"Whispered Touches"

Written By: Zazu

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing, nor do I own the characters. I have borrowed them here for some fun and creativity, and this is not for profit. I do, however, own the plot mentioned here, and any instances that you may find similar to real life events are purely a coincidence.

Rating: PG-13 (for now)

Pairings: 1+2+1, 3+4+3, 5+M (may progress to 1x2x1, etc)

Notes: Beta-read by ShenLong Deb. Thank you!!

/blah/ denotes thoughts.

Summary: Heero moves to a new house and finds something odd going on, something he's not quite sure about.

Started: June 5, 2006 :

"Whispered Touches "

Chapter 3

Eyes blinked open, taking a long minute to adjust in the light, bringing the blurred vision to focus. The owner of the violet eyes registered the slanted roof above him.

/Where am I?/ He thought groggily, stretching and sitting up. Glancing around, he caught sight of a square window that allowed sunlight to filter in. /Morning already?/ He yawned and moved to stand.

He couldn't feel the floor.

Looking down, he noticed that he was floating. And that he could see the floor through his black shoes. Shoes? Who wore shoes to sleep?

Taking a hesitant step, he found that he was still floating. Oh, he walked, but about three inches above the ground. What was wrong with him? Turning, he suddenly noticed that there had been nothing for him to lie on. He certainly hadn't been on the floor; he'd swung his legs right over to stand up! He held a hand up to his face and he could see through it.

Ridiculous. People don't see through their hands. Only ghosts did, right? He touched one hand with the other, oddly relieved he could feel his own cold hands. He paused.

Absurd. Ghosts can't survive in the daylight; otherwise there'd be ones drifting around scaring little children. Then children wouldn't be afraid of the dark. He took a few steps, attempting to pace and think, and was irritated that he was still a good three inches above the ground.

Insane. People don't float. They walk. He tried to extend his foot past the invisible three-inch barrier to the wooden floor, but it was in vain. People don't walk three inches above the ground. But he wasn't exactly floating.

Oh. He blinked as his groggy and irritated mind brought back some memories.

Ghosts did see through their hands, and themselves. But only in daylight. Ghosts can survive in daylight; he had found that out when he had become a ghost, some time ago. Ghosts couldn't walk on ground until night had fallen, when they were able to become somewhat more solid.

/I overslept, didn't I?/ The ghost thought for a moment. /What woke me up?/

There were footsteps padding around under him. Two sets were heavy, one was light, one didn't sound human; there were claws clicking on the floor. He walked his way, three inches above the ground, to the door, and attempted to open it. His hand passed through the knob on both tries, with both hands.

Strange. He could feel his own hands. So why couldn't the doorknob feel his hands? But if his hands passed through the doorknob, then it meant he could travel by passing through the solid door, right? Closing one eye, he made his way towards the solid wall, his other eye closing as he attempted to cross through the barrier. A slight tingle, and he was on the other side.

The smart side of his brain supplied, a few moments too late, that the safer way would have been to try and pass through the barrier slowly; with his hands, and feet first, and not rush at it like some hot-headed bull. He made his way -- still three inches above the ground, he noted irritably -- down the stairs only to meet another door. This time, he walked through it like a normal being.

Well, as normal as one could get, seeing as he had walked through the solid thing.

He blinked at the wall in front of him, then looked over to his right. A room, filled with boxes and furniture, the window that looked out the front of the house just like the attic window. He couldn't remember the room being like that. Venturing closer, he saw a small, solid-looking child, a girl, he noted, standing with her hand clutching the collar of a dog. Neither noticed him. He caught sight of a calendar, recalling the last time he looked, it was August. It was August. He did a double-take.

August 2006.

His memories chose that moment to surface, and his violet eyes turned dark with anger. Backing out of the room, he looked to down the hall and saw a teenager with unruly hair talking to a woman, and walking towards him. He stepped backwards and found himself staring again at the door that he had passed through, the one leading back to the stairs of the attic.

The violent crime bestowed upon him in what he now realized was his past life flew like a movie in front of his eyes. He covered his eyes with his hands, the heels of his palm digging into his eyes as he tried to stop the onslaught of images. Unwanted memories.

"Come on Wing." The teenager's voice sounded through the door, interrupting his turmoil. A whistle. "Let's go downstairs."

/You woke me./ The see-through figure behind the door narrowed his eyes as he recalled the voice that had disturbed his dreamless slumber, a four-year slumber. /You made me wake up and remember./

*****

Heero sighed, sitting at a computer of the local library, trying to dig up any news he could find regarding a violent murder several years past.

"Any lucky?" Trowa asked, leaning over from the computer on his left.

"Nothing we don't already know." Quatre answered from Heero's right. So far, they had discovered a series of violent murders of a family of four that had occurred eight years ago. The bodies had been found in the living room, but not of Heero's house; it was the house to the left, the one scheduled to be destroyed and rebuilt next summer. The family names had been kept confidential, at least from the records that they were studying. Then, the story of the actual occurances ranged from the murderer being a serial killer to the idea that the family had stolen a box of gold and had met their rightful revenge.

In short, there was everything to read, but nothing to believe.

No murderer had ever been found, and the case had been closed after two years of investigation, leaving the town to slowly forget about the event. Then, the haunted house rumours began. Descriptions ranged from seeing a bloody woman at the window, to receiving messages on the mirror when the police made their last rounds to take away the caution tape and erase any signs of crime from the house, and even to strange sounds of laughter in the supposedly empty house.

Again, everything to read, and nothing to believe.

"This creeps me out." Quatre said honestly. "The fact that half of this is clearly made up, but the fact that something about the house actually gives off a kind of...anguish." He whispered.

"The strange thing is, why is my house haunted when the one next door was the one of the murder?" Heero muttered.

"All we've been able to do is look at the crime through the news resources." Trowa said thoughtfully. "We need to somehow find the real story."

"I have to head home." Quatre said with a glance to his watch. "Iria's going to be coming in late tonight and she's counting on me to get dinner ready."

"It is getting late." A glance at his watch showed that it was almost six; school finished just after four and they had taken the time since then to grab a quick snack and look into news reports in the library. "Thanks for helping out."

"No problem." Trowa nodded, and Quatre shrugged in a kind manner.

Twenty minutes later, Heero entered the house. "I'm home." He called out.

"Kitchen." Kanoko replied. Heero entered to see Naoko sitting in her high chair at the head of the table. "What kept you?" She asked. He glanced over to the left side of the kitchen where his mother was cooking dinner.

"I went to the library to do some research." Heero answered, dropping his bag by the door and petting the dog.

"Project?"

"Yea, history project." Heero felt bad at telling the half-lie. He really did have a history project, but he hadn't been working on it at the library. Still, it was better than telling his mother about the kind of research he had been doing. He made his way to the high chair. "Hi baby." He ruffled the baby girl's hair and bent to drop a kiss on her head. Naoko was playing with her spoon and swinging her legs lightly, and speaking gibberish to her right, towards the chair Heero usually sat in.

The tingling feeling returned to the back of his neck, and Heero straightened, gazing towards the chair.

"Who are you?" He whispered. A shimmer, and it was gone.

"What was that Heero?" Kanoko asked, reaching for the vegetables to drop into the frying pan. Just as she did so and there was a crackle of hot oil against raw vegetables, the hairs by his right ear ruffled as if there was a bit of wind.

"Duo Maxwell." A whisper, clearly by his ear despite the noise of the cooking vegetables and the fan above the stove. The tingle at the back of his neck intensified and he shivered, gripping the back of Naoko's high chair.

Heero looked sharply to his right, half afraid, half out of reflex. Nothing was there. But he knew that the voice was the same one as the tenor he heard the very first night he cooked dinner in the house.

/Smells good./ He recalled the voice, the words.

"Give me a hand Heero."

"Sure Mom." Heero quickly walked over to give his mother a hand.

/So the ghost is not a figment of my imagination./ He dropped off the plate of food on the table away from Naoko's reach. "Mom, I'm going to wash up real quick."

"Okay."

Heero headed up the stairs after snagging his bag and dropped it by his desk. The tingling feeling was gone, and he instinctively knew that the ghost was not around. Washing up, he headed back down to the kitchen for dinner.

An hour later, having finished washing the dishes and collected the dog from the backyard, Heero returned to his room to do his homework.

"Heero?" He turned as he switched on his computer. "Can you watch Naoko while I shower?"

"Sure Mom." The baby girl was holding her teddy bear and seemed content to play on the floor with the stuffed toy and the dog. He turned back to his homework, trying to concentrate on the chemistry questions instead of the voice that kept resounding in his head.

/Duo Maxwell. Duo Maxwell. Duo Maxwell. Duo Maxwell./

He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, and jumped, startled, when a hand landed on his shoulder. He turned quickly.

"I called you twice." Kanoko was smiling. "Hard chem question?"

"Yea. Deep in thought." He answered. "Taking Naoko?"

"So we can leave you in peace." She teased, lifting the girl to her feet and taking her hand. He turned and smiled at his baby sister as she giggled, clutching the stuffed bear, and followed their mother to the door. She turned and looked back into the room, but she was looking up, much like she did when he stood over her.

"Bye bye." She waved and vanished from his view.

The tingling feeling. Heero stood and leaned against his desk, crossing his arms.

"Duo Maxwell." He tried out the name. His eyes narrowed, and he surveyed his room as he spoke. "Leave my sister alone. She's a baby. If you want to mess with someone, you mess with me."

A moment later, a whisper reached his ear.

"Fine by me."

*****

"Heero?"

Heero jerked back to attention. It was lunchtime, but he had barely taken two bites out of his sandwich.

"Are you okay?" Quatre asked. "You seem spaced out."

"Didn't sleep well." It was true. He had spent the night wondering just what the ghost would do, and what the ghost really was. And why it was around.

"Did you do any more research?" Trowa asked, silently directing the question towards their ghost research.

"No." Heero answered after a moment. He couldn't very well tell them that the ghost had told him it's name, could he?

"You're lying." Quatre said softly. "I've always been good at reading people, Heero, and that was a lie. Has..." He lowered his voice. "Has something happened?"

Heero studied the blonde, then studied Trowa. He tossed his barely half-eaten sandwich back into it's bag and into his backpack. "This isn't a good place to talk." He muttered.

A few minutes later, they were seated outside where no one could overhear them, and Heero began his story.

"On my first day at the house, when I was cooking dinner. I noticed Wing stop eating. He never stops, unless something is wrong. The last time he did, Naoko had taken a fall and started to cry."

"Dogs are sensitive to things like that." Trowa inputted. Heero nodded.

"He was staring at an empty chair at the dining table, but then he went back to his food. I thought it was nothing, so I went back to cooking, but I thought I heard someone, a voice that I didn't know, tell me that the food smelt good. I thought it was a figment of my imagination." Heero looked into the distance. "Another time, after I first meeting with Trowa, I had gone to get my sister from her nap and take her downstairs for a snack. She was up in her crib, and giggling at the wall decorated with teddy bears. When I led her from the room, she waved and said goodbye to the empty room."

"An imaginary friend?" Quatre asked awkwardly. Heero shrugged.

"I have a window seat in my room where I like to read. I like to leave my book there, closed and bookmarked. A habit I've had since I was really young. When I returned from my shower, it was opened at page five."

A sharp intake of breath from Quatre.

"Then yesterday, when I went home, I saw my sister chattering to my empty seat at the dinner table. I whispered 'who are you' in that direction. Then that voice, the same one that told me the food smelt good, whispered back to me."

"What did it say?" Quatre's eyes were wide while Trowa seemed to be silently taking in the story.

"Duo Maxwell."

"Duo Maxwell?" Trowa asked quietly.

"Then later at night, my mom left Naoko in my room when she went to shower. I was thinking about the name Duo Maxwell and trying to do my homework. When Mom picked Naoko up from my room, she looked up as if someone were standing above her and said bye bye again. Then I stood and looked around my room and told the ghost to leave my baby sister alone and if it wanted to mess around, it could mess with me."

"Did it reply?" Quatre asked, his face pale.

"Yes." Heero nodded. "It said 'fine by me'."

They were silent for a few minutes.

"Duo Maxwell." Trowa said again. "Come." He lead them towards the gym's hall of fame and stopped them in front of the basketball display case.

"Legendary basketball captain at the age of sixteen leads Berkeley High's team to state victory of school season 1998." Quatre read. His eyes widened. "Duo Maxwell."

Heero's eyes stared long and hard at the picture of a teenaged boy dressed in the jersey of the school's colours, a long braid dangling over his shoulder. One thought lodged itself into his mind.

/Duo Maxwell has beautiful violet eyes./

~*~*~*~*~*~

To Be Continued...

Chapter 4

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