Duo POV
It's amazing the kind of stuff you can learn when you're looking from the inside of someone's head. I mean, sure, they can still hide their deepest darkest secret, but you can see all the other memories perfectly, and the coolest part is, so that your mind can keep them separate from your own memories, you don't actually see through the person's eyes. You're mind takes what the memory gives and shifts it around so you're a spectator instead of one of the characters in the little drama. If it's Heero's memory, of course he can shift into his body and relive the memory, the same goes for if it's my memory.
Memories were different from feelings. Well, duh, but I mean in our link. Instead of being ropes in a void, the link made a solid room that looked a hell of a lot like a cave. I often wondered if this was because we were in a cave the first time we shared memories, or we both just thought that would be as good a place as any. Anyway, the memories appeared as these big, multicolored blobs on the cave walls. Kind of looked like the cave had pimples. Or chickenpox. All different colored pimples and chicken pox... Anyway, as with the feelings color signified what the memory was like. Blue signaled sadness, pink signaled happiness and love, white was a memory in which nothing special happened, and so on. We started with Heero's mind, since he had a hell of a lot more white memories than me and we figured I'd take longer. Besides, we had only managed to do a couple of memories that first night, so if we hit his brain on the second night we could hit mine on Heero's first night at Haven and maybe it'd take his mind off the new surroundings. The problem with Heero's mind is that he had so many memories the same exact thing every day, work on books, work on the body, listen to J lecture about the nobility of following orders, how little Heero mattered, and how hot in Hell he would burn if he ever disobeyed J. Or something like that. Every time we went through a memory we would stick a little red flag in it, so we didn't look at the some one three or four times. Oh yeah, and you can conjure things in the links too, although Heero forbid me from conjuring any more hamburgers, saying they wouldn't really feed me at all. Spoilsport. Anyway, we decided to take a look at some of the more interesting colors of memories when Heero found me trying to pop one of the white ones with the stick from my flag. Man, did he ever flip! It's not like he needed that memory, he had at least a thousand more just like it. Yeash!
Anyway, while exploring I happened upon a bright red pimple thing. I was curious about it, since love was red in the emotion strings. Maybe red was a memory of hot, passionate sex? And since I definitely hadn't had sex with Heero, thins one had me a bit worried.
Hey Heero, I called, Come have a look at this.
Normally, I would have been surprised if Heero suddenly appeared out of nowhere, but hey, I had been conjuring things so I really couldn't complain.
What is it? he asked in his normal, this-had-better-not-be-stupid tone.
What is this thing?
I don't know.
Wanna find out? I asked, then grabbed his hand and touched the pimple without waiting for an answer. We were immediately sucked in.
There was a small forest clearing. At the end of the clearing, several targets were set up, the round red and white ones usually used in archery or throwing knives.
The bushes rustled and a large man with light brown hair stepped out. He looked European and wore European clothing, though so did the small Japanese boy behind who followed at his heels.
Aww! Heero, you were so cute as a kid! I told him. I glanced over at Heero when he didn't reply only to find a blush growing on his cheeks. Interesting.
The man, who I would assume to be Odin, was holding two bows, a large one and a small one, and a quiver of arrows. He stopped about five yards from the targets, the little boy stopped behind him.
"Odin, wha are we doin' 'ere?" he asked, in his broken, accented, childish Japanese which translated through Heero right into English for me, since I wasn't good enough at Japanese to translate baby talk.
I barely suppressed another aww. Heero could only be three or four years old, five at most, and his words were still a bit hard to understand. His eyes were still a bit too big for his head, even though they were smaller than European eyes, and his tiny little hands were so cute!
"I'm going to teach you how to shoot a bow," Odin told him, speaking with a slight accent to his Japanese words that Heero's mind let me notice, though, being European myself, I never would have picked up on it.
"Reawy?" Heero asked and Odin smiled affectionately. He pulled of the quiver of arrows and set down the larger bow, then pulled out a couple of smaller arrows.
He hand crafted those just for me, Heero said, pulling my attention away from the scene in front of me. Heero had a look of sadness and longing in his eyes, but there was also happiness there. I didn't know they were even for me until he gave them to me.
When I turned my attention back to the scene in front of me, Odin had taken Heero and helped him string the bow, and was now leaning down next to Heero, showing him how to work it. Heero pulled back the string of the bow as Odin instructed. Odin stepped back, allowing Heero the chance to try it himself. Heero let the arrow go with a loud ping. The arrow struck the target just one band away from the bull's-eye.
But Heero didn't seem happy. Instead, his long bang were covering his eyes, but the tiny little sobbing sounds he made revealed that he was crying. Odin got this affectionate little half-smile on his face and I could see where Heero got some of his faces from. Odin leaned down and picked Heero up, pulling him against his chest in a hug.
"Heero," he said, "You don't have to be afraid. You don't even have to do this if you don't want to."
Little Heero looked up, teardrops still in his eyes, "Reawy?" he asked.
"Of course. Come one, let's go back to the house. If you feel like trying again sometime, you can, if not, you might like some other weapon. Sooner or later, you have to learn to defend yourself, but you're a little young right now anyway," Odin said, putting Heero on the ground. Heero gave him a blinding smile that only a child can give, then skipped off down the path. Odin shook his head, smiling , then went to retrieve the equipment. Before leaving, Odin tossed a look at the target back over his shoulder.
"Damn good shot," he muttered, then followed Heero out of the clearing.
The scene shifted and we were suddenly back in the cave. Heero looked... deep in thought. He had a slight smile on his face, but his eyes were far away.
Odin never let me forget that day, he used to tease me about it all the time. Told every hunter he came across that I was an excellent archer even when I was a toddler, I just cried every time I shot a bow, his eyes went misty for a moment, God, I miss him.
Without missing a beat, I pulled Heero into a hug, letting him curl around my chest. His emotions ran through me, and I soothed them, calmed them, but didn't change them. Loss, sadness, the ache for someone who has passed is better to have than nothing. At least if you miss them, you can remember the good times with them, if you stop missing them you lose them completely.
We went through more of Heero's memories that night, but it took a long time for the pain in Heero's heart to fade. I wasn't really worried, I had realized quite a while ago that Heero tried to put off emotional breakdowns as much as he could. Heero had tried to morn for Odin right after his death, but he hadn't been properly able because of J. Now that he was safe and re-facing the memories, it was like he had just begun to morn the death of his mentor, the person he thought of as a father.
There were more happy memories, mainly ones about Odin. Like the first time Odin had taken him fishing and the fish knocked Heero in the water and Odin had to dive in to keep him from drowning. Or the time Odin gave Heero swimming lessons and Heero splashed the water so much he knocked a fish out of the water. Odin had to sit on the bank and laugh until he was crying after that one. Odin once got hold of a box of fireworks from China and set them off so Heero could see them.
After Odin there were almost no happy memories. There was once when Heero escaped from J and ran off to play in the fields during his training, but he was beaten severely after that so it couldn't really be counted as happy. There were a few memories where Heero felt happy in the woods once J had turned him into a slave, but most of the happy memories after Odin were ones with me in them.
There were also sad memories that had to be dealt with. I felt kind of bad, forcing Heero to face memories that would be better left buried, but I knew I would have my fair share the next day, so I didn't feel too bad.
The first memory we happened upon was the death of Odin. The small nine year old Heero being nearly drug by Odin as the city collapsed around them. The building exploded. Odin pushed Heero out of the way. A long shard of wood pierced right through Odin's heart and nailed him to the ground. Heero screamed. Rushing to his side, Heero tried to pull the wood from Odin's body, but even the older man knew it was too late and stopped him. Gently, lovingly, Odin smiled at Heero. Heero began to cry, hard sobs that wracked his body and Odin raised a hand to try to comfort him even as he faded away. Rough hands grabbed Heero from behind and pulled him into a carriage. Heero screamed and Odin struggled to get loose and rescue the boy. Odin's last words left him in a scream of Heero's name as J pulled the coach away and raced around the corner.
Later memories, of training with J. The first man Heero killed. Not just killed, oh no, that would be too normal. J, the sadist, gave Heero a garrote wire and told him to take down a 250 pound man. A little eight-year-old boy took down a mountain of a man... right in front of his family. That was when Heero first started to drift away from his emotions. The other missions solidified it, missions where Heero was walked into a room of people and was told to kill every one. Missions where Heero would be forced to kill foes that had already surrendered. The mission where Heero set some explosives off two inches, two fucking inches, to the right of where he was supposed to and a little girl and her puppy died. Of course, it wouldn't have been nearly as scaring had J not used it as a lecture in efficiency and told Heero over and over that the little girl's death was all his fault. Never mind that J ordered the operation in the first place.
But out of all the memories, the most painful ones for me to face where the ones where Heero was on the Hell drug. Seeing it from Heero's perspective was... scary. It made me want to just wrap him up in a blanket and hide him deep in the mountains where no one could find him. I understood, because of recent revelations, how Heero could be so detached that the Hell drug didn't scare him. I also knew that the Hell drug had been used on him before, but it was still hard to see how Heero could not be crying in a ball in the corner somewhere.
Heero didn't even want me to look at the Hell memories, saying that the weren't so bad for him, but I had to see them. I had to know what he had gone through, what he had seen. Eventually, Heero would get over all the things that happened to him, one at a time, like some sort of delayed reaction. I needed to know what he saw so I could help him through it. In the end, Heero and I compromised, so that I would only see two memories of the Hell drug, one in the bedroom and one in the bathroom.
The first memory was of the bedroom. Heero and I were both lying on the bed. I was on my back and Heero was curled up on my chest like a kitten. His mind painted this odd light around us, like one of us was radiating it. I had the bed's purples sheets pulled up over the two of us, Heero's blanket peaking out from underneath the other blankets.
Everywhere the light touched was exactly as I remembered it, but beyond where the light touched was as Heero saw it. The blankets that fell over the side of the bed were dirty and torn. There were snakes on the floor trying to crawl up the sheets and get on the bed, but never made it up the side. Their tongues flicked out over the side of the bed, tasting the creatures they knew were there.
The walls were covered in dents and blood splatters, like something had thrown the bodies up against a wall before or after they had died. One woman in a tattered yellow dress seemed to have been alive when the thing threw here, she was still partially standing and had a hold of the dirty, bloodstained curtains. Her eyes, both still in tact though they were devoid of life, seemed to stare out the window into the ruins of the hold.
Outside the window were charred buildings and more bodies, the hold looked like some horrible monster had come through. Bodies littered the ground, like some kind of explosion had thrown them there. Nothing moved but the crows, the vultures, and a pack of wild dogs.
The floor was like a swamp, completely covered in about an inch of liquid, only this liquid was blood, not water. The snakes swam through the blood and would, from time to time, feast on one of the rats that came to dine on the bodies.
The bodies weren't too much of a surprise, since Heero had told me about them, but it was still horrible none the less. Some of the bodies looked like they had just fallen, a woman in her thirties and a man in his fifties. Others, too decayed to tell what gender they were, let alone the age, had holes chewed through various parts of them. Rats would eat at their flesh, so would the carrion birds, sometimes they would fight amongst themselves, screeching and hissing loudly.
Some of the bodies refused to stay down. They would stand and limp in any general direction. One, presumably a man with a brown hat and long coat, walked toward the bed while we watched. One of the rats was in his pocket, still gnawing on his hand. A snake had been hunting the rat when the man stood, the snake was still roped around him neck and through his eye socket. The men, who had one foot nearly chewed off, limped over to the bed and hovered above Heero and I. I was completely oblivious to the man, but Heero saw him and buried himself deeper in my chest. Slowly, the man sank to the floor next to the bed, unable to get passed the light and hurt Heero.
The scene shifted and we were in the bathroom.
The bathroom was both better and worse than the bedroom. There was less blood, less bodies, but the bodies that were there were worse.
Heero was curled up in the corner, mid-scream before I came rushing in. His clothes were tattered, dirty, with blood all over his hands, body, and face. There was a snake slowly crawling up his ankle, a cockroach making its way through his hair to his cheek.
Heero screamed and I burst through the door, radiating this ethereal light, and everything that became in cased in that light returned to normal. Quickly I dashed over to where Heero was and bent down in front of him, incasing him in the light, and chasing the roach and snake away, returning him to normal.
I shifted my attention from myself and Heero from the memory to Heero's memory of the room. The walls were blackened with dirt, the floor covered in smile. Here and there a body part would lie, I watched the Heero from memory swerve to dodge a head and an arm that myself from the memory couldn't see.
Instead of snakes in this room, though there were several of them, there were roaches and other bugs. The sink was rusted and cracked, brown water dripped out of the faucet. There were a few dead bugs in the bottom of the sink, more crawling up its sides and around the bottom.
The tub was full to the brim with blood, body parts floating in the concoction. The blood ran down the sides and mixed with the slime on the floor to create a brown color.
The little girl and her puppy watched the two of us from the corner as we crossed the room. She was as Heero had described her. Half of her looked almost alive, the other half showed only skeletal remains. Her dress was pink, with white stockings and tiny black shoes. She even had little white gloves on her hands, the common European style for little girls at that time. She had a small pink umbrella made of mainly silk and lace. Her hair was blonde and put into tight curls. Her small red lips smiled happily as her one blue eye sparkled. The other side of her was completely opposite. Her dress was dirty and ragged, covering bones and a few scraps of flesh. What little hair she had left was ragged and her lips on that side had gone along with her eye. Her dirty glove held a leash connected to a puppy made of bones. You could only see a scrap of the puppy's tongue, but he was lolling it, like he had just played a game of chase. The puppy sat, not still, for it moved its head so that its hollow eye sockets could see around the room, just as it must have done when it was still alive.
When I finally tore my eyes away from the girl I found that I had led Heero to the rusty, broken toilet. Standing in front of Heero was Dekim, the hand I had cut off still clutched in his other.
Dekim looked like he had been dead for several years, most of the flesh had fallen off his hands and one of his eyes was barely contained in his head. His face was a gray-blueish color with scratches that could only have come from the rats. He smiled, revealing dirty, bloody teeth, and spoke.
"Why don't ya gimme a kiss?" he asked, opening his mouth to reveal a tongue that was missing chunks out of its sides and a large maggot crawling out of his gums.
Heero backed up until he bumped into me even though he knew Dekim couldn't get passed the light barrier. Dekim closed his mouth and smiled.
"What? Aren't we good enough for ya anymore?" he asked in his raspy, broken voice.
"I think he just needs a good fuck," came another voice and I turned my head to see Barton, supporting himself on the wall because of his missing leg.
Barton hadn't held up any better than Dekim. His nose was completely gone and you could see the holes in his chest through his torn shirt. His pants had partially fallen down because of decay and the missing leg, you could see his semi-erect penis was missing chunks of tissue.
Had I been in a body with a physical stomach, I would have puked all over the place.
The scene ended as soon as Heero did his business and I dragged him back to the bed, but it was something that I would remember for the rest of my life.
When I woke early that morning, though it could have been later that night since time has no affect on us when we're inside the link, all I could do was cling to Heero.
"Feel better?" I asked once I had purged my mind of most of those images.
"A little. I'm still sad, but... I remember the good times too now. How about you? Are you alright?"
"I will be. I'm sorry I couldn't do more for you when you were..."
"You did everything you could, and it was enough. You saved me, Duo, you kept me from running away from myself again," Heero told me, smiling.
"I only wish that were true," I mumbled, too low for him to hear. The sun began to rise and I realized that in just a few hours, it would be my turn to bare my soul to Heero.
Oh joy.