Duo's POV
Absolution
by solange channonix
Chapter 3
21.04.198 AC
L3 colony cluster
It was the time. I woke up today as the first rays of the sun crept into my bedroom through the dark curtains and decided it was the time again. I got up, got dressed in my black clothes, grabbed a slice of cold pizza and went out, slamming the door shut behind me.
My neighbour looked up at me anxiously as I brushed past her eating my pizza. She was a student, learning whole nights and so, always angry at me for making the noise. The noise of cracking glass, screams of passion and pleasure if some girl happened to follow me home. I could understand her, but I didn't care. I'd done enough for others, thanks to us, the soldiers, she could now live peacefully and study at all, I'd lost close to everything for others, so now, I didn't feel obliged to care anymore.
I could be nicer, I know. I'd used to be so nice...
... and I'd gotten nothing from that. I'd been trying so hard to make friends with everyone and I'd been as stupid as to think I'd managed, at least in some cases, and only then, I'd gotten to know I hadn't. Sweepers, G and Howard had needed me only as long as I'd been fighting in the war by their side, piloting Deathscythe, other pilots as well. Quatre was as nice to me as to everyone else, the rest hadn't bothered even that much. Only Hilde had been truly caring for me, but now it was over, she was married and to her as well I'd become a burden.
For God's sake, I wasn't hiding. You could take an address book for my colony and find my name there and if they asked Hilde, she knew where to find me. I'd been even trying to contact Quatre, just to talk to someone, just to change a few words, but he hadn't been there nor had been willing to call then, though I'd left a message. I'd been even trying to find Heero, I'd sent messages at all his e-mail accounts I knew about. Well, maybe he wasn't using them anymore, maybe, rather, he didn't care.
They'd all left me alone and gone their own ways... all of them, even him and I... I'd been thinking I'd gotten through to him, that we'd become friends, after the first war, we'd been sharing an apartment for a year and it hadn't been that bad. He could be nice, in his own way, strange way, but one could get used to it.
I missed him, I missed all of them, I missed Hilde, I missed all of those close to me who'd died even before the war, who hadn't place in their lives for me. I missed any human contact, I still craved for it and yet, I was still alone.
After the years of occupation and the war, people in colonies and especially on L3, weren't trustful. They'd rather not let know too much about themselves to strangers. They would drink with you and blabber stupidities, they'd go to bed with you and disappear the next morning, but never let you know much, let you get close.
They all feared. They all feared to care, because some Barton, Alliance's soldiers, OZ or whatever else could come and take all you care for away and make you suffer. The more you care, the more you suffer then, so to care was an dangerous thing. As well as to let out something of your past, like that you'd been an Alliance's soldier, had sympathized with OZ, had been in Mariemaia's army, or in White Fang, or that someone from your family or your boyfriend had been. No one would talk with you sincerely and you'd make a fool of yourself doing so or smiling so carelessly how I'd used to do.
There was no place on that colony and at that time for that, no place for old Duo Maxwell, who, not to mention, hadn't as much of mental strength as to still smile so lively.
My mask was cracking... I was still smiling feeling the tears collecting under my eyelids, I still could do that, but not as well. Someone who'd known me in the past would've seen the difference, so much more mournful eyes... so much of blood on my hands...
I wasn't feeling here too well, but I couldn't leave. I had a job here and a new task in four days. I shouldn't be wasting my time for such things, but, that morning, I'd just felt like it and again, acted on an impulse.
I needed to go to a graveyard, to the graveyard designated for the victims of the last two wars, where there were buried all of the corpses found on the streets of that colony or floating in the space around it and where there were white marble boards rendering the missing ones memorable, where there were lying those killed in the last battle, also those killed by my hands.
That graveyard was beckoning me, once in a while, a silent place the importance of could be felt in the air, in the sounds and voices of birds, in the immensity of the transparent dome over it, separating it from the rest of the colony, so it would be that clean and silent. Because of that graveyard, I'd chosen that colony as a place to stay in the first place, over all of the others from the L3 cluster.
I went through the gate, passing by a giant statue, an angel with a sword guarding the peace of that place. It wasn't to be destroyed in any war, any future war could be only the source of new corpses, never its destruction. They were supposed to stay here, all of those I'd killed, so no one, and especially not me, was able to forget about them. If it was to convince people that wars were pointless, that we shouldn't start them ever again, then it was working on me.
Then there were just graves and boards, all white, all shining, parted by a net of narrow paths. Most of them had no names on them, just the circumstances of finding the corpse and supposed age. There were thousands of them... counting those only mentioned on the boards, millions.
I'd heard there was something similar built on L2 V08744, in the place where the Maxwell's Church had used to be. And as a proof that I was to be found if someone looked for me, I'd gotten an invitation to the opening, planned to be the 29th April, as a witness of the massacre. I wasn't sure yet if I was even going to go there, maybe to be forced to talk about the massacre, about my friends killed there and still excepted to be just a bit sad, not to cry and scream from mental pain, not to go crazy then and there...
I advanced among the graves, passing by, looking for the section of those killed in the last battle, finally finding it. A separated square of graves, all bearing the very same date. Here was buried the most of the last victims of the first war, not counting only those whose families wanted otherwise and there weren't many. On Earth, there were graveyards and corpses were buried, at the colonies, they were cremated and the ashes freed into space, so most of the families, the colonists or those who couldn't afford taking the corpses to Earth, let them be buried at this graveyard, one of the few at the colonies.
Here were my victims. Thousands of graves and some of them were here because of me.
Standing there, looking numbly before me, on the strangely empty cemetery, I heard a chant. I followed it to its source, curious as to what was happening. In the middle of the spherical graveyard, there was a white chapel under a silver dome. From there was coming the chant and people were gathered around it, all dressed in black.
I came closer, looking at the entrance of the chapel, two coffins, white and shining like everything here, being carried towards the empty section, behind the chapel, each one by four men dressed all in black, like everyone here, including myself.
Strangely transfixed, I was approaching them, pushing people aside, I sped up, following the procession, the coffins, the corpses. I was close enough to see them, their faces. A woman, seemingly young, dressed in a long, white, not black, dress, with a wrap put over her chest, covering something that should not be seen. Her face, her pale face with slightly parted lips, a calm smile, long lashes making deep shadows dance over her white cheeks. Long, fair, nearly white hair, slightly curly...
It was her, the one I'd killed.
She had to be an important figure, buried here because of that, along with her husband, followed by such a funeral procession. The wrap over her chest was placed where I'd shot her, to cover up the mortal wound. It had to...
I heard a scream, a high pitched voice screaming in utter horror.
I squirmed and turned viciously around. A little girl was standing just behind me, pointing out at me and screaming. Her wide open, large green eyes bore into mine, judging me, being engraved by my memory to hunt me in my future nightmares, as she was screaming, louder and louder, in a such a terrified, shrieking voice. It was their daughter, the child I'd orphaned, one of the many, but never had I faced one. I...
When I'd executed her parents, the woman had been holding her in her arms, so I'd shot next to her, not hurting her at all. I hadn't been close, but still, she'd had to see me, or maybe, she just knew, somehow.
Someone hugged her, but she wouldn't stop. People were staring at who she was pointing out, refusing to stop screaming in horror, at me, judging, imposing a sentence... Her wide open, impossibly large green eyes, so innocent and so dark with pain and despair, maybe as much as my own were. I...
I needed to flee.
I started to run and strangely, no one followed me, but I was running still, towards the exit, towards the freedom, out of the yard of the dead ones, back to the living's world, out of that place hunting me in my nightmares, beckoning in the reality. Away from those green eyes, so innocent and so broken...
I could still hear her shrieking voice, ringing in my ears, making my head throb, my heart beat so quickly, too quickly, from fear she would tell them, that I'd get caught. I didn't fear the punishment, I feared only the question `why ?`.
I ran through the gate and slowed only there, as I became a part of an ordinary crowd of the street. Walking slowly, I was trying to calm, to forget, to wash the image of that child's eyes away from under my eyelids. I'd killed her parents...
So what ? She wasn't the first one nor the only one I'd orphaned, but her eyes... her eyes... I hadn't been forced to be looking into the eyes of every child I'd orphaned, to compare them to my own.
I headed back to my apartment and once there, reached out for a mirror and looked into my own eyes, dark blue blurred into amethyst and as much of despair and pain as in hers. Though while I was broken, she was just terrified. For her it would pass, she'd forget, for me the nightmare would never end, for me all of that was replaying every single night, every single moment. And I was doing that to myself, because I didn't want to forget, to lose the past which was all I had. I was still killing, because the pain, despair and nightmares were all I had, without them and no chances to replace them with anything, I'd ceased to exist.
I couldn't stop killing, I was the God of the Death, I was killing and orphaning children, it was just the way things were supposed to be. Regrets would hunt me, but they were the only content of my life, they were all I had. The eyes of that child girl, coming back to me in my nightmares, were all I had.
I turned the mirror away, unable to be looking anymore into my own eyes, like I couldn't look into hers.
I was feeling bad, dizzy, kind of... Something was ripping the remnants of my heart to shreds again, something, the memory of those eyes, of the death of that woman, one of so many I'd seen. She'd been smiling so brilliantly just before she'd died and I'd turned her into cold corpse that couldn't be the mother for that little girl anymore, like someone had had to do with my own mother, all those years ago.
I'd committed so many other sins, murdered so many other people, that that one crime wouldn't even count, if there was anything at the other side. There was no reason to be thinking about it, instead of getting ready to complete another task. I had a work to do, there was no time for regrets, not now, not yet. In a few days, when I'd be done.
As for now... I reached for another bottle of whisky, drinking it slowly
in long gulps from the bottle, soothing my pained heart, or rather, what
was there left of it after all of this, after so many years of doing so
terrible things and still caring, still counting, just to be able to torment
myself more.
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