By My Nightmare's

by Inochi y Shinigami

Disclaimer: I do not own anything associated with Bandai or Gundam wing. I just choose to borrow them for my own personal torture.... This story is not for profit.

*I haven't written in a very long time and this story is to try and get myself back into the swing of things. I apologize ahead of time if it's not any good, and any feedback or criticisms are always welcome and encouraged.

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Duo awoke slowly, the grogginess of unconsciousness ebbing gradually into the throb of pain. He groaned softly, laying perfectly still, accessing his wounds. The soldier in him objectively observed a broken nose, two broken ribs, and a sprained left leg. All in all, he decided, it could have been worse.

Duo lifted his head off the concrete floor, feeling his bangs cling against the surface, something wet and sticky running down his cheek. Blood he realized, moving one hand to his pounded head to check the wound. He blinked back a wave of dizziness, groaning softly to himself and willing the pain to go away.

'what did I get myself into this time.' He wondered quietly. His mind wandered back to before he began this mission, to the promise that he had made a friend….

"Duo, please be careful on this one. I've never seen a mission parameter so complicated, I really wish you wouldn't even go." Quatre bit his lip nervously, looking over the mission file Duo had been given that morning. Duo's face never betrayed his own nervousness, he'd read the mission file thoroughly, he new what kind of danger he'd be in and he didn't much like it either. But of course, as with all of their missions, he had no choice, he had to go.

"Quatre my man, don't worry so much, I can handle this no problem!" Duo laughed hollowly tossing a plate of eggs and bacon down on the counter with absentminded grace and taking a seat on a high stool to eat.

"Duo…." He cautioned eyeing his friend significantly. "If you get caught on this mission, there isn't anyone who could possibly pull you out. Not even Heero has the skill to get back into this place." Duo took a moment's pause, taken aback by his comrade's concern, knowing full well that he was right, Duo was the right choice for this mission because he was the only choice. Stealth had always been Duo's greatest asset for the team, and this mission was meant for him to prove it.

"Quatre, It's no sweat. Get in, get the information on this new weapon, get out again. Nothing too it."

"Duo just promise me you'll be careful."

"I always am Quatre"

"Duo, just promise!"

"Ok, ok, I promise."

Duo scoffed painfully at the memory, "Broke that promise." He sat up gingerly, surveying the damage done to the rest of his body. 'Not bad', he thought, 'even the head injury could have been worse. Now, how to get out of here…' In the pitch black of the prison cell he was obviously in he couldn't see much, not even the distant shadows of benches built into the wall or the soft outline of a door. 'well that's not good. I'll have to feel my way around to get out of here.'

Duo stood on shaking knees, closing his eyes tight against another bout of nauseating motion sickness and took small trembling steps forward until he found the wall. Running his hands along the cold surface, he could feel by the texture that it was stone. He worked his way slowly, getting a feel for every imperfection in the wall and memorizing areas of sharp resistance, areas he could work on pulling from the wall and using as weapons should the need arise. He had made progress toward his second wall when the sound of a key grinding in the lock of the door interrupted him.

The braided pilot crouched where he stood, arms and legs rigid in anticipation and eyes squinted against the light he knew would come streaming into the room. The door swung open on silent hinges, a testament to the keepers of the facility, either the door was opened on a regular basis meaning they kept many prisoners around, or their leader ran a tight ship and would not allow the neglect of any detail. Duo hoped it was the former, detail oriented people rarely made it easy for prisoners to escape.

Blinking against the harsh fluorescent glare that penetrated the once darkened cell, Duo turned his gaze to the room itself, desperate to memorize his surroundings, he didn't know how long he was going to be here, or what could be used as a weapon against his captors. The room was barren, all save for the tiny sink and toilet in the corner, no bench for a bed and the walls were solid stone, not a crack to be had. The pilot frowned and turned his gaze back to the doorway.

A woman stood in the doorway, dressed impecibly in the military uniform of oz, her long dark hair pulled back in a pony tail, her darkly arkaic features told him she had been born on earth. A man stood behind her dressed in a long white lab coat. It was the man who entered the room, crossing the floor with no weapon, and apparently no fear.

"Welcome, pilot 02. It was very foolish of you to try and sneak into my laboratory, what exactly were you looking for? Schematics on the laser beam canon Oz is planning on using? Well regardless, what you have found here is your own death. My name is Coroso and my specialty is human redevelopment. See my assistant over there? I would not recommend attacking me, nor attempting to escape. Her reprogramming has allowed me to create a perfect bodyguard. She would kill you before you even had a chance to move a muscle." Duo blinked at the man once, trying to keep up as the scientist babbled on about his plans. It seemed he rarely had new visitors to talk too.

'This guy likes to hear the sound of his own voice.' Duo thought, mind calculating the distance to the door, 'But lets put his little boast to the test.' Duo sprang forward, launching himself at the scientist's throat in an attempt to incapacitate him; his hands met only air. Duo blinked, turning slightly to see the woman's thin arm braced against his shoulder, holding him an inch above the ground. Duo gulped in surprise, but clamped an iron mask down on his features instantly, less he betray himself to his captors.

Coroso laughed heartily, crossing his arms over his chest. "I warned you, but I must say I admire your determination. That will make breaking you down all that much more fun." His threat sent shivers down Duo's spine, eliciting a dark glare from the pilot. The scientist laughed again, turning toward the door. "Well we might as well get started, I just hate waiting. Bring him will you Contraki?"

Coroso waved back over his shoulder, signaling the tall assistant to follow him. She nodded silently, lifted Duo's body with one arm higher off the floor and carried him toward the door.

'Alright, now this is just embarrassing.' Duo thought. The pilot drew his knees up close to his chest and kicked out with his entire body against the body guard's chest, a move he'd picked up while training with Trowa. Contraki coughed, releasing Duo's shoulder. Duo dropped to the floor in a crouch, dropping one hand to the cement floor for balance and taking off toward the open cell door like a race horse out of the chute. He exploded out of the darkness into the bright fluorescent light of the hallway and took off in the direction the scientist was heading. Coroso gasped and pressed himself against the wall to avoid the streaking bullet that was pilot 02.

Duo ran down the highway, breathing coming in short gasps, glancing back and forth trying to find an escape route. 'Damn. Should have thought this through before I took off. This place is like a maze, and I can't find any way out.' Duo turned a corner, cursing and coming to a sliding halt as he ran into a pair of Oz guards talking flamboyantly about last night's drunken escapades. The pair gasped, going for weapons as Duo crashed into their legs, knocking them both to the ground. The pilot scrambled desperately to his feet, tripping over a discarded pistol and reaching down blindly to bring it with him.

02 took two more steps down the hallway before he realized he was running directly toward the Doctor's tall assistant, and one more before he was aware enough to know that he couldn't stop. Contraki spun on her heel, delivering a roundhouse kick to Duo's abdomen, knocking the wind from his lungs and sending sprawling to the floor. Sparks danced before his eyes, and the sound of his own blood roared in his ears, and still he tried to recover and escape. Before he could raise himself up farther than his elbows, Contraki was standing over him, staring down at him with dead brown eyes. Duo held perfectly still, his mind working frantically, knowing that there was no escape from her.

"Who are you?" He asked through screaming lungs, a touch of fear in his gaze.

"No one. Not anymore." She replied, reaching down to drag him to his feet. Her bulk led him down the hallway against his will, without even trying she drug him to the scientist's most precious room…..

Duo woke slowly, curled up on the cement floor of his cell with his legs pulled as close to his chest as he could, both in an attempt to keep warm and as a way to reduce the amount of pain his limbs were in. He groaned, testing the limits of his arms by stretching. His right arm had been broken, repeatedly and he couldn't seem to set the bones back correctly. Unlike Heero, he wasn't capable of setting the bones himself, each time he tried he passed out before the bones moved enough to make a difference. Every muscle in his body ached and he couldn't seem to concentrate for very long without getting dizzy.

'Damn it he's done me over.' Duo worried. He knew very well what kind of permanent damage the kind of brutality Coroso was fond of could cause, and he was extremely worried that if he ever got out of here, he might not recover. He lost track of how long he'd been here, months now at least. At some point he had hoped that the other pilots would come to his rescue, a brilliant charge of glory like Heero had done for him before, but no one had come. Part of him knew that no one would, he knew that it wasn't possible for anyone else to break into this place but him, and he had failed to even do that part of the mission. Quatre's warnings repeated over and over in his head like a mantra, "Not even Heero has the skill to get into this place…."

The wounded pilot sighed heavily, wincing as the action pulled at sore muscles. 'I do believe I'm stuck here.' The realization had been coming for a while. He knew that he was doomed from the moment he had been put back in this cell, but it's amazing how resiliently the mind will cling to the idea of hope. That cling to hope has driven more than one person mad and saved the lives of countless more; but Duo had lost the desire to dream.

The door to the cell swung open quietly, bright light flooding the desolate room. Duo winced, involuntarily curling into himself even more. He had lost the determination to fight his captors when they came a while ago, more out of lack of strength then lack of will, in fact, Duo was fairly certain that Coroso treated him worse then he would have another prisoner because he refused to yield to despair. The pilot's resilience against his torture seemed to piss the scientist off, either that or excite him,; Duo wasn't quite sure which.

Contraki, entered the room with a stoic look on her face. She moved across the room to where the pilot lay, placing a hand, almost gently on the small of his back. Duo flinched away from the touch as it sent sparks of pain down his spine. The bodyguard moved to lift him to his feet without so much as a spark of sympathy. Duo bit his lip to stop the cry that threatened to escape and leaned heavily against his captor as she lead him out into the hallway and back to his torturer.

Contraki glanced at the bruised and beaten pilot out of the corner of her eye every few steps, seeming to consider something only she knew the answer too.

"You know it would be better for you to just give in to him. No one is coming for you, you must know that. The longer you fight him, the harder he will try, and he will break you in the end. He breaks everyone, you will not be the exception. Just give him what he wants and life will be much easier on you." Contraki stated matter-of-factly after a few moments of dragging the pilot along. Duo started, pulling his head up a fraction of an inch to look at her. If he had had the strength to speak, he would have screamed at her for even thinking such a thing, but part of him died in that instant, the part of him that was holding on to the last bits of hope for rescue trembled and curled over, dying in Duo's mind. The shock of her words made him physically tremble and he lost the last bit of strength he had left in his limbs.

'She's right.' Despair finally creeping into his very bones, penetrating every cell and killing his spirit. 'It's over.' A single tear, the only tear he shed during the long cruel months of torture, escaped from behind closed eyes, weaving down his cheek like a traitor.

Just then, they reached the very room that would haunt Duo's dreams for the rest of his life, the room where Coroso waited for him. The door slid open into the wall, letting the bleach filled air escape into the hallway. The bright surgical lights hanging from the ceiling gave the stainless steel table in the center of the room an ethereal glow. Coroso stood to one side of the table, invitingly like Duo's entrance was always welcome and they were close friends.

"So my good pilot. I trust our rest was foefilling? Are you ready for another day of our games?" The scientist didn't wait for a reply as his assistant strapped Duo's arms and legs to the surgical steel. "I think that we'll try something new today. You've done quite well up until now, but a dear friend of mine informed me that pain alone might not work on a pilot of you're calliber, so we're going to work with some new toys today!" He sounded so excited to Duo, like this was a tea party and he was bringing in a new recipe he had just figured out for chocolate chip cookies. It made the pilot sick.

Coroso turned from the table and returned with a scalpel and what looked like an electrical probe. "I apologize. This might not hurt as much as I want it too." The probe touched his bare chest with a spark, sending convulsions through the pilot's body. Duo arched his back off the table, biting back a silent scream of agony. He saw red behind closed eyelids, even after the probe was removed; but Coroso did not give him time to recover before he moved in again, this time drawing the sharp edge of the scalpel across his clavical. Duo felt the pain of the blade tearing through his flesh, and the hot pulse of blood as it flowed across bare skin. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized that the scientist had never been quite this brutal, broken bones and torn muscles, but no permanent damage. For some reason he seemed to have wanted Duo to remain intact for some task he had set out for him, but no more. Now it felt as if the doctor was preparing for his inevitable death, in the most painful way possible.

The scientist paused, looking Duo in the eye with a dark grin. "Now I want you to understand what's going to happen now. That wound that I gave you is very deep. If you pull against your restraints, you will pull the wound open further, which could kill you very quickly. However, if you desire to live, you will not move. Let's see how long you last shall we?"

Duo's eyes filled with understanding and terror at the same moment, the look made Coroso's grin widen. The pilot drew in a long shaky breath and something in him snapped. A spiraling tendrel of fear spun through him, like the sensation of the floor dropping out from under him. Across the room he could faintly hear a cry of protest, something he had never hoped to hear coming from the stranger.

"Sir, why? Surely he's more use to you alive!" Contraki took a step forward, her mind urging her to protect the boy she had come to respect.

"How dare you speak back to me! My motives are my own. You will obey, or leave the room and I will deal with you later." Duo heard a sharp intake of breath and a moment later the retreating steps of the bodyguard. His mind raced, covering all possibilities left to him. He could hold his ground, hold perfectly still and let the sadistic bastard carve into him some more before throwing him away back into his cell until the next time he wanted to get his rocks off; or…. His mind fumbled slightly with the next idea, it wasn't something that had ever been trained into his brain. He could give up. He could move, tearing his chest open beyond repair and sink into the quiet sweet oblivion that was death. A small voice inside him protested, how could he think of giving up, and yet…. Why not? What do I have to keep me here? Surely the other pilots thought him dead already, what difference would it make to deny this bastard of one more day of torture?

Duo had resolved himself quietly, giving over his fate to the heavens, ready to die. Coroso looked him over silently and moved in to place the probe back against his chest. Duo tensed, pulling muscles together, gathering them to burst forward and separate damaged flesh. Suddenly an image came to him, dark tossled auburn hair framing a pale stoic face, and penetrating cobalt blue eyes searching his with an unspoken question.

Heero.

Duo gasped, mouth open wide in shock. His head swam with a thousand emotions, all pulling at him from different corners of his mind. Heero would never forgive him for giving up, even in the face of his death. He had not after all, when Heero self-detonated he accepted his mission as the only way to complete the necessary tasks, he held no fear in him. How weak would he think Duo now if he gave into despair now? Would he even be worthy of being called a gundam pilot if he did? Would Heero still call him friend and comrade? Would the others?

The probe came down against his flesh, pulling all thoughts but one from his mind. 'NO. I won't leave without him.'

Every muscle in his body threatened to break out of his skin, tensed to the point of breaking, but not one of them twitched outwardly. Duo held perfectly still through the agony of electricity flashing through his every nerve. Coroso frowned hauntingly, setting the probe down again, this time just above his heart. Duo jumped slightly, the wound in his chest expanding at the soft pressure, before he clamped down on his muscles once more. Duo felt the erratic flutter of his heartbeat change and the edges of his vision blurred. Coroso seemed aware of his dampening heartbeat as well and he smiled sardonically. The probe came in contact with sweat dampened flesh one last time and Duo lost all senses, a save for pain, a pain that seemed to last forever…..