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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 Four ~ So Say Goodbye to Love Trowa's apartment had not been broken into with frequency since Duo's death but he recognised the tell-tale signs of someone having entered without his consent. With Duo no longer in the picture, it meant it could only be one other man. After all, he'd managed to meet and have a civil conversation with Quatre. But he hadn't seen - "Heero." The dark haired man nodded in greeting. "Trowa." Heero Yuy looked like the man that he tried to ignore on posters and vid feeds. All suit and still slightly messy dark hair, still standing very straight backed like he never quite got over being the soldier. Didn't slouch like Trowa did - still held himself like he was ready to bring out a gun and fight at a moment's notice. Trowa knew he wouldn't - Heero had vowed at the end of the Eve War he would never kill again and as far as he was aware, he never had. Supposed he couldn't when he married the Queen of Pacifism only to divorce her four years later. It had always pissed Trowa off that Heero judged his own relationship with Duo when he pretty much fucked up his only significant romantic relationship within such a short time period. Maybe Trowa had never declared undying love for Duo Maxwell but hell, Duo hadn't either or seemingly wanted it. But then they had spent eight years screwing around in a parody of a monogamous and happy relationship. Trowa observed that Heero hadn't made himself at all comfortable in his home. Hadn't even turned on the light as the day cycle started to darken. He'd gotten used to Duo breaking into his apartment and finding him in the shower, or on his couch, or if he was particularly lucky in that visit, waiting in bed but then they were fucking and they were comfortable with one another - something Trowa supposed he'd ignored. Supposed he never realised that he didn't react at all when Duo invaded his home or his personal space. Heero didn't try to ingratiate into the space, just stood by the window. Trowa flicked on the lights - vaguely glad his boredom threshold on his leave of absence meant his apartment wasn't the complete train wreck it usually was. The lighting illuminated the main living area and the kitchenette and Trowa walked towards the fridge. "Beer?" "No." He didn't expect Heero to accept but he pulled one out of the newly purchased six-pack and flipped it open on the edge of the counter. Heero didn't do alcohol often. Trowa could never quite understand how he could be so close to Duo without drinking. Their own relationship had a reliance on intoxication. And sex. Suppose there had been little else but that. Vaguely depressing. He took a sip and realised that he was being watched very closely - seemed Heero had the same searching eyes as Wufei. Years hadn't blunted the severe quality of his face - really only made him seem harsher somehow. It seemed that they must use make up or photoshopping for some of his campaign vids - he looked almost happy in those. "Do you want to sit down?" The faux politeness was not lost on Heero. He quite frankly would like to throw Heero Yuy out of his apartment - have the fight that had bubbled up over the past few years. Trowa was pretty certain he could take Heero in a fist fight - knew that Heero was now a politician and he was an active Preventer with constant mission action as well as his hours in the gym. It would be childish but Trowa had always wanted to measure himself against Heero. It was so long ago but he could remember admiring Heero during the war, wanting to be so like him and able to do what he did. Wanting the glorious ending of self-destruction and finally becoming the nothing he'd always been. He'd listened to every word - held onto the following emotions line as long as he could but now he was sure it was bullshit. He was sure that the following emotions thing had not seen Heero so well - standing in front of him now, twenty eight, divorced and running for L1 senate as some kind of pay back to a bitch of an ex-wife. Or so he figured. Couldn't imagine why else Heero would run for senate unless it was to piss Miss Pink off - though he knew from Duo that the divorce had been amicable. Suppose he'd not cared enough to ask anything about it. "No, I'm not going to be here long," Heero said. "Fine," Trowa answered. He didn't take a seat himself - instead he leaned a little against the kitchen counter and took a sip of beer. "You didn't come to the funeral." "It was bullshit. He didn't want that." "I followed his wishes." "Bullshit." "Believe what you want, Barton. You were just fucking him." The temptation was to throw the bottle, knowing his aim was perfect from his time in the circus and his own knife throwing exploits. Heero didn't move and didn't show any tension in his own body as Trowa had automatically found himself tensing as though ready to fight. He would love to fight Heero - knew he would enjoy trying to beat him to a pulp but they'd probably not know when to stop. It would be some kind of sick fight for the honour of someone who was dead - the best friend and the lover and it made no fucking sense. Plus Duo would've hated it. Hated Heero's overprotective shit and opinions on Trowa. Hated Trowa's belief that Heero was somehow still trying to get into his pants despite the constant protests of him being straight. "Is that all you wanted, Yuy?" "Chang said we should talk. Your therapy." "Fuck my therapy. I don't want to talk to you." If it hadn't been blatantly obvious that Heero was unwanted, which he'd probably known he wasn't from the moment Trowa opened the door, then it was more than obvious now. "You never followed my advice," Heero said, quietly, adjusting his coat as though readying to leave. Trowa only shrugged. Always hated when Heero became a bit of a self-satisfied jerk - sure he would make a good senator - he could be trained by a campaign team to be smug and as irritating as the rest of them. "You never followed your emotions." "Get out." "You loved him." His teeth gritted and his jaw ground as he met those cold blue eyes. "He loved you. You should've worked it out, Barton." "Get out." "I'm leaving." He walked past and stopped for a moment at Trowa's side - not making eye contact as he removed a box from his pocket. "He wanted you to have this." He dropped the box on the kitchen counter - avoiding physical contact and didn't turn back, walking from Trowa's apartment, the door closing ominously behind him. Trowa took another swig of the beer and didn't want to know what the box contained. Not some declaration of love and affection from beyond the grave - Yuy was too cold a bastard to do that. Green eyes glanced at the box and a hand made a motion towards it. It looked almost like a jewellery box but Duo had never worn jewellery - too girly. Took too much bullshit in his years with a braid without wearing "chick shit". The box was heavier than expected in his hand and he placed down his beer on the counter and opened it. The surprising level of solidity was explained by the contents. The scrap of black scorched Gundanium was recognisable. It was some part of Deathscythe Hell. Not sure what as the part was small and undefined but a scrap of Gundanium. A joke probably more than a declaration of love. After all, Trowa had destroyed Deathscythe once - something that Duo never quite forgot even after all those goddamn years. He looked at it for a second and then felt the weirdest sensation in his chest - the bubbling of a laugh, something humorous from the perennial joker. He found himself laughing, alone, slightly psychotically, falling down to his ass and drawing his knees up and laughing. Didn't understand - never understood Duo Maxwell and never would but it was easier to laugh at the cosmic joke of this than hit the crushing reality of Heero's visit. "You loved him" - words from a man who barely knew what love meant. "He loved you." Probably knew that for certain. Probably shared liked good buddies - Heero probably disapproving and wanting Duo to find someone more stable and less likely to rebuff him after a week in his company. The box dropped to the floor - the piece of scorched Gundanium falling onto the linoleum and he could only think - fuck, this would give Change plenty of ammo for his final session. "Do you think he wanted to die?" The question was startling and Trowa found it difficult to respond. His mind replayed moments of Duo's war time utter recklessness and he remembered night time confessions, pillow talk of ex-soldiers. "I didn't wanna survive the war." Trowa remembered those words, uttered in the middle of the night and he nodded. Neither had he. Would have been much easier to have died nameless and hopeless in the rubble of Heavyarms. Would've been better for him to die, floating in space after the battle with Quatre in Wing ZERO. It would have avoided those years of guilt on Quatre's part and all that damn trying that the blonde business man had done over the years to make Trowa less like he was. Least Duo accepted the morose tendencies. His irritability. His unsociable attitude. Supposed Duo was a lot like him underneath the layers of bullshit - after all, he'd picked a career where he spent months alone aboard the Helen. Chosen to be furthest away from the other four both physically and emotionally. And he remembered those last few encounters - he saw it now, Duo had been getting tired, desperate even, a little worn around the edges. The Helen was being held together with duct tape and sheer will and sometimes it seemed that was the same for Duo. Being held together by glue and not much else. But he wouldn't ask, goddamit, wouldn't ask any of them. Not him - if Heero was correct, the man he supposedly loved - and not even Heero who he still idolised despite the fuck up the Perfect Soldier had done of his post war life. That last night - that last weekend, the stop over at the L1 cluster for refuel before the journey to beyond Mars, well, that had shown him. He should've made Duo stay - he realised it now - he was being distant, doing that thing with the smirk and the hand behind his neck. Doing those little tics that surfaced only in stress or battle. It was clear he was agitated and Trowa... he didn't say anything. They'd got caught in the rain cycle as Trowa didn't pay attention to them - newspapers arrived at this apartment and were deposited on the coffee table, usually unread. He glanced at the headlines - saw people he knew and then threw them back down. That night they'd played pool, drank beer and gone home in the middle of the downpour. They'd stripped out of wet clothing, only t-shirts and jeans and the kisses became more passionate until Trowa stepped back, a vague look of rejection in blue eyes as a hand brushed aside the long bangs at the front - still there despite the lack of braid. Still weird to reach for the back of Duo's head and feel the soft short hairs rather than the fall of heavy braided hair. "Want a drink? Whisky?" "Sure." Trowa wasn't sure then why he backed away - why he was putting distance between them but the mood was strange. They'd done everything they normally did - fallen into bed on Duo's arrival and then dressed and eaten at a bar and grill before going to the dive bar with the pool table but Duo wasn't there somehow. Fuck. He hadn't even noticed. And then there was the conversation later that night. Duo had snagged that black sweatshirt Catherine bought him - too big over his slender shoulders - and he was smoking out the window in the living room, leaving Trowa to wake up alone and wondering whether the stealth expert had made an escape. But he was there - leaning against the window as the rain cycle wound down to slowly falling drops as the great mechanism took its time to turn off fully. It always puzzled him in a way but Duo reminded him of his captain from his merc days - it was just the smell of smoke, he supposed, the cigarettes. And that was his moment. His moment to say let's stop screwing around. Let's stop pretending we don't want anything more from each other. Let's try the relationship shit - live in the same place, give up the wreck that the Helen had become despite having the best engineer it could possibility have - you can't repair machines without parts, after all. And Trowa didn't. Just walked over, looped his arms around that slender waist and borrowed the cigarette from those thin fingers before returning it back to Duo. Their lips met briefly, tasted of smoke, whisky and the beginning of morning breath. He smelt of sex as he leant back against Trowa. "You know I didn't wanna survive the war." And he'd nodded. "Neither did I." "You ever think we'd get here?" "In my apartment?" "Nah, nearly thirty." "Got a couple more years." "Yeah but we're now nearer thirty than twenty. Like we're getting old. Grown-ups or something. Time to stop shitting around, I guess." That was the moment - that was the moment and he'd missed it. Duo had been too melancholy. Too thoughtful. Maybe he'd known that The Helen wouldn't survive the run or maybe he knew he wouldn't. And he didn't say anything. Only kissed the back of his neck gently in that juncture that used to be hindered by braid and let him go and went back to bed. Trowa never knew how to deal with Duo like that. But damn it, he realised he'd never even tried. "Do you think he wanted to die?" Wufei's eyes were scanning him closely and Trowa almost felt himself jerk at the question. "He didn't want to survive the war." "The war was thirteen years ago. That is irrelevant." "He was tired." "Tired?" "Started to give up." "Give up on what?" "Maybe us. Maybe his life. I didn't ask." "You never asked?" "I never knew what to say to him." "Do you regret that?" Trowa blinked, suddenly finding something akin to moisture in his eyes. Could only remember crying once before after his destruction of Deathscythe. Seemed his moments of pure emotion were all related to Duo before he even knew that. "Yeah." "I understand you saw Yuy." His eyes gazed out the window, suddenly very conscious of his expression, suddenly wishing he was sixteen again and able to hide behind his bangs and pretend he felt nothing. But he didn't feel nothing. He damn felt everything. All those wasted years - those smiles, that laugh, that body, that understanding - that person who had accepted him as he was. Just as he was. And Duo was gone. "He said I never followed my emotions." He paused and drummed his fingers against his denim clad thigh. "That he loved me. That I loved him." "And what do you think?" "That I loved him. And I never told him." Trowa supposed that was what all these sessions were building up to - for him to admit that he had been in love with Duo Maxwell and his death had been the emotional catalyst for his reckless actions. He expected to see Wufei triumphant - the battle of wits, the warfare over, the game of chess completed - check mate. He didn't look triumphant, he simply removed his glasses and begun to rub them against his white shirt before placing them back on the end of the nose and looking weary, tired, older. He supposed Trowa had been so used to being the one who was being judged and viewed that he hadn't thought about Wufei in this situation. "Did you want to die when the chemical bomb exploded?" "I had..." he corrected himself. "I have nothing to live for. Skylark did." "You have people who care, Barton." "What - you? Yuy? Quatre?" "We neglected you... perhaps we always thought you were better alone. Only Duo didn't see that." They sat in silence and Wufei's glanced towards that clock that indicated they had completed the hour and with that the four sessions. "I feel we have just uncovered the problems, Barton. I feel we should continue these sessions privately." "Are you going to clear me for duty?" "I will clear you but I insist we continue these sessions. You obviously need to analyse your feelings towards Duo's death further." The moisture clung to his eyes but he nodded, wiped a hasty hand across his eyes and for once was glad that Wufei gave him some damn dignity as he was looking away, gone to his desk, looking at forms and papers. "I'd like to see you once a week for the immediate future. I will have to bill you, I'm afraid, but I'm sure you will be able to claim back through your health insurance." Wufei spoke as he ticked forms, signed his name against the bottom of them with a flourish and handed them over. Forms, paperwork, four hours of analysing his feelings reduced to a signature and a tick box that said mentally fit for active duty. The Preventer bureaucracy never ceased to amaze him. "Call me when you return to work to organise appointments around your schedule." "Yeah." Trowa rose to his feet, ready to leave, holding those forms to be handed to the Human Resources staff and fill his already thick personnel file. He didn't know quite what to say. Wufei had removed those glasses and it made him look younger again - more akin to the war time warrior than the careful psychologist and he thought it was appropriate to reach out for his hand, less reluctantly this time. "Thanks." He wasn't sure what he was thanking him for but Wufei nodded, accepted his hand and then said quietly. "We all miss him." And he knew that - knew that from Quatre's distant looks, from Heero's firm belief in doing what he was asked to do and Wufei's words. "We were meant to be five. Never meant to be four," Wufei said, quietly, strained. "Just didn't think he'd go first." And there was nothing left to say as the phone buzzed to inform Dr. Chang of his next appointment. Trowa left, only discovering when he left the office building and was walking down the streets that there was still an unpleasant moisture in his eyes. The shuttle flight had been uncomfortable - Trowa was too tall for commercial shuttles - his limbs too long, his legs cramped into the seats and he'd paid for the standard economy class ticket unable to justify the expenditure for the benefit of leg room. He regretted that as he left the shuttle port carrying only the black duffle over his shoulder and joining the queue for the taxis outside the port. He impatiently tapped his foot. Trowa had too many of these quirks now - realised he didn't stand still anymore, didn't become as emotionless and expressionless as he'd liked to be. Now he moved. Too much time spent around Duo. A cab became available and he instructed the driver of his intended location. The guy nodded, looked at him in the rear view mirror but was not disgusted or horrified by his appearance. His chemical burn was hidden underneath the jacket anyway. He'd raised the collar to hide the burn as the cab met midday traffic. It had been impulse. Cleared for duty from the psychologist and his wounds healing, he would be returning to the Preventers on Monday. It was Thursday and he wanted to do this one final thing before he went back to work. He'd booked the first shuttle available to the L2 cluster and cared little for the time. He'd packed only a few items in his carry on and departed his apartment, grabbing the small shard of Gundanium as he left. "You sure you want to be here?" "Yeah, thanks." He handed over cash and exited the cab and slamming the door with a little more force than needed. The cemetery was one of the many dedicated to the war dead scattered across the colonies. He'd seen the one in Sanc - the rows and rows of white crosses lined in green fields. Impressive white gravestones for lieutenants and superior officers. Seemed there was still some differentiation between the average soldier and the command even in death. But the cemetery in L2 was less impressive than the one in Sanc - less dramatic. It was green and well-kept but not the sprawling hills and miles of war dead. He'd not gone to the funeral and didn't know exactly where the stone had been put. There were no remains of a body in the explosions. He figured he'd walk and work it out, glance at all the names until those familiar letters appeared. Trowa walked, seeing name upon name of war dead, wondering how many were his own victims or victims of the other pilots. They all lived with the feeling of guilt from their own kills. Finally he found it and realised it had a more premium location than he had expected. Perhaps Quatre's influence as it was situated near a cherry blossom tree that was beginning to flower in the spring time of even the poorest cluster. It had been years since Trowa had been on any L2 colony - years since he'd talked to Duo about it and he supposed it had to get better. Got the upgrades to the weather cycles. Got the real plant life. Became more earth-like. The stone was black. This made something akin to a smirk tug at the corner of Trowa's lips. In a graveyard of predominantly white graves, Duo had to have damn black and it was the proverbial middle finger even in death. A little joke. Something like that. The words were in silvery script. Duo Maxwell AC 180 - AC 208 Brother in Arms He tried not to snort - wondered which of them decided it was the appropriate wording for his grave and figured he would've wanted something funny. Something with swearing. Something about the life he'd led rather than the wars he'd fought in his teens. It affirmed the whole thing was bullshit and he felt glad he'd not attended the funeral. For a second Trowa thought himself stupid. He'd never been the sort of person to visit the past - he thought a little about his old captain, his first betrayal, thought about the wars from time to time and he wasn't someone who mourned. And he wasn't someone who had faith in anything - afterlife or ghosts or souls. He'd seen enough death to believe that death was it - you became worm food and that was that but here he was. Stood at a pointless marker, above an empty grave. The box containing the Gundanium was poised in his fingers and he knelt down to place it among fresh flowers. He vaguely wondered who had replaced them recently but then didn't care. They seemed redundant and stupid. Putting flowers on the man who called himself death's graveside. Ironic. Something like that. It was pointless talking to a grave. Duo's body was unrecoverable. There was nothing left in the blast that had ripped through The Helen and there were no bones underneath his body as he knelt down. His fingers briefly touched the black marble, feeling the vast expense of it and thinking if only Duo had accepted money from one of them when he was alive to do the necessary refit of his damn ship rather than being independent, stubborn, one man against the world. "They made me go to therapy." It felt stupid speaking to the black gravestone and a bitter smile crossed Trowa's face. "With Wufei. He's a psychologist now. Pretentious asshole." He tried to imagine the responses - the way Duo would laugh when they were in bed together, how if Trowa had his head on that chest he'd hear the low rumble at something he said. Only time Trowa really spoke, naked, in afterglows or in between rounds. The responses didn't flow in his head - he already felt like he was losing bits of Duo, not able to clearly remember the crinkles at the corners of his eyes that age had brought, not able to remember the scars down his back courtesy of OZ and how they felt, was even forgetting quite how his voice sounded - the low tone and the way it could range from pissed to erotic, comical and melancholy. His emotions were always betrayed by his voice even if his words disguised them. "This is where I say I miss you." And he did. Missed the images that were fading in his head - all those moments suddenly slipping through his fingers. Or maybe it should be more - the moment he says he loved him but somehow he couldn't and instead, Trowa rose to his feet and suddenly became conscious that he was being watched as three men stood far enough way that he hadn't sensed their arrival. He nodded in permission and they approached. Trowa registered that they looked odd together now they were no longer young men - Heero in another suit - navy this time, his campaign team probably suggesting that it matched his eyes or something, Quatre in a long black wool coat that reached mid-thigh and Wufei in a cream trench coat. Probably looked as different as they were in reality as Trowa stood with frayed jeans and that old brown corduroy jacket that Duo had spent years trying to get him to get rid of. It could have been expected - if Trowa had thought about it more, he'd have expected it. Quatre could find out anything, could know the shuttle he was on and be there before he arrived. And they were trying to show something. Solidarity. Brotherhood. Something. "We thought we needed to do something to remember him," Quatre said, speaking on their behalf. "All of us." It was then that Trowa noticed the bottle of Wild Turkey loosely in Heero's hand - a familiar brand and a familiar taste on his lips and he realised what they were doing. What they were meant to be doing. There was a part of him that wanted to resist, to rebel and say that he wanted, no he needed to remember Duo in his own way but that fight had gone out of him. "Yeah," he said thickly. The bourbon burnt on their throats, all taking swigs from the bottle, Quatre's first time wiping the top in some fit of being hygienic or OCD after Trowa passed it to him but got called out on it by Wufei who then offered him a free session to discuss his issues with germs. It was a shuddering warmth that the bourbon produced, that familiar flavour reminding Trowa of pliant lips and a demanding tongue and the feel of firm muscles and scarred skin. Supposed this was a better funeral than the official one - talking through long suppressed memories, talking of the war that they all had tried to put behind them. And all those moments - punching each other, shooting at each other, and finally, after so long, fighting all together and all the things they remembered about the man who was missing. It was getting dark by the time the bottle was nearly finished and they'd exhausted the stories they had. Maybe too much alcohol had been consumed for anything else to be said that meant anything. There seemed to be some unspoken agreement and Heero and Wufei left the graveside but Trowa did catch the movement of fingers touching the black marble as they departed. Quatre stood for a second beside him, trying to straighten his coat and brush off some of the blades of grass. "We're at the Grand Plaza hotel if you want to join us. I can get you a room." "Yeah... I just need a few more minutes." "I understand." He felt the squeeze of his shoulder and then Quatre had joined the other two former pilots who were leaving the cemetery. Trowa's fingers traced the name, a name constructed out of death and loss, and felt the indentations made on heavy marble. It felt dumb to speak to the stone but the loosened tongue due to warming alcohol made him say words that he never thought he'd say. "I love you." It was late, it was too damn late and utterly pointless now - to say it months after the explosion, months after their last moments together, years after they first starting fucking around - it was all too late. He'd waited too long and all he could do was declare love to an empty gravestone. "Duo... I loved you." And with that, he turned, his head held high to see the cherry blossom tree and the colony sky, and said goodbye to the only one he'd ever loved.
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