FicWad

-=-=-=-

Heero blinked, looking confused and slightly panicked. "Your... darkness? Duo, who the hell is he?"

Duo cradled his head in his hands. "Heero Yuy, meet Shinigami, the bloodthirsty, insane, and way too hyper other half of my soul."

If anything, the L1 pilot looked even more confused; and since a confused Perfect Soldier was often a homidical one, Duo sighed. "Look, can you wait for an explanation until after Wufei wakes up? My head's spinning too much to say it all more than once right now. And put that gun away, you've known Shin just as long as you've known me."

The American tried to stand, one hand going to his head as he collapsed back to the floor. Shin strode over to him, ignoring the weapon Heero was still pointing at him. He knelt by his hikari, asking mentally if he was all right.

Duo squeaked, squeezing his head tighter. "With some aspirin I'll be fine, but if you do that again I'll shoot you myself!"

Shin smiled humorlessly from where he was holding his own head. "Not if I shoot myself first. That fucking hurt!"

"What hurt?" Heero demanded, exasperated.

"The mind link. Guess whatever we did screwed the hell out of it, hurts like the dickens to use."

"Mind link."

Duo started to nod, then subsided, grimacing. "Yes, mind link. Is that a particularly difficult concept?" He glanced up. "Look, you wake up Wufei while we go get something for our heads. Then I promise we'll explain everything."

-=-=-=-

Bakura's face was as pale as his hair by the time he finally managed to escape to his room. Isis had been absolutely pissed when she'd picked him up from the school, but she'd saved her rant until they got back to the mansion. Now, half an hour later, he found himself confined to his room, the seeress's words still ringing in his ears.

I'm over five thousand years old, damn it! I should not be sulking in my bedroom like a bloody child! he grumbled mentally, taking care not to send it to Ryou. And I wasn't even the one who blew up the classroom! It was that fucking teacher!

However, the thief soon forgot his resentful mutterings as Shadow Magic exploded somewhere in the city, an explosion so powerful Bakura could feel it even without the Ring.

[[Ryou?!]]

[Yami? What the... what just happened?]

[[You're asking me?]]

[It wasn't you, then?]

[[No. I sincerely doubt I could get that level of power even with the Ring.]]

[Oh. Well, it wasn't one of us.]

[[I know, it came from out in the city.]]

[...Shit.]

Bakura frowned. [[What is it?]]

[Hmm? Oh, it's just that we thought we had a suspect, but if the source was out in the city it couldn't have been him.]

[[Are you sure?]]

[I'm still at school, and I can see him from where I'm sitting.]

At this point Isis came running into the room. "You felt it?" she asked breathlessly.

Bakura nodded. "Ryou says it wasn't them."

She cursed, before frowning thoughtfully.

"What is it?"

"That power surge, I could swear I'd felt something like it before, more than once, even." She looked briefly annoyed. "I suppose it'll come to me in time. Now, you need to go check out that area for anything out of the ordinary. Don't try anything, just look around."

Bakura resisted the urge to salute, forcing himself to merely nod. "Let me grab a couple more knives, then I'll go."

-=-=-=-

Duo watched as Heero dumped a glass of cold water over Wufei's face. The Chinese boy sat up, spluttering, ready to kill someone- at least until he caught sight of the two identical (well, near identical) Duos sitting on the couch, and looking much better for popping a couple of pain pills.

"W-what?" he stammered, eyes wide.

"What's the matter, Wu? Gundam got your tongue?" one said, grinning.

"Why, you..." Wufei growled, rising to his feet, only to be halted in his lunge by the other's voice.

"Shin, that's enough. Give him some time to adjust."

'Shin' pouted. "What's there to adjust to? They've always known us. We just happen to have separate bodies now."

In response, the other- Wufei would have said Maxwell, except he wasn't acting at all like the Maxwell he knew- simply gestured at the two pilots, whose mouths were hanging open.

"Separate... bodies? You mean... you're the same person?" Heero asked.

"Were the same person," Shin corrected. "Literally. Now we're not."

"...Oh."

-=-=-=-

"Perhaps it might be best if we were to start at the beginning?" Duo asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Please do," Wufei said sarcastically.

Momentarily annoyed, Duo glared at him. "Well, to start with, I'm going to have to tell you more about my past than I ever intended to. That means you can only interrupt if you have a question. Got it?"

Heero and Wufei nodded quickly, eager to find out some answers.

"My earliest memories are of the streets of L2, where, as far as I can tell, I spent the first eight years of my life as a thief in a children's gang. When I was seven, I stole an... object from an antiques dealer." Duo frowned. "I'm still not sure why I stole it in the first place. It was two distinctive to have been able to pawn... The only reason I can think of is that it put some kind of compulsion on me."

He eyed Wufei as the boy started to make a sound. "What did I say about interruptions?" Watching until he subsided, scowling, Duo continued on.

"Anyway, as soon as I touched the...object, I was knocked out. As far as we can tell, during the period I was unconscious, Shin was created. I didn't realize it then, of course. The first time I realized he was there was years later, after..." Here he shook his head, forcing himself back on track. "Anyway, a year later the rest of my gang was killed in a plague, and I was sent to an orphanage, Maxwell's Church."

Heero echoed Duo's frown of earlier, trying to remember why that name sounded familiar.

"I spent... nearly two years there. It was the happiest time of my life. Unfortunately, the war intervened. A group of terrorists took over the church, trying to use the children and priests as shields from OZ. It didn't work."

"The Maxwell Church Massacre," Wufei breathed, looking appalled. "You're a survivor."

Ah, that was why. J had made sure he studied all of OZ's tactics, including that... rather sickening incident.

"Yes," Duo nodded absently. "The only one."

Things Heero had always wondered about, particularly the American's motivations in joining the war, were becoming all too clear. "How did you survive?"

"I made a deal with the terrorists. If I could steal them a prototype mobile suit, they would leave. I stole it, but when I returned the church was... gone. Right after that was when I met Shinigami." He waved towards the other Duo.

"You're not really Shinigami, are you?" Wufei asked, eyeing Shin a tad nervously.

He smirked. "Not unless you make me mad."

"And what would make you mad?"

Shin turned cold, crimson eyes on the Wing pilot. "Someone hurting Duo."

"So...why Shinigami?"

"Because the first time I realized he was there was right after he finished killing the man who ordered the attack on the church, as well as his family. He did the same thing to them that he did to those muggers earlier."

"Which was?"

The yami bared his teeth in what might have been termed a smile. "I tore them apart. Literally."

Oh, Heero thought. He now understood why Duo had earlier turned green.

There was a moment of silence, before he thought of a new question. "You said we've known you for as long as we've known Duo. How... have you been switching places or something?"

Duo smiled. "Remember what Shin said about separate bodies? Up until a few hours ago, we had what you would call a multiple-personality disorder. Except that in our case, there was magic involved."

At last, the others choked. "/Magic/?"

The twins nodded. "We've known it wasn't just multiple personalities ever since we hooked up with G," Shin explained, leaning forward. "He was the first to notice that whenever we switched control of our body, there were actual physical changes."

Heero blinked. "Your eyes. They did change color yesterday. I thought it was just the light."

/He was looking at our eyes?/

Hush.

"The hair changes, too, but the eyes are the most noticeable. Shin has blonde streaks in his hair, for example."

Heero frowned. Something was off. Well, even more off. "...Duo? Why are you speaking differently? And why haven't you called Wufei anything?"

Duo looked amused. "It's Shin that has the fetish for nicknames, not me. And I'm talking the same way I've always talked. Father Maxwell drummed speaking properly into my thick skull." Taking pity on their confused expressions, he explained. "The Duo you knew before was... our attempt to find a compromise between our personalities. You actually know Shin better than you do me." He seemed briefly sad. "People always notice noise before they do silence."

"Then... the Duo we knew, that we thought we knew... he doesn't exist?" Heero stumbled uncharacteristically, for some inexplicable reason afraid.

"Parts of him exist." Duo gave him a slight shrug. "As for the rest..."

"Is there any way for you to recombine?" Wufei asked, ever curious.

"Shin smiled sourly. "We've been trying just that for nearly three hours. All we got for it was a headache."

"How did you separate in the first place?"

"I used the wand thingy."

Heero and Wufei shared a glance. "Wand... thingy?"

Duo rolled his eyes. "He means the artifact that I stole." He reached up and undid the chain that was always around his neck.

Wufei looked startled. "Your cross?"

"Not exactly." Duo sighed, detaching the plain silver cross from its chain and holding it out. "I hate to be dramatic, but... show yourself!"

They watched, amazed, as the cross grew, melting into a similar, yet very different shape. At last, it resolved itself into a winged, golden rod, about the size a wand would be if such things existed.

"Cool, huh?" Shin couldn't help grinning. "It does tricks, too." He grabbed the scepter from Duo. Placing his hands in the center, he twisted, until it separated itself into a lethal-looking blade. Both yami and hikari gazed at it lovingly.

The two normal pilots were still staring a minute later when Wufei's cell phone rang, breaking the silence. He blinked, digging it out of his pocket and holding it to his ear. "Chang."

"Barton? What-? Oh, I see." Suddenly, Wufei looked towards Shin, smirking wickedly. "All right, we'll see you then," he said, hanging up much happier than he had been a moment before.

"What's happening?"

"Winner and Barton have been ordered to join us in hiding now that their mission is over. They'll be here tomorrow."

Shin looked at him suspiciously. "That still doesn't explain the smirk."

"They don't know about you."

One by one, they began to smile.