cozzybob (cozzybob) wrote in cozzybabbles, @ 2008-02-20 19:12:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | 2x6x2, duo, zechs |
[GW] To Die
To Die
by cozzybob
Disclaimer: The two extremely hot men with the very long hair do not belong to me. The fact that they are currently chained to my bed means nothing.
Pairs: Zechs. Duo. Very subtle reference to 13+6.
Warning: Post-EW. Mentions of mental breakdown, discrimination, dirty cops, Christian blasphemy, vulgarity, some bad words, other stuff, and a topless Zechs drinking Wild Turkey. Surprisingly, there's not a whole lot of angst.
Note: This is dedicated to Cinderzol, who is in love with Duo and Zechs in the same room together. She's got the right idea. xD Also, I give a special thanks to Neil Gaimen and "Anasi Boys," who both randomly gave me the inspiration I needed, and helped me to write this whole entire thing in one day. That's a miracle for me. Thank you, Writer God.
Summary: Although not a Preventer, Duo finds his way into the Preventer fight room in Brussels, which is inhabited only by a half-drunken topless Zechs drinking Wild Turkey in all his lovely glory. They talk, as men will do, and they form an unusual kinship.
Some people are born with wings, just like some are born with guns or chess sets or big brains and a three million dollar inheritance. I was born with wings, and then somebody ripped them off my back and threw me into the street, because where I come from, men with wings aren't angels, they're freaks. Any man born with wings is a man who shouldn't have been born at all. He should have stayed in heaven where he belonged.
Of course, I don't even believe in heaven. I wouldn't know it if it rolled itself up inside my mailbox, stuck between the pages of a porn mag. I just know what I got in front of me, and for years, the only thing in front of me has been hell.
But I've always been a bit more stubborn than I probably should be, and because of that subbornness, I eventually found a way to grow my wings back, and then I flew the cold depths of space seeking vengeance. Or whatever it was, but I never found him or it or her anyway. I flew with huge black bat wings made out of gundanium that lifted me into the Earth's atmosphere, powered by stuff stronger than jet fuel, and I never found the thing that I was seeking. I was tortured on the moon, and I was raised on a man-made planet dipped in the river of sin, and I was fury, and I was hate, and I was a god. I was glorious in those days, because every one of my victims knew that I was death itself, and yet I never once found what I was looking for.
And then of course death died, after the war. I cast it and my wings into the sun, and I never saw them again.
It nearly drove me mad. I'm sure, for a short while, it actually did.
But I wasn't the only one. It got the devil too.
I remember not expecting to see him in the fight room of Preventer, the place neither of us should have been, considering I am not a Preventer and he had been on Mars the last time I heard word of him. I remember asking myself why I was even surprised in the first place, and how I should have recognized him so easily when I didn't ever meet him before. Not officially, that is. I only fought him with once, and that was in a pointless war that didn't even last a day. We had exchanged confirmations over comm and nothing else. He fought in Tallgeese number three, and I fought in Deathscythe Hell. I don't even remember if I knew what it was I was fighting for. I knew the reasons, sure, but I didn't entirely remember why. If that makes sense.
I just remember knowing, privately, that he was the only other man I had ever seen in my entire life to be born with wings too. It was in the way he flew Tallgeese III, just like the way he'd flown Epyon, Zero, and Tallgeese number one. I knew, the moment I saw him fly, that he had been born with wings. In that sense, I was disappointed to having had actually met him after both our wings were ripped off our backs for the second time in a row, because if I'd met him before then, we could have flown together, and then I'd live again. I might have actually understood that thing that I said that I was looking for.
He sat there on the brand new wooden floor of the Preventer fight room in Brussels, dressed only in thin black pants, a bottle of Wild Turkey standing behind him. One knee was pressed to his chest that his arm draped over lazily, his tired grip loosely holding a half-full shot glass of wine. Charmed blue eyes stared at nothing, and he was smiling, even in the piles of white-blond hair falling into his face. It wasn't exactly a happy smile, but it wasn't a sad smile either.
I stared it.
And then I approached him, plopped myself down next to him, and sighed that heavy sort of sigh a guy can never really tell the nature of... some cross between tired-as-fuck and confused-as-fuck, with lets-go-play around the corner.
I asked him so very smoothly, as if this wasn't the first time I had ever really spoken to him in my life, "You know what the meaning of death is?"
He grunted at me the kind of grunt that meant he didn't care, and he hoped that I would go away, or he would have to hurt me. He didn't even spare me a look or have the decency to be surprised at my sudden social attraction to his person. I don't think he even knew who I was. He just took the rest of the shot in his glass and stared at the portal to whatever it was he was staring at.
I sighed again and laid down on my back, arms folded behind my head as I stared at up the ceiling. I don't remember why I bothered to bother him. I didn't know him, and I didn't want to know him, but he was born with wings, and he was interesting. He was the most interesting thing that I had managed to come across since that day Deathscythe Hell fought along side Tallgeese III.
Life has been very boring.
After several moments of silence--not awkward, but comfortable, rather, despite the circumstances, he asked, "Aren't you going to tell me?"
"Tell you what?"
"The meaning to death," he said. He reached behind him without removing his gaze from that spot and poured himself another shot of Wild Turkey.
It was thoroughly depressing.
I didn't pity him. "No," I said. "I don't like being ignored, yanno. You lost your chance."
He grunted again, the muscles of his back and shoulders rippling into a shrug. He took another shot.
I rolled to my side and rested my head in an elbow. My braid fell over my shoulder like it always does, and I began to play with the purple tie on the end of it.
"Are you drunk?"
"No," he said. "I'm not drunk."
"Are you pretending to be drunk?"
"No." It was more like another grunt than a word, but it still sounded like no.
I waved a hand carelessly, motioning to the half-empty--well, no, a little more than half-empty--bottle of Wild Turkey. I had never even heard of Wild Turkey before, but he looked like a man of good taste, and I supposed it might be worth drinking. I pondered asking for a shot, but instead, I asked, "What are you doing, then?"
"Drinking," he replied helpfully.
"You think that if you ignore me long enough I'll go away, don't you?"
He didn't even nod, the bastard. But I knew it was yes. It was that sort of silence.
I laid on my back again, arms behind my head, and shrugged something that was more like a spasm than a shrug. "Well, I don't feel like going away. I like bothering you. You'll have to suffer, I'm sorry."
"Apology accepted." His voice was so smooth that I thought I would die of envy.
I was green as the American money in my back pocket. "You don't apologize," I said, "You just take the sorry that I give you. No giving back."
"Oh?"
"Oh," I said, perhaps just a bit too harsh.
He poured another shot while I contemplated the sudden source of my mood swings.
A cool drift came up and brushed the hair pooling down his back and shoulders like a wave, and I marveled at his shiver, and the way it carried into his breath. His eyes grew just the barest sliver darker.
I wondered why we were in the fight room, talking about nothing, and why no one else was around. I remember wondering why we were laying on the unforgiving wooden floor when we could have been lying on the mats not ten feet away.
Not that I was complaining. From my position, I got a fairly good view of his spine. He has such a lovely spine...
"You're Duo Maxwell," he said.
"And?"
"You're annoying."
"Well, you're a genocidal freak with two names, who not only damn near put the Earth into a nuclear winter, but managed to survive death, what? Three times? Yeah, three according to my record. You're not one to judge on annoyance, buddy."
There was some time before he finally said, so calmly, "Fuck you."
"And fuck you too," I said.
He actually turned around and smirked at me. It was the kind of smirk shared only between comrades after being captured and dragged into a POW encampment, where men who always managed to look rather foreign no matter what war it happened to be, put one bullet into an old revolver chamber, spun the thing, snapped it shut, and made you put it to your own head and pull the trigger. It was the kind of smirk shared between two comrades when the both of you were then lying down on the floor, bullet lodged in your brains as the blood shot out and sprayed on all their nasty little faces.
I smirked back and wondered why we were smirking like this.
He grabbed the Wild Turkey bottle again, and drank the thing straight in a quick swig, not even bothering for the shot glass anymore. "I am glad we're on good terms, then, Shinigami." He sloshed the wine inside the bottle, staring at it. The reflections of the liquid beyond the darkened glass looked like black blood.
It was my turn to shudder. "Not Shinigami," I said, looking away. "Not anymore."
He didn't answer. He set the bottle down and laid down beside me, armed folded behind his head just like mine. He stared at the ceiling. It was a high gym sort of ceiling, with rafters and poles supporting basketball hoops and things all over the place.
"I am not very good with Japanese." He said it in a voice that could only have been bred from royalty, no matter what scum he'd actually been raised with. I wondered if it was true, what they said about him. "...but isn't Shinigami the God of Death?"
"Technically," I said. "It's not actually death, but a personification of death, or generally gods associated with death. There are Shinto gods about death, but they aren't called Shinigami."
"Than why call yourself Shinigami? Why not just Death?"
"That would be a bit egotistical, wouldn't it?" I raise an eyebrow at him, as if the very idea were an insult. As if I had not actually entertained the thought several times.
He grunted again. For a while, he just laid there, perfectly comfortable and perhaps a bit drunk. And then he asked, "Why Japanese? From what I remember, you wore a Christian priest's garb."
"Just the collar, buddy, and what's with all the questions? You writin' a book or somethin'?"
"Curious." His lips were caught in a strange twist, and I scowled to myself. Did he really find me that amusing?
Oh fuck him. I am not a clown. But instead I said, "In all technicality, I might be a Colonial American citizen, but the L2 colony I was raised was primarily Japanese. We were required to learn English in school, but I spoke a garbled mess of that, Japanese and some others on the streets. Colony-speak, they call it. That's my mother tongue."
"That sounds like an American accent to me."
"And that sounds like the bloody English," I mocked. "What the hell would you know?"
He sat up again and took yet another shot of the wine with the shot glass, this time. "Point," he admitted.
I was surprised, but not stunned. I asked, "Are you really a prince?"
"Yes."
"You don't fly like one," I said.
Then he glared me in a way no man should ever glare, and it was, if you could believe me, ten thousand times worse than any of Heero Yuy's. It was worse because I knew that while Heero gave good threats, this man actually carried them out.
I somehow managed to grin at him, and sat up, holding up my hands in surrender. "Hey, hey, relax big guy. I wasn't insulting your flying skills. I'm just saying a pampered prince would never be able to fly the way you do."
He was shocked. I swear on my mother's spaced ashes, he was shocked. He looked away and down, and the endless piles of hair brushed his slightly pink cheeks in a way that almost seemed endearing. "I wasn't pampered," he said.
"No friggin' kidding." Then I frowned at him. Was he embarrassed? "Don't tell me you've never been complimented for your flying before."
"No," he said, and shook his head so the hair was sliding along his spine, spilling over his shoulder, and floating in the movements of sudden negation. "It's just been a while."
I heard the hidden endings, there. I heard it. It ended with, since I've flown.
I could relate.
I took the honor of saying nothing.
And he said, staring again at that portal to nothing he'd been staring at when I first entered, "I didn't know you were a Preventer."
"I'm not," I said. "I was arrested for assault against a police officer. Local. Une pulled me out on a favor, and I just came back from the hellfire."
His laugh wasn't a laugh at all. It was more like a choke with a grin attached. "What kind of favor could Une possibly owe you?" I wasn't surprised when the laugh was more for the idea of favors than my arrest. I suppose he just didn't want to know that I was arrested because the police officer was beating up a minority for apparently a reason no more strict than a speeding ticket. I had to deal with Alliance trash beating up on minorities and random colonists whenever they chose during my childhood, and I promised myself shortly after landing on Howard's ship that I would not stand back and watch the shit happen anymore.
But that was over. Another day, another hangover. I shrugged. "No, I owe her now. She didn't owe me anything."
He nodded, making an affirmative sort of noise.
And I said, "I thought you were on Mars."
"I was." So helpful.
I snorted, throwing the braid back over my shoulder again. "Well?"
"Well what?"
"Why are you back, you idiot?"
He had the balls to raise a pale eyebrow at me, as if I was asking him a stupid question. "Une," he said.
"Une what?"
"Une brought me back."
I smirked again. That woman really got around, didn't she? "Just like that, hunh? What about Noin?"
"What about her?"
"Didn't she go with you?"
"Yes."
He was even worse than Heero. It was official.
I sighed in that please-kill-me sort of way. "You suck at conversations," I said to him.
He grunted again. Bastard.
"So where's Noin?"
"Around," he said, like he really didn't give a rat's ass.
I only said, "Ahh," head bouncing stupidly because I finally understood.
We were quiet for a while.
I started thinking about Shinigami again, and how much it bothered me that I wasn't Shinigami anymore. He resurrected himself for a few hours during that whole Mariemaia thing, but that was it. Then he was gone for good, or so they said in psychiatric ward when I broke down for a while shortly thereafter. You know, that madness thing I mentioned before? It really happened, you know. I wasn't kidding.
In fact, the madness itself never really stopped.
I looked at him, and wondered. If I was a personification of death, what was he? I remember Epyon. Heero had told me once that it was built by Treize, and Treize himself had given it freely to him. I also remember Heero telling me that Treize was a goddamned nut to ever build such a thing, and never tell Wufei he said that, but we're all nuts and I am no man to judge. I think Treize was just good about flaunting his own nutty-ness.
I realized, then, that the man I was currently sharing comfortable silence with was I man I hadn't even spoken the name of, not even in my head. It was because I didn't know what to call him. Did I call him Zechs? Did I call him Milliard?
Did I call him Windy?
I chuckled to myself in amusement, and he rolled his head to look at me again.
I shrugged and didn't say anything.
I thought about Epyon. Tallgeese in all its brilliant form was purely Zechs' weapon, much like the way Deathscythe was mine, but Epyon was... well, Epyon was Treize's weapon, but Zechs had been the only one to master the art of flying it. I wondered. Watching Treize fight Wufei in space a few years ago, now, I remember being surprised at how well he handled a machine like Tallgeese II. Treize wasn't the best pilot in the world, rusty you know, but he handled the punches of it like a natural. In another universe, Treize could have been, and probably should have been a pilot himself.
Treize knew the art of flying. He knew it like an obsession, which was why Epyon was so brutal in the first place. It was extremely well built. In biographies, I've read that Treize also obsessed over birds... it was said that he cared for many them in his childhood and even during his times in OZ, but he never ever bought them. It was said that they were wild birds that flew to him, and stayed with him, despite every natural law there is in bird-dom. Some hinted in these books that Treize had some bizarre power over them, like the Beast Master.
But I think differently. I think Treize just knew birds. He knew birds like he knew flying, and he used his knowledge to ensnare them, and have them. I'm sure it was similar to the hold he seemed to have on Zechs during the war, but then, I'll never really know at all.
I just remember Epyon. I remember Zechs piloting Epyon. I remember the whip, the terrible blood-red wings, and the sheer terror one could get as it sailed passed your head trailing shrapnel and bodies on the way to bigger game waiting in the form of Wing Zero ten miles away. I remember feeling sorry for Heero. Heero was a good pilot, don't get me wrong, but he was not a flyer. He could not fly like Zechs could. Hell, sometimes I think the only reason he won that battle was because Treize had died shortly before, and that must have put Zechs into a highly unstable state of mind.
I still don't know if there was anything between them. Treize and Zechs, I mean. There are rumors, there are always rumors, but I still don't know if it was love or hate or nothing at all. But still. A man like that dies, and even I felt like shit. Wufei screamed my ears off over the comm, I thought he killed himself in there for a few hellish seconds. Une had surrendered with tears in her eyes.
I can only imagine what it did to Zechs, high on Zero.
"What are you thinking about?"
The voice startled me, and my stomach lurched as if caught red-handed doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing. I shrugged. "Epyon," I said carefully. I couldn't lie. Not even now. It's a long story for another day, but I don't lie for anyone.
He's surprised. "Epyon?" Of all topics, I know.
But I say, "Yeah. I mean, all the gundams, even Tallgeese, seemed to have a theme. Mine was death, Heero's was an angel, Quatre's was a warrior of the desert, Trowa was a mercenary with guns, guns and more guns, and Wufei was a dragon. Tallgeese was a knight. But Epyon? Epyon was just evil. Think about it, Zechs, you did most of your good fighting in Tallgeese, but even Heero got weird in Epyon. Epyon's hell."
He didn't answer. I looked at him, and he looked me, and he did nothing.
"Aren't you going to tell me how wrong I am?"
"No," he said. "I'm just going to tell you that you think too much. I wasn't sure if your endless babble actually came with a thought process, but it seems that they do."
"You're a real bastard, you know that?"
He made a noncommittal noise. Not a grunt, it was more elegant than a grunt.
"I still think its hell," I said. "I also think it fits you. Me, death, you, the devil..."
This time, he smiled. "Are you calling me Lucifer?"
"Perhaps." I licked my lips, my mouth was dry. "Lucifer means light giver. He was the most powerful angel until he rebelled, fucked up, and was properly smited into the bowels of the Earth. I actually feel a bit sorry for the poor guy, because I'm fairly sure that if he didn't rebel, someone else would have. It was God's plan, you see. Heaven can't exist without a Hell. Hell is Heaven's mirror, and what good is a mirror without a reflection on the other side? God knew that he needed a Hell and a leader for Hell, and instead of asking Lucifer nicely, he plotted it all out and got Lucifer to attack him and Lucifer was then tossed into Hell with his buddies. Lucifer became Satan, a snake, and the whipping boy for all evil. I don't think he got it very good. I don't think he even wanted it." I grinned, legs folded Indian style, elbow on my knee, chin in my palm while I thought about it. "What's really funny," I added, "...is that God would choose Lucifer, the giver of light. Why cast light into Hell? Hell is supposed to be a dark and dreary place. But then, maybe that's the reason every light gives a shadow?" I hummed. "Well, it's an interesting thought."
He just stared at me.
"I thought you were Christian," he said.
"No. Not really."
"But you wore a Christian gar--"
"Collar. I told you, I wore the collar."
"Right," he said, wary. I hadn't used the nicest voice, but it was personal. "It's just... you do realize that about half of your speech was blasphemous?"
"Yeah. So?"
He sighed at me. Wearily, as if I was a lot of work to talk to. "What does this have to do with Epyon and myself?"
"Well," I said, "Epyon was pure evil. Epyon was hell. You, Lucifer, were cast from heaven through a bizarre set of essentially uncontrollable circumstances, and you were forced to lead it. Well, pilot it anyway."
"Hrm," he said, as if unsure to take it as a compliment or an insult.
I laughed at him.
He didn't bother to dignify that with a response.
We fell silent again.
Grabbing the bottle and taking another quick swig of Wild Turkey, again without the shot glass, he said, "You weren't a bad pilot, Maxwell."
The change in subject stunned me, and I felt the burning in my cheeks.
He smiled at me, and it was such a rare, happy, contented smile, I melted into butter all over the beautiful wooden floors. "Some men are born with wings," he said. "I knew it when I saw you fly. Yuy's a soldier, not a flyer. Barton's a mercenary, Winner is a general, and Chang's a warrior. But you," he waved to me in an elegant, though drunken manner, "...are a flyer. You were born with wings. I know, because I was born with them as well. It was nice, in that final battle, to fly against you like that." The blush had touched both of our cheeks, and I remember chuckling nervously. "Rare and instantaneous that it was," he added. "We hardly ever had the chance to battle."
"Yeah. It's too bad our wings have been ripped, isn't it?"
"Ripped?"
"Yeah. Ripped right off our backs. 'Scythe's gone. I'm guess Epyon's in a thousand little pieces. I won't even ask what happened to Tallgeese III."
He fell chillingly silent. I glanced at him, but I couldn't read his face.
And he said, "You miss it?"
"Of course I do."
He leaned over, one long, luxurious, drool-worthy left leg draped over his right as he dug into his left pocket. I heard the unmistakable clink of keys. He pulled them out on a slender finger, and I clearly saw a set of MS keys smiling back at me.
I stared at him.
"You still have them?"
He didn't answer. He held up his pointer finger, curled into the number one.
One. He has one left.
And I grinned.
"Of course you don't," I answered for him.
He smiled at me and put them back into his pocket. "You can drive me home," he said with a glint in his eye, "If you answer that question."
"What question?"
"The meaning of death."
"Oh," I said, and shrugged carelessly. "To be born."
His eyes narrowed in a soft sort of way as he thought about it, before nodding. I was almost proud of myself. Then he asked, "What is the meaning of life, then?"
I laughed and stood up. I pulled him to feet, grabbed the empty Turkey bottle and the abandoned shot glass, and headed for the door.
"You only get that after I drive you home."
He ran ahead of me and blocked my path in the kind of speed that made him famous in the old days. He folded his arms over his chest, eyes serious. "Tell me," he said.
I laughed at him again. "No."
"Yes," he said.
"Why do you want to know so badly?"
"I'm curious."
"Curiosity killed the cat, Zechs."
"I'm not a cat."
I didn't answer him. I waited for him to break and finally let me out.
He didn't budge. "Why the meaning of death? Why this as the start of pointless conversation?"
"Why not?"
He smirked at me and dropped his arms. "You're a stubborn one," he said.
"Yep."
He grit his teeth and shifted to one foot. "Just answer me. What is the meaning of life?"
The funny thing is, he was starting to ask it like a dying man. Like a man who once had the answer, but it had been stolen from him. A man lost.
I finally pitied him.
"It's simple," I said.
"Yes?"
"Yeah."
"And?"
I smiled. I shrugged. I corked my finger in the empty bottle of Wild Turkey and waved it around to amuse myself.
"What's the answer?" Now he sounded desperate.
I remembered then what he said about wings. I remembered his MS keys. I remembered that police officer beating the black man behind his cop car like he owned the goddamned world.
"People think death is such a bad thing. They think death is the worst possible thing that could happen. I used to think that too, which is why I called myself Shinigami. But I grew up. I learned that death is merely the cure to life's disease. To die, is to be born again."
I remembered that, in the psychiatric ward, I remembered wanting to die. I remembered that's where I'd learned it. They called it a break down, but I called it enlightenment.
"The meaning of life," I said, "...is to die."
"To die? Isn't that a bit morose?"
I shrugged and brushed my way passed him, tossing the bottle into the trash waiting by the door.
"Not at all."
He left for the dressing room and came back with his shirt on. I drove him home. In the darkness of the car, he said it was nice meeting me and that we had a very nice talk. Perhaps we can do it again, somewhere without surveillance equipment, somewhere without walls, perhaps in the middle of nowhere with a huge stretch of atmosphere, where we can talk about flying around in circles, one lonely bird to another.
I said I'd like that.
--Fini