----------------------------
Obligatory Tragic Past Scene
 ~ A Moment in a Dorm Room ~
----------------------------
	"Duo."

	The boy in question was startled by the sudden voice from the 
darkness.  He turned toward the lump in the other bed that was his 
roommate's.  "Huh?"

	"Why are you still awake?"

	Well, there went the theory that maybe Heero talked in his 
sleep.  And Duo had just been huddled in the corner of the room at the 
head of his bed, silent as could be.  That he had done nothing 
immediately to wake Heero was confirmed by the way the boy wasn't 
groggy-sounding in the slightest, though he was fairly certain that his 
roommate had indeed fallen asleep earlier.  "Why are -you- still awake, 
man?  Go back to sleep."

	"I've been doing that for the last two nights this has happened.  
It's getting old."  Not that Duo didn't normally wake during the night, 
but he usually settled back down and fell asleep again.  Wrapped up in a 
blanket ball in the corner, Duo clearly had no intentions of going back 
to sleep any time soon.

	"Then stop waking up," he retorted.  Wasn't like he was doing 
anything that was keeping his roommate up.  It was Heero's own damn 
fault that he was just weird enough to wake up for no good reason.  And 
as usual, Duo ignored the irony.  At least he woke up and went back to 
sleep again without bitching about it.

	"Why don't -you- stop waking up?"

	Duo glared over at the lump on the other side of the room.  
Surely it was the late hour that had reduced their conversation to this.  
Even Yuy was normally more thoughtful than this.  He snorted and 
continued his brooding in his corner.  If Yuy wanted to lose sleep over 
it, that was his problem.

	The meditation of sorts proceeded quite moodily for a few 
successful minutes, but eventually, the fact of Heero's state of 
wakefulness began to distract Duo from his dreary thoughts.  Heero 
wasn't doing anything in his bed; the sheets had not even rustled once 
since he had first spoken.  Was he even still awake?  Duo thought he 
was, just because Heero was Heero, and he would be ornery like that.  
The boy could control his vitals, after all, but would he do so for such 
a trivial matter?  Or maybe this was how Heero had gained control over 
his biorhythms.  Maybe he lay in bed at night practicing.

	Entirely irrelevant.  Absolutely.  Completely.  Duo went back to 
losing himself in his ponderings.  Alas, Heero was like a mysteriously 
twinkling spot off in the dark distance.  The distraction proved to be 
too much for Duo, and he succumbed.  "Hey," he murmured softly.

	"Aa?"

	So he was awake after all.  As to why, Duo would not wonder.  
Heero had, by his own admission, been able to fall asleep again easily 
enough on the previous nights.  That he chose to stay awake this time 
was just another example of his incomprehensible nature.  And now that 
his attention had been stirred, Duo was left with the consequences: 
trying to find some reason for making the inquiry.  "Those 
counselors...."

	Heero exhaled with a sharp, audible puff.  "Refreshing," he 
labeled them dryly.

	Duo made a similarly cynical sound.  "Vaguely horrifying."

	"Disturbingly..."  There was a long silence while he searched 
for the right word.  "...'innocent'."

	"Completely out of their minds."

	"Justifiably so.  Justifiably off-base, that is."  There were 
only a few school administrators that were completely aware of the 
reason for why they were there.  The school counselors were not members 
of this group.

	Yeah, if Duo were going to be nice about it, he might call them 
'off-base'.  They were probably all, relatively speaking, competent at 
their jobs.  It was simply overshadowed by the absolute absurdity of 
asking a Gundam pilot what he planned on doing with his life.  
"Standardized tests.  She gave me pamphlets!  For study courses for 
standardized tests for college admissions.  College!  Of all things..."

	Certainly college had never once entered Heero's brain either.  
He devoted some thought to it now.  "I don't think I could do college.  
Not any time soon, at least."

	"Hm?"  Duo had thought the discussion complete.  It had only 
been something mentioned offhandedly so he could get back to his silent 
brooding.

	"College.  It just seems... wrong."

	He snorted.  "Man, high school is just plain wrong, too.  Half 
the time, I feel like I'm on one of those hidden camera shows."

	"That why you can't sleep?" Heero asked, the faintest hint of 
humor tinging his tone.  "Afraid someone's spying on you?"

	Not exactly, though theoretically it was sort of tangentially 
almost true.  He slept lightly for fear of something sneaking up on him 
in his slumber.  It was a habit he was unlikely to break any time soon.  
"We haven't swept the room for bugs recently," he answered with a dry 
irony.  Recognition of their little quirks was a requirement for staying 
sane in this environment.

	"We can do it tomorrow."  Heero was only half-joking.  It was 
good practice, but he doubted that anyone on this campus other than 
their fellow pilots was skilled enough to bug the room without their 
noticing.

	Duo made a noncommittal sound and let the brief conversation 
die, returning instead to the things his trip to the counselors had 
brought to the forefront of his mind.  The situation may have been 
somewhat surreal, but that didn't mean that some interesting questions 
hadn't been asked.

	What did he plan to do with his life?  Life after the war.  It 
was still a notion that boggled the mind, to such a degree that he had 
felt fully justified in putting off its contemplation to a later date.

	He was running out of later dates, and he was quite adamant 
against putting it off indefinitely.  He had never liked people that 
drifted directionlessly through life.  He'd join the Preventers before 
he'd become one of them.

	Not that he'd ever really thought much about the future, but 
he'd definitely never dreamed or nightmared about growing up to become a 
government agent.  Once upon a time, maybe there had been dreams of a 
different sort... and he couldn't help but wonder.  "I had a man once, 
too, yanno," he whispered, just in case Heero had fallen asleep, but 
somehow secure in the knowledge that he hadn't, despite the intervening 
minutes since the silence had last been broken.

	He was proven correct mere seconds later.  "Was he a bad man?" 
Heero asked, handling the sudden confession in the middle of his night 
with his typical aplomb.

	"He was a good man.  A priest.  Didn't keep me as much as your 
guy kept you, I guess... but he had high hopes for me."

	"Is he still around?"

	"Died fighting for -- no, just died for what he believed in.  
Damned pacifists."  Now there was a word that hadn't really entered his 
vocabulary until the war of the last year.  "Hn.  'Course, he wasn't a 
'pacifist' to me back then.  Then, he was just a fool.  Now... guess I 
gotta give the Princess some credit.  That girl's got a good set of 
balls on her.  As crazy in the head as you are, maybe, but hell, you got 
a good set of balls on you, too."

	His roommate grunted with a deadpan undertone.  "Thank you."

	He smothered a sharp laugh.  That was what he got for saying 
something like that to Yuy.  The amusement passed quickly.  "It's 
weird... how things can change.  And sometimes, in one quick flash-bang 
explosion.  Nothing like mobile suits taking out civilian structures, 
eh?"

	There was a faint rustling of sheets as Heero shifted in his 
bed.  "Aa."

	"Just one big boom," Duo continued to muse.  "And it's all gone.  
Just like that.  And you watch it from a distance, completely unable to 
do anything... not even knowing whether or not you should be doing 
something.  Maybe you've already done enough."

	A strained sound of acknowlegement came from Heero's side of the 
room.

	"And then you relive those moments, and it keeps you up at 
night."  Duo forced a small, tired laugh.  "And it's a pale sort of 
penance, yeah?  For getting all those people killed.  And the only thing 
else you can do about it is keep on going, and pretty much cross your 
fingers that it doesn't happen again.  Kinda pathetic, ain't it?"

	After a long pause, he didn't think Heero would answer him, but 
he did.  "We do what we can."

	That was kinda pathetic, too.  "I had a church once, too, yanno.  
Good place to stay.  Apparently some cheap excuse for a rebel army 
thought so, too.  They moved in, and then the Feds came and blew the 
hell out of the whole place, and everyone there that night."

	"Maxwell Church," Heero murmured, and with the utterance he 
could almost feel Duo's attention sharpen on him.  "I read about it.  
You were doing research on Heero Yuy.  I thought it would only be fair 
to research something from your side of things, to report the things you 
couldn't.  The name caught my eye."  He had wondered if there was a 
connection.  Regardless, he had already decided not to look into the 
matter any further.  The name coincidence was enough to possibly rouse 
the curiosity of the teacher.

	After a long silence, Duo let the matter drop with a soft "Ah."  
It took a few more seconds for him to regain a degree of nonchalance.  
"My name pop up anywhere?"

	"You were a minor."

	He snorted.  "Yeah, that, and 'Church Massacre: No Survivors!' 
makes for a better headline than 'One Survivor'.  I certainly didn't 
stick around long enough to dispute the claims, or get turned into some 
sort of poster child for the rebel movement."  Ironically, he hadn't 
completely avoided the 'poster child' fate in the end.

	"You weren't there."  There was only the barest hint of a 
question mark.

	"...No.  I wasn't.  I was out making trouble for the Feds.  And 
there I was, wondering where everyone was.  It was so easy.  And it 
turned out they were out making trouble in my own 'hood.  The irony 
could just kill me."

	"There's no correlation."

	"What?"

	"There's no correlation between you making trouble and them 
making trouble.  Ergo, you didn't get all those people killed."

	Duo might have thrown something at him, if it had seemed worth 
the effort.  As it was, he cast evil looks in his roommate's direction.  
"Where the hell do you get off psychoanalyzing me, Yuy?"

	"I told you, I studied some of that psychoanalyzing crap."

	Because a lot of people died that shouldn't have.  Duo 
remembered, and lost the edge to his flare of anger.  "Doesn't mean you 
get to use it on me," he mumbled, holding onto some fraying thread of 
irritability.  It didn't matter that he had started this exchange, or 
that Heero was a much more likely target for his random brain dumps than 
any of those fools they had to visit.

	Heero exhaled quietly, though more in reminiscence than offense 
or exasperation.  "I took five minutes for myself that day.  Five stolen 
minutes of freedom before I headed back to base.  And then things... 
went south later that night.  But there was no correlation."

	Hm.  That would be an acceptible reason for the stick up Yuy's 
ass.  Didn't mean Duo didn't think the stick could do with some yanking 
out, though.  "How many times you gotta keep telling yourself that?"

	"I lost count."

	"Peachy."

	"...Is 'peachy' one of those slang terms I'm supposed to call 
you on?"

	"Hell if I know.  Normal people use 'peachy', too, don't they?"

	"Not that I've heard."  Then again, how many 'normal' people had 
he really been listening to lately?

	"Yeah, well... it's a good word, not a bad word, so there.  
Kosher.  All you have to worry about is whether or not I use 'peachily' 
to modify a verb or adjective right."

	"Rightly."  It briefly crossed Heero's mind to question the use 
of the term 'kosher', but he let that one pass.  He didn't know enough 
about it in its proper context to question this one.  "'Correctly' would 
probably be better, though."

	As usual, his attempts to help Duo clean up his language skills 
met with yet more messy language.  "Fuck you, Yuy."

	"I fuck you, too, Maxwell."

	Duo made a strangled sound.  Well, maybe that stick wasn't as 
firmly lodged up there as he thought it was.  At length, he laughed and 
shook his head.  "Go back to sleep already, Yuy."

	"Next time, I think I'll go back to sleep before we ever start 
this conversation."

	Duo chuckled some more as he followed his own advice, 
rearranging himself and his blankets back into a sleep position before 
he even remembered that he had been in the middle of brooding insomnia.  
Ah, well.  He wasn't in the mood for it anymore, anyway.  "...Good 
night, Yuy," he tossed out in something resembling gratitude.

	"Good night," his roommate answered.



-----
vaguely corresponding to the events laid out in haven: de natura deorum 
heeroisque.  i like this version better. =p



_________________________________________
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http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html

last modified : 10/12/2005 00:24:58 PST