Gift fic for Sunhawk16
So, I've mostly been working on my original stuff these days, but every so often, the fanfiction plot-bunny bites.
The talented and lovely
sunhawk16 posted a short AU vignette from her Ion Arc universe, from Heero's POV, and I immediately began hearing Duo in a follow-up scene.
Read this first: http://sunhawk16.livejournal.com/180276.html
And here's the follow-up:
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Duo:
It was the smell that gave the whole thing away.
That and whatever the smell had attracted to our garden. Some critter had dug up my newly-planted flowerbed with great energy, uprooting the petunias that had taken me hours to plant. And started to chew on the nicely-ripened hand and arm now sticking up from the soil at the bottom of the shallow hole.
I stared at the body part, calculating rates of decomposition.
Whatever had happened, it had happened while I was away in Washington DC last month. And Heero not only hadn't told me about, he'd tried to hide it.
Well, shit.
Colony brats like us aren't used to dealing with dirt. Heero might have been trained to kill efficiently, but disposing of bodies....that was another thing, entirely. Ground-bounders can't just jimmy an airlock alarm and shunt the evidence out to hard vaccum. Or rig a recycler unit to deal with 100 kilos of freshly-dead meat.
Nope. Heero had decided to handle the corpse in a...somewhat more traditional manner.
As I stared at the gruesome sight, trying to figure out what to do next, Heero came out of the house.
He froze in his tracks as he saw me standing over the ruins of the flowerbed, and his expression turned cold and distant in a way that I hadn't seen for years.
"Who was it?" I asked, as calmly as I could. "Door-to-door salesman? Religious type?"
"He broke into our house while I was asleep," Heero said, in a flat voice.
"So it was self-defense?" I asked. Heero was giving me the serious creeps with his thousand-yard stare. "Did he have a gun?"
"No," Heero said, his expression still distant. "But he as good as told me he'd already robbed a number of other houses. He needed a reset."
I couldn't help it. I flinched. My lover...Heero...had killed an unarmed thief.
A thief just like me. I might be a decade and thousands of miles removed from the slums of the L2 colony where I'd struggled to survive as a little kid, but Heero surely knew I'd done my share of breaking-and-entering in the past.
Would he have done the same to me, if I had picked his house back or apartment back then? Killed me and hidden my body, apparently without a second thought?
I stood there for a long moment, thoughts racing. My personal squad of thought-hamsters were racing around, screaming suggestions. Run away! No, he'd catch you before you reached the gate. Go along with it, until you can call Wufei. No, get away now! Heero is dangerous. Heero is crazy.
I've never been able to hide my thoughts from Heero. That scary expression of his thawed, and he put his arm around me. I managed not to flinch. After a moment, I didn't want to. Maybe I was as crazy as he was, but he was my safe place.
"I didn't want you to know, Duo," he said, softly. "I couldn't bear the thought of you feeling...violated...here. In our home."
He might be insane—hell, weren't we all? No way to mold kids into killers without breaking a few important things.
But his first thought, as always, had been to protect me.
Heero was a stone-cold killer...but he was my stone-cold killer. And I'd been the God of Death, once. Maybe still was.
"Heero, better get both shovels from the shed," I said, keeping my tone lightly exasperated. "There's a reason ground-bounders usually dig their graves two meters deep."
The talented and lovely
sunhawk16 posted a short AU vignette from her Ion Arc universe, from Heero's POV, and I immediately began hearing Duo in a follow-up scene. Read this first: http://sunhawk16.livejournal.com/180276.html
And here's the follow-up:
-------------------
Duo:
It was the smell that gave the whole thing away.
That and whatever the smell had attracted to our garden. Some critter had dug up my newly-planted flowerbed with great energy, uprooting the petunias that had taken me hours to plant. And started to chew on the nicely-ripened hand and arm now sticking up from the soil at the bottom of the shallow hole.
I stared at the body part, calculating rates of decomposition.
Whatever had happened, it had happened while I was away in Washington DC last month. And Heero not only hadn't told me about, he'd tried to hide it.
Well, shit.
Colony brats like us aren't used to dealing with dirt. Heero might have been trained to kill efficiently, but disposing of bodies....that was another thing, entirely. Ground-bounders can't just jimmy an airlock alarm and shunt the evidence out to hard vaccum. Or rig a recycler unit to deal with 100 kilos of freshly-dead meat.
Nope. Heero had decided to handle the corpse in a...somewhat more traditional manner.
As I stared at the gruesome sight, trying to figure out what to do next, Heero came out of the house.
He froze in his tracks as he saw me standing over the ruins of the flowerbed, and his expression turned cold and distant in a way that I hadn't seen for years.
"Who was it?" I asked, as calmly as I could. "Door-to-door salesman? Religious type?"
"He broke into our house while I was asleep," Heero said, in a flat voice.
"So it was self-defense?" I asked. Heero was giving me the serious creeps with his thousand-yard stare. "Did he have a gun?"
"No," Heero said, his expression still distant. "But he as good as told me he'd already robbed a number of other houses. He needed a reset."
I couldn't help it. I flinched. My lover...Heero...had killed an unarmed thief.
A thief just like me. I might be a decade and thousands of miles removed from the slums of the L2 colony where I'd struggled to survive as a little kid, but Heero surely knew I'd done my share of breaking-and-entering in the past.
Would he have done the same to me, if I had picked his house back or apartment back then? Killed me and hidden my body, apparently without a second thought?
I stood there for a long moment, thoughts racing. My personal squad of thought-hamsters were racing around, screaming suggestions. Run away! No, he'd catch you before you reached the gate. Go along with it, until you can call Wufei. No, get away now! Heero is dangerous. Heero is crazy.
I've never been able to hide my thoughts from Heero. That scary expression of his thawed, and he put his arm around me. I managed not to flinch. After a moment, I didn't want to. Maybe I was as crazy as he was, but he was my safe place.
"I didn't want you to know, Duo," he said, softly. "I couldn't bear the thought of you feeling...violated...here. In our home."
He might be insane—hell, weren't we all? No way to mold kids into killers without breaking a few important things.
But his first thought, as always, had been to protect me.
Heero was a stone-cold killer...but he was my stone-cold killer. And I'd been the God of Death, once. Maybe still was.
"Heero, better get both shovels from the shed," I said, keeping my tone lightly exasperated. "There's a reason ground-bounders usually dig their graves two meters deep."