~ All standard disclaimers apply
~ Warning: Deathfic! Very morbid and of course angsty.
Tons of blood and gore. (Not the guy who was going for president) Anyone who
can't stomach a ton of blood and pain and fighting, you better get out now.
Definitely AU. Told in Duo's POV, and I know it does not sound a thing like
him. But I couldn't think of anyone else who I could use. No yaoi, unless you
think being a guy and having a best friend who's a guy is considered yaoi.
Very, very mild language (the worst is damn)
~ Note: Takes place during a battle on Earth. This is one
of my more depressing fics, but I love the ending. All reviews are appreciated.
Flames will be my inspiration for future fics. (I'll just imagine what I want
to do to the flamers and make that happen to one of the characters in a fic)
Just remember the warning and REVIEW!
~Demons are everywhere- even in me~
~ Dark Waters ~
We stand on one end of a field of grass, thirty men
gathered around the Lieutenant. Although we are preparing for a battle, we have
only swords, no armor or even a shield among us. Still, we are sure of our
abilities and ourselves; confident we can win against the enemy forces.
The faint sound of jingling draws our attention to the far
side of the clearing. Straight rows of soldiers enter the field. There are far
more of them than our forces. They all wear armor, shields strapped to their
arms and swords by their sides. They look so confident, so…professional, for
lack of a better word.
For the first time, fear enters our group. I know what is
running through my comrades' minds, for the same thing is running through my
mind.
We may not be a match for them.
Quickly I push that thought away. I can't let doubt enter
my mind, can't let the doubt cloud my judgement and make me vulnerable. Still,
I can't help wondering if I'll ever see my friends after today.
"There are so many of them." I hear Quatre
whisper, almost to himself.
"And they all have armor." Nothing about Trowa's
face or voice says if he's worried or not. He is just stating the obvious, something
I thought I was the only one to do.
"We can beat them." Wufei sounds confident.
"We trained for so long."
"But those guys look so calm, so confident. Like every
single one of them has fought in a battle before and come out alive. What
if…"
"No!" I interrupt Quatre. "We can't start
thinking like that. If we doubt we can beat these guys, it'll make it harder to
beat them."
"It's good to know you actually paid attention during
training, Duo." Heero remarks dryly. I just grin.
Before we can say more, a shout rings in the air.
The battle has started.
I charge into the fray, determined to kill off every one of
these evil men. I feel completely sure that by sun down, every single one of
them will be lying lifeless on the ground, red blood soaking the trampled
grass, turning the green to a dark burgundy color. This sureness is like a
premonition, like I've seen some of the future. Despite the fact that they have
armor while we have none, and their numbers are greater than our group I'm still
confident about our skills.
I find myself facing my first opponent. He glares at me,
but I pay no heed. I can't let him intimidate me. I see an opening and rive my
sword between the man's armor plates and into his flesh. I tug my blade free as
he gasps in pain, but the man continues to fight. Narrowing my eyes, I thrust
my sword again. It gets past his weakened defenses and enters the tender spot
at the base
of his throat. He chokes, flailing his arms in a pathetic
attempt to stay alive. I remove my sword, and the man falls to the ground, dying.
I ignore his body and move to my next victim.
The man I chose next is a better swordsman than the first,
and he manages to draw first blood. Fortunately I dodge the attack, his sword
only grazing my skin. I can still fight, and fight well. Watching carefully, I
see an opening and take it. With a horizontal swipe of my blade, I manage to
cut him across the throat, sword going deep enough to cut his windpipe.
He chokes as the first man did and he falls to the earth,
hands around his neck and eyes bugging out. If his blood goes down his windpipe
it will fill his lungs and he will drown in his own blood, if he doesn't die
from lack of air first. Thinking about what will happen to him gives me
pleasure. None of these men should be allowed to see another sun rise.
Leaving him on the ground, I move off to find another man
whom I can kill. It's not long before I find someone, and not long after that before
I manage to cut him down.
I go on this way, taking minor wounds but inflicting more
serious ones upon my enemies. I leave their bodies on the ground, ignoring
their cries and garbled speech. At one point, I glimpse Quatre. He's bleeding
from numerous wounds, all over. He must be thinking that we can't win, because
I know he's a better swordsman than I am. I don't see any more of my friends,
but I feel they are in better shape than Quatre.
The hours pass quickly, and at noon the Lieutenant calls us
back. The enemy forces also retreat to their side of the battlefield for a
temporary break.
That is when I see the damage done to our side. Many of my
comrades are wounded worse than I am, and I see bodies on the battlefield that
can only have come from our forces, identifiable only because they have no armor.
Looking around the crowd of soldiers around me, I fail to spot any of my
friends. When I encounter Heero, I ask where the others are.
Silently he points out to the bloody field. I look where he
points and see a fresh corpse, beheaded earlier during the fighting. The head
lies nearby, short blond hair matted with blood. Lifeless blue eyes stare
vacantly at some obscure point on the ground.
"…Oh no…"
No, it can't be. Quatre was the best with the sword out of
our little group; he couldn't be struck down, not while I still stand, able to
fight. Quickly I scan the other bodies on the ground, hoping I don't see a
Chinese body or one with brown bangs covering an eye.
I feel sick when I see it. A tall corpse, its brown hair
slick with blood. Shiny, slippery-looking tubes rest under the body, reddish
pink bits peeking out. I recognize the clothes Trowa had been wearing when we
trooped out to this field, though now they are soaked in blood. Slowly I
realize those tubes looking so much like oversized worms are Trowa's intestines.
They cut him across the stomach, spilling those vital organs to the bloody
earth. Thankfully, I cannot see his face. That would be too much.
"Where's Wufei?" My voice sounds frantic and I
almost can't recognize it.
"Right here." Wufei materializes out of the small
crowd, easing my fears a little. "Where are Winner and Barton?"
Wufei's innocent question makes me feel sick again. My face
must betray my horror because Wufei immediately asks what's wrong with me. I
mimic Heero's gesture from before, silently pointing to the field where the bodies
of our friends lie. I feel worse when Wufei pales, the blood draining from his
face, eyes wide.
"We can't let their deaths prevent us from winning
this war." Heero speaks in monotone as if Quatre and Trowa were never his friends.
"But Quatre and Trowa, our friends, are lying dead
over there!" My voice explodes from my throat.
He barely glances at me. "We are all expendable."
"Yes," Wufei agrees. "But whether or not
it's for the best, I am going to get revenge for them."
Heero looks like he wants to disagree, to say something
like when we bring personal feelings onto the battlefield, it endangers our
side and ourselves. I hate the general for what he did to my friend. Heero
wasn't like this before the general called him in for extra training. Heero was
a human being then; he was capable of experiencing joy and feeling the sorrow
that accompanies the joy.
Silently though, I agree with Wufei completely. I will make
them pay for taking away two of our group, two of my friends. They will pay
with their own blood for the blood of my friends they have spilt onto the
ground. I will make them pay for sacrificing Quatre and Trowa to a place where
I'll never see them again.
When the battle starts up again, I charge forward with
renewed vigor. I have another goal, a more personal reason for killing every
one of those men and winning the war for our side. I have to make them pay for
the deaths of my friends.
I slash those who dare oppose me, leaving their bloody
bodies where they fall, anxious to get to the next one, to do so much damage to
the other side that they would have no hope of standing up against us any
longer.
Suddenly I trip. Something makes me look down to see what
tripped me. Maybe it's habit. None of that matters when I see what I tripped
over.
Wufei.
He lies there in the bloody grass, black eyes empty and
staring at the clouds. I feel the need to hurl. First Trowa and Quatre are lost
forever, and now Wufei. I have no time for those thoughts however. A soldier
attacks me.
He is very sure of himself, and rather good, I resent to
admit. He forces me backwards, and I can only hope that I don't trip over any
more bodies, especially one of my friends'.
I find myself beside Heero, my best friend. At least he is
alive and able to fight. He handles his sword well, so I am not really worried
he will be struck down anytime soon.
While fighting one of the enemy soldiers, a sudden heavy
pressure against my back almost causes me to impale myself on the enemy sword.
Desperation gives me the strength to make quick work of that soldier so I may
turn to see what caused my distraction.
When my eyes land on what jarred me, almost causing my
death, I gasp.
Heero lies near my feet, blood gushing out of a wound in
his chest. I drop to my knees beside him.
Blood. So much blood, Heero's blood. Pumping out of his
body and onto the ground, further soaking the wet grass. There is too much
blood leaving my friend, too much to replace. Even if I could get him medical
attention right now, he wouldn't make it. With deep certainty I know he will
join Quatre and Trowa and Wufei, where ever they are, in a matter of minutes,
maybe even seconds.
I watch in sick fascination as Heero's blood leaves him,
making it hard for him to breathe. As I watch, Heero cracks open one blue eye
and looks at me, but not at me. It seems like he's looking right through me at
some sight only he can see. Maybe he is seeing Trowa, Quatre and Wufei.
"We are all expendable."
Heero croaks out that last sentence before his eye closes
again and the breath leaves him. Heero, the Perfect Soldier, my best friend, is
dead. Gone, just like Wufei and Trowa and Quatre. Taken away from me without
warning.
I am now the only one left of our small group, the only one
left alive. I know that I must take revenge for my friends who can no longer do
that for themselves. I have too much pride and I care too much for them to do
any less. This knowledge comes to me in a second.
Suddenly realization dawns on me. We can't win. We will all
die. I should have realized this sooner. The odds were stacked against us, but
we were too damn sure of our capabilities and ourselves to face the truth. So
we plunged into the fight with dreams of victory, only to have those dreams
shattered when friends die and we realize how stupid we were to have thought we
could ever have won.
With the realization of the truth in my mind, the bloodlust
that has driven me on dies. I no longer crave to see an opponent die by my
sword, their blood leaking out of their doomed bodies to stain everything it
touches. The grass, their clothes, and my hands all stained by that blood. Now
I feel repulsed at the idea, sickened by the killing and death that surrounds
me.
I am forced to stand up and fight for my life. I am denied
even a minute to mourn the passing of my closest, indeed my only, friends. Now
that I know the truth, the awful truth, I fear my death even more.
Quatre was right. I think to myself. He knew we didn't
stand a chance. But he was probably the first to go down. Maybe the ignorance
of the truth helped us to live longer.
With that thought, I feel all the more frightened, because
now I know the truth. And I know for certain that Heero realized it right
before he was stabbed in the heart. My other friends, I know they knew the
truth before they were killed. The truth is what brought them to their
downfalls, and what will bring me to my death.
I had started the day overconfident, so sure we would be
the victors with little loss to our side. But now I fear for my very life. I don't
want to be stabbed in the chest like Heero, or have to experience the horror of
seeing my body falling without a head like Quatre, blood gushing in either
situation. I don't want to die. I want to live without having to kill or
witness others being killed.
I hear a hoarse shout. It's the Lieutenant, and he wants us
to retreat and regroup. The enemy won't let us go willingly. I see others
fighting to get back to the Lieutenant, and I join their number, defending
myself desperately to get back to the Lieutenant.
Finally I reach him. I turn to watch my comrades fight to
get back to us. As I watch a few of our men still fighting to join us, the full
picture of this battle finally hits me. There are far too little of us left.
The enemy forces more than triples our pathetic little group. I can do nothing
for my comrades on the battlefield.
I can only watch as they are disposed of one by one, their
bodies littering the ground. I can only watch and hope that some of us will
make it out of this bloody ordeal alive. Even this, I realize, is futile. There
are only a few enemy soldiers on the ground surrounded by the many of ours.
The enemy has tremendous advantages over us. They have
armor to protect themselves with while we have none. Their numbers are much
greater than ours are. They are also ruthless killers.
This point is proven as I watch as one of our few not dead
or dying trips over one of the many corpses littering the ground. A group of
enemy fighters converges on our soldier. Their naked swords gleam in the ruddy
afternoon light.
He screams in agonizing pain. Again and again they raise
their blades slick with blood, only to plunge them down into the torn flesh of
my comrade. I am spared the sight of seeing him killed by the killers
themselves; my comrade's attackers block my view with their bodies.
When they finally back off and attack another from our
side, I can hardly tell the lacerated pile of flesh and bone was even human. I
can see white bone peaking out from red flesh and organs, but quickly getting
stained by the spreading blood. That blood is everywhere, even on me, coming
out of me.
One soldier makes it back to us. The rest are either dead
or dying on the blood soaked earth.
"I know it looks hopeless, but we have to keep
fighting."
"But Lieutenant," I hear my voice speak, although
my brain is not fully functional. "There are too many of them, and they're
too good with swords. We'll all die!"
"With that attitude, you will die. Now get out there
and fight! Don't go down without taking some of them with you! Go!"
We charge onto the battlefield, but I with less enthusiasm
than before. Again, the clash of metal on metal rings in the air. I find myself
on the defensive, three enemy soldiers against me. They seem intent on cutting
off my head as they did to Quatre, or driving their bloody swords through my
heart, like they did Heero.
Desperately I defend myself. I do not want to die. But they
are ruthless, guiltless and determined to kill me. With a start I realize I was
like them before. Before I realized the truth. Before I realized we had no hope
of winning, and were all doomed to die.
I had eagerly fought the enemy, not caring about the pain I
put them though or the people who would mourn their passing. I had wanted to
see their blood dripping and staining the earth, leaving them gasping while
they died. I was half crazed with this bloodlust, and that in turn blinded me
to the truth. Now I am glad I realized the truth, because now that I see how I
was before,
I have no desire to be like that again.
Numerous small wounds appear on my exposed flesh, fresh
blood mingling with the darker red of the older wounds.
I gasp in pain as a sword gets past my defenses and enters
my stomach. It doesn't pierce me completely, but the pain is overwhelming none
the less. I wonder if this is what Heero felt when the enemy sword entered his
chest, piercing his heart, or what Quatre felt when they hacked his head from
his shoulders. I crumple to the ground, legs unable to hold my weight. The soldier
who mortally wounded me and his comrades leave me on the ground to die.
With dazed eyes I gaze at the wound in my abdomen. Stupidly
I graze my fingers over the torn flesh surrounding the hole. Pain responds
immediately. I feel it race up and down my spine incredibly fast, yet
torturously slow at the same time. White hot fire taking the place of my
nerves, burning me from the inside out.
I manage to drop my arm on the trampled grass, not my
bruised and battered body. I stare at the sky, dark with the coming dusk. This
must be what happened to Heero when he seemed to stare right through me at
something I couldn't see.
Now I know what he saw. It was his own life, flashing
before him like mine is now. I see myself as a child, completely aware of the
pain of losing someone close. I was never free to experience life without
knowing pain was near, waiting to attack. I feel sad to know I will never experience
life like that, not ever.
I see more of my life, mostly filled with the horrible
sights of the poor disease ridden streets that was my home for so long. There
are very few happy moments. Those are when I met my friends who are now dead.
All this passes in front of my eyes quickly, as if it were
a program watched in fast forward. Yet even though I know it doesn't take long,
it seems to take a lifetime. At least the memories filled with pain and longing
do. The happy ones don't last long enough.
Some vital part of my brain must have shut down recently; I
don't feel the pain anymore. I cannot feel anything, nor can I think coherently.
I find I cannot tear my eyes from the blood pulsing from my stomach, soaking my
clothes and the earth below. The blood forms an ever-spreading puddle around
me. For an irrational moment I fear I will drown in it.
Hard to breathe. It's so damn hard to breathe. Hard to
force my lungs to expand, to take in the needed oxygen, throat searing as the
air passes my lips. My muscles feel tired and weak; I guess the battle is
taking its toll on me. I want to relax and stop forcing myself to breathe, but
if I do, I will suffocate. Not that it would make much difference in the end.
One way or another, I will die and face what my friends went trough before me.
Dry heaves wrack my aching body, and I can't control them.
When the violent shaking subsides, it's even harder to breathe. My shallow
pants send splinters of pain along my nerves reaching every part of my body
within mili-seconds. My heart beats hard and fast, trying to circulate what
little blood is left in my body. Vaguely I think it's just pushing more of the
thinning blood out of my wounds and into the open where I can never reclaim it
as my own.
Rational thought comes back to me for a moment, and I
understand more than I did before. I realize that I always knew the truth about
my ultimate destiny, but I refused to believe it. I didn't like to think I
would be killed so easily, and so painfully. So I just ignored that thought,
let myself get overconfident, sloppy.
Thinking back on what I felt sure of this morning before
the battle my lips almost curve up in an ironic smile. I had been sure every
man opposing us would be lying dead before sun down, yet it is our side I saw
lying dead in the grass. I remember Heero's last words.
We are all expendable.
I don't think he knew how right he was. The government
doesn't care about us soldiers, no one does. No one but our friends and family,
and mine are all dead, every single one of them. And soon I will be joining
them in the afterlife.
There will be no grave marker, nothing to remember us by.
We will all be buried in a mass grave, perhaps along with a few enemy bodies.
We are the nameless soldiers sent to battle, our purpose to fight for the good
of humanity, our destiny to be killed in cold blood. We won't be remembered,
like so many other soldiers who died for their country yet remain nameless.
That is my last coherent thought. I am tired and I want to
sleep, just like I want to stop breathing. If I can only sleep I will loose touch
with consciousness and my aching body. I just want to close my eyes and slip
into quiet darkness, where the killing can't touch me, where I will finally be
at peace.
Something within me says I can't sleep because I may never
wake. I may never see the sky again, or the ocean which has fascinated me so
much over the years. I ignore the voice. What does it matter? I will die no
matter what. My blood is spilled on the ground, leaking out at this very
moment. I will not live to see the sun rise again.
A sea of black beckons to me, inviting me into its depths,
offering endless comfort and rest. And most of all, peace. Peace and tranquility
for my poor and tortured soul. I fall into the sea willingly.
As my head enters the dark liquid, my eyes take in the fact
that the sea isn't black at all, but a deep red, like old blood. Fear enters
me. I am drowning, drowning in a sea of blood. My blood and my comrades' blood.
The cool liquid against my skin, in my lungs, soothes away
my fears. I sink deeper into the bloody depths, a trail of bubbles leading from
my mouth to the surface now far above me.
The sea of blood offers a respite from all the pain, the
torture and the death I have witnessed recently. I can rest, sleep without fear.
As I sink deeper into the sea of blood, the red deepens to black.
The blood whispers to me, urging me to let go my hold on
consciousness. It will take on all my pain and suffering, leaving only the
longed for peace left. I need never fear anything again. I can sleep
undisturbed.
Willingly I relinquish my hold on any conscious thought
left. Handing over all my burdens to the sea, I feel the promised sense of calmness
left, giving me comfort and bringing tranquility into my soul. My mind is being
cleansed of all that which haunted me before.
One last fear grips my mind: Will I make it out of this
bloody sea? Then the fear is stolen from my mind, leaving me calm once more. My
last thought is of my friends. Will I see them again? The answer remains
unknown to me.
The sea of blood claims my body, and the afterlife claims
my soul.
I am finally at peace.
~ Owari~
