Title: The Forsworn ~ Depiction (13A)

Author: Sita Seraph

Genre: Angst?  Supernatural?

Pairing: Unknown

Rated: R

Archive: Aya and Sonny's Aenai Ai - http://aenai.steelsong.com/

Silver Crucifix – http://www.silvercrucifix.com

Beyond Forever - http://crimson.gwyaoi.com/beyondforever/index.html

Warning: Suicide, angst, depression

Summary: When love gets out of hand, out of control, and out of mind – where beliefs are lies.  This will be Heero's last chance.

Dedicated: To Blue, for her birthday.  I made my deadline! Though, ahem, it might have a few typos.

Finished: 1-4-03

A.

I closed my eyes against the world as it passed me, blocking out the bent trees and coy grass out the car window.  We were traveling back to the hospital as calmly as possible but I could tell that Quatre was efficiently going over the speeding limit.  I felt anxiety, even a little terror, coil in my stomach and I hated it.  For the past week, I had felt nothing and thought nothing.  I couldn't – I couldn't think of what I saw or of what I knew.  I couldn't will myself to do so.  It was like the door had been shut and I didn't even bother trying to find a key to the lock.  I had lain outside, drained emotionally and physically.  I didn't care for my appearance and I let myself lag around with the clothes that I happened to find on the floor near me.  I forgot my body even had to eat until I felt dizzy and sick and so, so tired.  When I was awake, I almost always felt the need to throw up.  But, sleeping in my bedroom was my lethargic release, I could let go of the world, and Duo for just a few hours when I closed my eyes.  And still I was so tired.  I couldn't think about anything because it was…too hard.  I just accepted what was around me and went with it.

I never imagined that a door could open with a single phone call.

Suddenly, I couldn't stop thinking; to stop…now _that_ was too hard.  I felt nervous and hungry and I suddenly took up the habit of nibbling on the little hairs on my knuckles.  Now, every time I closed my eyes, there was no longer the bliss of emptiness but that white room.  That endless white room where blood spread across the ground like the slow bloom of the reddest, darkest flower.  Where thorns of clear agony stood to attention, begging for the kiss of white, pure flesh.   The trail that held memories and life on each glistening tip; it reached out to each fool that stepped near that white plain splattered with angry scarlet; their jagged hands extended out with sharp nails, whispering the truth in their bloody massacre.  The truth of Duo Maxwell.  And they would hold onto his reality with their cold ruby fingers, bargaining with a life that wasn't theirs to have.  Oh, how cruel was that trail of splattered life.  Life that was so dark but held no glimmer – like the dying chestnut braid that wilted over the back of the hospital chair.  I imagined the braid and I opened my eyes to picture it on the window.  The background blurred away and all I saw was each fold of that once glistening hair.  Then I could only think of that trail as it suddenly replaced that thick mane.  And I couldn't even tell the difference between the two.

"Heero," Trowa called from in front of me.  "Lets go."

Giving a small grunt in response, I opened the car door and slid off the seat.  I looked up at the building as I shut the door and sighed nervously, thinking that beyond the stones of the outer wall, and past the halls where a mere cough was muted behind shaky hands, and straight through the caged door that locked the man within a room that they swore was helping him. In my mind's eye, I stared at those lifeless violet orbs and with a sinking feeling…I knew.  I knew that when I walked through those steel doors, down that tomb hallway, and stepped in that hell of heavenly white, I would see no emotion from those eyes ever again.  Because I felt, somewhere deep within my chest, that shard that had taken root under my skin…and it told me I had broken something.  I had snapped something into two, into millions, and with it I took what life that was still breathing in Duo's corpse.

I followed my companions lifelessly, my eyes staring into a world I did not wish to be in.  A world where those mauve eyes did not look at me like I wanted him to.  Where those brief moments of bodily encounter meant nothing more to him then a handshake with a stranger.  Where a smile I thought I knew so well was just a painted grin from a perfect drawing, just there to fill in the space of the master's face, even though the portrayal did not reach the creation's eyes.  The person that I knew with such detail was nothing more than a fading figment in the back of my mind; a drawing thrown on the wall by a sketchy artist to cover up the blundered canvass underneath.  Now it was being shown to the world in its relative fakeness.  No one had bothered to look a little bit closer and see the dark hue shining underneath those light and bright colors.  But if one, if only one person wondered.  If only that person had taken a blade and ripped away the painting…out would gush that river of blood, scattered with glass of joyous glee.  If, of course, that person was not too late.  For over time, the two canvasses had merged and if one took a blade to that painting…you they would destroy both realities.

"This way, Mr. Winner," the redheaded nurse ushered, leading us down the hallway in single file.  I stared ahead at the appointed room, my upper body suddenly and dreadfully numb.  I couldn't find the voice to speak or the muscle to blink.  Then why could I still walk?  How could I still love someone, some painting, when I didn't understand its depth, when I could only see the outer layers?  How did I know that everything was so far from over…

The nurse opened the door and out spilled the room's light across the floor.  I loathed this fakeness, this light that cascaded over the true darkness, pinning the shadows to the floors and walls.  It chained the gloom of each and every one that entered its path of light, showing off the hideous and gruesome doings of each person.  If there was only some way to hide from the daylight.  If there was only some way to keep some secrets unknown.  For us, anyway.   For me.  I felt so exposed under the white glow, everything I've done and felt splattered over the wall with my shadow.

Not for Duo.

I stepped inside after them.  The intense light, the intense pain sharpening in my skull before retreating, blinded me.  I peeked open my eyes after a moment and the first thing I noticed was that the wheelchair was empty.  My breath was suddenly constricted in my chest and my anxiety increased ten-folds. I glanced over after Quatre who was still peeking through his eyelashes, looking almost afraid of the thing he dared to hope for to finally come. But Trowa stood solid in the light, staring through its luminosity and I treaded through his gaze's path.  And if I had had a hard time breathing before, I couldn't tell at all anymore.  For there was a figure sitting on the windowsill, silhouetted by the daylight shinning through the pane less glass.  Trickles of obviously long hair fell down around the figure and over the seat, wilting over the sides at the shaggy and uncut ends.  The figure was turned towards the window, hugging one of his legs while the other stretched across the bench.  He was completely still, almost like he was in shock…or…or dead.  A self-supporting corpse glancing out the window towards the life that surrounded him…but could not enjoy himself.

"Duo…" Quatre whispered painfully.

The figure turned quickly, but not quick enough.  He seemed so considerably slower in this room, like time had stopped on this one moment to mercifully kill my heart over and over again.  To spread this instant longer than humanly possible; to engrave that profile of Duo forever in my head.  I didn't know if I wanted to cry or scream.  To run towards him or run away in fear of the man I did not know.  But no choice on my behalf could be made.  I was lost in this moment, stumbling for a threshold against those painful eyes and knowing that for the rest of my life I would never forget them.

I could not move and could not breath.  I felt myself falling, though I knew I stood strong with my feet still on the ground.  The world spun around me and I imagined that plane of white again.  I imagined that trail of blood and the time I had lain beside it, screaming for Duo to hear me, to forgive me for my sightlessness.  I remembered when the place had broken and the world around me had fallen apart.  Carrying me, the blood, and the glass into the darkness deep within those eyes I could never describe to you.  And I stared at that face, at the lips that once held the portrait smile and, to the eyes that now only cried that broken world. And I knew that the glass within me was speaking the truth.  For the thing I had broken fell from those eyes.  Those shattered, black eyes.

One eye teared clear holy liquid.

While the other, bled only blood.