Trans: "Energy is never created or destroyed, it is transformed into another type."
Heero listened to the silence, and something seemed to be wrong. He looked over at the other half of his shared dorm room and the answer came to him. Duo. Or rather, a lack of a certain braided pilot that gave Heero the sense of wrongness.
Heero returned his gaze to his laptop and sighed. He then started at the uncharacteristic sound. He looked down at his hands and thought. He recalled the last few events in crystal clear black and white.
"Oi, Heero, whatcha doin'?" Duo asked. He stood by Heero's right shoulder, bouncing impatiently from foot to foot. Heero trained a long glare on the pilot from L2.
"Must you?" he asked impatiently. Duo stopped and grinned sheepishly.
"Sorry, but man I'm bored! There's nothing to do around this place!" he exclaimed.
Heero pointed to Duo's messy half of the room, unmade bed and stacks of schoolbooks. "You could clean your room-"
"Yuck!"
"Make your bed-"
"It's just going to be slept in tonight, why bother?"
"Do your homework-"
"Bo-ring. Come on, isn't all that typing getting to you? Why don't we go out and do something?"
Heero turned away to give Duo his full attention. He avoid looking at Duo's sparkling grey eyes[1] and gave him a stern look. "Duo, if we don't maintain a serious attitude towards who we are fighting and what we are fighting for, this war will never end. The more time we waste, the more battles we need to fight."
Duo's head lowered at this and he disappeared for long hours afterwards. After that, they'd moved on to another school and another cover story.
At the next school, Duo was quiet. Normally exuberant, the braided boy stayed quiet and rarely drew attention to himself. After school, he spontaneously cleaned every inch of the room, made the beds to five star hotel perfection and did his homework in perfect, neat handwriting. Then he disappeared until just before the lights-out was called, showered and went to bed to start another early morning.
At first, Heero enjoyed the quiet. He was never interrupted and his mission reports were filled out better and on time. But, something gnawed at him, something deep in his chest. He longed for the inane chatter and friendly clutter that his partner used to bring to their rooms. Heero shut off his laptop and went to bed. He pulled the covers over his body and thought long into the night.
The next evening, when Duo left the room, Heero followed. Duo walked to the weight room and changed into a pair of loose jogging pants and a black tank top. He wrapped white bandaging around his knuckles[2] and stood in front of a large punching bag. He bowed to the punching bag and then began to attack it with a fury. He landed punches and kicks, rocking the large bag of sand until he seemed to grow tired. Heero watched Duo's face and noted with slight horror that he has tears streaming down his face.
Duo dropped to his knees suddenly, letting the punching bag swing back and forth. His shoulders shook as Heero watched him cry.
"Why do you hate me Heero?" Duo whispered. Heero felt fingers of ice grasp his heart. Hate you? Duo, I could never...
Heero walked silently over to Duo and awkwardly put an arm around his shoulders, half-remembering what Duo often did.
"It... it's okay Duo," Heero said haltingly. Duo looked up at him, a look of abject shame written on his features.
"I'm sorry Heero. Another useless waste of energy, huh?"
Heero had the grace to look ashamed. "That was wrong of me," he said. "Gomen nasai." He locked eyes with Duo and his voice dropped to a whisper. "Sumimasen."
Duo just looked at him, expression changing from shame to disbelief to joy. He wrapped his arms around Heero tightly, which startled Heero completely. "Yeah."
The End
1-Heh... I made Heero colour blind... completely so.
2-Trust me, punching one of those with no protection hurts like Hell. Some of my knuckles are still lightly scarred from trying.
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