Standard disclaimer. Not mine. Theirs. Too bad, cos the G-Boys are damned cool. Not making any money so dun sue me. All I have is a few dogs and a few thusand dollars worth of college loans anyway. Blood. Turnip. You do the math.
He felt deceptively strong arms wrap around his shoulders and hold him tight as he typed away at his laptop. A long chestnut braid slipped over his shoulder and brushed his face before it settled with a dull thump into his lap. Warm breath tickled his ear as Duo leaned over him and left a soft kiss on the nape of his neck."Oi, Heero. Come to bed. You can finish the report in the morning, ne? It’s not like the details won’t still be locked in that perfect brain in that perfect head of yours," he teased gently.
Heero paused a moment, letting one hand slip from the keyboard to caress that silken rope of hair lying across his chest. He cocked his head to one side, peering at the braided pilot behind him out of the corner of one eye, the tiniest of smiles teasing the edges of his normally hard-set mouth.
One of Duo’s graceful hands snaked forwards, long fingers reaching past Heero to fiddle with the keyboard. He moved slowly; Heero could have stopped him at any moment. With a few deft keystrokes, Duo saved the file his partner had been typing on and closed down the program. He shut the laptop with a decisive click, plunging the room into total darkness.
"Omae o korusu."
Duo chuckled softly and pulled himself closer to the Japanese pilot.
"I love you too, Heero."
Darkness enveloped him suddenly. Not the warm comforting darkness of their shared room and Duo’s embrace, but a cold, silent, lonely darkness.
Duo was gone.
He shivered as the ebon cloak that surrounded him surged tighter, cutting him off from... from what?
His mind was foggy. He was having a hard time holding on to coherent thought. He was having a hard time holding on to anything. The darkness gave way below him, plunging him further into the gloom.
He was falling, but his senses told him there was nothing to be falling from, nor anything to be falling to. He was nowhere. He was everywhere.
All he knew was that when Duo vanished, his whole world collapsed.
Duo peered through the glass separating the operating room from the rest of the medical facilities. It couldn’t be real.
None of this could be real.
His mind refused to comprehend the solid drone of the monitor, proclaiming the silence of the heart within Heero’s chest. Duo’s own heart refused to comprehend the finality of its meaning.
:All those tubes and shit. He looks so... mechanical,: Duo thought to himself, watching the still form of his lover lying so cold and unresponsive on that table.
He couldn’t equate that mangled body with the same warm flesh and blood of the boy he’d woken up beside that morning. The same pilot whose lips he’d teased before they left on the mission, and whose fingers had caressed him with rare tenderness in return.
:Ai Shiteiru... those words. You’ve never said those words before...:
His fingers splayed on the glass, pushing forward, as if he could reach into that room through the window and call forth the quiescent spirit of the Japanese pilot and return it to it’s fleshy home.
A quiet corner of his brain pondered that thought.
:Return his spirit... As if it’s left already... I don’t really believe that, do I? It can’t be gone... If it were gone, he’d... He’d be... dead.:
The enormity of it all asserted itself as he watched the doctors struggling to revive Heero, to return some sort of life to the body. Tears cascaded from his eyes unheeded. Tightness enveloped his chest, gripping his lungs with punishing force and denying him breath.
:Why? Why did you take that shot? why? Not for me. Please not for me... How could I let you trade yourself for me?:
:whywhywhywhywhywhy...: the thought tumbled through his mind.
He buried his face in his hands and gripped his bangs tightly, trying to banish the image of the bloody form on that table beyond the unforgiving glass.
He didn’t even hear the door open behind him and the other three pilots shuffle in to stand around him.
A hand touched his arm, startling him.
His red-rimmed violet eyes opened suddenly and looked up, meeting Quatre’s compassionate, yet perplexed, gaze.
:He looks so confused... Wonder why? Ohyeah... He didn’t know about me and Heero...:
:Heero... Oh god... Please don’t take him! I need him! He’s too... Please.... Oh god!:
"Baka," he muttered brokenly, not even realizing that he was speaking aloud.
:Baka. why? whywhywhywhywhy.....:
"wasn’t worth it..."
"What wasn’t worth it, Duo?" Quatre asked, concern coloring his voice.
Duo stared through him, eyes lost and far away and clearly not even comprehending his surroundings, let alone focusing on them, as he answered.
"The trade. Heero for me... wasn’t worth it..."
Quatre frowned, meeting Trowa’s eyes pleadingly. The taller boy had no answers, however, and simply peered through the glass where the doctors were even now still trying to restart Heero’s heart.
Quatre sadly took in the flat line on the monitor screen, and the mournful tone of the alarm. His heart hitched in his chest, sending a twinge of agony coursing through him.
Heero was dead.
Quatre laid his hand back on Duo’s shoulder, drawing the American pilot’s gaze.
Duo finally focused on the smaller boy, reading the sorrow and grief swimming in his blue eyes. He shook his head angrily.
"No. He can’t be."
"Duo... He’s... He’s been down so long," Quatre whispered gently.
"No. NO! He CAN’T be," Duo wailed, his whole body starting to quake.
"I- I’m sorry."
Duo hunched in on himself, hugging his arms tightly to his chest as he quivered with rage and sorrow and fear. Quatre’s whispered sympathy broke something within the American pilot, tearing down a hastily erected wall, and letting forth a beast of biblical proportion.
A savage scream ripped from the braided pilot’s throat, animalistic and vengeful.
"NO! HEEEERRROOOOO!!!"
Duo shook off the other pilots brutally and broke free, his eyes wide, unseeing, and mad. Before anyone could even frame a thought about trying to stop him, Duo sprinted out the door towards the Gundam hangar.
By the time any of the others reached the hangar, Duo and Shinigami were already lumbering out into the desert.
"We have to stop him!" Quatre cried, heading for Sandrock.
Trowa’s hand on his shoulder held him back.
"Are you so ready to die, then, Quatre?" Wufei said, standing to bar the Arabian pilot’s way with his arms crossed stubbornly over his chest.
"What? What are you talking about? Didn’t you see the look in his eyes?" Quatre demanded.
"Eyes are the windows to the soul. Duo’s soul has fled into madness. To try and stop him would be suicide," Wufei answered flatly.
Quatre shook the Heavyarms pilot’s hand from his arm angrily and considered the two intractable pilots.
"He’ll get himself killed! His Gundam is still damaged!"
"If we try and stop him, he’ll kill us too. Aren’t two pilots dead in one day enough?" Trowa said, voice thick with rare emotion.
Quatre jerked as if he’d been slapped.
"No..."
:No... oh Duo...:
They would pay. Oh yes. Every one of them would pay.
If it took the rest of his life, Duo would hunt every one of those Oz bastards down and exact his revenge for stealing Heero from him.
And he’d start with that base they were supposed to have hit today. The base whose runways they were supposed to have destroyed, but never even reached before Oz sprang their nasty little trap.
A mad little giggle escaped his lips as Shinigami vanished into the darkness of the night.
:Boy. Sure is a quiet night,: the Oz base Watch Commander thought to himself, silently chiding himself at the almost naive sounding thought.
:I thought for sure that those damned Gundam Pilots would have tried something after our ambush backfired.:
As if summoned by his thoughts, the hangars across the tarmac erupted into a brilliant cherry ball of flame. The Watch Commander threw up his arm with a cry of pain, futilely trying to shield his vision from that infernal blast. He felt the whole base shake with the force of the explosion, and the glass of the window he’d been peering out of shattered inward. A wall of heat knocked him to his knees, sparing him from the rest of the detonation concussion.
Over the radios, he could hear his soldiers crying out in confusion and pain. Shrieks of dying agony and suffering drifted through the previously still night air, chilling the Watch Commander to his boots. He struggled back to his feet and stared out into the ruin that had once been a proud Oz base.
There. A phantom shadow, ghosting through the darkness of the night. There it was again.
:What IS that?: his mind screamed.
A pair of hellish green eyes turned to pin him with it’s soulless stare. He stood, transfixed, and simply surrendered himself to the flash of emerald flame that ushered him from the world.
The Watch Commander had been lucky; he was one of the first of the souls Shinigami harvested that night. No one escaped the rushing flight into the Void.
Something was digging into his chest. It was hard to breath because of the pain and the stale air. Duo shook his head to clear it, and winced when the world spun around him and a sharp stab of agony pierced his brain.
:Na... nani? Shimatta... my head...:
He forced his thoughts to focus, and opened his eyes again. It took him almost a minute to figure out why the world seemed to be tilted crazily.
:Hanging... in my harness... What is going on?:
He reached out and flipped a few switches, cueing up the external cameras.
Shinigami lay sprawled in a canyon, collapsed in an arroyo like a carelessly abandoned marionette.
Memory seeped back into Duo’s abused skull.
He remembered fighting Oz troops. A lot of Oz troops.
:How long ago? Days?:
:How long did I fight? It seemed like forever...:
Fingers reached up and gently probed the knot on his skull, hissing as he found the gash. At least it had stopped bleeding.
:Itai! Musta knocked myself out when Shinigami fell. No- That’s not right... I... I collapsed...:
:Tired...:
Duo blinked as he tried to reassemble the past few... hours? Days? Weeks?
How long HAD it been? What was he doing here?
:Oz troops. Lots of Oz troops. I remember fighting them...:
:Be honest with yourself, Duo-man. I remember DECIMATING them. LOTS of them... Heero wouldda been impressed... He-:
Something flitted through his mind. The memory of seeing Heero lying on that cold, cold operating table. The horrible sound of the monitors, screeching their shrill death knell to the world.
"No."
The foggy, slumbering part of his memory woke up then, and like a ghastly movie, reminded him of the past few days. Replayed his attacks- no. His massacres.
A cold lump formed in his chest, locking away the tiny part of him that wanted to be sick, that sliver of him that was ashamed. The freezing knot murdered the stirrings of compassion within the young pilot, hardening what was left of the shreds of his soul.
He’d collapsed from exhaustion in this valley. The wound to his head probably happened when Shinigami had struck the unforgiving earth. He’d stalked Oz troops for days. No sleep, no food, no rest. Just the blood and the deaths. That was all he needed to sustain him: the blood of Oz.
He flicked on the Gundam’s systems, ignoring the pain of his battered body, squelching the protest of his queasy stomach and aching head.
There were more Oz troops out there. More souls to be reaped. Shinigami had a job to do. But first, Duo would have to return to Quatre’s base.
Shinigami would have to be in top condition to destroy the rest of Oz, after all.
Quatre blinked in disbelief as he stared at the black mobile suit standing in the hangar. No one had even seen Shinigami return.
:Kitto the Maganacs...:
Quatre shook his head. No. If Duo really didn’t want to be noticed, then nothing in the world... Quatre sighed.
At the moment, the American pilot was half buried in an open panel on his Gundam’s chest. Odd sparks and flashes lit the boy every few seconds, and the occasional waft of smoke drifted up to the rafters as Duo worked on repairing his mobile suit.
Shaking the confusion and shock from himself, Quatre took off for the catwalk at a brisk jog. He had something of monumental importance to tell Duo!
"Go away."
Quatre hadn’t even spoken yet when Duo’s strangely cold and emotionless voice came to him.
"But Duo-"
"Go. Away."
Quatre stood there, at a loss for words, and slightly offended, before common sense reasserted itself.
:He’s hurting and striking out at everyone. Especially Oz.:
"I-"
"Whatever it is, I. Don’t. Want. To. Hear. It."
"Heero-"
Duo jerked out of the compartment he’d been half sprawled in and spun on the Arabian pilot with a vicious snarl. He advanced on Quatre, brandishing the hand-held welder he'd been using to repair the delicate electronics of his beloved Shinigami.
"Don’t EVER speak to me about him again! Got it?!"
"He’s alive!" Quatre squeaked, back-peddling away from the enraged Duo.
There was a clank as the welder slipped unnoticed from Duo’s numb hand. He blinked once, stunned.
"What?"
"The doctors managed to bring him back. They got his heart restarted and he survived," Quatre said in a rush.
Duo’s wrath fled him, rushing out in a torrent of relief.
"Heero..."
A dream. It had to be a dream.
This aching darkness, this eternal nothingness, this ceaseless falling, this... Void. This had to be a dream.
Heero clung to that hope.
Hope? When had he become human enough to hope? There was no place in the heart of the Perfect Soldier for hope. K’so. There was no room within the Perfect Soldier for a HEART!
Such strange thoughts of hope and hearts.
And yet, something within him belied the cold logic of his inhumanity.
Hope. Heart. Soul.
When had he become human enough for those things to find purchase in the icy cavern within him?
Duo.
A blinding flash brought the object of his hope into being.
"You call this living?!" Duo said in a deadly quiet voice, peering into the room where Heero lay.
:So still... so quiet... There’s nothing but... but an empty shell...: Duo’s mind wailed.
He turned on Quatre, grabbing the smaller pilot by the front of his impeccable shirt, and dragging him into the room to shove the proof of the travesty down his throat.
"That’s nothing but a lie!" he snarled, shaking Quatre violently.
"Duo!"
"No!
"That’s not alive! That’s not HEERO! It’s nothing but a corpse! A corpse run by machines!"
"He’s in- a coma!" Quatre cried, his hands clutching at Duo’s fists wrapped in his clothes.
"The doctors... don’t know... what- what else... to do," Quatre managed to gasp between shakes.
Someone grabbed Duo’s shoulder, whipping him around. He had a split second to see the punch aimed at his face before his world exploded into darkness and pain.
With a wrench, Quatre was torn from his grip, and Duo fell to his knees. Moaning, he pitched forward, and caught himself with his hands. He crouched there on all fours for long moments as his vision tried to clear itself.
:too long... too hard... not enough... not enough rest... too weak...:
When he could finally look up, he saw Trowa standing over him, fists held ready and a dangerous gleam in his eyes as he stared contemptuously down at the American pilot.
:huh... can see both of his eyes from this angle...: a corner of Duo’s brain commented sardonically.
"Quatre?" Trowa said, his voice betraying his concern, despite the terseness of his question.
"Ah. Daijoubu, Trowa. Daijoubu. It’s okay. He’s just-"
"No excuses."
Quatre glanced sharply at Trowa, amazed at the curt, cold tone of his friend’s voice.
"Trowa?"
"This is war, Duo. Get over yourself and just let it go."
With that harsh declaration, Trowa ushered Quatre out the door and away from Heero’s room.
:let it go? -no-:
:they just kept him- kept him alive... for me...:
His face crumpled with that thought.
:I can’t. I can’t let you go... you’re all I have left.:
:koibito... don’t leave me... omae wa ore no mono da...:
A tormented sigh escaped his lips as exhaustion and intense grief seized him, flinging him into darkness like a discarded sock. The last thing he saw as his body shut down on him was Heero’s unresponsive hand, dangling from the bed.
End part 2
RavynFyre
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