Crossed and Damned
Chapter One
*
"It's like a dream you try to remember but it's gone
When you
Try to scream but it only comes out as a yawn
When you
Try to figure out what all this is for."
~Barenaked Ladies, "Pinch Me"
*
With a barely audible sigh, Mizuno Ami fingered the ends of one of her wavy blue locks cut short to frame her face, large blue eyes gazing out through the delicate tortoiseshell glasses perched on her nose. As she stepped quietly out of the shuttle, behind her tall and beautiful mother, she looked like nothing more than an unremarkable, shy young woman in high school. And yet contained within her skull was one of the most brilliant minds Earth had the sovereign right to boast of.
And she hated every press conference Dr. Mizuno, her mother, and she had to attend. Her mother, she knew, enjoyed it and was professional enough to remain unaffected by fame. Of course, that did nothing to help Ami's inability to converse freely before a crowd without falling back on technical terms and large words.
That, in turn, led to a public belief that she was a stuck-up, reclusive snob.
Since people then left her alone, she was somewhat content with the unspoken treaty.
Somewhat.
"Ami-chan, L2 to Ami-chan…"
Blinking owlishly up at her mother, the eighteen-year old's cheeks exploded with a scarlet blush as her mother smirked.
"Listen, sweetie, I have an important meeting I need to get to in fifteen minutes." Seeing the crushed look passing quickly across Ami's small features, Dr. Mizuno smiled reassuringly. "I know I promised to spend the afternoon with you, but our flight *was* delayed, you remember. Anyway, here's your key to our suite," she carefully quested for the key in her purse before handing said key to Ami, "and I should be there by seven=ish tonight. All right, dear? Good! Sayonara, then!" Waving once, cheerfully, Dr. Mizuno skirted the pressing crowds as she moved swiftly to a waiting vehicle.
Giving the key a steady look before flicking her wrist and catching it as it tumbled down from its leap, Ami sighed deeply. "Well, key, looks like it's just you and me now." Pretending the key had given her am answer, she kissed the metal surface before pocketing it. "Damn, but I hope they've got something other than Discovery Channel re-runs at *this* medical suite."
A few people turned and gave her very unusual looks before hurrying along.
*
"Is he drunk off his ass again?" Wufei asked once, bluntly as Duo fiddled with the straw of his multi-flavor milkshake (how in hell Maxwell could drink something with fifty different milkshake flavors in it was beyond Wufei's reasoning), humming something softly beneath his breath that sounded suspiciously like an old Shania Twain song. Quatre paused and shrugged, lying stomach down on the grass of the park they were currently in. Heero snorted and Trowa said something quiet long the lines of, "He is in sorrow after Hilde-chan's death. He needs peace."
A silence, comfortable and familiar, descended fluidly on the five former pilots.
"USAGI NO BAKA!!"
The sudden, fiery, death-foreboding voice shattered the (relative) piece and tranquility, sending Quatre into a yelp and Duo into a pitch-my-milkshake-in-the-direction-of-Wufei frenzy.
A veritable goddess with long raven hair sweeping the inside of her knees, exposed by rolled up jeans, swept past, dragging a smaller woman with long blonde hair and abnormally large blue eyes, which were currently filling with tears, behind her. "Demo, Rei-chan, it was an accident, I swear by all I hold holy!" the blonde wailed pitifully.
"So, you're swearing by ice-cream sundaes and strawberry sodas?" the dark-haired woman spoke sarcastically, scowling at her unfortunate victim.
Usagi, who was apparently the victim, cast about desperately for any help whatsoever. Spying Heero and the others, she eagerly cried, "Help me! Rei's a psychotic murderer and she's gonna-mmfmmmgyuf!"
Rei clamped her hand about Usagi's mouth and hauled her out of view.
"That," Trowa stated calmly, "is why we never go outside on a colony Duo calls home."
*
Having wandered aimlessly along the sidewalks of L2, Ami was stricken by the cheerful oddity of the entire LaGrange colony. She had heard that the majority of L2's civilians were Americans, and thusly different in a variety of ways, but this open frankness was unusual to the born-and-bred Japanese girl. It both fascinated her and repulsed her, the looseness of their culture contrasting sharply with the rigidity of her own. How, she thought dizzily, could she have ever dreaded coming here?
A child with wild red hair and flamboyant freckles dodged past her, yelling back at a small girl of what appeared to be Haitian descent. Laughing at their own joy, she decided to follow the two happily playing children for the sake of avoiding an empty suite. After all, it was only…she risked a quick glance at a large cathedral's clocktower…two-thirty. Spending four hours and another thirty minutes completely alone was *not* her idea of a wonderful trip, whether she liked her solitude or not.
The boy turned and smiled happily at the girl, saying in lisping English, "You'll never catch me!"
The dark-skinned, olive-eyed girl scowled. "Yes, I *will*!" she whined.
"No," the boy drawled, skipping off the sidewalk into the paved street, "you won't, Nanya. 'Cause I'm faster than you." Ami tried to force down the sudden foreboding feeling twisting in her gut.
"Aw, you're just a…a…a big poopy-head, Chrissie!" the girl, Nanya, bit back, staying on the sidewalk. "And you know Mommy says not to play in the streets!"
"Mommy doesn't know everything," Chrissie grinned, his mischievous face bunching up elfinly.
Ami's throat squeezed shut thickly when she heard the sudden screeching of wheels and she learned first-hand that accidents never, ever go in slow motion*.
*
Only slightly intoxicated from an after-picnic trip to a local bar, Duo was stumbling along the streets when the shrill sound of brakes being strained to their limits shattered his eardrums and an agonized, whimpering sort of faltering scream ensued. Needless to say, he was affectively snapped fully back into reality.
Years of training and living on a deadly edged blade of life and death had taught Duo one thing among many.
Time truly was of the essence.
Rounding a corner at breakneck speed (literally), he managed to get out a hasty apology to a startled woman he'd sent sprawling to the ground with an outflung arm.
A tangled wreckage of a car was smashed into what was fortunately a closed establishment. A pale hand dangled out the windshield and picking his way carefully across the street to it, he needed only to take one look to know the driver had departed his mortal shell. Grisly blood dripped about the seat of the mangled car and Duo made a quick, automatic prayer for th driver's soul, the habit engrained into him by the Maxwell church.
Glancing around the shocked people, he hunted for any signs of any wounded. To his growing dismay, he saw a little boy no older than seven curled up fetally in the middle of the street, pools of blood pillowing his body. The movement of his chest was hidden from view by the blue-haired head of a thin young woman expertly taking his heartbeat and tearing her blood-stained skirt to wrap firmly about the largest gashes, trying her hardest to cease the dangerous blood flow before it got worse.
Crouching beside her, he whispered urgently, "Are you the boy's mother?"
Pausing in her work of bandaging him, she shook her head, sending the shiny locks decorating her head into shimmering waves. Still she did not lift her face. "Do you have a cell-phone?" she asked in a clipped voice as a small girl fell beside the boy, sobbing and trying to move and shake him. "No, Nanya, you mustn't move him," she ordered and the little dark girl was startled into silence.
"Yes," Duo responded to her earlier question. Being by no means an exceptionally dull man, he whipped out his phone and dialed the emergency line.
And, to his anger and astonished disbelief, he received a busy signal.
"God DAMN it!!" he snarled viciously and the unscratched, weeping girl stared at him in a sort of awe, saying: "That's a bad word."
"He's lost a great deal of blood," the woman stated softly, her English dialect tinted by the wisp of a Japanese accent in her voice, "and he needs medical attention immediately."
"Phone's busy," Duo sighed, reaching to rip the cloth of his red shirt.
"Well, *kuso*," the woman cursed quietly, looking up anxiously into the violet eyes of Duo.
It was as if he'd been punched in the gut, the way he felt every motor function of his body come to a squealing stop, halting in shock. An angelic face framed by dark blue hair cut so eerily like the girl he had known as Hildey-chan, as his sister or imouto, and large blue eyes behind slender glasses stared inquisitively. She was pale like Hilde, he noted distantly, and built like her, too, though kind of skinnier.
SO, was it any wonder that the words that tumbled so softly from his lips so they almost were nothing but an undecipherable murmur were, "Hilde…?"
Her blue eyebrows knit together in confusion and he wanted to howl in rage.
Sirens blazed into existence as an ambulance tore around the corner and stopped abruptly, the two men carrying a stretcher appearing and destroying the perverse spell.
Feeling as if he was going to retch, he jerked to his feet, turned and ran.
Ami was stunned and sat on her knees and shins until they went numb, not hearing Nanya's hesitant thank-you.
Who was that boy?
GAAAAAAAAHH!! This is such a SUCKY chapter!!!! *hits self repeatedly on head* Darn my four Muses! *shakes fist* Ya'll are supposed to make sure I don't write fanfic chapters late at night…*sniffles* I wanna hug something and cry like a little baby! *turns and glomps the aLiEn tiGEr who is used to this sort of thing, being the giant, 5'3" long & high Muse with thick fluffy fur, after all, aLiEn tiGEr - =.= - IS a tiGEr* WAAAAA!! *bawls* Okay, I'm fine. No, wait…*wails for another moment or two* I know, I know, this chapter wasn't very good and I'm probably moving too fast, but I wrote this at ten o'clock PM, New Mexico time, and I'm bouncing off the side-affects of eating thirteen Thin Mints, two Sprites, and chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup. (Hey, I've got high metabolism!) So, I apologize sincerely for the crappiness of this. *Told* you it was an unexceptional Duo/Ami fic.
God Bless!
XOXO!
Signed,
Me, of course!
Contact me via review-thing or at Lisa@ascot-sama.zzn.com - but, be warned. My zzn.com address isn't as good as my AOL one, which I'll never release willingly. ;} Ja ne!
Chapter One
*
"It's like a dream you try to remember but it's gone
When you
Try to scream but it only comes out as a yawn
When you
Try to figure out what all this is for."
~Barenaked Ladies, "Pinch Me"
*
With a barely audible sigh, Mizuno Ami fingered the ends of one of her wavy blue locks cut short to frame her face, large blue eyes gazing out through the delicate tortoiseshell glasses perched on her nose. As she stepped quietly out of the shuttle, behind her tall and beautiful mother, she looked like nothing more than an unremarkable, shy young woman in high school. And yet contained within her skull was one of the most brilliant minds Earth had the sovereign right to boast of.
And she hated every press conference Dr. Mizuno, her mother, and she had to attend. Her mother, she knew, enjoyed it and was professional enough to remain unaffected by fame. Of course, that did nothing to help Ami's inability to converse freely before a crowd without falling back on technical terms and large words.
That, in turn, led to a public belief that she was a stuck-up, reclusive snob.
Since people then left her alone, she was somewhat content with the unspoken treaty.
Somewhat.
"Ami-chan, L2 to Ami-chan…"
Blinking owlishly up at her mother, the eighteen-year old's cheeks exploded with a scarlet blush as her mother smirked.
"Listen, sweetie, I have an important meeting I need to get to in fifteen minutes." Seeing the crushed look passing quickly across Ami's small features, Dr. Mizuno smiled reassuringly. "I know I promised to spend the afternoon with you, but our flight *was* delayed, you remember. Anyway, here's your key to our suite," she carefully quested for the key in her purse before handing said key to Ami, "and I should be there by seven=ish tonight. All right, dear? Good! Sayonara, then!" Waving once, cheerfully, Dr. Mizuno skirted the pressing crowds as she moved swiftly to a waiting vehicle.
Giving the key a steady look before flicking her wrist and catching it as it tumbled down from its leap, Ami sighed deeply. "Well, key, looks like it's just you and me now." Pretending the key had given her am answer, she kissed the metal surface before pocketing it. "Damn, but I hope they've got something other than Discovery Channel re-runs at *this* medical suite."
A few people turned and gave her very unusual looks before hurrying along.
*
"Is he drunk off his ass again?" Wufei asked once, bluntly as Duo fiddled with the straw of his multi-flavor milkshake (how in hell Maxwell could drink something with fifty different milkshake flavors in it was beyond Wufei's reasoning), humming something softly beneath his breath that sounded suspiciously like an old Shania Twain song. Quatre paused and shrugged, lying stomach down on the grass of the park they were currently in. Heero snorted and Trowa said something quiet long the lines of, "He is in sorrow after Hilde-chan's death. He needs peace."
A silence, comfortable and familiar, descended fluidly on the five former pilots.
"USAGI NO BAKA!!"
The sudden, fiery, death-foreboding voice shattered the (relative) piece and tranquility, sending Quatre into a yelp and Duo into a pitch-my-milkshake-in-the-direction-of-Wufei frenzy.
A veritable goddess with long raven hair sweeping the inside of her knees, exposed by rolled up jeans, swept past, dragging a smaller woman with long blonde hair and abnormally large blue eyes, which were currently filling with tears, behind her. "Demo, Rei-chan, it was an accident, I swear by all I hold holy!" the blonde wailed pitifully.
"So, you're swearing by ice-cream sundaes and strawberry sodas?" the dark-haired woman spoke sarcastically, scowling at her unfortunate victim.
Usagi, who was apparently the victim, cast about desperately for any help whatsoever. Spying Heero and the others, she eagerly cried, "Help me! Rei's a psychotic murderer and she's gonna-mmfmmmgyuf!"
Rei clamped her hand about Usagi's mouth and hauled her out of view.
"That," Trowa stated calmly, "is why we never go outside on a colony Duo calls home."
*
Having wandered aimlessly along the sidewalks of L2, Ami was stricken by the cheerful oddity of the entire LaGrange colony. She had heard that the majority of L2's civilians were Americans, and thusly different in a variety of ways, but this open frankness was unusual to the born-and-bred Japanese girl. It both fascinated her and repulsed her, the looseness of their culture contrasting sharply with the rigidity of her own. How, she thought dizzily, could she have ever dreaded coming here?
A child with wild red hair and flamboyant freckles dodged past her, yelling back at a small girl of what appeared to be Haitian descent. Laughing at their own joy, she decided to follow the two happily playing children for the sake of avoiding an empty suite. After all, it was only…she risked a quick glance at a large cathedral's clocktower…two-thirty. Spending four hours and another thirty minutes completely alone was *not* her idea of a wonderful trip, whether she liked her solitude or not.
The boy turned and smiled happily at the girl, saying in lisping English, "You'll never catch me!"
The dark-skinned, olive-eyed girl scowled. "Yes, I *will*!" she whined.
"No," the boy drawled, skipping off the sidewalk into the paved street, "you won't, Nanya. 'Cause I'm faster than you." Ami tried to force down the sudden foreboding feeling twisting in her gut.
"Aw, you're just a…a…a big poopy-head, Chrissie!" the girl, Nanya, bit back, staying on the sidewalk. "And you know Mommy says not to play in the streets!"
"Mommy doesn't know everything," Chrissie grinned, his mischievous face bunching up elfinly.
Ami's throat squeezed shut thickly when she heard the sudden screeching of wheels and she learned first-hand that accidents never, ever go in slow motion*.
*
Only slightly intoxicated from an after-picnic trip to a local bar, Duo was stumbling along the streets when the shrill sound of brakes being strained to their limits shattered his eardrums and an agonized, whimpering sort of faltering scream ensued. Needless to say, he was affectively snapped fully back into reality.
Years of training and living on a deadly edged blade of life and death had taught Duo one thing among many.
Time truly was of the essence.
Rounding a corner at breakneck speed (literally), he managed to get out a hasty apology to a startled woman he'd sent sprawling to the ground with an outflung arm.
A tangled wreckage of a car was smashed into what was fortunately a closed establishment. A pale hand dangled out the windshield and picking his way carefully across the street to it, he needed only to take one look to know the driver had departed his mortal shell. Grisly blood dripped about the seat of the mangled car and Duo made a quick, automatic prayer for th driver's soul, the habit engrained into him by the Maxwell church.
Glancing around the shocked people, he hunted for any signs of any wounded. To his growing dismay, he saw a little boy no older than seven curled up fetally in the middle of the street, pools of blood pillowing his body. The movement of his chest was hidden from view by the blue-haired head of a thin young woman expertly taking his heartbeat and tearing her blood-stained skirt to wrap firmly about the largest gashes, trying her hardest to cease the dangerous blood flow before it got worse.
Crouching beside her, he whispered urgently, "Are you the boy's mother?"
Pausing in her work of bandaging him, she shook her head, sending the shiny locks decorating her head into shimmering waves. Still she did not lift her face. "Do you have a cell-phone?" she asked in a clipped voice as a small girl fell beside the boy, sobbing and trying to move and shake him. "No, Nanya, you mustn't move him," she ordered and the little dark girl was startled into silence.
"Yes," Duo responded to her earlier question. Being by no means an exceptionally dull man, he whipped out his phone and dialed the emergency line.
And, to his anger and astonished disbelief, he received a busy signal.
"God DAMN it!!" he snarled viciously and the unscratched, weeping girl stared at him in a sort of awe, saying: "That's a bad word."
"He's lost a great deal of blood," the woman stated softly, her English dialect tinted by the wisp of a Japanese accent in her voice, "and he needs medical attention immediately."
"Phone's busy," Duo sighed, reaching to rip the cloth of his red shirt.
"Well, *kuso*," the woman cursed quietly, looking up anxiously into the violet eyes of Duo.
It was as if he'd been punched in the gut, the way he felt every motor function of his body come to a squealing stop, halting in shock. An angelic face framed by dark blue hair cut so eerily like the girl he had known as Hildey-chan, as his sister or imouto, and large blue eyes behind slender glasses stared inquisitively. She was pale like Hilde, he noted distantly, and built like her, too, though kind of skinnier.
SO, was it any wonder that the words that tumbled so softly from his lips so they almost were nothing but an undecipherable murmur were, "Hilde…?"
Her blue eyebrows knit together in confusion and he wanted to howl in rage.
Sirens blazed into existence as an ambulance tore around the corner and stopped abruptly, the two men carrying a stretcher appearing and destroying the perverse spell.
Feeling as if he was going to retch, he jerked to his feet, turned and ran.
Ami was stunned and sat on her knees and shins until they went numb, not hearing Nanya's hesitant thank-you.
Who was that boy?
GAAAAAAAAHH!! This is such a SUCKY chapter!!!! *hits self repeatedly on head* Darn my four Muses! *shakes fist* Ya'll are supposed to make sure I don't write fanfic chapters late at night…*sniffles* I wanna hug something and cry like a little baby! *turns and glomps the aLiEn tiGEr who is used to this sort of thing, being the giant, 5'3" long & high Muse with thick fluffy fur, after all, aLiEn tiGEr - =.= - IS a tiGEr* WAAAAA!! *bawls* Okay, I'm fine. No, wait…*wails for another moment or two* I know, I know, this chapter wasn't very good and I'm probably moving too fast, but I wrote this at ten o'clock PM, New Mexico time, and I'm bouncing off the side-affects of eating thirteen Thin Mints, two Sprites, and chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup. (Hey, I've got high metabolism!) So, I apologize sincerely for the crappiness of this. *Told* you it was an unexceptional Duo/Ami fic.
God Bless!
XOXO!
Signed,
Me, of course!
Contact me via review-thing or at Lisa@ascot-sama.zzn.com - but, be warned. My zzn.com address isn't as good as my AOL one, which I'll never release willingly. ;} Ja ne!