Work Text:
Beneath: Rage
by duointherain
Disclaimer: I don’t own Gundam Wing
“Better,” Maureen asked.
She was still taller than he was, but only barely. He seemed to be growing faster than she’d imagined children could grow. He’d been her child for nearly a year and what had started as a need to right a wrong, to protect someone who had helped her daughter, had grown into a full measure of love and wonder.
It was late summer. The family and extended guests were at the beach house. The first day Duo had sulked and whined. There were moments when her sixteen-year-old boy was really not more mature than a tired five-year-old. She suspected that Heero hadn’t felt any better about a three hour commercial flight where he had to sit in his seat and not fly the plane, but Heero was much more closed in. It worried her, honestly. If anyone was going to ax murder them all in their sleep, it was going to be a repressed Heero Yuy.
“Yeah,” Duo said, with a late summer, faded blue jeans kind of calm. “Like, God, maybe there’d be a lot more fuckers alive if I’d known this a long time ago.”
Maureen smiled, her hands on the porch railing and she felt as old as the setting sun. There you go. Decent parenting prevents wars. That was the other thing with Duo, that he’d say things that were true, just his baseline reality, but so far from the norm that there just weren’t normal things to say back. Just exactly what does one say to one’s beloved boy who casually mentioned the hundreds of people he’s killed? “We all learn as we live, Duo. We never stop learning.”
“Yeah,” he said, leaning on the railing, his braid a bit sun-bleached and heavy from swimming still. “I really wanted to kill’em, but I didn’t.”
Maureen’s fingers brushed over Duo’s long bangs, brushing them back. “What he did was wrong.”
“I’m never gonna get my notebook back,” Duo said with a resurging melancholy.
His writing notebooks had become kind of a security blanket for him. There wasn’t a notebook in the world she wouldn’t want to give him, but he had cherished a cheap paper book with old fashioned thread binding the pages. He’d carried it around for months, scribbling in it. Then cousin Emile had found it on a beach towel and tossed the battered book into the trash can of a staff member who was cleaning houses at the edge of the beach.
Duo had come back and chased after the staff member, only to find out the trash was already in the compactor and gone. There was no possible way to get his notebook back. In a matter of minutes, he’d gone from being a happy kid chasing surf on the beach to being one of the scariest forms of life Maureen had ever been near. She swore his eyes went to a darker purple, his body harder with a dark energy that she was sure could cut down a legion of people and feel nothing. She’d actually found him in the kitchen admiring the knives and she didn’t know if he wanted to use them on himself or on Emile. She didn’t think he knew either.
Relena had thrown tantrums when she’d first been adopted too, but those were usually more of a four-year-old throwing herself on the floor.
So they’d talked. She’d asked him about his anger and he said he wasn’t angry. Emile had come into the kitchen during the talk and said something flippant about having thrown away a ratty old book and was Duo still upset? Maybe Duo shouldn’t have left trash on the beach. Some people had to work to clean that up, you know?
Maureen wasn’t sure she hadn’t been almost ready to be on board with murder while her nephew was speaking. Instead, she’d smiled, taken the knife from Duo’s hands and commanded Emile to get his father. The look of sudden shock in Emile’s eyes might have gotten overlooked by Duo, but Maureen knew she’d found the right nerve.
They were sitting on the porch with iced tea when Rainer arrived. His family was in the next little house over. The entire collection of little bungalow style houses was owned by the Darlian family. Rainier was a solidly build man, maybe half around as he was tall with a shock of black hair and brown eyes that watched everything like a jaded hell hound. “Maureen.”
“Rainer,” she said, standing to offer her hand to him.
He took her hand, kissed the back of her fingers. “What’s wrong?”
“Duo, tell Uncle Rainer what happened?”
“Why?” Duo had lost the darker purple to his eyes and was kind of melted into the chair like a sad crayon left on the dashboard on a hot summer day.
“Please?” She said, reaching across the little glass table to pat his hand.
“I had a notebook. It was.. important to me, but I was having fun swimming and I left it on the towel... and Emile threw it away. I can’t get it back.”
“I’m so sorry,” Ranier said, pulling up the third chair. “I’ll get you another one. He shouldn’t have done that.”
“What?”
“My son destroyed your property. I’ll replace it. I’ll drive you into town and you can pick whichever one you want. He will also come make amends after I explain to him the seriousness of what he’s done.”
“What?” Duo asked.
And later, when after the new notebook had been bought and Emile had apologized, Duo and Maureen stood on the porch, watching the sunset, Duo turned to her and smiled. “So that’s how it’s supposed to be. You get mad so you know something’s wrong. Then you tell people you’re mad. The right people make it up to you. Then you feel better. It’s like magic.”
“How do you think humanity has survived so long?” She laid a hand on his shoulder, gave him a gentle squeeze.
“Stupid luck? I guess I hadn’t actually thought about it.”
“Duo!” Quatre said as he approached on a very nice chestnut horse, leading another black horse, “Come on! We’re waiting for you. Heero and Rey are going to murder us if we don’t hurry up.”
“Coming!” Duo grabbed his new notebook, rolled it up and shoved it into his cargo pants pocket. “Bye mom! I’ll see you tomorrow! Love you!”
“I love you too, Duo!” Maureen waved.
“You’re going to love camping,” Quatre said, as he handed Duo the reigns to the black horse.
Duo wasn’t sure about that, but getting murdered by Heero or Rey just wasn’t really on his to-do list. “Let’s go!”