cozzybob (cozzybob) wrote in cozzybabbles, @ 2008-04-17 22:50:00 |
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Entry tags: | duo, origins, solo |
[GW] Origins 4: Skills
Origins 4: Skills
Pair: Solo, Duo
Warnings: kids with guns, um... the usual.
Note: Timeline-wise, this one goes shortly after the last one (they're now staying with Juan), but you don't need to read any of the others to understand this. As usual, for shini02 and the GW500 “kid” prompt. Yesh, you get two in one day! xD
Summary: Duo masters weaponry.
Origins 1, 2, 3
Duo sat at a chipped table, his tiny legs swinging in the ancient folding chair while he picked apart his gun and joyfully put it back together again. Solo had taken to watching the first hour while he did this, but for many reasons, it had become a very disturbing past time and he leant back against the bed with his arms folded, ignoring the awed “Wows” and “Do it again, Duo's!” that permeated the room from the other children. He was happy that Duo had found something he enjoyed doing, but it reminded Solo badly of where Duo had come from, and Solo wished deep down that he had some way of preventing his brother from fulfilling a blood-bathed destiny.
But Duo had tasted first blood now, and there was no stopping him. Solo was very young himself, but he knew enough about life to know that the only option he had left to them was to let Duo learn control over the impulse, and maybe they'd even get some sort advantage out of it. Later, he'd find some way of warning Duo against getting rash—killing people wasn't supposed to be for sport, or even as a last resort. It was supposed to be something that happened in the extreme, and letting his four-year-old brother carry a gun and waltz around the place like the thing was his new best friend went against everything Solo had learned to live by.
So it was with great resentment that Solo watched a little girl named Rose approach Duo after he'd put the gun back together for the fifth time in a row, and asked, “Can you shoot it, Duo?”
Duo bounced in his seat, hyper as a kid on Christmas morning. “Yeah! Gettin' good, I am! I even hit the bullseye on my first try!”
There was a chorus of “Oooooh!”'s all around.
Rose happily dragged Duo out of the seat toward the door. “Let's go to the range, then! I wanna see!”
Duo laughed and grabbed the gun, nodding assent. He eyed Solo for a moment and saw the disappointment there, but Duo didn't seem to let that stop him because he firmed his little shoulders, opened the door with a small fist, and said, “'Kay! Last one to the range is a rotten egg!”
The other children shrieked and ran after, leaving Solo alone to his grown-up thoughts. With a sigh, he left and followed, and found them in the back where the targets were set up. The others bounced around and pointed at Solo, calling him a rotten egg and even going so far as to describe how smelly he was. He joked a little--”Well, YOU smell like a sewer, Johnson!”--but his eyes never left Duo while the younger boy prepared himself to hit the target.
A thrumming silence fell over them when Duo lifted the gun. Rose held a hand to her mouth, staring with wide eyes, and Duo winked at her in a casual cowboy fashion before he fired.
The bullet tore through the very center bullseye, and everyone gave a deafening roar.
“That was great, Duo! Where'd you learn to hit like that?”
“Do it again! Again!”
“Thanks! S'easy! You should try it--”
Solo nearly intervened, but none of the children seemed entirely willing to handle the gun themselves—most guns were associated with the Alliance, which naturally brought extreme reluctance in the others for various reasons. For Solo, he still saw his mother's face before that man had shot her, and it was enough rage and disgust to refrain from handling the thing at all. He trusted Duo not to kill anyone important with it—he couldn't say that about the other children.
Duo was aiming to fire again, to the bouncing cries of the others. He fired again, and it hit the bullseye dead on.
And Duo grinned, then, growing sheepish, and held the gun on one hand while he pulled a knife from his pocket with the other. Duo tossed it in the air, caught it deftly by the hilt with a tiny fist, walked a few feet closer, and then threw it toward the target with all his might. The knife tore through the paper forehead.
The younger boy laughed.
Solo watched the glee on the children's faces, and wondered why he couldn't be happy for them. Instead, Duo's laughter caused him to shudder. He didn't like hungry tones he heard echo from that tiny, joyful mouth... he didn't like the way the gun and the knife had fit so easily into the palm of his tiny hand, he didn't like the way Duo just seemed to know how to use it, how to kill with it, how to show off with it. For the older boy, it seemed the first real sign that all was not right, even in their tiny little world.
Solo worried for Duo.
Duo kept right on laughing.
--tbc