Stray

By Kaitsurinu

. Chapter One . Window

Duo could see there was something about him, even standing there, so many feet from the window where he stood pressing his hands to the glass. When he leaned ever so slightly forward, cautiously pressing his nose flat, the sun poured over him. There was even something familiar and unsettling about that. The shape of the light on his dark hair, the way his middle and ring fingers reflexively clung close together when the others spread, the way he lifted his head to gaze further outside. The peculiar way the bottoms of his ears protruded further than the upper rims, the slightly bow-legged angle of his feet, his unfashionable, scuffed sneakers. The last perplexing observation Duo felt he could chalk up to the fact he could have been living on his own, in the streets, for years, but it did not shake the feeling that struck him now. They were tiny imperfections he could have sworn he'd seen on someone else in what seemed another life. It was so long ago, now.

"How did the ride here go?" Duo did not let it affect him when his assistant Michelle walked up to him, holding a clipboard to her long, dark habit.

"Jacob said he was practically a saint. Didn't speak a word," she informed him. She handed him the information sheet and he quickly paged through the paper work, medical records for a glance. "The only real sound he made was when they were giving him his check-up and poking the scope in his ears. But other than that, he's a pretty quiet, calm kid."

"That'd definitely be a break from the ordinary with us."

"I'm not going to complain," she said, folding her arms and tilting her head as she looked at him. She watched him stare intently out the window, another sister sitting beside him on a small bench, behind her a magnificent view of the grassy acres surrounding them. He was breathing on the glass and puffing his lips out. "It would be nice to have a child who could teach the others a little stillness. I just hope he'll get along with the others. He still might be a little shy."

She continued to watch him and a gentle smile crossed her face. Duo glanced over at her, then followed her eyes back to the intriguing little silhouette, barely higher than his knee. She did not seem him the same way he did—with a lump of dread. She could not feel an eerie sense of knowledge and intimacy with a tiny orphan she'd never seen before in her life.

Or if she did, she was hiding it well.

"I'm sure they'll welcome him. Heaven knows they always could use a new playmate," Duo said. "But he didn't have a name?"

The corner of Michelle's mouth slung backwards, cocking an eyebrow. "Not that he would tell any of us, but I think he does. He gives you a strange look whenever you ask him, like he wouldn't even if you offered him candy for it. I don't know. It could be something he picked up from being on his own for so long." She looked at the child, then turned to Duo again. "Cynthia Williams was the woman who called us last week. Said he'd been sneaking into her garage early in the mornings for at least a month, and she thought she'd seen him ghosting around for nearly four weeks before that."

"Alone?"

"Yep."

The gold light of the afternoon light was gleaming in the kid's hair, which was littered with cowlicks and untamable tufts jutting out, hanging down in his face, which was still raptly set on the window. The color was a dusty brown, though the underlying color was something deeper still, and the sunlight set it ablaze, almost blonde. It was thick and tousled, and Duo had a feeling that even after they had thoroughly washed and brushed it, it would remain just as unruly.

The sleeves of the oversized coat he wore slid down to his elbows as he lifted his hands, revealing his slight frame and bony wrists. He stuck them to the glass and leaned forward on his toes, bending like a reed. His mouth found the glass again and a lopsided cloud of mist appeared.

"He can't be more than four or five. What took so long for someone to report this kid? I mean, doesn't anybody notice a near-toddler outside, without any kind of supervision?"

"I guess not. She said that she barely saw him during the day, though. Always at night—picking through garbage, sleeping in unlocked cars, flowerbeds."

"Yeah," Duo said. "You never want anyone to see you in the daylight. Makes the shame worse."

Michelle's composure didn't falter. She just glanced at Duo.

He shifted a fraction away from the protective gesture, turned the pages and tried to make the words printed there register in his mind, but his attention was fixated in another place, and something thick was forming in his throat. He was sure now what color the child's eyes would be when he turned around.

"He tested negative for R95 and R89, MMR, Rooter's Syndrome, and New Space Sickness. He's an awfully healthy kid, for living where he has been. L-1 has been suffering a lot of outbreaks of new diseases in children in the last few years," he said. "The only way he'd be show resistance to all these is if he had already contracted them, which, if he had, he'd most likely be dead, or if he's already been vaccinated against them."

"He couldn't have been out on the streets much longer than a few months, then. Someone had to be taking care of him up that point. Well, taking care of him enough to at least get his basic vaccinations," Duo said, tilting his head ever so slightly. The child was arching his neck, shifting his gaze, turning his face ever so closer to Duo's eyes. Something twisted in his gut. Hard.

But he couldn't jump to a conclusion. It was no use. He cleared his throat a little to cover up the flinch and slipped into an even voice. "And no word about parents or a caretaker?"

"No. I'm sure he must have had one though. He says he has a name, but he just won't tell us." She let out a sigh and simply lifted her eyebrows at it. "Maybe he'll feel comfortable enough soon. He seems rather hesitant to talk about his past."

"Well, the sooner we have a name, the sooner we have a possibility of finding that caretaker and returning him to that person," Duo said firmly. "It doesn't mean we have to tiptoe around him."

Michelle looked away from the child and up at her supervisor, with something like surprise etched into her expression. A curious sound escaped her. "That doesn't sound like you, Duo."

He startled a little (the child had been lifting his measly weight onto his tiptoes, and he had been prisoner to watch every moment) and his head jerked around to look at her. A pang of fear formed, cold, in his stomach to match the corner of a scowl that appeared. "What's that supposed to mean?"

The sister shook her head slightly as her mouth opened. "I mean, you said yourself to never judge a kid based on his needs. We accept them all and we'll do what it takes to help give them a new start," she said, hurrying through the latter words since she had heard and reiterated them so many times. "It just didn't seem like you to say something like that."

A slight color filled Duo and a line appeared between his brows. He quickly tore his eyes from Michelle's to glance needlessly down at the paperwork again, making as if he were intently scanning over some new bit of information. He knew it didn't fool her, but he couldn't help it. He couldn't look at her and mutter what he did a moment later. "He just unnerves me, that's all."

He tried to reach out and hand her the clipboard of papers in an attempt to appear more casual, but she smiled and told him it was a copy and it was for him to keep.

"And how about our new child? Aren't we going to go and actually meet him?"

Duo did not want to. Suddenly, there was a terror about that distance separating them and the idea of closing the gap only to find something terrible waiting for him. Something he knew was going to be true, had to be true, was already true, no matter how much he avoiding looking at that familiar miniature face, and couldn't stand to accept. It was waiting over there for him at the window and now it looked up to the other sister as she stood up beside the child and tried to pat down some of his disheveled hair.

A visible flinch ran through his tiny frame, he threw his hands onto his head, and bent his knees, trying to escape the touch. But then, after a moment, as if realizing his instinct had gotten the better of him and he was being rude, he begrudgingly let her hand attempt and comb through his hair. Duo prayed that the child would not suddenly catch a glimpse of something in the corner of his eye and turn towards it, see something in the corner of eyes that were going to be murderously blue and ambiguously shaped. Almost almond, but open and keen.

It was then he decided that his beeper was alerting him of an urgent call in his office on the other side of the building and must immediately catch it.

---

Duo Maxwell sat in his office for a very long time not doing anything, eyes glazed, body tensed but motionless, and stared at the wall just to the side of the door. It took him a few minutes before he could coax himself out of the corridors of his mind and into doing anything at all. Drawing himself out of his deep and treacherous memory vaults, he looked up to the door, watching the glass windows around it for a sign of life, of anyone walking by. There was none. So he reached for his bottom right drawer and opened it for the first time in a long time.

On his desk were picture frames that were empty, yet to be filled, except for that of him and Michelle standing outside the working shell of what would become their orphanage in the months of long, hard work. She was beaming and holding the doorknob that had come off in her hand, looking more than ready to tackle the challenge before her. He was standing at her side, resisting a laugh. Both were so doused in enthusiasm, he swore he could see them glow in it.

But right now he hated being in this place. It was abruptly and thoroughly the last place he wanted to be right now because there was a child, no doubt holding Michelle's hand as they walked the halls, looking at the finger-painted pictures on the wall, who had a face he shouldn't have.

It was one that Duo didn't have to find in his drawer to see perfectly in his mind.

He pushed the folder of deeds and land assessments from so long ago out of the way, followed by old contractor estimates and bank account information. More manila folders followed, stuffed with stored away ideas and words. Old handbooks and manuals to things that had long been thrown out or given away; half-full notebooks with numbers and memos and chicken-scratch notes from years ago; letters from long-ago adopted children. But it was the book at the very bottom that he searched for. It held something even older, more private and far more precious.

Shutting the drawer, he placed the King James Bible on his lap and it fell open to the middle of the book of Joshua. Several photos lay there, bristling up from the seam.

They were hidden, safe, and as long as they stayed that way, Duo could keep a professional distance from the now distant pains they could inadvertently stir up without losing them completely. At least, that's what he coached himself to believe. The corners on each were bent, the edges built-up with fingerprints, but they were all Duo had left in the physical world from his past. Deathscythe was destroyed, all his weapons sold off to profit the orphanage, and beat-up clothes given away. Only the pictures remained, and a little gold crucifix around his neck.

He leaned back into his chair and picked up the first one. He let loose a smile automatically as he looked down at Quatre and Trowa standing just inside a familiar circus tent, Quatre turning his head to glance back at the camera that had surprised them, standing and talking as comfortably as they always did. There was a bemusement in Trowa's face that made Duo suspect it was Cathy snapping the picture. And there was a twist in Quatre's innocent look that Duo suspected was a little bit of surprise and regret that they were no longer alone together.

He chuckled and slipped that photo to the back of the pile, bringing up the second one, an image of his mobile suit from OZ's database. The dark, metallic wings were stretched wide, arms arched back, boiling green knifing through the hoard of dolls surrounding it. He may have finally gotten the courage to hit the self-destruct button and obliviate such an important participant in his life, but he still couldn't get over the fact he'd had the best-looking mobile suit of the bunch and it would be a waste not to keep at least one picture of it. The smile on his face grew into a grin at this and he lingered a moment longer before flipping to the next photograph.

Howard, in another of his ridiculously colored Hawaiian shirts, throwing a spindly elbow around Duo's neck while Duo held at his arm, squinting and grinning. A few other Sweepers were loosely gathered in the backgrounds—the ones willing enough and not slathered in black grease, that is. He brought the photo closer to scrutinize his younger self. "God, I'm never going to get any less scrawny, am I?" he muttered. And in a moment of carefree nostalgia, he added, "'Course, I'll never be like Heero was back then."

And then he felt the cold twisting pain return. Duo flipped over the final photograph, emphatically wishing he hadn't said that name as his eyes fell on the glossy paper torn from a yearbook.

It made the separation heavier.

"Duo?" There was a knock at the door.

Duo startled straight up in his chair, quickly slapping the photos down into his lap, out of sight. He felt his heart going up into his throat and embarrassed that his senses were slipping. His red-haired assistant stood at the door with a stance that told him she'd been there for a while.

"Michelle," he managed out without breathing too heavily. "What's up?"

"Why are you afraid of this kid, Duo?" she asked, stepping inside. Somehow the smirking smile didn't comfort him, though she didn't mean any harm through it. "It's a little strange to see a grown man sulking around his office just because he's afraid of a little orphan."

Somehow Duo didn't appreciate the cold twisting movement his stomach made at the thought that she could see a fear he was so terribly trying to hide. Or how he used the word 'fear' himself. It made the reality thicker, the separation heavier.

"I'm not afraid of an orphan," he said. "I'm afraid of that kid—I mean, he just unnerves me, is all. And besides, I'm not sulking around, I've been working, I'll have you know."

She found that hard to believe and it translated into her grin opening wide. "On staring into your book? Maybe you would make more progress if you turned the page."

He moved the pictures into the safety of the pages and gently shut the covers around them, still not lifting his eyes from her face as he tried to corral his expression. It was becoming harder in his old age, and he had not noticed just how much so. With a shake of his head and an injected smile, he chuckled, making it a sheepish one, and stood up. "When you're right, you're right, 'chelle." He pulled the drawer open and placed the Bible safely inside. "I've probably been working in here a little too long anyway. The stale air's getting to me. So let's go properly meet our newest child."

She had not been expecting such a cooperative Duo on this matter. "But I thought you were terrified of this four year old," she said as he met her at the door. "You turned nearly white as a sheet when you saw him, you know."

Duo didn't fake the grimacing smirk. "Did I?"

Michelle laughed and began to walk down the corridor. Duo closed the door and followed her with feet that were terrible weights to move and a stricken mind but a duty and a blind compulsion that told him it was what had to be done. It was a voice that sounded a little too familiar to him. It only made his dread thicken as he walked, picturing the words coming from a picture that belonged a book in his locked drawer and not haunting the front of his mind.