept he would have nightmares of the Zero system, and suddenly he wanted to stay awake. “It lied, you know? Zero could show mathematical probability equations and display them as visions formulated through its AI unit. Machine intelligence can not respond as accurately as human intelligence to a given set of circumstances. The day a machine decides it knows more than I do about surviving, is the day I crawl in a hole and die. Zero should never have been built. It lied and so did Epyon.” “No. Truth.” The rasping whisper seemed loud in the confines of the tent. End
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