Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, and am making no money off of this fic.
AN: Written for Clara.
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Familiar Strangers by luvsanime02
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There's something wrong with this place.
Not that he doesn't know this already, what with those creatures hunting him during the night. Creatures so silent that he can't even hear them breathing before they attack him. If they even breathe at all in the first place. He's less and less sure about that as more time goes on.
Less sure about whether or not he's just hallucinating this whole mad experience. That might even be the more preferable explanation.
The constant emptiness has been creepy enough. The silence where there should clearly be life is driving him inevitably towards madness and rashness. This is his only excuse for why he's decided to walk through the town's cemetery when the sun is so close to setting.
What he finds there, though, is just wrong. Even more than most everything else about this place. Blankly, his gaze flits from headstone to headstone, desperately trying to make some sense of it all.
Every name is the same. On every headstone. And all of them are his name.
Some are displayed on small pieces of granite. Others are etched onto marble statues of angels or other religious figures. Hell, there's even a couple of mausoleums. And every single epitaph that appears before his stunned eyes is the same, the letters of his own name staring boldly back at him. The dates of his birth and death are the same day, exactly, the last day that he remembers before the car accident. Before waking up here, in this town.
Coming here was a bad idea. He feels this truth deep down in his bones, in his soul, that he never should have entered this cemetery in the first place. As quickly as possible considering his injuries, he carefully retreats, until finally he's walking back out through the front gates. He still doesn't dare to look away from all of the graves until he's surrounded by houses again.
Only then does he turn away, determined not to go near there ever again, and instead starts searching for a high place to rest at during the night. Not to sleep, not with those things out there, but someplace where maybe those creatures can't reach him. A tree won't do him any good. He'd made that mistake his very first night here. Those things can climb perfectly well.
No, he needs to find somewhere else, and eventually decides on the roof of the hospital where he first woke up. If nothing else, it'll be a shorter trip to the morgue, he can't help but think darkly. He shuffles forward, ignoring the lack of wind or insects or anything else to be found here except for a graveyard full of himself. He has to get to the hospital before nightfall. Everything else can wait.
He wonders suddenly what he would find if he dug up all of those graves, and then immediately wishes that he hadn't considered the idea at all. He'll never find out, he reminds himself, because he's not going back there again.
Those creatures that attack him, though, something about them seems familiar. Something about the way that they move when they attack. It reminds him of the darkness that stares back at him from behind his own eyes every time that he dares to look into a mirror.
He tries very hard not to think about that, too.