Chapter Text
Beneath: The New Kid
by duointherain
disclaimer: I don’t own Gundam Wing.
The school by the lake had some issues and that was before Duo and Relena nearly destroyed the cafeteria and Duo put a couple bodies in the forest. It had started out with land deer and there was still that giant ass waterdeer in the lake. It was still mostly the humans that made it so shitty.
“Aren’t you a little short for a terrorist,” Hank Hansen sneered.
Duo twisted up his face, a hand on the backpack slung over his shoulder. “Well, for one, you don’t look like Princess Leia. For two, I ain’t here to rescue your ass.” He stuck out his tongue as the bigger boy’s eyes widened.
Several other kids in the hall snickered. Duo shrugged, wiggled his eyebrows, then spun on his heel and ran after Shin, who had promised to show him the way to civics class.
In the two weeks before school started again, Relena had tried to show Duo every movie she thought were relevant and important. They tended towards being science fiction movies. It turned out Duo was very partial to the Alien movies, so much so that Relena bought him a stuffed xenomorph. Duo had said stuffy in his backback, down on the bottom, because coming back to this school was giving him anxiety.
Actually, he supposed, it wasn’t the school giving him anxiety. It was having to stay at the school, even if he didn’t want to. In the old days, if he didn’t want to be somewhere, he could just leave. If he needed his attendance fixed, Heero would have done that for him. Now he had to stay. He had to go to class. He really, really had to not put any more bodies in the forest.
Shin leaned forward a bit, smiling at him, and when he had Duo’s attention, he touched his finger to Duo’s arm. “Stop overthinking every fucking thing.”
Duo grunted, rolled his eyes, and searched for words. Having a friend who wasn’t also a wartime ally was... odd. Just walking down the hall towards this class, which Duo really did not know what it was going to be about, felt like the most dangerous thing he’d ever done. Under the layer of approved and reasonable thought, the walls were crumbling and falling to either side. Explosions hit the outside of the building so loudly that Duo thought he could actually hear them, even though he knew in that rational layer of thought, that they weren’t real. Old bullet wounds ached like they still wanted to bleed. Bones decently mended whispered about falling apart again. “I gotta go to the bathroom.”
“Do you don’t,” Shin said. “Come on, we only have two minutes until the bell rings. Everything’s going to be okay!”
From the layer of his brain that was Shinigami, pent up and anxious, Duo saw a bullet hit Shin right in the perfect center of his forehead, so very convincingly, that Duo’s smile felt frozen. “You okay?”
“I’m good,” Shin said, slipping his arm around Duo’s and half dragging him forward. “Come on.”
The space between standing in the hall and sitting at the desk happened so fast that Duo couldn’t remember not a single step. It was like he was in the hall then he was at the desk. Head leaning back just slightly, pink lips parted, violet eyes slightly wide, he really hoped like Hell he hadn’t killed anyone in that blank moment.
“Mr. Maxwell,” Ms. Hyon said firmly, “Are you still with us?”
“Yea,” Duo meeped. A glance at his notebook showed him notes written in Chinese, just the word murder over and over again. He flipped the notebook over, wrote his name real quick, propped his chin in his palm, smiled like he had just won the world. The clock said the class was half over. Great. That was good at least.
“So then, Mr. Maxwell. What are the three branches of the federal government in the United States?”
Duo’s lip twitched. Government? Branches? Trees? Government... government... “I don’t know.”
“Well, take a guess then,” she said, head tilting, chin pushing forward a little.
Her expression gave Duo the idea that maybe she really didn’t like this job that much. Important things for government... “Uh, maintenance, medical, and mercs.”
The class erupted in laughter, but that could have been the teacher’s gonna-die-of-shock expression or Duo’s answer, or both. Duo’s face turned explosion-red as he sank down into the seat a little more.
Ms. Hyon took a step to the side and touched her hand to the whiteboard. “Those sound like they’d be really useful. In the United States, our government is made of three branches which are the executive, legislative, and judicial. Who wants to tell us what the executive branch does?”
In Duo’s mind, he saw a great big tree with three branches and one of them hung an executive style pen that he’d seen in that fancy store. Then to top it all off, there was a deer standing on it’s back to legs, smoking the cigar that Maureen said he couldn’t have, laughing at him. It shouldn’t have been that hard to die young. He couldn’t do anything right.
The rest of the class was just a mind fuck, but he sat there, doodling on his notebook, drawing stick figure comics with the dialog in Chinese, Japanese, and a touch of Arabic. If it wasn’t for going home to Relena and her mom, he would have just made for the nearest spaceport and stolen a ship or died trying. At that moment, he really didn’t care which, except that he really wanted to sit down at the table and be part of the pretend family with Relena and Maureen.
“Mr. Maxwell, a minute,” Ms. Hyon said.
Shin was waiting for him by the door, his faithful sheep dog, but Duo gestured him off. He could find math class on his own. He had a phone. There had to be GPS. Notebook rolled up under his arm, he strode to the teacher’s desk like a proud prisoner to his execution.
“I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot,” she said. She held a book in her hands, small, like a novel.
An apology was the last thing he’d expected and now the floor was all cracking ice. “Yeah, no problem. I’m sorry I’m stupid.”
“You are not stupid. You’ve had a very unusual life. I’m glad you’re here. This book,” she said, holding it out to him, “Was given to me by my freshman political science professor. He was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. You are exactly the kind of person he said we should all be willing to be. I’d like you to have it.”
Duo’s eyes narrowed. “It sounds important to you. I ain’t got nothing to give back.”
“You’ve already given,” she said, suddenly throwing her arms around him.
He squeaked, his mind overrun with sudden visions of deer encircling him. “Okay, okay!”
“Please read it,” she said, pushing into his hands. “That’s all I ask.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, dancing away from her as if he were an uncatchable firefly. “I’ll read it!”
“I hope you have a good rest of your day.”
“Yeahyeahyeahu2!” He said it fast, as his mind melted down. Book shoved in his backpack, he headed for the door, only to find Hank waiting for him.
“You’re so fucking stupid,” the bigger boy hissed at him, “I can’t stand that they let you into my school.”
Murder would violate his probation. That might be worth it.