---------------------------
    There Once Was a Man
~ A Moment in a Dorm Room ~
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	It was dark when he woke.  He lay passively in his bed until he 
could identify if there had been any particular reason for it.  It took 
him a few breaths, but finally he found the sound that did not belong.

	Rain.  It was a strange thing to a colony-born.  The sky had 
been gloomy and overcast all day, the air tinged with that peculiar 
scent he was only just beginning to associate with a coming shower.  The 
atmosphere had felt thick, ripe with potential.  It made him jumpy and 
introspective and lethargic all at once.

	He opened his eyes and twisted his body to look up at the window 
above him to confirm his conclusions.  Through the partially-open 
blinds, he could see the faint static of light reflecting off water as 
the drops fell.  He also spied his roommate, perched on the end of his 
own bed, staring out the window.  The blankets were drawn around his 
shoulders as he sat with his feet catching the bed frame and his elbows 
on his knees.  The sound of the drizzle came through a window he had 
opened.

	Heero shifted, curling around in place until he, too, gathered 
some blankets over him to keep him cozy and he leaned his head against 
the wall and watched the rain cleanse the earth.

	For Duo, yes, the way the whole day seemed to change with the 
weather was strange.  Of course, it was also strange to see so much 
water coming out of nowhere, falling without a purpose, sinking into the 
earth and away from greedy mortal hands.  He knew the night was getting 
a little too heavy and deep when he started thinking metaphorically 
about raindrops.  His life, springing forth from nothing more than 
ashes, only to fall, plummet, crash into the earth as the winds dictated 
and sink into quiet oblivion.

	He sighed silently, trying to sweep the pathetic attempt at 
imagery from his mind.  "Is there someone you used to be?" he asked, 
breaking their silence with a quiet voice.  "Someone you could go back 
to?"

	It had felt like they were sharing something anyway with their 
watching of the rain, so the sudden words scarcely surprised Heero.  
Someone he used to be?  Was there?  With enough significant differences 
to make the distinction notable?  "No."

	Unequivocally, starkly 'no'.  It made Duo think back over his 
life, and the various stages it had gone through.  There were plenty.  
Any he could go back to, though?  No.  There was no going back for him.  
"How did you get into the program?"

	"What do you mean?"

	One had to give to get.  "I mean, one day I got onto a ship that 
just happened to be a secret outpost of L2's revolutionary force, and I 
managed to get myself signed on to the cause.  How'd you end up J's 
little golden boy?  Or were you always with him?"

	"No, I wasn't raised by Dr. J."

	"No?  Then what's your story?"

	He supposed it was important to know the history of one's path 
in order to better understand where one stood in the present, and if Duo 
could summarize what surely was an interesting story with only a single 
sentence, then surely Heero could do the same.  "There... was a man 
before him."

	A tiny shiver ran down Duo's spine, and he pulled the blankets 
around him tighter.  "...A... shit, you mean... No, you probably don't."

	Heero blinked from the rain to his roommate and back again.  
"Huh?"

	He shrugged uncomfortably, using the action to manuever his 
blankets into an even more snug configuration.  "I mean... like... never 
mind.  It's none of my business."

	While true, that was no more elucidating than the initial 
commentary.  "What isn't?"

	The filtered view by the lights lining the campus walkways 
outside gave Duo enough to try and study his roommate intently, looking 
for signs to match the impressions floating through his mind.  He found 
nothing.  "Just... I mean, when you say 'a man'... you don't mean, 
like... shit."

	"What?" Heero repeated, a little crossly.

	Unbalanced and a few steps shy of flustered, Duo tried to say 
what he didn't want to say.  "Like... you mean like a 'bad' man?"

	It was an answer, but again, less than illuminating.  "...A 
'bad' man?"

	"You know... like..."

	The floundering about for adequate vocabulary pushed the limits 
of Heero's patience, and he decided to take a stab at it on his own.  
"Well... he was an assassin... I guess that qualifies as 'bad' by most 
standards."

	Duo's shoulders slumped visibly in relief.  "Oh.  Whew."

	Heero cast him a puzzled look.  "What did you think I meant?"

	If he had no idea, did Duo really want to tell him?  Would Heero 
even give him a choice, now that they had gotten this far?  Surrendering 
gracefully at this point was a better alternative.  If Heero forced it 
out of him, it wouldn't be pretty.  "If I said something like, 'there 
was a man', and given where I'm from, I'd probably be implying that... 
umm..."

	Heero closed his eyes briefly, reminding himself to be as the 
earth, patient.  The rain would come to it.  "...Well?  There are lots 
of 'bad men' in the world, Duo.  Which particular breed are you talking 
about?"

	"The kind of 'bad man' that would prey on a little boy," Duo 
finally answered softly.

	"...Ah."  Granted, there were still several kinds of those, but 
the field of possibilities had been narrowed down sufficiently for him 
to guess at Duo's meaning.  His gaze drifted back to the view out the 
window as the silence between them returned.  He was glad enough not to 
have to continue sharing his past.  Every once in a while, his eyes 
turned to Duo, and he thought about the other pilot's story.

	"What?" Duo eventually said testily, hackles rising.

	"I was just wondering."

	"Wondering what?  Just 'cuz I'm from there and I seem to know 
about this shit, you think I had myself a 'man'?"

	Heero accepted the accusation with a calm expression.  "I was 
just wondering if you were the type to cut off the balls of anyone who 
dared, or if you would get taken in, and then pushed to the point where 
you cut off his balls... and maybe the balls of all his buddies just for 
kicks."

	Duo blinked in surprise, then in contemplation.  Finally, he 
tilted his head with an edged twist of his lips.  "A valid train of 
thought," he said, but he didn't actually respond to the implied 
question.  He turned the inspection back on his roommate.  "A contract 
killer, huh?  He work for J?"

	"No."  No more information was volunteered, and none was really 
expected.

	"Did you kill for money, too?  Or were you just along for the 
ride?"

	"A little of both."  He'd started out as just another prop, but 
made his usefulness known soon enough.

	On the last sputtering fumes of a lingering belligerence, Duo 
assessed his roommate coolly.  "I've met a couple of cleaners and 
do-boys in my time.  Shouldn't be surprised, I guess."  Heero could get 
that same impassive look in his eyes, the kind that marked people for 
death.  Then again, weren't all five of them the same in that regard?

	"Odin was good," Heero stated flatly, in the sort of tone that 
said that arguing was only going to bring the conversation to a cold and 
complete halt.  So many years later, and he still held on to the 
professional pride that Odin had instilled in him.  "He wasn't just some 
bottom of the barrel hitman."

	Both amused and intrigued, Duo took the hint.  "Okay, fine.  
Guess I'm surprised you're not even more messed up, then."

	The lifestyle had never been atypical to Heero.  He didn't think 
of it as 'messed up' at all.  "Assassination... is about patience.  
Waiting.  Blending in.  Choosing the right time and the right place for 
everything.  It's probably helped."

	"Huh."  A curious point of view, and yet Duo found himself 
swallowing it easily.  It certainly explained or excused the fact that 
Heero sometimes seemed to be better at this whole living and time-biding 
thing than he was.  Feeling something more of an answer was appropriate, 
he offered information the others already knew. "I'm more from the 
thieving side of the fence, myself.  Never professionally, though."

	He wondered if he might have ended up doing just that if he 
hadn't chosen the wrong -- or right -- ship to get him off-colony.  He 
could certainly think of worse fates.  Even though he'd never done it by 
contract, there were similarities with the assassin's trade.  Patience.  
Waiting.  Blending in.  Yes, he was familiar with those things, wasn't 
he?  That was why he'd never been caught.  Up until he met the Sweepers, 
anyway.

	Maybe the whole guerilla rebel force thing had pushed it out of 
his mind.  That had all been about swift strikes, taking advantage of 
sudden opportunities to surprise and decimate the enemy.  Once in, he'd 
gleefully smashed everything in sight, and made sure to leave a calling 
card.  They hadn't been sent to Earth to win, but to make a statement, 
and he'd been more than happy to at the time.

	It all had very little to do with finesse, no matter how 
skillfully he had utilized his hyperjammers and other stealth devices.  
There was something about being encased in gundanium armor that dulled a 
person's dodging reactions.  Sixteen point three meters of mech was not 
made for subtlety.  Everyone who saw him had to be neutralized?  
Whatever happened to not being seen at all?  And his crimes not being 
noticed until he was long gone from the scene.

	Yes, that was it.  He had to go back to being a thief -- a 
damned good thief -- and forget about this whole revolutionary pilot 
thing.  Huzzah.  Criminal background to the rescue!  Once he got himself 
back into the groove of things, he'd be able to wait out the rest of 
this parole with a little more patience.  It was, after all, just 
waiting until it was all clear before he could slip away into the crowd 
unnoticed.  Of course, it wouldn't solve his problem of which crowd he 
wanted to blend into, but that was another problem for another time.  
Maybe now was just the time for him to be preparing his costume for his 
getaway.

	Patience... he hadn't had that peculiar oneness with the 
universe for a while now.  Not since his last infiltration run for data 
theft and it'd been like a game to sit back and study the security until 
he knew all its weaknesses.  He enjoyed that, and since goodness knew he 
had few enough things he could do that he enjoyed these days, he thought 
he should probably go out of his way to do that again.

	And the game?  Play the happy, well-adjusted citizen until the 
government looked the other direction?  Hell, he'd played that game 
plenty as a kid.  Never for months at a time, though.

	His visual focus slid over to rest on his roommate for a few 
moments.  It didn't have to be a continual role.  He could come back to 
his room and trust the others not to squeal on him.  Hell, Heero'd 
probably smack him a few times just on principle if Duo forced him to 
live with a vacuous eager-to-please good boy.  Other than that, though, 
Heero didn't seem to care how he acted.  That... was a somewhat 
liberating feeling.

	He hated to admit it... but living with Heero could be an 
educational experience.  And not just in learning interesting things 
about Heero himself, but about how to deal with life, how to not sweat 
the small stuff.  And after running things through the Heero blender, 
just about everything qualified as small stuff.  It wasn't like a 
student-mentor sort of education.  It wasn't even like learning by 
example.  Duo had no intentions of emulating his roommate.  In some 
cases, it was even anti-example.  He'd value his own life if only 
because Heero clearly didn't and he had no desire to be like Heero.

	No, he learned through Heero's little... 'quirks'.  Heero's 
definition of 'small stuff' probably qualified as one of them, given the 
sorts of things Duo had seen him just shrug off, like grievous bodily 
injury.  But hey, if those little quirks helped Duo view the world in a 
new light, give him a little more perspective, then more power to the 
crazy guy.

	Life was really just a matter of priorities.  And while Heero 
could remind him of that, his priorities seemed a little skewed, so Duo 
figured he'd find his own, thank you very much.  His concentration slid 
to his roommate.  "That's really other-end-of-the-spectrum for you, 
isn't it?  I mean, to go from killing for money to dying for a cause."

	Heero's eyes unfocused from the rain as he turned his attention 
inwards.  "Honestly... I never thought much about the ethical 
implications of it.  Typical assassin mentality would have us as nothing 
more than just another service provider.  It wasn't because I was a 
child.  I understood what we were doing."

	"Just the way things were, eh?  Yeah, I get that."  His morality 
was flexible as a matter of survival.  "Is... is that how you deal with 
it sometimes?  Just a part of the job?"

	"...No.  Unfortunately, no."

	"Yeah.  Kinda sucks."

	"Yeah."

	About ten minutes later, the rain stopped, and they went to back 
to bed.



_________________________________________
This piece of fiction is the intellectual 
property of the little turnip that could.  
The basis for this fic, i.e. Gundam Wing, 
Kyuuketsuki Miyu, et al., is the property 
of someone else.  The author can be con-
tacted at jchew@myrealbox.com.  This has 
been an entirely automated message.
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html

last modified : 10/3/2004 23:00:54 PST