I Backward Cast My E'e Part 12

"Hey."

Duo jumped, looking away from the photos guiltily. "Hey."

Trowa hitchhiked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. "I snuck out when Heero and Cathy started debating how best to smother us with drinks and snacks."

"Dude, it's Thanksgiving, not the Super Bowl. Aren't we supposed to be saving our stomachs?"

"Probably. I think those two just like protecting their territory." Trowa eyed him curiously, and then the frames on the fireplace mantle. "Nothing there you haven't seen before. We've got some pics from the circus, but the only clown there is me. No reason to have that look on your face."

It was a poor excuse, but it was an excuse. Duo pounced on it. "Hey, speak not the name of the devil."

"Just what did Howard do to you?"

He shivered dramatically. "I think I'd rather not talk about it."

"Maybe you just need to be eased into them. There are a lot of different kinds of you-know-whats..."

"I'd rather not talk about it," he repeated firmly. If Trowa weren't such a good friend of Heero's, he'd probably have avoided the guy altogether. The guy liked those unspeakables. There had to be something wrong with his head.

Trowa thought the same thing about Duo, only the other way around. "Heero can hold your hand the entire time."

"He'd have to do more than -- wait, I'm totally not agreeing at all, no matter what Heero does." Duo glared at him, then changed the subject. "Anyway. Rather than searching your photographs for the faces of my mortal enemies, I was wondering... are those real lion cubs?"

"They don't look real to you?"

"Well, I mean, of course they look real... I just think that's a lot more kitty than I've ever seen packed into such a cute little furball. Was it really a good idea to be.. yanno... chokeholding them like that?"

"I'm still alive, aren't I?"

"Um, not exactly an answer to inspire confidence in a guy."

Trowa wasn't exactly out to inspire confidence in a guy. That was no fun. "It was probably more dangerous trying to chokehold Cathy."

Duo winced. "Oh yeah. She hung out with the knife-throwers, right?" For a split second there, he almost looked over to the photograph with her in her colorful leotard, an array of knives between her fingers, posed like she was ready to hurl them straight into the camera... but then he remembered Trowa was standing right next to her in that picture, dressed in his own circus costume, and he averted his eyes. Okay, while there was still obviously something strange about the two siblings, at least Cathy was on the right side of strange. Knives could be cool. "How's that more dangerous than lions? Lions have knives built right into them!"

"Yes, but throwing knives have longer range. And big sisters can hold a grudge."

"Yeah... and lions can get hungry. Maybe the cubs can't swallow you whole, but they could still take a pretty good chomp out of you."

As if their handlers didn't feed them. "The kitties are harmless."

"Harmless. Yeah. Right."

"Mostly harmless." He'd do Duo a favor and not show him the pictures with the cats all grown up. "You just have to approach them with kindness."

"But would they approach me with kindness?"

"You? Probably not."

"You're mean."

"You're tense. They would sense that. Your tension would make them anxious. An anxious lion..."

"Not so good?"

"Not so good."

"Great. You've just given me another reason never to go to the circus."

Trowa shrugged. "You're lucky Heero was never all that into it."

Man, otherwise talk about irreconciliable differences. Duo wasn't sure what he'd do if it was Heero's room decorated with clowns instead of grumpy paraphernalia. Or worse yet, grumpy clown paraphernalia. The guy was great, but probably not worth his sanity. "You went to this circus summer camp thing, didn't you?"

"Yep."

"What did Heero do all summer without his best bud?"

"Heero had his own interests. Actually, we've always sort of had different interests. Anyway, I don't remember what he did every summer. You'll have to ask him for a complete rundown. But I remember Odin enrolling him in some summer programs run by the institute. Like science camps, astronomy clubs, things like that. A lot of that was probably for convenience, I'm sure... but it was probably also Odin trying to find some way to connect with him. I guess they're lucky Heero took to that kind of thing. Hm. Actually, I'm getting a kick out of picturing what Odin's reaction would have been if his kid had told him he wanted to be a clown when he grew up."

Duo wasn't picturing it. He didn't even try since his thoughts were already somewhere else entirely. "Heero... he loved his mother a lot, right? What was he like... 'after'? I'm not looking for dirt or anything, but, well, I have his point of view on things, but it had to have been different looking from the outside in. I'm just curious... was it really just 'life goes on' for him? You don't have to answer or anything if you feel like--"

Trowa cut him off with a shake of his head. "Heero was never exactly the most outgoing kid, you know? I think... I think he went inside himself for a little bit. And he came back out just... determined to be the person his mother wanted him to be. Well, at least that's what I've gotten over the years, personal impression and from what my parents and Cathy have said."

"You knew her, right?"

"Yeah. She was a really nice lady."

The following silence was respectful, but after a while Duo turned away with a faintly bitter smile on his lips. "Yanno, it's funny how things turn out. Between me and him, there's so much in common there in our stories, with our birth parents leaving us behind, one way or another, and then getting raised by guys who stepped up when they didn't have to... and yet our stories turned out completely different, didn't they?"

"Do you resent that?"

He opened his mouth to brush the suggestion aside casually, but the words stuck in his throat. He cast his eyes in the direction of Trowa's feet as he pushed himself into being honest. "Sometimes. A little. Maybe."

Having wrung the confession from him, Trowa now invalidated it. "From what I can tell, Duo... your two stories didn't turn out all that different in the end. You both ended up getting raised by guys who love you like your fathers never did."

"Yeah, I guess. I guess that's the important part, eh? And I guess since we got together, now we're in the same story anyway, right?" He smiled tentatively, eyes sweeping across the accumulation of photographs on the Barton mantle. "Not like Howie and I don't have any pictures of the two of us. Or memories or whatever. Seems pretty different... but maybe it all boils down to the same thing in the end."

Trowa chuckled. "Yeah. It's Thanksgiving, Duo. Forget about the family you don't have, and be thankful for the one you do have."

Good advice, but a little too nicely phrased for Duo to let it go without an ironic twist of his lips. He looked over to the door of the kitchen. "Hey, don't we have territory of our own to protect? Let's go piss on some tree stumps."

"Yeah, Cathy will love that."

TBC...

 

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