Side story
Disclaimer:I don't own them and I don't make any money off of this.
Warning:Male/male sex. angst, NCS references, language.
Sidefic to Shinigami's Lover
Birthday request for POV about Duo's problems.
His strength amazes me. I would like to think that his mental difficulties make him a poor choice as a soldier, as a pilot especially, but those self same instabilities that make him a dangerous comrade also allow him to reek havoc without pause, without introspection, without the guilt that often plagues others. He kills wholesale with a wild grin and a gleam of murder in his eyes, because he can see, clearer than most, why he is fighting and whom. Oz did not treat Duo Maxwell with honor, even when he was very young, and they are reaping their karmic reward at the super heated edge of a scythe.
When he is not fighting, when he rests and tries to find some modicum of peace, Duo can be most dangerous. He is on a hair trigger, a smile hiding the wariness, the fear, that someone might perpetrate, once gain, the horrors of his childhood. It isn't a baseless fear. We have run into our share of the dregs of humanity. That Duo practices that wariness, even in the presence of the one he loves most, is a caution, though, a warning signal that death is always a twitch away for some unwary soul that can't see his changes of mood; the flicker of the devil of fear that suddenly turns into murderous madness.
Can I imagine what he must be feeling, deep down inside? No, of course not, nor do I wish to, but I can see the toll it takes, the self control he practices every moment he is awake, to not let it overwhelm him, to not let it take from him, in a moment of violence, the people he holds most dear. He once told me that the fear was a child inside of him, that never grew older, that never moved past the time when he had been many men's toy. It was that child that wanted murder and revenge, that struck out when surprised, that had determined that no one should ever touch him again.
Heero touched him, though. Heero dared to dance with Shinigami. If I hadn't know his bravery, I would have known it by that. Watching them in the main room of the ramshackle safe house, warm and somewhat safe, they dared to relax together, to talk, and sometimes to reach out and touch. Duo's fingers were hesitant though, as if he feared Heero might burn him. Heero, for his part, kept watching Duo's eyes, ready to pull back if that 'other', that child within Duo, should suddenly take offense.
I saw the moment when things moved to a more serious level. Duo leaned in close and I saw him give Heero a fierce smile. Heero smiled back and they rose as one to go upstairs to their bedroom. A man might sneer, might judge harshly, two young men who had decided to love each other, but I wasn't a man like that. We were warriors and we took what peace and love we could find. It didn't make them weak, or make them less than what they were. It gave them something powerful to fight for. A man who had nothing.... but that would be myself... or had been until I had allowed myself to join forces with my fellow Gundam pilots. I think, if that had not happened, that I would have never seen a life worth fighting for, my own, or a reason not to fight to the death. A dead man, after all, can never know true victory.
The End