Part Three of "Eien ni" by Marie Whi Mitshue (3 of 6)
1 Author's Warning: a little blood, some emotional and physical pain…into every story a little tragedy & angst must fall… gomen…blame the munchkin muse in my head, the one who's a tragic romantic – great love won at great cost, after great tragedy… sigh…
//thoughts//
*emphasis* (the more **, the greater the emphasis)
flashback/memories
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~2
Heero Yuy sat hunched in the middle of the Quatre's living room floor. The room was dark but for moon- and starlight that came in the big picture window and the little light that leaked from the hallway. The room was cold, too, but Heero didn't care. Didn't notice. He was too numb to notice.
He was dressed in his usual black spandex shorts and green tank top, and someone had thrown a blanket over his shoulders – probably the ever- compassionate Quatre.
He huddled beneath it, face slack, cobalt blue eyes disturbingly blank. There was a bandage on his arm, one on his leg, a bruised scratch up one cheekbone. Blood was slowly seeping through the bandage on his thigh. Clutched in his hands was a faded, black t-shirt that belonged to Duo.
Images and sounds flashed over and over through his mind, horrid memories that wouldn't leave him alone:
Deathscythe Hell stumbling forward as a bad missile strike exploded at its back, Duo's pained gasp echoing over the Comm link.
"Duo?!" He called.
"H..Heero, I'm alrigh-" his koi's voice came back as Deathscythe Hell spun, but a second missile strike sent the gundam tumbling off the high, sheer cliff the Oz base was on.
"DUO!!!" Heero yelled anguishedly as he watched Deathscythe Hell free-fall to smash into the rocks at the shoreline so very far below.
"…H..H..Heer…o…" Duo's choked voice whimpered over the Comm as Heero in Wing Zero flew down towards the damaged gundam. Heero could practically hear the blood bubbling out of Duo's mouth, hear the screaming pain of his injuries, his heart shrieking at the agony in his koibito's feeble voice.
"I'm coming, Duo! Hold on!"
"…NO!…Deathscythe's gonna…blow…Heero, I lov-"
Duo's tormented, pain-filled sob was cut off as Deathscythe exploded, and the shockwave buffeted Wing Zero and slammed him into the cliff wall.
"***DUO!!!!***" Heero screamed before he blacked out.
"Heero…"
For a second, Heero thought it was Duo's voice. His head snapped up, towards the figure silhouetted in the doorway. For a second, Duo's beloved, smiling face and lithe-muscled body was superimposed on the person in the doorway. Then it faded, and Heero found himself blinking up at a concerned looking Quatre Raberba Winner.
"What?!" He snarled harshly at the blond Arabian.
"Can I … get you anything?"
"Yeah." Heero whispered, "A brown-braided baka who talks too much, smiles too much, eats too much, moves too much, jokes too much and who is the only one who ever touched my heart, and holds my soul. Failing that, get the fuck away from me." There was no emotion in Heero's voice, only crushing, soul–killing loss and emptiness.
For an anguished moment, his and Duo's voices echoed through his mind:
"You are *mine*, Duo Maxwell. Eien ni. **Mine**." Heero pledged.
"…forever…"Duo repeated, his whisper a sacred promise.
//Duo, you *promised*…//Heero's mind howled silently, //…forever…//
"Heero…" Quatre was at a loss – what should he do? He could see the darkness rising in Heero's eyes – of all of them, Heero had always been the one too close to the shadow. But his relationship with Duo had seemed to help him, seemed to free the soul imprisoned by the thick barrier of his cold and terrible training, seemed to help him begin to understand and treasure his emotions. Only Duo Maxwell, self-proclaimed God of Death, had ever reached past those barriers. Only Duo had ever been able to bring Heero into the light. Only Duo. Without him…
A familiar hand touched his shoulder and he turned to see Trowa Barton standing beside him. His one visible emerald eye, the other obscured by his long, razored, light brown bangs, was as full of worry as Quatre had ever seen it, although no trace of it was on his face.
"Heero—" Trowa started, but stopped as Heero moved.
Heero surged to his feet, blanket fluttering to the floor, Duo's shirt still in his clenched fists. There was barely suppressed, grief- induced violence, almost madness, in his every move, in his rigid muscles, in his glittering, cobalt eyes. Both of the other gundam pilots were well aware of the destructive abilities of Heero-The-Perfect-Soldier-Yuy.
"Leave me alone!" Heero growled.
"They tried to pull up the remains of Deathscythe Hell." Trowa spoke as if Heero hadn't.
A quick, indrawn breath was all the reaction they got from Heero.
Heero froze, imagining Duo's beautiful body twisted and burned and torn by the exploded gundam.
"And?!" Heero spit out finally.
"It was gone. The tide must have sucked it out. The Managnacs are dredging, but the current there…" Trowa's voice trailed off.
Heero closed his eyes, in his mind's eye seeing Duo's battered and lifeless body being pulled into the sea's frigid and uncaring embrace, his braid swirling up in the current to brush against his bruised, scratched face, those beautiful violet eyes open, inanimate and blank.
It was more than he could bear. It was an unendurable, smothering pain that engulfed him like a wave of molten, burning lava.
He spun, and drove his fist into the wall. It went in past his wrist, sending plaster and paint dust and fragments all over. He hauled it out, and did it again and again and again… Not a sound escaped him, but silent tears streamed down his cheeks.
"Trowa, he's hurting himself!" Quatre gulped to his love.
"Heero's hurting period, Little One." Trowa told him. "If this is the only way he can deal with it…"
Heero stopped abruptly, breathing harsh and wild. Soundless tears still slipped down his face. He turned towards them, blood dripping down his injured, plaster-dusted fist, but he never even felt it. His eyes were glittering with dark emotion.
"No, there is another way I can deal with it." Heero's voice was dead. Not the 'omae wo korosu' monotone the others were used to, but *dead*, completely, utterly devoid of humanity. "I can kill every member of Oz and Romafeller, every single person responsible for this war. Without this war, Duo would never have been trained as a gundam pilot and never would have come to earth to die."
"But…you never would have met him. Think how terrible that would have been." Quatre said.
Heero's blank eyes turned to him. "I rather would have never met him than have him dead. I would rather have never let him in my heart, and remained focused only on my missions, remained a frozen simulation of a human being than this, what has happened." Heero said in that same humanity-deadened voice.
"Heero…that way lies madness and death. That's *all* that revenge leads to." Trowa warned calmly.
Heero's eyes slowly turned to Trowa. A sinister little smile that was more grimace than smile twisted Heero's lips. "Revenge is what I want, Trowa. Revenge leads to madness, madness leads to death, and death leads…to Duo…" His voice got softer as he spoke until he spoke Duo's name in a bare whisper of sound.
"Heero!" Quatre snapped, appalled and frantic.
Heero lifted the shirt that was still wrapped around his unbloodied hand. He was still crying, but he didn't seem to notice.
He walked towards the doorway, then paused when the two other pilots didn't move. He blinked dead eyes at them from in under messy brown bangs. " I do not want to hurt you, but if you do not move, I will." He told them in that cold, deadened voice that Trowa was suspecting was going to become permanent – like the hole in Heero's soul that only Duo's presence could fill.
"And what would Duo think of that?" Quatre asked, zeroing in on the one thing that might get through to the devastated Japanese pilot.
Heero blinked uncertainly and the barest glimmer of light came back into those shadowed cobalt eyes.
He could just *see* Duo standing behind Quatre and Trowa, shaking his head at Heero's words, at his intentions, beautiful face sorrowful, but suffused with his love for him. His sweet mouth curved in a little, endearing smile, so different from his broad, jovial grins, a smile that was meant for Heero alone.
"D..Duo..?!" He gasped.
Quatre and Trowa exchanged worried looks, looking from the empty hall beyond them to Heero and back again.
Duo's lips moved, but no sound issued forth. But Heero *knew* what he was saying: 'Ai shiteru, Heero. Please don't do this. Get away from the darkness. Oh, my Heero. Don't do this. Ai shiteru eien ni. I'm yours, forever. Please, koi, don't do this…'
Then the image of Duo faded. Heero knew it was from his own tortured mind, but he also knew it was what Duo would have said. Duo would have been trying to keep him from heading down the path of hatred, vengeance and self-destruction he was about to start on.
"Duo!" He moaned. He sank to his knees, then curled up on the floor, wrapped around himself, Duo's shirt pressed to his face, weeping.
Gentle hands clasped his shoulders and his arms, and Trowa and Quatre huddled with the stricken, hopeless and bereft Heero, grieving with him for the loss of the most jovial, the most carefree of them.{1}
~~~~~~~~~~
Duo Maxwell groaned against the pain blaring in his head and slowly opened his eyes. He was bloodied and dishevelled, rips and burns in his customary black and white preacher outfit, his braid matted with dried blood in spots, and partially unravelled. He had a huge, nasty black-blue- purple bruise on his forehead and temple, his bottom lip was split and his right wrist hung at a wrong angle and throbbed like a sonuvabitch.
"I…I'm alive…" Duo coughed out. "Holy Mother, I'm friggin' ALIVE!!!" He laughed.
He turned his head gingerly, looking for Heero. "My Soldier Boy musta hauled me outta the wreck. My poor Deathscythe." He mumbled to himself…then he realised he was on the none-too clean floor of a dim, dank room that was only a little bigger than a broom closet.
"What the-? Heero? Quat? Tro? Wu?" He called, starting to rise, but stopped and clapped his hand with the fractured wrist to his chest, not noticing the pain shooting up his arm as his movements sent brilliant, hot arcs of pain through his torso, like live wires digging into his flesh. "Broken…ribs…" He coughed to himself, unbroken hand flying to his mouth…then stared in horror at the scarlet wetness that stained his fingers. "Oh, God, oh, God…."
Suddenly, a hidden speaker crackled to life.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Zero-Two. You may have guessed by now that you have been captured…by the Romafeller Foundation. You will tell us where to find the other gundam pilots and what defences they have."
"Wouldn't matter if I did," Duo spit out defiantly – along with a spray of blood. "They would have changed locations when I was captured."
"Oh, dear Zero-Two. They all think you are dead. This is the Comm logs from the base you attacked. They managed to break your communications encryption towards the end of the battle."
There was a moment of static, then:
"Duo?!" Heero's voice called worriedly.
"H..Heero, I'm alrigh-" his own voice came back, a little pained.
"DUO!!!" Heero's voice yelled anguishedly.
"…H..H..Heer…o…" Duo's choked voice whimpered over the speakers, feeble and full of agony.
"I'm coming, Duo! Hold on!" Heero's frantic voice said.
"…NO!…Deathscythe's gonna…blow…Heero, I lov-"
An explosion cut off Duo's tormented, pain-filled sob.
"***DUO!!!!***" Heero's voice screamed…then died abruptly.
Trowa's voice came over the Comm. "I got Wing Zero! Heero's hurt pretty badly. He almost slid down that cliff."
"What about Duo?" Quatre's pained voice said.
"…Deathscythe Hell's…exploded. Not even Heero could have survived through that…" Wufei's controlled voice came over the Comm.
"We have to make sure!" Quatre snapped.
"We have to get out of here. They're sending up reinforcements, too many mobile dolls. We can send someone back when the situation cools down to collect…the remains. Quatre, look for yourself, he *can't have* survived that…" Wufei's voice was strained with the effort it took to control it.
"Duo…" An almost inaudible, unconscious moan came from Heero's Comm.
"…Let's go…" Quatre sighed sadly.
"You *bastards*!!" Duo swore and surged to his knees – but the sudden rush of movement and anger sent a fresh wave of pain through his chest and he toppled back to the floor, coughing up and choking on blood.
He was vaguely aware of some people rushing to keep him alive for interrogation as the world blacked out around him, but his only thoughts were for the heartrending despair he had heard in Heero's voice.
//Ai shiteru, Heero. Eien ni. I'm still alive, I'm still here. I'm not breaking my promise that easily.// He swore silently to himself as he passed out. //I'm coming back to you, koi. Don't give up hope. Don't…//
End of Part Three
{1} WAAAHHHH!! Sniff! Sob! I hate sad parts!
I decided to translate for those who haven't picked up a little Japanese or are new to GW:
Koibito (koi) – lover, love, boyfriend
1 Author's Warning: a little blood, some emotional and physical pain…into every story a little tragedy & angst must fall… gomen…blame the munchkin muse in my head, the one who's a tragic romantic – great love won at great cost, after great tragedy… sigh…
//thoughts//
*emphasis* (the more **, the greater the emphasis)
flashback/memories
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~2
Heero Yuy sat hunched in the middle of the Quatre's living room floor. The room was dark but for moon- and starlight that came in the big picture window and the little light that leaked from the hallway. The room was cold, too, but Heero didn't care. Didn't notice. He was too numb to notice.
He was dressed in his usual black spandex shorts and green tank top, and someone had thrown a blanket over his shoulders – probably the ever- compassionate Quatre.
He huddled beneath it, face slack, cobalt blue eyes disturbingly blank. There was a bandage on his arm, one on his leg, a bruised scratch up one cheekbone. Blood was slowly seeping through the bandage on his thigh. Clutched in his hands was a faded, black t-shirt that belonged to Duo.
Images and sounds flashed over and over through his mind, horrid memories that wouldn't leave him alone:
Deathscythe Hell stumbling forward as a bad missile strike exploded at its back, Duo's pained gasp echoing over the Comm link.
"Duo?!" He called.
"H..Heero, I'm alrigh-" his koi's voice came back as Deathscythe Hell spun, but a second missile strike sent the gundam tumbling off the high, sheer cliff the Oz base was on.
"DUO!!!" Heero yelled anguishedly as he watched Deathscythe Hell free-fall to smash into the rocks at the shoreline so very far below.
"…H..H..Heer…o…" Duo's choked voice whimpered over the Comm as Heero in Wing Zero flew down towards the damaged gundam. Heero could practically hear the blood bubbling out of Duo's mouth, hear the screaming pain of his injuries, his heart shrieking at the agony in his koibito's feeble voice.
"I'm coming, Duo! Hold on!"
"…NO!…Deathscythe's gonna…blow…Heero, I lov-"
Duo's tormented, pain-filled sob was cut off as Deathscythe exploded, and the shockwave buffeted Wing Zero and slammed him into the cliff wall.
"***DUO!!!!***" Heero screamed before he blacked out.
"Heero…"
For a second, Heero thought it was Duo's voice. His head snapped up, towards the figure silhouetted in the doorway. For a second, Duo's beloved, smiling face and lithe-muscled body was superimposed on the person in the doorway. Then it faded, and Heero found himself blinking up at a concerned looking Quatre Raberba Winner.
"What?!" He snarled harshly at the blond Arabian.
"Can I … get you anything?"
"Yeah." Heero whispered, "A brown-braided baka who talks too much, smiles too much, eats too much, moves too much, jokes too much and who is the only one who ever touched my heart, and holds my soul. Failing that, get the fuck away from me." There was no emotion in Heero's voice, only crushing, soul–killing loss and emptiness.
For an anguished moment, his and Duo's voices echoed through his mind:
"You are *mine*, Duo Maxwell. Eien ni. **Mine**." Heero pledged.
"…forever…"Duo repeated, his whisper a sacred promise.
//Duo, you *promised*…//Heero's mind howled silently, //…forever…//
"Heero…" Quatre was at a loss – what should he do? He could see the darkness rising in Heero's eyes – of all of them, Heero had always been the one too close to the shadow. But his relationship with Duo had seemed to help him, seemed to free the soul imprisoned by the thick barrier of his cold and terrible training, seemed to help him begin to understand and treasure his emotions. Only Duo Maxwell, self-proclaimed God of Death, had ever reached past those barriers. Only Duo had ever been able to bring Heero into the light. Only Duo. Without him…
A familiar hand touched his shoulder and he turned to see Trowa Barton standing beside him. His one visible emerald eye, the other obscured by his long, razored, light brown bangs, was as full of worry as Quatre had ever seen it, although no trace of it was on his face.
"Heero—" Trowa started, but stopped as Heero moved.
Heero surged to his feet, blanket fluttering to the floor, Duo's shirt still in his clenched fists. There was barely suppressed, grief- induced violence, almost madness, in his every move, in his rigid muscles, in his glittering, cobalt eyes. Both of the other gundam pilots were well aware of the destructive abilities of Heero-The-Perfect-Soldier-Yuy.
"Leave me alone!" Heero growled.
"They tried to pull up the remains of Deathscythe Hell." Trowa spoke as if Heero hadn't.
A quick, indrawn breath was all the reaction they got from Heero.
Heero froze, imagining Duo's beautiful body twisted and burned and torn by the exploded gundam.
"And?!" Heero spit out finally.
"It was gone. The tide must have sucked it out. The Managnacs are dredging, but the current there…" Trowa's voice trailed off.
Heero closed his eyes, in his mind's eye seeing Duo's battered and lifeless body being pulled into the sea's frigid and uncaring embrace, his braid swirling up in the current to brush against his bruised, scratched face, those beautiful violet eyes open, inanimate and blank.
It was more than he could bear. It was an unendurable, smothering pain that engulfed him like a wave of molten, burning lava.
He spun, and drove his fist into the wall. It went in past his wrist, sending plaster and paint dust and fragments all over. He hauled it out, and did it again and again and again… Not a sound escaped him, but silent tears streamed down his cheeks.
"Trowa, he's hurting himself!" Quatre gulped to his love.
"Heero's hurting period, Little One." Trowa told him. "If this is the only way he can deal with it…"
Heero stopped abruptly, breathing harsh and wild. Soundless tears still slipped down his face. He turned towards them, blood dripping down his injured, plaster-dusted fist, but he never even felt it. His eyes were glittering with dark emotion.
"No, there is another way I can deal with it." Heero's voice was dead. Not the 'omae wo korosu' monotone the others were used to, but *dead*, completely, utterly devoid of humanity. "I can kill every member of Oz and Romafeller, every single person responsible for this war. Without this war, Duo would never have been trained as a gundam pilot and never would have come to earth to die."
"But…you never would have met him. Think how terrible that would have been." Quatre said.
Heero's blank eyes turned to him. "I rather would have never met him than have him dead. I would rather have never let him in my heart, and remained focused only on my missions, remained a frozen simulation of a human being than this, what has happened." Heero said in that same humanity-deadened voice.
"Heero…that way lies madness and death. That's *all* that revenge leads to." Trowa warned calmly.
Heero's eyes slowly turned to Trowa. A sinister little smile that was more grimace than smile twisted Heero's lips. "Revenge is what I want, Trowa. Revenge leads to madness, madness leads to death, and death leads…to Duo…" His voice got softer as he spoke until he spoke Duo's name in a bare whisper of sound.
"Heero!" Quatre snapped, appalled and frantic.
Heero lifted the shirt that was still wrapped around his unbloodied hand. He was still crying, but he didn't seem to notice.
He walked towards the doorway, then paused when the two other pilots didn't move. He blinked dead eyes at them from in under messy brown bangs. " I do not want to hurt you, but if you do not move, I will." He told them in that cold, deadened voice that Trowa was suspecting was going to become permanent – like the hole in Heero's soul that only Duo's presence could fill.
"And what would Duo think of that?" Quatre asked, zeroing in on the one thing that might get through to the devastated Japanese pilot.
Heero blinked uncertainly and the barest glimmer of light came back into those shadowed cobalt eyes.
He could just *see* Duo standing behind Quatre and Trowa, shaking his head at Heero's words, at his intentions, beautiful face sorrowful, but suffused with his love for him. His sweet mouth curved in a little, endearing smile, so different from his broad, jovial grins, a smile that was meant for Heero alone.
"D..Duo..?!" He gasped.
Quatre and Trowa exchanged worried looks, looking from the empty hall beyond them to Heero and back again.
Duo's lips moved, but no sound issued forth. But Heero *knew* what he was saying: 'Ai shiteru, Heero. Please don't do this. Get away from the darkness. Oh, my Heero. Don't do this. Ai shiteru eien ni. I'm yours, forever. Please, koi, don't do this…'
Then the image of Duo faded. Heero knew it was from his own tortured mind, but he also knew it was what Duo would have said. Duo would have been trying to keep him from heading down the path of hatred, vengeance and self-destruction he was about to start on.
"Duo!" He moaned. He sank to his knees, then curled up on the floor, wrapped around himself, Duo's shirt pressed to his face, weeping.
Gentle hands clasped his shoulders and his arms, and Trowa and Quatre huddled with the stricken, hopeless and bereft Heero, grieving with him for the loss of the most jovial, the most carefree of them.{1}
~~~~~~~~~~
Duo Maxwell groaned against the pain blaring in his head and slowly opened his eyes. He was bloodied and dishevelled, rips and burns in his customary black and white preacher outfit, his braid matted with dried blood in spots, and partially unravelled. He had a huge, nasty black-blue- purple bruise on his forehead and temple, his bottom lip was split and his right wrist hung at a wrong angle and throbbed like a sonuvabitch.
"I…I'm alive…" Duo coughed out. "Holy Mother, I'm friggin' ALIVE!!!" He laughed.
He turned his head gingerly, looking for Heero. "My Soldier Boy musta hauled me outta the wreck. My poor Deathscythe." He mumbled to himself…then he realised he was on the none-too clean floor of a dim, dank room that was only a little bigger than a broom closet.
"What the-? Heero? Quat? Tro? Wu?" He called, starting to rise, but stopped and clapped his hand with the fractured wrist to his chest, not noticing the pain shooting up his arm as his movements sent brilliant, hot arcs of pain through his torso, like live wires digging into his flesh. "Broken…ribs…" He coughed to himself, unbroken hand flying to his mouth…then stared in horror at the scarlet wetness that stained his fingers. "Oh, God, oh, God…."
Suddenly, a hidden speaker crackled to life.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Zero-Two. You may have guessed by now that you have been captured…by the Romafeller Foundation. You will tell us where to find the other gundam pilots and what defences they have."
"Wouldn't matter if I did," Duo spit out defiantly – along with a spray of blood. "They would have changed locations when I was captured."
"Oh, dear Zero-Two. They all think you are dead. This is the Comm logs from the base you attacked. They managed to break your communications encryption towards the end of the battle."
There was a moment of static, then:
"Duo?!" Heero's voice called worriedly.
"H..Heero, I'm alrigh-" his own voice came back, a little pained.
"DUO!!!" Heero's voice yelled anguishedly.
"…H..H..Heer…o…" Duo's choked voice whimpered over the speakers, feeble and full of agony.
"I'm coming, Duo! Hold on!" Heero's frantic voice said.
"…NO!…Deathscythe's gonna…blow…Heero, I lov-"
An explosion cut off Duo's tormented, pain-filled sob.
"***DUO!!!!***" Heero's voice screamed…then died abruptly.
Trowa's voice came over the Comm. "I got Wing Zero! Heero's hurt pretty badly. He almost slid down that cliff."
"What about Duo?" Quatre's pained voice said.
"…Deathscythe Hell's…exploded. Not even Heero could have survived through that…" Wufei's controlled voice came over the Comm.
"We have to make sure!" Quatre snapped.
"We have to get out of here. They're sending up reinforcements, too many mobile dolls. We can send someone back when the situation cools down to collect…the remains. Quatre, look for yourself, he *can't have* survived that…" Wufei's voice was strained with the effort it took to control it.
"Duo…" An almost inaudible, unconscious moan came from Heero's Comm.
"…Let's go…" Quatre sighed sadly.
"You *bastards*!!" Duo swore and surged to his knees – but the sudden rush of movement and anger sent a fresh wave of pain through his chest and he toppled back to the floor, coughing up and choking on blood.
He was vaguely aware of some people rushing to keep him alive for interrogation as the world blacked out around him, but his only thoughts were for the heartrending despair he had heard in Heero's voice.
//Ai shiteru, Heero. Eien ni. I'm still alive, I'm still here. I'm not breaking my promise that easily.// He swore silently to himself as he passed out. //I'm coming back to you, koi. Don't give up hope. Don't…//
End of Part Three
{1} WAAAHHHH!! Sniff! Sob! I hate sad parts!
I decided to translate for those who haven't picked up a little Japanese or are new to GW:
Koibito (koi) – lover, love, boyfriend