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"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.
CHAPTER 8: ZERØSPACE "...But the essence of being human is that, in
the brief moment we exist on this spinning planet, we can love some
persons and some things, in spite of the fact that time and death
will ultimately claim us all."
Not go to a better place, or come back in some other form and continue life in some everlasting cyclical way. I am going to not exist any more. To end. To have everything… finally… end. There are moments in life where reality and imagination get crossed, become so blurred they are indistinguishable. "Duo?" I looked up at Heero, who was standing by the doorway. The corridor behind him was dark. "Are you going to go home soon?" My eyes flicked to the clock, then to the darkened window. It was four hours after I was supposed to clock out. I hadn’t realized it was so late. "Yeah. I’m going now, I guess." Heero walked with me to the parking garage. The only people we passed on the way out were Security, a true testament to the hour. It was a week after the first two notes had appeared on my desk, but I felt like it was only a matter of time before I received another. The season was slowly turning, the cold settling deeply into the atmosphere. The smell of snow was in the air, though it would still be several weeks before we saw any of it. Our walk to our respective cars was quiet as usual, and I said goodnight to Heero and got in mine. It was a crappy looking little thing, but I had spent enough time on it that it ran okay. When I got back to the apartment, I took a quick shower and braided my hair before going to bed. It would still be wet in the morning, but I didn’t really care right then. I had stopped taking the sleeping pills for a few nights, but pretty quickly found that they didn’t make all that much difference in the nightmares. Once I’d gotten my body into the regular pattern of sleeping for seven or eight hours a night, I was able to fall asleep on my own. But then the dreams would wake me, and I was back where I’d started. After yet another grueling mental debate over whether or not to flush the damn things down the toilet, I decided to take them again tonight, just because I had found myself nodding off in weird places, something that freaked the fuck out of me, and I figured maybe getting some more rest at night would help. Sleep came quickly, reminding me why I’d been an insomniac in the first place. It was Heero again. This time though, it was snowing. I recognized the scene with dread, as it had haunted my dreams before. Siberia. I looked at the empty wasteland before me, the remnants of a mobile suit battle littering the ground. It was quiet, save for the cold sound of the wind whipping through my hair. I turned, although I really didn’t want to. I already knew what was behind me. The smoldering ruins of Wing were scattered across the scorched plain. In the center was Heero. His eyes were open, unwavering, and dead, his body mangled. Bones were broken in some places to the extent that they ripped all the way through his flesh, and there was a huge, piercing shard of gundanium that tore through his torso and pinned him to the earth like a butterfly in a collector’s glass case. The wind grew stronger. It whistled through the masses of what used to be suits, stirring up dust and tiny fragments of metal that tore at my exposed flesh. The force grew stronger still, blowing so brutally that the weight of my braid snapped my entire body back violently. I struggled to stay upright, but the force kept building until I was torn away from the ground, away from Wing and Heero. I awoke, gasping for breath. The shadows of the room slowly solidified, and I lay still, my panting slowly dying down into a regular pattern. It wasn’t real, it didn’t happen that way, Heero didn’t… something strained pulled itself from my throat. "Shh, Duo. It’s all right." Heero? What was Heero doing here? I turned over. At first, I could only make out the mess of his hair and the vague outline of his body, sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at me, his hair falling dark over his face. Then, I realized the shape wasn’t quite right. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I realized the color wasn’t right either. His skin was tinged blue and waxy under a soft film of frost. He turned toward me all the way, and I gagged. He looked exactly as he had in my dream, down to his lifeless eyes and scorched appendages, only now the shrapnel and fragments of gundanium had been ripped from his body, leaving wrinkled, gaping lesions in his flesh. He lifted a hand to touch my face, but one of the fingers was hanging from a thin strip of skin. The phone screamed (rang…?) and I woke up. Disoriented, I groped at the bedside table, my eyes scanning the room. No one was there. My fingers connected with my cell phone, and I checked the caller ID. Heero. I flipped it open. "Yeah?" My voice sounded hoarse and unsteady. "Sorry, Duo." Heero’s voice was crackling through the earpiece. "There’s an emergency pro… Miller and Linwood need…" The signal was lost. I frowned. What? The apartment was silent. I shivered. Listening carefully, I got up and stumbled through getting dressed, wondering what other then Heero would have gotten me out of bed at four in the morning when I had actually slept. I decided fire. If the building was on fire, I would probably get out of bed. For some reason, it was very important in that moment to re-braid my hair. I started to re-do it on my way to the bathroom, tripping a couple of times on the way over. I turned on the shower and started to undo my braid. My hand slid down to the end. Where was the hair tie? I frowned, confused. My hair was wet. I started braiding it again. Why was the shower on? I tied off the end and reached over to turn the water off. The sound of running water died, and I realized the phone was ringing again. /Someone's outside the apartment/ I wove back into the bedroom and picked up the phone. "Heero?" /The lock on the front door just broke/ "Sorry, I was in the tunnel…not… I’m on my way… pick you up. It’s Linwood and Miller’s … got a sting … we’re transporting as soon as possible with them…" At first, I thought the reception was still bad, but then I realized he was just talking too fast for me to keep up. I kept missing words. "…Ren and Hunter are meeting us there… leaving from… get there… orders…" I had no idea what Heero was talking about, his coherency dissolving with each word. /They're coming up behind me/ "Hey, Heero?" I said into the receiver. "Yeah, I’ve got someone trying to kill me here, could you hold on a sec?" I whipped around, flipping the phone shut, and used the momentum of the spin to bash it into the side of the intruder’s head. He flew back and fell, temple hitting squarely on the sharp corner of the dresser, leaving behind a deep red smear. I spun a little too far on the follow-through and almost fell on top of him. Regaining my balance, I stared dumbly at the body lying on my floor and the gun that had slid a few feet from it’s hand. The phone was ringing again. Persistently. I dropped it, kneeling at my unconscious attacker’s side. I automatically checked to see if he had a pulse, my fingers finding the throbbing pressure beneath his skin mechanically. "Fuck." I murmured. What the hell was going on? The phone kept ringing. Was I supposed to be calling someone? I looked at my phone, then frowned. Damn, the screen on the outside of the cell was cracked. I heard the front door being flung open with a crash, and it was Heero’s voice that called, "Duo!" from outside the room. "It broke." I said cloudily. He ran in to find me kneeling next to an unconscious and bleeding man, who I was ignoring in favor of prodding my phone with a glower. "What the hell happened? Are you okay?" His gun was out as he surveyed the scene. "What?" Of course I was okay. Wait… I was fine, right? "Duo?" He looked wary. What was wrong? I was really confused. "I was braiding my hair, but the shower was louder and then the phone broke." Wait… that didn’t make sense. Heero knelt down next to me, holding my chin steady with his hand and looked into my eyes. "Duo, did he drug you?" Huh? "No, he broke my phone." Heero punched something into his cell and started talking at a pace I couldn’t keep up with. I fell back on my ass and tried to clear my head. What was I supposed to be doing? I was supposed to be doing something. No, Heero was doing something. Heero? Heero was dead. No! Heero was a butterfly. I looked at him. He didn’t look like a butterfly. Heero hung up and put two fingers to the man’s throat, then looked at the deep gash in his head. He started searching the man’s clothes, but didn’t seem to find anything. Was that what I was supposed to be doing? No, it had something to do with the phone, I think. Heero was in front of me, checking my pulse now. He was frowning. "You need to tell me what happened. What did he do?" I pursed my lips and concentrated, trying to think. "I was talking to the phone, and I heard him behind me. I hit him with the phone and he fell. Are you a butterfly?" He started. "A what?" I blinked. "I dunno." "Duo, what the hell are you on?" On? "I’m on the floor." He could see that. "Drugs, Duo. Did you take any drugs?" Oh, the pills. "They’re to make me sleep but I don’t." I shook my head furiously. "I don’t sleep, I dream." He stood up and walked behind me to the nightstand, where the pills were. I tried to turn and watch, but I tipped over. "Ow." I rubbed my head, sitting up again. The room spun. I was really tired. "How many did you take?" Where was Heero’s voice coming from? Oh, yeah, behind me. "Two." There were people coming in, but I couldn’t see them behind Heero. He was talking to me, I think. The image of his face was swinging lightly back and forth. He grabbed my arms and the swinging stopped. "The handprints on the wall…" I mumbled. "There’re handprints on the wall, and they’re bloody. Red handprints on the wall…" Someone else replaced him, and they flashed a light into my eyes. I turned away, and then we were in a car. I was sitting next to Heero. My eyes closed and I slumped down, leaning into him. I woke up back at HQ, on a cot in the infirmary, wondering exactly what the scattered memories of last night added up to. "Fuck…" I muttered. "You’re awake." I sat up, my head snapping over to where Heero’s voice had come from. He was sitting next to the cot. Shit, this was embarrassing. "Err… mind giving me a re-cap?" He frowned. "Why are you taking sleeping pills?" "To sleep." Duh. "Well, overdosing on pills could have gotten you killed." "You make it sound like I tried to kill myself. I took two." I muttered darkly. His jaw clenched. "You’re supposed to take a half." I sighed defensively. "Look, the only reason I was that fucked up was because I’m supposed to get seven hours. I woke up after four. You’re not supposed to be on those things when you’re awake." "What the hell were you thinking? You almost killed yourself!" He growled roughly, and I couldn’t help looking surprised at him. I hadn’t seen him this angry in a long, long time. "You could have *died* Duo. You compromised your safety by taking drugs. What if you had still been asleep when that man attacked you?" There was an edge to his voice. Silence. He took a deep breath that seemed to collect him a little. "You said something about dreams. Can you not sleep because of them?" I avoided his gaze. "Well, even sleeping with nightmares has to be more restful than not sleeping at all, right?" "What kind of nightmares?" His curiosity confused me. I shook my head. "Doesn’t matter. The memories are worse anyways." "Duo-" He started. "Have they talked to the guy yet?" I switched. He frowned at the change of topic, but didn’t bother trying to redirect me. "No. The force you hit him with was significant. He has brain damage. We’ll never hear from him what happened." "Or why he tried to kill you." We both turned to face Une, who was leaning against the doorframe. "Was he really trying to?" I asked. "I mean, I was kinda out of it. It could have been a standard B and E for all I know." Even as the words came out of my mouth, I knew it wasn’t very likely. My place wasn’t something serious thieves would try and get into. Not enough payoff. Street punks and junkies wouldn’t bother, either. There were easier targets on the floors below me. Une shook her head. "He had a gun and a photo of you on him. Someone wanted you dead." Again? Oh, joy. "How long am I going to be out for?" I asked. Une’s expression was unreadable. "You’re not being taken off duty. Miller and Linwood need you two as soon as possible. I can fix things with I.I. as the man was an intruder in your apartment. No one is going to contest that it was self-defense when you used a cell phone to knock him out instead of a gun. I’ll leave you two to figure out this mess when you get back. The other case is too important to be pushed back, and it’s probably best you be out of town for a while, in any case" She looked at me. "Now that the drugs are out of your system…" I cringed. "…you’re going to have to leave right away. You’ll get your briefing en route." I wasn’t sure what the others were thinking, but I pretty much knew going into the mission that we were fucked. The timetable was skewed, but the numbers told us we had to get this done as soon as possible. The whole thing was too rushed, and something in the details was off. The inventory didn’t make sense, and the location was all wrong. It was an old plant in a valley that dumped several streams into the sea. It was a horrible place for this type of gunrunning operation. I was sure it was a trap. But that didn’t make sense, since none of us were targets. Except me, but it was unlikely the guys who had tried to snap me would set something this big up to catch me just in case the guy they sent to kill me didn’t finish the job. During the war, traps had been expected. There were more than a few reasons for one to want to capture a Gundam Pilot. What I was wondering now was why the hell someone would want to catch or kill a random group of agents. My theory so far was that they figured a mission like this would warrant Une putting her top agents in, and that one or more of us was the actual target. Probably Heero or Wufei, as the most high-profile of the group, though I also supposed someone could be looking for hostages from amongst the Preventer ranks. The fact that Une’s top four teams were on it with us wasn’t reassuring, and not just because of the target thing. Even with this many top teams, our numbers just didn’t seem like enough. Not that any one of them was incompetent. Besides Elise and Miller, we had Daiyu and her partner, Agent Hunter, Wufei and Sally, and Agents Barberini and Spencer. I had worked with them all before, and they were all extremely proficient. Elise and Miller had done solid background work, and the plans going in were watertight. I should have been perfectly satisfied with all the arrangements. I wasn’t. I was twitchy and needing something to keep my mind occupied, so I pulled out my backpack to get my copy of the case file out, in the vain hope that I might find some glitch, some indication of what I knew was wrong. There was a loose paper at the bottom, crumpled a little from the files smashed in on top of it. I pulled it out, stiffening when I realized it was the same paper as Sandman’s notes. He’d left one in my backpack… this would do wonders for my nerves. Never wary Oh, well. If I spent my time trying to figure this out, I might forget about the feeling I had that we were all about to DIE. Or not. I turned my attention to the cryptic poem. The first part seemed fairly obvious to me. This little game was going to go on for a while. And that "endless dance" smacked of Mariemeia’s "Endless Waltz" speech. For a while, I was totally stuck on "Ever parry false romance." There was the reference to sword fighting and romance, so I was thinking of something along the lines of courtly love. Which had absolutely nothing to do with anything. Avoid fake love? What the fuck did that mean? It was probably political… false ideology, most likely. Hmm, that might work. Humanity never tires of the Endless Waltz, of fighting and revolution, and always to ward off deceptive ideals. This might have been easier if I had gone to school for more than one fucking year. I could really could use a couple of semesters of English about now. Elise was moving down the darkened aisle towards me. I smiled at her as she sat down beside me. "Hey, babe. You ready?" She chewed on her lip a little. "Yes. I guess. Does it seem wrong to you? It just… doesn’t feel right to me, somehow. Something’s off." Damn… if even Elise thought something was wrong… "You’re right. I just wish I could put my finger on it." She sighed. "I guess it’s too late to back out. We worked it and reworked it… and there’s just so much pressure right now. We have to close the deal… and there is absolutely no reason *not* to make a move. We just have to go through with it." "Yeah." I said. "I guess we do." I looked at her thoughtfully. If there was anyone educated enough to figure out a poem it was Elise. And she’d been in on the thing from the start, anyways. "Hey, can I get you to look at something for me? Tell me what you think?" She looked almost surprised. "Of course. What do you have?" I handed her a copy of the poems, and she read them over slowly. "I didn’t know you wrote poetry." I laughed. "Oh, I don’t. I just was wondering what you can tell me about the poems, maybe about the poet." "Well, there seem to be many layers… is it all one poem, or are they supposed to be separate?" "I don’t really know." I confessed. "I found them separately, but they seem to run along the same theme." "Well, they don’t all follow a meter, so I’m tempted to think that they’re separate. But the theme suggests they’re one poem, or at the very least a series. The poet could be self-educated, or at least not educated to a higher level, but intelligent enough to be able to come up with something as complex as these seem to be." She said thoughtfully, then looked back at me. "I’d like to look at them more when we get back, if you don’t mind. They’re very interesting. " "That’d be great." I grinned at her. Maybe we’d be able to break through on this thing, after all. We did everything right and everyone did what they were supposed to, which really is the only reason we all got out of there alive. That didn’t make our situation any better. Yes, we were on the outside of the flaming building. Yes, we were out of range of the explosion. No, I did not think we were going to make it. We had been split up with no communication, and I had no idea where the others were, or how bad their injuries were. And there were plenty of injuries to be had, but I was only sure of Elise, who was with me on the very wrong end of the valley. She had taken a disabling shot through her forearm. It was a through-and- through, not bleeding too much, definitely not life threatening, and we’d managed to bandage it securely, but the problem was that the bullet had severed nerves and Elise couldn’t move three of her fingers on her right hand. What slowed us down further was that I had totally blown out my ankle (again) in a dumbass move that involved jumping two stories down onto a moving conveyer belt. Both of us had a number of lacerations and bruises, but nothing so serious as the fatigue that was slowing our trek through the heavily wooded area. I had no idea where the others were. Logically, and depending on their injuries, they would have gone around the units of enemy men hidden throughout the forest floor to the north passage out of the valley, then west to get back down to the ocean at the base of the hills to a drop-point. Elise and I were on the southeast end, hoping to get to that spot ourselves, but we had a group of armed men hunting us. Our only hope at this point was to follow the river west down to the ocean, then cut back north along the shore to where the others hopefully were. We had just made it to the river, which had swelled violently and was running strongly due to a recent rainstorm. We had been running for five hours with several brief firefights along the way, and both of us were very near exhaustion. I was running low on ammo, and there were too many of them to resort to close-quarter combat. Our pursuers were very, very close, and we heard rounds firing off near by. I just hoped they weren’t shooting at anybody on our team. A wide tree had fallen halfway into the water, and we ducked down behind it. "This side’s too open." I told Elise, trying to catch my breath. "We need to use the trees on the opposite bank as cover." "It’s going to be very dangerous. The crossing will leave us open and vulnerable." She said, her eyes scanning the distance as she tossed an empty magazine and slammed a new one into her handgun. The noise of the moving water was so deafening we could hardly hear each other. "We really don’t have a choice." I returned warily. "We just have to do it as quickly as possible. You hear gunfire, dive under and let the current take you downstream." "You take point, then." She said firmly. "All right, let’s go." We ran low out from behind the log and struggled forward into the rushing swell of water. There was a fence line that cut across, and I relied on it to keep myself from getting carried away in the current. Elise was right behind me, but was having a harder time fighting the pull of the water, with less muscle and weight to help her. She was dropping behind, so I turned around to take her arm and pull her behind me. Rounds of fire suddenly pocked the water, and if I hadn’t been looking behind me in that moment I never would have heard her cry out over the noise of the rushing water. A thick blossom of crimson exploded in the wet material of her shirt. A second bullet jerked her body as she stuttered forward, dropping her gun into the water as the current buckled her knees, pulling her under. I was not even half a second behind, plunging down after her. The water was thick with fragments of dirt and wood and waste, and I could only search by touch and not sight. The lack of vision and sound enhanced the feel of the water and debris as they battered me. Something sharp sliced my side open, and what I was sure was a heavy branch knocked me in the head, hard. Dizzily fighting to control my awareness, I reached out desperately, and with the very tips of my fingers felt cloth. I doubled my efforts and caught it in my hands, pulling it to me. A body. Elise. We burst to the surface, and I only realized then how long we must have been without air. I sucked it in, pulling Elise’s head above water and strained to keep hold of her. I cautiously put my feet down, trying to come in contact with something solid, but didn’t find it. Our best chance was to just try and make it to the side. Shifting the dead weight I held to one arm, I used the other to try and persuade our movement to the left bank. I spotted a low branch hanging over our path. Using all my limited strength now, I kicked strongly with my legs and reached out as we were sucked past it. I caught the branch in a lock, and I’m not even sure where I found the power I used to pull us free of the current and into onto the bank. On my knees, I dragged Elise from the water’s grasp and into the cover of the trees. I looked around quickly, catching no signs of our pursuers. The current had taken us almost all the way downstream. Pulling myself up next to where she lay with my elbows, I wheezed for breath, simultaneously coughing up muddy water and pulling Elise onto her back to check for a pulse. Shaking hard, I leaned in to tilt her head back. The movements I made were automatic, and the sudden sucking sound of air and subsequent gargle of water relieved me, but very briefly. Elise’s eyes opened with disorientation, but she didn’t move, just slowly looked at me, allowing me to remove her jacket hastily and lift her to examine the wounds. I worked quickly, terrifically aware of the fact that our enemies were very close. One bullet had entered and exited just below her collar bone next to her shoulder, and the other was through her midsection. I took the blade from my boot to slice off her shirt, splitting the material and using it to staunch the flow of blood on her shoulder wound, then checked out the lower one. The shot to her stomach looked nasty, practically screaming "long recovery time," but it was her shoulder that really had me worried. She was losing way too much blood way too fast. I looked into her face. She was bleached pale, and her lips were white-rimmed and trembling. The light shivering of her body began to turn into a more violent shake as she began to go into shock. Shit. There was no way I could get her all the way to
a pick-up point by myself. Either someone would come after us, or
we were both dead. I sped my actions further, doing my best to stabilize
her in case help arrived, and moved us deeper into the cover of the
trees, well away from the water. Her body shook more lightly now,
spasming every so often, and she looked up at me, eyelids twitching
unsettlingly. "Right here, babe." I said calmly, the blood flooding out from beneath my fingers as I tried to staunch the flow. "Duo, I never found it." She choked a little trying to suck in air. "What, Eli?" I asked softly. Her skin had lost its color, and her eyes moved statically as they tried to focus on me. Disoriented, she struggled to get the words out. "I… never found…" Her eyes closed, and her lips kept moving. "I just wanted to find…" She trailed off, her breath moving faintly. "Oh, no." I patted her cheek sharply, blood leaving a smear on her face. "Come on, stay with me. Stay with me Eli." Her body shuddered again. "Don’t you do this, Eli! Don’t you fucking dare!" I snarled in panic. I leaned down to check her again. She wasn’t breathing. I went to start CPR again. "Come on, Eli! Wake the fuck up, come on!" She didn’t respond, her body limp and cold, but I didn’t stop trying to get her breathing again until, in a dizzy haze, I realized that she was really dead. I sat back, feeling like I was breathing her air as I stared at her unmoving form. The shouting voices and running feet echoed loudly in my head. The enemy was approaching. I reached down and my fingers stroked slightly over Elise’s face, closing her eyes, and then I took her spare gun and stood up, brushing away my dripping bangs from my eyes. I don’t become Shinigami. I *am* Shinigami. It isn’t a matter of going to another place, allowing this *thing* to take me over… it’s just me, letting go. Not another state of being, just *me*. That may be the most frightening part. I stepped away from her corpse just as men burst down over the small incline before me. I raised the gun. I picked them off, easily. The first ones to came running over I shot neatly in the head. I ran out of bullets and discarded the gun, pulling out mine, which I knew to only have three shots left in the chamber. I ran up the incline as I spent them, bringing down the empty weapon on a man’s head as I came down the other side, shattering his skull. I dodged a series of bullets and whipped a knife out in each hand. My left disemboweled one man while my right slashed a windpipe open. I spun and kicked a man aiming an M-16, his rounds spraying his own squadron with bullets, then used a backhanded swing to stab another in the neck. I don’t know how long it took, but every one of them went down. The momentum of each move carried me into my next one until I stood panting alone in the clearing, surrounded by corpses and the sickening stench of blood. The adrenaline faded suddenly. Only then did I feel the gummy trickle of blood down my face, the open gash in my side, the trembling in my limbs, and the million other pains assaulting my body. Unable to keep myself upright, my muscles all collapsed at once, and I fell in the damp, dead leaves. The colors crossed until their shapes were indistinct and I couldn’t see them at all, left only with the smell of earth and blood, and the rasping sound of my own strained attempts to breathe in air. I blacked out.
~I am a fallen zerø ~ * ~ |
