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 Thirteen — Say Nothing
Slick hands traveled slowly over the controls, tracing along the metal between the keys, leaving behind faint trails of sweat that had already begun to evaporate in the too-warm, stale air of the cockpit. A smile and bottom-heavy lips parted slightly as he bit down on the tip of his protruding tongue. His smoky brown eyes had long since rolled up and back into his head, the lids fluttering rapidly over the veined sclera. He tilted his head back against the hard head rest of the seat, arcing away from it. The hands twitched, fingers pressing down gently on the practiced commands, shudders rippling down his spine as the machine took action.
His breathing hitched, a hoarse and ragged panting as he strained against the thick nylon cross-belt digging into his chest. Red light danced along the monitors, showing up white on the large screen in front as it slammed through the dull grey plating beneath the machine's feet. The metal went soft on contact, piling up like waves around the perimeter of the blast. He moaned, a deep and throaty note escaping him. One hand returned from the control panel to touch his face, to push uneven bangs up off his sweat-soaked forehead. He left his fingers tangled in his hair, the muscles in his hand and arm contracting as a result of the incapacitating stimulation to his nervous system. His short nails left shallow gouges in his scalp as he hovered on the precipice overlooking the distinction between intense pain and unimaginable pleasure.
But something went wrong in the machine's computations, and Maru opened his mouth in a wordless scream; his eyes coming forward, not seeing the inside of the cockpit filled with overtly familiar hardware. He thrashed against the restraints, biting down violently and feeling his teeth connect on the other side of his tongue. Blood filled his mouth and dribbled down his chin, falling in bright drops to break and run down the dusky skin of his bare chest. He started choking.
A shattering—not of substance, but of a spiritual, a mental, a much more important and irreplaceable origin—ripped through him, shaking him to the core. Oh no. . .not this again. . . The breaking, the taking, the loss of consent. He heard it, felt it, became one with it. It took him, left his body and threw his mind to the ground; trampling, destroying. Synapses exploded from the heavy tension and chemical overload, electricity jumping sporadically from one axon to another. He jerked, writhing from the breathtaking agony, simply beauty of the half-dead psyche. The breaking. . . Oh, God. . . He was breaking again.
His shaky hand slid down with his nails still dug in, clawing at his lids in a vain attempt to close his eyes. Thoughts, the ones that had managed to survive his frayed and dying mind, bubbled up from the darker recesses of his mentality, and he cried out for release. Images of what would happen next flashed before dilated pupils. C-1013 hung in space in front of him, giving the impression that it was a toy, a marionette in the Lord's hand. Blue tainted light rushed through the frigid void toward the colony, hitting the reinforced titanium walls. It shuddered, ripples moving out from the point of impact as the metal liquefied.
The machine's primary weapon turned off and away from the colony's armor plating, shifting in the magnetically jointed hands. Its secondary thrusters flared, vernier clusters on the wing devices spreading open for evasive maneuvers against the new barrage of gunfire from the left. The machine acted on some unknown impulse; perhaps the last tenacious shred of its pilot's extensive training kicking in. It moved upward instinctually, the barrel of the Twin-Buster Rifle following the scurrying movements of the enemy's advancing Mobile Suits. A single command was rooted out of the paralyzed body in the cockpit:
Destroy.
The sound of grinding metal reached his ears, alerting him that the covers of the shoulder-mounted machine cannons were being removed. Red targets spotted the main screen; the proximity alarm screeched overhead. He could feel the temperature rising, could feel the floor of the cockpit being heated even through the soles of his combat boots. The generator was thrumming into overdrive, the energy output suddenly exceeding what the massive structure was designed to handle. He knew what would happen next without the Zero System's intervention, and his eyes became impossibly wide as he helplessly watched the battle unfold.
More shots would erupt from the double gatling guns in the enemy Serpent Custom's black hands. The barrage of bullets would skitter harmlessly off of the machine's armored hull, and Wing Zero would return fire. He imagined that he could feel the vibrations through the metal even before the cannons had gone off, could see the exiting rounds ripping through the opposing metal as though it had never existed. Originally, Wing Zero had been equipped with two 60mm machine cannons, but Maru had changed that, deciding halfway through the rebuilding process that his God needed something more. The 156mm incendiary rounds of depleted uranium that he was currently using could slide through titanium like water, sunk into worked Gundanium with minimal effort, and worked wonders for his Crusades. Fuck the prophets. Who needs Moses—he had jokingly asked Quatre before suiting up for the mission, gesturing to the weaponry—when I can blow my way through the heart of the Red Sea?
The Serpent Custom's computers would stall momentarily, the sensory equipment fragmenting and sparking over the malfunction. It would jerk, twisting away from the recoil as its thrusters flared to life, a brief moment when all three thousand kilowatts of the generator's output was converted along the power grid in a violent surge of electricity. The internal systems would be shut down, even life-support for the pilot inside would be cut as the energy traveled back to the generator from the thrusters through the wires, igniting a series of small explosions along the way.
It would last one and a half seconds, the time it took the bullets to enter and exit the Serpent Custom's torso, before the machine burst, orange-red light blindingly bright in the frigid expanse of space. Shrapnel would zoom by, bouncing off of Wing Zero and the colony before spinning away into the void. There was no smoke; the explosion would only be a flash of color in the darkness. No sound, no shockwave. After the light dissipated, there would be nothing, as though neither the Serpent Custom nor its pilot had ever existed. They would have suddenly, horrifyingly, and miraculously achieved true Nothing; they had succeeded in becoming one with the absolute Zero.
But those were hardly Maru's main concern.
His chest rose as if pulled up and forward by an invisible string, straining against the cross-belt until one of them snapped. He could not be certain if it had been him or the machine, but it hurt to breathe, and so he had to stop. The weight of his body seemed somehow exaggerated, crushing him as he was slammed into the cushioned back of his seat. He repeated the action, the erratic steps of a seizure. His eyes remained locked open, staring at the mission timer above the primary control panel, his vision starting to fade in and out as his brain struggled to continue its operations. The lack of oxygen made his head ache, and he longed for the luxury of screaming.
Outside, shots erupted from the double gatling guns in the Serpent Custom's black hands. The cockpit of Wing Zero shook ominously as the machine returned fire, the whirring and whining of metal vibrating down to him from the shoulder-cannons. Beneath him, the generator screamed, the rubber coating of copper wires melting. Soon, the power grid would face the same fate as one by one the heat from the generator spread throughout the structure.
The temperature was still rising in the cockpit, and cold sweat dripped off his body, soaking the waistband of his old blue jeans. Wave after wave of nausea assaulted him, his intestines winding themselves into knots. A sharp and sudden pain brought bile and acid to his bloody mouth, breaking the spell. It burned the stump of his tongue, and he gagged on it, head dropping reflexively. The warm, viscid liquid splashing into his lap, cloudy yellow-white streaked with red. Gasping, he struggled for breath between wet heaving. Tears stung his brown eyes, and he felt his legs seizing up, a stiff tension rippling through his muscles and settling in the small of his back as a dull and throbbing agony. His hands came down to grip the arm rests on either side of him.
On the main screen in front of him, the Serpent Custom jerked, pausing slightly in space. It drifted downward, less than half a second passing before it exploded, leaving a bright smear of orange flickering in his vision like a long-dead ghost. The remaining Mobile Suits scattered like leaves on the winds, the pilots turning their machines around and rushing for some far off sanctuary that did not exist.
His own internal systems were shutting down much in the same manner that the Serpent Custom's had, though his malfunction was on the molecular stratum. Electrons were wrenched from orbit around the atoms which constructed his being, and nature's delicate balance was utterly annihilated. The atoms could no longer connect with one another, could no longer maintain bonds to form organs and cells. His body was being ripped to pieces at the smallest level, and all he could do was cry and vomit and pray that God would take him soon.
Everything went black, and Maru's body went limp in the seat. Blood and saliva dripped from his gaping jaw; the light in his eyes dimmed to nothing, and his head rolled forward on his neck brokenly.
Time of death: 23:14, approximately three minutes and seven seconds after mission start.
"Maru! Maru, can you hear me?"
A voice penetrated the darkness, shaking the battered pilot's consciousness back into reality. Slowly, carefully, Maru opened his eyes with a great effort. The bright light of the frigate storage unit flooded his vision, startling him. It was such a radical change from the darkness that he felt any adjustment to it would be impossible; he saw only white, coupled with a few vague colors and abstract shapes. Something pale leaned over him, a halo of gold above an odd smear of blue. The thing—a creature of some sort, he decided, as he felt it grip his shoulders with thin fingers—began to shake him lightly, trying to discern what damage had been done.
"Come on, Maru. . .please answer me!" the voice begged, and only now was the young man able to connect the sound to the hazy image above him. The creature did not fade into clarity; instead, Maru's mind made distinctions in uneven leaps and stumbling steps as cognitive functions in the brain kicked back on. A small, pale mouth, lips pressed together tightly, down-turned with some foreign emotion. What was that emotion? His mind tripped over the feeling, sprawled across uncertainty without understanding. Above the smear of blue were two blond streaks; between them, the light-colored skin was creased, furrowed deeply as if in thought.
Or worry, he realized. The creature, the strange and alien figure with its pale brows and quivering mouth, was worried about him. How strange, he mused, his mind finally giving lines to the shapes. The thing had a face, had a straight nose and high cheek bones. It even had gender and age—was male and young. It—no, he, now—was human.
More accurately, he was Quatre.
It was evident in his eyes when recognition dawned on him, and Quatre sighed in relief, leaning against the wall and allowing the back of his head to thump lightly against the metal. He had been kneeling over Maru when the older boy first came to, but now was seated on the cold floor with one leg drawn up and the other sprawled out in front of him. Wing Zero's cockpit hatch had been left open, and Quatre could see the descent cable hanging down, swaying slightly in the still air. He turned his head, looking up at the machine with a sense of foreboding.
"Are you okay now, Maru?" he asked, staring at where the generator hid in the Gundam's torso. The Operating System alone was enough to drive an average human being crazy—Allah knew it had done just that when he had piloted that metallic demon—but the addition of the old generator was suicide. The ancient casing was eroding quickly, and they both knew that the Mission was getting more dangerous.
". . .I. . ." the older boy tried to begin, but the words caught in his throat painfully. He ripped them out with a sob, tears coming to his brown eyes as his recount of the event rushed back to him. "I didn't mean for it to happen. Oh God, Quatre, I didn't mean for it to happen. I didn't mean to think whatever it was that angered Him, that made Him believe that I was not His devoted servant. It was as if. . .as if He had seen in me some horror, some vile and ugly intention, some deviance towards His Holiness. He treated me in the way that he treated you, but I had felt no evil desire for His purity and beauty, yet He destroyed me as though I had attempted to rape His godhood.
"Quatre!" he implored the Arab to hear him out, to forgive him of these transgressions. "I would never. . . You know that I would never do, or think, or feel any of that! I love Him; He is my Lord and Savior. He is the Salvation; He uplifts my soul and cleanses my imperfections. He leads me away from temptation and sin. He. . ."
Maru faltered, gasping from pain. He squeezed his eyes shut, his mouth opening in a wordless wail. Quatre jumped, surprised. Never in his life had he seen a man cry like that, like a small child whose world had just been destroyed. Maru lay on his back, gasping, crying, and screaming for someone to give him the answer. Quatre could only stare at him in shock. He reached a hand out, laid it gently on his companion's sweat-soaked brow to check for sickness. The skin was cold and clammy, leaving Quatre's fingertips feeling soiled, stained by the blood or perhaps the mind below. Quatre shuddered, pulling his hand back quickly and wiping it off on his pant leg.
The injured pilot coughed, choking momentarily on the emotions that now caught in his throat. Maru swallowed hard, his eyes snapping open and staring up into the light unseeingly. His bottom-heavy lips quivered and his chest rose and fell to a shaky rhythm.
"I can't feel my legs."
"What?" Quatre asked at the sudden confession, looking down to the limbs in discussion. His legs were locked straight, back of his knees touching the floor of the storage unit. Vomit had dried on the fabric of Maru's faded old jeans, collected in the lap with small splatters along his lower stomach, thighs, and knees. It did not look like there was any blood, neither breaks nor tears in fabric or flesh. He touched his companion's leg just above the knee, eyeing Maru's face for a reaction. "Can you feel this?"
"Feel what?" the hysterical tone had drifted away from the pilot's voice, leaving nothing behind. Sweet apathy shaded his words, mocked his ill health and mimicked his blind sight. Quatre took a deep breath through his nose, letting it out as a sigh.
"I'm checking your back," he warned as he reached for Maru's far shoulder and hip. Carefully, he rolled the other pilot onto his stomach, wincing at the pained cry that escaped his companion. Quatre mumbled an apology, one hand feeling along the small of Maru's back. A scream erupted from the older boy as Quatre's fingers pressed against a strange, pale bulge in the dusky skin, nestled close to the spine. The area around the bulge was covered with discolored spots, fanning out from the spine like cancerous wings. It seemed to crawl up Maru's torso, vainly reaching for his strong shoulders only to come up short, barely reaching the middle of his back. The marks had spread out wide, though, snaking out to brush his sides, leaving pale streaks and dots in its wake. Quatre shook his head, swallowing hard as he gently set Maru onto his back once again. "It's getting worse."