Title: Janus-Faced, pt. 2/5ish
Author: AKA Anonymous
Genre: Suspense, evil pilot?
Pairings: (background) 3+4, others???
Warnings: Angst, betrayal?, light pilot torture, spoilers for Ep.
Zero, unbeta'd
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, it's insane characters, or the twisted plot...wait a minute, that's just *my* story. ****************************
The cell, in size and shape, was like many others Heero had seen or
been held in during his life. Smooth, gray concrete walls and
floors, a door that looked like solid steel, and the itch on the back
of his neck like someone was watching--which was very likely.
However, the bareness of the cell went beyond that of a normal jail.
No pallet-bunks were bolted to the wall, no holes were cut into the
walls for plumbing for water to drink or wash, not even a window in
the door for the guards to sneer through. An isolation room--only
he wasn't alone. He shifted his head, scanning the room and it's
other occupants once again.
Heero studied his comrades carefully, mentally updating his opinion
of their probability ratings and change of mission perimeters in
relation to the group's survival. His mind assessed their injuries
and mental state with an unconscious, practiced ease that annoyed
him, but also thankfully kept him from focusing totally on the
failure of the mission thus far.
He was fighting a losing battle with himself, an internal war that
threatened his self-control from the instant he had realized the
gravity of their situation. Heero had been trained thoroughly to
avoid sloppy work that led to capture. He didn't understand what had
gone wrong, save for the possibility they had been betrayed.
It would have had to have been someone very close to them. Even
within the Preventors very few people knew of the 'silent' colony.
To not only have knowledge of the possible rebellion, but detailed
information on the procedures to put down the uprising from the
inside...
No one would have known about it but them. The two handcuffed and
battered with him and their missing comrade.
That was the battleground for his psyche. In the years following his
dehumanizing training from Dr. J by the brutal orders of Dekim Barton
he had been able to find a precarious balance between himself and his
training. Heero Yuy and the Perfect Soldier had meshed firmly
together years before, but the conflicting emotions--a friend, a
brother, a loved one, one of his own leading them to this?--was
almost too much. He had let the walls of his defenses down and now
he was captured. But not beaten.
Heero still held to hope as he allowed his mind to run all possible
scenarios for the mole. Who was it?
He shook his head with a frown; all the assumptions and hypotheses he
could churn out would only be guesses. What he needed was
information. The threat to the peace was his first priority,
everything else, even the welfare of his comrades and himself, was
secondary.
What was going on here, anyway? No information had been available
from the outside, all communications were lost weeks ago, and so
their team had gone in blind. Getting in, it turned out, was the
easy part.
They had infiltrated the colony through an emergency airlock that had
been left to disrepair as the inhabitants fell into hard times. Upon
entering their team had found the streets disturbingly empty except
for the occasional bum sleeping in the ally ways. Quatre had taken
point, guiding the way to what they thought to be the most likely
place for the rebels to have set a base: the old government's
parliament buildings. Heero followed close behind, ready to cover
their path with bullets, should the enemy make an appearance. Wufei
and Duo had the rear.
Heero's thoughts backtracked. It was had been surprising when Duo
hadn't whined about being the last. The Deathscythe pilot usually
demanded a scouting position, but he had seemed almost calmly
agreeable to Quatre's plans. Not normal behavior for the braided
thief, but in light of Quatre's own fiery determination, Heero had
overlooked it.
And they were all Quatre's plans. The Winner heir had more of a
tactical mind for groups than any of the others, so they
automatically left the work to him. Normally the Sandrock and
Heavyarms pilots would have bantered back and forth about the
acceptable risks of Quatre's plan, airing out it's difficulties and
set backs, then settling on something together, but that hadn't been
the case this time.
When the L2 colony had first fallen 'silent'--a Preventor term for a
colony whose communications have been cut off in a suspected coup
d'etat--immediate action had been taken. In order to gain more
information their superiors had sent in their best spy to infiltrate
the new faction.
That was the last they had heard of Trowa Barton.
Heero's mind played back their capture in perfect detail; the sudden
appearance of men, all dressed as if homeless beggars and hoodlums,
the clicks of guns being loaded, the demand for their surrender...
Heero's eyes narrowed as the memory progressed to the leader.
It was hate at first sight. He had known in a second that the greasy
blonde was the leader of the cause, but how the man fit in with the
situation was beyond Heero's grasp for the moment.
What cause was he leading? The men that had surrounded them, though
they may have held their weapons well and definitely didn't look
afraid to use them, weren't up to the normal standards of an army.
He was beginning to believe that they actually were bums. They had
no insignia, no means of identifying each other that he could discern-
-not that he minded, it would only help in their escape--but how
could they have gotten weapons if they didn't have the means for
decent clothes? There was too much unknown and that was before he
added the renegade Gundam pilot to the equation.
How did the rebels know they were there? A spy. How did they know
the betrayer? Unknown. What did they have on a Gundam pilot that
would make him turn? Unknown. Who was it?
There was only one person Heero ruled out, 05. Wufei had betrayed
them once before, but his methods had been brutally open. And when
their differences had been cleared away, the Shelong pilot had
attached himself to the Preventors with a loyalty that rivaled only
his connections to the other four pilots.
He had given each of them a chance of exacting justice for his
actions directly after the Barton Incident, as a sign of repentance
and sorrow for his betrayal. Heero had almost laughed at the Chinese
when he had handed over a pistol and await the judgement; it was too
much like his own methods.
He knew Wufei would die by his own hand before speaking against them
again. That left only three possibilities, all of which were far-
fetched, but remotely feasible, though hard for Heero to process:
Quarte and Trowa could have been working together with the rebels,
for some reason unknown.
Quatre had sold them out for Trowa's benefit--though that was highly
unlikely, judging by the Arabian's sense of protection to them
all...and the fact that he was trussed up like a turkey at the moment.
Or Duo had given them to the enemy; reason unknown. Location
unknown, for that matter. That worried him more than he'd like to
admit and, from the dangerous look in Wufei's black eyes, he wasn't
alone in his fear.
A groan sounded from his left, 04's head bobbed a bit as he fought
for consciousness. "Where are we? Is everyone all right?"
Heero and Wufei flashed their companion similar, reassuring hand
signals. The blonde smiled apologetically as he realized they were
trying to remain silent. It didn't matter, though.
Whether the enemy guards had heard Quatre or they were on orders to
check the prisoners, the solid metal door jerked open, letting a
bright beam of light flood into the dim cell. Five men stepped in,
guns leveled, and motioned for the pilots to get to their feet.
Wufei and Quatre did so only after Heero had.
Even with his shoulder dislocated, one arm sagging lower than the
other, Heero raised himself up and faced the rebels with his usual
emotionless calm. The last guard produced more chains, which were
linked to their handcuffs, down to their feet where ankle-cuffs were
added. Lastly, the man grinned as white sacks were held up.
The remaining Gundam pilots stood still as their heads were covered,
only shuffling forward as the point of the guard's guns prodded their
backs.
~*~*~*~*~
Trowa's eyes had been bound again. He no longer had any sense of day
or night, no sounds could penetrate the room's thick walls and no
sensations were there to link his sanity to besides the pain that
rolled through his body whenever he moved.
The isolation mixed with the on-and-off interrogations was slowly
stripping his mind of its bearings, so when he heard the door open,
he tensed. When he heard the jingling of chains he cringed, but when
he heard the soft tenor voice that had kept his mind intact, he
almost lost it.
"Trowa!" The Heavyarms pilot let a moan of despair pass from his
lips, not wanting to believe or hope that the voice was real. His
mind wanted to believe Quatre was there, but his heart hoped that he
wasn't. If he was, he had been captured as well. Trowa didn't have
to wait long to find out which was right.
Fingers tore at his blindfold, yanking it off in near desperation and
Trowa fought the heaviness of his eyelids as he felt slim fingers
stroking his cheek. Even before his eyes could focus, his nose
brought him a familiar scent, his ears caught the well known whimpers
of distress and his memories of the light touches left no doubt in
his mind. "Quatre."
His blood-shot eyes caught a wave of sea-blue concern. The blonde's
eyes were filled with unshed tears, the thin eyebrows were lift in
worry, but Trowa caught the sharply down turned mouth before Quatre
could hide it. Shifting his eyes right and left he saw the same
frowns in the eyes of the others.
"Duo," Trowa bowed his head, "what have you done?"
"02?" Heero's tone was harsh. Trowa looked up and saw the 'Perfect
Soldier' staring back at him. "Are you sure?"
Quatre paused in his examinations of Trowa's injuries to see the
shadow of pain flicker across his features. "Yes. He...he was the
one who...interrogated me."
Horror. The word for the looks on Quatre's and Wufei's faces was
that of horror. Wufei backed away from them, glancing from Trowa to
Heero and back, as if he was trying not to comprehend the statement.
The blonde pilot shook his head violently at his partner, the blue-
green eyes a wide and unblinking for several silent moments.
"But--but why?"
Trowa shook his head, awakening stiff muscles that bit into his neck
like piranhas. "I don't know. He didn't ask for much information,
just kept whispering things to me. Nonsense things and accusations
sometimes, apologies the next day...he changed..."
The European wavered off for a moment in painful recollection, but
his voice returned in full force as he brought his head up to face
his comrades. "I think--I think he's gone insane."
*******************************
Thanks for reading! Please review! *Runs off cackling madly*
--Anon
Author: AKA Anonymous
Genre: Suspense, evil pilot?
Pairings: (background) 3+4, others???
Warnings: Angst, betrayal?, light pilot torture, spoilers for Ep.
Zero, unbeta'd
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, it's insane characters, or the twisted plot...wait a minute, that's just *my* story. ****************************
The cell, in size and shape, was like many others Heero had seen or
been held in during his life. Smooth, gray concrete walls and
floors, a door that looked like solid steel, and the itch on the back
of his neck like someone was watching--which was very likely.
However, the bareness of the cell went beyond that of a normal jail.
No pallet-bunks were bolted to the wall, no holes were cut into the
walls for plumbing for water to drink or wash, not even a window in
the door for the guards to sneer through. An isolation room--only
he wasn't alone. He shifted his head, scanning the room and it's
other occupants once again.
Heero studied his comrades carefully, mentally updating his opinion
of their probability ratings and change of mission perimeters in
relation to the group's survival. His mind assessed their injuries
and mental state with an unconscious, practiced ease that annoyed
him, but also thankfully kept him from focusing totally on the
failure of the mission thus far.
He was fighting a losing battle with himself, an internal war that
threatened his self-control from the instant he had realized the
gravity of their situation. Heero had been trained thoroughly to
avoid sloppy work that led to capture. He didn't understand what had
gone wrong, save for the possibility they had been betrayed.
It would have had to have been someone very close to them. Even
within the Preventors very few people knew of the 'silent' colony.
To not only have knowledge of the possible rebellion, but detailed
information on the procedures to put down the uprising from the
inside...
No one would have known about it but them. The two handcuffed and
battered with him and their missing comrade.
That was the battleground for his psyche. In the years following his
dehumanizing training from Dr. J by the brutal orders of Dekim Barton
he had been able to find a precarious balance between himself and his
training. Heero Yuy and the Perfect Soldier had meshed firmly
together years before, but the conflicting emotions--a friend, a
brother, a loved one, one of his own leading them to this?--was
almost too much. He had let the walls of his defenses down and now
he was captured. But not beaten.
Heero still held to hope as he allowed his mind to run all possible
scenarios for the mole. Who was it?
He shook his head with a frown; all the assumptions and hypotheses he
could churn out would only be guesses. What he needed was
information. The threat to the peace was his first priority,
everything else, even the welfare of his comrades and himself, was
secondary.
What was going on here, anyway? No information had been available
from the outside, all communications were lost weeks ago, and so
their team had gone in blind. Getting in, it turned out, was the
easy part.
They had infiltrated the colony through an emergency airlock that had
been left to disrepair as the inhabitants fell into hard times. Upon
entering their team had found the streets disturbingly empty except
for the occasional bum sleeping in the ally ways. Quatre had taken
point, guiding the way to what they thought to be the most likely
place for the rebels to have set a base: the old government's
parliament buildings. Heero followed close behind, ready to cover
their path with bullets, should the enemy make an appearance. Wufei
and Duo had the rear.
Heero's thoughts backtracked. It was had been surprising when Duo
hadn't whined about being the last. The Deathscythe pilot usually
demanded a scouting position, but he had seemed almost calmly
agreeable to Quatre's plans. Not normal behavior for the braided
thief, but in light of Quatre's own fiery determination, Heero had
overlooked it.
And they were all Quatre's plans. The Winner heir had more of a
tactical mind for groups than any of the others, so they
automatically left the work to him. Normally the Sandrock and
Heavyarms pilots would have bantered back and forth about the
acceptable risks of Quatre's plan, airing out it's difficulties and
set backs, then settling on something together, but that hadn't been
the case this time.
When the L2 colony had first fallen 'silent'--a Preventor term for a
colony whose communications have been cut off in a suspected coup
d'etat--immediate action had been taken. In order to gain more
information their superiors had sent in their best spy to infiltrate
the new faction.
That was the last they had heard of Trowa Barton.
Heero's mind played back their capture in perfect detail; the sudden
appearance of men, all dressed as if homeless beggars and hoodlums,
the clicks of guns being loaded, the demand for their surrender...
Heero's eyes narrowed as the memory progressed to the leader.
It was hate at first sight. He had known in a second that the greasy
blonde was the leader of the cause, but how the man fit in with the
situation was beyond Heero's grasp for the moment.
What cause was he leading? The men that had surrounded them, though
they may have held their weapons well and definitely didn't look
afraid to use them, weren't up to the normal standards of an army.
He was beginning to believe that they actually were bums. They had
no insignia, no means of identifying each other that he could discern-
-not that he minded, it would only help in their escape--but how
could they have gotten weapons if they didn't have the means for
decent clothes? There was too much unknown and that was before he
added the renegade Gundam pilot to the equation.
How did the rebels know they were there? A spy. How did they know
the betrayer? Unknown. What did they have on a Gundam pilot that
would make him turn? Unknown. Who was it?
There was only one person Heero ruled out, 05. Wufei had betrayed
them once before, but his methods had been brutally open. And when
their differences had been cleared away, the Shelong pilot had
attached himself to the Preventors with a loyalty that rivaled only
his connections to the other four pilots.
He had given each of them a chance of exacting justice for his
actions directly after the Barton Incident, as a sign of repentance
and sorrow for his betrayal. Heero had almost laughed at the Chinese
when he had handed over a pistol and await the judgement; it was too
much like his own methods.
He knew Wufei would die by his own hand before speaking against them
again. That left only three possibilities, all of which were far-
fetched, but remotely feasible, though hard for Heero to process:
Quarte and Trowa could have been working together with the rebels,
for some reason unknown.
Quatre had sold them out for Trowa's benefit--though that was highly
unlikely, judging by the Arabian's sense of protection to them
all...and the fact that he was trussed up like a turkey at the moment.
Or Duo had given them to the enemy; reason unknown. Location
unknown, for that matter. That worried him more than he'd like to
admit and, from the dangerous look in Wufei's black eyes, he wasn't
alone in his fear.
A groan sounded from his left, 04's head bobbed a bit as he fought
for consciousness. "Where are we? Is everyone all right?"
Heero and Wufei flashed their companion similar, reassuring hand
signals. The blonde smiled apologetically as he realized they were
trying to remain silent. It didn't matter, though.
Whether the enemy guards had heard Quatre or they were on orders to
check the prisoners, the solid metal door jerked open, letting a
bright beam of light flood into the dim cell. Five men stepped in,
guns leveled, and motioned for the pilots to get to their feet.
Wufei and Quatre did so only after Heero had.
Even with his shoulder dislocated, one arm sagging lower than the
other, Heero raised himself up and faced the rebels with his usual
emotionless calm. The last guard produced more chains, which were
linked to their handcuffs, down to their feet where ankle-cuffs were
added. Lastly, the man grinned as white sacks were held up.
The remaining Gundam pilots stood still as their heads were covered,
only shuffling forward as the point of the guard's guns prodded their
backs.
~*~*~*~*~
Trowa's eyes had been bound again. He no longer had any sense of day
or night, no sounds could penetrate the room's thick walls and no
sensations were there to link his sanity to besides the pain that
rolled through his body whenever he moved.
The isolation mixed with the on-and-off interrogations was slowly
stripping his mind of its bearings, so when he heard the door open,
he tensed. When he heard the jingling of chains he cringed, but when
he heard the soft tenor voice that had kept his mind intact, he
almost lost it.
"Trowa!" The Heavyarms pilot let a moan of despair pass from his
lips, not wanting to believe or hope that the voice was real. His
mind wanted to believe Quatre was there, but his heart hoped that he
wasn't. If he was, he had been captured as well. Trowa didn't have
to wait long to find out which was right.
Fingers tore at his blindfold, yanking it off in near desperation and
Trowa fought the heaviness of his eyelids as he felt slim fingers
stroking his cheek. Even before his eyes could focus, his nose
brought him a familiar scent, his ears caught the well known whimpers
of distress and his memories of the light touches left no doubt in
his mind. "Quatre."
His blood-shot eyes caught a wave of sea-blue concern. The blonde's
eyes were filled with unshed tears, the thin eyebrows were lift in
worry, but Trowa caught the sharply down turned mouth before Quatre
could hide it. Shifting his eyes right and left he saw the same
frowns in the eyes of the others.
"Duo," Trowa bowed his head, "what have you done?"
"02?" Heero's tone was harsh. Trowa looked up and saw the 'Perfect
Soldier' staring back at him. "Are you sure?"
Quatre paused in his examinations of Trowa's injuries to see the
shadow of pain flicker across his features. "Yes. He...he was the
one who...interrogated me."
Horror. The word for the looks on Quatre's and Wufei's faces was
that of horror. Wufei backed away from them, glancing from Trowa to
Heero and back, as if he was trying not to comprehend the statement.
The blonde pilot shook his head violently at his partner, the blue-
green eyes a wide and unblinking for several silent moments.
"But--but why?"
Trowa shook his head, awakening stiff muscles that bit into his neck
like piranhas. "I don't know. He didn't ask for much information,
just kept whispering things to me. Nonsense things and accusations
sometimes, apologies the next day...he changed..."
The European wavered off for a moment in painful recollection, but
his voice returned in full force as he brought his head up to face
his comrades. "I think--I think he's gone insane."
*******************************
Thanks for reading! Please review! *Runs off cackling madly*
--Anon