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Everyone knew about Duo’s ghosts.
They all had them, it was an occupational hazard for any soldier, but especially for them. Collections of the dead in their lives.
Duo’s were different though. He didn’t just… have them. He collected them. Not just his, but those of the people around him. Somehow, their ghosts became his as well after a while. Not removed, just… shared, perhaps? The weight didn’t feel so heavy any more, and they could breathe a little more easily.
They attributed it to Duo’s cheerful understanding, and the continuing peace in the world helping them find peace inside.
And Duo was happy to let them.
*
Duo liked Meilan, almost despite himself. She had hovered around Wufei during the war, visible over his shoulder in the cockpit of Nataku, proud and angry.
The first time they had talked was on the lunar base, when Wufei had gone into his trance.
“You could at least chat to me,” Duo had told her, leaning back against the wall, gangly legs stretched out straight in front of him, “since he’s not even gonna try. Keep me entertained for my last few hours.”
The spirit had looked startled, from where she was sat on the steps beside Wufei, legs neatly crossed. The room was dark, save for the slight internal phosphorescence that seemed to emanate from her form, airy and unreal. She seemed surprised he could see her - which wasn’t an unusual reaction. Then she frowned.
“You’ll use up the air,” she pointed out.
“You’d better do most of the talkin’ then,” he said. She looked offended at the idea that he could order her around, but he shrugged a lazy shoulder. “What else’re you gonna do? An’ I bet it’s the first chance you’ve had in a while. The way things go, could be the last.”
She almost argued, then hesitated, then frowned cautiously at him.
“What do you want me to talk about?”
He shrugged again, his arms flopped in front of him, letting the weight of the cuffs pull them straight. He flashed her a winning, crooked grin.
“Lady’s choice.”
*
He didn’t exactly know how to explain it. He had just always been able to see them.
He had learned to stop telling people he could see them when he had been taken into the church, but not talking about them wasn’t the same as not seeing them.
They weren’t all there. And they weren’t all there all the time. It was usually the spirits which had hurt the most that clung the hardest, were the most defined, and weighed people down.
Most of them only took a little coaxing to come to Duo instead, to stop haunting their host and let him care for them. He could look after them if they stayed, help them to find peace if they wanted to go. And seeing his friends able to stand a little straighter, smile more honestly by degrees, it was worth it.
For Heero, the twenty pacifists hadn’t taken much convincing, happy to be given the option to spare the young man any more pain. It was the small girl, confused and scared, who had required a more gentle approach. At first she had been alarmed that Duo could see her, tucking herself behind Heero and staring, wide-eyed and tearful.
It had taken months of Duo casually and quietly talking to her without demanding answers before she started to creep closer, started to become curious about him. Eventually they worked up to a game where she tried to get close enough to catch the end of his braid, and he would twitch it away at the last second.
When she first saw some of the other ghosts around Duo, she had retreated again, and watched.
But the day she realised that the tall lady, with the long skirt and the black veil, wasn’t scary but was kind, and gentle, and nice…
The next day, the furrow between Heero’s eyebrows was gone, and he seemed a little perplexed. A heavy weight, that had been pulling at his soul, was lifted.
*
Meilan wasn’t Wufei’s only ghost, but she was the one most willing to talk to Duo.
Sometimes, on his worst days, he could be surrounded by a seething mass of spirits, thousands of lives blending and bleeding together, with only occasional faces standing out. They would swarm around him, over him, swallowing him up.
Meilan would sit beside Duo sometimes and watch them, watch Wufei, nearly lost in the centre of it. She couldn’t offer any suggestions to help, but she could tell Duo who some of the more defined faces belonged to. She could stand beside him as, one by one, two by two, he started to help them.
At first, she had been skeptical, death had made her cynical. Helping her clan began to soften her, bring some warmth to her sarcasm.
“You’re the best sidekick a guy could ask for,” he told her once, as another elder drifted away from Wufei.
“Please,” she scoffed. “You’re my sidekick.”
“Sure, okay,” he agreed. “I’d be more likely to watch that show anyway.”
“You’re going to be here forever, you know,” she said, looking at the spirits still to go. “He’s never going to be free.”
Wufei was sleeping, curled on his side with a troubled expression even in dreams. Unaware of Duo’s presence, his subconscious recognising an ally, even if the ally had broken into his apartment to interact with the dead.
“Then I’m going to be here forever,” he said.
*
Quatre once asked why he called himself the God of Death.
“I see dead people,” Duo had intoned, obediently, and then laughed, and Quatre had laughed, and the topic had never been raised again. Which was good, because Duo didn’t want to talk about the beautiful blonde woman who he saw sometimes with Quatre, or the tall man with a moustache.
Never at the same time. They were never together, and that made Duo sad.
Cathy overheard him, and had shyly come up to him later.
“You never lie, right?”
“Nope.”
“Can you really?” she asked, just tipsy enough to be unsure, to be able to ask. “See ghosts, I mean.”
“Sure,” he said, with a one-shouldered shrug. “But keep it on the DL.”
“Can you see my brother?” she whispered. “He was only a baby when we lost him.”
Glancing around, Duo had taken her to another room, for peace and quiet. He sat her down, and put her hands on a table, palms up, and rested his own hands over hers, palm to palm. It wasn’t necessary, but the few people who knew seemed more comfortable thinking he had to summon the gift, had to concentrate and complete some ritual.
He could feel her pulse fluttering under his fingers, as he looked over her shoulders and saw two adults, her parents, undoubtedly, smiling sadly at her.
“There isn’t a child,” he told her gently. “You look like your mom - you smile like her.”
“What does that mean?”
“If I had to guess? He’s still alive. But… I don’t know. This didn’t come with a manual.”
She gave a watery chuckle, and took Duo’s proffered handkerchief to dab her eyes and blow her nose, whilst Duo tried to work out who her parents reminded him of.
*
The door swung open before Duo could finish deftly picking the lock, and Wufei was already halfway back inside the apartment before he had stood and put his picks away. Lurking in the kitchen, Meilan shrugged unhelpfully.
“I could ask why you keep breaking into my home at night,” Wufei said, as Duo closed the door carefully behind him and came to stand across the kitchen counter from his friend, accepting the warm mug of tea that was slipped across to him, “but I’m certain you won’t tell me.”
“Do you want me to stop?” Duo asked, cautiously. Wufei looked tired. Dressed in a loose t-shirt and sleep pants, he looked restless, unsettled. The roiling cloud of ghosts behind him - smaller than it had, but still intense - was crowding through the living area.
For a moment, he looked like he was about to answer, then he sighed, and his shoulders slumped, and he just continued absently dipping his teabag in and out of his mug.
“I don’t mind,” he said. “It’s nice to have the company.”
It was the first time Wufei had admitted he was lonely. Meilan looked startled, then sad, but Duo was a little pleased that he was finally able to say it out loud.
Progress by inches. But still, progress.
*
The Mercenary troupe had been an interesting addition to Duo’s ghosts. They had been congenial enough, although had taken to trying to teach the scrappy young street kids, gap-toothed and skinned-legged, all sorts of language that some of the others didn’t find appropriate. A few interventions were required after they first arrived to ensure peace had returned.
“It’s a bit hypocritical of you,” Meilan said.
“What is?”
“Taking ghosts from other people, encouraging them to let go, whilst all yours are still here.”
“Yeah, well. I gotta have some flaws, or everyone would just be in love with me, an’ I’d never get anythin’ done.” Duo glanced sideways at Meilan, who was sat beside him on the sofa while Wufei showered, watching the other spirits in the apartment milling around him. “Why do you care? Are they crampin’ your style?”
“Don’t they want to move on?”
“Don’t you?” Duo asked, although the response was a little defensive, a little guilty, as he looked to where Sister Helen was sat by the window, watching the world go by with Heero’s little girl.
Meilan didn’t rise to the jibe, just turned to shoot him a patronising smile, which he tried to pretend didn’t bother him. Along the hallway, the shower turned off with a ‘clunk’, and Duo’s attention was lost as Wufei came padding down the corridor a couple of minutes later, bathrobe loosely tied, towelling his hair dry.
He seemed only a little surprised to see Duo sprawling on his sofa, and then a small, pleased smile crawled across his face.
“I’m going to have to start charging you rent,” he commented dryly.
“Stop buying the beer I like and I’ll stop comin’ round,” Duo quipped, eyes tracking Wufei as he shook his head fondly, and disappeared into the bedroom.
After a long moment, where Duo just watched the open doorway with a dopey expression, Meilan let out a dramatic sigh.
“Maybe you should go see if he needs any help with that,” she suggested, the hinting not even slightly subtle. He flushed and glanced at her awkwardly.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I know he’s your -”
He was cut off by a call from the bedroom.
“Duo? Can you come give me a hand…?”
Duo was out of his seat like a rocket, but then hesitated in the doorway, looking back at Meilan nervously.
“Go get him, tiger,” she said.
*
Duo had never met Treize Khushrenada when he was alive.
Meeting him when he was dead was a little like meeting the Boogeyman.
He’d grown used to seeing him hovering behind Une occasionally, but as the cloud of souls from L5 had begun to diminish, the form had become clearer and clearer amongst Wufei’s personal dead.
Treize had watched him silently as the crowd thinned across the months - he wasn’t always there, travelling between Une and Wufei as the tide of their respective guilts ebbed and flowed over days, weeks, months.
Eventually, however, Treize came and stood in front of him as he leaned against the kitchen counter one midnight, Wufei asleep in the other room. Tall and proud even as a shade, his smile was calculating for all it seemed kind. Meilan lurked on the other side of the room, watching from the far end of the sofa, and keeping out of it as she had been firmly instructed. Duo had been very clear on that point, for this spirit.
“Pilot 02,” he said, with a small inclination of his head. “I’m sorry this is how we had to meet.”
“I’m not sure I am,” Duo said, his voice low and measured, folding his arms and looking unimpressed.
“I only met Wufei and Heero during the war, but I have enjoyed learning of you and your other comrades since then. I’m honoured to have fought against you.”
Duo snorted, and raised an eyebrow, waiting to see if any more lip service was to come, and Treize let out a pleased laugh.
“I think we might have got along, had we met sooner,” Treize mused.
“I doubt it.” Duo reached behind him to snag the mug of cocoa, before turning back to face Treize again, hands cradling the hot beverage. “I know I can’t blame you for the whole war, that was in the making years before you. But. You overthrew the Alliance. You had the power to stop it. Right there. And instead, you kept it going. For what?”
Treize studied him, standing tall and proud as he ever had done in life. His shoulders were squared, his chin tilted regally, his head straight and tall. He stood with his hands loosely linked behind his back. A general inspecting troops, in control and self-assured.
“People could never know true peace without knowing true war.”
“Bullshit.”
An elegant eyebrow was quirked at that. All it served to do was make Duo more angry.
“It was a pissing contest between you and Romefeller, and then you and Zechs. An’ you used the rest of the world as the pieces in your shitty game of ‘most honorable’.”
“Would Relena Peacecraft have become who she is today without that war? Would the Preventers exist?”
“You can’t use the accomplishments of people cleaning up your mess to justify what you did!”
It came out louder than he intended, and across the room Meilan spoke up, just once, to shush him. Duo glanced towards the closed bedroom door and silence fell again for a long moment, to ensure that there was no movement, no noise. Treize watched him with interest, an intrigued smile toying at his lips.
“You wouldn’t have him if it weren’t for me.”
“Fuck you,” Duo hissed. “You know exactly what your war did to him. You saw it. You’ve been here, hiding in the mess of it and not facing up to what you caused.”
“I remembered everyone who died for me,” Treize told him, calmly.
“No you didn’t. You got Une to remember it for you!” He had to stop, take a deep breath, a sip of cocoa, letting the warmth seep into his body, relax his muscles, calm him. His next words were said more slowly, clearly trying to control his anger. “Did you remember the name of everyone on his colony? The colony that died to protect him from you?”
He didn’t get a response. Instead, Treize pressed his lips together in a thin line and looked away. Duo huffed a bitter laugh into his mug.
“Yeah,” he muttered, “I thought as much.”
“People had to choose peace for it to last.”
“You didn’t give them a chance to choose before you started another war.”
“Duo? Who are you talking to?”
The bedroom door was open a smidge, and Wufei was leaning against the frame. Rumpled and sleep-soft, he was rubbing at his eye with the heel of his hand and frowning in a sleepy, perplexed sort of way. He looked like heaven.
“No-one,” Duo said, not breaking eye contact with Treize. “I’m sorry, I’ll be right there.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Nearly.” He stood and set his empty cup on the counter, and breezed past the imposing figure still stood in the centre of the room. “Just a few last things to clear away.”
Before the bedroom door clicked shut, Duo heard Meilan add her two cents to the conversation with the General, in her own inimitable way.
“Jerk.”
*
The day he finally let Sister Helen and Solo go, he felt so light with relief, and torn apart with guilt because of it. Simultaneously free and devastatingly empty.
Wufei had panicked, not sure what to do, as he lay on the bed and stared at the wall, fat, lazy tears making their way down his cheeks.
“I’ll be alright,” Duo assured him. “I’ll be okay.”
“He flaps like a nervous hen,” Meilan had observed, from her perch across the room. “You’ve made him soft.”
“What can I do?” Wufei asked, gently brushing Duo’s bangs back from his forehead, anxiety creased between his brows. “How can I help?”
“Talk to me,” Duo said, fingers curling into the loose material of Wufei’s pants, head nestled against Wufei’s hip, taking comfort in the presence of him over him, protective, solid. “Tell me about your life. About Meilan.”
“Looking for dirt,” Meilan snorted. “Very classy.”
Wufei’s voice was low and gentle as he spoke, starting from his earliest memories, his studies and his training. It had been a cold childhood, but Wufei had found pride and solace in becoming proficient in both. He talked about the sparky girl who had become his wife, how much she hated him, and how he took no little pleasure in making her hate him more. It made him feel less powerless, less trapped. How he didn’t regret it now, because he realised that being able to rage at him had given her the same relief.
He talked for a long time, and eventually Duo’s tears dried, and he just lay there, drained but calm.
“She’d say you’ve gone soft,” he observed, afterwards. Wufei let out a rueful chuckle.
“She’d be right,” he agreed.
“Fuck you,” she muttered, but her voice was quiet, and sulky, and affectionate, and emotional. “Fuck you.”
*
Eventually, Meilan was the last one left.
She clung close by them through house moves, and job reassignments, and when they acquired a cat which took great pleasure in curling up wherever she was sitting and purring loudly, much to Wufei’s bafflement, Meilan’s disgust and Duo’s utter delight.
Things settled. They were comfortable. Domestic.
Duo forgot that Meilan wasn’t supposed to be there. They were a family.
Until one night, he drifted awake in the wee hours of the morning, to find Meilan sitting on the chair beside the bed, watching them and looking sad. He didn’t move, stayed curled around Wufei, who was breathing deeply, softly.
“Are you alright?” he breathed.
“I’m scared,” she said. “But I think it will be alright.”
“What’re you scared of?”
She didn’t answer, instead just watched them again in silence. Duo nearly lapsed back into sleep again, lulled by the steady thump of Wufei’s heartbeat, the warmth of his body in his arms.
“You really are going to stay with him forever, aren’t you?” she asked quietly.
“That’s the plan,” he murmured.
“Good,” she said. “It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you, it was just. I couldn’t leave him alone.”
“He’s not alone,” Duo reassured her.
She fell silent again, then nodded and stood. She leaned over the bed, the ghost of a fifteen year old girl, and brushed her formless lips against the foreheads of the two forty-year-old men in the bed. There was only a brief sensation of cool on their skin as a response, and Wufei made a vaguely disgruntled noise, nuzzling into the pillow and rubbing his head into the hand that was curled in front of his face.
Meilan straightened and set her shoulders, taking a deep breath.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
Duo watched her walk out of the door.
That was the last he saw of her.