"The Darkest Reflection"

Written By: Impish

Rating: strong R

Pairings: main 1+2+1, background 2+3, OFC+5 and 4+3

Category: Duo POV with angst, action, drama and politics.

Warnings: creepiness, more graphic images and gore

Summery: The earth sphere has moved on into an age of peace, but Duo is fighting battles of his own. He has reluctantly joined the Preventers, and is surprised to see Heero sign up as well. With an assassin on the loose and an increase in suspicious activity, he’s beginning to realize the fine line between genius and insanity, and how easily it can be erased.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Gundam Wing. Surprise! And none of the songs or titles belong to me, either.

Notes: So I lied. There's going to be one more chapter than I expected, since I had to split this one up. The evil pixies have yet to return, but Heero's POV has, at Amy's request.

"The Darkest Reflection"

Chapter 11: The Dance

"There's a stake in your fat, black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always *knew* it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through."
-Silvia Plath, "Daddy"


Embrace the inevitable. Give in to your nightmares and don’t try to resurrect the dreams. For there is no love in death. And death shall be…

I woke up.

I felt Heero at the controls and opened my eyes to the familiar setting of the shuttle. The shuttle? Was I… what the hell had I done? Was I really awake…? It felt real… but everything had all felt so real. A dream… it really was a dream. But how much of it? Was I still dreaming?

The images fluttering behind my eyes had me unable to draw regular breath and it seemed the more I tried to calm myself, the less I was able to breathe. I was hyperventilating and my vision was beginning to get spotty. I almost fell out of bed in my haste to get back to the head, stumbling into a run and throwing up when I got there.

I wanted to never sleep again.

Footsteps. "Duo? Are you… are you all right?" Heero stood hesitantly in the doorway.

"Yeah…" A dream. "Yeah, I think I’m over it now."

Was I? The image of Quatre lying there… and all that blood, all Heero's blood… and his heart… I sat back and closed my eyes, still panting a little. When had the dream actually started? A whole week…

"I’m sorry." Heero said, and the dark wash of déjà vu chilled me again.

"So am I." I responded anyway, haunted by the familiarity of the words.

Shakily, I got to my feet and moving to the sink. I washed my mouth out again and Heero handed me the toothpaste.

He stared at the floor until I was finished, and we stood in silence even then, him leaning against the wall behind me, me braced over the sink, staring at him in the mirror. I was so confused and tangled up; I didn't even know what to say to him.

"Duo, you need to talk to me now. This can't go on… you can't go on like this." He started, and I had a hard time getting my head back to real time, time before I thought… before I had fallen asleep.

"God, we can't go on like this." He whispered, eyes searching mine out.

"Please, Heero. *Please* don't." My voice murmured, my arms lifting and wrapping themselves around me. I couldn't do this, not now. "You can't make me let it all go… there won't be anything left."

He came behind me and forced me around to face him. I looked up and caught his eyes with mine.

"If you take it all away Heero, there's nothing left of me but Death." My breath hitched, and not even knowing where the words were coming from, I kept on. "I knew you, Heero. I recognized you from a moment we hadn’t had yet. And I think you knew me, too."

"Then what exactly am I?" His tone, so muted and calm, still somehow spoke of frustration as he looked back at me, eyes searching for some kind of direction.

The smile I gave him was heavy and hollow. "The answer." I said simply.

I knew the question he wanted to ask. I knew he wanted to know why… and he wanted to know about Trowa.

"But not to everything. Because sometimes there are no answers." I told him, still holding his eyes. "Sometimes the answers aren’t good enough. And to the question you would ask me, no answer I can give you will ever be good enough.

"You have to know, no matter what I do… that without you, I’m nothing." I reached up and took his face in my hands. "I’m bones… nothing but bones. Not even a whole human being." My voice dropped down to a whisper as I drew him to me. "Just bones."

And I kissed him, so brief that it could have been a memory, but fierce enough to make it real. Then I let him go and brushed past him, running down the corridor.

***

(Heero POV)

He kissed me. And then he ran.

Only Duo could give devotion and desolation in the same gesture. He was perfect and flawed, giving and merciless, alive and broken… in everything he did, there was something else completely beyond what met the eye. He was the epitome of the duality his name suggested.

Just when I thought I couldn't begin to understand him anymore, he did something that made me think I did get him after all… and in doing so confused me even further. I just couldn't keep up with him.

I wanted to trust him. I wanted to be able to put aside the questions, and have whatever faith it took to just get him though whatever this was he was going through, and hope that it would all end with him letting his guard down enough to let me do whatever I could to stop his hurting.

But I didn't know what had happened with Trowa. That seemed to be the key to this all; Trowa and the mission everyone spoke of as having gone so wrong, with the informant casualty, the disappearance, the demotion, and what I feared was a connection to Relena's departure from the political stage.

The timing of her illness and that mission were far too coincidental. She'd sounded so scattered and afraid, almost, that last time I had spoken with her. She had said she was ill, that she wasn't sure if she would be able to continue what she was doing, and that she didn't want me to visit or even contact her. She wouldn't tell me what she had that was serious enough to force her from a profession to which she'd not only shown great proficiency, but also genuinely enjoyed.

And now Duo seemed… disturbed. Suspicious, almost. He didn't speak the entire drive to Quatre's, and it was almost frightening the way he looked around him as if he were distrustful of… everything. A shadow of self-doubt seemed cloaked over him

When we arrived, a butler opened the door. I didn't recognize him from my last visit to L4, which was going to make getting a meeting with Quatre something annoyingly difficult.

Duo looked startled at the sight of the man, his hand reaching in a subtle way I recognized as going for his gun.

I flashed him a look, and he looked almost chagrined, turning back to the butler and speaking quickly, almost as if he were testing the man. "Miles right? Is Quatre at his office?"

At first, I thought that Duo must have known him, but at the confused look on the butler's face, I reassessed. Did his theory about Sandman watching us really have him so on edge? Or was there something else going on?

"Um, I apologize, sirs, but I’m-"

"-Not allowed to give out that information, right." Duo cut him off, and then seemed to think for a second. He chewed on his lower lip for a brief moment, then called out past the butler, "Hey! Abdul!"

"Master Duo?" Abdul said a second later when he entered the foyer. "What a surprise! Master Quatre is at his office. He’s due back in an hour, but I could drive you there if it’s important."

My partner grinned, but there was something panicked behind it. "Thanks Abdul, it is."

The strange behavior continued on the drive to the office, Duo thinking something over so studiously he ignored everything around him.

He didn't say a word until we were almost there, unnerved enough to blurt out, "Heero, would you punch me?"

It was so abrupt and unexpected that it took me some time to respond, my reply deliberate and cautious. "Duo, I realize that you must be angry with me, but-"

He shook his head, his eyes almost pleading. "I’m not mad at you, and I’m not going to hit you back. I just need to make sure I’m not dreaming."

Dreaming… this went back to those nightmares he had spoken of, then. "Can’t you just ask me to pinch you like normal people?"

Abdul was staring at him through the rearview mirror, like he next expected Duo to ask me to kill him.

"You, of all people, accuse me of not being normal?" He tried, quirking a grin.

"You know that’s not the point. What has you so on edge?"

He moved abruptly, leaning in close enough that the tips of our noses almost touching, his eyes dark and wide. "Have you ever had a dream so horrible, you thought it must be real?"

‘Duo, that doesn’t make any sense." I said, softly.

"Never mind." he drew back just as abruptly and turned away. "But if I kill Quatre, it’s your fault for not punching me."

Kill… Quatre? But we were at the office, and he was closing the car door behind him before I could really try to get something more out of him.

I had to sprint to keep up, chasing him through the building straight to Quatre's office, although I knew he had never been there before. Something very *wrong* was going on with Duo. Something that would be useless to ask about, as it was clear that it didn't even make sense to him.

We were immediately allowed in to the office, Abdul having phoned ahead of time. Quatre was standing up and coming around his desk as we walked in. He gave both of us a welcoming hug.

"I’m so glad to see you both! Duo, it’s been so long!" His smile was soft and his eyes were sparkling. He looked good; not as tired as when I had seen him months ago.

"It’s great to see you too, Quatre." Duo said, looking visibly relieved to see him, then muttering something neither Quatre or I could hear, but the movement of his lips looked suspiciously like, "Especially since I haven't killed you, Quatre."

I meant to congratulate Quatre on the satellite contracts he'd been working on when I was here last, but Duo's behavior had me scrutinizing him instead.

Quatre studied us carefully. "As wonderful as it is to see you again, this isn’t a social call, is it?"

Duo shivered.

"Duo? Are you okay?" Quatre's brows drew together in trepidation, eyes fixated on my partner in a way that concerned me even further.

"Yeah… I’m fine. I haven’t been feeling too well lately is all. And you’re right… as much as I wish you weren't."

Quatre dropped his chin, his eyes still set on Duo, tracing his every movement. "Why don’t you tell me what brought you here?"

"Sandman… the assassin. He’s going to try to kill you. At the masque, I think."

"Sandman?" Quatre inquired inquisitively.

"Masque?" I asked slowly, as if it were something soft dissolving on my tongue. "You never said anything about a masque."

"Every year, our family used to put on a masquerade ball. Ball gowns, masks, the whole deal." Quatre explained. "It was a rather illustrious charity event, but was put on a hiatus during the war for obvious reasons. This is the first year since that we’ve held it. It’s going to be this Friday night. My sisters have been planning it for almost a year."

Why hadn't Duo mentioned it before? "That matches up perfectly with the poems…"

Quatre cocked his head to the side, leaning back against his desk. "What poems?"

"Sandman has been leaving notes on Duo’s desk. Without us knowing how he gets them there." My eyes flicked to Duo, asking why he hadn't told me about the masque before, but he just grinned thinly and looked back at Quatre.

"Can I have a look at them?" The blonde asked curiously.

Duo brought them out again, and we wrote out the notes and the codes on paper Quatre provided.

"It fits perfectly with the idea of a masque… and there’s a code." I told him as we laid out all the equations.

"This does seem unusual for such an anonymous character… Duo, would there be any reason he should have formed an attachment to you? Some way you drew his attention, or maybe… maybe he's even someone you know?"

Duo flinched, then took a deep breath and looked down before answering, lowly, "I don't think so… my best guess is that I helped the agents some before the case was even handed off to us… I might have caught his attention then."

"I see… but doesn’t he kill using a poison in the eyes? I don’t wear contacts or use eye drops… nothing really goes near my eyes that he could use, I don't think."

"It doesn’t matter. Sometimes the poison is added postmortem for effect."

"Do you think we should cancel the ball? I don’t want my guests in danger."

"No," Duo shook his head quickly, as if he'd been expecting the question. "He’ll just strike at another time. This way we can prepare for him."

"I guess you’re right." Quatre sighed, still watching Duo with concern. "As much as I dislike the situation, I should probably tighten security and lay low until this is resolved. I assume you’ll be staying with me?

"Yeah. I don’t think there’s any kind of trail to track down, but I can work on it to make sure, and Heero can sit on you. How’s that sound?"

He sounded so… prepared. I wondered why he seemed to be leaving me out as much as he was. "All right… I suppose it wouldn't hurt to split up for now."

"That sounds fine to me." Quatre said, now looking at me with the same concern. "Duo, I’ll have Abdul stay with you if you need anything. We’ll check in every hour or if anyone comes up with something useful."

"Thanks, man. Can I use the computer in here?"

"Of course. Heero and I might as well go home and tidy things up."

"Right." Duo said. "Talk to you in an hour."



"So what happened between you two?" Quatre asked as soon as we took off. "Last we spoke, you said that you two were working well together."

I sighed heavily, rubbing my eyes. "I really don't even know anymore, Quatre. He's been acting so strange… a good friend of his, an agent, was killed very recently, and I think he blames himself. But it's not even just that. It's just been one problem after another, and he's been tense and apprehensive ever since we got to L4."

"He does seem very uneasy." Quatre agreed contemplatively. "Anything happen on the way over to make him so… I don't know… wary?"

"He's been having nightmares, and he was sleeping almost the entire time. I think he must have had one that disturbed him badly." He had been throwing up when I'd gone back to wake him… but there was no way his hangover should have lasted that long.

"I'm just worried. I don't think he even should have been on the last mission, the one Agent Linwood died on. There was an incident beforehand… I don't think he's been sleeping, and he had a cold. And then he was injured again." I took a breath of frustration. "He left the hospital too soon, and the doctors never really had the chance to impart on him the extent of his injuries… they were going to try and talk him into having surgery on his ankle. And he had a wound in his side that was very close to having perforated the peritoneum… I can't even be sure he's taking the anti-biotics he was given."

Quatre looked pained as he flipped on his blinker and took a right out of the business district towards his home. "I suppose the most we can do for him is keep an eye on him until the masque. We still have a week… that should be at least some time to rest. Maybe we can guilt him into getting looked over, by Iria at the very least. She'll be here a few days before the Masque."

"It won't be easy. He's just so stubborn." I said with another sigh. "Quatre?’

He turned to look at me inquisitively. "Yes?"

"Why do you believe so strongly in people?" I asked, needing some kind affirmation that we were taking the right actions. "You trust so completely in the decency and integrity of everyone, even though you spent a war fighting. We came across few who were honorable, but a great many that weren’t. How is it you are able to automatically trust like you are?"

"I guess I just always have." He said, wistfully. "I remember being six years old, at the height of the riots on this colony. Two of my schoolmates and I were driven every day to school by our chauffer, Benigo. One day, the riots had broken out into the street on our route to school. Beni tried to turn us around… but the people were so angry, and they saw an expensive car that had to belong to someone rich enough not to care what happened to them. There were mobs of them, hundreds in the street. They crowded around us, and Beni was shouting at us to get down. People were throwing rocks. They started rocking the car back and forth, trying to flip it over, and Dima and Sana were crying hysterically. Beni kept yelling for us to get down… but I *knew* that if they realized there were children, they would let us go.

"So I jumped up on the seat and I waved. Two or three of them saw me, and started calling out to the crowd, ‘There’s children! There’s children!’" He smiled and shook his head. "And they let us through. There were hundreds of angry people there, but they let us through."

***

(Duo POV)

Back at the house and through the entire week, I would have moments that were exactly as they had been in the dream. It was uncanny. Quatre and Heero were asking me what was so disturbing at least three times a day each, and the best answer they’d gotten out of me yet was "déjà vu."

This time around, though, Heero was getting closer and closer to making me tell him everything but now was not the time, not when Quatre needed us. And neither of them was making it easy on me, constantly harassing me to seek medical attention until I finally agreed to let Quatre's sister look me over.

She recommended surgery on my ankle, as there had apparently been a lot more damage to it than I had realized. There was something else about the wound to my side, but she said it was healing well, and added a great deal of caution against stress and avoiding infection.

When the masque finally arrived, it turned out frighteningly similar to the dream as well; Quatre and Heero even wore the same costumes, but I switched places with Heero, insisting he stand on the floor while I took position with the AWM in the balcony as the sniper. I didn’t bother with the fancy outfit, or even a mask.

Quatre's sisters attempted to make him play his violin again, but Heero did a better job than I had of warding them off. The word “glare” entailed far too much effort. No, Heero used a *look;* a look that *implied* hurt, pain, suffering, and anguish of the acutest kind without actually being much more than a brief glance.

The sisters were duly cowed into retreat.

There was another difference I did notice, a strange, minute detail. There were still many of the jewel-toned dresses, but there were also a great number of orange and white gowns as well. And… I didn't see a single red costume.

I was growing tenser as the moment approached when hell had broken out, laying flat at the edge of the balcony, eyes scanning the crowd below with apprehension. And in that moment, a clock struck midnight, tolling so loudly some below stopped dancing momentarily.

"Agent Maxwell. I’m very pleased to meet you." The voice behind me was low, honeyed and smooth, without a trace of any accent.

I half-turned, keeping one eye on the figure at the stairs and the other on the ballroom floor. "Not really sure if I feel the same way."

He was wearing the same kind of blood-and-death mask as Quatre, so I couldn’t see his face, but I was sure he was smiling. He didn’t just have on the mask, though. He had the whole outfit. "The Masque of the Red Death" come to life. The black, shroud-like cape, everything.

"That’s perfectly understandable. Please allow me to introduce myself. I believe you know me as Sandman."

"You're telling me things I already know. What I want to hear is who hired you to go after Quatre." I had a feeling that once this was over, he wasn't going to leave anything behind to answer our questions, so I could only hope he would give me something now.

He ignored me. "I was going to bring you one final note after tonight… would you like to hear it?"

"I have a feeling I’m going to sooner or later." I eased slowly to my feet, but didn’t move away from the gun.

"Yes. Yes, I’m sure you would." He walked slowly towards me. "But a player am I…"

He took a step. "…As players are we all…"

And another. "… Gambling with courtly lies…"

He stopped directly before me, only inches between us. "… Graceful before the fall."

"Very nice." I said, not giving ground. "I have one for you, too."

I stood still, trying to find some hint of who he was behind that disguise as I spoke. "All that I have left is my life, a pair of aces and a switchblade knife. I want to be free of it all… but folding now is just a cheaper fall."

If a person can look pleased behind a mask, he certainly did. "How very clever… I knew you were. You did come up with that on the spot, didn’t you?"

"Does that surprise you?"

"Not at all. It means that I was right about you." He told me neutrally.

"Right about me?" I asked, eyebrow raised in question.

"Indeed. It’s why I didn’t take the job to kill you."

There was another job out on me… from the same person who wanted Quatre dead. "But… if you did all of those other jobs for whoever hired you, why not take me out, too?"

"I couldn't kill you, not like that."

"But you could kill the others?" I frowned.

"Those were jobs. They weren’t about wanting. The others didn’t matter to me, not as you did. I wanted you alive, Duo Maxwell. Others have appreciated me before, of course. But they only appreciated my intelligence because I was smarter than they were, because they could not catch me, because they could not figure me out." There was nothing arrogant in the way he spoke, his words merely addressing the unadorned truth. "But you… you did figure me out, you do understand. And that, I can respect enough to end the game."

I studied him distrustfully. "No. You wouldn’t call off the kill."

He chuckled through closed lips. "Of course not. What I meant was… I’ll fight you for it. End the dance. We fight, and if I win, I finish my job. If you win, I die. Either way, it ends for us both."

"Why now? Why kill me now when you refused to before?" I looked directly up into his hooded eyes. The play of the lights from the chandeliers in the ballroom were half-hidden by the heavy velvet curtains in a way that made the shadows a streaked definition of light and dark across his mask and lit my eyes with a glitter that was bright and living.

"As strange as this might seem to you now… I love you."

My breath caught and my eyes widened imperceptibly at the profession. The respect I had expected, but to go so far as to say he loved me?

A gloved hand reached out, hesitating, then tracing the darkened line of my cheek with a tremor that seemed born of disbelief.

"We all die, and so very few of us have control over our fates in such a way as to choose our own deaths. Because I love you, I have to kill you. It is a gift in the most tragic of ways to be killed by someone who loves you. And there is nothing as beautiful as tragedy." His fingers caught on my jaw line, his thumb grazing over my lips with a tentativeness that seemed outside his character.

I stayed very still and made no move to draw away, only asking, "And if I'm the one to kill you?"

His clouded voice flowed from behind the grinning skull he wore. "Then it will be even more beautiful."

"But I don't love you. I don't even know who you are." The words, far from cold, lay patiently in wait for his response.

"You do love me. You love me with the same intensity with which you hate me, and you don't have to know who I am to feel such things for me." His hand remained where it was with a diffident kind of tenderness.

"I guess I don’t really have a choice, then. So this fight… is a duel? What are the weapons of choice?" I asked carefully, with the feeling we weren’t going to use sniper rifles this time around.

His eyes smiled again. "I hope you don’t mind… since this is my game, I choose the weapons."

"I thought it was the challenged that got to choose." He dropped his hand as I spoke, and I couldn't help but tense when he drew away.

"Normally, I suppose. But like I said, this is my game." He pulled something from beneath his cloak and tossed it to me.

I caught it reflexively and stared down at it, blinking.

Shit! I didn’t know how to use this thing! Of all the fucking weapons to pull… why didn’t I take Dorothy up on those fencing lessons?

"You’re kidding me, ri- oh, fuck!"

He had already begun his attack. I ducked out of the way and back from the balcony. This was fucking ridiculous. I’d never even seen fencing. I really should have let Heero come up here.

Okay… I had to watch him, he knew what *he* was doing at least…

So I did my best just to dodge, using my weapon to block his away when I couldn’t, studying the way he held his, the way his body moved and what muscles were used. He landed a hit, no more than a deep scratch really, on my thigh. I had been waiting for him to gain some confidence, and that move pushed him close enough to it that I felt I could begin to move offensively. My weight shifted abruptly and I sprung forward to make a hit of my own, marking his arm with a cut as shallow as the one he had landed.

Not that I suddenly became a Musketeer, but I was able to hold my own a little better… enough to stall him, I hoped. Someone downstairs had to have heard us by now, even over the music. I realized that Sandman must have barred the door at the bottom of the stairs somehow and that I was going to have to end this on my own.

It didn’t seem like it was going to end in my favor. He was by far the more experienced fighter, and I was guessing he didn’t have stitches in his side or a busted ankle. There was a rhythmic pounding at the door that assured me Heero would have it broken down in a few minutes.

But I didn’t have minutes. Sandman had managed to back me into a corner, in a position that I couldn’t move my arm to block the blade following through to my chest. I dropped my sword to the ground, ducked my left shoulder low, and pushed up with everything I had.

His weapon speared the wall, and all his weight was held up by my two hands shoving the switchblade into his heart.

"That wasn’t part… of the game…" He wheezed out, his blood pouring down my arms.

"We’re playing my game now." I said breathlessly. "Didn’t you listen to my poem?"

I shoved him away, his body falling back to the carpet with a thick thud. The blood bubbled up around the blade, and his life bled out within seconds, the knife crooked and impaled in his unmoving corpse.

It took me a moment to get myself together enough to reach out and pull the mask away from his face. When I did, it was with a deliberate slowness and the near expectation of seeing my reflection staring back at me.

I recognized him, his face disturbingly familiar and unfamiliar. He could have been anybody, with that face. A face that looked like someone everyone knew and didn’t pay attention to. A face I saw and never noticed. A face that smiled up at me, even in death.

It was the Tech Supervisor, Tony, but his hair and eyes were different, and the tone of his skin. I realized that he must have feigned a crush on Elise to be able to get on the agent's floor without questions being asked, to watch her, and me, without notice. No one questioned it because *everyone* was head-over for Eli, and so he was written off as harmless…

And then he forged my handwriting so that I couldn't share the notes without having my sanity questioned or becoming a suspect myself.

The most chilling part wasn't that he had been so close without us ever knowing or that he had been able to infiltrate the Preventers, but that he had been right about me… that I *did* understand him.

"A player am I, as players are we all…" A player… I wondered who he really was behind the mask of Tony Driver.

There was a crack and a bang as the door finally gave way. Heero and Quatre thundered up the stairs, seeing the body first, then me, bloody and drenched in sweat, sitting propped up against the wall, the sword pinned to the wall above my head, the mask held limply in my hand.

"Duo!" Quatre cried out heavily, rushing to my side. He reached out to check me over, but I reflexively pushed away.

An anxious look washed across his face, but only briefly.

"Sorry." I muttered. "Just a second, give me just a second."

"Are you wounded?" Heero knelt next to me, but at a safe distance. Quatre had drawn back to hover over his shoulder.

I breathed in and out several times before responding. "No. I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Everyone's all right downstairs?"

"Yes." Quatre murmured. "Thanks to you, everyone’s all right. They don’t even know there was a problem. I’m just sorry we couldn’t get the door open sooner."

"’S’ok." For some reason, I was incredibly lethargic. I couldn’t seem to move. "I thought it was me."

"What? Duo, I can’t understand you." Quatre leaned in. "Are you sure you’re okay?"

I looked down at my leg, the small cut bleeding sluggishly through the tear in my pants. Oh… /end for us both. /

"Poison… 'e mussve poson d blid…" The words were gummy in my mouth and come out glued together.

"Heero? Can you understand him?" Quatre said, worry etched plainly into his face.

"I think he said poison." Heero started checking me over, looking at my arms first as they were the bloodiest. I tried to show him the cut, but my limbs were limp and hurt to move. Quatre noticed my hand twitch by my thigh and saw it.

"Heero, ambulance, now!" Then I thought they were yelling, but I couldn’t be sure. I felt sick and dizzy and the floor was moving like we were on water.

I slumped down and there was a black, spotty mist in the edges of my vision, slowly creeping in towards the center. The edges got smaller and smaller until I was left with only a fuzzy pinprick of light, and then that, too was extinguished.

They say you can’t miss what you’ve never had.

There are the dreams that torture you because they haunt you with your past, your memories, the worst images you’ve seen. But the worst dreams, the most terrifying dreams are the ones that prove what might have been.

"I thought it was me…"


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The Dance" by Autumn Tears

~ Dance with me but one more time
Embrace the silence as I die
Never mend my broken wings
And never hear the children sing
The blade deepens, the shame weakens us
They gather and dream of passion and vengeance
The duality of the motion is all that remains
We are death, and death shall be our only companion
Death shall be our only companion
Frozen cries fill the air
Must we die without despair?
Another dream flowing with lies
Bleeding souls, bleeding eyes
A look of peace shows only lies
Deep within their frozen eyes
Dance with me but one last time
Take my hand and cry for light
Open thy broken wings
And hear the dying children sing~


The story Quatre told is a real one that my mother experienced as a child in the Dominican Republic after the assassination of the dictator, Trujillo… it always gives me chills when she talks about it.

~ * ~

Chapter 12

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