Disclaimer: Not mine, I want them but the boys still aren't mine… not even the mecha, how depressing… ;) Gundam belongs to Mixx, or somebody lucky like that.
AN: Okay, after much plotting with my best friend, this is finally under way again! Yay! So more and more should be coming out… and this story is definitely taking an interesting turn, and I want to thank Jeni-chan (and her Duo) for being so much help! ;)
Walking the Dividing Line
Part 4
I didn't know how much time had passed. Soon after the girl – Giniko, I assumed – had left, two soldiers had come and chained me to the wall. And so now I sat, hands suspended over my head by shackles pinned to the wall, and stared at the door. Or at least in the direction of the door.
It was dark in here, and the darkness only served to stir up images – images that I didn't want to see.
I could see Duo, sitting alone, normally mischievous blue eyes cast downwards as I shied away from his playfulness yet again.
I could see Heero, staring at me from across the hangar, cold blue eyes threatening to freeze me over by will alone. I could feel his hatred just as I could feel the cold metal of Duo's new Gundam-in-progress beneath my hands.
I could see Quatre's concerned looks, Trowa's distant glances.
And I could see Wufei's angry eyes, deep onyx staring down at me as his fists pounded me again and again, hatred shoving itself deeper and deeper into my mind with each blow.
My chest ached from my broken ribs, and my arms were sore from being suspended above my head for so long. I wanted to sleep but didn't dare to. So I sat there, and waited, and watched the pilots' faces contort from temperance to hatred over and over in my mind.
The door opened.
I looked up and watched silently as she stepped through, walking towards me, boots clicking purposefully on the metal grating. She stopped before me and crouched down to look at me, her outline sharpened. I studied her backlit face as she stared back at me, silent, features set.
"You're going to help me," she told me curtly, her voice sharp and low.
"Why should I?" I wanted to know. What did she have to offer me? What did *OZ* have to offer me?
Certainly not what the pilots had to offer me –
Not what Duo had to offer me.
I blinked, but when I opened my eyes she was still staring back at me, her carefully calculating brown eyes still boring into my own.
The world had nothing to offer me. I was a nobody, I was alone and I didn't need anything, not from her and not from Duo.
I didn't need anything.
"You're going to help me," she repeated, and there was no room in her voice for resistance.
Not that I cared. She couldn't threaten me with anything that would make me cooperate. She couldn't take anything away that I hadn't already lost. I had no friends, no loyalties. I had no identity.
She could take my life, but I was already dead.
"No," I informed her slowly, "I am not."
She slapped me, throwing my head to the side with the force of her blow. She leaned in, until her face was inches from mine, and stared at me with those brown eyes that were so icy I momentarily wondered why they weren't blue.
"You *will* help me, little soldier, and don't think you even have a say in the matter."
She stood in one swift motion, and pulled out a syringe. I was too stiff to struggle much – the needle slid into my arm painfully and quickly, and almost as quickly the world began to bleed into greys and blacks and…
She had uncoupled my chains from the wall. She was leading me, slowly, down a maze of hazy yellow-grey halls. She was shoving me into a room, chaining me to a chair, sitting at a desk –
Everything was moving in slow motion. My mind was moving in slow motion, and my world was thick and weighted down with the drugs. Even my hatred had been dulled to the point of indeterminate dislike.
I blinked heavy eyelids, watching half-coherently at best as she reached over and pulled a laptop towards her. She flipped it open, and the screen glowed blue, outlining her features sharply again until –
The screen turned black and peach and blue and brown.
"What the – who are you? What the hell are you doing – this is a secure - !"
That voice – the air was thick and everything sounded like my ears were full of cotton but I knew that voice.
"Shut up," she said sharply, and the protests stopped.
"What do you want?"
"Oh, now there's a question," she said amusedly, her sharp demeanor disappearing, leaning back in her chair and I could just see her smile, icy and confident. "But if I were to tell you that, it would spoil the surprise."
"What the hell do you mean! *Tell* me what you –"
"Oh, come now, *Duo*," she purred, and once more the voice was silenced. She reminded me of a cat – a panther, perhaps – stalking its prey, hypnotizing it with cool yellow eyes just before it struck.
Yellow…. my world bled into yellow for a moment, a new wave of confusion washing over me, and I was momentarily lost in a hazy world of half-remembered screams –
I was trying to pick up my head, trying to clear my thoughts that weren't really mine but somebody else's, but it didn't seem to be working and my hands were shackled behind me and they were so heavy…
"This is all about you," she continued, suddenly leaning forward, propping her chin delicately on interlaced fingers, elbows resting on the polished desk. The light was bouncing off the shiny surface and it was blinding me. "And what you want. Or rather," she paused, sitting up straight once more, "what you *think* you want."
"What the hell – "
"Shhh," she shushed him, voice low and one finger to her lips; he stopped. "I… have something," she said slowly. Her voice was still low, and there was a seductive undertone that had begun to peek through. It reminded me of how she had sounded before, when she wanted me to tell her about Duo. Somehow, it made me sick.
"I have her," Giniko purred. "You *do* want her, don't you?"
"You… you have…"
"See for yourself." And she stood, coming over to the chair, grabbing my shoulder and yanking my too-heavy, too-numb body up and dragging me over to the desk.
"Alison!"
I blinked tiredly at the image of Duo on the screen. The image of the person who was no longer my friend, because he couldn't possibly be friends with the person Giniko – Heero – Wufei – told me I was. He couldn't be friends with an OZ soldier.
He couldn't love a traitor.
I was his *enemy*.
Hah, some sick voice in the back of my head laughed. I was his enemy, and what was more, I was his bait.
I was nothing more than bait.
"Yes," Giniko said, her grip tightening and her arm tensing and suddenly she threw me down; I thudded sideways into the wall and slid down to the floor, my legs unwilling to hold me up. "Alison."
"You… you…. What do I have to do?" His voice sounded tired and I wondered why he was even bothering. Why this bait ploy was working – he couldn't possibly have a reason to –
"Oh, it's very simple," she said, seating herself in the chair once more. "Let me tell you where I want you to meet me."
* * *
I had been chained up in that same room again. My body was numb; not more than two hours had gone by without some OZ lackey coming in and injecting me with more drugs. I was beginning to severely dislike living in the dark haze I had been left in; my arms and legs numb and my head thick. Severe dislike, however, was the most I could muster, because most of it was masked by apathy – it pushed and weighed down on my mind until nothing mattered, until everything was dark and there was nothing but heavy blackness, both inside my head and outside of it.
I couldn't really think straight, but when I could think the thoughts would come hard and fast and fleeting and transparent.
Duo stood before me, a scythe in his hand, looking at me with dark, empty eyes. He hadn't blinked for hours.
Wufei paced back and forth, sword in hand, waiting for me to blink so he could strike.
The barrel of Heero's gun was cold against my skin, metal between my eyes and he only had to twitch and I was dead.
I was already dead.
Quatre's face, empty and lost, his jaw swollen and eyes angry. He had a gun. I had never before seen him carry a gun.
Trowa held a handful of throwing knives, walking in lazy circles and tossing one my way every so often. He wasn't going to miss forever.
I could hear voices. I was sure they were in my head. They told me that I was no one, that I was dead, that Duo wouldn't come because he didn't care, I didn't care, I didn't think or feel or breathe because this was all a dream.
"You're not a real person. You never were."
"You are dead."
"I will kill you."
"You've betrayed us."
"No one can ever trust you again."
"Get up."
That voice was louder. It was sharper and it cut through the fog like an icicle until I realized that there was someone standing over me.
I squinted unfocused eyes in the dimness.
It was her. I felt a wave of hatred swell up and momentarily overtake the apathy. I didn't like her. She was conniving and I couldn't tell what she wanted, other than Duo.
Well, I supposed, it wasn't as if I cared whether she wanted Duo or not. It wasn't like he was mine. It wasn't like I cared about him. It wasn't like he cared about me. We were enemies.
She grabbed my shoulder and yanked me to my feet, the motion jarring my heavy arms and the shackles ripping at my wrists. There was pain, at that, but it was far away and half-complete.
I blinked at her.
"…What?"
"Be quiet and get moving," she commanded sharply, detaching my handcuffs from the wall and dragging me brusquely along by the wrists, tripping over my heavy, half-existent feet and lost in my cloudy, dizzy head.
She led me through a maze of hallways, twists and turns only amplified by the drugs in my bloodstream until I nearly felt sick.
I was sick. I was sick of everything. Sick of being captured, tortured, drugged, confused –
Sick. Sick sick sick.
Sick of life. Sick of my life, of this life –
Why wasn't there an end?
There was an end – we stopped somewhere, a large room, and she went over to a large structure and grabbed a rope and –
Gundam. This was a Gundam.
Who *was* this girl?
My sore body was tossed into the cockpit as she took the pilot's seat, strapping herself in and flipping switches; the suit began to whir to life as the screens popped on one by one.
That sound…
This was Deathscythe. I knew it – I didn't know how I knew it, in this drug-induced haze, but I knew that this was Deathscythe.
Only Deathscythe had been lost in the explosion the last time…
The last time I had been captured by OZ.
There really was no end, save the darkness that was beginning to descend on my vision, weighing on my mind as she took the flight stick and the mobile suit lurched to life. I could hear her chuckle softly to herself.
"And just who is the God of Death now, Duo Maxwell," she murmured satisfactorily to herself, before launching the suit out of the hangar and into the open air beyond. I couldn't really grab onto anything, my hands being both numb and bound, and I slid about on the floor still feeling like I was moving in slow motion, only to hit my head on the side of the pilot's chair, and the darkness descended even further onto my mind. The silence wasn't far behind.
