"Dogs of War"
by s1ncer1ty
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Notes: Angsty, with much character death. If you don't like that
sort of stuff, please don't read this. You know it's coming, so
you've been warned. Flamers will be sacrificed to the NJ Highway
Authority.
I don't know where this one came from, and I'm really not sure
whether or not I even like it. This one hurt to write,
but it had to come out... o.o
---
Chang Wufei had it the easiest. Granted, it could not have been an easy thing to be manhandled from his simple home on Earth where he had secluded himself after the war, manacled and held in a cold, air-tight cell until his trial. On the platform that led to his demise -- where each former Gundam pilot stood awaiting execution -- he finally spoke of the atrocities the L-12 colony put him through from the time of his arrest to now. Wufei told of how he was left without a commode, how he'd had to evacuate his system in a corner of his cramped solitary confinement; he spoke of the moldy, bug-infested food he'd been fed, of how little water he was given, and of how he'd eventually had to drink his own urine to keep from dehydrating. In simple, emotionless tones, he told the four of us of how his pleas for amnesty were ignored by the colony-given lawyer, who himself had seemed all too eager to enact the populace's cry for vengeance against the terrorists who'd once supported their fight for freedom.
Atrocities, for certain, but Wufei still had it the easiest. In the circus show that had become our execution, he was the first to be led up that rickety flight of steps, past the jeering and the rotted food and stones thrown at him by the wild-eyed crowd. As the rest of us stood at the bottom, shackled uncomfortably, each of us standing a regulatory two feet apart, Wufei was asked by the executioner -- more the ringleader than a man of law -- if he had any last words. None of us could hear above the din of the masses the boy's speech, save for a few words regarding honor and dignity.
A black, cloth bag was placed over his head, a noose looped around his neck. Wufei did not struggle, did not scream as the platform beneath bottomed out and his neck broke. The once-proud pilot of the now-destroyed Altron Gundam died like an animal in a cruel, medieval lynching, a cheer rising up from the L-12 colonists. But he had it the easiest of us all.
Despite the pain the manacles caused him, Quatre Raberba Winner managed to lean forward a couple inches as he vomited at the sound of Wufei's neck breaking. Pasty-grey and trembling uncontrollably, he had managed to keep from weeping for the entire spectacle, even when the life burst from his fellow pilot in a split second of agony, even when the masses gathered closer to the platform, laughing as they shrieked for greater vengeance. He had spearheaded the campaign for our exoneration, but even the wealthiest lawyers he'd found could not find a means of exoneration -- L-12 colony law fell outside the united jurisdiction, as signed into the peace treaty accordance. No one could help us -- not Winner-appointed lawyers, Preventer protection, nor the pleading of Relena Peacecraft for amnesty. Even Quatre's former bodyguards and staunch allies, the Magnuacs, had been detained and were awaiting their own trial for alleged crimes during the war.
But it was not the absolute unfairness of the execution, or even the death of Chang Wufei, that hurt Quatre the most. It was the wild, animal amusement of the crowd, gaining so much pleasure in the death of five less-than-innocent boys regarded as heroes on other colonies, that cut to the very core of the Arabian boy's being. Even now, in the face of his demise, his Space Heart shattered at the sheer animosity that emanated from the crowd. The rest of us could hide it, to keep from egging the masses on further, but Quatre could not mask the agony that maintained its hold over his entire being.
"Why do they do this?" Quatre muttered, once he was able to regain some semblance of composure. Drool slicked his chin, and his chest hitched painfully as he continued to dry-heave periodically.
Trowa Barton, Quatre's best friend and confidante both during and after the wars, could do little more than make a soft noise in the back of his throat. Unable to hold his friend, or even to offer a consoling touch, it was all he could do to attempt to comfort the boy. But I, for one, was less sympathetic than Trowa.
"Don't cry," I ordered through clenched teeth, coldly. "Don't let them see what they're doing to you."
He took my words seriously, as the executioner announced the list of alleged "war crimes" that Quatre had committed, riling up the crowd before the boy's own execution. Until he was yanked by the manacles on his arms towards the platform, he stood with his head held high, his eyes tearless. The only weakness he showed was a return of the shakes, rippling convulsively through his small body, when Trowa mumbled to him, "I'll see you soon, my angel. Be strong." And then, the gentle Arabian boy was walked to his end.
Quatre's death was, perhaps, the most tragic -- maybe more so than the horrendous suffering Duo Maxwell went through before his own demise -- because, even as he was centered over the trapdoor, the noose looped around his neck, the boy continued to believe the people of the L-12 colony could still be swayed. With light panic in his eyes, he continued to seek out a single, sympathetic eye from the boos of the masses, or a last-minute reprieve by someone -- anyone.
"No, this is wrong!" Quatre exclaimed just before the executioner placed the black bag over his head. "We've wanted only to bring peace, and we've achieved it! Everyone suffered during the wars -- don't you understand that your actions will only bring more suffering?"
He begged further, pleading for understanding from the colonists gathered for our execution, but a roar of disapproval drowned him out. They were only out for blood this day -- blood, and a sense of cold completion that they received when a swift, strangled cry signaled the end of Quatre Raberba Winner.
Quatre's death unnerved us all, myself included. Trowa let out a single sob, two lone tears spilling from his eyes at the death of his best friend and savior. His face remained impassive, his jaw firmly set as he briefly wept, but his once-unreadable eyes were visibly pained.
Immediately to my left, I heard Duo's respiration pick up in a familiar way, and he began muttering to himself in a fast-paced whisper.
"I can't do it. I can't do it. I'm too late. I can't do it, I'm too late."
Without a word, I turned my head to look at him, and he stared back at me with wide eyes, so filled with agony. I could easily tell that he was up to something, as always, but I could not determine what it was. I fought the urge to let my eyes trail over his body, searching for any sign of movement, as that might give him away to the guards that surrounded us like vultures.
"I'm too late," he whispered again, pained.
"Hn," I breathed and turned my face rigidly front again, leaving the boy to his own devices. I would know his plan soon enough.
Trowa was the next to go, to the end as poised and quietly elegant as he had always been. When the manhunts for the former Gundam pilots had begun six months ago, I had received a frantic call from his sister, Catherine Bloom, and together we calculated a plan to hide him among the underground rebels who opposed the will off the L-12 colony. But he had been given away by a traitor among the rebels, yet Trowa had very nearly escaped capture when L-12 forces blew the rebel base to dust with their mobile suit contingent. Catherine herself had been killed in the blast, and that was, perhaps, the sole reason Trowa allowed himself to be taken. Without a loving family to protect, he saw little impetus to continue to evade the enemy.
"Pilot 03 -- Trowa Barton," the executioner boomed to the throng of L-12 colonists, as several guards stood watch while two others slid the noose over his head. "You have been found guilty of the following crimes: sabotage, espionage, premeditated genocide of military personnel and civilians, and treason." The last word was spat out with particular venom. "You are hereby sentenced to death. You will now be hung by your neck by rope until your heart stops and you are dead. Do you have any final words?"
Trowa merely raised his face to the blue, artificial colony sky above, and murmured, "Thank you."
And then, the bag was pulled over his face, the trap door bottomed out, and Trowa was gone, willingly giving himself to the hangman's noose.
When the enraged din of the L-12 colony crowd dulled moderately, I could hear that Duo's breathing had quieted to a slow, calculated rhythm. I did not have to turn my head to know that he was sporting a dangerous smile. Unlike Quatre, he felt no sympathy towards the colonists crying out for his blood, only a sadistic anger at their animalistic sense of justice.
"So," he laughed to the two guards that moved to either side to walk him up the platform, "you wish to kill the great Shinigami? You should know better -- you just can't kill Death, ne?"
In a single movement, Duo suddenly swung his unexpectedly free arms in two separate directions. His right, holding the opened manacles, connected squarely with one guard's face, tearing through his eye and opening a flap of cheek in a gush of blood. His left arm thrust into the other guard's gut once, twice, three times, each time coming away bloodier than before.
As Duo broke into a swift run, his body slammed against mine,
as if in a blind panic. But I knew it was calculated when I felt
his hands wrap around mine for a split second, leaving behind
the blood-slick laser file that had been used to take down one
of the guards after it had melted away the locks on his shackles.
I closed my hand quickly, feigning a stumble, and watched as the
American boy dodged the hands of the guards who tore after him,
ducked the surge of a livid L-12 colony crowd, and darted towards
an on-hand military freighter.
He shouldn't have tried to save me. Maybe then, he would have
lived.
In handing me the laser file, Duo lost four precious seconds of escape time, in addition to the element of surprise. By then, the crowd had the time to regroup and to surge in a single, bloodthirsty entity towards the boy. They caught up with him at the freighter and overflowed like liquid over him. Try as he might, Duo could not escape the onslaught of hands and stones that tore at his clothes, ripped out hunks of his hair, and battered his body almost beyond recognition.
By the time Duo was dragged back to the hangman's platform, the left half of his face was barely visible beneath the gush of blood -- by the looks of it, he might have even lost the eye. His shoulder was easily dislocated, and through the flap of his ripped pants the calf muscle on one of his legs had been torn so deeply that I could see the bone beneath.
Despite the obvious pain, despite the horrifying injuries, Duo was defiant up until the end. When given the chance to make a final statement, he refused. Instead of a typical Duo rant, he spat a mouthful of blood and a couple of teeth into the crowd.
But when it came time for him to hang, the executioner announced a change of procedure. No bag was slipped over his face, and a contingent of four guards held him -- gingerly, like one would hold a bomb -- as the trapdoor was released. Slowly, they lowered his body so the noose tightened around his throat, but there was no sudden force to snap his neck.
It took seventeen minutes of choking, gasping, and clawing fruitlessly at the rope around his neck before he died. For every agonizing minute, for every strangled cry that escaped Duo's lips, the crowd cheered harder. By the time he let out his final gasp, his face had turned a pained shade of purple, and he had bloodied his fingertips as he struggled to loosen the rope around his throat.
Immediately following the slow hanging of Duo, I was grasped and forced up the steps to the hanging platform. The guards were the most careful around me, the "ringleader" and "mastermind" behind the terrorist Gundam organization. I had been deliberately detained until last, so I could personally watch the demise of each former comrade of mine and ultimately walk past each body on my own path to death. Throughout it all, I kept up a cold countenance, turned a mask of stone towards the crowd, even as my soul hardened.
But I could not help but bow my head in deference to the still, dangling body of Chang Wufei, honorable and dignified to the end.
I wanted to weep for the sweet, compassionate Quatre Raberba Winner, who had shown me humanity and compassion, and who had hoped and prayed for the L-12 colony to change its animalistic path towards peace even as they walked him to his death.
I hoped silently that Trowa Barton found the peace in death that he could never find in life, and that I could accept my demise as easily as he could.
And I paused before the body of Duo Maxwell, the God of Death all too silent, and realization hit me that he did not have a tube surreptitiously slipped down his throat so he could breathe, nor did he have any other tricks on hand to save him from the hangman's noose.
They were dead. All of them, dead.
I was unable to hear above the crowd my own death sentence. All I could see was a massive throng of anger, stripped of all semblance of humanity and compassion. I barely felt the noose slide over my neck, almost did not hear the executioner ask me for my final words. Turning a cold pair of eyes towards him, I uttered the last words of my mortal life.
"I feel so sorry for you all."
And as Trowa had done before me, I turned my head towards the sky, fighting the instinctual urge to struggle to the bitter end. By then, I had no further reason to survive. Even if the majority of the colonies were sympathetic towards the Gundam cause, the few rotten, backbiting colonies that survived would surely taint the rest, given enough time. After our deaths, war would certainly be inevitable, and the Gundam pilots would be revered as martyrs. Just the mere thought of it made me sick to my stomach.
The crowd let out a collective gasp as I let my manacles fall to the ground. The trapdoor creaked with a groan of screws, and gave way.
And I plunged into emptiness.
it was easy then to tell right from wrong
easy then to tell weak from strong
when a man should stand and fight
or just go along
but today there is no day or night
today there is no dark or light
today there is no black or white
only shades of gray
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