Disclaimer: Characters belong to their respective copyright owners like Sunrise, Sotsu, Bandai. Plot, if you can call it that, belongs to me.
GundamW. Non-pairing. Angst. Death, and lots of it.
If you're not familiar with the challenge, this is a collection of five AUs.
Author's Notes: As far as I know, no one's ever done Five Things for any of the GW boys, so I figured why not. I haven't watched the whole series in a while though, so here's to hoping nothing's way off canon. Thanks to blue soaring for the help and encouragement.
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Five Things that Never Happened to Duo Maxwell
by Ponderosa
[#1 blood is thicker than water ]
Occupation. Soldiers. Resistance fighters. It all plays out on the newsfeeds nightly.
Bluish-grey eyes watch it all unfold. Skinny fingers run nervous over a skull of closely-cropped brown hair.
"What's going to happen to our Colony?"
"I don't know, baby."
"Is there gonna be war? Are we gonna die?"
"I don't know about war, but everyone dies eventually. That's how the world works."
"Think we could be like cats, mom? You almost died with me inside you, so that'd give us eight lives left."
Warm eyes of the same strange colour between blue and purple crinkle at the corners. "Sure, we could be like cats, but then you'd have to drink milk with your dinner and like it."
"Aw, mom..."
[#2 death rides a pale horse ]
"Duo?!"
A head full of tangled brown hair rolls to the side. Glassy eyes stare as a young man in his twenties digs through a dresser that has seen better days. The top drawer is as scuffed and scarred as the rest, and doesn't sit right on its track. Nerve damage left behind from the plagues makes the man's hands tremble like a junkie's as he yanks the drawer open.
He turns, brows furrowing beneath the feathered edge of his unruly hair. "Duo, you shithead, where's the rest of the stash?" He squints, takes a second look at the boy lying on the bed and curls his upper lip. "You promised me you were going to stay clean."
"We sell the shit, we don't use it," he shouts angrily. He throws an empty beer bottle at the outflung arm.
The glass connects, but there's no reaction.
The man forgets his search and drops down next to the boy he's tried his best to raise. "Oh shit. Oh God!" he stammers, quaking fingers wiping tangled hair and drying vomit from Duo's smooth face.
"Fuck!" Solo cries, searching for a pulse.
[#3 the road is paved with good intentions ]
Duo tries to staunch the blood with his own hands, but it just keeps coming in great dark tides that stain the girl's blue dress black.
"Come back, please, help me! You owe it to her!" he shouts, but the retreating figure pays him no mind. The guy keeps going, spine straight, making only a quick stop to disable the torpedoes from auto-launching towards his suit. Duo can't get himself to take his fingers off the bullet wound in the girl's throat, and the guy knows it.
Duo throws his head back and looks at the deep blue sky overhead. "Oh God," he cries, "please don't let her die." Things aren't supposed to happen like this. Civilians aren't supposed to get hurt, for Christ's sake. The girl shouldn't have gotten in the way in the first place, but when he had a clear shot - a sure shot - the guy wasn't supposed to grab her and use her for a fucking shield.
Duo tries to pray that she'll live and not that she'll die quickly and then maybe he'll have time to do something before the guy realises there are two suits down there. And Deathscythe fully operational to boot.
Blood bubbles at the girl's lips and the pale hand clutching at his arm grasps all the more desperately. Duo clenches his teeth together. Seconds tick by. He feels tears burning hot behind his eyes and whispers a ragged, "I'm sorry," as he lets go and scrambles for his gun with wet, red hands.
The guy is already off the platform and in the water swimming with powerful strokes towards the salvage ship. Duo raises his arm to take aim as the timer on the warheads goes off.
[#4 whoever controls the media, controls the mind ]
...Good Evening everyone.
It was reported earlier today that one of the terrorists involved in the ongoing conflict between the colonies and Earth has been confirmed as dead.
Lady Une has issued a press release documenting the young man's continued resistance while in custody, and the unfortunate events that led to his unsuccessful attempt at escape.
We have word that before his death, the young man divulged the names of his fellow Gundam terrorists. One of them was Quatre Raberba Winner, heir to the Winner fortune. Soldiers have already placed several members of the Winner family under arres....
[#5 there is no failure except in no longer trying ]
Duo flies like the devil himself is on his heels. He carries five men cradled beneath the fragile shell of Deathscythe's wings.
The dolls spin around him, wicked fast in the infinite, glittering blackness of space.
They wear him down, but he cuts through them with grim determination. His weapon flashes as he flies, great sweeps of green that leave scattered red afterimages in his mind.
The mobile dolls falter, stalling in their deadly dance, and Duo gives a wild whoop of laughter over the comms before hitting his jets to cross the remaining miles of the battlefield. He lands light, fingers of his mobile suit clinging to the shell of Peacemillion. He hits the controls to unfold Deathscythe's wings.
But pestillence is still ruled by death and there is nothing left but the broken bodies of men who were prepared to give their all.
Duo closes his eyes. He swallows the grief and fear, as he reaches for his helmet.
"Override Peacemillion's engines in a crazy gamble to try and save a planet I wasn't even born on?" he murmurs, as Deathscythe's hatch hisses open and, beyond the floating bodies, the hull of the ship looms large to fill his vision.
"No sweat..." he says, and steps out into the void.
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