"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.
"The Darkest Reflection"
CHAPTER 9: Crave
"Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should
be. But if you don’t love me, it would be better and more honest
to say so."
-"Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy
I woke up and my first thought was "I must be dying."
And then "oh god, *please* let me be dying" when the pain
didn’t subside.
Feeling… sucks. Hard. In every imaginable way.
There were strange humming noises that resonated painfully in my head.
They were acute and pulsating, and the disturbing hurt assaulted all
my senses despite the sickening disconnection I associated with hardcore
drugs. I knew my eyes were open, but pain was so sharp that I couldn’t
see anything clearly in the darkness.
Not knowing where I was, and knowing how very likely it was that since
I was still alive I had been caught, I knew I had to get my shit together
fast. The odd unsteady beeping had begun to escalate. I had to get
out of here, wherever here was, and I wouldn’t have much time.
My senses were still blurred disjointedly, but I struggled to get
out of the bed anyways. I was tied down. I heard voices outside the
room, so I worked quickly, freeing my hands first, then my ankles.
I sat up, and everything spun… I found myself on the floor with
a lot of possibly vital, possibly lethal tubes and wires ripped out
of my body. The humming died abruptly.
Something cold trickled down my arms, and I had to look down to identify
it as blood. The pain was distant, like there was a wall between me
and all the hurting. But it was still there, still very strong, and
I felt cold… cold in a wet, icy kind of way.
My legs felt more like whipped cream than muscle, which made getting
to my feet something strangely difficult. Hiding behind the door,
I waited for someone to open it, having to brace myself on the wall.
Rushed voices burst inside to find an empty bed and I then slipped
behind them out of the room. Everything spun wildly around me, and
the colors were somehow wrong. Most were dull, washed out and faded.
Muted. Cool tones that faded to where they looked more like a blue-grey
watercolor than something real. But some… were brighter. Painfully
brighter.
Like the blood on my arms. The red was slimy and glistening. Indian
red… brick red… strawberry red… fire red… sunset
red… yeah, sunset red. I ran down the corridor, tripping constantly,
but managed to push myself up and keep going, constantly wiping the
blood off my arms so I wouldn’t leave a trail. I had no idea
where I was going, but having seen a sign that told me I was on the
ninth floor, I figured down was the best direction to try.
The halls were not empty, and it took a while to get past the people
walking the corridors to a stairwell. Using the elevator wasn’t
an option; it could be stopped and I’d be trapped. Not to mention
the possibility of other people trying to use it. I wasn’t in
any shape to take them down.
Trying to use stairs while under the influence of unknown substances
is not recommended. I was falling down more flights than I climbed
down under my own power, and things were steadily getting darker.
It took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t the lights getting
dimmer, but my vision. Even the sunset was darker.
Wait, of course it was darker, it’s always darker when the sun
sets…
I made it down to the second floor before I finally collapsed. I sat
slumped against a wall on the landing, a thick, throbbing, pounding
noise echoing in the confined space. The harshness of my breathing
was out of tempo with it.
My hands were cold… my feet were cold… my face was numb…
my hands hurt.
The red didn't look so bright anymore. The darkness of it was everywhere,
soaking through the cloth until I was washed in it, and the wet stain
blotted on the material like a spill of ink. I was trembling, trying
to persuade my body that this really wasn’t a good time to give
out on me.
It didn’t listen.
The next time I woke I was moving.
All I could see was the ceiling panels rolling above and the long
dashes of fluorescent lighting that made me shut my eyes again. The
sound of raised voices dominated the more muted one of the wheels
rolling beneath me. They were moving with hurried footsteps at the
same pace as the panels, so I imagined what they were saying might
have something to do with me.
"We told you this would happen. It is in everyone’s best
interest that you let at least one of us stay with him. He is no ordinary
patient." The voice was familiar. Was it someone… someone
I knew?
"We apologize, but the rules are strict and the liability concerns
are-"
"Pardon me, but you are about to have intractable liability concerns
if you do not allow us stay! The doctor told us himself that it was
dangerous to keep him on such a level of medication for an extended
period of time, and that he should be coming around again soon. And
when he does-" Someone from… no. No, I knew that voice.
What happened? I… tried to escape and passed out. On the second
floor.
There was a noise that sounded vaguely human; at the sound of it all
the voices immediately quieted and whatever I was on stopped moving.
My eyes opened again, and there was a distinct lack of pain.
"Duo?"
What the fuck? Heero?
"Duo, you’re safe. We’re in a hospital." His voice
was gentle and even.
Oh… shit.
I tried to talk, but the words came out in a choked cough. I tried
to sit up, and someone gently placed a small hand on my chest to keep
me down. It was Daiyu.
"What…?" I looked down at myself. My arms were bandaged
and I was in a hospital gown.
"How are you feeling?" That was the gurney-pusher person.
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. "Like I got pumped full of drugs."
"You kept coming out from under the anesthetic, so the hospital
had you restrained. We weren’t allowed to stay with you, and
so when you woke up, you must have thought…" Even though
I couldn't quite see the speaker from where I lay, I knew it had been
Wufei who was yelling before. "There was significant blood loss
by the time you were found."
"Agent Maxwell, I really need to do an exam and take you to-"
the gurney-pusher was cut off.
"You *need* to give us a second to talk to him. Leave. Both of
you." Wufei ordered. There was a pause as the gurney-pusher looked
at the person I couldn’t see.
"Now!" He commanded, and the gurney-pusher jumped a little,
picked up my chart, and scurried away with other footsteps. I got
the impression Wufei had been traumatizing them for a while now.
"Are you okay to… are you lucid enough to talk?" Heero
asked, leaning down so that I wouldn’t strain to keep him in
my line of sight. "What do you remember?"
I took a couple of breaths. "Yeah… I think so. I was with…"
My right hand twitched. "Elise died, didn’t she? I couldn’t
save her."
There was a long pause. "There was nothing you could have done.
The blood loss and the damage to her internal organs were too great."
Wufei said quietly.
"I’m not very good at saving people." My hands were
throbbing and I couldn’t seem to keep myself from saying the
words out loud. "I seem to be much better at killing them."
"Duo! It wasn’t-"
"Please." I cut Daiyu off, too out of sorts to keep my mouth
shut. "I need you to just go aw… I’d really like to
be left alone… for a minute." I tried, smiling for her.
Daiyu looked as if she were going to argue, but Wufei took her gently
by the arms and led her away without a word. The smile dropped from
my face like a painting falls from a wall. Heero stepped to me and
reached out, the tips of his fingers whispering out to stroke over
my cheek.
I looked up into his eyes, holding something back that was making
me crumble from the inside out. Heero looked back into me and leaned
down until his cheek rested on mine, and when he spoke into my ear,
his lips brushed against my skin.
"I know… there are things you can't tell me. And things
you don't want to. But I'm only going to be able to watch you do this
to yourself for so long. So I'm going to let you be alone for now,
because I know you need me to… but you *will* let me help you."
The only response I could give him shuddered almost inaudibly between
a whimper and a sob. Then he stood and followed Daiyu and Wufei without
another word.
As soon as he left, the gurney-pusher returned, taking me to get a
series of tests that I assume took a long time, but was in such a
haze that I didn’t put any effort into focusing on what was going
on around me.
I felt cold.
I felt like I had been rinsed out and dried, and there was nothing
left but what was flapping in the wind. I was faded, and my seams
were wearing thin.
I felt like a black cat, doomed forever to cross the paths of the
unsuspecting.
I felt as though it didn’t matter which path I chose, because
no matter what, they always suddenly dropped off into an abyss, leaving
me to wander and fall no matter which way I chose to go.
I felt as though I had fallen already.
It always… they always…
I had wanted to be alone, but alone was the last thing I wanted to
be.
When the others returned a few hours later, the gurney-pusher had
brought me back to a room. Wufei knocked quietly on the half-open
door. "Do you mind us coming in now?"
"No." I didn’t turn to watch them enter. Daiyu sat
on the corner of the bed and Heero and Wufei took the two chairs,
Heero pulling his up a little closer.
"How long have I been out?" I asked, my voice a little hoarse.
"A week. You came to last night." Daiyu answered. "There
was extensive blood loss, you had a massive concussion, sixteen stitches
in your side and your ankle… considering the damage, it was surprising
that you could even… well, you lost a lot of blood. You had to
be transfused twice."
"Oh," There were so many questions, but I didn’t know
if I could get my head together to ask them all. "What happened?"
I asked. "I mean, what *really* happened… why did…?
Who else… who…?"
I guess Heero understood what I was trying to spit out. " We
all made the same decision as to what location was to be the intended
destination. Sally, Barberini, Hunter and Spencer were the first to
make it. They were involved in skirmishes on their route and injuries
were sustained. Sally is out of commission with a broken clavicle,
Barberini and Spencer both suffered minor damage from the initial
explosion, and Hunter underwent surgery to repair his liver and is
still in the ICU. Daiyu, Wufei, Miller and I engaged in combat with
a group of men, and outran another until we reached the ocean. They
stopped pursuing us at that point… we only discovered later it
was because they received a call for backup from the group tracking
you. You were… taking them down too quickly." His voice
had an odd quality to it I wasn’t sure I wanted to place.
"There was more than one unit of men I killed? How many…?"
I had to know. Had to know how many were worth her life.
It was Wufei who replied this time, with almost the same tone Heero
had used. "You killed sixteen armed men with eight bullets. There
were no survivors."
I took that information in, and asked, hesitantly, "How did I…
get here?"
They looked at each other, and Heero spoke. "We got to the pick-up
point, and when you and Linwood didn't show, Miller managed to intercept
the enemy's radio communication, and we heard the tale end of your
encounter. Wufei and I went back for you."
"I guess I should thank you guys then." And then realized
what they had left out. "And the set up?"
"We still… we’re unsure of what their objectives were."
Wufei said steadily.
I couldn't tell if he was lying to me. If he was, it was because it
had something to do with me… or Elise. "Fine. When do I
get out of here?"
"You're going to have to stay here for a couple days." Heero
told me. "Wufei and Daiyu will be taking over the investigation
of the intruder in your apartment, and I will keep on with the Sandman
case until the doctors clear you for active duty."
I didn't bother arguing with him over it, and waited an hour after
they left before I ditched the hospital. Couple of days… yeah…
fuck that. If they weren’t going to tell me what the hell was
going on, I needed to find out on my own.
My apartment was nowhere near the hospital, and since I didn’t
have a ride I had to take the subway. I had the thought that I probably
shouldn’t go back to my apartment since we still didn’t
know why that guy had broken in or who was after me, but at the moment
I really didn’t have anywhere else to go. The sun had set while
I was underground, so the sky was still darkening by the time I made
the last walk back. No one followed me.
As soon as I got inside and shoved a chair under the doorknob, I stripped
away all the bandages, leaving a withered trail to the bathroom. I
crawled into the shower and turned on the water, the handle squeaking
as the water spurted out. I sat at the foot of the spray, waiting
for it to heat. The cold felt like fire on my frozen skin. I don’t
know how long I stayed there, but I didn’t move to adjust the
temperature when the water turned scalding.
No matter how hot the water burned, I still felt cold inside.
Finally, I shut the shower off and stepped out, as shriveled and wilted
as the leathery dead leaves at the bottom of a muddy pond. I toweled
off quickly, but the dampness had soaked all the way through me and
now clung to my skin. I pulled on a pair of boxers and an oversized,
threadbare and faded black shirt I was sure had belonged to someone
else at some point. I only used it to sleep in since it had a habit
of slipping off my shoulder.
The need to sleep was settling over me, but I could feel the dreams
I knew would come scratching at the back of my eyes like a monster
in the cage of my head, trying to claw its way out.
I needed something to send my thoughts in another direction, and so
I pulled out the poems to go over and went to sit at the kitchen counter.
At the sight of a small yellow slip of paper already there, I caught
my breath, reeling somewhere between dread and resignation.
Sandman had been here. Not surprising since someone else had found
where I lived, and he already knew where I worked anyway… but
still more disturbing than I cared to think of.
Sitting down, I placed with unsteady hands the poems in the order
I had received them and then began to study the newest one.
Along, along, and fawn
Here is polished poise and song
Lace, grace, and waltzing on
Marble mirrors we dance upon.
“Along, along…” Come along, strung along? Hah, we certainly
were.
“Here is polished poise and song…” Upper class, that
went along with sycophantic behavior, in my opinion. Same for “lace,
grace, and waltzing on.” That line went back to the Endless Waltz
idea from the previous note.
“Marble mirrors we dance upon…” and there again. “Marble
mirrors…” Marble like marble grave markers? Floors so polished
we can see ourselves dancing in them? That had so many layers I wasn’t
sure if I could ever figure it out. We can see ourselves dancing in
the mirrors, but no one ever watches the floor. We watch each other.
Are we too busy looking at others that we forget ourselves? Or maybe
it was political, too… we look to others for the blame, but never
ourselves?
I looked at them all together. There was a lot about masks and costumes,
both false fronts. Not to mention the repeated dancing. It was like
a masque. A very deadly masque. I had a nagging feeling Sandman wasn’t
just writing pretty words down for to piss me off. It was a test…
to see if I could understand his messages. Understand him. To see
if I was smart enough to figure out his game.
Something caught my eye on the newest poem. A period. He used a period
on the last line.
Was that the end then? The last poem he would give me?
I had thought that there wasn’t a code in any of them… but
maybe there was a code in *all* of them, that only made sense all
together.
I’ve always been something of a natural when it comes to picking
up patterns and sequences… for some reason numbers come easily
for me. Pretty good for being self-taught, anyway. I thought I was
beginning to pick up a pattern, but once I had it, I was stuck trying
to decode it. I had no idea how long I’d been at it when I was
startled by a knock at the door.
It wasn’t a Delivery Knock, or a Landlord Knock. Definitely not
a Cop Knock. A soft Here-But-the-Neighbors-Won’t-Hear Knock.
A Heero Knock. Guess he had expected me to make a break from the hospital.
I got up and glided quietly to the door, a strange numbness accompanying
me that I assumed had something to do with all the medication. I removed
the chair I’d shoved under the doorknob in lieu of the broken
bolt with a scrape that echoed in the quiet, and swung the door open.
Heero stood there in the chilled darkness, looking so uncertain and
so open, not making any move to come in. The cold in the air was as
dense as the silence of our stares. It hung so heavily between us
that it was as if the door were still shut, and for the moment we
were nothing more than a pair of silhouettes in the dark. I took in
what I could in the faint light- his unsteady expression, the line
of his brow, the shades and shadows of his face. I held my breath,
my gaze utterly lost in his eyes, in that blue so deep and potent
that words alone were far too weak to describe. We stood frozen.
I let out a shuddering breath, and it broke the stillness between
us. I wasn’t sure if I grabbed him or he grabbed me, but all
of a sudden, we were clutching onto each other as if something infinitely
more important than our lives depended on it.
Our lips met soundly, our mouths hotly cemented together, and I was
tasting him, breathing him into me. We held on to each other so hard
it hurt, his hands clutching my face, my arms twined around him.
Somehow, the door was shut. I was barely aware that we had moved around,
until my back hit the wall roughly. I didn’t know how or why
it was happening now, all I knew was that I couldn’t get close
enough to him. My hands dropped to his hips, soaking in the touch
of his skin, sweeping around to his lower back as he lowered one of
his to the hem of my shirt.
He traced the line of my boxers, then slowly moved up over the muscles
of my stomach, over the planes of my chest and back down again, his
other hand leaving my face. Both hands rested for a moment on my hips,
then snaked around and grabbed my ass, pulling me to him. I lifted
my legs to wrap around him, my hands burying themselves in his hair,
pulling his head forward into the kiss.
His lips, his mouth, his body were so warm against mine. I wanted
to drink his fire into me, I wanted to feel his warmth inside. But
I was scared, so very frightened that if I did this, I could never
be separated from him and feel whole again.
That thought woke me from the dream, and all I could think was that
I didn’t want it to end, I didn’t want to-
"Stop." I gasped, breaking off the kiss, dropping down and
grabbing his wrists. He froze in my grasp, not even breathing, it
seemed, with trepidation.
"What- I…"
"I’m sorry, Heero," I whispered, "I’m so
sorry."
There was a choking silence, and I couldn’t bring myself to look
into his eyes, knowing that they would undo me.
"Duo." He took my face in his hands to force me to look
at him, but I avoided him still. "Is this because of Trowa?"
he asked, his voice suddenly as cold and still as the air around us
and painfully bare. I felt like my heart was hanging itself.
"Yes," I choked out miserably, only because I couldn’t
say no.
"Duo," He pleaded, "You have to just tell me-"
"I can’t!" I half-screamed, half-sobbed. "Just
*go,* Heero!"
We said nothing more, the silence suffocating and stilted, and he
left somewhere in it, the heat escaping with him. The door was left
wide open, exposing the me to the rawness of the outside.
I closed it with a painful noise escaping from my throat, one hand
on the knob, the other in a curled fist stamped on the door over my
head. I slowly turned myself over, agony sweeping through my body,
and sank down to the floor, pulling my elbows into myself, folding
over them. My hands throbbed with a deep ache, and my body shook with
the sobs I would not voice.
I watched the city lights play across the wood of the floor in a dizzy
smog until my body had worn itself out, and it was a very long time
before I could bring myself to move again. I stood in one swaying
motion and went to pull on a pair of jeans and my boots. Grabbing
my wallet, I walked out the door and didn’t lock it behind me.
There were a couple of bars a few blocks over. I didn’t care
that I was drugged like a racehorse, and I didn’t care that I
had been avoiding this moment from the beginning. I needed to do something
rash, something dangerous. Self-destructive and reckless. Something
more, something wild. I needed to do something brainlessly, inexcusably
stupid, something I could hate myself for in the morning.
I needed to throw myself away.
There were a few bars to choose from. The Thimble, Malloy’s,
J.D.’s, Ballad’s Bar, and the Yellow Moon. I had never been
to Ballad’s before, but I knew where it was, and more importantly,
I could find my way back from it pissing drunk. It looked like a local
place, small and friendly. Not all highbrow and not a seedy dive,
either.
"You old enough to drink, son?" The bartender looked like
the kind you’d expect to see in one of those old movies, doling
out advice and comfort to wayward souls.
"I should fucking hope so." I sighed, sitting in front of
him. I pulled my Preventer ID. People don’t tend to notice there’s
no date of birth on it. They just figure that if you’re old enough
to be a Special Agent for the Preventers, you’re damn well going
to be old enough to drink. Which was good, because I didn’t have
a date of birth.
"What can I get you then, kid?" He was doing the glass-wiping
thing.
"Tequila. Lots of Tequila."
He chuckled a little. "One of those days, huh?"
I watched the shot glass fill. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess it was. Though
it really stretches out a mite longer than a day."
He was gestured over by a guy a barstool down, who was well on his
way to becoming drunk, although he wasn’t quite there yet. He
was a regular, it seemed, as the bartender knew him by name. Had to
be ex-military. He had the Oz look for sure, probably Treize Faction.
It was in the way he looked at everyone, like he thought he had been
a part of something important and no one else had.
I studied him and felt centuries older than him, even though the guy
had a good ten years on me. I just had a feeling that I was a lot
older than him, despite our actual ages. I also had a feeling that
I had more experience than anyone "Harvey" had ever known…
I felt as though I had seen things every day of my life, that if any
other person here had seen just once, they might have gone mad. But
maybe that was just the mood.
Harvey liked to talk about the war. About how rough it was for the
vets. Nothing to strong, really. He was just looking to get some sympathy,
some assurance that he deserved to turn to the bottle. I was on my
fourth shot when another guy started joining in on the reminiscing.
He had to be Alliance, though, probably deserted when Oz took over.
He was also going to cause trouble within the next couple of drinks,
but I wasn't here to play bouncer, so I did my best to just ignore
him.
"Why do ya think everything always happened on Christmas Eve?"
Harvey asked his new buddy and Clement, the bartender.
Clement leaned on the bar top. "Well, Christians believe that
Christ was their savior. I dunno about the Jesus thing, but I guess
the ‘savior’ part is pretty accurate, considering."
"No way, man!" spat Army Boy.
"Yeah," Harvey said in a much sadder tone. "Nobody
got saved. People died… soldiers died. Nothing Christian about
that."
Clement tilted his head to me, and noticing my cluster of empty glasses,
poured me another shot. "How ‘bout you, kid? Know much about
it?"
"Nah, someone stole my Bible at the bar next door." I slung
it back and he got me another, chuckling.
"Eh, he’s too fucking young to know anything about it."
Drunk and Annoying slurred. I was, after all, just a skinny kid in
an oversized shirt.
Harvey sized me up. "I dunno, Nagg. This ain’t his first
barbeque. He can drink like he knows somethin’ about somethin.’"
His name was really Nagg? Damn. Poor sucker, no wonder he was so bitter.
The conversation strayed in another direction for a while, and when
I took my nose out of the bottom of a glass it was in easy conversation
with Clement or a bit of small chat with someone waiting for a drink.
The space had filled up pretty well, and I had a feeling most if the
crowd were regulars like Harvey.
Drowning your sorrows doesn’t work too well when dwelling on
the issue. I couldn’t get it out of my head, any of it. It killed
me that I’d killed Elise. It killed me that I couldn’t save
another one. After all the others… after Solo, Father and Sister…
after Hilde. Hell, I couldn’t save Relena and she wasn’t
even dead.
It was why I had begun fighting in the first place, when I had the
chance to pilot Deathscythe. It hadn’t been about revenge, not
really. I just knew… how dangerous I was. I had to get away from
L2 before I killed anyone else. If people were going to die because
of me, I figured it was better that I was killing the right people.
Unleash myself on the wicked, so to speak.
But I was wrong, I couldn’t save anyone that way… I just
keep killing them all. I was feeling even worse now because I was
thinking as much of Heero as Elise. The guilt of caring about my personal
problems when she had been bagged up in plastic, dead like the leaves…
it stung.
Heero… I was cold again. So cold now. To have fire, then to have
it taken away. I was so cold. I had killed something inside of me
that had wanted to live. And even worse… I think I had killed
something inside of him, too.
I think, in the beginning, he had intrigued me as much as he did because
he didn’t do life the way anyone else did. I mean, on L2, the
ultimate goal was survival. It was a selfish world, and it didn’t
matter what you did to achieve that goal. But Heero… he seemed
to be going out of his way to die. I had figured out that there were
things worth dying for, but Heero was the first person I’d met
who was not only willing, but intending to go the distance. There
is something remarkable in that.
To find something as human in myself as to love him, and then to kill
it… it was worse than killing my body. It was killing my soul.
So I drank. I drank to Elise, I drank to Heero, and I drank to Death.
I drank to my soul.
"You finishing up soon, kid?" Clement said, even as he poured.
"I’ve never seen someone your size drink this much liquor,
much less hold it all."
"Women love a man in uniform. Impresses them." Nagg’s
voice cut through loudly.
"It seems that a lot of women have low standards." I muttered.
"Yeah, Clement, I’ll be goin’ soon. Just a beer before
I stumble my way back home, please."
"No problem. You gonna make it home okay? Don’t want me
to call a cab?"
I took the last shot. "Yeah, I’ll be fine.
I only live a few blocks down."
Harvey and Nagg had moved back to hotter topics. "Fuckin’
moronic, man. Why in the fuck would anyone have ever wanted to fight
against us? We were the fuckin’ defenders of Earth!"
"Because they believed in the colonies." My voice cut through.
Oops. I seem to be drunk.
He turned to me, leaning heavily on the bar top. "What would
you know?! That’s fuckin’ bullshit is all it is."
"So, it’s patriotic to believe in the ESUN, but it’s
bullshit to believe in the colonies?" A drunk Duo likes to cause
trouble, evidently. Nagg was steadily drunk, but he’d been sipping
beers all night, not chugging tequila.
"Go to hell, preschooler." He spat out, and some in the
crowd stirred with discomfort.
I should have paid my tab and walked away. I shrugged instead, chugging
down most of the beer. "We’re all going to hell, but it’s
up to me which way I’m going to get there."
"You think you know something, huh? You think you can tell me
something I don’t know about the war? You were probably, what?
Fourteen, fifteen? Punks like you don’t know anything about what
Oz or the Alliance were really like. What, you think because you took
some kind of high school history class you know about the real world?
Runt, go home to your mother and shut up about shit you know nothing
about." He stood up and took a step toward me. Harvey looked
like he wanted to bust out of there.
I swilled down most of the beer. "And you know more than I do,
right? You seem to have forgotten the Gundams, who fought for the
colonies, were the ones to save Earth. Both times. Not the Alliance.
Not Oz. It was Wing Zero who saved your sorry ass. Though I guess
he can be forgiven for that."
Those seemed to be the wrong words. Or the right ones, if you were
looking for a fight.
"Those *fucking* bastards! One of the cocksuckers killed my platoon!"
The Nagg spat, getting in my face. His lip curled with rage. "They
should have been executed for everything they did."
I shrugged, unimpressed. "Probably."
The crowd in the bar stilled, waiting to see the scene play out. Nagg
pulled a knife from his coat, and when drawing the weapon didn’t
seam to intimidate me, he came towards me. The old issue army survival
knife was at my throat, but I didn’t even flinch. He knew what
he was doing; the sharp blade was poised at just the right spot. The
slightest move from him and he would kill me.
The rest of the customers had backed away a considerable distance,
leaving me and Nagg in the center of everyone’s eye. It was deadly
quiet as I poured the remnants of my drink out of my beer bottle on
the floor, the liquid splattering his shoes. I broke the empty bottle
against my head with a sick crash, and then I was behind him with
my arm around his neck, bottle angled at his jugular before he could
gasp.
"That’s right," I said, my voice a deadly, level whisper
only he could hear. "I was a Gundam Pilot, and I’m fucking
crazy."
No one moved. I relaxed and let him go, shoving him away from me.
He fell to the floor on his hands and knees, and made no attempt to
get up.
"Sorry about the trouble and the mess, Clement." I paid
my tab and then some, and then, without another word to anyone, I
walked past the panting man on the floor, boots crunching on broken
glass, and left.
I was drunker than I thought. Tomorrow was going to be hellacious
if I didn’t hydrate. When I staggered back into the apartment
I poured myself a tall glass of water and sat at the counter, staring
at the poems. The words weren’t blurred, but my brain wasn’t
processing what was in front of me.
Then, despite the haziness, the numbers and letters began to sort
themselves out in my head until I finally cracked it.
My eyes widened… there wasn’t any way…
I re-worked it, writing this time to make sure it came out right.
But the result remained the same. The next target was Quatre Winner.
Heart pounding, I knew I had to call Heero. Dialing the number, I
was hoping he wouldn’t go grade-school on me and screen the call.
There was no answer. Swearing, I tried again. No luck.
I growled and texted him in a simple code we had used during the first
war.
/fire on the 4th floor/
He responded with two words.
/meet now/
I sighed in relief, and dialed back /field/.
We had to get to L4, and as quickly as possible. There was no way
to warn Quatre without warning Sandman, and if he thought we had figured
out his little game, Quatre was dead. I just hoped he wasn’t
already in outer space, or at least not on L4. Because us jetting
off in the middle of the night would be a pretty big tip-off. And
if he could predict me as well as he seemed to be able to… god
I hoped this wasn’t a trap.
I threw together a duffle bag, mostly filling it with weapons. I wouldn’t
have time to stop by HQ to get more.
Feeling is a horrible, horrible thing. There is no substitute, no
way to fill the empty pockets in your soul. But even as we need to
fill those empty places, trying to do it hurts.
Love bleeds. And there is no respite.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Crave" by Drain STH
~And so I can't ignore
my heart is bruised and sore
My sanctuary has been raked, been raked
My soul is colored red
from all the love I bled
My crucifixion is complete, complete
Now I need a substitute for...
...the love that you gave
Now I just can't be saved
And there is no salvation for me, yeah
My sin was to touch
But I wanted it too much
Now I know that I've fallen from grace, yeah
No matter how I try, I just can't justify
My absolution is denied, denied
And so I'm left to burn, my body craves and yearns
The beast inside me is alive, alive
Now I need a substitute for...
...the love that you gave
Now I just can't be saved
And there is no salvation for me, yeah
My sin was to touch
But I wanted it too much
Now I know that I've fallen from grace, yeah~
~ * ~
Chapter 10
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