Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Deadly Beautiful ❯ Your Gun is Your Scythe ( Chapter 14 )

Disclaimer: I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts, doodly doo... But that's all I have. I don't own Gundam Wing, and I'm not making any money off of this endeavor.

Deadly Beautiful - Chapter 14

By danse

Duo turned off the blast of hot water and stepped out of the shower in a cloud of steam. He stood on the blue bath mat and dripped for a minute while he wrung out his hair into the tub, then grabbed a towel off of the rack next to him and started rubbing his arms with it.

He put on the pair of black sweatpants that were lying on the bathroom floor and walked down the hallway to his bedroom with no shirt on, displaying a well-built chest and abs. He shut the bedroom door behind him and got dressed quickly, putting his hair in a ponytail to keep it out of the way, as he felt too lazy to braid it at the moment.

Five minutes later, he walked into the kitchen in dark blue jeans and a black, long-sleeved t-shirt, his hair still in a ponytail, and nodded a tired greeting at Hilde as he wandered to the coffee maker. It was already on, and making happy bubbling and steaming noises as it poured hot, fresh coffee into the glass decanter. Duo was tired enough to stand in front of it and blink in confusion for a few moments, wondering what was going on. It was a very bad thing to interrupt a morning routine that he'd kept ever since he'd had a coffee maker.

"I already turned it on. It's almost ready," Hilde clarified from her stool at the counter. "Sorry, I was just trying to be helpful."

"It's okay," he said as he pulled out a stool and sat. "I just need to get used to having another person around, that's all."

Hilde nodded and went back to her cereal.

When Duo's coffee was ready, he poured a cup and drank it black, then chased it with another one that contained cream and sugar. He got up and put his cup in the sink, and Hilde stared at him. He turned and met her gaze. "What?"

"Is that all you ever have for breakfast?" she asked incredulously.

"Yep."

"But...how...don't you need to eat anything else?" she finally choked out, a little disgusted.

"Not usually. I like my coffee. Wakes me up." He grinned.

Hilde made a face. "How do you stay in such good shape without eating regularly?" she said. "Coffee's not good for you on an empty stomach."

"Whatever you say, Mom." Duo was a little annoyed by the mild nagging. He'd never actually had a mother to nag him, except Helen, and he was fiercely independent. Suddenly having someone around to pick holes in his habits was disconcerting.

"Sorry," she amended, "but, ugh. You're weird. I gotta have some food to function when I can get it." To punctuate her sentence, she dug into her cereal again.

Duo shrugged and grabbed his car keys off of the counter. "I'm going to work," he said. "Are you good for the day?"

She nodded. "Yeah. I'm gonna go job hunting when I'm done eating." She was wearing clean jeans that weren't too tight, and a white linen blouse that looked conservative and suited her very well.

"Okay. Good luck and don't forget to lock the door," he said, and left the apartment. She'd have to wait until he got home to get back in, because he hadn't given her a key.

Duo thumped softly down the stairs in his black Docs to the entrance of the building, then swung out of the front door into bright morning sunshine. It was going to be a warm day for April. He sauntered across the sidewalk to his car, which was parked right near the front door of the building, next to a broken parking meter. He loved his car; it was an old, black Mustang, with chrome detail, and got about twenty miles to the gallon, but it was a classic, and it made him feel like a king when he sat in the driver's seat. He kept it shining, and heads turned when it roared down the street. It was great for picking up women.

He got inside and started the engine. It turned over with a growl, and he turned the radio on almost loud enough to make the windows vibrate with the bass as he drove through morning traffic to G's office. He felt positively serene as he walked into the main lobby of the building.

Helen looked up from her computer screen as Duo walked into G's personal reception area. "Go on in, honey. He's waiting for you."

Duo nodded and pushed through the heavy oak door that led to his employer's office. G was standing with his back to the door, looking out of the big windows at the constantly moving city below.

"You rang, G?" Duo asked as he plopped himself down in a chair in front of the desk.

"I would rather have had you here last night," G said as he turned around and eased himself comfortably into his chair. "Where were you?"

"Out," Duo said defensively. "I'm allowed to have a life outside of work."

"Not outside of this work, you're not," G scolded, but it was much more matter-of-fact than fierce. G wasn't terribly hard to aggravate, but when he wasn't angry, he was more of an overworked father figure prone to sardonic humor.

Duo slouched to avoid the truth of the remark. "What do you need from me, G?"

G slid some papers from the side of his desk to the middle. "You're going undercover. This is our second, and probably last," he emphasized, "try at Miss Darlian. She goes to a private school outside of town. Tomorrow, you will be as well. You're enrolling as a new transfer student, and you'll be living in the dorms there and going to classes, most of them having her in them."

Duo frowned. Tomorrow? What about Hilde? I can't just leave all of a sudden. "I can't do it tomorrow, G."

G stared at him like he'd grown another head. What was he talking about? He did what he was told. "You can't? Why not?"

"There's someone else at my place right now."

G looked more thoroughly baffled, and a little suspicious. Duo sighed, and had to tell the whole story about Hilde, except perhaps for what he'd been doing last night, which he thought was none of G's business.

When the story was done, G leaned back in his chair and contemplated Duo with an odd look. "So you can't go tomorrow because you have a new girlfriend?"

"She's not my girlfriend. She's just staying with me until she gets back on her feet."

G looked skeptical, but said nothing about it. "Have you told her anything?"

"I work in an office building, and I just took a week of vacation."

G nodded. "Good. So then, what are you going to do about it?"

"About what?"

"About the fact that you're leaving tomorrow, and have to either kick her back out onto the street or invent more and more excuses and stories until you contradict yourself and she gets suspicious. You know very well what will have to happen if she gets suspicious, Maxwell."

Duo swallowed nervously. This wasn't a good situation. Getting a little frantic but trying not to show it in front of his boss, who was pinning him down with an indifferent stare of authority, he cast about desperately for a solution. He just needed time... "Give me a week," he blurted out finally.

G frowned, thinking. He scratched his nose, looking at the barely concealed panic on his agent's face. Finally, he sighed. "Fine. Exactly one week. No more," he said, less-than-benevolently.

Duo nodded, formulating a plan. "All right," he said. "Now tell me what I need to know for the mission."

G got down to business. "Your alias will be Scott McNeil," he said. "You're going to be a Grade 11 student at Miss Darlian's school, Clearwater Academy. You're a transfer student from upstate. You'll attend classes with her and get to know her. I want you to become her best friend, Maxwell."

"If you want a best friend, send a girl," Duo said, not unreasonably.

"Then become her boyfriend. The point is, I want you to be close to her. Make her trust you. Then bring her back here."

"Syringe again?"

"For the journey. We don't want her to know where she is." G got up to look out of the window again. "You'll be issued a computer before you go, to communicate. You'll be sending a message every night regarding your mission progress. Take as long as absolutely necessary, but I'm giving you a month. The sooner you're back, the better."

Duo nodded his understanding.

"Due to the length of the mission and the situation, you'll also be issued a code name for communication. Your code name will be Reaper."

"Reaper?" Duo was puzzled.

"Think about it, boy. How many people have you killed? Does it give you nightmares? I know it doesn't. You're the most desensitized agent in my employ." G came around the desk and laid a hand on Duo's shoulder in an altogether very comforting way. "You have a knack for killing, Duo. You're very good at it. When you use your gun, you rarely miss. You are the Grim Reaper and your gun is your scythe. Consider it a compliment." G removed his hand from Duo's shoulder and backed away. "You're dismissed."

Duo got up and left G's office, too lost in thought to say goodbye to Helen as he walked by her. He was in his car, about to turn the key in the ignition, when he finally crumbled under the weight of revelation. His head thumped against the top of the steering wheel in some far-off dimension, and he was a million miles away, fighting with the truth. You have a knack for killing... What kind of compliment was that?

He didn't know how long it took to bring himself back to normal, at least enough to drive, but eventually he could turn the key in the ignition and back out of his parking spot. His hands didn't shake, and he didn't feel even remotely hysterical. There was a shield between him and the rest of the world. He could do things with as much ease as usual, but he couldn't seem to distract himself from his mind with the outside world. Everything material seemed trivial and distant. He was in a plastic bubble.

The Mighty Maxwell, super-desensitized killing machine, he thought sardonically as he drove. No job that he can't do... He was driving, quite nicely in fact, but he didn't really care where he was going. Instead of heading home, he drove through town, out of the Brooklyn area and through random streets in Queens, passing white houses with neat green lawns, into Manhattan, passing shining mirrors of skyscrapers that reflected the hot afternoon sun.

Eventually, he parked the car outside of an office building and started walking. An hour later, he dimly realized that he was entering Central Park. He collapsed on the grass under a tree, not noticing the new green leaves that were almost fully sprouted, covering the ground with dancing shadows. He didn't notice fluffy ducklings following their parents around the lake. He didn't notice that it was nearly 6:00, and that Hilde was probably sitting on the front stoop of a brownstone in Brooklyn, waiting for him to come home and open the door of apartment 5B. At that point, he might not have cared.

As it got later and steadily darker, people walking through the park with dogs and children and groceries would cast a glance at the young man with the ponytail, sitting under a tree with his arm braced on his knee, staring at a fixed spot right in front of him, and wonder. He didn't move a muscle for a long time; he didn't feel them cramping up. His eyes, typically blue, but sometimes purple in the right light, looked dead. He might have been chiseled out of stone. He looked like he might outlive the Earth itself if he tried. Death was immortal, after all.

At 8:30, the sky was darker blue than his jeans, and a wind had come up that was blowing loose strands of hair around his face. A patrolling police officer walked up and tapped him on the shoulder. Coming out of a thick haze, Duo looked at him blandly.

"You should be moving along, kid," the police officer said, not unkindly. "It's getting kinda cold."

Duo didn't feel cold, but he got up and stuffed his hands in his pockets as he wandered along the path. He left the park and ambled back towards the place where his Mustang was parked, taking his time. He was still hazy, still thinking, as slowly and patiently as the Earth breathes.

He got in his car, yanking a parking ticket out from under the wiper, and heard the engine roar to life. He drove back to Brooklyn in silence, his radio that had been blaring that morning now dark and dead.

When he got home, Hilde wasn't sitting on the front step of the brownstone. Duo was too far away from himself to wonder. He just opened the front door and walked up the stairs to the fifth floor slowly. He got to the brown door whose gold figures said 5B and let himself in. Hilde was curled up on the threadbare grey couch, watching a sitcom and drinking a glass of water. She looked up at him and grinned. "Hi."

"How did you get in?" Duo asked as he dropped his keys on the kitchen counter.

"I helped some lady on the fourth floor take in her groceries, so she let me in downstairs. I picked the lock on the apartment door. That was at about 6:30."

Her story matched fresh scratches that he'd absently noted on the doorknob outside. She'd probably used a hairpin. "Did you find a job?"

She scowled. "No. Tried at two diners, an office building, and a nursing home. They all said they weren't hiring."

"You need a resume."

"I went to a library five blocks away this morning and typed one up on a computer. It didn't help."

"Oh well. Try again tomorrow." And every day this week until you find one.

Hilde turned to face him and studied his face. "Are you okay?" she asked. "You don't sound like normal."

"I'm fine," he said. "Look, I've had a long day, I'm going to bed." He turned and walked down the hall to his room without waiting for acknowledgement.

"Goodnight..." drifted down the hall after him.

He undressed methodically and slipped under the covers of his bed, not bothering to do anything about the ponytail. For an hour and a half, he just lay there, staring at the dark ceiling above him while thoughts drifted through his head. He still felt distant, but he was quickly getting used to it. He suspected he'd feel like that for a while.

You have a knack for killing, Duo. You're very good at it a compliment. He thought slowly, all of the threads winding together to a conclusion. If I am the Reaper, he thought, if killing is my talent...I'll hone it to perfection. There's no need to fear what I can do...

Strangely pacified, he drifted off to sleep.