"What do you mean?" Wufei dropped his weapon a bit lower. His eyebrow
locked again. This time, it was not from disgust but from confusion.
Quatre, on the other hand, felt the smile surfacing his face. "You told Odin?"
"No." Seeing that the sword was no longer at his throat, Trowa lowered his hands. "General Lowell already knew by some other means. I merely contacted him about Quinze's plan and that he knew they were on his tail." Before he would allow Quatre's smile to fade away, Trowa quickly added.
"Why?" Wufei dropped the weapon completely. Even though the sword is still unsheathed, the hostility was gone in Wufei's voice.
"I don't want to see you hurt." Without hesitation, Trowa spoke in a quiet tone. His impassive expression was only betrayed by his own pair of intensive green eyes, which stared into the clear blue.
Wufei rolled his eyes as Quatre blushed fiercely. Wufei turned and started to walk back to where he dropped his stuff. "Finally," Wufei took out a piece of cloth from his backpack and wiped off the bloodstain on his sword. "Now that Odin is out getting the bastard, this thing is finally coming to an end." Wufei bent and picked up his sheath.
"Not quite." Trowa broke the eye contact with Quatre for the first time during the meet. "As I said before, my mission was to kidnap you two." Trowa wiped away the almost dried blood from his neck. "It was not my mission to terminate Heero Yuy."
"WHAT?!" Wufei swirled around, sheath and sword dropped on the floor. He practically ran toward Trowa and grabbed him by his collar violently. "WHAT- DID-YOU-SAY?"
Quatre clenched his fist in front of his chest. "Who! Who else is part of White Fang? Is Heero in danger?"
"Duo Maxwell." Trowa said monotonously.
Quatre stepped back a few steps. "no......" He whispered as he felt his heart ached.
"He is not in this with you? Why didn't you stop him? Where is he?" Wufei barked.
Trowa lightly shook his head. "I don't know. It was hard to tell what he is thinking." Trowa paused. "He.... He is unstable sometimes....but..."
"Kisama!" Not having any patience, Wufei ran out of the music room.
"Wait!" Quatre called out to Wufei. He was ready to make a run and
to follow Wufei until a hand placed on his shoulder and stopped him. Quatre turned
around, suppressing his urge to brush off the offending hand.
Trowa only looked at Quatre with confidence in his eyes. "I trust Duo."
* * *
Heero laughed. He laughed so hard and his lungs were aching so bad that he could hardly breath. He laughed so hard that his head felt like exploding and that the only thing to keep him sane is the pain eradiating from his physical body. Heero did not care. He laughed. What else could he do but to laugh at this irony. This was his damnation and salvation all together! All these years, he relived this scene over and over again in his head. Sure, the character changed but the situation and dialogue remained the same. Still sitting on the cold floor, he supported his upper body with both of his hands behind his back. The laugh subsided as he focused at the long haired boy in front him. The same expression. The same determination. A bitter smirk tucked at the corner of his mouth. Finally he would know. Finally they would be answered. Finally, the ghost in his endless nightmare would speak to him.
Heero's assassin was not surprised at Heero's outburst. Years of doing his "job" had allowed him to see what people would react at the gunpoint. The rich ones would beg and try to bribe him with wealth. The politicians, especially the corrupt ones, would pee in their pants and yell futilely for the dead bodyguards. The smart ones would attempt to talk their way out by trying to seek his intention. And the insane ones, mostly they welcomed death.... The long hair boy looked down on the broken boy. It was his job to relieve their sufferings from the world after all.
"How?" Heero paused, trying to sort out his breathing. "How did you become what you are?" Heero stared right into the blank expression of the man who claimed to be Shinigami. His eyes traced the handsome outline of his assassin. At the same time, his mind recalled the face of his previous lover. Heero ached and wondered what drove these two men, whom he knew to be the most compassionate person in the world, to become this deadly assassins.
The assassin was thrown off for a split second but smirked. "How?" Maybe he was wrong. This one was not insane. This one was a smart one. "Revenge." He shrugged carelessly.
Heero merely raised his eyebrow.
The assassin chuckled. Okay, maybe he was right the first time. Heero apparently did not want to talk his way out. This kid had lost his sanity. He wanted to know why? Hell, he would tell him why.
With gun still aiming at Heero, he kneeled down again and pressed his mouth next to his ear. "Remember? That stranger, " his breath blew hot air onto Heero's sensitive ears. "He took away everything, leaving the kid nothing to offer." His lips were now practically glued to the ear. "Do you know what it is like? To know that you aren't worth anything more than the dirt on the ground." The gun pressed on Heero's temple, threatening to leave an indentation. "To feel that every inch of your body did not belong to you... to realize that this world is just another version of hell..."
Heero trembled. Not out of fear but out of the realization of what had really happened to Duo during those days.
The assassin paused briefly before another chuckle escaped him again. "It didn't help even when the police caught the guy red handed. You know? Fucking bastards. You have me to thank because I saved his sanity when the court sentenced decided to find the murderer "temporally insanity." The assassin gave a sinister laugh. "Temporally insane! Can you fucking believe that!? They didn't bother to send him to the electric chair! Not even life in prison! What did they do? They locked him up in the mental institution for a minimum of 10 years!" The assassin abruptly stood up. "Ten fucking years! It was unacceptable." He waved the gun wildly in the air and paced in the room. "It was absolutely unacceptable." His free hand pressed hard on his temple. His lips trembled with both anger and excitement. "So I told him the only way to survive, the only way to battle. To be trained as an assassin and became one of the best..... With my help of course." The assassin stopped, reminiscing his great accomplishments.
"And when that day came. Oh.. how we waited... you have no idea..." The assassin's grin grew bigger. "We waited for the day of his release.... The day he walked out of the mental institute alone. It was a suitable raining day perfect for our disguise in the car. We could have taken him out just like that with a single bullet." He snapped his fingers. "But that would be wrong. Because death," He paused, and his eyes gleamed with danger, "would be a luxury that he was not allowed to have."
* * *
"You mean you already broke away from White Fang two years ago?" Hope blossomed as Quatre held tightly onto Trowa's arms. "Both of you?" Maybe Duo wouldn't do it after all. Maybe it was just a scare.
Trowa nodded. "Duo was the one who suggested. He was on leave for a few days and all of the sudden he returned and told me that he was tired of killing...that he wanted to leave the team."
"Something happened?"
Trowa lightly shook his head. "He never told me anything only that he was tired. It was a mutual feeling so I left with him."
"But I don't understand... If you already left the team, why are you.... I mean why would Duo obey Quinze? It shouldn't matter anymore."
"Initially Duo was just doing some hacking jobs for Quinze." Trowa lowered his eyes sadly. "I should have known. I never really question where the money came from. I guess a part of me didn't want to admit it." Trowa paused, silently berating himself for not realizing it sooner. "But Quinze was desperate. He needed us to finish the job for him because he was running out of time. Your father and General Lowell were on his tail." Trowa suppressed his anger. "So he threatened us with the orphanage we are running."
Quatre absorbed the information. Something was wrong. It didn't fit. "But.... You were in the school here first... Duo couldn't have followed us here. It didn't make sense."
"According to Duo, he had already tracked you down last year. But before he could report to Quinze, the media had found you and so you moved again. It just turned out that the next school you moved to was fairly close to ours... so Quinze made the arrangement for you to move again. Some small incident that wouldn't force you to change to different state, but enough to get your guys out of that school and transfer to somewhere close, which is ours."
Quatre stared at Trowa, not believing. His mind worked like a slide machine that went through the memory of last school in fast pace. Finally scenes of a girl annoyingly following around Heero jumped into focus. "Relena? Relena Peacecraft? You are telling me that Relena purposedly tried to irritate us so that...." Quatre gasped. The image of Relena slamming Heero into the lockers and Wufei's violent response flashed into Quatre's memory.
Trowa did not answer. He didn't need to anyway.
* * *
"Imagination is the key. I tell you." The long hair boy had now dragged a chair in front of Heero and sat comfortably with one of his leg rested on the other. He was no longer aiming at his victim's forehead either. The hands relaxed in his lap. "We blindfolded the damn guy and we tied him to a chair. Naked. We left him like that for the first few hours. We didn't do anything to him. We didn't have to. We let his own imagination work against him. We let him lived in his own creation of fear." He smirked. "And when he was just starting to calm down, we struck." He tilted his head, trying to recall the details. "What did we do first? Oh, I think we cut off his left.. no, right ear first. And when he was starting to fall asleep, we dumped water on him." The cold assassin paused, taking his time to drown in the past. "You see.... Constant insecurity and sleep deprivation was the best combination of torture. Of course we had to fuel his imagination once a while too. We brought in rats the second day. We made sure he heard the rats well before we actually released the hungry animals on him. It was great. To hear him scream like the lowly creatures that were nipping on him at the same moment. It was fantastic."
Heero sat still on the ground. Quiet. Though the words fazed in and out of his consciousness as he fought hard to stay awake, Heero now understood Duo. Overlooking those gruesome details of tortures and manic laughs, he saw a tormented soul who needed the love that was cruelly stripped away from him... at the age of six. Heero stared into the violet eyes, remembering Duo's cocky grins, playful attitudes and ingenious wits. Even now, when the Duo in front of him was recounting the murderous act that he did, Heero did not look at him in disgust. On the contrary, He just wanted to hold Duo in his arms and told him that it was all over and that it was okay because from now on he would be there for him. Half listening to Duo's words, Heero had finally admitted to himself that he had become attracted to him and eventually loved him. He fixed his focus on the assassin in front him. Yes. He loved him.
"..... by the fourth day, he was in no shape to scream anymore. But don't you worry because there are many ways to make a man howl in pain." Duo stopped. He spun the gun between his fingers. His eyes slightly looked to upper left, listing the ways of torturing in his mind. "And I was going to fucking skin his leg. You know how you do it? You inject water into the sublayer of the skin so that you could cut into the flesh and peel off the skin right off the meat just like you are peeling an orange [1]. It won't be as much physical pain as you would think because the fucking nerve end came right off with the skin. But it would hurt like hell because the victim would feel as much pain as he thought he should. Again, imagination is the key." The assassin gave a menacing laugh. "It would have been soooo much fun."
Heero did not cringe away from his vivid description. Instead, he silently cursed the man who had taken away his past and happiness.
As the laugh subsided, the grin on the assassin slowly faded. "But then Duo had to go ahead and took that away from me. The stupid ingrate. Didn't he know that I was doing all these for his sake? The least he could do was to give me ......."
"What did Duo do?" Heero quietly interrupted.
The assassin was startled as he heard the question from Heero. He looked at the boy on the floor and for the first time since he started to recant the past, he noticed the boy. The surprise did not last too long as he answered the boy. "He ended his suffering. He delivered a bullet right between his eyes, sending him to the comfort of ...."
Heero widened his eyes as he saw the assassin stopped in the middle of his sentence and tumbled back in imbalance. His one hand pressed his temple and the other hand wildly flapped in the air trying to look for a support. The whole thing lasted about a few seconds as the long hair boy steadied himself and took control again. When Heero finally meet the pair of violet eyes, he was surprised. The vacant eyes were cleared. They were calm.
"Heero..." The long hair boy started. "This world has so much pain. It is just another version of hell." He looked at Heero with compassion and love in his eyes. "I wanted to help you to get away from it. You don't deserve to suffer like this. We will go together. We will both get the salvation we need. I swear on my love for you, it would almost be painless."
* * *
"It's too late. Even if you have me right now, you cannot convict me." Qunize looked at Odin with defiance. His hands were cuffed behind his back and a trail of blood streaming down his lips.
"Try me." Odin squeezed the words from his gritting teeth. He used all of his energy to refrain himself from choking the man in front of him to death.
Quinze only grinned.
* * *
"Just like you relieved your father's suffering." Heero used the last of his energy and backed himself to a wall. He locked his eyes to his executioner. One part of him agreed with Duo. He was right. Heero was tired. The physical pain was becoming unbearable. It would be nice if someone would do the favor for him. He knew he would make it a clean shot. Just like he claimed, it would almost be painless. But then another part of him grieved. For the weight he saw on the long hair boy's shoulder. How it had severely damaged his sanity. He wanted to save him. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with him. Even if that meant living in this messed up world where jealousy and mistrust lurked in people's souls . Heero took another big breath. He would follow his heart. It did not matter the outcome. It only mattered that Duo understood his love. He needed to say it.
Duo backed a step as he saw Heero painfully opened his jaws and silently mouthed 'I love you'. Duo felt the world spin and the familiar gun in his hand suddenly became as heavy as it was 12 years ago. He felt weak and struggled to aim the target. "I am doing this to help him. I am ending his suffering." Duo muttered and fought to aim the target with the accuracy and precision he had acquired from his training. But it didn't work. He couldn't. Suddenly, he felt an invisible pair of hand cupped his own hands and helped him steady the gun.
//Do it again//
Duo shuddered. The familiar voice awakened his memory. His mother's begging started to surface in the background. He looked at his hands. They were so small, so innocent. They were just like the ones belonging to a six-year-old child.
//Do it.//
The stranger's voice was as firm as Duo had remembered. Duo cried. Tears running down his cheek like 12 years ago. "Please don't make me do it. Please don't make me do it.." He muttered and fought hard to steady the hands. But the awful gun was just so heavy. He needed to pull the trigger now or else....
/*I love you*/
Duo closed his eyes, images of his father occupied his mind. His father had meant what he said. His face was full of love and acceptance.
//Do it.//
With his eyes still closed, Duo felt the stranger's invisible hand slowly withdrawn from his hands. His body trembled. "Please don't make me do it. Please don't make me do it."
"It's all right. It was in the past. Duo. I love you." Heero rested his head on the wall, closing his eyes and feeling his consciousness slipping away. He had said the words. Nothing mattered.
Duo snapped his eyes open. The image of his dying father superimposed on Heero. Duo froze and felt someone had knocked him in the head and brought him back to the reality. Realization and self-loathing raged in his mind. He did the only thing he could to relief the conflict in his inner self. He screamed.
Heero heard Duo's anguish scream and followed by the sound of metal hitting the floor. Before he could open his eyes, warm lips were already pressing against his cold ones.
"I am so sorry Heero. I am so sorry." Duo broke away the kiss to say the words. His forehead leaned against Heero's and his hands cupped his face. "For 12 years I had vowed for revenge.. but I still lost. He had me in his palm even when I brutally killed him. God, I almost killed you. I almost did. God help me if I did. My hands are already stained with blood... I am so sorry.. I...."
Heero only smiled and sealed their lips together again. His tongue gently caressed Duo's trembling lips. As Duo calmed down a little, his tongue entered Duo's mouth, seeking for warmth and love. He brought his hands painfully up and wrapped around Duo's shaking shoulder. He would give him shelter. He would give him warmth. He would give him the love he needed to survive. They would heal together. They would face the world as one.
Duo slowly relaxed and bathed in Heero's comforting embrace. He subdued his breathing and lost himself in Heero's gentle caress. It had been so long since anyone touched him like this. He felt peace. A sense of tranquility overwhelmed him. He had finally come home. Maybe after all he could....
Without warning, the sound of footsteps and faint shouts of Heero's name echoed in the hallway.
Duo blinked. As he hastily pushed himself away from Heero, he saw the confusion on Heero's face. Duo shivered. He had already missed his warmth. "Heero...." Duo started to sob. "My hands are stained with so much blood. I can't deserve this. I just can't." Duo abruptly stood up and practically ran toward his gun.
It took a few seconds before Heero registered the situation. He struggled to get up to follow Duo but his body was still weak. Helplessly, he watched in horror as Duo picked up the gun and place on his temple. "Stop Duo." Heero fought to lessen the desperation in his voice. He had to remain calm and soothing. "You don't have to do this."
Tears continued to pour out of Duo's eyes. Biting down his lips, he shook his head. He averted his gaze and focused on the ceiling. He couldn't take the risk of looking at Heero right now.
The sound of the footsteps came closer as Heero shakily stood up with one hand on the wall supporting his bodyweight.
"I love you, Heero." Shutting his eyes, Duo muttered. Prayers to God lingered at his lips as he placed his finger on the trigger.
"NOOOO!!!!!!"
* * *
Wufei stopped dead in the middle of the hallway as he heard a gun fired. Time seemed to freezing up as the ringing of the gunshot remained vivid in his ears.
"HEERO!!!!" Finally as the reality settled in, Wufei broke into a run, racing toward the origin of the sound.
* * *