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"Heero Yuy, L6, and the Second Suit Wars "Part 3Written 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... The lovely Miss-Murdered beta'd this for me and frankly this story wouldn't exist without her encouragement.
"Restitution of a Former Life " 3.9 The Mistake
The proximity alarms and HERA's fingers on my consciousness pulled me from my light slumber. I wasn't really intending to sleep, but then I hadn't slept in over twelve hours and the flight to L6 was a long one. Not to mention, despite how eager I was to resolve this issue, I wanted to give Wufei time to catch up with me in case I needed back up, so I wasn't really in a rush. Rendezvous with four HERA-manipulated mobile suits in three minutes. Immediately shaking off my sleep, I moved to pull up visual but HERA anticipated my desire and had it pulled up before my fingers reached the panel. It seemed in light of this system that it was unnecessary for Quatre to have patterned Zeus' design and control pattern after Wing as HERA could respond to my demands faster than my own body could. I had to fight back the automatic response within me to pull out the thermal saber as I waited for them to approach. I took a deep breath and lowered my mental shields as HERA dropped the system buffers to connect me with other AIs. There was a moment of lag and I was hit with a wash of apprehension that was distinctly Duo and I swallowed back the swelling of emotion those few seconds caused in my gut. The connection with Duo Maxwell was never reestablished. I blinked, perplexed, but shook my head to clear my confusion as the new type suits grew larger on the screen. You are experiencing unusual brain activity. What the fuck was that supposed to mean exactly? I didn't really have time to dwell on it as I was immediately bombarded by the thoughts of four others roving through my brain. It almost hurt to have my thoughts shifted through, dissected, pulled directly from my brain like that, without my consent. I forced myself to relax, allow it to happen, not fight it. "We were warned about him." "He piloted during the war." "ZERO system." "Division. "Right." While I heard their discussion as it was filtered through HERA it was fast, too fast for me to focus on, often disjointed and accompanied by vague images of things I had never seen before yet morphing with my own experiences in some attempt to help me understand. But the feeling I got was that they understood each other perfectly, their frames of reference all the same, and I understood that this was an effect of the collective consciousness. "He knows Lizzy." "But he's not a friend." "Something is wrong with him." "No." "He intends to hurt us." "His memories are deformed." "He wants to destroy our home." I realized as images flashed before my eyes through the backlash of their shared mental link that home to them was L6, that dormitory we entered into after crawling through the waste ducts of the colony. The effect was disconcerting as memories of Duo moving through our place in Lyon combined with those children's barracks and the chatter of little voices running up and down the hallway and I suppose the merging memories were in part as we were the same - orphans with only one clear picture of what 'home' was. "Doesn't he know what home is?" Before the thought was even fully formed the next one came through and squeezed my heart. "He destroyed his own home." The accusation made me irrationally angry. How could they judge me - mere children brainwashed by a megalomaniac? What did they know of love? It was unfortunate but my own experiences, my own loneliness as a child, the insecurity of traveling with a mercenary, pretending to be his son, shot back through the connection and hostility snapped between us. My anger built, overriding everything, grounded in doubt I hadn't felt with such poignancy since I was a child not much older than them - doubt that Odin was my father, doubt that he loved me, doubt that I had a home, doubt that I was safe - that we were safe. No child should have to suffer that kind of insecurity and the child in me cried out at what felt like mocking laughter from the children in the suits. They had a home, they had security. Words were no longer necessary as emotions flew between us. I understood their anger that I would try to take the only security, the only home they had ever had from them, but it didn't matter to me. Their home was a threat to mine - to Duo, to the peace we had established ten years ago which in and of itself felt like home. They didn't understand that this wasn't right, this wasn't normal, and I couldn't show them anything. What did I have but a dead man who told me to live by my emotions and a lover I'd abandoned in fear? I thought of the little girl in the park, that dog, the elaborate fantasy I'd created surrounding - that she had a mother and father who cared about her, hugged her, picked her up and held her in their laps and stroked through her hair - this whole elaborate fantasy life I didn't know or understand but wanted and destroyed for someone else and all that pain and anguish was sent blasting through the link between us. And of course, what else would those children think as they filtered through my memories of buildings burning and my guilt, my horror, other than that I was a monster? I couldn't even accurately defend myself in my own heart because even I thought I was a monster. I felt the change in their dispositions as the hostility between us grew to a breaking point and my fingers navigated over the controls with frightening speed as I drew out the thermal saber. They had anticipated that action but still - even with the ability to predict my moves through the neural link supplied by HERA, they could only respond as quickly as they could think. I engaged the thrusters and burst towards them, blood pulsing through my veins, anger and frustration and helplessness and memories of the past and all the times I'd done this before and all the people I was forced to kill and all for what? My whole life was a sad failure if I didn't succeed here, if I allowed this to happen. They separated and I got the backlash of technical diagrams of fight patterns and I smirked even as they began trying to shut down the connection between us. I felt intimately their realization that I knew more than them about this even as they procured primitive weaponry and that feeling of superiority, of being better than the enemy, welled up within me and I knew I had them. The best way to work a situation with multiple opponents trying to distract you by splitting up is to focus on one target at a time, draw them away and pin them down solo. If anyone followed you could always turn on them and take them out. But I saw the specs on these suits, knew that they were lighter and with more thrust than what I currently possessed and knew that I would run out of fuel before I ever caught up to one. However, I also knew that the tactic would still work because I was once privy to the way my enemy thought and I knew without a doubt that they would move to protect one of their own. They were conditioned towards protecting their home and their comrades were their home - as assuredly as Duo was mine. I grit my teeth against the G force as I pulled up hard and maneuvered towards the suit closest to me. It was clear the enemy didn't want to engage me, which was an irritation more than anything although not inherently unwise as I would clearly overpower them individually. The suit fled backward as I moved forward to overtake it. As I anticipated, HERA warned me that the other three suits were coming up from behind, likely assuming that strength in numbers would allow them to overpower me. I felt them attempt to access my thoughts but I rebuked them, knowing HERA wouldn't allow it if I didn't want it and I couldn't afford to be distracted by emotion, by pity or sympathy. Training seared through my brain as I turned suddenly, swinging my thermal sword straight into the side of one of the suits, watching as energy crackled across it. I jerked the arm upward and watched as metal melted and bent away, straight up to the cockpit, until I knew the suit and pilot were completely immobilized. A sense of satisfaction filled me then - one down and three left to go. It seemed my opponents were intimidated by my prowess, my power in this suit just as they should be - it was a Gundam and I was a superior soldier. I freed my saber from the suit and turned towards my next opponent, the imposing but otherwise inferior and useless Leos staring back at me, coordinating their next attack while backing away. I turned on them, furious, rage from being played by people I was supposed to be able to trust, by Dr. J, by everyone overriding rational thought and I knew I could only rely on myself. I would end this. I was the only one now who could protect Earth and the colonies. I was the only one I could trust. Laughing cruelly as adrenaline pumped through my veins I sped forward, feigning a quick attack only to fall back and reverse thrusters. My torso snapped against the harness and my previously injured ribs screamed at me but I didn't care. I was stronger even than the vessel I was forced to wield and I sucked my tongue back in my mouth, clamped my teeth together, gripped the thrusters hard as I came alongside the enemy suit. I switched quickly to the arm control stick and brought my thermal saber straight up into the chest cavity of the Leo, the whole thing lighting up and then going abruptly dark and I knew it was dead. The other two suits shot away from me even as my mind seared in agony and a voice roared my name across my consciousness and I stopped and whipped my head around, looking for the source before I realized where I was and what happened and that the voice was resonating within my own head. I stared out in horror and devastation as I realized my thermal sword wasn't sunk into a Leo at all, but a newtype suit carrying the now lifeless body of a child. My arms shook and I swallowed hard, pulling out the sword and backing away slowly. I... I didn't intend to do that. I never intended to hurt those children. HERA was blaring warnings about my brain activity in my head and it pounded painfully and I slumped in the seat, breathing heavily, just trying to gain some kind of hold on reality once more. "Would an incident like that have to be repeated again?" Memories of Wufei's words bubbled up from the back of my brain and I wanted to silence him, I didn't want to think about that or what I'd said or what I'd meant because now - "How many more times must I kill that girl and her dog?" - because now there was no speculation, there was only fact. At least twice more. At least twice more I would have to kill that girl and probably even more than that if I was going to take down the whole fucking colony with its dormitories full of child pilots forced to fight me, forced to die. If Duo were here... My solemn reflection of his disappointment in me was almost immediately interrupted by my remembrance and sudden curiosity over who had dragged me from my instable destruction of innocent children. I reached out to HERA tentatively, stretching my mind out towards an unknown point in space, trying to find whoever disrupted me earlier. When our minds touched again I gasped in shock, slamming back into my seat as the force of his presence overwhelmed me. It was Lennon. ~ * ~ tbc... |
