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"9"Written By: L.
Valensi
Rating: R Warnings: Suspense/Romance, hefty amount of gratuitous
violence; some abuse; lots of minor OCs & general term-invention Summary: The story is set in A.C. 205, little
less than ten years since the series ended in Endless Waltz. It centers
around the new life of Spoilers: Everything; Set Post-Mariemaia
Chapter 8: Grey Room -- -- If I squeeze my grape, then I drink my wine. -- A.C. 205 – Just Outside the Volans Estate Duo, map in hand, finds the Volans loading zone at the northeast of L2 where his men are retreating from the front. It is a mass of bodies: dead, alive, somewhere in between, all crawling about in hysteria. They move in slow-motion in Duo’s eyes, whose mind is neither present in time and unbearably trapped to act within it. His body is beyond him; it belongs to the God of Death. “I wouldn’t mind being the God of the Death forever,” he recalls, stricken with the oddest feeling of empty nostalgia like a dying man reminiscing about his childhood. Amidst the feverish turmoil of retreat, Duo’s able to move about as freely as he can. His eyes are tucked underneath a wash of brown pushed down by his black cap. Holding onto a simple backpack, he jumps into a truck’s passenger seat nonchalantly. “You get shot out there, boy?” Says the man in the driver’s seat—a scruffy man of around fifty, with a piece of wood hanging out of his mouth and his biceps slashed and caked in blood—as he looks at Duo’s bandaged arm which has been stained with someone else’s blood. “You’re lucky to get out with just a shot in th’ arm, sonny. Young guys like you who don’t know nothin’ ‘bout war been dyin’ out there real fast, like fish in a barrel,” Duo grunts, sulking down to hide his face. The other man laughs gruffly, coughing out blood onto the steering wheel. “Shit,” he says, “I hope I make it to the safehouse, at least. From there, I’ll be okay and get that dough they been promisin’ me.” The old man survives, much to Duo’s dismay, and they enter the Volans Estate grounds no problem. Duo’s earlier assumption about the Volans Estate is proven wrong when the man begins to head to a road behind the big, peach villa. Duo thinks for a moment that he’s going to have to kill the old bastard beside him but decides against it and waits out the ride. He spies in the distance a down-sloping, dimly lit entrance. The man has coughed up enough blood without abandon that the windshield is stained with his fluids, forcing the guards to let him and Duo inside without much inspection. As soon as the man parks the truck inside the underground safehouse and doubles over in a blood coughing fit, Duo takes his gun and silencer out and does the bastard a favor by shooting him in the head. He removes from his pocket a small remote control with a prominent red button. He pushes it and somewhere back in the northeastern area of L2, another gigantic explosion occurs from the back of a Preventer pickup truck and wipes out everything within a one-mile radius, singing everything from trees, to buildings, to fragile human bodies seeking refuge from combat. “Dei iudicium, recquiescat in pase,” Duo whispers, closing the man’s eyes with gloved fingers and leaving the remote control in his hands. By the judgment of God, rest in peace. He moves stealthily through the halls, every sounding alarm and trepid progression of footsteps all around dulling in his ears. All that is running through Duo’s head are the numbers: the inches, feet, and potential energy necessary to move through the hall and turn the corner; the time it takes to bring down a roomful of unsuspecting men; the number of bullets and grenades still left in his arsenal. He arrives at the bolted office doors, an area strangely devoid of rushing human bodies, as if it is estranged in a separate dimension. Duo takes out a two-inch switchblade and undoes the side of the sensor-pad, revealing a mess of wires and sockets. He attaches a thin, black wire to the exposed motherboard and waits for his system neutralizer to disable the locks. The code breaks and the doors open, and Duo doesn’t stop for a moment to doubt the smoothness of his entry. -- Turning and turning in the widening gyre Surely some revelation is at hand; Hilde stands in the middle of a room filled with computer screens and strewn chairs, flickering like an electric ghost in the static playing an opera of light around her. She stands in the middle hidden under a wide-brimmed hat and fluorescent shadows. Duo’s breath is caught in his lungs and he lets it wade there for as long as he can hold it, trying to see if the pain of asphyxiation can surpass the disappearance of his soul. He approaches her, gun in hand and pointed at that fucking wide-brimmed hat, her head—her smiling, caring head—her vicious, traitorous head—her sadly smiling head, looking guiltily at the floor. They stand before each other and let life as it has been for the past few months whirl in between them like a blood-dimmed tide loosed, drowning everything left inside of the braided, vengeful pilot. We’re here, now, just you and I, Duo. You’ve come all the way here to face your biggest fears, to face the future you’ve doomed yourself with. You would have spent years running away and hiding and lying to yourself. But you can’t do that now. Now you’ve only got the truth left. “Smile for me, Duo,” Hilde says softly. “Just this time.” She keeps her head bowed down, hidden. “I’m not here for you,” He says frigidly. “I’m here for Volans.” Hilde smiles and looks up at him with sad eyes that are too familiar, too precious to Duo. Even now he can’t help but want to save her, to take back the life he can never have again. It’s not her fault, he thinks. “Why don’t you just ask what it is you really want to know?” She asks. It’s silent and Duo knows the weight’s back. All at once, the burden sends him spiraling down to a place of denial and darkness and helplessness. There’s nothing in Hilde’s eyes that can comfort him in his situation, he realizes, because there’s nothing left there for him to receive. He laughs. “What do you want me to say, Hilde?” He snaps at her harshly, full of bitter emotions. “You don’t think I knew that I was responsible from destroying our life from the start? You don’t think I’d foretold that somewhere along the line, you’d betray me, and I’d end up losing everything that mattered to me?” Duo laughs harder this time, his face contorted into an expression between absolute suffering and sincere relief—even he’s not sure what he feels. “Duo—” “No, you shut the fuck up for now,” He interrupts violently. “You’ll have your fucking turn. Right now you’re going to listen to me. You’re going to listen to me and you’re going to tell me everything I want. It’s the least you can do, you heartless bitch. “First and foremost, you’re going to tell me what any of them had to do with this. What Sonny, Morty, Axel—all of them—what place they had in this, because they didn’t have a place and they didn’t deserve this. “Next you’re going to tell me why the fuck you’d go to Volans before you’d go to me—why the fuck you’d trust him over me. “And then you’re going to tell why the fuck you’re doing this. What did I do, Hilde? Was I wrong to build a life with you? Was I wrong about this business being what we both wanted? I fucking loved the hell out of you and our business and our family! I was so fucking happy for the first time in my entire life—” “YOU WERE NEVER HAPPY!” Yells Hilde, her voice filled with a passion so raw it makes Duo’s heart bleed to hear it. Duo’s hand trembles as he’s driven to silence by her tearful outburst, unable to bring anything more out of himself. Hilde cries uncontrollably but continues to speak. “How much longer are you planning on hiding, Duo? How much longer are you going to run from the truth?” She throws off her hat and approaches Duo, dark circles lining her red eyes. “You were never happy with me. With me, with the business, it was like you were wading through a dream, always waiting for something to wake you up and make you feel something. Anything. Just to give your life a sense of meaning. You would have given up your life sooner or later.” Duo’s strength falters and his hand falls to his side. The pistol tumbles to the floor, tinkling against the marble tiles, etching his weakness into the ground. He looks at Hilde as if she is an illusion. They let an uncomfortable silence pass, seeking questions and answers neither could express. Suddenly, his face softens and he looks at her with equivalent sadness. “I was happy, Hilde,” He responds quietly. “I really was.” “You see?” She says, oddly and painfully amused. “That’s your problem. It’s over, Duo. Your life is over as you know it, so why can’t you just admit to me, at least, why you gave it all up? Why their lives meant nothing in the grander scheme of things because of that piece of shit, who wouldn’t have even given a shit about you had you never walked back into his life?” “They mattered to me,” Duo mumbles, clenching his fists. “They mattered more than anything to me!” “Bullshit, Duo! Take a look around you! You left them to die so you could have a chance with him! You were gonna risk sending us back into war!” “Is that all this is to you?” Duo asks. “You think I spent ten years of my life wishing for a reason to go back to him? I could have gone back any goddamn time I wanted, but I didn’t, because I wanted to be happy! I wanted us, all of us, to be happy! I stole Wing Zero because Volans would have used it for war!” “No he wouldn’t have! Because I would have been there to destroy it! I did all this to get Wing Zero—to save everyone—and I risked all those lives, including mine, and no matter what, you just wouldn’t give it up! You kept asking for more and more death, as if you were obsessed with killing everything around you, because you’re a mon—” Duo slaps her, hard, and sends her flying sideways against a computer. The computer shatters on the ground, crackling and sizzling against the backdrop of Hilde’s rapid breathing. She rises shakily and faces Duo with sadistic determination. “None of this had to happen,” Hilde seethes, “You could have turned over Wing Zero to Relena and none of this would have happened. But you didn’t. And you didn’t trust me enough to tell me, which meant you’d never tell me. So I did what I had to—I risked my life to serve under Volans to make sure I’d get Wing Zero and destroy it and to keep you alive. And that’s still my mission, Duo, unless you plan on killing me tonight. My job as a citizen of this nation is to get rid of that head once and for all. “At this very moment, you’re already surrounded. I knew you’d come to try and kill Volans because that is the kind of stupid thing a guilty man would do. They will torture you until you give them the location and then probably kill you. But if you tell me where it is, I will save you. Tomorrow morning, Relena will be here with troops ready to take down the Volans Network. She has promised that nothing will happen to you if you lead us to Wing Zero. Everything will be alright after that. You and I will be able to start over.” Hilde watches him, but Duo doesn’t move. His head is bowed, bathed in shadows. Blood is dripping from his clenched fists. “Start over?” He responds wistfully. “Why should I do that?” He walks over to a desk and seats himself calmly, folding his hands in his lap, his back turned to Hilde. “You can pick up that gun and shoot me while I’m not looking, or you can wait for them to torture me, gut me alive, whatever it is that turns them on,” Duo says. “Or I can do it myself. Either way, the results are the same. I’ll take my secrets to the grave if I have to.” “Don’t be stupid, Duo!” Hilde shouts. “If anyone finds that head, you’ll be damning us all!” “Then damn you all,” He says. An blast of rubble and scraps of metal from the floor above causes Hilde to fall to the ground and Duo to fall out of his chair. Amidst the sea of smoke and dynamite particles, he sees a familiar shadow hover above him with and outstretched arm. His eyes pierce through to fog to meet blue, blue eyes full of urgency. “Come on,” Heero Yuy says to him. Duo stays still, eyes wide in distress, moving only to try and pull his arm away from the other. But Heero forcibly grabs his arm and pulls him close. “Please,” He whispers. Duo accepts his plea like a ghost, a dream—acknowledging that, still, somewhere deep inside of him he was afraid of accepting the truths that had flowed so effortlessly from Hilde’s soul. Hilde glimpses and swears that, from beneath her arm and through the fog of stone and steel, she sees Duo led away by an angel in white that looks too much like Heero Yuy. -- A.C. 205 – Lagrange Two Southside: Howard’s Place It’s been almost two days since the incident at the Volans Estate and still Duo hasn’t said a word or moved an inch from the unmade twin bed in Howard’s place. He sits there like a zombie, clutching at the sheets so hard that sometimes Heero is forced to wash the bloodstains clean off. He hasn’t tried to talk to his braided ex-partner for fear of saying the wrong words, for causing any more trouble in his life. All he does for now is sit there patiently and care for him as best he can. On the third morning, Heero awakes to Duo standing by the window, staring out the brilliant sunrise glimmering on the horizon of L2. Heero gets up and hastily walks over to Duo, ready to tell him to get back to bed, but Duo turns to him and smiles and he can’t find it in himself to move anymore. “What do you want from me?” Duo asks gingerly, still smiling airily. Heero stands before him, slightly slack-jawed and without a proper response. He felt abnormally helpless in the situation, wanting simultaneously not to cause him further pain and to make him smile sincerely. Duo faces him, exposing his entire being by looking at Heero in a way he has refused to do so until now. His expression is heartbreakingly delicate, so much so that Heero knows he’ll never forget it for as long as he lives. His hair is blown all around by the wan breezes, floating around him and hitting the sunlight in magical angles. Duo approaches him in elegant strides, lifting his bruised arm and resting it upon Heero’s shoulderblade. His arm snakes behind Heero’s head; and then Heero feels his long, skillful fingers sliding through his matted hair discreetly, lingering until Heero feels moved enough to lean into them subconsciously. Next thing he knows, Duo’s cheek is up against his, taut and war-hardened, smelling of reconnaissance. “I’m in love with you,” Duo murmurs sweetly into his ear. “But I can’t do this anymore, Heero. I’ve got nothing left to give you. I’ve got nothing left.” Duo backs away from him slowly, enough to see his face, and observes him with careful, loving eyes. “There’s nothing left for me here or anywhere. So there’s nothing for you to wait around for anymore, Heero. It’s over. Just go.” He kisses Heero on the cheek and begins to walk back to his bed, but he feels a firm grip take hold of his wrist. Duo turns around and faces Heero once more. “I was counting on your skills from the beginning,” says Heero. “So do me a favor and don’t give up so easily when nothing’s been lost.” They gaze at each other, once more swallowed by a silence neither could explain. “I’m… still here, Duo,” Heero says, fumbling for the words—fumbling into a grey uncertainty. “I’m here… for you. So… there must be something left for me to wait for. There’s something left…” …Something worth saving, left here. So I’ll save you. From them and from yourself, if I have to. And for that moment in time, they realize the absence of weight between them and pray for it to last. ~ * ~ |
