"This Beautiful Life"

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or its characters

Rating: R

Warnings: Romance & Friendship

Pairings: 2x5, others will be present but subtle.

Summary: 3 years after cutting ties with everyone from the war, WuFei Chang gets into a car accident in his way home from a company Christmas party and wakes up to another life.

"This Beautiful Life"

Chapter 6:

Though his stomach swirled with nausea and his mind reeled from pain and anxiety, Duo slipped on an easy smile and answered the vid-phone. It filled with a familiar expressionless face.

One glistening green eye met wide blue and Duo let himself relax and allow his forced happiness slip a little as the stress of the past day seeped through. No use trying to hide behind a forced façade, the man on the screen would see right through it.

"Hey, Tro, nice to see you," Duo greeted.

"How is he?" Good old Trowa Barton, always straight to the point.

"You talk to Sally?"

"No. I talked to Quatre."

Who talked to Sally after talking to Heero, who in turn had talked to Relena, who had talked to Hilde after Duo had called her to talk him down when WuFei took off and failed to return after their fight; Duo mentally translated. He was getting good at understanding the more stoic pilots who spoke a need-to-know-basis language that still managed to drive him up the wall even after living three years with one of them.

"How long have you known about the accident?" He already guessed the answer but Duo needed to ask anyway, to justify the anger simmering his blood.

"Since early morning, around three."

"Great," Duo seethed, then exploded, "Would you care to explain why no one felt the need to call and tell me my boyfriend was bleeding all over the ER after smacking into the pavement at whatever fucking speed he was going – I'm betting beyond neck-breaking fast? Because I'm guessing every single one of my so-called friends knew long before I did!"

Unfazed, Trowa calmly replied, "Sally felt it was best to wait until she was certain of his condition."

"So I got to sit at home and wonder where the hell he was at, if he was okay, if he was coming back while Sally played 'mother-knows-best'?" Duo demanded, his anger boiling over, "It doesn't matter what his condition was, I should've been there! I should've been at his side!"

Trowa was silent. Duo glared at him. A few heartbeats passed.

"He's fine," Duo finally muttered, looking away, adding with a quake in his voice, "He's forgotten things."

The corner of Trowa's mouth twitched slightly. He said nothing, waiting for Duo to explain.

"Sally called it 'selective memory loss', heard of it?" Duo thought to throw in jokingly 'ever suffer from it' but having this discussion seemed to put him in a somber mood. It made the situation feel more real than it had at the hospital.

"No."

"Well, it's a type of amnesia, but the person only loses a part of their memory," Duo explained, then biting his lower lip and looking away as forming tears warmed his eyes, "He's forgotten me."

"Just you?"

"The past three years," Duo corrected with a snap, then more gently, "He remembers everything before then but the last three years are kind of...confused...in his mind."

"I see. How confused?" Trowa was so calm about this; Duo hated it.

"He thinks he lives in Bergonia," Duo started slowly, toying with the end of his braid, "In an apartment. That he hasn't seen or spoken to me in three years. Sally about two. That he left the Preventers, works as an accountant. That he sold his motorbike."

That finally made Trowa lift a brow.

"That's not memory loss," he pointed out.

"More like memory trade," Duo agreed, then sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, smearing the unshed tears, "Sally says it's temporary, not sure how temporary, but temporary."

"That's good."

"Yeah, right," Duo snorted, folding his arms over his chest and dipping his chin down.

"You're worried."

"And why shouldn't I be?"

Trowa turned his attention to something off screen and Duo could hear muffled words from an unknown someone. Duo buried his face in his hand, waiting as Trowa listened to whoever was talking; most likely about the next show - Trowa worked at the circus, after all. It sounded like instructions but Duo wasn't paying enough attention to understand the muted conversation.

His mind was on WuFei, lost and confused in the other room. He wondered at the things that must be going through that boy's head, how frightened and angry he must be. Could they be fine, Duo thought, would they – he – make it through this?

"You should have faith in WuFei," Trowa's words floated to Duo's ears. He startled, looking up through his bangs at the screen.

"I do have faith in WuFei. The bump on his head...not so much."

"He loves you, Duo."

"Too bad he doesn't remember that, huh?"

"You're worried his memory won't return."

Duo bit into his bottom lip again, lowering his head to shadow his face. Despite being a complete mystery, Trowa had always been able to read others like a book. A personality quirk that annoyed the hell out of Duo Maxwell: Hider Extraordinaire and Master of Running Away.

"So what if I am," Duo bit out, looking up into that apathetic face with shimmering eyes, darkened with fear and generally dispersed anger at the world, "It's a reasonable thing to be afraid of. Three years, Trowa, that's his and my entire relationship romantic and otherwise. Before that we had what? Chance glimpses between blaze and bullets during the wars and brief moments of 'what-was-that-guy's-name-again' afterwards. If his memory is gone for good, then I might as well go with it."

Those words seemed to spark something inside of Trowa because the corners of his mouth turned down a millimeter and his visible eye narrowed ever so slightly.

"I don't understand your reasoning. Even if his memory is gone it changes nothing, yet you speak as though you've already been defeated in a battle you have yet to fight. I never thought, no matter how difficult the situation, you would ever abandon him."

"It's not that simple..."

"After all, through everything, he never abandoned you."

Duo flinched from the sharp edge of those words as they sank deep into his skin. The only thing worse than a perceptive Trowa was an angry Trowa, because no one knew how to inflict verbal damage like the most silent member of the former five Gundam pilots. He wielded words like he wielded a knife, and damn if he wasn't pure death with a knife.

"Trowa," Duo breathed, steeling himself, "I don't know if I can handle..."

"Yes you can."

"But what if..."

"He loves you."

"Yeah, but what if," Duo growled, finally losing what little composure he had, "What if his memory doesn't come back? What if he doesn't remember the past three years with me? What if he doesn't remember that he loves me? What if he never loves me again?"

Trowa was quiet. Duo was trembling; tears steaming down his cheeks, fingers gripping his own arms until the knuckles turned white. When Trowa finally spoke again, his voice was a whisper.

"The memories would be lost to him, Duo, but what is left will still be him. He fell in love with you once. What is there to stop him from falling in love with you a second time?"

"The first time was a one in a billion long shot. I'm a lot of things, Trowa, lucky ain't one of them," Duo muttered stubbornly, he heaved a heavy sigh, "I won't abandon him. I could never abandon him. I'm only...it's just...it's been a rough couple of days."

Impassive apathy fixed on Trowa's features once more. Duo swiped away his tears furiously with the collar of his shirt.

"In regards to lunch tomorrow," Trowa began in a tone that made it seem as though the entire conversation the two boy's just held had never occurred, "Will it be cancelled?"

"I...um...I'm not sure," Duo mumbled, straightening and pulling a smile across his face, "Po said that we should carry on as normal as possible, that it might help bring his memories back quicker."

"But?"

"I don't know if he'll want to and he's in pretty bad shape anyhow."

"What do you mean by 'if he'll want to'?" Trowa questioned, curious.

"Like I said," Duo explained wearily, "He can't remember having seen me in three years. Po, two years. I'm not entirely sure where that puts you or any of the other guys on the 'cut-all-ties-with' timeline of his three years false memories but I'm willing to bet in his Bergonia life he didn't eat lunch, or any other meal for that matter, on a regular basis with you."

"I see."

"What do you think? Lunch or no?"

"I think..." Trowa answered with only a slight pause, "That I will be at Kimiko's Café tomorrow. 1 o'clock. It would please me if you two came."

"Right," Duo grinned, "I'll talk to you later then, Tro."

"Yes. Later."

~ * ~

Chapter 7

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