Disclaimer/Note: I do not own Gundam Wing, or any of the characters in this story (unless otherwise stated). Zero-zero/Maru Rei, for example, belongs to me. I do not own the series' creator, mech designer, or PHYSALIS, and I'm not making any money off this story. This story was written solely for entertainment purposes, and no copyright infringement was intended. Please, do not sue. All original concepts in this story are original (duh) and belong to me, or have had all rights handed over to me. Do not steal. This story is AC (Alternate Continuity), takes place (for the most part) almost five years after Endless Waltz, and contains: violence, language, angst, flashbacks, acts of terrorism and subsequent political brouhaha, religious references, twisted senses of morality, and an obnoxious timeline.

Better Than Nothing:
Chapter Eleven — Know Nothing

His body felt heavy, cold and numb as his mind tried to swim back up through the murky waters of unconsciousness. He could not feel his fingers or legs, but throbbing throughout his being was a chilling ache. It was not an unfamiliar feeling, and he recognized it instantly from his days as a soldier. Shock. His body was in shock, was trying to deny the smell of gun powder in the air and the blood on the floor. There was glass under one of his hands, tiny shards suspended in the sweat on his neck. They were sharp, but he only knew that from the training which was currently taking over, processing the damage like some computer's cheap virus scan.

One minor head wound, scalp sliced open in the back, slightly off centered. His attacker had come at him from somewhere off to his right. A concussion was unlikely, but still possible. He twitched, a small convulsion of the hand. The glass was stuck in his hair, a thin piece still embedded in his head.

But he could do nothing about it. He could not move or speak yet, could only lay there and wait to regain control as he listened to the hum and buzz of a conversation nearby. He could not follow it. Too fast, too many people; all he heard was endlessly droning noise. Slowly, he forced his mind to focus on distinguishing one voice from another. He tried breaking each voice down into the sentences that flew by, grasping desperately at words.

"—Wasn'tevenloadedwhatkindof fuckin'—"

"Calmdown, Duo, I'msurethatthere'sanexplanation—"

"Damn it, Wufei!" a thump, like a fist coming down on hard plastic. Like someone punching the table or countertop. "Someone could have died."

"Really? Gee, I must not have noticed." There was sarcasm in the voice, and the young man on the floor was surprised that he was able to recognize it so readily. Again he stirred, hands sliding through the debris around him to stop at either side of his chest. He was waiting for the strength to push himself up. There was a pause in the argument as the others in the room turned to watch him.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Heero," it was Trowa's voice, coming from somewhere in the vicinity of the counter. Heero gasped as he got to his knees, a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea assaulting his senses. He opened his eyes and was momentarily blinded, blinking rapidly as he tried to adjust. No one made a move to help him. Gingerly, he raised a hand to touch the back of his head, fingers red and sticky as they slid through his blood-soaked hair.

"Nan. . ." he licked his lips, trying to remember the words in English. His brain felt fuzzy, hazy as if he had just woken up with a bad hangover. "Wha. . .what happened?"

There was a long pause. Duo shifted uncomfortably where he stood, Wufei mumbled something about looking for a first aid kit and headed for the counter. Trowa began playing with his cell phone again, tossing it from hand to hand. He stopped long enough to turn it back on, and then continued. It was mesmerizing, in a way, to watch the sleek device travel through the air, and Heero allowed his eyes to follow its motions. Left to right to left, and back again.

"Hey, Heero," Duo sat down on the table, hands gripping the edge tightly. Wufei knelt beside Wing's former pilot, opening the first aid kit he had found. "Why wasn't it loaded?"

"What're you talking about?" the words were coming easily now, the shock and battle fatigue wearing off at an incredible speed. Still, he did not feel well, and he did not like the way the American's question had sounded. Wufei put a hand on his shoulder, his other gently probing for the glass. Heero winced.

"Your gun. Why wasn't it loaded?"

Heero growled, only partially from the pain of having the glass removed from his scalp. "It's fucking peacetime, you moron. We're not even supposed to own firearms anymore, and you think I'd walk around with it loaded? What kind of psychotic maniac do you think I am?"

"I'm a moron? You were bluffing and it could have gotten both you and Trowa killed, you goddamn—"

"Oh, so now I suppose that it's my fault that Wufei and Trowa are fucking sociopaths?"

"Heero, if you keep moving, I'm never going to get this all out—"

"I am not a sociopath, you little shit!"

"Stop messin' around, man—"

Soon, they were all back to arguing again, screaming at each other from their respective places around the break room. Wufei was dousing a cloth with peroxide as he shouted at Duo, told Deathscythe's pilot to stop being the goddamn instigator of these fights and just shut up. Duo's response consisted of 'sit on it and spin, you Chink-a-nese fucktard.' The cloth was applied roughly to the back of Heero's head. Cursing the sting and burn that followed, the Japanese pilot gritted his teeth, though he was uncertain if he was repressing the urge to lash out at his fellow Asian or the violent redhead flinging heavy insults that hit far too close to home for his comfort.

"Murderer!"

"Monster!"

"Shut up!"

"Traitor!"

The door was slammed open then, knob embedding itself in the plaster wall behind it. Silence descended upon the four pilots like a sudden sickness, harsh words dying instantly upon their lips. Standing in the doorway with dark glares and disapproving frowns were the scientists, arms crossed over their chests as they surveyed the room. Heero looked down guiltily, bowing his head under the pretense of allowing Wufei better access to the wound. He clenched his fists, uneven nails cutting shallow crescents into his palms, a single plea thrashing around the inside of his skull: Please don't let him know I'm scared.

"What is going on here?" Doctor J was asking the question, the sound of his prosthetics grinding as he walked in, accompanied by the dull thud of his cane against the carpet. It was followed by footsteps as the other scientists filed in after him. They stood like gods, an angry pantheon of unholy war, above their charges. Heero began to stammer an apology:

"I. . .I. . .D-Doctor J, I—"

"It's nothing," Duo interrupted, shooting his peers a dirty look in case they were thinking of contradicting him. "Now can we get back to work? We've still got a lot of shit to figure out."

"Well, I appreciate your concern, Duo, but. . ." a brief pause in speaking, G coughing discretely into his hand before continuing. "But we already know 'what', 'who', and 'why'. We're just a little skeptical on that whole 'where is he headed' and 'how do we stop him' business, that's all."

Surprise colored the faces of the pilots, all of them staring with openmouthed disbelief at the smug professor. Duo stood, stepping away from the table on unsteady feet.

"What the hell are you talking about?" the American was the first to recover, snapping the question angrily. "Stop holding out on us, you crotchety old geezer!"

"Your rage will lead us no closer to catching this villain," Master O regarded them carefully. The statement—or was it a warning?—was said in that slow, thoughtful manner which made it sound like an ancient proverb of sorts; made it seem like a startling revelation he had come to after years of hard training and deep meditation. Wufei hated it when Master O used that tone.

"Well?" the young China man asked after another lapse into silence, patting Heero's shoulder as he finished wrapping the wound. "Do you plan on sharing this new and vitally important information with us?"

He was answered by a nod from the doctor, and the scientists turned to the door. S led H back out, an arm around the instructor's hunched and shivering shoulders, murmuring soothing words in Russian every now and then.

"I hope," he said quietly, taking a moment to eye the younger men. "That you boys remember how to pilot Mobile Suits. Because we are going to need some very, very big guns for this."

"We'll explain everything as head over to the containment rooms. Unless, of course, you need us to stop by the medical facilities so you can lie down, Heero."

"N-no, that. . .that's all right, Doctor J. I-I'm fine."

"Good."

They stepped out into the hallway, a nervous and faithless tension settling like smog over the group. Heero placed his hand on the wall, using it to help him walk. He was starting to feel a little dizzy again, a little disoriented as they were led down several winding, bright corridors. They stank of unscented disinfectant; of old memories that he could not—that he would not—bring himself to remember or name. Each hall looked more and more like the previous, and Heero could not stop himself from beginning to fall behind. He did not want to go down here, did not want to venture into the depths of the compound.

He did not want to revisit the containment rooms.

His memories of them were flaky, at best. Mostly, he remembered the sounds; could still hear his boyish screams echoing across those metal walls, his hands—so tiny and weak back then—pounding on the knob less, hinge less door in hopes of finding sanctuary. He could still hear the sickening crunch and snap of bone when something broke, the lifeless thud of his own limp body hitting the floor when they told him to heal. The sound of silence, of Doctor J's voice distorted by the intercom system and telling him that he was

( worthless, you hear me?)

only being given an hour of rest and then it was back to more training.

"Heero, how old were you in your first memories?"

"I. . .wha—?" his teeth came down hard on his tongue, killing the question before it had time to fully form. He forced himself to take two deep, calming breaths before answering J. "I'm not sure. Six, maybe seven. Why?"

"Then you'll have no idea what I'm talking about," Doctor J said it with a sigh, shaking his head. "The man we're looking for is a former subject of ours. Mostly mine, and Professor G's."

"You're going to have to give us the details at some point, so you might as well make it now," Trowa pointed out.

"True enough," J led them around another sharp corner, stifling a series of hoarse coughs before he began. "He was a part of the Zero System project, known only as subject designation XXG-ZSP-00. We bought him in the August of 177, almost a full year after Wing Zero's actual completion. He was to be trained specifically for the operation of the Zero System; we had not been able to find a pilot who was capable of surviving the first test run and so decided that we would simply have to manufacture our own. Unfortunately, the child turned out to be disturbed and unbalanced. He began. . .malfunctioning during training sessions early on in 181.

"Soon after, Project Zero was officially disbanded. That was. . ." he stopped, thinking hard. "December of 181? Or March of '82?"

"One-eighty-two," O reassured the good doctor, quickly adding. "June, actually."

"Ah yes, June of 182. Zero-zero had become completely unstable by that point. He would go into violent fits and seizures, sometimes rambling about his vivid hallucinations. Apparently, we 'overloaded his fragile psyche, and disrupted the stages of mental growth required for maintaining a healthy, functioning human being with prolonged exposure to the Zero system.' Or at least, that was the diagnosis from the clinical psychologist on our staff. Regardless, the subject was deemed useless for the time being and placed in quarantine for restabilization."

"Why?" Heero's mouth was unexplainably dry, his words rasping painfully in his throat. J canted his head to one side, but did not stop walking. A tremor ran down Heero's arm, and he had to force down the urge to apologize for interrupting. He only hoped that the doctor was not angry with him.

"Because I had already begun work on Wing Gundam, and I wanted to retrain him for that. He was only useless 'for the moment.' I did not assume that the damage was so permanent that it could not be overcome by my particular brand training. But he proved himself to be broken beyond all repair, and I set him aside to continue work on subject designation XXG-ZSP-01, whom we had—" he paused at a cough from S, glancing over at the other scientists as he quickly moved to correct himself. "Whom I had acquired in the April of 181 to train as a substitute for Zero-zero."

"They were both kept in this facility," Professor G gestured to a set of large double doors ahead as he spoke. They were thick and metallic, silver and knob less with a keypad on the wall to the left. "Completely different rooms, of course; I doubt that they ever saw each other."

"Only once, as far as I can remember," mused the doctor, tapping the pass code in on the keypad to open the doors. "I kept Zero-zero just in case Zero-one proved faulty or was killed before completing his mission. After all, a deranged child is better than nothing, and he was more than capable of piloting something as rudimentary as Wing Gundam.

"But Zero-one did complete his mission, and after the war ended, there was really no need to keep Zero-zero. I released him under the condition that he was not to harm anyone, and told him to try to live. . .like a normal human being. He was still rather unstable, but he seemed to be making quite a bit of progress in his emotional and mental development. I thought that human contact might do him some good."

The doors opened, and they walked into another long corridor, this one spotted with those same knob less doors on either side, electronic keypads always to the left. Doctor J led them further down the hall, a little short on breath but continuing his story nonetheless.

"He, expectedly, rebelled against the idea, and immediately came back to me begging to be given some kind of mission to fulfill. I should not have been surprised; he had spent the entirety of his life in this compound, and most of that time was here in the containment rooms. He said that he could not live or die without having completed at least one mission from me, and that doing my will was his ultimate purpose in life, or some such nonsense. Anyway. . ." J trailed off, finally coming to a halt in front of a door on the right side of the hall, third from the end.

"So, you gave him a fake mission to get him to go away and now he's blowing up colonies?" Duo sounded more than just a little incredulous, rubbing at the back of his neck as he watched J type in the numerical code needed to open the door to Zero-zero's room. "Y'know, I feel like, even after all that, I'm still missin' something really important. Like where the fuck he got a nuclear Gundam? 'Cause, y'know, that's a lot more relevant to our situation right now."

"Ah, that's where I come in," Professor G cleared his throat, pretending to be deeply involved in cleaning his nails with a paperclip as they waited. "The third and final frame of Wing Zero was hidden under a mining facility on an asteroid orbiting one of the L4 colony clusters, and the blue prints and information on the whereabouts of said Gundam were one of the things stolen from my computer several years ago. The other was my research on an old, nuclear Mobile Suit generator that supposedly predated the creation of both Wing Zero and the Tallgeese."

"Oh. Well, fuck."

"Wait, I want to know what happened to the other one," it was Wufei asking, arms crossed over his chest loosely, glaring at the back of J's head. "Zero-one, what did you do with him?"

"He moved up from subject to pilot, new designation XXG-WP1-01W, and was used for Operation Meteor. Isn't that right, Zero-one?"

". . .Shut up."

Doctor J stopped with his hand hovering over the 'enter' key, looking over his shoulder at the shaky young man who had spoken. Heero slammed his fist into the wall, his body racked by the quick, uneven breaths that he drew in. The skin of his knuckle split, and blood began to slide down the slick surface that it still rested against, heading for the floor as he shook his head violently.

"Just shut up!" he screamed the words, could feel his vocal cords protesting the abuse. "That's not what happened, that's not how it happened! I was a goddamn person before you picked me up off the street; I remember things and people and places before I ever came to this fucking colony! I wasn't born for this!"

That revelation came as a surprise to even Heero, who could not see past the tears that clouded his vision. That made the world blurry and indistinct. He did not want to have been born for such a bloody purpose, could not imagine the level of inhumanity needed to force such a cruel destiny upon him. It hurt him to hear Doctor J's story, ripped the heart he had worked so hard for out, dropped it to the ground and crushed it beneath a heavy boot. The sob that escaped him was hoarse, wet and ragged. Broken.

"It's a lie. It's a lie, it's a lie it's a lie," he chanted the words like a mantra, some bizarre prayer to an even stranger god. He kept his head down, squeezing his eyes shut as if perhaps his childish insistence would force the doctor to take it all back. To leave the door and let him run away, far far away until the sounds and the smells and the god-awful sights of the containment facilities were behind him. Let him run away from all the bad bad memories that were fighting so desperately through years of abuse and training to be realized once more.

But Doctor J said nothing, did nothing. He just stood there, still as death. Heero whimpered, feeling those cold eyes behind the metal sheens burrowing through his skin, tearing him apart little by little. Forcing him to remember. There was no life prior to the compound, to the doctors and scientists with their long needles and solemn clipboards. There was no father, no mother, no Odin Lowe who took care of him when he was younger. No warm, steady hand over his own, teaching him how to hold and fire a gun. There was no hope that he would, or could, ever go back to a life before blood had stained his hands and his mind had been honed to apathy. There were only the white white rooms with their coldly inhuman machines and fearless men of science and rebellion.

He knew, of course, that Doctor J would not respond. Doctor J never responded to his tears, to his emotional outbursts. He used to tell him that those things were useless, those childish emotions of his. Then he would pull out the wires and the patches, two small electrode pads lined with tiny hooks like leech teeth, would slap them onto his temples and turn the shocks up as he brushed the sweat from Heero's shaved scalp. Yes, that always was J's way, his 'particular brand of training.' He could still feel the way the electricity would rack his tiny frame, tear through his body and leave him twitching uncontrollably.

Nonetheless, Heero did not want to admit that any of that was real.

". . .And why does it have to be a lie now, Heero?" J's question caught him off guard, and he finally looked up, slate-blue gaze locked onto the old man. Why? Why? Because anything else would drive him mad, would mean that he was nothing more than a substitute monster for the good doctor's personal freak show.

"Because. . ." he struggled for some reason that he could give voice to, the logical explanation that J demanded. He found it after a moment, and it came out in a rushed exhalation. "Because I'm only nineteen; I wasn't even born in '81."

"Actually," Doctor J hit the final key, watching as the door slid open, a hint of amusement finding its way into his tone. "You'll be twenty-one in April."