Disclaimer: Although there is an imaginary Wufei that lives with me and doesn't seem to want to come down off my loft at the moment, I do not own Gundam Wing

Disclaimer: Although there is an imaginary Wufei that lives with me and doesn't seem to want to come down off my loft at the moment, I do not own Gundam Wing.

AN: Ahhh!!! Okay, I'm SO sorry that I haven't gotten more out. I blame it all on Quantum, and the immense stress resulting from trying to actually pass it. So. Um. Now that that ordeal is over, here's more, and more should - *should* - be out on a regular basis. I hope..

Walking the Dividing Line

Part 3

Cold. The first thing I felt was cold cement beneath my bruised cheek, the harsh texture of the ground biting into my skin and augmenting the already painful contusion there. Then I felt the rope binding my wrists and ankles.

I struggled to open too-heavy eyelids – had I been drugged? – and was met with the sight of an unfamiliar room, the floor and walls lined with concrete and the air was stale and old. I was lying on the ground, tied but not gagged, and I was alone.

It must have been drugs. My limbs felt vaguely distant and numb, and my mind was cloudy. I couldn't remember how I'd gotten here or who had done this to me. I felt my pulse speed up – had I been recaptured by the pilots? How had they found me? And what was more, why hadn't they killed me, if they knew what was good for them –?

My cloudy thoughts were cut off as a door to my right opened, spreading a path of light from the doorway to my eyes. As I squinted in the light, I could just make out the form of a girl. A girl in an OZ uniform. I blinked – OZ? How had *they* found me…? She stepped up to me and I stared at her polished black boots a moment before casting my gaze up towards her face.

She wasn't that much older than I was, if at all. Her short brown hair fell dutifully about her chin, framing her pale face and sharp eyes. Her crisp brown-eyed gaze studied me with a calculating look in the dim light from the doorway, as if I had to pass an inspection before she would speak to me.

Apparently, I passed. "You are Alison," she said shortly, her curt voice hitting the walls of the room and stopping dead. I blinked again – no, actually, I wasn't. I wanted to tell her that I wasn't Alison because there *was* no Alison. Alison was just a mask, a costume that I had been made to wear. Alison didn't exist. I was someone else.

Instead, I said, "Yes."

She nodded once, then smiled. It was a thin, icy smile, that reminded me all too much of that woman from before on that OZ base. The one that Duo had killed. The one who had messed with me in the first place. The one that had ruined my life. I shivered involuntarily, and something like hatred began to churn in the pit of my stomach.

"Good. You will, I think, be of some use to me."

"How's that?" I spat at her, not caring about my tone, about my demeanor, about whether or not she was going to kill me. I was already dead. Alison was already gone.

"Listen," she said sharply, "I wouldn't speak like that to a fellow OZ officer, *girl*." And she kicked me in the stomach – right in the bruised ribs, and I gasped at the pain her shiny back boot caused as it connected with my battered body. I'd nearly managed to block that pain out of my mind before. Now it was back with a new vengeance, and I briefly remembered Wufei, and the tone of his voice. And how it almost exactly matched hers.

"It looks like you don't have too many friends these days," she said icily. "You'd do better to show me some respect. After all," she said, her tone lightening, "I might consider telling Commander Khushrenada about your immense contribution to this mission, should you begin to act like the OZ soldier you are."

Contribution? "What contribution?"

She smiled again. "Oh, what a contribution it was. You'll be highly decorated for this, you know. *If* you remember just where your loyalties lie, little soldier."

Soldier. OZ soldier.

Loyalties.

"What contribution?!"

"Right now, our Lieutenant Zechs is on his way to pay your little… research subjects a visit. Quite a good job you did of showing us exactly where they are."

The pilots. Zechs – that name sounded so familiar – was going after the pilots.

She didn't give me time to think about that, however.

"So, while we're waiting," she sad, suddenly lowering herself to the floor and sitting cross-legged before me, hands on knees, "tell me about him." Her eyes held this spark – an almost possessive flash as she looked at me and smiled that icy smile.

"About… who?" I asked, unsure of what she wanted, what she was doing to me. My head was hazy with misplaced loyalties and faceless memories; my mind felt like it was being torn in two directions at once. It was the drugs, I tried to convince myself.

But it wasn't. Because I had no loyalties anymore, and I knew that all too well. I had no loyalties, and I had no allies, it seemed. Just enemies.

The pilots.

OZ.

The colonies.

The Earth-Sphere Alliance.

Treize.

Duo –

"Duo Maxwell," she said slowly, as if relishing the way his name felt in her mouth. "Tell me all about him – your little loverboy. I want to know *everything*."

I blinked. Duo?
Duo. The cold hole in my gut reminded me that he was no longer my ally – no longer my friend. He was my enemy.

Duo Maxwell was my enemy.

"Oh, come on," she prompted, unhappy with my silence in the wake of her inquiry. "You know, your little boy-toy with the butt-length braid? The *Shinigami*. Tell me."

Shinigami – how had she known he…?

Shinigami. He had come for me and he had killed Alison and I was no longer her, no longer his girl and when the hell was I going to accept that? I'd seen the empty look in his eyes.

Good. Very good. That was a start.

"So, you wanna hear about the Shinigami, ne? Well, I'll tell you about the Shinigami..."

She leaned forward, hands on ankles, dark eyes sparkling with anticipation. It was… frightening, almost, the look she had gotten on her face, the air of expectancy and impatience that she suddenly exuded.

And something in me snapped, then, and somehow the drug-induced haze fell away, and the shadows in the room became razor-sharp and what was I doing?
But what did it matter?

"The Shinigami," I said, as slowly and deliberately as she had spoken his name moments before, "came for me. He killed me. And that's all I'm going to tell you."

Her eyes grew almost wide, and I saw her right hand rise to strike me.

"Giniko."

A blunt voice from the doorway stopped her hand inches from my face. She turned, hand still held out, to face the door, where a lean male figure blocked the column of light it threw into the room.

"Sir."

"That will not be necessary right now. I have something to discuss with you. You may continue your interrogation later."

"Sir," she repeated, but her voice was tight and I could tell that she didn't want to be interrupted right now. She was tense and angry, and it showed in her demeanor as she stood and strode over to the door, not even so much as casting one last glance in my direction before she slammed the door. The darkness slammed down behind it, and I was left in silence, alone. Again.