Toy Soldiers
by Ashura
disclaimer: all the usual crap
pairings: none yet; non-traditional and subject to change
warnings/notes: AU, because playing fast and loose with the timeline and actual
events. Yaoi, het, drama, angst,
violence, sap--um, how about just "everything"?
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Book I: Sweet Bells Jangled Out of Tune
****************
Chapter 1:
"The enemy will fail to resist in time."
--Sun
Tzu
"Sometimes," Duo Maxwell muttered under
his extremely irritated breath, "even I'm not sure how the hell I get
myself into these things." At
present, "these things" meant pounding full tilt and wounded down the
corridor of one impressive spacecraft known as Fortress Barge, with half a
squadron of soldiers rapidly gaining on him and a quickly depleting supply of
ammunition. Things were not looking
good for the God of Death, and he knew it.
He turned down a smaller passageway--a service
corridor, it looked like, not one widely used by the personnel, and he paused
just long enough to heave a great big lungful into his burning chest before he
took off running again. There was
always a chance, he knew, that the long narrow hallway would reach a dead end
and he'd be trapped, but there was just as much of a chance that there's be a
chute or some kind of escape route he could make it through.
His pursuers had noticed his detour and turned down
the passageway as well--still following him, though a bit slower since there
was less room for them between the narrow walls. Not that it was going to do him a lot of good--his legs ached,
and the limp he'd acquired when a bullet had hit him just above the knee was
starting to get harder to ignore. His
lungs were burning, his vision fogging, and only the absolute determination of
one whose only hope for survival is to keep running kept him moving at
all.
Something whizzed by his head--someone had realised
that while it was hard to shoot and chase at the same time, a bullet could
cover the distance considerably faster than a person. He dove for cover at the sound of the next shot, crashing into a
stack of metal crates set up against the wall for storage. He took refuge behind them, emptying the
last of his ammunition into the void of the hallway even though he couldn't see
well enough to aim--from the sharp cry and thud that followed his shots, he'd
at least winged somebody.
Then, all too quickly, his gun was empty. His leg refused to support him when he tried
to struggle to his feet, and a human-shaped shadow fell across him.
"Get up," the voice belonging to the
shadow said roughly, wrenching Duo's weapon out of his hand. The soldier was tall, broad-shouldered, and
fair-haired; his pale blue eyes were cold and angry and his fingers clenched on
the trigger of his gun reflexively. "I said get up!"
"I...can't...." It galled Duo to admit it, but short of pushing himself
half-upright against the wall, he found his body was refusing to obey his
commands. The soldier snarled and
seized his arm roughly, yanking him to his feet.
"Shit, he's barely conscious!" A dark-haired young man cut in front of the
larger one, his body a deceptively slight mass of wiry muscle. "Give me a hand here, Lowen, we need to
get him down to holding. They'll be
wanting to question him later, and he has to be alive for that."
The taller one growled but deferred, and the
smaller man slipped an arm under Duo's arm and around his shoulder.
"He could be faking it," Lowen pointed
out, his gun still out and ready. "We should--"
"He's not," the other interrupted firmly.
"Look at his eyes--I'm surprised if he can even see us by this point. Trust me on this one."
"You're the doctor," Lowen grumbled, but
he didn't sound convinced, and even when he slid an arm around Duo's other
side, the pilot could feel the muzzle of the gun against his back. "In case you are faking it," the
low voice said in his ear. "Don't
try anything."
Duo would have liked nothing better than to
"try something," but the truth was that the doctor-turned-soldier,
whatever his name was, was right. White
fog kept clouding the corners of his vision, making it hard to focus, and he
was rapidly losing feeling in his limbs. Escape was just going to have to wait til he was feeling a bit more like
himself.
By the time they dumped his limp body onto the
floor of the holding cell, he was already unconscious.
*****
Light prickled at the corners of his vision,
prodding him slowly into consciousness. Reflexively he tried to stretch, before even realising where he was--and
discovered abruptly that he couldn't move. He was sitting up, tied securely to a chair with his hands behind
him. His injured leg, now that he was
awake to notice it, throbbed with an insistent pain only mildly less than the
original sharp agony the wound had inflicted.
"Is he awake?" someone asked--he couldn't tell who, for his vision was no more
than blurs of light and shadow coalescing and shifting against his eyelids.
"He will be in a moment." The second voice was instinctively familiar,
but not one he could put a face to. Duo
tried to blink. It hurt.
//Captured. I was captured by Oz.// It
amased him, in some remote part of his mind, that it had taken him so long to
reach so obvious a conclusion. Then a
rough hand cupped his chin and tilted his head up, and the scrape of fabric
across his face told him that even if he could open his eyes completely, it
would make no difference. He was
blindfolded.
"Can you hear me?" the first voice
said--it was deep, a little gravelly, calm and confident. Duo forced a monosyllabic grunt, but it
seemed to satisfy. "Good. The Lieutenant here says you may have
sustained a bit of brain damage, so I'm going to make things very clear and
simple for you. I'm going to ask you
some questions. Answer them honestly,
and we put you back in holding with a good hot meal and some painkillers for
that wound. Refuse, or try to play
around with us, and I'll make sure you wish you hadn't. Understand?"
Duo said nothing. Interrogation--that was something he understood. Even if he had believed in the tempting
promise of warm food and drugs, it was ingrained in him by now to resist. He would not tell them anything. He would give them no information about his
or the other Gundams, or the other pilots. He would spill no secrets.
He would probably hurt a lot.
In that, he was correct. Each question the interrogator asked, Duo answered with stony
silence. Each time, his silence was
rewarded with a sharp slap to the head, or something sharp prodding into the
bullet-hole in his leg. The longer he
held out, the more brutal the responses, but he found it was nothing he
couldn't will himself to ignore. He was
a trained Gundam pilot. He was fairly
sure that no matter what they did to him, he'd survived worse.
That wasn't to say he didn't scream when the man
poured a steaming cup of coffee in his lap, or carved initials into his
skin. He just managed not to scream
anything but obscenities.
He had long since lost track of time by the time he
heard the door open and a low voice say, "This is not getting us
anywhere. If you can't get anything out
of him, Bronson, that's what we have an interrogation specialist for."
"Yes sir." Duo felt the ropes around his body loosen, and calloused hands
rub some of the feeling back into his arms. "We'll just take him back to holding for the night--"
"No." The new arrival's voice was a cold, crisp, and unfeeling tenor, and the
room's temperature seemed to drop by degrees as he bit off the word.
"Sir?" the original questioner asked.
A long exasperated breath. "It hardly seems productive to give the
prisoner a full night's sleep before subjecting him to further
questioning. Take him now."
"Sir, I must protest." That was the first again, the
familiar, softer one--Duo recognised it now as the same doctor-soldier who had
first captured him, though he wasn't sure if the man had been in the room the
whole time. "The injuries he's
sustained demand further attention--he could die right out from under
you--"
"Did you not understand my orders,
Lieutenant?" the cold voice
demanded, interrupting him as well. "If you have such a problem with it, you are relieved from any
contact with the prisoner until further notice."
"Yes, /sir/," the doctor snapped back
acidly. "Do these orders come from
the Colonel?"
"The Colonel," the other responded,
"does not need to be bothered with the details of questioning
prisoners. You are dismissed."
Duo heard footsteps disappearing rapidly into the
distance, felt ungentle hands grip his arms and yank him to his feet. "As for you--bring him. Follow me."
The floor was cold and smooth against his skin--had
he been barefoot this whole time? He
couldn't remember--and his battered body was too drained to keep up with the
pace his captors set. He found himself
dragged brusquely along by his arms, his feet dragging against the floor,
scraping against its surface. His
equilibrium was uncertain, and bloodloss had rendered him too weak to resist,
or do anything more than will himself to be as heavy as possible for those responsible
for carrying him. It seemed like entire
epochs must have passed in this feeble darkness before he heard another door
open, and he was shoved roughly to his knees.
"Mister Tobita..?"
"This is the prisoner?" someone asked, and a shiver trickled like
cold water down Duo's spine. This new
voice was high, barely recognisable as male, full of acid and pain and a trill
of undeniable pleasure.
"He's the pilot of Gundam 02," the
still-unnamed officer responded. "He's resisted all of Officer Bronson's efforts, I thought you
might have more luck."
"He's beautiful," Tobita purred, the
promise of torments as yet undisclosed fairly oozing from his nasal, acidic
voice. "A pity you had to mark him
so badly, Bronson--what /is/ this you've carved into his back? 'Oz'--how quaint." Duo shivered as cool, slender fingers
caressed his cheek in a ghastly parody of affection. "Very well, Major. I
shall have answers for you by morning."
"It /is/ morning," Bronson growled. Plainly there was some contention between
the two interrogators. Duo found it
mildly disturbing that despite the events of the past several hours, he was
happy to take Bronson's side.
"As you say," Tobita agreed calmly. "Shall we say, zero-eight-hundred,
then? That should give me sufficient
time to...experiment."
"Play, you mean," the Major said,
sounding a little uncomfortable himself. "Very well, Tobita. I'll
leave you alone until then."
Just before the door closed, Duo heard him add,
"and I'll see that no-one else bothers you, either."
"Well now," that calm, cold voice said as
the locked clicked shut, dripping with false civility. "Let's take a moment to get to know
each other, you and I. And we won't be
needing /this/." The same
long-nailed fingers that stroked his cheek snapped upward, flinging the
blindfold across the room in one swift movement. Duo blinked as even the dim light assaulted his weary eyes, and
took note of his surroundings.
As far as he could tell, he was in a supply
closet. Grey-walled and sterile, it was
lined with shelves and boxes and equipment. The only light came from a single bulb in the ceiling, its chain
dangling impotently in the air. It was
devoid of all furniture save for a single table, shoved up against one wall to
Duo's right.
And then there was Tobita.
Long silvery hair, even longer than Duo's own, fell
in thick, silky waves almost to the young man's knees, looking out of place
with the austere Oz soldier's uniform he wore. His pale face, graceful and elven, would have been beautiful were it not
for the sadistic gleam alight in his amber eyes, transforming his face to a
twisted, sinister mask. His body was
willowy, his hands slender and smooth and tipped by long, black-painted nails
that extended like claws. He was
beautiful, Duo thought, the way the Devil must be beautiful; striking and
uncomfortable, with an aura of evil that enveloped him like a cloud.
"I meant it, you know, my pretty one," he
said calmly, his claws cupping Duo's chin. "Even with Bronson's marking, you /are/ lovely. But I can do better." He smiled, and Duo couldn't keep himself
from wincing. "A great philosopher
once said," Tobita whispered, leaning down to inhale the scent of Duo's
blood-caked hair, "that life without pain has no meaning." His lips brushed the skin of Duo's neck
under his ear, and he whispered, "I wish to give your life meaning."
Duo did his best to hold completely still under
Tobita's obscenely gentle ministrations, making himself heavy when the slender
man hauled him upright and bent him over the table, but his captor was, like the
pilot himself, stronger than he first appeared. His already-raw wrists were secured tightly to the table, his
cheek pressed against its rough-textured surface.
"Now...before we begin," Tobita said,
still smooth as if he weren't about to indulge in torturing a hated enemy,
"I realise I'm obligated to give you one more chance to get out of
this." He ran one soft hand up
Duo's side, fingering the tatters of his shirt. "So, Pilot Zero-Two, do you want to give in now, and just
tell me where the other Gundams are, and who is giving you orders?"
"Fuck you," Duo responded wearily--he was
too exhausted to put any emphasis into it, but it seemed to please Tobita
inordinately.
"Oh, I'm /so/ glad," he confessed,
walking away from Duo to some corner of the room that the Deathscythe pilot
couldn't see. "I get so
disappointed when they crack before I even have a chance to play...perhaps
there is something special about you Gundam pilots after all."
"Glad at least one of us is having fun,"
Duo mumbled through his swollen lips.
"Oh, I am," Tobita assured him. "And I thank you in advance for the fun
I'm going to have through the rest of the night...after all, you may not be up
to accepting my gratitude later." There was a swish of cool air against Duo's left leg, though nothing
touched him. "But in all fairness,
do remember--you can stop this any time, you know." His body bumped the back of Duo's legs,
pressing against him, against his wound. "As soon as you reveal the information I've asked for, it will all
be over."
Duo forced his lips into a battered semblance of
his old grin. "What'll be
over? You ain't started anything
yet."
Tobita laughed--harsh, grating, and menacing. "Oh, but I have. You merely haven't noticed, pretty one. But you will." His hand slid up the side of Duo's leg
again, and the pilot's injured knee jerked as those cold fingers touched bare
skin. //Where the /fuck/ did my pants
go? I know I had 'em on a minute ago,
and he hasn't touched me--// Another
brush of cool air, this time on the other side. He caught a glimpse of motion from the corner of his eye, and had
his answer. //A whip. And he hasn't touched me with it yet--man,
but that's some control!// He didn't
have to think too hard to admit that the prospect was truly terrifying.
Tobita continued to speak to him in soothing,
seductive tones, each stroke baring a little more skin, and making Duo's
efforts to contain his fear a little harder. He got the idea it wasn't working--the interrogator could /taste/ his
terror, he absorbed it out of the air, and he made no secret of the fact that
it turned him on. The first time the
whip actually crashed against Duo's bare back, he heard a disturbingly sensual
moan as blood welled up from his broken skin. It came down again, crossing the first mark, and he bit down on his lip
trying not to scream. //I will /not/
give him any more excitement out of this. I won't. I won't scream.//
Then the lash licked the spot on his back where the
letter had been carved, and his resolve crumbled before he could even realise
it had done so--a howl of pain left his lips, his jaw cracking against the
table.
"That's right, my little flower," Tobita
crooned, tickling the end of the whip along Duo's thigh. "It's not nearly as much fun if you
don't scream...."
"That's--/not/--incentive--" Duo gasped
out between tearful breaths. At least
he could be his own smartass self, observed some part of his mind attempting to
distract the rest of him from the pain coursing through his body. It wasn't like this fellow was going to be
any easier on him for keeping his mouth shut.
This experience was unlike any interrogation or
torture in Duo's previous experience--maybe because this was obviously Tobita's
passion in life, though that was something he didn't want to contemplate for
too long. Normally there was only so
much suffering a body could endure before its sensors began to shut down--nerve
endings simply numbed, the pain centres of the brain became so overloaded that everything
blended together into one wide, numb ache that could be pushed past and
ignored.
Not so this. Each lash of the whip ignited his body into fire all over again, not
fading until there were several more to join it. Duo was in the most exquisite agony of his life, and in shame he
tried futilely to hide the trails of the tears streaking his face. He was hyper-aware, conscious of every nerve
and pore in his battered body as a separate entity capable of its own pain. He knew without contemplation that Tobita
would rape him soon--every seductive caress brought him a little closer to the
act itself, and the pleasure the interrogator found in his work was obviously
erotic.
Frustrated with his own helplessness, his lack of
control, and the throbbing pain coursing through him, Duo actually considered,
if only for a heartbeat, giving the others away. Anything to make this stop. If begging, bargaining, /anything/ would have worked, he would have done
it. He couldn't even pass out, Tobita
was too expert at his craft to allow for that. He wanted Duo conscious and hurting, and that was exactly what he was
going to get.
A sudden cry as the whip lifted away caught his
attention, but he couldn't turn his face toward the direction of these new
sounds. All he knew was a sense of
profound, exhausted relief as a fierce, icy female voice cut through the dingy
room--
"Just WHAT do you think you're doing?"
*****