Posted: 9/25/00
Titled: Life in the Madhouse (1/?)
Author: Jay / carboxylated@yahoo.com
Archive: All those with prior permission are welcome (and hugged profusely) to archive this. Email me at the the address at the bottom of this page if you'd like to ask. :-)
[Note: all fics accessible @ http://www.geocities.com/fenris_wolf0]
Category: AU. Yaoi hints.
Timeline: AU.
Pairings: 1+2, thusfar.
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing is quite sadly not mine, but in fact the
property of Bandai, Sunrise, and other large corporations and companies
I have no affiliation with. (Again, quite sadly.)
Warning/Rating: R. Language, mild violence, twisted.
Feedback: Hit me!
Note: Er. Enjoy. This was typed late, so forgive me!
Every hour of everyday, you could hear someone screaming. There were high-pitched shrieks, moans, rumbling groans, hoarse yelling and sometimes-- sometimes even singing. They would leak from their padded rooms and iron doors, and filter through the cracks of the walls: a constant lullaby of the insane, the mad, and the demented.
These screams rang through the halls. "I'm not mad!" It sobbed, desperate, alone. "I'm not mad!" Repeated again and again, in a demonic chorus. Echoing down the corridors, eventually slipping through my door. Outside, I could hear the heavy footsteps approaching. I locked at the solitary clock on the wall. 11:35 p.m. It would be dark outside, I mused. I wouldn't know; my room was in the heart of the madhouse-- Wayview Asylum. Inside this room, the world spun and time flew, but here: here it was just white walls, lights on and off, combined with stagnant air. The shrieks grew to a crescendo. "I'm not mad!"
He entered the room and stared at me, through dark, messy hair. One of the orderlies, David, smirked. "Decided to stop screaming?" he chided, none too gently, and gave me a wink. "Your new roomie, Maxwell. You two play nice, now." He dropped some luggage on the floor and exited. The lock clicked shut, and we stared at each other in the confines of the small room.
"They don't always lock you in," I finally said. "Just after 11, when we're supposed to be sleeping."
He nodded, and after hesitating a moment, extended his hand. "Heero Yuy," he introduced himself. I shook his hand. "Duo Maxwell."
Another silence filled the space between us. "Did you eat?" I'm sure I didn't care if he had eaten or not, but petty conversation is still infinitely better than nothing. He nodded his head, and sat down on one of the two twin beds.
"I'm kind of tired," he murmured. I could hear the raw edge in his voice, from the screaming he'd been doing.
Reaching up, I clicked off the lights. "We can talk tomorrow, at breakfast." I curled under the sheets, and for a moment, all I heard was his steady breathing. He was still sitting there on the bed.
"What's wrong?" I asked, finally.
"Duo?" His voice sounded sad.
"Yeah?"
"I'm not crazy," he whispered.
I nodded sagely. "They all say that when they get here," I offered. He didn't fall asleep for another half hour. Neither did I.
Breakfast was at 9 a.m. I rose, habitually, at 8:30 and went into the adjoining bathroom. A shard of a mirror hung beyond my reach high on the wall-- too many inmates slicing their wrists, apparently. I pushed the on/off button and washed my face, and dried it with a fresh white towel. I chuckled, slightly: almost like hotel service, if you discounted the barcode tattooed on our wrists. I had to crook a smile at that too, tracing the black lines thoughtfully.
When I returned, Heero was up and pulling up his clothes. I admit my eyes lingered a little.
"Breakfast is in twenty minutes," I said briskly. He nodded, dumbly, eyes shadowing my movements. I've been told that I look very harmless; a heartshaped face that some describe was beautiful, long hair that brushes past my waist, and brilliant violet eyes. I have a lean frame, and it seems unfathomable than I could do any kind of harm. So when the jury faced my delicate face and wide eyes, and looked at the brutal stabbing of an elderly woman, my bloody fingerprints over her clothes, they accepted my plea of insanity.
When we sat down to for breakfast, Heero was jammed between Quatre and me. Beautiful, innocent Quatre Winner, with schizophrenic manic fits, who believed himself to the new prophet of Allah. Allah had told him to kill two little girls, and he had complied. His father's influence had kept him out of jail, and sent him here. He was happily sipping tea and buttering toast with a decidedly aristocratic air.
"I was talking to Him last night," he murmured, benevolently.
I half-listened. "Mmhmm?"
He whispered confidentially, "He doesn't like what they're doing to me." A droll wink, and then a serious look in those aquamarine eyes. "He'll kill them all," he said simply. "Allah's will be done."
Heero shot him a horrified, sideways glance. Quatre smiled at him, and pulled one up sleeve. His arm was dotted with scars, and bruises from broken capillaries-- from elbow to wrist, some new, some old. "I'm a Development," he said proudly. Something dark passed over his face. "I don't like it very much," he whispered.
Chang Wufei sat down beside me, his nod taking in Heero and Quatre. A steaming mug of coffee was placed in front of him. "I can't stand this shit," he growled, and jerked his thumb at the coffee. "I don't know what they're trying to pass it off as. Who's the new kid?"
Unexpected, Heero answered. "My name is Heero Yuy." He extended a hand.
Wufei glowered at him before answering. "Japanese bastard," he snarled. "I remember what you did to my people."
"Chinese," I murmured. "Very. nationalistic."
Heero looked at me, worried. "World borders have been dissolved," he declared.
Wufei shook his head, scornfully. "They want you to believe that shit," he said. "And you're weak enough to do it." His eyes narrowed.
"He gets like this on he's on meds," I explained, under my breath. Heero nodded, almost imperceptibly, just as Trowa Barton gracefully sat by Quatre.
"I'm calling my lawyer," he said, in a tremulous, hoarse voice.
"Mon pauvre chou," Quatre murmured. "What did they do to you?"
"They injected me." He was trembling, slightly, one visible eye widening. "They aren't supposed to. I'm going to call my lawyer." His voice sounded a little uncertain. He gazed at Heero and abruptly asked: "Did you kill her, like they said?"
Heero stared at him, before shaking his head. "I did not."
Trowa considered this before nodding. "Good."
"Kill who?" I asked. It was a madhouse: this was flippant conversation.
"A girl," he answered, simply, and then asked, boldly: "Why are you in here?" Exchanges like this were ordinary.
"I've sailed around the world," Trowa said, softly, smiling just a little. He lifted a fork before grinning. "I've-- sailed-- around the world!" Brandishing it like a weapon: a little too enthusiastically, it seemed, because a nurse walked over and removed it from his hand. His face fell.
She clucked, admonishing. "Wayview policies."
"I'm going to call my lawyer," he repeated, glaring hatefully at her.
Heero tilted his head in my direction. "How long have you been here?"
I reflected for a moment, counting up days, weeks, and months. "Two years," I finally announced, relieved that I could remember.
"And how old are you?"
"Twenty," I said, succinctly, swirling the food on my plate. "We're all twenty, at this table, except for Trowa. He's twenty-one."
Trowa smiled again. "I sailed around the world when I was a boy," he sighed.
"I'm twenty, too," Heero offered. "What can you remember-- before this?"
Wufei and I exchanged a look. "Most people don't want to remember," I said gently.
"It's funny," Trowa said, and laughed accordingly. Quatre shot him a quizzical look, and he explained. "We don't want to remember." His face clouded. "I-- don't want to."
"You," Wufei said, succinctly. "Are an ass." He swore-- he cursed like a sailor, and usually found ways to insert profanities into each sentence; unless he actually was being serious.
"I'm not," Trowa insisted.
"You are," Wufei returned, triumphantly. "You're an asshole. An insane asshole."
Beside Heero, Quatre cackled and finished his tea.
Dr. Ellyson was a good man, I'm sure, at heart. But his voice droned on, asking questions I didn't want to answer. "Why do you get angry, Duo?" Or, "Why do you want to hurt people, Duo?" "Why do you want to kill people so much?"
He didn't understand that I didn't have an answer for those things, or why my eyes mist red sometimes, looking at him. He was Heero's psychiatrist too. We would sit in our room and talk about him, sometimes, after sessions.
Heero seemed quiet enough-- intense, but not insane. Altogether wrong in our motley band of madmen and prophets. It was the second Tuesday after his arrival that I began to realize why he, perhaps more than anyone of us, deserved these whitewashed walls.
He was pacing, back and forth, between the door and the far wall. "Duo."
"Yes?"
"I want to go outside."
"Can't. Wayview policies."
"I want to go outside." His voice was strained.
"You can't," I replied, again.
"Can you even remember the sky?" He snapped.
I paused. "No," I mumbled.
"How about the sun? Grass? Fresh air?"
I shook my head.
"I," he took a deep breath. "I am a human being. A HUMAN BEING." His sudden shriek reverberated off the walls. "I. NEED. AIR. I need sun, I need the sky, I need space." He began banging on the door. "I NEED TO GET OUT." He kicked the steel door.
The nurses were hurrying, judging from the sound of their footsteps.
"I need space," he repeated, staring at them through the small window to the outside. "I need air, I need space."
"Mr. Yuy--"
He snarled and punched the inch-thick glass, glass that bullets couldn't shatter, and never winced as his knuckles split. "Let me out," he said, dangerous. "I want out."
"Wayview policies," the nurse began primly.
"FUCK THE POLICIES," he screamed. "Fuck Wayview. Fuck you."
They were pushing the door open now; three orderlies and a nurse with a syringe. "Mr. Yuy, please refrain from--"
And then he did it.
He grabbed the syringe and stuck it into her palm, slamming down viciously. The nurse screamed, before crumpling into a heap on the floor. He smiled then, sudden, feral, primal.
It took three more orderlies to come in to restrain in. He spent the next week in solitary, under heavy sedation. His eyes were red and his voice rough when he finally came back, but he gave me a ghost of a smile.
"I got to see the sun," he said, voice low. "When they were taking me to solitary, I saw the sun through a window." He gave me a twisted kind of smile. "The sky's blue, Duo." His voice was wistful. "It's a beautiful, cerulean blue."
I was fascinated when he'd attacked the nurse; enraptured by a sort of new, wild animal. But now, as he sat, talking in hushed reverent tones about the sky-- I fell in love with him. My lips twisted into a smile.
"Tell me about the sun," I commanded. The lights burned in our room, well after 11 p.m. We were breaking the policies. We were breaking through Wayview, any way we could.
We were madmen, after all.
End Part 1
Jay
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