'Memory' for scacao
Title: Memory
Recipient: scacao
Rating: T
Warnings: language
Summary: Duo tries to figure out life after war.
Author's Notes: The story went in a direction I wasn’t expecting, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.
Author: liafic
Duo spends his time knee deep in charred metal and twisted wire, sifting through the dull landscape of the scrap yard until his muscles burn and his mind goes blank, his thoughts breaking off into a grey abyss of nothingness. The manufactured sunsets are brief and inconsistent each night, and he finds himself yearning for the endless skies of the earth, the memory of a wide horizon imprinted in blue on his soul. These days a restless sort of emptiness has buried itself deep into his bones, the unshakeable chill of it lingering and leaching the colour out of everything.
He guesses it might just be the isolation, or post-traumatic stress or whatever. With Hilde gone for so long, the house has gotten dark and lifeless, and Duo feels the calm paranoia of loneliness descending over him like a pale shroud. The passage of time starts to blur, and he sleeps until late in the day, working past nightfall and lying awake in his blankets on the couch, consumed by shadows and half-formed memories. Sometimes he starts drinking, convincing himself that this is where it ends; he is going to get wasted and maybe cry a bit and move on with his life like everyone else. But he always stops before he gets too far gone, hovering in the numb and sober in-between, staring out the window to the empty streets, where white lights scatter over the colony shell like so many stars.
.
There was a time, just after the war ended, when Duo was exactly where he needed to be. He was making a supply run out to L3, where construction on new colonies had taken off and the return on scrap alloy was high, and the feel of the shuttle controls under his fingers was like coming home. The void of space called out to him the way it has called out to him for as long as he can remember, the depth of that unfathomable darkness pulling somewhere behind his ribs like a cord that only tightens over time, and for a second-just barely more than a heartbeat-Duo remembered what it was like to believe in God.
Like the constricted panic that rushes over him whenever he thinks about death for too long, the feeling was gone as soon as it came. He has not been able to call it back ever since, and here, in the semidarkness of night, he puts the whole thing down to some sort of divine synchronicity. The colony where he grew up is only a few hours away, hovering in the edge of his mind like thoughts of God and memories of war and the shadows in this empty house.
Sometimes he thinks he might be going crazy.
.
There is this guy, an ex-soldier who wanders their street sometimes, slurring his words, and one night, Duo tried to have a conversation with him on a whim, tried to figure out where he came from, where it all went wrong. The guy had stopped walking for just a minute, turning to face Duo so that his eyes were glassy and red rimmed in the light, standing silent for the longest time.
“It all goes-you know?” he mumbled. “Soon it all just . . .”
And that was that. He turned and walked away, on the same aimless road that he walked night after night. Duo never figured out what the hell he was on about. Memories or sanity or some shit. But maybe now he has started to understand. Only now, with the war echoing so quiet in his mind that he can barely hear himself think, Duo completely understands that guy, and he does not want to be like him. He did not fight for three years just to turn out as some shell-shocked ghost wandering the streets.
.
There is an old military radio that Hilde keeps in the shed, and every once in a while, if he is sort of drunk or too tired to think straight, Duo stumbles out there in the middle of the night and tunes it to the encrypted frequency that they used during the wars. The channel ends up being just so much white noise after all this time, and sometimes he falls asleep and sometimes he just listens for hours, hearing the imagined echo of voices in the static.
But tonight there is only silence.
“Who is this?” he whispers, his voice hoarse from disuse. He waits for the longest time.
“Maxwell.”
“Is this-is this Heero Yuy?” The quiet of empty space chills through him even while his pulse races in waves. “Hello?”
“This is Yuy.”
“Heero, I-“ His voice breaks on something half strangled, caught between laughing and crying.
“You still use this frequency.”
“No, I . . . Sometimes. It’s just-damn it, Heero.”
Silence.
“I’m losing it for sure. I’m just-gone.”
“Post-traumatic stress.”
“All right. Yeah, maybe. You still-you’re doing okay?”
“I’m working on it.”
“I guess. We just-there’s peace, right? And it all . . . but sometimes I wish I was back there.”
“The war is over.”
“I know,” Duo says. His voice is tight, and he presses the back of his hand across his blurry eyes. “And I’m doing okay. Just . . . I’m doing okay. You know?”
The darkness is slowly fading through the dusty windows of the shed, the white lights blinking out as day spreads across the colony. He can hear his own breathing in the silence, and for just one moment he feels like a child again, staring up in awe through the memory of stained glass windows.
“I know,” Heero says. “I do know.”
.
There is one memory that Duo holds on to tighter than all the rest, and it is this memory that he turns to when the nights get too dark and the house gets too empty and he lies awake by the window.
He has crash landed his mobile suit in the forests of Indochina, in the first few months of the war. He is tired and angry and beat up, and when he staggers out of the cockpit and lies down in the ferns, his shoulder is dislocated and his vision spins. The humidity clings to his skin and his clothes. But he lies there, the taste of blood flooding his mouth, and when he opens his eyes, the sun is bright through a thousand leaves overhead, and he can hear the rush of the ocean somewhere far off, and he just breathes.
In that moment, he feels peace.
Recipient: scacao
Rating: T
Warnings: language
Summary: Duo tries to figure out life after war.
Author's Notes: The story went in a direction I wasn’t expecting, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.
Author: liafic
Duo spends his time knee deep in charred metal and twisted wire, sifting through the dull landscape of the scrap yard until his muscles burn and his mind goes blank, his thoughts breaking off into a grey abyss of nothingness. The manufactured sunsets are brief and inconsistent each night, and he finds himself yearning for the endless skies of the earth, the memory of a wide horizon imprinted in blue on his soul. These days a restless sort of emptiness has buried itself deep into his bones, the unshakeable chill of it lingering and leaching the colour out of everything.
He guesses it might just be the isolation, or post-traumatic stress or whatever. With Hilde gone for so long, the house has gotten dark and lifeless, and Duo feels the calm paranoia of loneliness descending over him like a pale shroud. The passage of time starts to blur, and he sleeps until late in the day, working past nightfall and lying awake in his blankets on the couch, consumed by shadows and half-formed memories. Sometimes he starts drinking, convincing himself that this is where it ends; he is going to get wasted and maybe cry a bit and move on with his life like everyone else. But he always stops before he gets too far gone, hovering in the numb and sober in-between, staring out the window to the empty streets, where white lights scatter over the colony shell like so many stars.
.
There was a time, just after the war ended, when Duo was exactly where he needed to be. He was making a supply run out to L3, where construction on new colonies had taken off and the return on scrap alloy was high, and the feel of the shuttle controls under his fingers was like coming home. The void of space called out to him the way it has called out to him for as long as he can remember, the depth of that unfathomable darkness pulling somewhere behind his ribs like a cord that only tightens over time, and for a second-just barely more than a heartbeat-Duo remembered what it was like to believe in God.
Like the constricted panic that rushes over him whenever he thinks about death for too long, the feeling was gone as soon as it came. He has not been able to call it back ever since, and here, in the semidarkness of night, he puts the whole thing down to some sort of divine synchronicity. The colony where he grew up is only a few hours away, hovering in the edge of his mind like thoughts of God and memories of war and the shadows in this empty house.
Sometimes he thinks he might be going crazy.
.
There is this guy, an ex-soldier who wanders their street sometimes, slurring his words, and one night, Duo tried to have a conversation with him on a whim, tried to figure out where he came from, where it all went wrong. The guy had stopped walking for just a minute, turning to face Duo so that his eyes were glassy and red rimmed in the light, standing silent for the longest time.
“It all goes-you know?” he mumbled. “Soon it all just . . .”
And that was that. He turned and walked away, on the same aimless road that he walked night after night. Duo never figured out what the hell he was on about. Memories or sanity or some shit. But maybe now he has started to understand. Only now, with the war echoing so quiet in his mind that he can barely hear himself think, Duo completely understands that guy, and he does not want to be like him. He did not fight for three years just to turn out as some shell-shocked ghost wandering the streets.
.
There is an old military radio that Hilde keeps in the shed, and every once in a while, if he is sort of drunk or too tired to think straight, Duo stumbles out there in the middle of the night and tunes it to the encrypted frequency that they used during the wars. The channel ends up being just so much white noise after all this time, and sometimes he falls asleep and sometimes he just listens for hours, hearing the imagined echo of voices in the static.
But tonight there is only silence.
“Who is this?” he whispers, his voice hoarse from disuse. He waits for the longest time.
“Maxwell.”
“Is this-is this Heero Yuy?” The quiet of empty space chills through him even while his pulse races in waves. “Hello?”
“This is Yuy.”
“Heero, I-“ His voice breaks on something half strangled, caught between laughing and crying.
“You still use this frequency.”
“No, I . . . Sometimes. It’s just-damn it, Heero.”
Silence.
“I’m losing it for sure. I’m just-gone.”
“Post-traumatic stress.”
“All right. Yeah, maybe. You still-you’re doing okay?”
“I’m working on it.”
“I guess. We just-there’s peace, right? And it all . . . but sometimes I wish I was back there.”
“The war is over.”
“I know,” Duo says. His voice is tight, and he presses the back of his hand across his blurry eyes. “And I’m doing okay. Just . . . I’m doing okay. You know?”
The darkness is slowly fading through the dusty windows of the shed, the white lights blinking out as day spreads across the colony. He can hear his own breathing in the silence, and for just one moment he feels like a child again, staring up in awe through the memory of stained glass windows.
“I know,” Heero says. “I do know.”
.
There is one memory that Duo holds on to tighter than all the rest, and it is this memory that he turns to when the nights get too dark and the house gets too empty and he lies awake by the window.
He has crash landed his mobile suit in the forests of Indochina, in the first few months of the war. He is tired and angry and beat up, and when he staggers out of the cockpit and lies down in the ferns, his shoulder is dislocated and his vision spins. The humidity clings to his skin and his clothes. But he lies there, the taste of blood flooding his mouth, and when he opens his eyes, the sun is bright through a thousand leaves overhead, and he can hear the rush of the ocean somewhere far off, and he just breathes.
In that moment, he feels peace.