Standard disclaimers apply
=========
OK, this if is just plain weird, so get over it. This fic, like just about is an
AU, so you will be experiencing OOC, blood, bad things, blood, more bad
things and more blood...and did I mention OOC? I did? Ah well.
=========
Soul Trial
Part 1
=========
Whoo ... where to start? Well I guess I should start at the
beginning. Or the beginning of all the really really odd shit. Well
for one thing, I'm a Gundam pilot. Death Scythe, my machine partner,
is probably the only one who knows everything about me. I'm sure you
think it's silly to care so much about a big giant blood thirsty robot,
but if you knew Death Scythe then you would too.
But that's not the weirdest thing ...
I was in love with my human partner .... who just coincidentally
happened to be another man. But that's just a small over-lookable detail,
ne? Well anyways I was in love with Heero, and I don't think he knew or
cared.
But the real kicker is about to come .... all because Heero is an
uncaring bastard.
It had happened that lovely day when Heero self-destructed. And
BOOM! Wave bye-bye to Heero. So I took a knife, and you know what
happens after that.
Wufei and Quatre must have anticipated my stupidity, they kicked
down the door to the bathroom and wrestled me out. Wufei smacked me 'till
I came back to reality. I had only had the chance to slit one of my wrists,
witch was bandaged immediately while Wufei forced tranquilizers down my
throat. They kept me sedated until my wrist had healed. Then they started
with the psychology. I had promised not to kill myself, or even try, ever
again.
Shortly after that we were kicked out of the school.
We had no where to go, so we wandered around for a while. Wufei had
to go on some solo mission and Quatre had to help the Maguanacs with
something. So there I was, little ol' Duo all by himself with no one to talk
to except the steering wheel of the truck. And I had Death Scythe. No one
believes me, but he talks back.
At one point I headed to where Heero had done his disappearing act,
you know, the one that he can only do once.
And I said my final farewell.
After about a month, we all ended up at the same school. Wufei's
pride and sense of justice were still as annoying as ever, Quatre was still
bright and perky -- and he still had the hots for Trowa -- and I was still
pretending not to be upset. Everything was back to normal.
Then the most fucked up and wonderful thing happened.
Trowa showed up.
WITH HEERO.
To say the least I was ecstatic. Heero was alive, there fore so was I.
But nothing had really changed, Heero was still Heero, I was still
lust struck. And there wasn't a damn thing that I could do about it.
***
I lay on my bed in our room, waiting for Heero to get out of the
shower. He took almost as long as I did, and he didn't have any where near as
much hair as I do.
And I hope that never happens. He likes to threaten to cut it all off
in my sleep. Oh I would kill him afterwards, but that wouldn't make my hair
come back.
I don't care if it's girlie, but I really like my hair. So shoot me!
God!
"Baka" Heero must have seen the wistful look on my face. He walked
into the room, with his usual cold 'Perfect-Soldier' face on.
"Well gee, nice to see you too!" I grumbled at him and turned may
back. Sarcastic? Very! Angry? How could you stay angry at someone like Heero?
Well actually it's very easy, Heero always had this nasty look on his face,
and his favorite phrase was 'omae o korosu'. But you can't pick who you fall
in love with. Right?
"Baka," He muttered again, and sank down into the little chair in
front of the little desk, with his little God damned computer. Wearing only
a too-small towel.
I hated that little excuse for a computer! And who wouldn't? The
damned way that he looked at it, and the sickly blue-green of the screen.
But I wasn't minding the view at all. Nope, gotta love those school towels.
They're *way* to small.
And I hated the room we were in ... oh it was big enough, but I had to
listen to Heero breath not three feet away from me at night. I had to watch
him get dressed, ah the delicious torture. I hate this....
I don't know why or how the hell it happened ... but Heero had become
special to me. I hoped that it was just some odd teenage fascination, a kind
of lust for contact. I beat myself up inside about it, constantly arguing
with myself about the facts of my feelings for one suicidal, cold, and
beautiful Heero Yuy. But I know I'm not gay or anything. I still find girls
attractive, and I flirt with all of them shamelessly, but what I felt for
Heero was special. After all love is supposed to be special.
The glow of the screen illuminated Heero's face as his fingers
flittered over the keys.
"Anno ... Heero?"
"Aa?" He didn't look up from the screen.
"Any new missions?" I flopped back on to my bed, bouncing on the hard
thin mattress.
"No" Was his only reply.
Good, no missions. I had enough to deal with lately thank you very
much.
I got up and grabbed my wallet, I honestly couldn't take it. Sitting
still wasn't one of my strong points. So sitting still in a small room with
my potentially homicidal and suicidal roommate and object of my affection,
was most likely going to get one of us killed.
Me.
No thanks. I would get out while I could.
"Ne, Heero?"
"Hn?" Why does he have to converse with one word phrases? It pisses
me off no end!
"I ... I, uh, I'm going to the cafe. Do you want anything?" I blurted
out my excuse to leave the room, got up from the bed and walked to the door,
I grabbed my gun and stuck it in my waistband. I didn't think that I would
need it walking on the school campus, but you never know.
"No." He just kept clicking away. One day I'm gonna blow that damn
thing up!
I wasn't sure if I meant the computer or Heero. Right then I probably
would have blown them both up.
I got up and walked out the door, closing off the wispy light of our
dorm room. I walked down the hall past Quatre and Trowa's room. Then past
Wu-man's. Thank God it was the middle of the night, Wufei would be asleep
or doing some Wufei thing ... Quatre and Trowa were definitely asleep. I
could hear Quatre snoring from outside the door. For such a small mousey
person, he wasn't all that mousey when you got to know him.
Down the flight of stairs, then out of the only guy's dorm building
on campus.
The night was dark, and quiet. Just how I liked it. I didn't have to
smile or grin in the dark, no one would ever be able to tell how pissed off
I really was. Plus it was past midnight, who in their right mind would be out?
Besides me.
Then again, 'in their right mind' doesn't really fit me does it?
/No, your to fucked up to be normal.../ Remind me to kill my brain
with some lethal drug later. It had a tendency to be horribly blunt.
I walked in the direction of the trees near the end of the campus.
I had been feeling abnormally restless the last few weeks, it was an
unwelcome feeling. Like I was moving faster than everything else. I just
wanted to feel normal -- for me -- again. But no-oo, we can't be normal,
not poor Duo Maxwell. No, he has to suffer!
I'm not bitter ... can't you tell?
I walked to the trees, the cafe was just on the other side of them.
It had been a long day, and I needed some caffeine. Then something moved
through the trees. It was too dark to tell and the moon wasn't big enough
to see by. I got out my gun, poised and ready to kill whatever the hell it
was.
A girl stepped out from behind the trees.
"Duo? Is that you?" She said, confusion coloring her voice.
"That depends on who you are." Oh yeah go me. No I don't
sound like an old movie or nuthin.
"It's me Ami. What are you doing out here?" She asked, her
voice unnervingly calm. I maneuvered around and put my gun away,
hoping desperately that she hadn't seen it. But then again considering that she
was out after midnight...
/She might be from OZ or something/ It was an ugly thought, but a
possible one.
She slinked closer to me, a wicked looking smile curling her lips up.
Something was burning against my chest. I could feel blood running from my
chest, but I couldn't move my eyes away from Ami. I was riveted to her every
venomously graceful movement. I tried to ignore the tense feeling in my gut.
I had this awful feeling that I hadn't loaded my gun ... oops.
"Duo, your shaking. Are you afraid of me?" Asked the way too innocent sounding
Ami. She wasn't more than four inches away from me, but in my sudden terror I
hadn't noticed. Her eyes sparkled in the dim light, one hand reaching up. A
finger running over my cheek.
***
/What? What the hell is going on?/ I thought frantically. I couldn't
open my eyes, I couldn't move at all.
/Where the hell am I? What's going on? What the hell am I supposed to
do?/ My mind raced in unhappy little circles as I struggled to move ANYTHING.
After what seemed like hours of futile struggle, I finally moved. But
once I did I wished I hadn't. My limbs burned and protested when I moved,
and when I lay still they still hurt. It was the burning of thousands of
little cuts seeping blood all over my body.
Not a pleasant feeling to say the least.
Then I felt like I was being lifted up, as if I were weightless, into
some one's arms. My body still burned horribly, but the presence of some one
else made me feel better. The arms laid me on my bed, surprisingly softly.
/But who IS the other person?/ I opened my eyes to take a look, not
knowing if I really wanted to.
Blonde hair, soft blue eyes, and very pail. Quatre.
He was yelling something, and we were in my room. Heero was inspecting
the cuts all over my arms. Neither of them noticed that I was awake, so when
I yelped at Heero's none too gentle fingers, they both looked startled. Yes
even Heero, only less so than Quatre.
"Duo, your awake?" Quatre made it sound like a question.
"I wish I wasn't." Came my pathetic reply.
"Do you remember what happened?" Heero straitened from his observation
of my arm and looked at me.
"Not really. I went out to go to the cafe, and then there was alota
blackness." I hoped that I didn't sound quite as pathetic as I thought I did.
Heero removed the blanket that was covering me and started inspecting
the cuts all over my chest and stomach, they were all over my legs and even
my feet. That was the first time I noticed that I was only wearing my boxers.
Suddenly Wufei burst through the door. He took one look at me and his
eyes grew completely cold. It was the look he got when he was going to kill
some one.
"What the hell happened?" He growled, his fists clenched.
"Do you think I know?" I said defensively. I was afraid he might be
mad at ME.
Trowa came in quietly and walked over to where Quatre stooped. Almost
as if it were where he belonged.
None of us had any time to discus me lack of memory though, because
half the school came tumbling through the door.
They must have been trampling each other in the hall way to try and
get in our room.
One of the upper classmen pushed his way to the front, mindless of the
people he shoved out of his way.
I think his name was Makoto. Or something close.
"We heard some one yelling, and that Maxwell-kun was seriously
injured. I thought that it was my duty as an upper classmen to come and
see if there was any way I could assist you." He said in a curt,
superior voice.
All the girls, who had been pushing their ways to the front,
started cooing and fussing over 'poor little Duo-chan'. They started
in with their chatter, asking 'Does it hurt?' or 'What happened
Duo-chan?' and 'Poor little Duo! Will you be all right? Can we get
anything for you?'. The coos and questions started to run together
as the girls seemed to get more and more urgent. Some of them started
asking about the others, asking if they were hurt either. We all had
our own respective fan clubs.
I suddenly remembered that all I had on was my boxers.
Makoto held up his hand signaling for silence. But when no one
complied, he cleared his throat loudly. Everyone stopped talking and looked
at him, but when he turned back to me and the others they started whispering
all at once. It was all blurred together so I didn't catch any, but I had the
feeling that they were gonna stick around until they were tossed out, or we
gave them something to do. Oh boy.
Makoto began talking again in that annoyingly superior sounding tone.
"Maxwell-kun, is there anything we can help with?"
In the background I hear several sets of knuckles pop loudly.
Some of them weren't there to make me feel better.
Most of the big jock guys at the school hated me. They said that I
looked like a girl but the REAL girls still loved me. They thought that if
this kept up then the girls would start liking each other, so pounding me to
a bloody pulp would -- of course -- fix everything.
Like hell.
The bloody bastards never thought that such a 'pretty boy' could fight
back. Well I would have been able to if I wasn't so slashed up.
But Heero was in perfect shape, and so was Wufei, so THEY could do the
ass kicking and I could cheer from the sidelines.
Quatre was the first one to reply to Makoto's question. "They best way
you could help would be for you all to go back to bed and let family take care
of Duo."
"Family?" Makoto ground out through his teeth.
/Family?/ I echoed in my head. Quatre had talked about family before,
but he had never used the word to refer to the freak show the five of us had
become.
"You heard what I said. " Quatre replied in uncharacteristic annoyance.
Wufei and Heero stepped forward and they both fixed their glares at the
crowd. The girls in the front shrunk back visibly.
"Family?!" Makoto almost yelled. "How the hell can you call yourselves
FAMILY!?" Manners and snobbyness thrown to the wind, Makoto took a step
forward. Uncaring that Wufei and Heero now had their cold eyes fixed on him.
Even Trowa looked mildly ticked off.
Makoto took a few more steps until he was right beside my bed. He
pointed an accusing finger in my direction. "You started all this Maxwell.
But you wont be causing any more problems for the rest of us soon." He said
in what he thought was a threatening whisper.
I couldn't help myself, I laughed at him. It made my ribs hurt, and I
ended up coughing up blood, but it still infuriated him.
He said in a louder indignant voice "You wont be laughing for long
Maxwell!" and he stormed out, pushing the other on lookers out of our room
and down the hall.
Heero was about to follow him, but Wufei caught his arm and shook his
head.
Heero suddenly remembered about me, and went back to looking at the
cuts. My head suddenly hurt like hell, and when I reached up I encountered
something damp and sticky.
The back of my head was bleeding. Shit.
Wufei must noticed immediately because he ran into the bath room. There
were some shuffling sounds, and Wufei emerged with more than two rolls of
gauze.
/I'm gonna look like a mummy when they get done. Just peachy./ I
thought unhappily. I'm vain, so sue me.
Once they were done rapping up my head they started dressing the worst
of the cuts on my body. I had some pretty bad gashes on my chest, and some
really bad ones on my arms and shoulders.
After they were all done fixing me up they made me take some serious
painkillers.
It was almost dawn when I dropped off to sleep.
=========
I revised this one a while ago ... I haven't really done anything else to it except
spell check it. (yay me!)
Standard disclaimers apply
=========
This one gets a little limey. Sowwy if ya don't like it er summin ... but I
CAN'T write lemon, I don't have the stomach for it. So enjoy the ficcy.
=========
Soul Trial
Part 2
=========
I was woken up by Quatre's soft boyish voice in my ear. "Wake up,
Duo. C'mon."
I cracked an eye open and looked at the blonde boy hovering over me.
"Quatre! What time is it? Do I have to go to school?" He winced at my
instant onslaught of questions, but his only answer was to tousle my hair.
All that Quatre and I had was friendship. I love Quatre like I loved
Solo. I want something totally different with Heero relationship wise.
It's really very simple, excluding the fact that Heero and I are both
MALE.
My bed gave slightly under Quatre's butt when he sat down. He leaned
back and rested his head on my stomach.
"You can stay in bed as long as you need to. It's my turn to watch
you, Heero stayed up all night to make sure you were OK. Did you know that?"
He sighed and rolled over. Digging his elbows into my stomach and resting his
head on his hands. He looked at me from the corner of his eye.
"Iie ... I had no idea. Why would he care?" Quatre had this encouraging
theory that Heero really *did* care about me, but him being the perfect
soldier, he didn't know how to show it.
I prayed that his theory was true.
"He cares about you Duo. It's just that for him, everything is set
aside except the mission. He'll come around eventually." He patted my arm in a
comforting/reasuring manner.
I reached up to scratch my itchy head, and encountered the bandage.
The itch was right underneath it.
It was the itch of a healing wound.
Quatre reached over and scratched my head for me. What else are
friends for?
Little brown flakes rained down on the pillow. I took a hand and
lifted a chunk of my jagged bangs, focusing on it intently. It was a rusty red
color.
My dismay showed clear all over my face. "K'so! This is going to take
*forever* to get out! Why me? Why always me?"
The blonde laying on my stomach made a suggestion. "You go take a
shower, I'll take care of the sheets. Kay?" I nodded and tried to get up,
finding him still on my stomach.
"Your going to have to get off me first." I pushed at him and wiggled
a little.
He started at my words and motion and promptly removed himself. "Gomen,
I was day dreaming..."
I finished his sentence for him, "...about Trowa!" I sniggered and
hopped out of the bed. Noting that Quatre's cheeks had gone pink.
"H-hai..." He flushed a deeper pink. Almost the color of his shirt.
Satisfied, I walked into the little bathroom and turned on the water.
I fiddled with the knobs 'till I got the water just right and then
stripped off my boxers and the rust copper bandages around my head and body.
The first thing I did was to get all the flaky blood out of my hair
while it was still in the braid. Then I let it down and washed it three times.
Once I was satisfied that it didn't smell like blood anymore I poured
conditioner on my head. I let it sit for about a ten minutes and then grabbed
the comb in the soap dish, working it deliberately through my hair, making sure
not to touch the delicate skin around the new scabs. After I had finished with
my hair I worked on cleaning the scabs that were pulling at my skin.
I came out of the shower, dripping wet with only a too-small towel on
my head and another around my waist, to a slightly snoring Quatre and a
freshly made bed.
I smiled at my sleeping friend while I toweled my hair and put on
clean boxers.
It didn't strike me as out of the ordinary until Quatre snorted in
his sleep.
/Why is he so tired?/ I pondered that thought for a while, dredging up
all the possible answers. Finally I decided that everyone was just tired. Witch
was very true.
Quatre snorted again and stirred awake.
I smirked at him, his eyes were bleary and he had a half conscious look
on his face.
"Now who's the one sleeping? Why are you so tired Q-man?" Is it just
me, or do I give every one stupid nick names?
"Whaa...? Oh, that was a short shower Duo." He rubbed his eyes and
stood up.
"I took an hour and a half long shower Quatre. How long have you been
asleep?" I got out a red tank top and jeans, and as I wrestled myself into
then I wondered how the hell Trowa could manage to do it every day. I would
feel terribly restricted. But my jeans were loose and baggy.
"Oh. I guess I stayed up to late last night." I cocked an eyebrow and
waited for him to continue.
"We all stayed up worrying about you. What the hell could have done
that to you Duo? Wufei said that it was totally unjust, or something like that.
I think he was just really worried."
"You all seem to forget that I, Duo Maxwell, am a Gundam pilot! People
are after me TOO you know. Why doesn't any one remember that?"
Quatre held up his hands as if warding off an attack. "That's not what
I mean Duo. If it was OZ then they wouldn't have slashed you up and left you
there. No, they would have captured you and interrogated you. This just wasn't
OZ's style." He looked seriously concerned.
I stared at him, there was nothing I could say.
"I really don't know what happened." Then a thought that had been
nagging me surfaced.
"How the hell did you guys find me anyway?"
"Heero told us that you had gone to the cafe, because you didn't come
back for two hours." Quatre explained.
"Oh, sou ka."
"Heero was really worried about you." The serious tone in his voice
told me that he was being totally truthful.
I grabbed Quatre and started swinging him around the room. "All right!"
The dance of the giddy school girls ... er...
in our case boys. Same thing. I put Quatre in a head lock and rumpled his hair
till he squeaked. Then I let him go.
I'm not desperate. Not me.
He rubbed his head, but a large and uncharacteristic grin was
plastered on his face.
"You seem to feel better now!" He started rearranging his hair so that
it had some semblance of order.
"Hai hai!" I whirled around the room and flopped on my hard bed. Then
a more serious thought entered my head.
"What are we going to do?" I raised my head slightly to look at him.
"I don't know, I really don't." He looked down at his feet. Then he
seemed to remember something, because he perked up. "We found this. It was
kinda in your hair." He pulled a dingy white card out of his pocked and
thrust it in my direction.
I took it in my hand and read the smeary pencil on it aloud. "'Monday
one o'clock PM at the courts.' Well I guess that means that we are supposed to
go to the courts on Monday. You wanna come with?"
"Hai. I want to find out what the hell is going on." Stern resolve
showed in his crystal blue eyes. "Do you want to see if Wufei will come?"
"Aa, lets go find him." We headed out in search of Wufei. The first
place we went was to Nataku. He liked to meditate or something at his Gundam's
feet.
"Oh Wu~~u-chan! Are you here?" I ran around the place where Nataku was
hidden, shouting out to Wu.
"Urusai! Do you want the whole campus to know about this place?" Came
Wufei's aggravated response from out of no where. Then he stepped out from
behind a large tree. I took a flying acrobatic leap at him and tackled him to
the ground. He landed with a resounding thud on his back with me sitting on
top.
"Wu-chan! Quatre and I are going to meet some people or something on
Monday and we want you to come!" I gave him my big shiny puppy eyes and
toyed with the end of my braid. He gave me a dark scowl and then punched me.
It was only in the arm but it threw me off balance and I toppled over. Wufei
got up and put his foot on my braid. When I tried to get up my head jerked
backwards and I fell down to the hard overgrown forest floor. Yelping with
pain and pure surprise.
"I'll come with you." He latched onto my shoulders and hoisted me up
to my feet. I clutched my aching head and glared at him.
"You bastard! I have a scab back there! That HURT!" I made a well
placed kick to his shin, but it didn't even make him twitch.
I grumbled as I massaged my poor head. Every one seemed to go for my
head.
Quatre, being in charge of damagecontrole,pipedd up with the best
suggestion a person could make. "Who wants food?"
I bounded out of the woods, Wufei in tow by his pony tail -- let's see
how he liked being yanked around by his hair! -- and Quatre by his fore arm.
My head ache was suddenly forgotten in the mad dash for food.
***
"Stho, we sthoold go and sthee thesthe people about whatever it isth
they want, but sthoold we bring gunths?" I babbled around a much too large
mouth full of sandwich.
Wu and Quatre knew what I was saying after over a year of hearing me
talk with food in my mouth.
Don'tcha just love my manners?
Wufei put down his rice bowl and glared at me. Manners were considered
part of your honor or something. With Wu-man I really can't tell what will
insult him. But just like you can't pick who you fall in love with, you can't
always pick your friends.
"Duo, will you swallow and stop grinning like a maniac?" Wufei jabbed
his chopsticks at me.
I swallowed and rolled my eyes. The rest of our lunch went on
similarly, without any real intrusion. Some girls came by and tried to sit
on me, but once they found out that my lap wasn't big enough to fit five
girls, they got up and each gave me a fare well hug.
There all nice girls, Ryoko is really pretty. She has piercing gray
eyes and a really nice body, and Eko had the most amazing blue green eyes.
Della and Erika both have long blonde hair and pretty blue eyes. And then
there was Ami, she had the be the prettiest girl out of the five. She was
kinda like the head-hancho of the fantastic-fabulous-every-body-loves-them-
girls. Ami had long flaming red hair and almost yellow eyes. It was striking
and beautiful on her.
But, none of them were Heero, so it didn't matter. I still liked the
attention though.
"Ja ne, Duo-chan!" Ami said with a wave and a suggestive wink. I
grinned brightly at the girls.
"Duo, you shouldn't be such an attention hog. You go on and on about
how Heero never talks to you, but how can he when you're surrounded by
chattering girls?" Wufei's dark eyes pinned me down over the rim of his tea
mug.
"Aw your just jealous Wu! Just cause non of the girls like your pony
tailed ass don't mean you have to jump on me for having fun!" I grinned at him
in the most annoying way I could and pocked him in the ribs. We ate the rest of
our food as I chattered to no one in particular. Quatre would correct me or
say some other comment. But for the most part he was gazing all misty eyed in
the direction that Heavyarms was, away in the woods.
Wufei was probably angry because he knew what tonight was.
Tonight was the night I went out and drew pink bunnies and the like on
Nataku.
***
"Oi, Heero. Do you wanna come with me tonight?" I said lazily. Once we
had finished lunch, Wu-man, Quatre and I had headed back to our own respective
rooms for a nap or some silent contemplation.
Like hell.
I don't do silent.
I didn't get an answer from Heero.
So I tried again. "Heero! Oi, Heee~~ro!"
That got his attention ... well sorta.
"What do you want Duo?" He said my NAME! And it wasn't followed by some
kind of horrible threat! My lucky day.
"I said: Do you want to come with me to deface Nataku?"
He just glared at me.
Maybe it wasn't my lucky day.
"All right fine, I'll go by myself. Again." I flopped back on the bed
with my arms laced behind my head.
"Duo," He said coldly.
"Haii~~i!"
"Urusai" He gave me another quick glare and turned back to his
computer.
Now not being one to shut up, I thought provoking him might be fun.
"What did you say Heero? I didn't quite hear you." I sat up and propped
my chin in my hands, grinning as wide and as insanely as I knew how.
He turned around and fixed me with one of his glares that kill.
I wiggled my finger at him and patted the bed. "Why don't you come
over here and tell me again. So then I can hear you." Some how, my grin
broadened.
But it did not have the desired affect. Heero stood up so fast that he
knocked over his chair, but he didn't notice the loud thud it made when it hit
the floor. Heero crossed the space between us and grabbed me by the throat.
He hauled me up with one hand and slammed my back up against the wall.
"Oi! Heero, leggo!" I croacked.
His grip tightened.
"H-Heero...!" My voice cracked as Heero squeezed harder.
I could tell that my eyes were round as saucers. Heero was the most
frightening person I knew, and at that moment he was trying to kill me.
"I told you to shut up, Duo." He said coldly. He eyes were mear inches
from mine.
I tried to say something -- anything -- to get him to stop, but all I
could do was gurgle.
That must have jolted him out of his homicidal mood, because he
loosened his grip. But he didn't let go.
"I wasn't trying to hurt you." He said in his cold monotone.
I just stared at him in shock and terror.
"This is what you get for tempting me." He looked right into my eyes
as if for emphasis. "Maybe I should take you up on all your offers." He said
the last almost to himself.
I looked right into his eyes. He didn't seem nervous or hesitant in
any way. Just cool and calculating.
Just Heero.
Then, before I could take another breath, Heero assaulted me with his
mouth. He slid his tong between my startled lips. One of his hands slid up my
shirt -- the one that didn't still have a hold on my neck -- and started
roaming over my skin.
I thought it would be best for my health to just submit.
Not that I had any kinda problem with that. Needless to say, Nataku
stayed spotless.
=========
Well there ya go. That's the end of this part. The next one should be ...
i~~nteresting. So have fun ... I'm all out of things to say. ^_^;;
standard disclaimers apply
=========
Warnings: Um ... stuff happens in this one. Believe it or not. The
G-boys are pretty nasty to poor Duo in this part, but it's not all that long
or all that bad.
=========
Soul Trial
Part 3
=========
I fell asleep with a big stupid grin plastered on my face and Heero
holding me to him almost possessively.
***
/What's going on?/
Heero was in front of me, in a coffin. Quatre, Wufei and Trowa were
looking at me like they were expecting me to do something. Heero was dead. He
was in the coffin, not moving, not breathing. But he was smiling. *Really*
smiling. It was the same smile I had made when he had come to kill me, when
OZ had gotten a hold of me. Relief, peace, rest. I hated that smile. It made
me feel like he was happy that he was away from me. That he wouldn't have to
live with me anymore. Then it was gone. It was just me and Heero. Someone was
crying in the background, but I could only see Heero.
Only Heero.
He sat up. Looked at me, and reached out a hand. I took it, everything
seemed fuzzy. When we touched, I felt a shock, and then everything was white.
White clouding my eyes, crawling around my brain. Seeping into every part of
my body.
Some one was breathing, their breath loud, desperate sounding. It was
my own. Then the cold white was gone, and something warm was rapped around me.
Arms, Heero's arms. Rapped around my waist, Heero pressed against me.
~Duo...~
Heero was saying my name, calling to me! His arms left my waist, and
his figure retreated into the darkness that surrounded us.
/Don't go! You can't be *this* cruel!/
"Duo!"
"Stay with me!" I yelled out in my sleep.
Strong arms were shaking my shoulders, my eyes snapped open.
"You were having a bad dream, it's over now." Heero sounded almost
tired.
Still dazed and groggy, not knowing what I was doing, I pulled Heero
down on the bed next to me. He didn't struggle, or call me 'baka' or hit me.
Hey just lay there next to me, blue sparks of light gazing into my own eyes.
Quatre said that I had violet eyes, I guess they look that way in the mirror,
but it's hard to tell.
"Duo, what were you dreaming about?" He looked right at me, not moving
in my almost white knuckle grip around his waist.
"Yo-nothing. It was just a bad dream," I tried not to sound like I
wasn't telling the truth. But the worst thing about Heero, is that if I lie to
him he can tell.
"What was the dream *really* about , Duo?" Yup, he knew that I wasn't
telling him the truth. He always did.
"Just drop it! I don't wanna talk about it all right?" I know I sounded
like a little kid, but I really *didn't* want to talk about it.
He didn't push me, he just looked down at my arms, strangling his
waist. He quirked an eyebrow, in that oh-so-Heero way.
He looked at me and smirked, then climbed back into my bed.
"Good night Duo, if you have any more dreams you can wake me up if you
need to," He slid his arms back around my waist and pulled me right up against
him. Eventually I could hear his even breathing.
I needed to go the the bath room, I felt like I was going to faint or
throw up. I wriggled out of Heero's arms and got up as quietly as I could I
didn't want to wake Heero up. He would be grouchy if he found out that he had
woken up just because I was making a mad dash for the bathroom.
The bathroom tiles were cold under my feet.
I went over to the mirror and looked at myself, daring the 'mirror
Duo' to make a move... and he did! The surface of the mirror swirled and then
solidified. The thing staring back at me was no longer myself. There was a
little girl on the other side of the glass, her face was smeared with rust
colored blood. Her hair was matted and bloody.
And I did the first thing that came to mind. I punched the mirror, not
caring that that it made my knuckles bleed. Bloody streaks ran down the
cracked mirror.
Heero had heard the crack, and came running into the bathroom. I
crumpled to the floor holding my fist. Blood was welling up between my
clenched fingers, dripping onto the floor. Heero must have walked up to me,
because he was hauling me up in his arms. I was still clutching my fist as
Heero held me against him. He was so warm.
"Duo, what happened?!" He sounded worried, but I didn't think that was
possible.
I pointed my non-bleeding, yet shaky, hand at the broken glass. "There
was a person in the mirror!" I sounded hysterical, "It was a girl, a little
girl and she was all bloody. And she looked right at me!" I dropped my hand
and shook all over in Heero's arms, my head dropped to his shoulder, and we
just stood there.
I let myself go limp and and he carried me back to my -- well more
like OUR -- bed. He bandaged up my hand and crawled under the covers once
again.
I cracked an eye open and looked at him. "Anno...Heero, why are you
being so nice?"
He brushed his hand over my eyes, closing them for me. "Because." He
secured his arms around my waist for more than the third time that night.
"Now go to sleep."
"Arigato Heero."
"Go to sleep." He sounded like I was annoying him. Witch was most
likely true.
***
[Monday]
"DUO! Did you cut yourself again?!" Quatre sounded pissed, Wufei
looked like he was going to kill me. We were waiting at the courts, for who
ever had left that little card.
I knew they were gonna ask that.
"No! First of all it's my knuckles, not my wrist, and second it's only
my one hand. Do you think I would go back on my promise to you guys?!"
"No. Gomen, Duo. But what did you do?" Quatre looked worried, he
probably thought it was his fault. He thought that everything that went wrong
was his fault. I bet that he thinks that salt water doesn't taste good because
he didn't try hard enough. He's like that.
"I punched a mirror. I guess I looked at myself the wrong way." I
grinned and laughed. They needed to think that I was fine. Not that I was
seeing dead people in the mirrors.
"What really happened?" Wufei was a lot like Heero, in some *very*
scary ways. He could tell when I wasn't telling the truth.
"You have to promise that you wont cart me off . All right?" Fuck. They
were gonna think that I had finally snapped.
"Of course not!" Quatre was trying not to laugh. Wufei didn't seem to
think it was funny at all.
I took a deep breath and told them about the mirror and the little
girl. I left out the part about Heero. They already had enough ammunition to
make fun of me for the rest of my life. They didn't need to know that Heero
and I were...
"I see." Wufei looked at me funny.
"You don't believe me!?" I made my 'ouch-that-hurt' face. Wufei looked
at me even funnier.
"No no, Duo, we believe you," Quatre glanced at Wufei, just a flicker
of his eyes, then back to me. "Duo, after what happened on Friday, I believe
you. Really!" I grinned.
"You guys better believe me! Or else you'll get a little taste of
Shinigami!" My grin broadened.
Quatre tackled me. I don't know what was up with him, but he was in a
violent mood lately. We went down in a tangle of limbs, Quatre on top. Wufei
was laughing at us. Quatre was sitting on top of me rubbing his face, a big
shinning tear in the corner of one eye.
"Oh don't hurt me Shinigami! Pleeeease! I'm to cute to die!" He
sniffed, and hid his face in his hands. Strangled laughing and giggling coming
from behind his hands.
"Oh get off you me drama queen!" I bucked and Quatre fell off me, his
arms clutching his sides. He looked like he was choking.
"Quatre, *breath* for God's sake!" Wufei was having some trouble
breathing as well. Quatre got up, laughter wheezing from his chest. He almost
fell over again from loss of breath. Wufei fixed it by slapping him on the
back.
Once he stopped wheezing, I looked up. There was a girl in front of
us. She looked like she was about our age, maybe a little older. She was
wearing the girl's school uniform, but the left sleeve had a rip in it, a
white bandage showed through the hole. The bandage had red splotches on it.
Her red hair shown in the sunlight and her bright green eyes flashed with
amusement as she watched us. I nudged Quatre and Wufei and they looked up.
Wufei crossed his arms and stood there. Scowling.
Quatre offered his hand and she took it.
"I'm Akiko." She looked directly at me.
"That's Quatre," I pointed, "And that's Wu-chan," I smirked and
pointed. Wufei scowled. He was gonna hit me later.
"And I'm --," She cut me off in mid introduction.
"I know who *you* are, Shinigami." We gawked.
"A-and you know this, *how*?!" I sounded dumb, but that's how I felt.
So it was OK, right?
She looked at me with a confused expression, "You don't know?" I
quirked an eyebrow, and she continued. "You are Shinigami, I'm not sure how to
explain it really. You're human, but there is something special about you. You
were born special. The only thing I can do is point you down the right road.
It's your choice. But you have to know, if you chose to become on of my
enemies, then I *will* have to kill you." She looked into my eyes, and she
must have seen the confusion. She sighed and continued.
"Duo, just keep being who you are. You might never have to use the
power hidden inside you, but there will be things that are curious about you.
Things that you never thought were real, the things that go 'bump' in the
night will come after you. And you will have to rely on your power and the
power of your friends. And if you truly need the help, then I will come. But
you wont need me." She reached into her pocket and took out a piece of paper.
"You can go here for weapons, just tell them that I sent you for them. You can
get some other things there too," She handed the folded paper to me. When I
reached out to take it from her she took my hand and smiled. She really was
beautiful.
Definitely NOT gay.
She leaned closer to me and whispered, "Just one more thing," She
leaned closer and kissed me! It was the weirdest feeling. Sure, I had kissed
girls before, but this felt really *really* odd. My lips started tingling, and
so did my fingers. The pins and needles ran up my arms and down my body to my
feet. It felt like I had been plunged into a tub of ice water.
Quatre and Wufei were staring at me, and Akiko. My eyes were wide open
from the shock of the fact that she was kissing me, and the feel of it. Wufei
looked like he disapproved, Quatre was giggling and blushing at the same time.
Wufei must have thought that we were being very indecent.
Then they were gone.
Akiko was standing in front of me. Everything around us was black.
"Duo, do you know where we are?" Her voice sounded like it was
everywhere.
"This is...?" I looked around the darkness, my voice sounded small. I
knew that place. It felt like the place my mind had gone to when Heero had
'died'. Familiar. Creepy.
"Try and get out, Duo,"
Cold, everything was so cold.
I felt someone next to me, I turned and saw Heero. He scowled at me,
turned and walked away. But before I could reach out to him, someone was on
the other side of me. Quatre.
"Quatre! What's going on?" He looked at me with cold eyes. He looked
angry with me. Just like Heero he turned and walked away.
"Duo,"
I looked behind me and Wufei was glaring at me. It wouldn't have been
odd, but there was hate in his glare.
"Wufei! What did I do? Why are you all leaving me?" He looked at me
like it was obvious.
"We don't like you Duo, we never did. We never will. Why don't you
just kill yourself so that we won't have to deal with you anymore," I stared
at him in shock. My eyes stung and I felt cold. My friends were saying this to
me.
Trowa showed up last, his eyes, well his *visible eye* seemed colder
than usual, a look of disgust crossed his face and then he was gone. I had
never seen him show so much on his face.
"What did I do? Quatre, Wufei, Trowa! *Heero*! What did I do to you?!"
I knew that I sounded hysteric, but when you friends, the only people left for
you to care about, tell you just to go kill yourself to make it easier on
them, how else *could* I sound?
"What will you do Duo?" Akiko's voice sounded cold in the dark.
"What an I supposed to do? Why are they all leaving me?" My eyes
stung, and my chest hurt. I felt like I was choking, my friends were leaving
me! *Heero* was leaving me.
"What will you do Duo?" I suddenly decided that I didn't like that
voice. I had a feeling that *she* was doing this to me. This girl, Akiko, was
somehow making my friends hate me. No wait ... that wasn't it. These weren't my
friends. It was all that girl!
"Those aren't my friends! They can't be!" I sounded hysteric.
Screaming made me feel better.
"What the hell are you doing to me! Give me back my friends!!!" I
screamed again, and lashed out. With what, I have no idea, but lashed out
nonetheless. In the distance a girl screamed.
Then suddenly I was back. Akiko was sprawled on the ground at my feet.
She was still breathing. Quatre and Wufei were looking at me, concern shown in
their eyes.
I reached down and prodded the girls prone figure, and she stirred.
One liquid green eye fluttering open at my touch.
I produced my hand, thinking she would take it. She didn't. She did
one of those cool jump-up things, where you arch your back and kick yourself
up onto your feet. I've seen Wufei do it before.
She smiled at me.
"Well done Duo. I had no idea that you had so much faith in your
friends. That's good, keep it that way," With that she turned and walked away.
No sway in her step, not a waver. You would never have been able to tell that
she had been on the ground out cold just a moment before.
Fuck.
Quatre and Wufei must be confused as hell.
***
"So you were taken into some weird place, and we told you to kill
yourself?" Wufei still looked confused. That was like the tenth time I had
explained it.
"That's what I said," And It was. This was getting on my nerves.
"You *know* we would *never* say that to you, Duo. We're your best
friends!" Quatre thought it was his fault again.
"I know Quatre. I think that's what she was trying to find out. I
guess it was a test or something. I'm totally lost in this whole thing." I
don't know if I've ever felt more helpless in my life before. Well, OK so I
was exaggerating. But I still didn't like it.
"Should we tell the others?" Wufei: Voice of reason. When he's not
pissed off, or if I'm not bothering him to much.
"Yeah I guess. There's no point in trying to hide it from Heero, he'll
know as soon as I step through the door, that something is wrong. And Quatre
has a tendency to tell Trowa *everything*." I rolled my eyes in mock
exasperation.
Poor Quatre.
"Oh shutup!" He punched me in the arm, yet again. What the hell was up
with him?
"What the hell is up with you? Why are you being so damn *violent*?!"
I tried to look hurt and surprised. I suck at faking, except when I'm
pretending to be happy. I don't think that any one has ever seen through that.
I hope they didn't.
"Am I being violent?" He looked at us with those big watery blue eyes.
That word just didn't sound right for Quatre. Violent and Quatre ... nope, they
just didn't go together.
"Well you seem to like beating me up lately! You *tackled* me when we
got here!" Maybe he was having trouble with Trowa?
"I guess ... I guess Trowa has just been getting to me. And then what
happened on Friday. I guess I just want to make sure your still here. I get
worried about my friends," And damn was *that* the understatement of the
friggin *year*!
"I ain't going anywhere Quatre. I'm Shinigami, and I have work to do!
You aren't gonna get rid of me yet!" Quatre seemed like he needed me to sound
cheerful.
/Trowa must really be oblivious. But I don't see how, he's like the
most observant one out of all of us. Maybe he does know and he's just afraid
or something.../
"Any body want to get some dinner? We could go to town and find that
weapons place! And then we could find a dinner or something. You have money,
right?" He should. He's like the richest person I know!
Quatre nodded, and I grabbed them both by the wrist and dragged them
off to town. And I'm serious about that, I literally had to drag both of them.
=========
And that's the end of the third part. Hope ya liked it.
Standard disclaimers apply
=========
This is kind a teaser. I'll work on it some more later, I PROMISE! So
don't throw things at me!
=========
Soul Trial
Part 4
=========
Why is it that whenever you go somewhere - and you just happen to
be nervous as hell - you keep thinking that everyone you see is starting
at you? It has to be one of the worst feelings. Well that and being blown
into itty bitty pieces. But I guess Heero would know more about that then
me.
Wufei walked into the dinner first, he seemed to think it might
be dangerous or something. Quatre and I followed. I swear, every set of
eyes in the whole place followed us.
I don't like the feeling that I'm being sized up. Now I know what
the meat feels like in the supermarkets. I don't think I'll be able to
eat meat any more.
Well needless to say we got out of there as fast as we could. I
didn't get anywhere near enough to eat, but I really didn't like the feel
of that place. Come to think of it, I was starting to not like the feel
of anywhere. Just walking down the street was becoming uncomfortable. All
the people, with their hunched shoulders. They all seemed to be walking
awfully fast. People are weird, ne?
"Why are the all looking at us?" Quatre's nervous whisper barely
reached my ears. In answer I just shrugged and kept walking.
Then, with a sudden sense of foreboding, the crowd seemed to get
thicker. Bodies pressed against us from all sides, and they all seemed to
be going in the opposite direction of us. I caught a glimpse of one of
their eyes. They were red, and that CAN'T be natural.
Quatre squeaked from somewhere near my shoulder. He was having
trouble fighting against the swarming bodies. I caught him by the arm and
half dragged him behind me. I started elbowing people out of the way,
wanting nothing more than the get the hell home.
A woman bumped into me, much harder than necessary, and I lost my
balance. I toppled into the woman and ended up in a tangle of limbs on the
hard concrete. I landed on top.
The woman squeaked faintly when we landed. She probably got the
wind knocked outta her. I got up as fast as I could, trying not to look
at her while muttering apologies.
The lady giggled, and I stopped stammering abruptly. People who
just got fallen on by some one larger and taller than them (and I'm short
and skinny so that's saying allot) don't just start giggling. She picked
herself up with no trouble at all and smiled at me.
I just looked at her, my jaw must have been brushing the floor.
People just didn't act like that. I kept starting at her, as if seeing her
for the first time. She was really very pretty, she had olive skin, large
deep brown eyes, and long black hair that was coiled into a slightly
sloppy bun - but that could have been due to the fact that I had just
fallen on her - the coat she was wearing was slightly wrinkled, the hem
fell past her knees, covering the tops of her lace up boots. She smiled
wider, so that her strait white teeth showed.
"Er ... I'm really sorry about that." I said nervously. Did she
*have* to keep smiling like that?
"Your awfully pretty for a boy." She said.
I felt my face go hot. "Erm .... thanks...?" I meant it more as a
question.
She walked closer, on arm outstretched towards me. An olive finger
brushed my cheek, two large brown eyes looked strait into mine,
unblinking. I tried to take a step back, but she caught my wrist and
whispered "No, I think I'll take you with me." She narrowed her eyes in
what was a very successful seductive expression.
I tried to struggle out of her - seemingly more than human - grip.
But she tightened her grip and the bones in my wrist grated together
painfully. I let out a yelp of displeasure, and then wanted to smack
myself. Going and whining wouldn't help the situation any. Knowing my luck
it most likely would have made it worse.
"Hold still lovely." Whispered the woman, she was still staring at
me, but her eyes had changed. I hadn't noticed in my attempt to get away,
but they were red now. The brown was almost completely undetectable.
I grimaced, trying hard not to make any kind of pathetic sound.
All I could do was wait until she loosened her grip so that I could get
away somehow.
And then, in only a few seconds, my only hope of getting any help
vanished with a squeak and a grunt.
Wufei and Quatre had been taken down. I could see them out of the
corner of my eye. Wufei was struggling under the wait of a very very large
man. Quatre had been pinned to the wall by another woman. This one was
taller than any of us, and almost as large as the man sitting on Wufei.
"Leggo!" I said in a voice that sounded very pathetic in my ears.
"But if I do that then, my pet, I wont be able to take you to
master." She said in a very honeyed voice. Her eyes misted over in what
looked like an expression of pure bliss. I took the opportunity, by
wrenching my arm out of her relaxed grip.
Once away from the creepy lady, I took a flying leap at Wufei's
very large attacker. And believe me, even a troll will feel a flying kick
to the ribs. It gave Wufei enough time to scramble away.
We looked at each other, nodded, and ran at the woman - who
appeared to by trying to unbutton Quatre's shirt - knocking into her with
our elbows. She keeled over, clutching her sides. Quatre squeaked and
fastened his shirt as fast as he could.
As we were running ... er ... retreating, I looked over my shoulder.
The olive skinned woman was staring after us. Her eyes narrowed in a
menacingly. Her lips were curled into an evil smirk.
We were being hunted, and she didn't think it was going to be
very hard to catch us again.
Oh yes, we were in deep shit now.
***
"What happened?" Heero asked the second I walked into the door.
I looked down at my feet. I was ashamed of being frightened,
ashamed that I hadn't been able to mask it, and ashamed that I was more
worried about Heero and my relationship - or lack of, whatever the case
may be - than I was about leather boot clad, troll-like minions hunting
us down. "Nothing. We just went out for dinner. I would have asked you
but you weren't around."
Heero grabbed my shoulders. "Duo, talk." He steered me over to the
bed and sat me down, then sat himself down next to me. "Talk." He said
again.
"All right geez." I said finally. He looked like he was about to
start poking me or something "We went out, and then on our way back these
freaky people with red eyes jumped us. They said they wanted to take
us back to "master" whatever the hell that means. There I told you, now
do you think I'm insane or what?" I looked at him accusingly.
"Are you All right?" Was all he said.
I just stared at him - I seemed to be doing that allot.
He smirked at me, and brushed a finger down my neck. I shivered
and looked up at him. Then finding some sudden energy, I jumped on him.
He pinned me, but once again, I'm not complaining.
***
I woke up happy as a clam, but slightly sore. But once I got my
bearings, and the day before started to seep back in, the feelings of
badness came flooding back. Some one was out there trying to find us, and
they had done that already. We were so fucked.
I groped around in the covers, and found Heero. He was a few feet
away from me, curled up in a small fetal ball. I touched his arm and he
flinched. His eyes snapped open and he groped for a gun that wasn't
there. Slow realization crept over his face.
"Heero? What was that all about?" I asked, grasping his shoulder.
"Just a dream, go back to sleep." he said, and tried to roll back
over.
"Heero, we have to go to class." I poked at him, waiting for him
to jump up, wrestle his clothes on and run down to classes. He didn't
move. "Heero...?" He rolled back over. The covers had slid off half way,
revealing his naked skin down to his hips. He looked at me, and sat up.
I poked him in the stomach, right above the covers pooling in his lap.
"We have classes. Get dressed." He said, kissed me lightly, and then
got up. We got dressed in silence. Walked down the hall in silence,
in fact I think the only time we talked that morning was when Heero bumped
into me and grunted. Hey, with him, that counts as talking.
Our classes passed with out anything really note worthy happening.
I dropped my pencil, and Heero and I both bent to pick it up, causing a
very awkward moment. But that's really about it.
"Heero-kun?" One of the wide eyed Heero worshipers had plucked up
enough courage to talk to her dark haired blue eyed god.
"Hn?" Heero said in his usual cold tone.
"Um ... never mind..." She walked off looking very let down.
"Heero, you don't have to scare them all off like that. Most of
the girls here are really nice. I bet a little female companionship would
do you good." I poked him in the ribs, and took a step back to avoid the
back of Heero's hand.
"Duo, shut up." He glared at me. "I don't want female
companionship."
"Sorry, geez." I slumped in my chair, trying to hide behind my
heaping lunch.
"Hii~~!" Quatre sang from behind me. He and Trowa had just walked
into the lunch room. Wufei stalked in from the other side, looking
disgruntled.
"Hello. What's up?" I asked when they all sat down. Wufei was
scowling like some one had just pinched his ass. Quatre seemed cheerful as
ever, and Trowa just looked .... quiet.
Quatre was the only one who answered with words. "I'm fine. We
just had a quiz in history. I think I passed. What have you guys been
doing all day?" He asked, looking more cheerful than anyone had a right to
be.
"Absolutely nothing. Heero has been quiet as usual, and he just
scared off a fan. Just another normal day." I sighed and started shoveling
my food down my throat.
Quatre looked a little crestfallen, but he perked up when Trowa
said that they should all get pizza or something that night. Anything
social will perk Quatre up. He just seems to like to chatter.
And for the rest of the day nothing happened, until Heero and I
got to gym.
People kept bumping into us while we were changing. And it was
really not fun. I was in a room full of guys, who seemed to be going out
of their way to trip over something and catch themselves on me. Heero
was having the same problem.
"What the hell is going on?" I muttered out of the corner of my
mouth so that the other guys wouldn't notice. Heero just scowled. He
didn't seem to like this extra attention.
It was a good thing that gym was our last class, cause I was about
to punch the next guy who bumped into me. And Heero's finger was
twitching, pulling the trigger of a gun that wasn't there. This was not
something that he was enjoying.
Well at least we came away from gym with only a few bruises, and
a very disgruntled Heero. He was going to need a ruffled tail feather
smoothing session. But I don't think a quick roll in the hay would fix it.
He was unnerved. Just like me.
I patted him on the arm while we made our way back to the dorm.
The promise of pizza and beer lingering in my head. Maybe that would
help Heero out ... maybe.
=========
I'll elaborate .... later. I'm procrastinating.
=========
OK, this if is just plain weird, so get over it. This fic, like just about is an
AU, so you will be experiencing OOC, blood, bad things, blood, more bad
things and more blood...and did I mention OOC? I did? Ah well.
=========
Soul Trial
Part 1
=========
Whoo ... where to start? Well I guess I should start at the
beginning. Or the beginning of all the really really odd shit. Well
for one thing, I'm a Gundam pilot. Death Scythe, my machine partner,
is probably the only one who knows everything about me. I'm sure you
think it's silly to care so much about a big giant blood thirsty robot,
but if you knew Death Scythe then you would too.
But that's not the weirdest thing ...
I was in love with my human partner .... who just coincidentally
happened to be another man. But that's just a small over-lookable detail,
ne? Well anyways I was in love with Heero, and I don't think he knew or
cared.
But the real kicker is about to come .... all because Heero is an
uncaring bastard.
It had happened that lovely day when Heero self-destructed. And
BOOM! Wave bye-bye to Heero. So I took a knife, and you know what
happens after that.
Wufei and Quatre must have anticipated my stupidity, they kicked
down the door to the bathroom and wrestled me out. Wufei smacked me 'till
I came back to reality. I had only had the chance to slit one of my wrists,
witch was bandaged immediately while Wufei forced tranquilizers down my
throat. They kept me sedated until my wrist had healed. Then they started
with the psychology. I had promised not to kill myself, or even try, ever
again.
Shortly after that we were kicked out of the school.
We had no where to go, so we wandered around for a while. Wufei had
to go on some solo mission and Quatre had to help the Maguanacs with
something. So there I was, little ol' Duo all by himself with no one to talk
to except the steering wheel of the truck. And I had Death Scythe. No one
believes me, but he talks back.
At one point I headed to where Heero had done his disappearing act,
you know, the one that he can only do once.
And I said my final farewell.
After about a month, we all ended up at the same school. Wufei's
pride and sense of justice were still as annoying as ever, Quatre was still
bright and perky -- and he still had the hots for Trowa -- and I was still
pretending not to be upset. Everything was back to normal.
Then the most fucked up and wonderful thing happened.
Trowa showed up.
WITH HEERO.
To say the least I was ecstatic. Heero was alive, there fore so was I.
But nothing had really changed, Heero was still Heero, I was still
lust struck. And there wasn't a damn thing that I could do about it.
***
I lay on my bed in our room, waiting for Heero to get out of the
shower. He took almost as long as I did, and he didn't have any where near as
much hair as I do.
And I hope that never happens. He likes to threaten to cut it all off
in my sleep. Oh I would kill him afterwards, but that wouldn't make my hair
come back.
I don't care if it's girlie, but I really like my hair. So shoot me!
God!
"Baka" Heero must have seen the wistful look on my face. He walked
into the room, with his usual cold 'Perfect-Soldier' face on.
"Well gee, nice to see you too!" I grumbled at him and turned may
back. Sarcastic? Very! Angry? How could you stay angry at someone like Heero?
Well actually it's very easy, Heero always had this nasty look on his face,
and his favorite phrase was 'omae o korosu'. But you can't pick who you fall
in love with. Right?
"Baka," He muttered again, and sank down into the little chair in
front of the little desk, with his little God damned computer. Wearing only
a too-small towel.
I hated that little excuse for a computer! And who wouldn't? The
damned way that he looked at it, and the sickly blue-green of the screen.
But I wasn't minding the view at all. Nope, gotta love those school towels.
They're *way* to small.
And I hated the room we were in ... oh it was big enough, but I had to
listen to Heero breath not three feet away from me at night. I had to watch
him get dressed, ah the delicious torture. I hate this....
I don't know why or how the hell it happened ... but Heero had become
special to me. I hoped that it was just some odd teenage fascination, a kind
of lust for contact. I beat myself up inside about it, constantly arguing
with myself about the facts of my feelings for one suicidal, cold, and
beautiful Heero Yuy. But I know I'm not gay or anything. I still find girls
attractive, and I flirt with all of them shamelessly, but what I felt for
Heero was special. After all love is supposed to be special.
The glow of the screen illuminated Heero's face as his fingers
flittered over the keys.
"Anno ... Heero?"
"Aa?" He didn't look up from the screen.
"Any new missions?" I flopped back on to my bed, bouncing on the hard
thin mattress.
"No" Was his only reply.
Good, no missions. I had enough to deal with lately thank you very
much.
I got up and grabbed my wallet, I honestly couldn't take it. Sitting
still wasn't one of my strong points. So sitting still in a small room with
my potentially homicidal and suicidal roommate and object of my affection,
was most likely going to get one of us killed.
Me.
No thanks. I would get out while I could.
"Ne, Heero?"
"Hn?" Why does he have to converse with one word phrases? It pisses
me off no end!
"I ... I, uh, I'm going to the cafe. Do you want anything?" I blurted
out my excuse to leave the room, got up from the bed and walked to the door,
I grabbed my gun and stuck it in my waistband. I didn't think that I would
need it walking on the school campus, but you never know.
"No." He just kept clicking away. One day I'm gonna blow that damn
thing up!
I wasn't sure if I meant the computer or Heero. Right then I probably
would have blown them both up.
I got up and walked out the door, closing off the wispy light of our
dorm room. I walked down the hall past Quatre and Trowa's room. Then past
Wu-man's. Thank God it was the middle of the night, Wufei would be asleep
or doing some Wufei thing ... Quatre and Trowa were definitely asleep. I
could hear Quatre snoring from outside the door. For such a small mousey
person, he wasn't all that mousey when you got to know him.
Down the flight of stairs, then out of the only guy's dorm building
on campus.
The night was dark, and quiet. Just how I liked it. I didn't have to
smile or grin in the dark, no one would ever be able to tell how pissed off
I really was. Plus it was past midnight, who in their right mind would be out?
Besides me.
Then again, 'in their right mind' doesn't really fit me does it?
/No, your to fucked up to be normal.../ Remind me to kill my brain
with some lethal drug later. It had a tendency to be horribly blunt.
I walked in the direction of the trees near the end of the campus.
I had been feeling abnormally restless the last few weeks, it was an
unwelcome feeling. Like I was moving faster than everything else. I just
wanted to feel normal -- for me -- again. But no-oo, we can't be normal,
not poor Duo Maxwell. No, he has to suffer!
I'm not bitter ... can't you tell?
I walked to the trees, the cafe was just on the other side of them.
It had been a long day, and I needed some caffeine. Then something moved
through the trees. It was too dark to tell and the moon wasn't big enough
to see by. I got out my gun, poised and ready to kill whatever the hell it
was.
A girl stepped out from behind the trees.
"Duo? Is that you?" She said, confusion coloring her voice.
"That depends on who you are." Oh yeah go me. No I don't
sound like an old movie or nuthin.
"It's me Ami. What are you doing out here?" She asked, her
voice unnervingly calm. I maneuvered around and put my gun away,
hoping desperately that she hadn't seen it. But then again considering that she
was out after midnight...
/She might be from OZ or something/ It was an ugly thought, but a
possible one.
She slinked closer to me, a wicked looking smile curling her lips up.
Something was burning against my chest. I could feel blood running from my
chest, but I couldn't move my eyes away from Ami. I was riveted to her every
venomously graceful movement. I tried to ignore the tense feeling in my gut.
I had this awful feeling that I hadn't loaded my gun ... oops.
"Duo, your shaking. Are you afraid of me?" Asked the way too innocent sounding
Ami. She wasn't more than four inches away from me, but in my sudden terror I
hadn't noticed. Her eyes sparkled in the dim light, one hand reaching up. A
finger running over my cheek.
***
/What? What the hell is going on?/ I thought frantically. I couldn't
open my eyes, I couldn't move at all.
/Where the hell am I? What's going on? What the hell am I supposed to
do?/ My mind raced in unhappy little circles as I struggled to move ANYTHING.
After what seemed like hours of futile struggle, I finally moved. But
once I did I wished I hadn't. My limbs burned and protested when I moved,
and when I lay still they still hurt. It was the burning of thousands of
little cuts seeping blood all over my body.
Not a pleasant feeling to say the least.
Then I felt like I was being lifted up, as if I were weightless, into
some one's arms. My body still burned horribly, but the presence of some one
else made me feel better. The arms laid me on my bed, surprisingly softly.
/But who IS the other person?/ I opened my eyes to take a look, not
knowing if I really wanted to.
Blonde hair, soft blue eyes, and very pail. Quatre.
He was yelling something, and we were in my room. Heero was inspecting
the cuts all over my arms. Neither of them noticed that I was awake, so when
I yelped at Heero's none too gentle fingers, they both looked startled. Yes
even Heero, only less so than Quatre.
"Duo, your awake?" Quatre made it sound like a question.
"I wish I wasn't." Came my pathetic reply.
"Do you remember what happened?" Heero straitened from his observation
of my arm and looked at me.
"Not really. I went out to go to the cafe, and then there was alota
blackness." I hoped that I didn't sound quite as pathetic as I thought I did.
Heero removed the blanket that was covering me and started inspecting
the cuts all over my chest and stomach, they were all over my legs and even
my feet. That was the first time I noticed that I was only wearing my boxers.
Suddenly Wufei burst through the door. He took one look at me and his
eyes grew completely cold. It was the look he got when he was going to kill
some one.
"What the hell happened?" He growled, his fists clenched.
"Do you think I know?" I said defensively. I was afraid he might be
mad at ME.
Trowa came in quietly and walked over to where Quatre stooped. Almost
as if it were where he belonged.
None of us had any time to discus me lack of memory though, because
half the school came tumbling through the door.
They must have been trampling each other in the hall way to try and
get in our room.
One of the upper classmen pushed his way to the front, mindless of the
people he shoved out of his way.
I think his name was Makoto. Or something close.
"We heard some one yelling, and that Maxwell-kun was seriously
injured. I thought that it was my duty as an upper classmen to come and
see if there was any way I could assist you." He said in a curt,
superior voice.
All the girls, who had been pushing their ways to the front,
started cooing and fussing over 'poor little Duo-chan'. They started
in with their chatter, asking 'Does it hurt?' or 'What happened
Duo-chan?' and 'Poor little Duo! Will you be all right? Can we get
anything for you?'. The coos and questions started to run together
as the girls seemed to get more and more urgent. Some of them started
asking about the others, asking if they were hurt either. We all had
our own respective fan clubs.
I suddenly remembered that all I had on was my boxers.
Makoto held up his hand signaling for silence. But when no one
complied, he cleared his throat loudly. Everyone stopped talking and looked
at him, but when he turned back to me and the others they started whispering
all at once. It was all blurred together so I didn't catch any, but I had the
feeling that they were gonna stick around until they were tossed out, or we
gave them something to do. Oh boy.
Makoto began talking again in that annoyingly superior sounding tone.
"Maxwell-kun, is there anything we can help with?"
In the background I hear several sets of knuckles pop loudly.
Some of them weren't there to make me feel better.
Most of the big jock guys at the school hated me. They said that I
looked like a girl but the REAL girls still loved me. They thought that if
this kept up then the girls would start liking each other, so pounding me to
a bloody pulp would -- of course -- fix everything.
Like hell.
The bloody bastards never thought that such a 'pretty boy' could fight
back. Well I would have been able to if I wasn't so slashed up.
But Heero was in perfect shape, and so was Wufei, so THEY could do the
ass kicking and I could cheer from the sidelines.
Quatre was the first one to reply to Makoto's question. "They best way
you could help would be for you all to go back to bed and let family take care
of Duo."
"Family?" Makoto ground out through his teeth.
/Family?/ I echoed in my head. Quatre had talked about family before,
but he had never used the word to refer to the freak show the five of us had
become.
"You heard what I said. " Quatre replied in uncharacteristic annoyance.
Wufei and Heero stepped forward and they both fixed their glares at the
crowd. The girls in the front shrunk back visibly.
"Family?!" Makoto almost yelled. "How the hell can you call yourselves
FAMILY!?" Manners and snobbyness thrown to the wind, Makoto took a step
forward. Uncaring that Wufei and Heero now had their cold eyes fixed on him.
Even Trowa looked mildly ticked off.
Makoto took a few more steps until he was right beside my bed. He
pointed an accusing finger in my direction. "You started all this Maxwell.
But you wont be causing any more problems for the rest of us soon." He said
in what he thought was a threatening whisper.
I couldn't help myself, I laughed at him. It made my ribs hurt, and I
ended up coughing up blood, but it still infuriated him.
He said in a louder indignant voice "You wont be laughing for long
Maxwell!" and he stormed out, pushing the other on lookers out of our room
and down the hall.
Heero was about to follow him, but Wufei caught his arm and shook his
head.
Heero suddenly remembered about me, and went back to looking at the
cuts. My head suddenly hurt like hell, and when I reached up I encountered
something damp and sticky.
The back of my head was bleeding. Shit.
Wufei must noticed immediately because he ran into the bath room. There
were some shuffling sounds, and Wufei emerged with more than two rolls of
gauze.
/I'm gonna look like a mummy when they get done. Just peachy./ I
thought unhappily. I'm vain, so sue me.
Once they were done rapping up my head they started dressing the worst
of the cuts on my body. I had some pretty bad gashes on my chest, and some
really bad ones on my arms and shoulders.
After they were all done fixing me up they made me take some serious
painkillers.
It was almost dawn when I dropped off to sleep.
=========
I revised this one a while ago ... I haven't really done anything else to it except
spell check it. (yay me!)
Standard disclaimers apply
=========
This one gets a little limey. Sowwy if ya don't like it er summin ... but I
CAN'T write lemon, I don't have the stomach for it. So enjoy the ficcy.
=========
Soul Trial
Part 2
=========
I was woken up by Quatre's soft boyish voice in my ear. "Wake up,
Duo. C'mon."
I cracked an eye open and looked at the blonde boy hovering over me.
"Quatre! What time is it? Do I have to go to school?" He winced at my
instant onslaught of questions, but his only answer was to tousle my hair.
All that Quatre and I had was friendship. I love Quatre like I loved
Solo. I want something totally different with Heero relationship wise.
It's really very simple, excluding the fact that Heero and I are both
MALE.
My bed gave slightly under Quatre's butt when he sat down. He leaned
back and rested his head on my stomach.
"You can stay in bed as long as you need to. It's my turn to watch
you, Heero stayed up all night to make sure you were OK. Did you know that?"
He sighed and rolled over. Digging his elbows into my stomach and resting his
head on his hands. He looked at me from the corner of his eye.
"Iie ... I had no idea. Why would he care?" Quatre had this encouraging
theory that Heero really *did* care about me, but him being the perfect
soldier, he didn't know how to show it.
I prayed that his theory was true.
"He cares about you Duo. It's just that for him, everything is set
aside except the mission. He'll come around eventually." He patted my arm in a
comforting/reasuring manner.
I reached up to scratch my itchy head, and encountered the bandage.
The itch was right underneath it.
It was the itch of a healing wound.
Quatre reached over and scratched my head for me. What else are
friends for?
Little brown flakes rained down on the pillow. I took a hand and
lifted a chunk of my jagged bangs, focusing on it intently. It was a rusty red
color.
My dismay showed clear all over my face. "K'so! This is going to take
*forever* to get out! Why me? Why always me?"
The blonde laying on my stomach made a suggestion. "You go take a
shower, I'll take care of the sheets. Kay?" I nodded and tried to get up,
finding him still on my stomach.
"Your going to have to get off me first." I pushed at him and wiggled
a little.
He started at my words and motion and promptly removed himself. "Gomen,
I was day dreaming..."
I finished his sentence for him, "...about Trowa!" I sniggered and
hopped out of the bed. Noting that Quatre's cheeks had gone pink.
"H-hai..." He flushed a deeper pink. Almost the color of his shirt.
Satisfied, I walked into the little bathroom and turned on the water.
I fiddled with the knobs 'till I got the water just right and then
stripped off my boxers and the rust copper bandages around my head and body.
The first thing I did was to get all the flaky blood out of my hair
while it was still in the braid. Then I let it down and washed it three times.
Once I was satisfied that it didn't smell like blood anymore I poured
conditioner on my head. I let it sit for about a ten minutes and then grabbed
the comb in the soap dish, working it deliberately through my hair, making sure
not to touch the delicate skin around the new scabs. After I had finished with
my hair I worked on cleaning the scabs that were pulling at my skin.
I came out of the shower, dripping wet with only a too-small towel on
my head and another around my waist, to a slightly snoring Quatre and a
freshly made bed.
I smiled at my sleeping friend while I toweled my hair and put on
clean boxers.
It didn't strike me as out of the ordinary until Quatre snorted in
his sleep.
/Why is he so tired?/ I pondered that thought for a while, dredging up
all the possible answers. Finally I decided that everyone was just tired. Witch
was very true.
Quatre snorted again and stirred awake.
I smirked at him, his eyes were bleary and he had a half conscious look
on his face.
"Now who's the one sleeping? Why are you so tired Q-man?" Is it just
me, or do I give every one stupid nick names?
"Whaa...? Oh, that was a short shower Duo." He rubbed his eyes and
stood up.
"I took an hour and a half long shower Quatre. How long have you been
asleep?" I got out a red tank top and jeans, and as I wrestled myself into
then I wondered how the hell Trowa could manage to do it every day. I would
feel terribly restricted. But my jeans were loose and baggy.
"Oh. I guess I stayed up to late last night." I cocked an eyebrow and
waited for him to continue.
"We all stayed up worrying about you. What the hell could have done
that to you Duo? Wufei said that it was totally unjust, or something like that.
I think he was just really worried."
"You all seem to forget that I, Duo Maxwell, am a Gundam pilot! People
are after me TOO you know. Why doesn't any one remember that?"
Quatre held up his hands as if warding off an attack. "That's not what
I mean Duo. If it was OZ then they wouldn't have slashed you up and left you
there. No, they would have captured you and interrogated you. This just wasn't
OZ's style." He looked seriously concerned.
I stared at him, there was nothing I could say.
"I really don't know what happened." Then a thought that had been
nagging me surfaced.
"How the hell did you guys find me anyway?"
"Heero told us that you had gone to the cafe, because you didn't come
back for two hours." Quatre explained.
"Oh, sou ka."
"Heero was really worried about you." The serious tone in his voice
told me that he was being totally truthful.
I grabbed Quatre and started swinging him around the room. "All right!"
The dance of the giddy school girls ... er...
in our case boys. Same thing. I put Quatre in a head lock and rumpled his hair
till he squeaked. Then I let him go.
I'm not desperate. Not me.
He rubbed his head, but a large and uncharacteristic grin was
plastered on his face.
"You seem to feel better now!" He started rearranging his hair so that
it had some semblance of order.
"Hai hai!" I whirled around the room and flopped on my hard bed. Then
a more serious thought entered my head.
"What are we going to do?" I raised my head slightly to look at him.
"I don't know, I really don't." He looked down at his feet. Then he
seemed to remember something, because he perked up. "We found this. It was
kinda in your hair." He pulled a dingy white card out of his pocked and
thrust it in my direction.
I took it in my hand and read the smeary pencil on it aloud. "'Monday
one o'clock PM at the courts.' Well I guess that means that we are supposed to
go to the courts on Monday. You wanna come with?"
"Hai. I want to find out what the hell is going on." Stern resolve
showed in his crystal blue eyes. "Do you want to see if Wufei will come?"
"Aa, lets go find him." We headed out in search of Wufei. The first
place we went was to Nataku. He liked to meditate or something at his Gundam's
feet.
"Oh Wu~~u-chan! Are you here?" I ran around the place where Nataku was
hidden, shouting out to Wu.
"Urusai! Do you want the whole campus to know about this place?" Came
Wufei's aggravated response from out of no where. Then he stepped out from
behind a large tree. I took a flying acrobatic leap at him and tackled him to
the ground. He landed with a resounding thud on his back with me sitting on
top.
"Wu-chan! Quatre and I are going to meet some people or something on
Monday and we want you to come!" I gave him my big shiny puppy eyes and
toyed with the end of my braid. He gave me a dark scowl and then punched me.
It was only in the arm but it threw me off balance and I toppled over. Wufei
got up and put his foot on my braid. When I tried to get up my head jerked
backwards and I fell down to the hard overgrown forest floor. Yelping with
pain and pure surprise.
"I'll come with you." He latched onto my shoulders and hoisted me up
to my feet. I clutched my aching head and glared at him.
"You bastard! I have a scab back there! That HURT!" I made a well
placed kick to his shin, but it didn't even make him twitch.
I grumbled as I massaged my poor head. Every one seemed to go for my
head.
Quatre, being in charge of damagecontrole,pipedd up with the best
suggestion a person could make. "Who wants food?"
I bounded out of the woods, Wufei in tow by his pony tail -- let's see
how he liked being yanked around by his hair! -- and Quatre by his fore arm.
My head ache was suddenly forgotten in the mad dash for food.
***
"Stho, we sthoold go and sthee thesthe people about whatever it isth
they want, but sthoold we bring gunths?" I babbled around a much too large
mouth full of sandwich.
Wu and Quatre knew what I was saying after over a year of hearing me
talk with food in my mouth.
Don'tcha just love my manners?
Wufei put down his rice bowl and glared at me. Manners were considered
part of your honor or something. With Wu-man I really can't tell what will
insult him. But just like you can't pick who you fall in love with, you can't
always pick your friends.
"Duo, will you swallow and stop grinning like a maniac?" Wufei jabbed
his chopsticks at me.
I swallowed and rolled my eyes. The rest of our lunch went on
similarly, without any real intrusion. Some girls came by and tried to sit
on me, but once they found out that my lap wasn't big enough to fit five
girls, they got up and each gave me a fare well hug.
There all nice girls, Ryoko is really pretty. She has piercing gray
eyes and a really nice body, and Eko had the most amazing blue green eyes.
Della and Erika both have long blonde hair and pretty blue eyes. And then
there was Ami, she had the be the prettiest girl out of the five. She was
kinda like the head-hancho of the fantastic-fabulous-every-body-loves-them-
girls. Ami had long flaming red hair and almost yellow eyes. It was striking
and beautiful on her.
But, none of them were Heero, so it didn't matter. I still liked the
attention though.
"Ja ne, Duo-chan!" Ami said with a wave and a suggestive wink. I
grinned brightly at the girls.
"Duo, you shouldn't be such an attention hog. You go on and on about
how Heero never talks to you, but how can he when you're surrounded by
chattering girls?" Wufei's dark eyes pinned me down over the rim of his tea
mug.
"Aw your just jealous Wu! Just cause non of the girls like your pony
tailed ass don't mean you have to jump on me for having fun!" I grinned at him
in the most annoying way I could and pocked him in the ribs. We ate the rest of
our food as I chattered to no one in particular. Quatre would correct me or
say some other comment. But for the most part he was gazing all misty eyed in
the direction that Heavyarms was, away in the woods.
Wufei was probably angry because he knew what tonight was.
Tonight was the night I went out and drew pink bunnies and the like on
Nataku.
***
"Oi, Heero. Do you wanna come with me tonight?" I said lazily. Once we
had finished lunch, Wu-man, Quatre and I had headed back to our own respective
rooms for a nap or some silent contemplation.
Like hell.
I don't do silent.
I didn't get an answer from Heero.
So I tried again. "Heero! Oi, Heee~~ro!"
That got his attention ... well sorta.
"What do you want Duo?" He said my NAME! And it wasn't followed by some
kind of horrible threat! My lucky day.
"I said: Do you want to come with me to deface Nataku?"
He just glared at me.
Maybe it wasn't my lucky day.
"All right fine, I'll go by myself. Again." I flopped back on the bed
with my arms laced behind my head.
"Duo," He said coldly.
"Haii~~i!"
"Urusai" He gave me another quick glare and turned back to his
computer.
Now not being one to shut up, I thought provoking him might be fun.
"What did you say Heero? I didn't quite hear you." I sat up and propped
my chin in my hands, grinning as wide and as insanely as I knew how.
He turned around and fixed me with one of his glares that kill.
I wiggled my finger at him and patted the bed. "Why don't you come
over here and tell me again. So then I can hear you." Some how, my grin
broadened.
But it did not have the desired affect. Heero stood up so fast that he
knocked over his chair, but he didn't notice the loud thud it made when it hit
the floor. Heero crossed the space between us and grabbed me by the throat.
He hauled me up with one hand and slammed my back up against the wall.
"Oi! Heero, leggo!" I croacked.
His grip tightened.
"H-Heero...!" My voice cracked as Heero squeezed harder.
I could tell that my eyes were round as saucers. Heero was the most
frightening person I knew, and at that moment he was trying to kill me.
"I told you to shut up, Duo." He said coldly. He eyes were mear inches
from mine.
I tried to say something -- anything -- to get him to stop, but all I
could do was gurgle.
That must have jolted him out of his homicidal mood, because he
loosened his grip. But he didn't let go.
"I wasn't trying to hurt you." He said in his cold monotone.
I just stared at him in shock and terror.
"This is what you get for tempting me." He looked right into my eyes
as if for emphasis. "Maybe I should take you up on all your offers." He said
the last almost to himself.
I looked right into his eyes. He didn't seem nervous or hesitant in
any way. Just cool and calculating.
Just Heero.
Then, before I could take another breath, Heero assaulted me with his
mouth. He slid his tong between my startled lips. One of his hands slid up my
shirt -- the one that didn't still have a hold on my neck -- and started
roaming over my skin.
I thought it would be best for my health to just submit.
Not that I had any kinda problem with that. Needless to say, Nataku
stayed spotless.
=========
Well there ya go. That's the end of this part. The next one should be ...
i~~nteresting. So have fun ... I'm all out of things to say. ^_^;;
standard disclaimers apply
=========
Warnings: Um ... stuff happens in this one. Believe it or not. The
G-boys are pretty nasty to poor Duo in this part, but it's not all that long
or all that bad.
=========
Soul Trial
Part 3
=========
I fell asleep with a big stupid grin plastered on my face and Heero
holding me to him almost possessively.
***
/What's going on?/
Heero was in front of me, in a coffin. Quatre, Wufei and Trowa were
looking at me like they were expecting me to do something. Heero was dead. He
was in the coffin, not moving, not breathing. But he was smiling. *Really*
smiling. It was the same smile I had made when he had come to kill me, when
OZ had gotten a hold of me. Relief, peace, rest. I hated that smile. It made
me feel like he was happy that he was away from me. That he wouldn't have to
live with me anymore. Then it was gone. It was just me and Heero. Someone was
crying in the background, but I could only see Heero.
Only Heero.
He sat up. Looked at me, and reached out a hand. I took it, everything
seemed fuzzy. When we touched, I felt a shock, and then everything was white.
White clouding my eyes, crawling around my brain. Seeping into every part of
my body.
Some one was breathing, their breath loud, desperate sounding. It was
my own. Then the cold white was gone, and something warm was rapped around me.
Arms, Heero's arms. Rapped around my waist, Heero pressed against me.
~Duo...~
Heero was saying my name, calling to me! His arms left my waist, and
his figure retreated into the darkness that surrounded us.
/Don't go! You can't be *this* cruel!/
"Duo!"
"Stay with me!" I yelled out in my sleep.
Strong arms were shaking my shoulders, my eyes snapped open.
"You were having a bad dream, it's over now." Heero sounded almost
tired.
Still dazed and groggy, not knowing what I was doing, I pulled Heero
down on the bed next to me. He didn't struggle, or call me 'baka' or hit me.
Hey just lay there next to me, blue sparks of light gazing into my own eyes.
Quatre said that I had violet eyes, I guess they look that way in the mirror,
but it's hard to tell.
"Duo, what were you dreaming about?" He looked right at me, not moving
in my almost white knuckle grip around his waist.
"Yo-nothing. It was just a bad dream," I tried not to sound like I
wasn't telling the truth. But the worst thing about Heero, is that if I lie to
him he can tell.
"What was the dream *really* about , Duo?" Yup, he knew that I wasn't
telling him the truth. He always did.
"Just drop it! I don't wanna talk about it all right?" I know I sounded
like a little kid, but I really *didn't* want to talk about it.
He didn't push me, he just looked down at my arms, strangling his
waist. He quirked an eyebrow, in that oh-so-Heero way.
He looked at me and smirked, then climbed back into my bed.
"Good night Duo, if you have any more dreams you can wake me up if you
need to," He slid his arms back around my waist and pulled me right up against
him. Eventually I could hear his even breathing.
I needed to go the the bath room, I felt like I was going to faint or
throw up. I wriggled out of Heero's arms and got up as quietly as I could I
didn't want to wake Heero up. He would be grouchy if he found out that he had
woken up just because I was making a mad dash for the bathroom.
The bathroom tiles were cold under my feet.
I went over to the mirror and looked at myself, daring the 'mirror
Duo' to make a move... and he did! The surface of the mirror swirled and then
solidified. The thing staring back at me was no longer myself. There was a
little girl on the other side of the glass, her face was smeared with rust
colored blood. Her hair was matted and bloody.
And I did the first thing that came to mind. I punched the mirror, not
caring that that it made my knuckles bleed. Bloody streaks ran down the
cracked mirror.
Heero had heard the crack, and came running into the bathroom. I
crumpled to the floor holding my fist. Blood was welling up between my
clenched fingers, dripping onto the floor. Heero must have walked up to me,
because he was hauling me up in his arms. I was still clutching my fist as
Heero held me against him. He was so warm.
"Duo, what happened?!" He sounded worried, but I didn't think that was
possible.
I pointed my non-bleeding, yet shaky, hand at the broken glass. "There
was a person in the mirror!" I sounded hysterical, "It was a girl, a little
girl and she was all bloody. And she looked right at me!" I dropped my hand
and shook all over in Heero's arms, my head dropped to his shoulder, and we
just stood there.
I let myself go limp and and he carried me back to my -- well more
like OUR -- bed. He bandaged up my hand and crawled under the covers once
again.
I cracked an eye open and looked at him. "Anno...Heero, why are you
being so nice?"
He brushed his hand over my eyes, closing them for me. "Because." He
secured his arms around my waist for more than the third time that night.
"Now go to sleep."
"Arigato Heero."
"Go to sleep." He sounded like I was annoying him. Witch was most
likely true.
***
[Monday]
"DUO! Did you cut yourself again?!" Quatre sounded pissed, Wufei
looked like he was going to kill me. We were waiting at the courts, for who
ever had left that little card.
I knew they were gonna ask that.
"No! First of all it's my knuckles, not my wrist, and second it's only
my one hand. Do you think I would go back on my promise to you guys?!"
"No. Gomen, Duo. But what did you do?" Quatre looked worried, he
probably thought it was his fault. He thought that everything that went wrong
was his fault. I bet that he thinks that salt water doesn't taste good because
he didn't try hard enough. He's like that.
"I punched a mirror. I guess I looked at myself the wrong way." I
grinned and laughed. They needed to think that I was fine. Not that I was
seeing dead people in the mirrors.
"What really happened?" Wufei was a lot like Heero, in some *very*
scary ways. He could tell when I wasn't telling the truth.
"You have to promise that you wont cart me off . All right?" Fuck. They
were gonna think that I had finally snapped.
"Of course not!" Quatre was trying not to laugh. Wufei didn't seem to
think it was funny at all.
I took a deep breath and told them about the mirror and the little
girl. I left out the part about Heero. They already had enough ammunition to
make fun of me for the rest of my life. They didn't need to know that Heero
and I were...
"I see." Wufei looked at me funny.
"You don't believe me!?" I made my 'ouch-that-hurt' face. Wufei looked
at me even funnier.
"No no, Duo, we believe you," Quatre glanced at Wufei, just a flicker
of his eyes, then back to me. "Duo, after what happened on Friday, I believe
you. Really!" I grinned.
"You guys better believe me! Or else you'll get a little taste of
Shinigami!" My grin broadened.
Quatre tackled me. I don't know what was up with him, but he was in a
violent mood lately. We went down in a tangle of limbs, Quatre on top. Wufei
was laughing at us. Quatre was sitting on top of me rubbing his face, a big
shinning tear in the corner of one eye.
"Oh don't hurt me Shinigami! Pleeeease! I'm to cute to die!" He
sniffed, and hid his face in his hands. Strangled laughing and giggling coming
from behind his hands.
"Oh get off you me drama queen!" I bucked and Quatre fell off me, his
arms clutching his sides. He looked like he was choking.
"Quatre, *breath* for God's sake!" Wufei was having some trouble
breathing as well. Quatre got up, laughter wheezing from his chest. He almost
fell over again from loss of breath. Wufei fixed it by slapping him on the
back.
Once he stopped wheezing, I looked up. There was a girl in front of
us. She looked like she was about our age, maybe a little older. She was
wearing the girl's school uniform, but the left sleeve had a rip in it, a
white bandage showed through the hole. The bandage had red splotches on it.
Her red hair shown in the sunlight and her bright green eyes flashed with
amusement as she watched us. I nudged Quatre and Wufei and they looked up.
Wufei crossed his arms and stood there. Scowling.
Quatre offered his hand and she took it.
"I'm Akiko." She looked directly at me.
"That's Quatre," I pointed, "And that's Wu-chan," I smirked and
pointed. Wufei scowled. He was gonna hit me later.
"And I'm --," She cut me off in mid introduction.
"I know who *you* are, Shinigami." We gawked.
"A-and you know this, *how*?!" I sounded dumb, but that's how I felt.
So it was OK, right?
She looked at me with a confused expression, "You don't know?" I
quirked an eyebrow, and she continued. "You are Shinigami, I'm not sure how to
explain it really. You're human, but there is something special about you. You
were born special. The only thing I can do is point you down the right road.
It's your choice. But you have to know, if you chose to become on of my
enemies, then I *will* have to kill you." She looked into my eyes, and she
must have seen the confusion. She sighed and continued.
"Duo, just keep being who you are. You might never have to use the
power hidden inside you, but there will be things that are curious about you.
Things that you never thought were real, the things that go 'bump' in the
night will come after you. And you will have to rely on your power and the
power of your friends. And if you truly need the help, then I will come. But
you wont need me." She reached into her pocket and took out a piece of paper.
"You can go here for weapons, just tell them that I sent you for them. You can
get some other things there too," She handed the folded paper to me. When I
reached out to take it from her she took my hand and smiled. She really was
beautiful.
Definitely NOT gay.
She leaned closer to me and whispered, "Just one more thing," She
leaned closer and kissed me! It was the weirdest feeling. Sure, I had kissed
girls before, but this felt really *really* odd. My lips started tingling, and
so did my fingers. The pins and needles ran up my arms and down my body to my
feet. It felt like I had been plunged into a tub of ice water.
Quatre and Wufei were staring at me, and Akiko. My eyes were wide open
from the shock of the fact that she was kissing me, and the feel of it. Wufei
looked like he disapproved, Quatre was giggling and blushing at the same time.
Wufei must have thought that we were being very indecent.
Then they were gone.
Akiko was standing in front of me. Everything around us was black.
"Duo, do you know where we are?" Her voice sounded like it was
everywhere.
"This is...?" I looked around the darkness, my voice sounded small. I
knew that place. It felt like the place my mind had gone to when Heero had
'died'. Familiar. Creepy.
"Try and get out, Duo,"
Cold, everything was so cold.
I felt someone next to me, I turned and saw Heero. He scowled at me,
turned and walked away. But before I could reach out to him, someone was on
the other side of me. Quatre.
"Quatre! What's going on?" He looked at me with cold eyes. He looked
angry with me. Just like Heero he turned and walked away.
"Duo,"
I looked behind me and Wufei was glaring at me. It wouldn't have been
odd, but there was hate in his glare.
"Wufei! What did I do? Why are you all leaving me?" He looked at me
like it was obvious.
"We don't like you Duo, we never did. We never will. Why don't you
just kill yourself so that we won't have to deal with you anymore," I stared
at him in shock. My eyes stung and I felt cold. My friends were saying this to
me.
Trowa showed up last, his eyes, well his *visible eye* seemed colder
than usual, a look of disgust crossed his face and then he was gone. I had
never seen him show so much on his face.
"What did I do? Quatre, Wufei, Trowa! *Heero*! What did I do to you?!"
I knew that I sounded hysteric, but when you friends, the only people left for
you to care about, tell you just to go kill yourself to make it easier on
them, how else *could* I sound?
"What will you do Duo?" Akiko's voice sounded cold in the dark.
"What an I supposed to do? Why are they all leaving me?" My eyes
stung, and my chest hurt. I felt like I was choking, my friends were leaving
me! *Heero* was leaving me.
"What will you do Duo?" I suddenly decided that I didn't like that
voice. I had a feeling that *she* was doing this to me. This girl, Akiko, was
somehow making my friends hate me. No wait ... that wasn't it. These weren't my
friends. It was all that girl!
"Those aren't my friends! They can't be!" I sounded hysteric.
Screaming made me feel better.
"What the hell are you doing to me! Give me back my friends!!!" I
screamed again, and lashed out. With what, I have no idea, but lashed out
nonetheless. In the distance a girl screamed.
Then suddenly I was back. Akiko was sprawled on the ground at my feet.
She was still breathing. Quatre and Wufei were looking at me, concern shown in
their eyes.
I reached down and prodded the girls prone figure, and she stirred.
One liquid green eye fluttering open at my touch.
I produced my hand, thinking she would take it. She didn't. She did
one of those cool jump-up things, where you arch your back and kick yourself
up onto your feet. I've seen Wufei do it before.
She smiled at me.
"Well done Duo. I had no idea that you had so much faith in your
friends. That's good, keep it that way," With that she turned and walked away.
No sway in her step, not a waver. You would never have been able to tell that
she had been on the ground out cold just a moment before.
Fuck.
Quatre and Wufei must be confused as hell.
***
"So you were taken into some weird place, and we told you to kill
yourself?" Wufei still looked confused. That was like the tenth time I had
explained it.
"That's what I said," And It was. This was getting on my nerves.
"You *know* we would *never* say that to you, Duo. We're your best
friends!" Quatre thought it was his fault again.
"I know Quatre. I think that's what she was trying to find out. I
guess it was a test or something. I'm totally lost in this whole thing." I
don't know if I've ever felt more helpless in my life before. Well, OK so I
was exaggerating. But I still didn't like it.
"Should we tell the others?" Wufei: Voice of reason. When he's not
pissed off, or if I'm not bothering him to much.
"Yeah I guess. There's no point in trying to hide it from Heero, he'll
know as soon as I step through the door, that something is wrong. And Quatre
has a tendency to tell Trowa *everything*." I rolled my eyes in mock
exasperation.
Poor Quatre.
"Oh shutup!" He punched me in the arm, yet again. What the hell was up
with him?
"What the hell is up with you? Why are you being so damn *violent*?!"
I tried to look hurt and surprised. I suck at faking, except when I'm
pretending to be happy. I don't think that any one has ever seen through that.
I hope they didn't.
"Am I being violent?" He looked at us with those big watery blue eyes.
That word just didn't sound right for Quatre. Violent and Quatre ... nope, they
just didn't go together.
"Well you seem to like beating me up lately! You *tackled* me when we
got here!" Maybe he was having trouble with Trowa?
"I guess ... I guess Trowa has just been getting to me. And then what
happened on Friday. I guess I just want to make sure your still here. I get
worried about my friends," And damn was *that* the understatement of the
friggin *year*!
"I ain't going anywhere Quatre. I'm Shinigami, and I have work to do!
You aren't gonna get rid of me yet!" Quatre seemed like he needed me to sound
cheerful.
/Trowa must really be oblivious. But I don't see how, he's like the
most observant one out of all of us. Maybe he does know and he's just afraid
or something.../
"Any body want to get some dinner? We could go to town and find that
weapons place! And then we could find a dinner or something. You have money,
right?" He should. He's like the richest person I know!
Quatre nodded, and I grabbed them both by the wrist and dragged them
off to town. And I'm serious about that, I literally had to drag both of them.
=========
And that's the end of the third part. Hope ya liked it.
Standard disclaimers apply
=========
This is kind a teaser. I'll work on it some more later, I PROMISE! So
don't throw things at me!
=========
Soul Trial
Part 4
=========
Why is it that whenever you go somewhere - and you just happen to
be nervous as hell - you keep thinking that everyone you see is starting
at you? It has to be one of the worst feelings. Well that and being blown
into itty bitty pieces. But I guess Heero would know more about that then
me.
Wufei walked into the dinner first, he seemed to think it might
be dangerous or something. Quatre and I followed. I swear, every set of
eyes in the whole place followed us.
I don't like the feeling that I'm being sized up. Now I know what
the meat feels like in the supermarkets. I don't think I'll be able to
eat meat any more.
Well needless to say we got out of there as fast as we could. I
didn't get anywhere near enough to eat, but I really didn't like the feel
of that place. Come to think of it, I was starting to not like the feel
of anywhere. Just walking down the street was becoming uncomfortable. All
the people, with their hunched shoulders. They all seemed to be walking
awfully fast. People are weird, ne?
"Why are the all looking at us?" Quatre's nervous whisper barely
reached my ears. In answer I just shrugged and kept walking.
Then, with a sudden sense of foreboding, the crowd seemed to get
thicker. Bodies pressed against us from all sides, and they all seemed to
be going in the opposite direction of us. I caught a glimpse of one of
their eyes. They were red, and that CAN'T be natural.
Quatre squeaked from somewhere near my shoulder. He was having
trouble fighting against the swarming bodies. I caught him by the arm and
half dragged him behind me. I started elbowing people out of the way,
wanting nothing more than the get the hell home.
A woman bumped into me, much harder than necessary, and I lost my
balance. I toppled into the woman and ended up in a tangle of limbs on the
hard concrete. I landed on top.
The woman squeaked faintly when we landed. She probably got the
wind knocked outta her. I got up as fast as I could, trying not to look
at her while muttering apologies.
The lady giggled, and I stopped stammering abruptly. People who
just got fallen on by some one larger and taller than them (and I'm short
and skinny so that's saying allot) don't just start giggling. She picked
herself up with no trouble at all and smiled at me.
I just looked at her, my jaw must have been brushing the floor.
People just didn't act like that. I kept starting at her, as if seeing her
for the first time. She was really very pretty, she had olive skin, large
deep brown eyes, and long black hair that was coiled into a slightly
sloppy bun - but that could have been due to the fact that I had just
fallen on her - the coat she was wearing was slightly wrinkled, the hem
fell past her knees, covering the tops of her lace up boots. She smiled
wider, so that her strait white teeth showed.
"Er ... I'm really sorry about that." I said nervously. Did she
*have* to keep smiling like that?
"Your awfully pretty for a boy." She said.
I felt my face go hot. "Erm .... thanks...?" I meant it more as a
question.
She walked closer, on arm outstretched towards me. An olive finger
brushed my cheek, two large brown eyes looked strait into mine,
unblinking. I tried to take a step back, but she caught my wrist and
whispered "No, I think I'll take you with me." She narrowed her eyes in
what was a very successful seductive expression.
I tried to struggle out of her - seemingly more than human - grip.
But she tightened her grip and the bones in my wrist grated together
painfully. I let out a yelp of displeasure, and then wanted to smack
myself. Going and whining wouldn't help the situation any. Knowing my luck
it most likely would have made it worse.
"Hold still lovely." Whispered the woman, she was still staring at
me, but her eyes had changed. I hadn't noticed in my attempt to get away,
but they were red now. The brown was almost completely undetectable.
I grimaced, trying hard not to make any kind of pathetic sound.
All I could do was wait until she loosened her grip so that I could get
away somehow.
And then, in only a few seconds, my only hope of getting any help
vanished with a squeak and a grunt.
Wufei and Quatre had been taken down. I could see them out of the
corner of my eye. Wufei was struggling under the wait of a very very large
man. Quatre had been pinned to the wall by another woman. This one was
taller than any of us, and almost as large as the man sitting on Wufei.
"Leggo!" I said in a voice that sounded very pathetic in my ears.
"But if I do that then, my pet, I wont be able to take you to
master." She said in a very honeyed voice. Her eyes misted over in what
looked like an expression of pure bliss. I took the opportunity, by
wrenching my arm out of her relaxed grip.
Once away from the creepy lady, I took a flying leap at Wufei's
very large attacker. And believe me, even a troll will feel a flying kick
to the ribs. It gave Wufei enough time to scramble away.
We looked at each other, nodded, and ran at the woman - who
appeared to by trying to unbutton Quatre's shirt - knocking into her with
our elbows. She keeled over, clutching her sides. Quatre squeaked and
fastened his shirt as fast as he could.
As we were running ... er ... retreating, I looked over my shoulder.
The olive skinned woman was staring after us. Her eyes narrowed in a
menacingly. Her lips were curled into an evil smirk.
We were being hunted, and she didn't think it was going to be
very hard to catch us again.
Oh yes, we were in deep shit now.
***
"What happened?" Heero asked the second I walked into the door.
I looked down at my feet. I was ashamed of being frightened,
ashamed that I hadn't been able to mask it, and ashamed that I was more
worried about Heero and my relationship - or lack of, whatever the case
may be - than I was about leather boot clad, troll-like minions hunting
us down. "Nothing. We just went out for dinner. I would have asked you
but you weren't around."
Heero grabbed my shoulders. "Duo, talk." He steered me over to the
bed and sat me down, then sat himself down next to me. "Talk." He said
again.
"All right geez." I said finally. He looked like he was about to
start poking me or something "We went out, and then on our way back these
freaky people with red eyes jumped us. They said they wanted to take
us back to "master" whatever the hell that means. There I told you, now
do you think I'm insane or what?" I looked at him accusingly.
"Are you All right?" Was all he said.
I just stared at him - I seemed to be doing that allot.
He smirked at me, and brushed a finger down my neck. I shivered
and looked up at him. Then finding some sudden energy, I jumped on him.
He pinned me, but once again, I'm not complaining.
***
I woke up happy as a clam, but slightly sore. But once I got my
bearings, and the day before started to seep back in, the feelings of
badness came flooding back. Some one was out there trying to find us, and
they had done that already. We were so fucked.
I groped around in the covers, and found Heero. He was a few feet
away from me, curled up in a small fetal ball. I touched his arm and he
flinched. His eyes snapped open and he groped for a gun that wasn't
there. Slow realization crept over his face.
"Heero? What was that all about?" I asked, grasping his shoulder.
"Just a dream, go back to sleep." he said, and tried to roll back
over.
"Heero, we have to go to class." I poked at him, waiting for him
to jump up, wrestle his clothes on and run down to classes. He didn't
move. "Heero...?" He rolled back over. The covers had slid off half way,
revealing his naked skin down to his hips. He looked at me, and sat up.
I poked him in the stomach, right above the covers pooling in his lap.
"We have classes. Get dressed." He said, kissed me lightly, and then
got up. We got dressed in silence. Walked down the hall in silence,
in fact I think the only time we talked that morning was when Heero bumped
into me and grunted. Hey, with him, that counts as talking.
Our classes passed with out anything really note worthy happening.
I dropped my pencil, and Heero and I both bent to pick it up, causing a
very awkward moment. But that's really about it.
"Heero-kun?" One of the wide eyed Heero worshipers had plucked up
enough courage to talk to her dark haired blue eyed god.
"Hn?" Heero said in his usual cold tone.
"Um ... never mind..." She walked off looking very let down.
"Heero, you don't have to scare them all off like that. Most of
the girls here are really nice. I bet a little female companionship would
do you good." I poked him in the ribs, and took a step back to avoid the
back of Heero's hand.
"Duo, shut up." He glared at me. "I don't want female
companionship."
"Sorry, geez." I slumped in my chair, trying to hide behind my
heaping lunch.
"Hii~~!" Quatre sang from behind me. He and Trowa had just walked
into the lunch room. Wufei stalked in from the other side, looking
disgruntled.
"Hello. What's up?" I asked when they all sat down. Wufei was
scowling like some one had just pinched his ass. Quatre seemed cheerful as
ever, and Trowa just looked .... quiet.
Quatre was the only one who answered with words. "I'm fine. We
just had a quiz in history. I think I passed. What have you guys been
doing all day?" He asked, looking more cheerful than anyone had a right to
be.
"Absolutely nothing. Heero has been quiet as usual, and he just
scared off a fan. Just another normal day." I sighed and started shoveling
my food down my throat.
Quatre looked a little crestfallen, but he perked up when Trowa
said that they should all get pizza or something that night. Anything
social will perk Quatre up. He just seems to like to chatter.
And for the rest of the day nothing happened, until Heero and I
got to gym.
People kept bumping into us while we were changing. And it was
really not fun. I was in a room full of guys, who seemed to be going out
of their way to trip over something and catch themselves on me. Heero
was having the same problem.
"What the hell is going on?" I muttered out of the corner of my
mouth so that the other guys wouldn't notice. Heero just scowled. He
didn't seem to like this extra attention.
It was a good thing that gym was our last class, cause I was about
to punch the next guy who bumped into me. And Heero's finger was
twitching, pulling the trigger of a gun that wasn't there. This was not
something that he was enjoying.
Well at least we came away from gym with only a few bruises, and
a very disgruntled Heero. He was going to need a ruffled tail feather
smoothing session. But I don't think a quick roll in the hay would fix it.
He was unnerved. Just like me.
I patted him on the arm while we made our way back to the dorm.
The promise of pizza and beer lingering in my head. Maybe that would
help Heero out ... maybe.
=========
I'll elaborate .... later. I'm procrastinating.