Duo stared into the blank eyes of his subject for a long while, looking for the slightest hint of humanity, of expression, of... anything. When nothing occurred, he felt a roil of black depression. Throwing himself away from the seated man, he paced back to his computer tucked between instruments and machines on a worktable. He dutifully reported his observations, even while he blinked back tears of frustration. The long line of similar entries mocked him, twisting the knife of it's conclusion into his already aching heart.
"You lied to me, old man," he growled as he sat on his worn stool and flipped through the copious notes of his mentor. Dr. G had dabbled in everything, from cloning to deep tissue repair using mechanical enhancements. He had logged successes and Duo had followed his notes to the letter. Failure to get a like result spelled out only one thing. The old man had made it all up.
A wasted year. A hope dashed, when that hope had been the only thing keeping him alive. Duo couldn't contemplate a life without his lover. It had driven him to grave robbing, to stealing equipment, to searching for his mentor's long lost lab in a crater of Earth's moon, and to attempting what had been made completely illegal, the animation of a deceased human with mechanical parts.
Dr. G had promised something more, though, a way to bring the brain back to life, as well, to bring back the psyche even after death. Heero Yuy should have been speaking to him, should have been moving machine and flesh and responding with all the memories of his old self. Wasn't the brain the repository for the person? It should have been like throwing on a switch, turning on a computer, revving up the engine of a shuttle.
Duo swiveled in his chair to look at the immobile man, again. Something was missing. Something wasn't coming back despite every attempt to recreate Heero's living being. His soul? Was this proof positive that there was something invisible, something undefined that science couldn't reconstruct?
Duo stood and slowly walked to the cryogenic chamber. There was a decision to be made, before Heero's body began to degrade Placing him back into the tube, would put him, once again, out of reach, though, while he did more research. That long year, without his lover's touch, had been almost more than Duo could stand.
Duo ran fingers over the cold glass of the tube and then turned back to Heero. "Why did you have to be the hero, anyway?" he accused for the thousandth time. That blank stare seemed a retort, a firm refusal to pity Duo in any way. Heero had done what was necessary, saving lives, and taking bullets to protect civilians. Those lips would have told him just that, if they had been able.
Duo stepped very close to Heero, leaned forward, and kissed those lips, making it sensual, making it deep, trying, with every ounce of his being, to make that body, half man and half machine, respond. His hands traced over a metal arm, and a flesh and blood one, over patches, here and there, along Heero's sides, that ticked away with mechanical parts.
The lips under his moved only when Duo made them. The body didn't respond, only steady mechanical breaths, and the pulse of the heartbeat in his neck, showing Duo that Heero was alive at all.
"Damn it!" Duo exploded and pushed away. Hugging himself, he choked on tears. "It's useless!" he grated, finally facing what he should have faced a year ago. Heero was gone. He wasn't coming back. Duo had been mad to attempt to bring back a body and soul with notes from another madman.
Duo made a sudden decision, nodding at the rightness of it. He pulled out the gun that he always wore under his lab coat, in case the government should find him and try to take Heero from him. It had another use now, one he should have put it to the moment he had felt Heero give up life in his hospital bed a year ago.
"I'm coming, baby," Duo promised. "Sorry it took me so long."
Duo raised the gun to his temple, closed his eyes, and began to squeeze the trigger.
"Duo." A familiar voice said in anguish. A hand closed cautiously over Duo's and Duo's eyes flew open.
Heero was staring at him in bewilderment.
"Heero?" Was it a dream? Another aspect of madness? Duo searched those confused blue eyes,afraid to believe.
"Don't," Heero begged and Duo allowed Heero's shaky hand to take the gun from him.
"It's... It's really you?" Duo tried, voice choking on emotion.
Heero put the gun aside on the bed that he was sitting on and then seemed to take stock of where he was. The confusion was more pronounced, but then, he seemed to gather himself, to decide that where and why wasn't important, when faced with a lover who had been about to commit suicide.
"Come... Come here," Heero begged, his voice faint, too long unused.
Metal and flesh arms gathered Duo in, hurting unintentionally as they pressed his to a warm chest. The sound of a mechanical heart beat a rhythm that was comforting.
"I thought... I thought that I had lost you," Duo choked out.
"What did you do?" Heero wanted to know, looking down at his own arms and raising hands to flex metal fingers.
"Brought you back to me," Duo whispered, afraid of hate, afraid that Heero wouldn't want to live this way.
The arms gathered him in again, more careful this time. Heero's loving voice whispered against the top of his head, "For you... anything, my love."
End