Coming Through the Rye

By Shannon the Twisted Link Worshiper

Author's Note (a.k.a. "the Rant") These little ficlets are becoming a way of life for me (not that it's new or anything). Anything to keep my mind piqued, I suppose. Let's just say this story got way out of hand. I'll make this disclaimer short for once (yeah right). The pairing's a 1x2x1, as would be typical of obsessive little old me, which means (you guessed it) YAOI!!! There's a tad of 1xOC, but don't worry about it. Just give this all a chance and keep reading. The dynamic Duo will show up eventually! I'm sorry that all I have to present is yet another song-ridden fic (and that lousy pun), but I think we've been over my worship of music and my retarded sense of humour before. Know that this monster is chock loaded with sap, angst, a broken, dead and whipped Heero, a touch of OOC, and a drop or two of lime (hehe), so be wary. And sorry if this is a little weird, but it's the product of writing at the ungodly hours of the morning and mindless daydreaming/writing during class (goddamned English/Latin teacher). Song credit goes to everyone who I ripped off with kudos; GW goes to Sunrise etc. with kudos x1000. So much for a short disclaimer. Oh well, enjoy.

[[PS]] Sorry to JD Salinger for stealing pieces of his excellent masterpiece The Catcher in the Rye, easily one of my favourite books of all time. Mistake ever making me read that, heh. Quotes from that book are in the pretty braces that look like this à {Omae o korosu… grrrrr!!!} There might also be some references to the book that you wouldn't get unless you've read it, and for that, I'm so sorry! If you haven't read it, I'm ordering you to right now, nevermind my fanfic! Holden's like Heero and Duo, except one person, I swear, which is exactly like me, frightening thought as that may be, hehe.

~ Part I ~

Superman's Dead

Do you worry you're not liked?
How long 'till you break?
You're happy 'cause you smile,
But how much can you fake?
An ordinary boy,
An ordinary name,
But ordinary's just not good enough today.

Alone, alone, alone, alone,
Alone, I'm thinking,
Why Superman's dead?
Is in my head?
We'll just laugh instead.
You worry about the weather and
Whether or not you should hate.

Are you worried about your faith?
Kneel down and obey.
You're happy you're in love.
You need someone to hate.
An ordinary girl,
An ordinary waist,
But ordinary's just not good enough today.

Doesn't anybody ever know that the world's a subway?

{If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.}

Heero's eyes rose from the tiny printed words of his book. He had the paperback novel hidden behind the pages of his textbook, glancing over the pages ever few moments to gaze out the window at the forlorn world, wet and fresh with rain. The drizzle splattered lazily against the thick glass embedded in the classroom's wooden window frames, the water sliding down the slick transient material in slow crystalline smears. Heero was barely paying attention to the droning physics professor standing at the head of the classroom and his dull voice preaching formulas and information Heero had known since he was ten years old. But even if he had not known a single thing about mathematics and its many scientific uses, Heero would have had just as much trouble staying focused on the class, despite his rigid disciplines and the spirit of a warring soldier within. His mind was far to preoccupied with the American he had walked out of his life almost three years ago to notice the world as it slowly climbed from the grave the war had dug. For the first time in his life, there was something that Heero regretting never doing.

Images of the boy who wore his torrent of hair in a rope of chestnut brown seemed to be reflected in those watery smudges daubing down the windowpanes, the rain flowing faster as its onslaught upon the wet earth continued into the grey-clouded day. Irritated by the boy with a name Heero found echoing through his mind more than he could bear and whose memory could not leave him alone, even though there were sure to be miles, maybe even light years between them. A quick rerun of the cold way he had treated him rewound and played over in his head for what seemed the six hundredth time since the first bell that morning. And that did not include the confusing dreams he had about the longhaired devil the night before. He had been distant and unfeeling as he was to most people, but the brat had been quite a tenacious one, never letting Heero's verbal attacks put a damper on his abundant energy. But that was not what upset Heero most. What was making Heero's mouth curl into an even darker frown that usual was the way these memories of the ever bubbly American chatterbox would not leave him alone. Thoughts like these obstructed carrying out a mission effectively, got in the way of reality and muddled his sense of perfection. Worse yet were the emotions that threatened to bring everything Heero had known to be an effective existence, the emotions that gave him a reason to live. It angered him to think that someone could slip into his life so nonchalantly and stick there, like a looming shadow that seeped into dark corners and lingered. But he could never hope to deny to himself that he had fallen in love.

Heero let his head drop to the side with a somewhat hollow dull thud as his mess of deep brown hair connected with the glass window, acquiring a few odd sideways glances from the rest of the class. He sneered at them, frightening the wayward lookers back into the lesson. That beautiful Maxwell boy had not been afraid of him like these children were, like everyone he ever laid his icy glare upon was. If anything, the darkened stares had only urged the braided prat on, making his commentary wilder and his laughs louder. The harder Heero had tried to shut him out, the quicker Maxwell was to come back at him with a bigger better set of explosives, in hopes to blast Heero right out of hiding. Explosive, that's what he was, Heero decided as he rolled his head downwards, his cold eyes falling outside to the courtyard that lay sprawling in front of the school. He came roaring in and out of my life with that strange Gundam of his like a damn explosion. Trying to shrug anymore illicit pondering of the boy away, Heero let his soldier's instincts take over the autopilot his mind had been running on all morning. But explosions come big and loud before they're gone, forever. I got what I needed from him and that's all that I should ever have to associate with him. So that kid's out of the picture for good. Mission complete. Or so he tried to tell himself, despite the sweet little voice in the back of his dark mind that kept screaming in protest that he really did miss him. Funny how those little voices always seem to pick up on subliminal things that the greater mind likes to ignore….

Suddenly, there was the roar of a motor and the squeal of tires treading on slick asphalt. His eyes narrowed as he stared out through the rain into the mist-coated courtyard, searching for the cause of the noise. Much to his chagrin, the sound of the motorcycle that was now thundering up the drive towards the school had attracted the curiosity of the twins that sat behind him and the girl on the right diagonal, the three leaping from their seats and rushing over to the large window to press their faces against the cooling panes to try and see. Heero stood slightly, giving the girl a somewhat cruel shove as he tried to get a good view of the biker.

"Ahem," the professor cleared his throat, reasserting himself as the leader of the classroom. The three other students slowly meandered back to their seats, Heero sinking back comfortably in his chair now that the wall of bodies had been removed from his window, as the professor made a quick comment about the stranger down below probably being the new student that was expected to transfer in that day. Of course, all that did was create a low hum of murmurs in the room, the class suddenly buzzing with excitement at a potential new friend. The last kid to transfer in (Heero could feel them all giving him dirty looks) was not exactly the best in the social department, and showed no hope of ever being more than a callous son of a bitch. Not that it bothered Heero in the least.

"I wonder…" Heero muttered under his breath as the professor tried in vain to get control of the class once more. His sharpened vision glimmered through the sparkling droplets of rain plummeting downwards just beyond the window as he caught a look at the slender figure dismounting the motorbike, the person's head hidden behind the tinted glass of his (or perhaps even her) helmet. Some administration member who had been waiting just inside the door rushed out to greet the new student, hiding the mystery newcomer from view beneath the shelter of a large black umbrella. Heero felt his expression tighten into an expression of stone, swearing that he saw a long brown coil of hair flair out from behind the biker as he (or she) was escorted inside. "Nani?" He let out in a loud angry outburst, slipping into his native tongue as the frustration and confusion welling up inside began to peak. He looked down again, knowing that there was no mistaking that hair.

"Mister Yuy," the professor was glaring at the strange student who had joined his class at the beginning of the month. "Mister Yuy, is there something you would like to share with the rest of us?"

Heero said nothing as his eyes turned from the window to the professor, the almost sadistic look in his eyes making the man pale on the spot. Yes, the professor turned away from the intimidating young Japanese boy, that kid is certainly different. He has that look almost like he could kill someone.

Satisfied that he had chased the teacher away for the rest of the period, and hopefully for the rest of his stay at this school, Heero sunk lower into his chair, wallowing in thought. Just when he was sure he had gotten over the memory of that Maxwell boy and all traces of his memory, it seemed he had come roaring right back into the picture, full-throttle, on a motorcycle. He had thought he would never see him again….

The rest of the class seemed to drag by, and when the bell finally rang once more, Heero was out of the room before anyone had even realized what had happened. At first walking brusquely down the hall with his books tucked under his arm to avoid as many people as possible, Heero began to slow, his pace becoming almost that of a snail's as he shook his head sadly. He had tried hard to find a way to forget the war, figuring that reapplying at school would help him get used to the peace, but it was just no use. His mind always trailed back to the battles, his old lover Duo Maxwell and the ridiculously depressing war that dominated more than half of his pitiful existence. Remembering it all made him even more bitter than he usually was, despite the changes his heart underwent during those years. The other students had tried to welcome him at first, unknowing of his past involvement with the Gundams and all of those messy details, the boys friendly and welcoming, the girls admiring of his merciless good looks, but even after only a few days, they had learned not to cross paths with Heero Yuy. He was punitive and seemed angry all the time, and even the excuse that the war had hardened him to be that way seemed not enough to explain away the psychological issues that teamed through the short young eighteen year old who had been to hell and back on numerous occasions.

He was passing the small chapel on his way to his dorm, when a hauntingly familiar voice floated through the hall, stopping Heero dead in his tracks. At first it had seemed like he had imagined that braid when he saw the new student sweep into the building earlier, but he never dreamed he would be able to see Duo one more. Walking into the small sanctuary, he found a slender figure leaning at the base of a statue of the Virgin at the front of the room.

"Hey there, Lady," the black clad person said to the statue. It looked like it could have been Duo, with the leather pants and motorcycle jacket, though the hair was swept up behind his head and pinned in a butterfly clip, this being a very feminine hairstyle like Heero had never seen on Duo before.

Maybe it's not him… Heero thought, letting out a breath he had not even realized he had sucked in as he walked past the empty pews towards the new student, who was still talking softly to the stone carving. Reaching out tentatively, Heero laid his hand on the brown haired figure's shoulder.

Jumping, the transfer student whirled around, a knife suddenly in hand and pressed against Heero's scarred wrist. "The hell!"

Heero looked the person over, noting dismally that it could not possibly be Duo for the girl's uniform draped over the transfer's leather-clad arm and the dark purple lipstick painted on her lips. "Gomen nasai," he apologized, stepping back with a little bow, noting to himself how quickly the girl had been able to react to his touch with that knife. The girl's weapon had made it back to wherever she had been hiding it as she stood there, just staring at Heero like she had never seen another human being before in her entire life.

She raised a brow, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "Japanese?" she questioned.

"Hai," he answered before mentally slapping himself for still rambling on in his first language. Realizing what he was doing, he returned to English with another quick bow of apology. "Anata wa… You… I thought you were someone else. I'm sorry, again."

"Do I?" she said, leaning irreverently on the statue behind her, crossing her arms over the uniform. Her voice was a somewhat throaty one for a girl, but it was charming nonetheless. Tall and slender with bluish purple eyes and pale skin, she looked almost exactly like Duo, obviously save the fact she was indeed a girl. Even her black leather clothes resembled something that the loudmouthed American would wear, and Heero was constantly reminded of it every time he chanced a look. She narrowed her eyes. "Have we met before? Name's Hoshi."

"No, I'm sure we have not," he said callously, his mouth dropping into a frown. Cutting to the foremost thought on his mind, Heero skipped all other formalities, including his name. "Tell me, have you ever met someone named Duo Maxwell?"

She grinned, running her hands through her thick very Duo-like hair. "That who I look like? Well I might have met him once or twice, but I ain't seen him too recently. Sorry pal."

"But you know him?"

"Kinda," she shrugged. "Not too well. I said I just might have seen him once or twice. That doesn't mean I know him or nothing."

"If that's the case, I'll be going," Heero said, turning to leave, a blade seeming to swipe through his heart. So close and yet so far away, he said to himself. The girl, Hoshi, was almost frighteningly like Duo, everything from her personality to her hair, even to her purple hued eyes.

"Hey, wait," she called out after him as he started to head back towards the empty corridor. When Heero did not stop walking, she called to him again, "Hey, don't you wanna talk about it?"

That put an end to Heero's retreat. Curious, he turned around and said in his usual aloof tone, "About what?"

"Well, Duo of course," she smiled as she pushed herself off of the statue and started to walk up to Heero, who was inadvertently backing away slowly. "You like to think you're tough, don't you? Well it's too bad for you that your eyes give away exactly what you're thinking. Did you think I was your Duo? He's the one with the long pretty hair, right? Makes him kind of look like a girl? I haven't seen him in a good bit."

"Yes," Heero swallowed, a dark blush rising to his cheeks. Then he darkened his tone as he raised his hand, clenching it into a tight fist. "But I swear, if I hear you calling Duo a woman again, I'll beat you shitless, nevermind that you're a girl."

"Oh, down boy," Hoshi said with a sadistic grin. She slid down onto one of the pews, arranging the light blue skirt and crème coloured sailor shirt over her lap. "So, Duo… how do you know him?"

"I never consented to talking about him," Heero snapped. He was not about to even begin to try and explain his feelings for that braided chatterbox to whom he had clung so desperately to a perfect stranger just because she happened to look a lot like him. "You have no right to pry into my past."

"Hurts, doesn't it?" she said, polishing her nails on her shirt casually, looking up at him with a sly gaze. "Whatever you're thinking about right now, it's tearing you apart inside, isn't it?"

"It was a war," Heero said curtly. At least it was not a lie, and that would have to do for the brown nosing girl for now. Heero shook his head as he started to step away. "And I was a soldier. We were soldiers, that's all."

"Somehow, I think there's more to this story than you're letting on," she said, her eyes still narrowed into those knowing slits as Heero's steps toward the back of the little chapel became bigger and much quicker in pace. "Well at least we have the rest of the year to hear it."

That was enough for Heero. He was not going to stay around to hear some Duo rip-off try and analyze his psyche like this. Duo was his, only his, and like hell he was about to share him with anyone else. He had barely been able to tell Duo how he felt, so how could he so easily open up and make clear his relationship with the boy who shone like Death to a prat like this Hoshi girl? Brooding over these thoughts, Heero turned on his heel once again and stormed out of the chapel, angry at nothing in particular and fed up with his world, one without Duo. The faster he could walk away from it all, the sooner he would forget his tears.

Stowed away in the eves of the school, a lone figure sat in the spider infested darkness, setting up a thin laptop coated with a myriad of stickers and even a few smears of orange paint. He was with Preventers, working with another undercover agent to expose a teacher working here that had been trying to cover up a dossier practically bursting with illegal dealings. After hitting his head for what seemed the eightieth time on the low ceiling and a string of mumbled swears, he finally had the computer running, wired up to the school's system. With any luck, this mission would be cleared by the end of the week. He sneezed, the sound causing a rat to dart across the keyboard to another dark corner of the musty old school's attic, much to the agent's disgust.

"Damn Wufei," he muttered sardonically as he settled cross-legged in front of the computer, logging onto the school's network with his cover agent's student ID. "This had better be as important as you say, my fine friend, or I swear that Shinigami will kill brutally you before he gives Preventers the old heave-ho."

A strange shadow darted past in the darkness ahead. The still complaining stranger crawled after the movement, wondering what could possible stay alive up there in that nasty old storage attic. Pouncing upon it, he found himself cuddling with a small dark brown cat. "Huh?" he knitted his brows together. "What's a cute kitty like you doing way up here?"

He only got a low purring noise in response.

Tickling the cat's belly, he smiled at his new feline companion, "Aren't you just the cutest damn thing! I could use a good cute buddy to hang around with nowadays." He lifted the cat up and nuzzled noses with it. "I miss hanging out with cute buddies, you know?"

The cat meowed again.

"Oh you do know, do you?" He ruffled the soft fur between the cat's tapered ears. "That's good. I'm glad we're on the same page."

"In any case, I'll kill that guy next time I see him. I still don't know why I said I'd do this for him," he grumbled, cat now in arm. He went on muttering to his newfound friend about Wufei's persuasive skills, deciding that the former Chinese Gundam pilot was as good a person as any to pin his current discomfort on, as he hooked up the small minidisk component to the laptop and slid the disk in. His agent was able to keep a record of the day's events with a tiny recording device fixed into a necklace charm that transmitted data to a DVD recorder built into his PC. As the footage began to play on the flat screen, the image of a darkly frowning Japanese student glaring darkly seeming to dominate the entire window. "Oh yeah," he smiled, twisting the tail of his braid around his fingers. "That's why."

"…So I hope that all of you will try and make Hoshi feel welcome here," the dean was saying, standing at the front of the classroom, her arm around the new girl's shoulders. After settling in the day before, the girl was ready to be thrown into the chaotic mix of the boarding academy. The dean rambled on. "Late in the term, I know, but that's not to say there's still plenty of time to get to know her."

The mid-morning literature class clapped politely; all save one, that is. Heero sat in the back row, by the window, frowning at the girl. There was something about her that just did not fit, and it was pissing him off beyond all belief. But what nearly made him just get up and walk out of the room was what the dean said next. "So why don't you go take the spot next to Mister Yuy back there. He can help you through the rest of the day."

Hoshi smiled brightly as she practically skipped through the aisle to the empty seat beside Heero as he made a mental note to make sure that the dean died slowly and painfully. He gave her one of his looks and slid his chair as far to his end of the table as he could. Feeling her smile plastered upon his back, he let out a low groan of distaste, returning to his absent revelries beyond the glass of the window. It was all too familiar. It was all too much like Duo. He had his heart broken once after the war, when they were forced to go their separate ways and he was not about to make the same error twice. So since then, he had not allowed a soul within five feet of him without getting a good punch on the jaw. It was just his way of hiding, his way of keeping himself safe from his fear.

"…Another example of symbolism can be found in chapter twelve, if you'll open your books, class," the teacher began the day's lesson, continuing their discussion of old pre-colony literature.

Heero had read the book in question many times, finding for himself that it was a piece that hit hauntingly close to home. It probably was a mistake for him to have read the thing, the book now a bible of sorts for him, its words only making his philosophies on the world all the more complex. Besides, the title was the only physical item he really had left to remind him of Duo, finding that the story's hero was much like the loudmouth in quite a few ways. Then again, the hero was also quite a bit like himself as well. Shaking his head, as was habitual of him when he had lack of anything else to do or think, his eyes quickly scanned the chapter again as the teacher read a few selected quotes aloud, trying to entice the class into thinking over some meaning to the lines.

"{'Well, you know the ducks that swim around in it? In springtime and all? Do you happen to know where they go in wintertime by any chance?'}" The teacher read from behind her desk, the words The Catcher in the Rye barely readable on the cracked spine of her worn out edition of the book. " {'Where who goes?'}"

Heero thought about the passage, thinking how he would kill for a set of wings so he could fly away. He once had been able to, way back during a time of weapons and fighting. He could have just clambered into his winged Gundam and taken to the stars where he could be alone to think, even on cold nights when there was no one there to hold him. But now he had no wings, the nights were always cold, and he never had anyone to hold him.

"{'The ducks. Do you know by any chance? I mean, does somebody come around in a truck or something and take them away, or do they fly away by themselves—go south or something?'}"

It seems like the kind of question Duo would ask, Heero found himself thinking. Always had to be that way, asking weird stuff like that, that always had a double meaning. And I could never figure it out so I would just… glare….

"{Old Horwitz turned all the way around and looked at me. He's a very impatient-type guy. He wasn't a bad guy, though. 'How the hell should I know?' he asked. 'How the hell should I know a stupid thing like that?'}"

Heero felt something very thin and flat slid beneath the hand he had pressed against the desktop. Looking down, he saw a sliver of white paper sticking out from beneath his palm. His eyes rose to Hoshi, who was sitting there with her nose buried in the white book, acting like she had nothing to do with the note. He lifted his hand and saw penned in a somewhat messy cursive on the notebook slip, a simple message. "I knew a guy like that once," it read.

"{'Well don't get sore about it,' I said. He was sore about something.}"

Heero could not resist, despite the angered expression he wore on his face. He wrote back simply and slid it back to her discreetly. "Who?"

"{'Who's sore? Nobody's sore!'}" The teacher looked up from the book to eye the class for anyone who might have comments. Seeing a hesitant hand in the back row, she favored it warmly. "Yes, Hoshi?"

She cast a smirk at Heero before she started to speak, as if what she was going to say would answer his question. "I think it's kind of like the ducks are trying to take a break from reality, you know? I know it seems silly to say something like that, but don't you think it's kind of like people too, ma'am? I mean, whether it's on their own accord or not, sometimes people just go off on their own, in the winter of their lives so to speak, when it's all cold an lonely, so they can think."

The teacher seemed stunned at such a deep and well thought remark. She laid the book facedown and folded her hands atop it. "Anything more, Miss Hoshi?"

"Well I think Holden asks this because he feels kind of trapped, you know?" she said, fumbling with her own book, as the words seemed to just come. Natural gift for talking it appeared, no matter how nervous she seemed. "He just wants to fly away somewhere so he can gather his life together. I think that's why he bothered ditching school to go to New York in the first place anyway. But you know, they always come back, when they've got it all straight. It just takes time."

The teacher nodded appreciatively. Then she glowered at the rest of the class as she said, "You know, it's funny how on her first day, Miss Hoshi is willing to contribute so much to the discussion where for the rest of you lot, I've spent a better part of the year begging for words."

Heero frowned even deeper, feeling belittled. He could have outshone anyone in that classroom if he had wanted to. He was the silent genius of the school, his grades in every class top notch, but he never spoke a word when he it was not required of him. Some of his classmates had even begun to speculate that Heero was a mute.

The teacher had returned to reading aloud, waiting for another comment about the next part of the scene. She was hoping for another stellar answer from Hoshi, realizing that the girl certainly had potential to shine in the class. "{I stopped having a conversation with him, if he was going to get so damn touchy about it. But he started it up again himself. He turned all the way around again and said, 'The fish don't go no place. They stay right where they are, the fish. Right in the goddamn lake.'}"

Stuck, just like me, Heero said to himself darkly.

"{'The fish—that's different. The fish is different. I'm talking about the ducks,' I said,}" the teacher read. "{What's different about it? Nothing's different about it!' Horwitz said. Everything he said, he sounded sore about something. 'It's tougher for the fish, the winter and all, than the ducks, for Chrissake. Use your head for Chrissake!}"

Yep, tougher 'cause they're stuck there, without wings, Heero sneered inwardly, frowning to himself as he thought about how lonely it must be for fish frozen beneath the lake in Central Park all damn winter without anywhere to go. Then again, he sympathized with the sea creatures, I'm just like you damn fish, frozen in one place because there's nowhere else for me to go. Duo had wings… he got to fly away to gather himself….

By the time Heero had snapped from his musings, he found he had missed a few more paragraphs. But the passage she was reading now was really starting to make Heero's mind twist around in deep thought. " {Yeah? What do they eat then? I mean, if their bodies are frozen solid, they can't swim around looking for food and all.}

Frozen….

"{'Their bodies—for Chrissake—what'sa matter with ya? Their bodies take in nutrition and all, right through all the seaweed and crap that's in the ice. They got their pores open the whole time. That's their nature for Chrissake. See what I mean?' He turned way the hell around to look at me.}"

"The good and the bad," a deep voice said from the back of the room, cutting the teacher off. Every head in the room looked up and turned around to lay eyes upon Heero, who was still staring out the window, but speaking nonetheless. Even the teacher was shocked by the sound of his voice. "Even if you're stuck in a moment you can't get out of 'cause you can't fly away," Heero was saying, his eyes still sadly gone in another reality, "you have to take the good stuff, the nutrition and all and the bad stuff, the crap. It's all just part of life. It makes you grow stronger."

"Mister Yuy," the teacher clearly had no idea what to say. Not only were his words unexpected, but they were profound as well.

"What?" he turned from the window, his melancholy eyes now radiated that smoldering glare of his. It seemed to melt the entire room, burning right into the teacher as defiantly as you please. "Are you going to trash me for that? Life has got a hell of a lot of crap I'll have you know, and I could explain it all to you in detail from a firsthand account. My life has got way more crap than you could ever care to deal with."

"Trash you?" the flummoxed teacher was beginning to quaver under his stare. It was strange how an eighteen year old had such a destructive effect on everyone that stare reached. Well, most everyone… "Mister Yuy, that was quite a bold statement. I'm pleased by it. You should talk more in class. We could benefit from your insight."

"Yeah right," Heero muttered under his breath, wondering what an insight on death and mobile suit combat could possibly do for a class of innocent rich snots. He settled back in his chair, letting his near depressive nature dominate his wistful thoughts for the rest of the period.

"Holden, hey Holden!" Hoshi called after Heero's form as he made his way towards the boy's dorms. To get there, he had to pass the chapel, which was where Hoshi had spent her free period, thinking. "Hey I'm calling you Holden Caulfield!"

He whipped around, his expression one of his most intimidating. "Will you shut up? My name's not Holden."

"Well since you never bothered to tell me, I suppose Holden will have to do," Hoshi shrugged, waggling her pristine newly bought copy of The Catcher in the Rye beneath Heero's nose. "You're more like him than I think you want to admit."

"Save the ridiculous questions he asks himself," Heero said, knowing that he did actually roll a few of those kinds of deep questions around his head more often than not. There had been a time where Heero had never asked himself questions of any kind. But he had changed a lot since then. Duo had done that to him….

"Yeah," she said with arched brows as Heero turned around again, more than ready to be alone again. Her presence just radiated Duo, and it made him feel even more downhearted than he already did. If Heero had been anyone else, a person who was so much like an old love would have been a welcome thing. But Heero was not anyone else, and all this girl's presence served was a constant reminder of the one person he could not have. "So you like the book then?"

Heero stopped again with a quick roll of his eyes, responding just to humour her. "What makes you say that?"

"Oh I was just looking at your copy of it today during class," she said offhandedly, leaning on the wall. "It's really worn, almost as bad as the teacher's. Looks like you've read it a few times."

"More than a few," Heero said, his hand subconsciously slipping into his satchel where he found his fingers curling around the worn novel. He could almost remember the day that Duo had thrust the book into his hands, telling him to get cultured. "I've had it for a long time."

"Ha, well everyone should have their comforts," she shrugged. Silence ensued for a moment before Hoshi started to babble on again. "So anyway, I'm still kind of unsure where everything is, even though the dean laid it all out for me. And since you've been appointed as my 'guide' I think I better pester you for help. So, where's the dorms?"

"Guys' dorms," Heero pointed briefly in the direction he had been walking. Then he turned and gestured down another corridor across from the chapel. "Girls' dorms."

"My, you really are a man of few words," she huffed, slapping her book idly against her shapely thigh. She was a very well built girl, not an ounce of unneeded weight on her, her thin body sculpted out of pure muscle. "That just means I'll have to do double the talking to make up for your silences."

"You talk to walls often then?" Heero snapped unkindly. "Because I don't plan on spending any more time with you than I do with anyone else. Which in other words means, I don't want anything to do with you."

"Even though I look like what's-his-name?" she said, squinting one eye shut as she shot him what was meant to be a playful look.

"Even more so because you look like Duo," Heero frowned at her and could almost feel her cracking under his stare. "It reminds me too much of a past that was more like a stolen reality. I'll never get to go back and I don't need to be reminded daily of it!"

He turned and angrily stalked down the hall, not even bothering to look back at her as he stalked up the narrow staircase that had probably served as a servant's passage when the building had been lived in as a residence, to the top floor where his room resided. If he had though, he would have realized she was following him, something he did not notice until he was twisting the iron key around in the old fashioned lock of his dorm way at the end of the hall.

"Having trouble?" she asked, her voice making him jump out of his skin.

"What are you doing?" he hissed, the door swinging silently open as he glowered at her over his shoulder. "Go away."

"You think that you're ever so descriptive directions to the girls' dorms are going to help me any? It sure would be nice if you could be a little bit kinder and actually take the five minutes out of your busy schedule to show me the way," she stood defiantly with a hand on each him, feet planted firmly on the ground.

"Go ask one of the other girls," was the harsh reply. His voice seemed to soften when he spoke again though, as if he were trying to amend for his crisp attitude. "Boys aren't really supposed to be in the girls' dormitories, just like you really 'ought not to be here."

"Well I'm sure no one would mind for just a little," she smiled as she tried to slip into Heero's room after him. She was a quick little devil, managing to slink into the room before Heero was even able to shut the door. Unhappy as he was, there was little he could do about it, so he just closed the door behind her and latched it. Watching this proceeding, Hoshi said curiously, "Do you always lock the door like that? What's there to be afraid of?"

"There's everything to be afraid of," was Heero's reply, tart and biting, as could best be expected from the Japanese youth.

"I don't know if you realized this," Hoshi commented, rising up on her tiptoes as she surveyed the sparsely furnished double suite with interest, "but the war's over. Been done for a while."

"Of course I'm aware of that!" Heero snapped, the very thought of the war cracking some nerve inside of him. Peace was a pleasant thing, but Heero felt more and more every day that there was less to live for. Why, with no war to fight, he had no purpose, and with no Duo, he had no soul, no life.

Hoshi was kneeling on one of the two beds, looking up with interest at the myriad of photographs tacked to the wall, the only hint that anyone occupied the room at all. The otherwise sterile room, an attic bedroom with one wall slanting over the spare bed with a dormitory window, housed nothing more than two beds, each made up with tightly pulled sheets on their wooden frames, a nightstand between the two and a black lamp. A writing table was pushed up to the wall beside the door, a thin grey laptop whirring slightly on standby, waiting for its owner to indulge in another sleepless night upon its plastic keys. "So what does your roommate think of these?" she asked, pointing to the pictures, her face shining with interest at the images of Heero and four other boys who seemed to be close friends of his. "Ha, look, you're smiling in this one."

Heero grimaced, a little annoyed that she was taking such an interest in his past. He had no roommate to worry about. Well, at one time he did, but the poor boy had been so freaked out by Heero's almost killer tendencies, that he had asked for a transfer as soon as possible, leaving Heero to have a double room all to himself, much to his internal glee. Once he had heard that no one dared to try and board another student with him, he had pulled out the packet of photographs from the old war days, the only visible memories he had left of the only friends he had ever possessed.

"That Duo?" she commented idly, pointing to a picture of the braided American just back from combat, a machine gun slung over one shoulder, his long chestnut plait a mess from fighting, pretty china face smeared with oil. One arm was flung around Heero's shoulders, pulling him close, the look on Heero's face impassive as so to hide whether or not he was displeased or satisfied with the gesture. Though Heero looked worn in the photograph, his there was the slightest trace of contentment on his countenance, which Hoshi did not fail to notice. "Aw, it's gotta be."

She was still talking as she unpinned another photograph from the wall, turning the worn picture over in her hands. Holding it up she asked, "What's this big robot in the background?"

Heero cursed his rotten luck and smacked his head in frustration. Leaping forward, he snatched the photograph of Trowa cradling Quatre in his arms, sitting on Heavyarm's foot. "It's just a mobile suit that belonged to a friend during the war. Just pretend like you never saw it." He looked down at the now wrinkled photo, a pang of jealously snapping through his heart at the openness that Trowa and his little desert prince had with their relationship.

"Ooh, secrets, secrets," she smiled as she watched Heero stuff the picture into the nightstand's single drawer. For the first time, she noticed a long wooden box sitting beneath the lamp. Crawling over to the head of the bed, wrinkling the sheets as she did so, much to Heero's climaxing ire, she settled atop the pillow and lifted the box into her lap. From the corner of her eye, she could see Heero's face tense and freeze as he watched, almost as if he were unable to reach forward and stop her from looking into his personal things. Sliding the lid from the box, she noticed an inscription carved neatly with the deep scratch marks of switchblade that read: "Could you believe in heaven, if heaven was all you had?" Inside she found another packet of photos and a few other random knick-knacks. She looked up at him with a devilish grin that simply oozed Duo. She sifted through a few of the items in the box, fingering a black hair tie that once belonged to Duo, and an old CD of his in a thin plastic case. "What's this, Mister Caulfield?"

"Stop with the Holden stuff. My surname is Yuy. Heero Yuy!" he growled, making a reach for the box. She truly was fast, and before Heero had realized it, she had bounced off the bed, leaving a mess of rumpled sheets in her wake as she raced to the other side of the room to take refuge on the other bed beneath the room's one large dormitory window. "I'm nothing like Caulfield in any case."

"If a body catch a body comin' through the rye!" she whistled, cheerfully ignoring him as she pulled the paper clip from its spot clamping down on the photos and started leafing through them.

Heero was tense, knowing that each and every photograph in that box was one of Duo. He had decided to just compile everything he had that reminded him of Duo, just to keep his memory close despite the distance that was sure to be between them now. He was suddenly on the bed with Hoshi, looming over her as he tried to steal the photos back, before she saw something he really did not want her to. "It's 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye,'" Heero said coldly.

"I know that," she smiled knowingly over her shoulder at him. He had one hand pressed against the sloped roof, supporting himself above her crouched form as his other tried to rip the pictures away from her. She grinned wider, "You think you're the only one who's read that book a dozen or more times? It's a poem by Robert Burns. I'm not that stupid."

"Could have fooled me," Heero finally managed to rip the majority of photos from her hand, turning his precious collection over in his hands as he settled at the foot of the bed to make sure nothing was damaged.

"But you know, I really do think you're a catcher in the rye," she said. Heero stopped, his fingers curling tightly around the photos as she spoke. Absently one hand came up to toy with the cross dangling about his neck that Duo had given him before they had parted ways, his eyes were frozen on the picture that lay on top of the stack, one of Duo in his usual black and baseball cap, a pair of round John Lennon-esque sunglass balanced on the bridge of his pert little nose. He was smiling, looking as happy and innocent as ever. It was hard to believe this cheerful looking boy was the one known as Shinigami, the God of Death. He heard her speaking from behind him still, her ability to nail his thoughts and feelings so easily after barely knowing him a day somewhat frightening. "It's not that hard, you know," she said, "to figure out a person like you. When people try to hide what the feel so hard, well, it just makes it all the more obvious. You're a catcher in the rye. That's why you fought in the war, huh?"

"What do you mean?"

She let out a sigh. Quietly, she pulled herself beside Heero, flopping over the edge of the bed so her long brown hair trailed on the floor, the top of her head just touching the ground as she stared up at his unwavering gaze. "I mean, why did you fight? You had to have a reason, didn't you? You had to have a reason to throw your childhood out the window like that. You would have been, what, fifteen during the war?"

"Yeah," Heero sighed, returning to shuffling through the Duo file. "I was. But I lost my innocence early, and it's something that I regret wholly. I… I didn't want to see any more innocence wasted. Accidents, things I did that I wish I could take back, there's a lot I regret doing, despite what I tell myself. I had to have peace in the world, so that no one would have to be like me, throwing themselves over a cliff there's no climbing back up from."

"What about Duo?" she asked, folding her arms behind her head.

"He's the real catcher in the rye," Heero sighed, suddenly finding that it felt good to talk about these things that had been churning around inside for a while. It made him feel more released. "He lost his innocence real early on too. He had it worse, I think. I just had a crappy childhood without even a name to call my own; Duo had friends and a home, a family of sorts, and then it was all stolen from him. He was just as adamant as I was to make sure that no one had to suffer the way he did. But his cause just seemed… more pure than me…. He never wanted to see anyone innocent, particularly children, hurl themselves over that cliff before it was necessary. I guess I wanted that too…."

She sort of set herself up on her elbows, though it was still a somewhat strange position considering that she was hanging upside down off the side of a bed. "You don't think your wants were pure? Peace isn't pure?"

"I was kind of forced… into the war," Heero admitted, feeling a squeeze of guilt around his heart. "Started out as a terrorist, just killing people because I was ordered to. I changed a lot and started fighting for things I believed in myself. But from the beginning, Duo fought for the innocence he'd lost, for the innocence the war needlessly slaughtered. He's one of the people who helped me change."

"You sure don't act changed," she pointed out with a wave of her finger.

"How would you know how I was before?" he snarled, his voice becoming even wreathed with that biting twang than before.

"Well you would think that you would have changed for the better, don't you agree?" she shrugged nonchalantly. "You seem very dissatisfied with life."

"Maybe because I am!" Heero frowned, even the sound of those words making a leaden weight in his heart. Things had been going well, as the fighting of so many years ago had begun to dwindle. He and Duo had been together, and that had been enough. He might have appeared stoic and unfeeling before, but it had become genuine since the war, though it might have seemed more realistic for the opposite to be true. But life just seemed so meaningless without Duo, and the violence done to his wrists sure as hell proclaimed as much to the world. Other students tried to ignore the scars and his apparent unhappiness, and the school had tried to do what they could for Heero, but it was of no avail. Not all the coaxing and sympathy in the world could produce Duo from the void to which he had disappeared. He seemed to have just vanished, and even Heero was at a loss at finding him, his every computer hacking skill seeming to lend no aid to find the one who should have been with him forever.

"Are you then?" Hoshi's voice snapped Heero from the dark thoughts that swirled through his mind at a mile a minute. "That's so sad."

"I don't need you feeling sorry for me." Heero's voice was becoming more and more dangerous with every retort. Hoshi was either unfazed by his grouchiness or was just damn persistent. It was starting to remind Heero too much of a certain towheaded aristocrat who had thankfully melded back into her own life without him.

"Who said I was feeling sorry for you?" she snapped. Take that comment about her being like Relena back; she certainly had a Duo-like fire to her. "I'm just saying it's sad, that's all. I mean, pathetic sad that you're so dismal to want to curl up and die just 'cause you lost the one you love."

"Easy for you to say," Heero frowned, upset that anyone would dare to make his love and his situation seem so light, as if it were nothing at all but a throwaway thing. "You don't understand how I feel at all."

She just rolled her shoulders back as she slid off the bed to the floor, now laying there and staring up at Heero as if she knew all the secrets of the world and she was more than happy to hold out on him with a cheesy grin on her face. "Ma-aybe."

"What do you mean, maybe?"

"Maybe I don't know how you feel," came the sadistic reply, her mouth curled into a strange sort of grin. "Ah, but I know how the one on the other side of the relationship feels." She leapt to her feet, patting Heero on top of the head before practically skipping towards the door, leaving an openmouthed Heero staring after her.

"What are you…?"

"Well Heero, it's been real," she grinned before darting back out into the hall. "I'll see you later. Hope we can chat up on this some more, hehe." And with that, she closed the door, the echo of her laughs and footsteps receding down the stairwell as she flounced away from the dorm of a very flustered and confused Heero Yuy.

[A/N] I think I've spoiled you maniacs too much! Time for the Link Worshiper to turn evil and sadistic! Instead of throwing up the whole damn story at one time, like I usually do, I've decided to do weekly postings, even though I've finished the whole story. So… ha! So you'll just have to wait for the next part. Hope you like it so far and keep up with the reading!