Disclaimer: If I owned them I'd be able to pay back my student loans. (Checks wallet.) Nope. Still poor and in debt.
Warning: Violence, swearing and yaoi.
Chapter 14Orth pulled the now empty syringe out of Quatre's arm. He cradled the blonde almost lovingly in his arms as he bent down to whisper in his ear. "Can you feel it burning through your blood stream yet? It won't take long; it never did with any of the others. I'm going to leave you here for your friends to find. Which one will find you first, do you think? Your loyal braided friend, maybe? Or perhaps it will be that Chinese Preventer agent? Or maybe even the boy who brought Red Thorn to your rescue? Whoever it is, they'll lean over to see if your hurt, get within arms length, and then you'll choke the life out of them. But who knows," he murmured gently, "maybe you'll get lucky, maybe they'll kill you first."
Quatre could make no reply. The disorientation that he had felt from the knock on his head was transforming into something else. Something that felt very, very wrong.
Orth lay the blonde on the ground and stood up. Several of his security men rounded the corner. "Sir! We've been looking for you. We'll get you to the north exit." They stepped up smartly to their battered employer and began to lead him away from the shattered blonde and the destroyed elevator.
There was a sharp cracking sound and the guard on Orth's right stopped suddenly in mid step. His body gradually folded, falling in slow motion, landing in a crumpled heap on the unforgiving floor.
Heero Yuy burst out of a side passage. His body coming not far behind the second lethal bullet he had fired at the other bodyguard. He slammed into Everett Orth, tossing him into the wall. The cobalt-eyed boy slid to a stop at the Arabian's side.
"Quatre!" He shook him, but there was no response from the blonde. His sharp eyes noticed the empty syringe lying discarded by his side. In a flash he was up again, grabbing the dazed Orth by the throat and shaking him. "What did you do to him? What did you do?!"
He tried to speak but all that came out was a wet gurgling sound. Belatedly Heero realized that he couldn't talk while his throat was being crushed. He loosened his hand just enough to allow speech.
"He-I-the Red Formula," Orth finally managed to cough out.
"How do I stop it?" He shook the man violently. "God damn it, how do I stop it?! There's got to be an antidote-something! Tell me!"
Orth was trying to figure out how to explain that the drug was unstoppable without getting his trachea crushed by the violent young man who currently had a hold on him. Suddenly he looked beyond Heero's shoulders, and smiled, no longer worried. "You can't stop it. He'll go crazy and rip apart anyone in his reach, then he'll do the same to himself, if you don't kill him first."
The look in the man's eyes was enough to let the perfect soldier no that they were no longer alone. He spun suddenly, pushing Orth in front of him as a human shield. It was a good thing, too. Four more guards had shown up, and the first bullet fired went through Everett's shoulder. Ironically right in the place where he had taken the deflected projectile from the assassin that he had hired to kill Relena. He groaned and fell to the side. Heero used the distraction to jump behind another wall and use it as cover.
Everett Orth, bleeding from a gunshot wound as well as previous abrasions, began to crawl past the still prone Quatre, his intent to take cover in the damaged elevator.
But his plan would never take place. While Heero had been trying to shake answers out of Orth, Quatre's brain chemistry had been changing. Neurons fired at a rapid pace, and began to redirect themselves. His gray matter finally began to reorder itself in a pattern that it had taken only once before.
Orth had made a costly mistake in injecting the blonde. He had not done his research well enough, and so had never heard of the zero system and the massive damage Quatre had inflicted in outer space while using it. But even if he had known about it, he might have dismissed it. After all, that was machine based, and had caused no permanent damage to the brain, right?
Wrong.
Quatre had gone crazy before he built Wing Zero. When he had seen his father die. For such a sensitive person as Quatre, seeing a loved one's death, and especially feeling it, while, it had broken him. His mind had pulled out the only defense it had.
Another Quatre. Colder and harder. In essence, it had created another personality.
The blonde's eyes snapped open. His reordered brain told him that his enemy was only inches away from him. He moved, almost too fast for the eye to follow. He rolled over until he was next to Orth's head, then he grabbed the man's neck.
And snapped it.
Seconds later he was on his feet. He yanked the remaining explosives from his belt. They were meant to be stuck to a flat surface; and then exploded with the detonator from a distance, but Quatre didn't use them that way. He bundled them up in a little ball, and then tossed them with all his might towards the two guards that Heero had not yet managed to pick off.
They landed, unnoticed, several feet behind the doomed men. The blonde took the detonator out of his pocket. Heero had seen the explosives land, and he turned astonished eyes on Quatre, then he jumped far behind the wall and took cover as the blonde pushed the button.
The resulting blast shook the entire building, causing plaster to rain down on them from the ceiling.
In the aftermath of the explosion the two ex-pilots stared at each other. Heero took a single step toward the other boy and then halted abruptly. He couldn't help but notice the empty, blank expression in the blonde's eyes. He had seen that look before. His own eyes widened in comprehension.
Footsteps sounded behind Heero. Wufei ran forward to Heero, while Trowa came behind, supporting Duo. The braided boy took one look at the blonde and, pain forgotten, started to run forward.
Heero held an arm in his way, stopping him short. He looked at the boy blocking his path, eyes wide. "Hey, what's going on?"
Heero spoke flatly, his voice without inflection. "Orth injected Quatre with the Red Formula."
Duo looked at him with disbelief. "Um, dude? I was in the room with those other people who were on it." He held up his bitten arm for emphasis. "See? If it was in Quatre he'd be trying to tear us apart right now."
"Not if he was like Une."
"What? I . . ." comprehension suddenly dawned. "Ah shit, the zero system."
"Yes."
Duo turned to the blonde. "Hey, Q snap out of it, okay? We need you, buddy."
Quatre's face was slack, his eyes empty. "Need . . . me?" He murmured, almost to soft to be heard.
"Yeah, come on back to us and we can all head out for a day of fun. I mean hey, we deserve it, right? Maybe we could go to an amusement park or the beach or something cool like that." The other ex-gundam pilots were quiet, allowing Duo to try and bring their friend back.
Quatre's face had focused on the word "fun." He turned and walked a couple of feet backwards, until he was standing by the dead body of his sister's fiancé. "Fun . . ." he whispered tonelessly. He squatted on his heels and stared into the body's glassy eyes. He tilted his head questioningly, until it almost looked like he was trying to imitate the corpse, with its neck twisted at such an unnatural angle. He smiled suddenly, the expression completely devoid of humor, more going through the motions of conveying feeling than actually feeling anything.
"I don't think he was having fun when I broke his neck." Quatre moved away from the body abruptly, ignoring his friends standing frozen in surprise at his words. He kicked a sheet of metal out of the way, revealing the gun that Orth had before the elevator exploded and blew it out of his hands. He bent down to pick it up.
There was a click behind him. "Don't touch it Quatre," Heero said warningly. His voice was steady, but the other boys could pick up the strain underneath.
The blonde arrested his downward movement. "Why not Heero? I won't use it on any of you. You're my allies after all." He spun suddenly, locking eyes with each of them. "Why don't you see it? We failed. We fought, we bled, we killed, and the world still won't accept peace. There's always going to be somebody like Everett Orth. Somebody that we need to kill."
"No Quatre, we didn't fail. The world isn't like it was during the war," Trowa said, green eyes piercing, intently trying to get through to his friend like he did once before. "There won't always be somebody to kill."
"It's interesting how you worded that, Trowa. The only way there won't be anyone to kill is if there's no one left." Quatre's damaged mind began to present him with new images, and a new objective. He smiled, the expression chillingly sweet. "Then there would truly be peace."
Heero stared at him, and then lowered his gun and dropped it to the floor. "That's not peace Quatre," he said quietly, "what you're describing, that's death."
"Then maybe death and peace are one and the same." The blonde bent back down, and grabbed up the gun. He pointed it at Heero. "Maybe you'd like to finally be at peace," he said thoughtfully, "maybe that's the only way."
"Shit Quatre that's not . . ." Duo was cut off abruptly by Heero holding up his hand for quiet.
"Maybe it is." Heero started to move, very slowly, inching his way toward Quatre.
"Don't come any closer! I don't want to have to hurt you again!" The blonde's voice was shrill, but his gun hand was still rock steady. "Go away Heero!"
"I'm not leaving Quatre," Heero said quietly, in an eerie echo of the past. "You conquered the zero system, you can move beyond this too." He kept moving until he was only about five feet away from the other pilot.
"Stop Heero, stop! Stay away!" His gun hand shook, and suddenly he fired. But because his hand was shaking, the bullet went straight through the other boy's shoulder.
Heero didn't even flinch. He showed no reaction to having a hole in his body. He just kept moving.
"Heero, oh Allah, please stay away!" Now the blonde was backing up, away from the advancing boy.
"I told you already, Quatre, you can't get rid of me, not unless you really want to kill me."
"I-I should. We're just obsolete soldiers, Heero. The only thing left in life for us is death!"
"No, you're wrong. We do have something to live for. We have each other. Obsolete soldiers we may be, but that doesn't mean we can't move away from our pasts."
"Not move away from our pasts?! That's not what you said to me before! You told me I couldn't live a normal life, that it didn't work for you and it wouldn't work for me. And you know what Heero, you were right."
"Normal, no. But that doesn't mean we have to give up and seek death, Quatre, besides, I think we both may have been putting to much stock on being normal. What ever you decide to do, you won't be alone in it. You have Duo, Trowa, Wufei, Sally, and even Lady Une, when she's not crazy. And you have me. I won't leave you again, Quatre."
The blonde finally stopped backing up when he reached the scorched elevator. He really didn't have anywhere else to go. He stared at Heero, eyes no longer cold and uncaring but confused and frightened. "But you will leave me." His speech was strangely child-like, the voice of a child who had lost a father that had not cared enough to live. "Everybody I want to love me leaves. You've already done it once."
"I know. But I won't leave again, I promise you. If you want me, I'll stay forever." With those last words Heero came to a stop inches away from the confused boy.
Quatre stared into his eyes, soaking in the intense emotions they contained. "I love you Quatre. I won't leave, we need each other." Inside Quatre's mind, the personality the drug had brought back began to crack, losing the hate and fear needed to feed it.
It cracked, and then it crumbled to dust.
The blonde swayed slightly on his feet. "Heero . . . " he whispered and then he fell forward, to be caught in his friend's arms. Heero's knees gave out on him, from blood loss and from a much greater emotion, and they both sank to ground. Ignoring the still bleeding bullet wound, he wrapped his arms around Quatre and held him tight.
"I won't leave, ever."
Notes: Okay, that's the end of the action sequences, nothing left but my epilogue. I realize it's kind of sappy, when Quatre's not being scary, but I couldn't help it. And I can't believe I did two chapters in one day! I got really caught up in this one, I haven't moved from my computer in almost three hours. Hmm. I need a life.
The clue was the glasses sitting on Une's desk. Okay I admit, it was a pretty pathetic clue . . .
Card Mistress, glad I could inspire you into another fic, I hope it's a 1X4. Diane, the Preventers were able to get there so fast because Duo contacted them to tell them he was following Quatre, I probably should have showed that some where . . . oh well.
On a side note, can you tell I have issues with Quatre's father? That man made me mad in a lot of ways. Stupid pacifist.