Surrealism (A Duo Drabble) A Gundam Wing Fanfiction by Amet It doesn't seem real. The idea that he will die here after all, alone and cold in a dilapidated feddie cell, barely having gotten off the abominable rock that was L2 makes part of Duo shiver with cold fury, and the only thing keeping him from beating his hands against the walls is the fact that he hasn't quite gotten himself to believe it yet. Because he's still here, alive and thinking and the notion that in a few days or hours or minutes he could just no longer be seems so impossible in the face of everything he's survived. So fucking stupid. He has to remember. He has to move on with the memories of Solo and Mouse and Jerry and Molly… all those people who never made it out, never stood a chance and now there's no one left to mark their passing but him. He hates that, the thought that they could all just be forgotten, erased from the world without making a mark as though they had never existed, ground down into component parts in the colony mortuary because they'd never had enough space or soil to make for a proper burial. They recycle everything on L2, even people, and sanitized protein is ground up and shipped out to richer colonies as fertilizer, a process that makes old man Nakaji crack embittered jokes about something called 'soylent green' that Duo never understood. It's the colony's greatest export, what it's known for, and he wonders sometimes if the fat cat bastards who buy the stuff realize that L2 is slowly eating itself to feed their geraniums. Carnivorous plants. He likes that thought. It's funny in a twisted kinda way. That's not very nice, and he can almost hear Sister scolding him in his head, hands on hips in that motherly fashion that used to infuriate him before he realized that yes, she really did think she was his mother and there wasn't a damn thing he could do to shake the notion out of her head. He loved her, he thinks, or at least as close as someone as transient as Duo is could manage to love anyone, with that last little niggle of doubt dancing in the back of his mind that this safety can't be real, can't last, can't… But there's no use thinking about it now. Besides which, Duo is not a nice kid. He's made it his business to not be a nice kid, because nice kids die too easily. Father was probably a nice kid, and the flower seller's daughter down the street who caught the old plague, the one that was supposed to have been wiped out by feddie sanitizers, a month before he left. Nice guys are weak. Throw a little smile at 'em and act the part and they give up things they'd be better served saving for themselves just to prove that they were agreeable, and that was just plain dense behavior. Nice guys got themselves killed because they were too soft and stupid to realize that dropping your guard left the overwhelming number of not nice guys an opening. No, Duo is a survivor, which is why he hasn't quite resigned himself to death. He isn't stupid, he knows the odds and he knows that barring some benevolence on the part of his captors or a fucking miracle, there is no way outta this one. But he also knows that as soon as you give yourself up, you're gone. End of story, exit stage left, roll the credits already cause there ain't no story left to tell. A beady-eyed old man shuffles into the cellblock, muttering orders at the soldiers and looking for all the world like he stole Pinocchio's nose and slapped it onto his wrinkled, weather beaten face. Duo sits up a little straighter against the wall and watches through slitted eyes. This one, sharp tongued and sardonic as he is, could be his out. He sees the way the man glances in his direction every so often with a sort of grudging appreciation, and though he hasn't the slightest clue what that's all about, the guy doesn't seem like the type to want to waste a good resource when he's found it, and Duo is very, very good at making himself useful. It will work out. It has to, because Duo knows with the kind of cold certainty that only the destined can fathom that his story isn't over yet. return to splash page