Author's note: Here we are at part four! Huzzah! Enter, Solo! Poor dead solo. Or, err... more importantly, poor dead CENSORED. Or is he? Or is he not? Or, WHAT IS GOING ON? Sigh, I'm so confused. This is what comes, children, from too many Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathons. Anyway, thats all.
p.s. Woah, does this text seem huuuuuge to you? How do i fix this? xx;;
Warning Signs (part IV) The State I'm In
By Onions Make Me Cry
-A warning sign /
I missed the good part then I realized /
I started looking and the bubble burst /
I started looking for excuses -
"Wake up, Duo. Time to go..."
Blackness.
"Duo..."
Strangeness.
And then nothing.
I can hear the voice, familiar in it's own right– But something about this situation is making my stomach turn, like a barrel full of jellyfish.
Where am I?
"Hey! Come the fuck on, man, we're almost there..."
Soft prodding at my arm takes a sudden turn, and unfriendly fingers grab a pocket of flesh, above my elbow, and wrench it in a painful circle. Yelping at the pinch, I lash out through the darkness, and come to suddenly and sharply, thrown back into a lounging position in the front seat of a Volvo station wagon.
"What the fuck?" The words explode from me, blinding me, as a violent flurry of recollection and half-patched memories of the last twenty four hours whip past my bleary countenance all at once, a torrent of swirling, spinning images hellbent on my destruction.
For a few desperate seconds, I sit gasping, sucking air in and out of my lungs... lungs, which feel strangely papery– Like delicate, spindly ornaments. Fucking weird. I'm a fish out of water, aren't I? A fucking goldfish, flopped out of the bowl and set to thrashing vainly on the floor a thousand leagues away from home.
And then I realize something, after a few more seconds of personal self-assessment. My lungs aren't what frightens me the most. Most terrible of all, I can no longer feel the palpitations of my heart, deep inside my chest. That, at least, was something I should have been able to sense. Especially in the midst of the frenzy of panic I've stuck my whole fucking head so deep inside by now–
But nothing inside me is moving. Nothing is alive.
I feel strange again.
"That's better. I thought you were gonna sleep the whole god damn way!" lilts the familiar voice again, into the hollow cavity of my left ear. "You son of a bitch! And me coming up all special-like to pick your ass up, and everything."
Turning trembling violet eyes to the driver, I know I've finally died. Really, there can't be another explanation. Or, at least, not an explanation I can come up with, in any kind of near realm of possibility.
I've died. I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm dead.
Sitting with a cocky expression of half amusement in the driver's seat, one arm thrown back behind my headrest, is Solo.
Holy fucking shit, I really have kicked the bucket.
"You." I jab a finger at him accusingly, my eyes narrowing to slits.
Solo smiles a little, and shrugs. The look suits him, his features older now, and handsomer. Or at least, handsomer as I would have imagined he could have been, had he lived to be my age. "Me."
"What are you doing here?"
He reaches over with his free hand, eyes half on the road, and theatrically whacks me with his palm, in my forehead, like he used to do when we were little together. "Doufus! You fucking pea brain, come on, put two and two together!"
The words spill out like a jeopardy game show prompt. "I'm dead."
"Very good! Very astute... If you're like, in the second grade."
I narrow my eyes at the sarcasm, but skip over the comeback. I mean, what does it really matter anymore? Petty things like arguments. I've died, so I should be over it, right? Or, above it. Or.. Errr... below it. Whatever.
"Well then," I continue, finding my eyes being drawn out into the scenery around us, though the panic I felt before hasnt entirely died out. Now it seems more like a mouse, gnawing holes through my intestines.
We're driving down an empty country road, flat land stretching out into a limitless field on the left, and rising into great, shadowy spikes on the right, in a clearly defined pine forest. Between the woods and the road strings an endless line of telephone polls, which rhythmically bob and sway with the movement of the car, thick rubbery power lines rising and falling hypnotically. The sky is a bloody red, and bathes everything beneath it in an ominous orange glow.
"Where are we going?" Solo finishes for me, a slight smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "You're gonna have to wait for that one, champ. I'm not allowed to tell you. This is purgatory, you know."
"What?" spit flies as I sputter the word. "Hold the fuck on for two little seconds, alright? So we're gonna have to just... keep driving? On and on for, like, forever?"
Solo's grin tugs a little further. "Oh, come on. This isnt that bad."
"But it's not that good, either!"
"So-so?" the grin is too much for my old friend, and he cracks into laughter.
I frown, in irritation. "I hate car trips. Especially long ones. I get all queasy."
"Dramamine in the glove box." his laughter tapers off a little, though not by much. His grin is also starting to annoy me. The look reminds me of Heero, strangely... when the morbid son of a bitch decides to grace the world with his smile. He always sucks the joy out of it by making some god damn cocky comment, or something equally annoying, the killjoy that he is and all.
Then the realization dawns on me.
Heero.
I'm feeling sick again, though this time I realize it must be entirely psychosomatic. I'm dead, after all.
"What about Heero?" I can't hide the edge from my voice, and I wrap my fingers around the door handle with half a mind to just roll out of the car and away. Solo quirks an eyebrow, but remains intent on the road. Though, now that I think about it, we're just driving straight here, which seems like no big challenge, so his intensity kind of bothers me. And, you know, really, to level that idea up a notch, this is all probably some strange Kafka-esque embodiment of the last few seconds of my life anyway, so Solo probably isn't even driving a car at all. Maybe, Solo isn't Solo either... Maybe I've actually been sent to hell, and I'm doomed to repeatedly question my situation, my motives, and the motives of others in an endless repetitive cycle of mistrust and distress.
And then Solo suddenly smiles a little, throwing me off guard.
"What about Heero?" He says the words as easily as referring to a dirty load of laundry, or a blandly interesting next door neighbor. God, I wish I could kick that expression down his face and into his ass.
"Well? What... what do I do? About him?" Thoughts of my lover are beginning to distress me. "You know, because true love happens like, barely once in every three lifetimes! Come on, take pity on my bleeding heart! Because I'm not sure I want to go somewhere he can't follow. That's just fucking weird. He's a super hero, you know."
"Heero Yuy still lives." The demurely smiling youth assures me, in placating tones. " Which, I guess, kind of proves your point, huh? Therefore, the probability of you seeing him any time soon is pretty low. Though..." Solo paused, considering. "No, actually, I take that back. He shows up from time to time, though he's always up and out again. Death is on that guy's heels. He'll be around soon enough, though I doubt the man upstairs will be saving a room for him."
That- shuts me up.
With slightly bugging eyes, I stare unabashedly at the side of his focused face.
To never see Heero again? Ever? Questions burn like battery acid in my stomach, though I know the pointlessness of asking them before I actually do. Solo will never answer my questions. At least, not directly anyway. But what he does know, is that Heero and I have irrevocably parted ways. Whether he meant to or not, that information at least, has been unearthed.
And then the thought of spending an eternity alone suddenly becomes much colder, and more frightening than I could possibly ever have conceived, before now. Shit, if I'd had a real, functioning bladder, I'm sure I'd pee myself right here and now.
Solo glances at me out of the corner of his eye, and his smile slowly begins to fade away. I can tell that he knows what I know. Death must be able to read all thoughts.
"It's not so bad... not like you think."
"What is?" the words feel dragged from me, the very core of them morose and heavy like I'm a baby deer and somebody's shot my mother, then ran over her with a tow truck
"Everything. Starting now. You'll be looked after." He's trying to comfort me, I think. "It really isn't that bad." (It isn't working).
I stare at him blandly, and the car continues to trundle down the broad strait of road.
From then on, we ride in silence.
somewhere in the real world...
The first greyish dredges of sunlight lit the willowy trees and shrubs along the riverbed with a dreary heave. Reflecting the sickly, ominous shapes of so many spindly branches, the murky water of the river came almost to a halt in this place, gathering in a loop pool where river crabs and salamanders gathered under the slimy rocks. It was here, in this place, that the unfamiliar shape of human shoulders could first be seen in the morning light, though somehow strangely at home in the eerily organic surroundings. Half washed up, half buried in the silty mud of the shore, the body was that of a boy's, with hair down to his hips soggy and matted with the twigs and bits of prolonged water exposure. Seeming asleep, he laid alone amongst the misting rocks, as river snails traced slimy paths up his bruised and filthy arm, and tiny glints of silver, shallow fish, nipped at his fingertips beneath the water. It was this image, just so, that was first presented to the horrified blue eyes of a one Quatre Raberba Winner from the shallow cliff above, early in the misty morning.
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Author's Note: AAH! Is he dead? It seems so! What is happening? And why has the tense suddenly shifted so dramatically? Everybody, grab hold of your butts, because we're going to the real world next. YES (XD)
