Broken Wings

"Talk to me, Heero." Duo. The braided baka. " Hn." I turn and look at him, daring him to ask me the question, which has hovered in the other's minds since we met. He takes the plunge. " Could you tell me about your training? It was obviously harder than ours, but how much?" My training. Why should I tell him? He'll stare at me with a mixture of horror and fear. It's obvious the others put him up to it. "I can't tell you." Duo thinks for a second. "Why not?" God, when will he learn that I don't want to talk about it? "Because my training was brutal and painful. I don't want you to know how much." He considers. " Okay, then." I watch him leave the room, still acting happy. He will never know how lucky he is. " Ohh Heero!!" Not her. Not now. I'm going to sleep, than I won't have to hear her screeching.

Duo climbed the stairs into Quatre's palatial library. They looked up. "Duo. He didn't tell you?" Quatre asked. "No." Wufei just says in that calm voice of his, "He obviously doesn't want to talk about it. So why are you trying to make him?" "Because we've known each other for years, and he won't tell us squat!" Duo yelled. Wufei gives him that inscrutable look. "Forget I asked." Duo sits down in a chair. " He writes in his laptop from time to time." They stare at him. "Well, why didn't you tell us that earlier?" Trowa queries. "Because I never pay attention." *Everyone sweatdrops.* Quatre gets up. "Well, I'm going to try and hack into it." Trowa and Duo follow. Wufei just sighs and starts to read. Bang! "Ow, shit!" Duo hisses. "What happened?" "Stubbed my toe on his laptop." They hoist it up and carry it to a study where they spend three hours finding a way through the security. Finally they find a collection of musings.

Odin, 01, Heero Yuy. Code names. None I can call my own. But that doesn't matter. What matters is how I was trained. I had known Dr. J since I was born. He was a family friend. I thought he was nice, a little eccentric maybe, but nice. And than one day, he drags me off, says he needs me for something called the Perfect Soldier experiment. I was 2. He dragged me off, put me in a metal room. And then they stick a tube down my throat, and pump me full of pills. And then when I wake up from the stupor, they pump me full again. And again. And again. Until I can't remember anything before. For all I know, I've spent my whole life being pumped and sleeping in a drug-induced daze. Then finally, they stop. I'm pulled from the chair that I was strapped in. I stumble down the hall with guards beside me. I'm shoved into a room. Dr. J is sitting there, watching me. I struggle up. " We've had fun, haven't we Heero?" I snarl and leap for him. Some guards grab me and sling me to the floor. He shakes his finger at me in an infuriating manner. "Tut tut, we can't have emotion in the perfect soldier, can we?" I crouch on the floor. I stare in anger at him. He laughs, happily. They take me away and throw me in a cell. I'm stuck there in isolation for three days. And then I'm let out. A room. White tile. Dr. J is there. I spend 2 years being in there, 10 hours a day. Dr. J spends the whole time talking to me, saying that I had to do everything he said, because if I didn't, I wouldn't get any food or water. Once I accepted the fact that he was my master, the real training began. I was 4, then. First was physical training, running a mile, right from the start. If I didn't finish within three minutes, no food or water. Martial arts, getting kicked everywhere. At the end of a day, I'm covered in bruises, more likely some broken bones. I had to learn to set those with whatever materials were handy. 8 more years doing that every day, than lifting weights until dinner. Than piloting, first an Aries, then a Leo. I was 12 when I got my first mission to kill someone using a gundam. Killing was nothing new, my first murder came when I was three. I had to assassinate the President of America. Mission accepted. I pull it off perfectly, shooting down the plane that was carrying him to a conference. I watch it fall into the ocean, carrying 50 innocent people to their doom. I don't care. I had been taught to have no emotion whatsoever. I am a weapon, an elite soldier. Emotion gets in the way, makes you weak. I know I am not supposed to have emotion, but it's there, beneath the surface. 20 more missions, each one harder than the last. It doesn't matter. Dr. J knows things I don't. If he tells me to kill myself, I will. One day when I'm 13 I get in the Leo I have been using, to notice something different. I shake wildly. The Zero System! Dr. J appears on screen. He orders me to get a grip. I snap to attention. He tells me to come to the computer room. Once I'm there, he trains me in computers and hacking. I become an accomplished hacker. After that, I learn explosives. Their make-up, power, and strategy for usage. This is one of the better parts. I still go to that white tiled room for three hours every day, to be brainwashed. Or "thought re-education" as the doctor calls it. My days would go like this. Wake up at 3. Go to the gym to lift weights until 6. Breakfast for 15 minutes, than running until 8. Martial arts until 12. Computers until 6. Explosives 'till 9. Piloting until 11, and then thought re-education until 2. Than I can fall into an exhausted sleep. This goes on until I'm almost 15. Than I receive Wing. I have 3 months of training with Wing, and than my mission. Kill Relena Darlian. The day before I leave for earth, I look at a mirror. I see no trace of the kid I once was. Only my eyes. Chilling cobalt blue. Nothing in them except a roiling maelstrom of emotion, bottled up within me. Covered by a shield of ice. Glazed over by death, and at the back, a desperate last plea for help. And then, it is extinguished forever, by the black weight of so many deaths on my 15 year-old shoulders. 13 years of training, beating, dying. I'm not alive. Just a robot walking the earth, lost, with no one. But still within me, that child is still crying, for a life lost. Who were my parents? Where did they live? I'll never know. And now, Dr. J is sending me my final mission, to be carried out as soon as I get a gun. Suicide. Then maybe I'll have rest. Hn. I'll probably go to hell, instead. I will never tell anyone. They'll hate me for it. They'll think I'm weak. I am a weapon, with no emotion. Raised only to carry out my mission. What can I do? I'm as helpless as an eagle with broken wings. I'm not alive. I am dead, lost forever in the dark shadows of my twisted mind. I have no choice but to be what Dr. J made me, The Perfect Soldier.

Duo, Quatre and Trowa sat silent; shocked at the pain and torture their friend had been forced to endure from the age of two. "Man, poor Heero." Trowa and Quatre nod silently, awestruck that he could have had the will to survive. " I understand why he didn't want to tell us, now." Quatre sadly said. "He didn't want us to know that he was broken, with no will." They stood up, and silently exited. Wufei looked up. His friends were white, drawn, and shaken. "What happened? You look like you saw a ghost." Duo smiled weakly and replied "We did." Wufei stared. "Weak onna, Heero's not dead!" Quatre whispered "Yes he is. He's dead, in his mind." "Tell me what happened up there." They told him word for word what Heero had written. "The reason he never told us was he thought we would think he was weak." Trowa finished. Wufei laughed incredulously. "Weak? Weak? I doubt any of us would have enough will to survive what he did." They all agreed.

Well, now they know. That's something. Maybe now they'll understand why I never could tell them. And now, it's time for my final mission. I don't know. If they hate me, then I'll go through with it. If they don't, well, we'll see. "Heeerooo!" Oh God. Not now. Hmmm. I do know martial arts, and the years of training have made me a lot stronger than the average human. I'll knock her out. I stand silently in the shadows, a leopard waiting for it's prey. " Ahhh.., thunk!" Mission accomplished, guys, mission accomplished.

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