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"So Say Goodbye"Written By: Miss Murdered Disclaimer: As always, I don't own GW and I make
no claim to it… Rating: NC 17 Warnings: Angst alert! deathfic, yaoi with references
to m/m sexual relations, my usual smattering of swearing, older pilots
(28) Pairings: 3x2x3, a hinted 1+2 and 4+3 Summary: After Trowa puts himself in the line of fire on a Preventer mission, he is forced into seeking professional help from a psychologist – who happens to be a certain Dr. Chang. Through four sessions, Trowa explores his feelings towards the other pilots and the one he loved and lost… A/N: This fic is four parts – four psychologist's
appointments. Inspired by the song Waiting… by City and Colour
which is a beautiful and amazing song. I highly recommend listening
to it as it shows where the whole fic came from and because Dallas
Green's voice is spine tingly good. Big thanks to Elle for her beta job on this one
- sorry for all the angst! "So Say Goodbye" ~ Session Two ~ Oh, It's the Little Things you Miss The choices of tea were confusing. Trowa stood behind a pair of young women ordering some coffee concoction that was more foam and milk and chocolate than actual coffee. He looked at the menu on a chalkboard and just decided to make a guess. He didn't drink tea. Hardly drank coffee anymore but if he was it would be strong and black. Hell, he hardly drank alcohol anymore. Twenty eight was perhaps the point in life when drinking to the point of fuzzy blurriness no longer held the same pleasure. Trowa really wasn't sure but couldn't really remember the last time he'd got hammered. Oh shit. He could. After Quatre's call. "Can I help you, sir?" The barista was chirpy and smiley. And generally, Trowa's disposition at this time in the morning was not so chipper. He ordered drinks without being rude - no small feat and managed not to bite back at the questions about loyalty cards and larger sizes. He went for oolong tea. He had no idea if Wufei drank that type of tea but knew he drank tea - remembered it, like Quatre was always tea. He could remember Duo's drinks of choice but most of them were alcoholic. Rum and coke if they were mixing though it had to be decent rum and then bourbon straight. Decent beers - not piss water or light and sometimes that was a challenge. If he stayed over, black coffee or espresso, the morning after. Not tea. Never tea. The drinks were handed over in a cardboard container and Trowa decided to tip. Maybe he was in a better mood than usual on a Tuesday morning prior to ten a.m. The coffee shop was a short distance from Dr. Chang's office and the day was warm - the colony temperature system at a pleasant sixty degrees. He'd worn a sweater, the black wool bobbling as it was old and something he barely wore anymore. Probably a Christmas or birthday present off Catherine. She liked to buy him clothes and they were always very practical and boring. The v neck exposed some of the chemical burn but he decided long ago he wasn't going to spend his entire life in turtlenecks. He wasn't going to go back to that now. He entered the building, signed in and walked up to the waiting room without asking where he needed to go. The room looked identical - same magazines even. He thought about making a comment about changing them as there was a sense of déjà-vu sitting in the waiting room. Today, he didn't get time to take a seat as the door to the office was open. "Barton." This time Wufei didn't get up. He was sat behind the large desk, typing quickly on the computer and glanced up at Trowa who nodded. "I will be one moment. Make yourself comfortable." Trowa did. Separated his own Americano coffee out of the cardboard container and took an experimental sip - it was hot but not too hot. The time taken to walk the short distance had cooled it enough to be drinkable. He needed caffeine - being given free time was not something that suited him and even with the doctors' appointments and check-ups for his wounds, he was bored and listless. He'd cleaned his apartment, contemplated painting the bathroom and tried to read. His sleeping patterns were completely sporadic since the stay in hospital. They had given him a plentiful supply of drugs that had made him hazy, blurry and sleepy and since coming off them and having nothing useful to do with himself, he'd spent the weeks since discharge sleeping fitfully whenever he felt like it and staying awake most nights. Last night he'd not slept - tried to go to bed at a normal hour but given up, smoked a little having found some of Duo's old cigarettes hidden in the couch cushion and sat at the window as a spring rain cycle rushed though the colony. Wufei completed his typing and got up from his desk, noticing the paper cup and cardboard container. "A peace offering, Barton?" "Bribery, maybe," he replied with a shrug, taking another sip of his own coffee. "Didn't know what tea you drank, went for oolong." "Oolong is fine." He took the tea and opened the lid to remove the tea bag, throwing that in the trash before taking his seat. "The appointment is earlier." "Yes, my usual patient attempted to kill herself this week so I moved my slots around." Trowa's eyes narrowed at the casual and matter of fact tone. He was pretty sure he was using the circumstances of that patient, whether true or not, to start the session on the topic of suicide. A topic he was unwilling to speak of. Wasn't relevant. "I thought there was doctor/patient confidentiality." "There is but I feel shock therapy is probably the only thing that will work on you." Wufei drank some tea, studying Trowa through the steam for any reactions. "Thank you for the tea. It is all so very... civil for you." "You don't think I'm civil?" "You only have ever been civil to people when necessary. The rest you ignore or refuse to speak to." "Fine." "Fine?" "I'll not be civil to you. I'll ignore you for the rest of the sessions." He got a harsh laugh for that. Wufei had that weird look in his eyes again - a look of triumph. Trowa wondered if he was working out his reactions - assessing how far he could push things still. He watched him closely, those uncomfortable x-ray black eyes taking everything in, and he was starting to hate it. "You're covering your wounds today." "Yeah, I decided to wear a sweater. Big deal." "It's black." "It's a sweater," he replied, blandly. "Black - the colour of mourning." "I'm not in mourning." "Duo wore black." Trowa rolled his eyes - a very Duo-like gesture. True, Duo had been in black for the first war and mostly for the Eve War but that was fifteen and sixteen year old Duo. The young man he became didn't stick to the black as much, tended to have that old school Americana thing going for him - all scruffy old Levi's and checked shirts with tanks underneath. Tattoos of swallows and anchors that the Sweepers had drunkenly got him to have during poker games - never bet Duo Maxwell to do anything, something that Trowa learnt, as he will follow through. There had been a drinking contest that he still didn't remember. Something about celebrating twenty firsts - around the time he was close to getting enough money to buy the wreck that became the Helen. Trowa remembered throwing up and sleeping on a hotel floor in his own vomit. He never bet Duo to anything again. Still didn't understand how he could be drunk under the table by Duo - he was far too skinny to absorb all the alcohol. Never understood. "I don't want to talk about Duo." "Then we talk about Agent Skylark." "Fine." "How long have you been partnered with Agent Skylark?" "Six months." "And your feelings towards her?" "She's young. She's all fresh academy bullshit." That was unfair. He knew it was but then Meaghan wasn't there and would never know what he said. He'd spent his first few years in the Preventers in deep cover assignments where morality and assignments verged into a grey area. However, it was decided that undercover operatives should only have a limited service time due to the demanding and dangerous line of work. Trowa had been moved to standard agent duty at twenty four and worked in the anti-terrorism unit. It meant he had a desk. "You have a desk? That, like, makes you Mr 9 til 5. Tro, it's like you're domesticated and shit." Duo was laid across his chest, his braid still trailing down and for some reason Trowa had wrapped the end round his hand a few times, almost like some kind of leash. "I don't know why I tell you anything. I get sarcasm." "You love my sarcasm." Lips met his and Trowa ran a hand down Duo's back, feeling the bumps of his spine, each bone in relief against skin. He felt movement behind closed eyes as a body straddled him and Trowa opened his mouth more to permit more tongue, more breath, more anything as it became more heated. This was easy between them - it was conversation and anything else that was hard. They parted and Duo was looking into his eyes. "Wanna go again?" "Yeah." "Gotta love your recovery time, Tro." He moved quickly enough to get a slight grunt of surprise from Duo - only a momentary thing as he reversed their position and had him pinned underneath his own body swiftly. "You only want me for this...." Trowa said. Lips met neck, trailing a pattern with a slight scraping of teeth. "No, I want you for your amazing conversation skills." Trowa couldn't help the laugh. He couldn't actually remember the last time he'd laughed but there he was - Duo looked concerned for a second and put a hand to his forehead. "Are you sick or something or did I actually just make you laugh?" "I can laugh I just choose not to do it often." Duo's mouth opened again to say something but those words were halted by a tongue and then fingers trailing downwards - searchingly and knowingly flicking certain spots and then further downwards to where there was still slickness from their recent fuck. As Trowa slid one finger inside, he couldn't help a small smirk as the man underneath him made an incoherent sound but no words. There had always been one way very effective way to make Duo stop joking. It took a moment to return to his present after the intense haze of another memory. He wasn't meant to be thinking about Duo but somehow it all came back to him at inappropriate times - little things while he seemed to be already losing other more important moments. But he wasn't meant to be thinking about Duo - he was meant to be thinking about Meaghan, no fucking Agent Skylark, as her codename dictated. Agent Skylark, he frowned at the codename. Trowa had done enough time in the Preventers to have gone through numerous code names - currently it was Wolf and that was fine. He'd had so many particularly awful ones over the years that Wolf was damn near likeable. Tended always to be animals for him, suspected the superiors had linked his past as part time lion tamer and gave his code names as some kind of amusement. Skylark suited Meaghan - young, innocent, yet to have spent the ten years wading through terrorist cells and criminals and the garden variety whack jobs. He knew he'd been teamed up with her due to his decade of experience in the Preventers but to a veteran, working with a rookie was an irritant. Trowa knew he wasn't the most sociable person in the world anyway. Give him a rookie who asked a million questions and it was a recipe for near constant grouchiness. He supposed his commanding officers saw him becoming more belligerent in his relative old age and needed a bright young thing to make him less cynical. But damn, did she have to talk so much? Very much like a fifteen year old Duo Maxwell, he supposed, the boy that he'd been not the man he became. "Why are you so protective of Agent Skylark? In your file, it mentions various incidents of events where you either ordered her to retreat or stepped in her way in dangerous situations." Trowa shrugged in an automatic response but recognised the severe glare over the top of the rimless glasses. He took a sip of his coffee and contemplated the answer. "She's young." The criticism was probably a little trite from someone who was a mercenary from as early as he could remember - had fought two wars by the time he was sixteen but she seemed younger than the eight or so year age gap. "Are you sleeping with Skylark?" The question almost made him choke on his last swallow of brown liquid and he put the cup down. "No." "Then you must associate her as someone you need to protect. You were very protective of Catherine during the wars." "She's young," he answered, stubbornly, sticking to his one answer strategy. He sighed and elaborated. "She's a rookie. Idealistic. Stupid sometimes." "Stupid?" The word sounded harsh repeated back in the clinical Dr. Chang method. "Just reckless." "Like Duo?" "I don't -" "Yes, I believe we've had this conversation twice already in these sessions. I know you don't want to talk about Duo but I believe that we have to." A grunt was all that Wufei got in response. Trowa's eyes drifted towards the window and the greenness of the L1 park. "You didn't talk to the others." It wasn't a question, Trowa knew that, it was a statement. He'd tried to call Quatre. Not very hard but had tried to make contact. Called and got through to a secretary or PA or something and left a vague message that may have made him sound like a crackpot. Probably didn't pass it on. But then he really hadn't wanted to talk to Quatre - went out of his way to avoid him these days, not that they had fallen out or anything, just that Quatre still had that art of seeing past the masks and shadows that he used to distract and avoid emotional connections. "I tried to call Quatre." The words sounded lame. He had time, damn, he had nothing but time, he could call the private residence number he had, he could call at the right hours and work out the time zone on whichever L4 colony he was on - whichever mining satellite he was working on or whatever he was doing right now. "Tried?" "I called a few times." "And Yuy?" "No," he said, automatically, the abruptness of his response startling Wufei. He could hear Duo's voice in his head for some reason. "Hostile much, Tro?" Something like that. Telling him he was being aggressive for no reason. "We don't get on very well - not since he became aware of my relationship with Duo." "I wasn't aware." Trowa defaulted to shrugging and stretching back a little more in the chair. "Heero felt I used Duo." He knew Wufei was going to prod now - gave him an opening that he wouldn't have expected. Maybe explained why Trowa withdrew entirely from social events that required the five of them to be in a room together so long ago. Maybe explained a lot. "How would you classify your relationship with Heero?" He noted the shift from surname to Christian name with a little quirk of his lips. "Okay up until..." "You started sleeping with Duo?" Wufei offered. "It wasn't any of his business." "He was Duo's best friend." Trowa shook his head - it sounded juvenile discussing Heero Yuy and Duo Maxwell as "best friends" - made them sound like they should be baking cookies together and having sleeping overs, painting each other's nails and braiding each other's hair. Though, he supposed, that would have been possible on Duo's part until three years ago. "You reject that statement." "No, it just makes them sound like ten year old girls." He got a slight hint of a smile for that. Seemed Wufei realised the childishness of the statement. "I'll rephrase - they were always close. Did you ever feel threatened?" Green eyes blinked. "Threatened?" "Did you feel that you competed in Duo's affections with Heero?" "No." "He spent three weeks aboard the Helen during the divorce proceedings." He didn't need to remember that - didn't need to remember Duo being in his apartment when the world's perfect marriage imploded or exploded or whatever it had done. Knew Duo was using his vid phone almost constantly for three days, they didn't even fuck much that weekend and he'd had a vague boiling anger towards Heero as he occupied Duo's time with woe-is-me crap that he wouldn't have believed possible of the wartime Perfect Soldier. Then the divorce came and with it the three weeks aboard the Helen. He remembered the shifty attitude Duo had adopted as he explained that Heero needed to be away from it - the press, Sanc and all the hangers on. How he needed a friend and to be away from it all. "Why do you care what I think?" "Jesus, Tro, because you and Heero hate each other because of some macho bullshit thing and I don't want you to get pissy about this." He was packing up - shirts and t-shirts and spare pairs of boxers all going in the grey duffle. Trowa leaned against the doorway, arms folded across his broad chest and observing the way Duo moved - the unconscious things he did. A hand that always pushed those slightly too long bits of bangs away from his face, how he moved still with that fluidity that suggested those long repressed stealth skills - how the braid slowly trailed as he moved. He never knew what to say to Duo - never knew the right thing. Should say something about how he was an insecure jerk who thought that as soon as Heero divorced the princess, he might try to fuck his best friend despite the whole straight thing. All he'd get was the same line, a roll of eyes, perhaps even a fucking pout and a glare - "Heero's straight" and that was the end of the conversation. Trowa wanted to have a conversation. Mention that maybe after four years it was time to become exclusive or whatever. Discuss the fact he was insecure as he struggled to see why Duo still came - still stopped in L1 cluster whenever he could - they were long past the early stages of it being all about fucking and endorphins and that desperate wanting that happened in those first few months of a relationship. He'd even stopped screwing around. That phase was probably over anyway - it got old sleeping with girls who didn't remember his name. Always tended to be chicks, felt vaguely like cheating if it was another man - sure there was something in that twisted psychology that Wufei would enjoy when Trowa thought about it now. But he hadn't said anything. "I was fine with it." "Really? For someone who suggests that the relationship was sexual and nonexclusive, you seem to have issues with possessiveness." Did he? He probably did. He shrugged non-committedly. He didn't know how to answer that and decided to look out the window instead. He supposed he felt, maybe, just left out. Always felt on the edge of the other pilots despite Duo's attempts. He'd retreated from them when he joined the Preventers being the only one that had continued to kill after the wars - thought they looked at him as the black sheep of their fucked up little family. The one who didn't give up the weapon. Heero with his marriage to the Queen of Peace, Duo with the Helen, Quatre with his family business and politics and Wufei with his degrees and education. It was only Trowa who'd not moved on, still a solider just this time he wore a uniform and had a badge rather than piloted a Gundam. "We never defined the relationship. I never knew where I stood." The honesty of the answer startled even Trowa. It was the crux of it. He never knew what it was - never knew if it was just fucking or if it had developed into something more over the years. "You were worried he'd leave you. Betray you." "I've been betrayed before." Wufei nodded solemnly. "We all have." Trowa blinked and met Wufei's eye, they all remembered bitterly being betrayed by the colonies and being isolated and only them but they all had their own moments of personal betrayal. He carried his own tightly to his chest. Still thought about his old captain. The one merc group that didn't treat him badly - they were drunkards and assholes but they weren't bad. It had been as near as family as he'd ever become - even Catherine paled in comparison to that solidarity in his formative years. They waited, sat suspended in the moment until Wufei cleared his throat to indicate the time and alert Trowa to the end of the session. It had seemed less painful in some ways and more so in others. "I want you to meet with Quatre before the next session. I will call and arrange it if you do not, Barton." "I can arrange my own life." "I am aware of that but you have always needed... shall we say a push to do anything you do not want to do." "I'll call him." "Good." Trowa rose from his seat, grabbing the empty coffee cup and the cardboard holder to deposit in the trash on his way out. Wufei watched his deliberate actions and didn't leave his chair. "I will call Winner myself if you don't," he said in warning. He had no comeback for it so instead he just nodded and left the room to see the next patient sitting outside reading a magazine and left with a heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach at the call he had to damn well make.
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