006 | Band of Brothers | Locked to roomates/visitors

[stillshinigami]

Rather than juggling three plates full of food as if he were some fancy ass waiter, he cooked the meat given by Haku. He'd cooked it the same way he cooked it before, and corn this time for his bro and hopefully Hermit though he had cooked a fish for that little guy. So everything was in order. He opened up the door and slipped inside, setting the food on his desk. Really he just wanted to spend a day being lazy or having fun, but he also wanted to talk to his bro about something. Important somethings. Hopefully they won't have anotehr misunderstanding like that, but then... Christ.

They were roommates now, so much for that!

"Dinner is served." He said, pulling the forks and knifes from his pockets and offering it to the other.

Comments

[broke_the_world]

"Dinner?" Hermit blinked for a moment and tilted his head. He took the fork and knife and let his nose search out the dinner. Oh, it smelled good. Really good. The feline looked surprised and looked up at Duo.

"How did you get good food?"

[stillshinigami]

Duo took the plate and placed the fish onto it, handing it over to him. He chuckled a bit and took the food he'd cooked for himself and sat on his bed, cutting into the steak.

"Well, I caught your fish. Haku got us some cuts of meat. Figured you'd appreciate that more."

[duomaxwell]

Haku had declined the offer of more food, letting Ratchet take care of her for the time being and sleeping once he had her repaired. So it was just the two Duos in their room - well, Duo's new room - with food after they'd been cleaned up and patched up.

Duo was sitting on his claimed bed, drying his loose hair off with a towel his double had given to him. He took the plate with a grateful smile. It looked damn good, and smelled even better.

"Thanks, man..."

[stillshinigami]

"Hey. No problem, pal." He said, crossing his legs setting his plate on his lap and cutting another piece of the steak he'd had, eating some of the corn. It was good, and his second piece yet. Eh, he could use the calories anyway. So he looked his double over, at the tangly mess of his hair.

"I got my old brush in the trunk, y'know." Dunno why he kept it, but it was a good brush either way.

[duomaxwell]

"Yeah? Thanks... I could probably stand to brush it normally for once," he said, tugging the mess back with a hair tie for the moment. He could brush it after food.

[stillshinigami]

"Yeah. You could probably stand for that, like you coulda stood to have that bath." As if he didn't need a bath too! He laughs, knowing he was being a hypocrite. He was just teasing anyway.

He ate his food quietly, focusing more on the taste and wanting to enjoy it first. That was just a bit more important for the moment. Once finished, he set the plate back down on his desk and flopped back on his bed.

"I wanna talk t'you about somethin'. Well, a buncha stuff."

[duomaxwell]

Duo let out a snort and childishly stuck is tongue out at his double before digging in to the food. The taste was amazing after so much crappy gruel, and he ate slowly, savoring the taste.

".. yeah?"

[stillshinigami]

"Wait til you're done eating and promise me you won't get sick over anything I'm gonna say." Duo said, waving a hand at him, giving a genuinely worried look.

It was pretty obvious what he was gonna do, tell him stuff. Tell him some of the stuff he'd been neglecting all of this time.

[duomaxwell]

"Uhh... I'll try..."

That was a hard promise to keep lately, but maybe with something other than the gross food in his stomach he wouldn't be so inclined to lose it.

[stillshinigami]

Well, there was that. Once his double was finished with the food he offered to take the plate and moved it to set on his own. With that, he went into his trunk and rummaged around to the bottom, pulling out the brush he'd spoken of earlier. He handed it to his double and frowned.

"...I kinda owe it to ya to tell you what happened."

[duomaxwell]

"Well... I wouldn't say you 'owe me' anything..." Duo admitted, frowning a bit. He took the brush with a muttered thanks.

"... if you really wanna, though."

[stillshinigami]

"Maybe not owe, but it'll help things. I know Quatre won't talk about it much. And it gets worse cos' now Haku's got one of my memories and so does Heero. Whatever happened the other day they kinda..." He musta heard something about that.

"So yeah." He scratched the back of his scalp, cooting back so he could sit cross legged against the wall on his bed.

He just kinda gave a moment, letting his double occupy himself with his hair or something. Start brushing. He explained what happened after the colony drop, how he met up with G again and they began the upgrade to Deathscythe. Then the year in school he touched on briefly.

"It was me and Wufei on the front lines, Heero and Quatre were nowhere to be found, not in space, not on the comms. Couldn't reach em. Found out later they were both captured. Don't have to tell you much, but Heero was pretty much Dekim's toy soldier. Did whatever they told him to do without question. Quatre was on track to be the same way if he wasn't being Dekim's figure head." He shrugged a little.

"So the doctors pressured Wufei and me to pick up the slack. Look at the big picture. No more civilian nonsense for me, and Wufei was off working trying to help Trieze get the Alliance and OZ forces mobilized. I'm off on my own forever." He trails off there, frowning a bit. Pretty mild so far.

[duomaxwell]

"Haku does?"

Shit. That explained a lot. He hadn't seen the girl in days and the few times he HAD seen her since his own memory hallucinations, she had been even quieter. Which basically meant she was a damn mute, because she couldn't get much quieter than she already was.

Whatever she had seen... it couldn't have been good. Which got him listening all the more intently and silently as he worked the brush through the ends of his hair first.

[stillshinigami]

"Yeah... Heero saw the colony drop, he said. And..." he grits his teeth, folding his arms around his chest.

"Haku saw when I got ambushed by Trowa." He leveled his eyes on his double and almost immediately lowered them. It was, he could hear Trowa yelling at him, laughing. His refusal to give in to Trowa with the blows, but did they ever hurt. And that's why he couldn't talk about it, cause thinkin' about it just made him think about what he had to go through.

He reached back to scratch at the back of his head. "The guy run me over. Beat me stupid while I just egged him on, cos he'd just stolen my gundam, and I was too stubborn to just shut up and take it. So he took a rusty knife and hacked my hair off." His lips were tight when he finished, shaking his head and putting his palm to his forehead. Nng.

[duomaxwell]

It took a second, and not much longer, to remember that the Trowa he was talking about wasn't the same Trowa from his own world. The further he went on, the more he scowled. Jesus. What a fuckhead.

"... can't say I'd be any different... not shuttin' up, I mean."

[stillshinigami]

"Was more like you back then anyway." He conceded, though that was probably redundant to say, they were still so similar but different in the ways that mattered.

"I don't really remember what happened to far after that. Amnesia, concussion. So like... I wasn't even close to coherency for a week or so. Ended up in OZ's clutches. Met Sally Po, Noin, Zechs, Trieze himself." Leaving out surgery, irrelevant details. All that bullshit.

"And I just about gave up. Didn't think there was any way we coulda won. We were down to one gundam and a puny little strike force and I was due to sit on my ass for two months in recovery for this bullshit. So... I dunno." He smirked a little at his lil' bro.

"Y'know that smile you put on, tell everyone it's okay for their own benefit and not yours? Trick yourself into thinking it's true?" He shook his head, a mirthless smile on his face.

"It's just not that easy anymore. I mean... you. You barely crack a smile even now. It's hard for you." Even harder for him. He shrugged and flopped onto his side, rolling onto his back to look at the ceiling, arms behind his head.

[duomaxwell]

Some how, that didn't surprise him at all. They had been the same person, once upon a time.

The hand brushing his hair had slowed while listening, but at the end of it he started up again, going slowly through it in sections, suddenly much, much more grateful than he used to be that his hair was still there. Sure, it was something that could grow back, something that really in the long run wasn't as important as, say, his life. But it was still important to him and he fully understood why it would be easy to give up with that being the final thing done to him.

"... you're still here, though. I mean. ... you're still alive. You pro'ly slipped a lot but you didn't completely give up..."

[stillshinigami]

"Hmm. But it's hard t'see after something like that. Just felt like shit, ended up sitting there in a drugged stupor for a couple a days just thinkin' about how hard I failed even if I gave it my all. I was bein' stupid. And giving up was stupid. But tell that to me then, y'know? I was helpless. Again." He takes in a breath and looked up to the ceiling.

"Ifit weren't for Wufei, I probably wouldn't have come out of it." He snorted with amusement, thinking about that, about how Wufei verbally kicked his ass, even teased him for nolonger looking like such a woman. What would you expect from him?

"It's just harder now, that's all. Maybe I do dismiss things like it doesn't matter, even if it does. And that was stupid anyway." He sat up, leaning forward against his crossed ankles.

[duomaxwell]

"It was stupid that we got in to that argument at all, man..." Duo sighed, shaking his head. He was almost finished brushing his hair out, but it really wasn't his main focus right then. Talking with his double, getting through the things that had been bothering them lately and just clearing the air so it would happen again... that was the important thing.

"When we're stressed, it's the stupid little things that bother us, right? I got no right to call you on how you cope with shit."

[stillshinigami]

"I do that more than I should." He pouted a bit, hunching his shoulders. "It's not that easy to cope anymore. Getting back to where I was isn't easy in a place like this."

[duomaxwell]

"I don't think people can ever 'get back' to how they used to be after something like that."

He pushed his hair over his shoulders, fingers playing with the hair tie idly.

"I mean... it's... it's like that saying. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger? There's truth in that. Getting stronger means changing, though."

[stillshinigami]

He mulled that one over, peering over at his double. "Funny, cos I don't feel all that strong. Maybe a stronger soldier." Which he never really wanted to be. Changed who he was over a war?

"If I can't go back then what's next? I can't even recognize myself sometimes." He sighs, laying back and rubbing his face with his hands.

[duomaxwell]

"Well... y'move forward. I mean, maybe not here 'cause there's not exactly a lot of moving anywhere, but... when you get back."

Simple in theory, maybe not in practice, but he had to hope that there was a resolution of some sort of his double out there. He viewed him like a brother now, after all. He cared about what happened to him even if he would logically never know the outcome.

[stillshinigami]

If he got back. He had sat back up, looking at his double with a tired smile. He wanted to move on, do what he had to do to be happy. Howard told him he couldn't fight forever.

"I'm gonna. Even if I don't make it back in time for Ky. If she doesn't wait for me, I'll move forward. And you better do the same, bro. Do something great. War be damned. Gotta do something you can be proud of." He smiled nostalgically at the thought of actually doing something meaningful.

[duomaxwell]

"Exactly, man. Exactly."

He grinned at his double with that, glad to hear that he was willing to take that advice. It gave him hope for his own future, even if really his was already much less bleak than the other.