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"Heero Yuy, L6, and the Second Suit Wars "Part 1Written By: ELLE Disclaimer: I don't own the characters from Gundam
Wing (unfortunately) and they were used without permission, but all
the words are my own. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: occurs post-EW, language, angst, sex,
hopefully acceptable OOC, 1st person POV (*shudder* sorry, no way
around it!), plus a ton of minor and a few major OCs (since it's 1st
person, you get to avoid dealing with them too much.) Pairings: 1x2x1 plus others TBD Summary: Jack Kaufmann has no recollection of the braided man who claims they were once more than friends, but his quest to recover his memories leads him to discover a plot much larger than himself that is a threat to the peace he'd once fought to protect... Author's Notes: This is gonna be a doozy of a fic, guys. I'm thinking 100k+. I'll likely update Monday, Wednesday, Friday and then take a brief hiatus between sections of the trilogy just to get all my G-boys in a row, so to speak. ;-P This fic starts off a little slow, in my typical psychological style, but will pick up into an action fic by the end so stick with it, please! =) The lovely Miss-Murdered beta'd this for me and frankly this story wouldn't exist without her encouragement. Oh and some of the topics I'm discussing here are waaaay out of my league so go easy on me, okay? My husband is a computer programmer and I've taken a few classes but my knowledge ends there. I hopefully know enough that I didn't make any glaring errors but no promises.
"Memoirs of a Former Life" 1.11 The Discovery It's hard to figure out a direction in your life when your sole purpose rejects you. I spent that weekend in and out of bars, drinking so that I didn't have to think, out so that I didn't have to be home, surrounded by shit Heero put there for me so that I could maintain a semblance of his life. I mean seriously, tell me. What the fuck was I supposed to do now? Dragging myself into work Monday morning was an exercise in masochism but at least my job was something I chose for myself, as far as I knew. But it wasn't until I got to the office and had curious coworkers hovering around my door that I remembered the date that never happened. Fortunately all they had to do was take one look at me before they realized they'd better not ask. Or maybe that was unfortunate. Even though they didn't ask, I still felt incredibly low every time those eyes changed from excited curiosity to sympathetic sadness and I got the strong urge to just walk out, get in my car, hit the highway, and take a hard right into oncoming traffic. And even when I shut the door and drew the blinds and locked out the world, I found myself thinking about how my hands slid across his skin in the dark, how he felt tucked into my arms, how he looked at me as I held Lizzy, how he held my hand as we walked to the train station in Zurich... All these stupid fucking memories. Memories that meant nothing because they went no where, lead to nothing. Nothing but an aching heart. I never said I loved him. It wasn't because I wasn't sure that I did. I knew that I did. That's the only word that could hold a candle to the emotion I was feeling. But the reason I never said it was because I couldn't be sure if it was Heero making me feel this way, or if I genuinely loved him as Jack, as myself. Now, though it was too late to do anything about it, I knew it didn't matter. My love for him overwhelmed all reason, all logic, all of my emotional capacity. And he was gone. I couldn't help but resent how selfish Heero was to leave a piece of himself intact to destroy all the progress I had made in his stead. What made him believe that could possibly have done anything but backfire? But I knew the truth if I let myself think it. The truth was that he couldn't deny himself. The truth was that as deeply in love with him as I thought I was, Heero was even deeper in, and he couldn't help it. He had to see him. No matter what the ramifications, he had to. In lieu of any other options, I began to bury myself in the research Aisha sent me, cross-referencing it with materials from my apartment. Slowly but surely I began to get a picture of what Heero must've done to create this situation for us. But the more I understood, the more I realized I had no idea how he could ever have pulled it off. I came to the conclusion that he must've repressed all of his memories, supplanted new ones over top, and sectioned off some part of his mind from me where his actual self still existed. Despite the fact that I didn't have any of his memories, I had plenty of his emotional sensitivity to the world around me. When I interacted with people or things familiar to him, I felt a backwash of what I now knew were his emotions. The delicacy of all of this cannot be overstated. In my life as I knew it, I worked primarily with computers. Computers, while still temperamental and fragile in their own right, were nowhere near as complex as the human brain. It was easy enough to yank memory from one slot to replace it with more and rewrite existing code to other easily defined areas in the circuitry. The brain, on the other hand, was unique in every instance. Synapse development was complex and to some degree inexplicable. Memory formation, storage, and allocation even more difficult to correctly quantify. Even in this day and age there were still many things about the brain we didn't understand. Frankly, I could easily be a rather impressive science fair project if someone stepped up to claim me. I think Heero could've won much acclaim and the ability to work anywhere. Even here. I probably would've attempted to recruit him. This thought amongst all my depressing frustration quite frankly made me curious. And so on Friday afternoon - when I knew that despite the rigid security Nexxus employed, people would be excited for the weekend, overlooking their protocols in order to chat with coworkers or get out of the office a few minutes early - I decided to snoop. First of all, Nexxus had a lovely open system policy towards its techies at HQ. Frankly, almost anyone on my wing could hack into any of the lower level systems with nothing but pitiful things like file permissions and set user roles securing them. So instead of bogging us down with regulations when we might very well need to access those systems for our legitimate work, they just installed sophisticated monitoring software on all of our machinery. Fine. This usually wasn't a problem because I usually wasn't looking at anything unrelated to work. Second of all, I knew that we weren't being monitored very closely. Working with the security team assured me of this fact. There were just way too many people working at Nexxus that were far less reputable than us good little highly compensated techies to worry about what we were doing every second of every day. I'm sure they went through our logs at some point... But I was sure that today wasn't going to be the day. And tomorrow probably wouldn't be either. I knew beyond a doubt that Bryan had a bit of a porn thing going on and it'd been that way for months without even a reprimand. So needless to say, I wasn't too concerned. Look, every company has their blind spots. Although I felt fairly confident no one was observing me, I still waited for Friday just in case some anal retentive jerk decided they wanted to be thorough. No one ever wanted to be thorough on Friday afternoon. Except for me. And even then, if I had anything, anything at all to look forward to, I could be persuaded into sloth. But as such I had nothing. So I began to dig in the recruitment files. I knew even I wouldn't have access to HR files - legality and all - but I also knew Nexxus had a separate talent search team that did extensive research on high profile, qualified candidates in order to woo them. I had been recruited myself, after all, and I certainly wasn't as high profile as a Gundam pilot. Or wait. Was I? I certainly couldn't have been recruited for the AI research I wasn't actually doing in my teenage years the way I'd believed. How come I hadn't thought of this before? I eventually came across a folder with what appeared to be large psych profiles of eligible candidates. It was a big folder but I scanned it quickly for my name and, upon coming up empty, I searched for Heero Yuy. And of course there was a hit. I opened it, feeling strangely perverse to be spying on my former self, and found a hundred page document discussing Heero's potential to the company as well as a complete psychological profile - based on what information, I was unsure - as well as many photographs and a list of his accomplishments during the war. I knew immediately that I couldn't just download this document for my leisurely perusal without drawing suspicion so I took screen captures of the ten page preface materials instead, quickly saving them on my personal device, knowing it would be a bit more difficult for them to prove and a lot less incriminating if I was found out. Then I had another thought. Why would they only recruit Heero? Were the other Gundam pilots somehow less worthy of Nexxus' attention? It seemed unlikely so I then went in search of Duo and immediately found his own briefing materials. Again, screenshots. And then I looked for Chang, Barton, and Winner working on the assumption that they had to be the other pilots. I saved their information as well, hoping it might give me some clue as to why I was picked and no one else, before logging out and briefly hoping no one would see fit to pull my logs. Then a knock fell on my door and for one brief, paranoid moment my heart raced, thinking I had already been discovered. But I knew that was impossible so I cleared my throat and announced they could come in. It was Aisha. "Hey Jack," she greeted warmly, crossing the room to rest a hip against my desk. I could tell there was concern in her pale blue eyes as she looked down on me. "Is everything okay?" I wondered how some people could do that to you. Look at you, ask a fairly simple question, and make you feel like baring your whole soul to them. "Yeah, fine," I replied shortly, attempting not to divulge my whole sorry state of affairs upon her. "You've just been holed up in here, avoiding everyone, even more than usual," she explained softly in a way that I knew was an attempt at prompting me to talk. "You were so excited last week... did something happen?" I raked my hands through my hair in aggravation, standing and staring through the window down at the parking lot, just to get away from her prying eyes. I noted all the little people making their way to their cars, stopping to chat about the week or weekend plans. I felt an up swell of jealousy as I had never felt before. They got to be normal. Heero tried to give me - himself - a piece of that normalcy, but he fucked it all up. "My date didn't go very well," I admitted carefully, trying to keep any trace of emotion from my voice. "She didn't like the restaurant?" Aisha asked in surprise, a hint of guilt there since she corroborated the glowing reviews. "We didn't make it to the restaurant," I replied, throat tightening as my mind flashed back unbidden to his bed, his lips, his fingertips. "Aw, Jack... I'm sorry," she murmured sympathetically and I could feel her eyes on the back of my neck. I just wanted her to leave. "Its fine," I muttered. "No, its not. I can tell she meant a lot to you." "You have no idea," I said quietly. I heard her get up and walk towards me, placing a kind hand on my shoulder. I couldn't look at her, scared I would break down, say something I shouldn't, or - god forbid - cry. "You know, you can come over for dinner tomorrow night if you'd like. I'm sure Bruce would love to show off his new sound system," she chuckled. "Thank you," I forced out, "but I really just want to be alone." She sighed and squeezed my shoulder. "Well, you have my personal number. Please call me if you change your mind. It doesn't matter if it's last minute, either. You're always welcome at my house." I finally turned to meet her eyes and I attempted an appreciative smile. I don't think I succeeded. I wasn't sure though - I couldn't see her expression through the water glassing my eyes. She hugged me briefly, a bold action I never would've permitted in any other circumstance, before she left me there. Alone again. With great effort I pushed away all thoughts of him and grabbed my tablet and cell phone to head out. I stopped and picked up some whiskey after finishing everything in my apartment over the course of the week. Maybe I should've just purchased some Valium. But there was something strangely satisfying about the self-destructive nature of liquor that fed my internal loathing. I made myself a sandwich and ate it standing at the counter and drowned it with a quick shot before pouring myself a generous glass of whiskey and settling in on the couch. I opened up the screen shots I'd previously saved, starting with the one on Heero. Even though it was only an overview it contained many details about him as well as a strong recommendation for recruitment. It stated that he had a flexible sense of morality and was suspected of schizoid personality disorder. That his hacking and piloting skills were unparalleled. That physical genetic modification was highly likely. That his experience using the ZERO system was invaluable due to his to mastery of it. That the biggest obstacle to his recruitment was his refusal to leave his partner, Duo Maxwell. In fact, he wouldn't do anything to compromise their relationship, including take a job Maxwell disagreed with. It was suggested to proceed with caution regarding Maxwell because he would not hesitate to defend his partner from any perceived threat and he was quite dangerous. So what changed, I wondered. I was here - the file even confirmed it. 'Recruitment successful,' it stated in black and white. Did Heero really want the job so badly he created me for it? While taking a job against Duo's wishes may have hurt him, it hardly seemed worthy of all this effort, all this pain. There had to be something more... I pulled up Duo's file and read the words 'ineligible for recruitment' written across the top of the file. Heero's summary, although dry and clinical, was glowing in comparison to Duo's. It outlined several tragedies in his life, including a virus which wiped out not only his family, leaving him an orphan, but also the gang he found comfort in a few years later when the mutated strain devastated the colony a second time. It also mentioned a horrific fire in which he was the only survivor, his church orphanage destroyed. It labeled him reckless, impulsive, unpredictable, and extremely dangerous, stating he was suspected to suffer from borderline personality disorder. It warned to act with extreme caution and not evoke his wrath in relation to Yuy or the results could be lethal. The document also stated that he refused to use the ZERO system after his initial experience and was against Yuy's participation in any further testing. It hinted that his elimination would be the easiest way to recruit Yuy - although thankfully they didn't take that route, as Duo was still alive. Then again, it didn't sound like "elimination" would really be that easy with the amount of warnings in both files suggesting they could easily incapacitated any recruiter bold enough to try. But that didn't really answer any questions. It certainly made Nexxus look suspicious, but from everything Heero left me it seemed that his repression was a personal choice made out of desperation and fear. And even Winner said it - he was the issue, he was dangerous, not Nexxus. Nexxus just indirectly benefited from his self-destruction. I glanced through the other three files. Although there were files on Barton and Chang, there didn't appear to be much more than half hearted recruitment attempts and their files were pegged as 'pending further review.' It gave me a small insight into their personalities though and I filed the information away for later use. Winner's file was a surprise. It was labeled 'recruitment pending' although I was certain Winner was never employed by Nexxus nor would have any need to be. He was busy running his own corporation. A corporation that was in league with Nexxus on the L6 installation. Maybe it was an error. These files were clearly old - perhaps the recruitment fell through and the file was never updated. Maybe it was even in reference to his co-sponsorship of the project. His file went on to describe his family situation and assets, describing him as empathetic to a fault, allowing his feelings for others to affect his actions. It went on to state that he was involved in the construction of the ZERO system and struggled but was ultimately able to successfully utilize it long-term. It was the third file that mentioned the ZERO system. I remembered Duo tapping my forehead the first time we met, warning me not to recreate it. But what was it? I had a strong suspicion that more than Yuy or Winner, Nexxus really wanted that. And since Yuy and Winner were the only ones to pilot it, we were the only ones who really mattered. The only ones who needed to be recruited. Unfortunately the only people who would know I couldn't ask. Maybe I could ask Chang, but I didn't want him, his curiosity, and his Preventer badge poking around and causing issues for me at work before I was able to uncover any additional information. No. It was better to go it alone. And then, I picked up a pad of paper and a pen and started to write.
~ * ~ tbc... |
