I flung myself out of Nataku the moment we landed. Across the open field, two Gundams stood like sentinels, their pilots an insignificant huddle at their feet. Trowa and Quatre clung to each other, and from where I stood, it seemed to me that without Quatre’s support, Trowa would have fallen. He shuddered like a man with a fever, holding the fragile-looking boy so tightly I wondered how those delicate bones didn’t break.
I ran to them, wondering if they had seen the end of the battle. They had been nearer Wing Zero than I. From Nataku, I witnessed merely the flash of the explosion, but I knew the blast pattern of a Gundam self-detonating when I saw one.
“Is there no hope?” I knew the answer, but still I asked.
Quatre looked up and shook his head.
I slumped, hunkering close to the ground. I could not say I’d liked Heero, but I could grieve for him because he was a comrade, and because he had given his life to save the Earth.
There was shock, too. I don’t think we believed Heero could die. Not someone bold enough to choose a boy named Death for his lover.
The sound of a Gundam reentering above our heads made me look up as Deathscythe barreled toward the field. Duo’s wild, daredevil landings always brought my heart to my throat. But this time, it was not his mad piloting that made my throat ache.
Quatre stared with wet eyes at the metallic black behemoth as it set down in the field. He grabbed my arm and I felt his hands shake. “He doesn’t know, Wufei. He was farthest away, he didn’t see. Trowa and I—we couldn’t tell him something like that over the com.”
Duo burst out of Deathscythe, his eyes glowing. I had never seen his face so open, so joyful. My stomach threatened to empty itself at the thought, but I knew I would have to be the one to tell him. Quatre would simply cry and never get the words out. And Trowa…Trowa still shook as if he were palsied. He and Heero had been friends, at least as the two of them defined friendship. I could not ask this of him. I had no excuse to shirk this duty.
No excuse except that I loved Duo, and I couldn’t bear to hurt him.
I had tried to deny it. From the first, I recognized the danger his friendship posed to me, and I stayed away from him, from all of them. I knew they thought me cold and aloof, but I had no choice. His spirit glowed as brightly as the lanterns that hung in our gardens when I was a child. And like the moths who willingly immolated themselves in the fire, in the end, I couldn’t help myself. I joined them, my soul seared by his flame.
The gods grant uneven gifts. To me, they gave the duties of love without the pleasures. I accepted their gift, counting duty as better than nothing at all, but I might as well run my sword through his body. I would rather run it through my own than tell him.
He swung down from his Gundam and ran toward us. He looked like a young gazelle, all legs and strength and grace. I watched his long braid bounce behind him, his slim black figure incongruous in the green field. He’s already wearing mourning, I thought crazily.
“Man, can you believe it? Was that the mother of all battles, or what?” He grinned, then let out an elated whoop and threw his battered black cap into the air. “It’s over! We won! C’mon, guys, let’s get that champagne!”
Quatre choked, and Duo turned toward him. “Quatre? What’s the matter? Trowa hug you too hard?”
I took a deep breath. “Duo—“
“Wu? What’s up?” Our reactions confused him, and I could see that he began to be afraid. He looked around wildly. “Where’s Heero?”
“Duo,” I began again. He turned back to me. I think he knew, even before I said a word. His violet eyes pleaded with me not to say it, but I forced myself to go on.
“Duo, Heero didn’t make it.”
He staggered back. I reached for him, afraid he would fall, but he pushed my hand away.
“What do you mean, Heero didn’t make it?” His voice shook with anger or fear, or perhaps both, and his face went white. “Where is he?”
Damn the euphemisms we use for death. I steeled myself, forcing out the blunt words, trying to convince myself that the swiftest blow is the least painful.
“He’s dead. He self-detonated to destroy the chunk of Libra that was still falling.”
“So what makes you think he’s dead? He self-detonated before and lived through it!”
My heart ached for him. I’d been through it all myself. The denial, the heart clinging to the belief that there had to be some mistake, even though the mind knew the truth.
“Trowa saw it. There’s no chance he survived.” He didn’t need to know the details. He had enough pain without them. “Duo, I…I’m so sorry.”
I felt so inadequate, for once wanting terribly to be wrong. It seemed to me that I had killed Heero myself, because until that moment, he had still been alive for Duo.
He turned his back to us, his hands balled into fists. He raised his face to the sky, as if looking for something. Then he screamed. I have heard too many screams in my life, but only one like that, a rabbit shrieking as a fox ripped it apart and devoured it alive.
Finally, he dropped to his knees in the hay-scented grass. I took him in my arms as I had wanted to do for so long, but there was no sweetness to it, no victory. He began to tremble, and I expected to feel hot tears wetting my shoulder, but he fought against them as fiercely as he’d fought our enemies in space.
“Why now?” His voice shook. “We almost made it. He said we’d stay together after the war. He promised.” He pounded his fists against my arms, my shoulders, my chest. “Goddamn him, he promised!”
I let him hit me. He needed to hurt someone. And if that was all I could do for him, to be the one he hurt, then so be it.
Perhaps we had slain the dogs of war but Relena Peacecraft and her pack of hyenas still fed off their carcasses. They hailed us Gundam pilots as heroes of the New Order, even as they secretly contacted us to become their enforcers.
“We have a friend to bury,” Quatre told the Peacecraft’s representative. “And the war is over for us. Tell her our answer is no.”
From the look on the man’s face, Queen Relena did not care to be told no. But that was his problem. What Relena Peacecraft wanted could not touch me, or so I believed. I had a problem nearer my heart to deal with.
“Duo, it’s time to get dressed.”
Duo huddled at his desk, head on his arms, an empty coffee cup at his elbow. He hadn’t changed clothes since our final mission, but his jacket hung open, revealing the rumpled white shirt beneath. Half of his hair had worked loose from his braid and hung in dull, tangled hanks down his back. When he raised his head, his eyes seemed blank, as if the brilliant fire that was Duo Maxwell had been extinguished.
“Dress’d? F’r wha’?”
My heart sank at the slurred words. I leaned close to him and smelled the alcohol on his breath. When I picked up the coffee cup and smelled it, too, the odor of whisky burned my nose. How had he gotten it past me? I thought I had watched him more closely than that. I couldn’t bring myself to scold him, but I vowed I would search his room for any more hidden bottles.
“Come on. It’s time to get ready for Heero’s funeral.” I slid my hands under his arms, lifted him out of the chair, steered him toward the bathroom. He leaned heavily on me, and I took a guilty pleasure in his closeness. Turning on the water, I held my hand under the spray until it warmed. Duo hated to be cold.
“Take your clothes off and get in,” I told him gently, as if I were speaking to a child.
He obeyed me without resistance, dropping his clothes where he shed them. His docility frightened me. Duo always fought back against life, against death. But not this time. Of course, he was drunk. I had always despised drunkeness as the refuge of the weak, but who was I to judge him for needing to numb himself? I’d had a war to fight when Meiran died. He didn’t even have that.
I opened his closet and found the suit Quatre had bought him to wear to the funeral. It felt strangely intimate, sorting through his clothing, and for a moment, I allowed myself to straighten the hangers as though I had a right to care for his things. I wanted to cling to the illusion, but pretense is hollow, and reluctantly, I returned to my errand.
Other than the new jacket and pants, still in the plastic bag, his closet held little else, just a few changes of his familiar black garments. For someone so beautiful, Duo had surprisingly little vanity. I laid out the suit and a new shirt and tie. In his dresser, I found underwear and socks. A shoebox with new dress shoes sat on the bed. Quatre had submerged his own grief in making the necessary arrangements, down the to last detail, even to Duo’s shoes.
I returned to the bathroom, encouraged by the steamy smells of soap and shampoo. “You’re finished,” I called out, hearing in my words the voice of my amah, who many times said the same to me when as a child I took too long in the bath. I put a fresh towel and his clean underwear on the counter, picked up the clothes he’d left strewn across the floor. “I have to get dressed now. Your clothes are on your bed. I’ll be back as soon as I’m ready.”
He turned off the water. I waited, but he remained in the shower. “Are you coming?”
“Yeah, okay, Wu. I’ll be ready in a minute.” His voice sounded tired but not as intoxicated as I’d first thought.
I wanted to ask if he needed help, but I feared my offer would humiliate him, so I retreated to my room. Still, I dressed as quickly as I could, fumbling with buttons and zippers in my hurry to return to him.
He had made it as far as his bed. He sat on the edge of the mattress, wearing his briefs and nothing else, holding his suit pants as if he weren’t sure what to do with them. His hair hung wet and sleek over his shoulders and back. It was the first time I’d ever seen him with his hair down, and I was startled at how much younger and more vulnerable it made him seem.
“Duo?”
He looked up at me with the eyes of a child who had been betrayed.
In the end, I dressed him, brushed and braided his hair. I tried to tame my wayward heart, but it pounded wildly as I drew the brush through his impossibly long locks. When I buttoned his shirt, my fingertips brushed against his skin, fine and cool as polished silk, and I ached at the sudden thought of my palms smoothing the plains of his chest. I hoped he remained unaware of my willful and wholly inappropriate desire, and indeed, it seemed his grief encased him, insulating him. I doubt he even knew I was there.
As I knotted his necktie, he dropped his forehead to my shoulder, as if he no longer had the strength to stand on his own.
“I can’t do this, Wu.”
My heart told me to hold him, but my honor forbade it. He would not have welcomed that much intimacy, or he would have confused my empathy with pity. Instead, I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
“Yes, you can, Duo. I’ll be with you.” Afraid I had said too much, I added, “We all will be.”
He straightened and tried to manage a smile, but it died stillborn. “Okay. Only if you promise.”
Of course I promised. For as long as he needed me. Forever.
