April 2001
"Okay, Jazz. I know you're an old pro about VR by now, but let me do my little shtick anyway. Nothing you're going to see is real. It can't hurt you, and I can end it at any time. We're doing observation only, have you ever done that before?"
Jazz nodded. "We can't make anything we see respond to us."
"Exactly. First we're going to explore your own memories. You'll see yourself as you looked in those memories, which is pretty neat, actually. Then we'll try and see if you have someone else's memories locked away in there." Sheld tapped him on the head. "And maybe make the nightmares stop."
"I'm ready." Jazz nodded, putting the helmet over his head. "You guys ready?"
"Roger." Duo called out.
"Ready, Sheld." Heero replied. His own helmet was in place.
Sheld gave commands for the environment to start, and Heero had a familiar moment of disorientation before it stabilized.
Jazz, Duo, and Sheld stood next to him in Duo's kitchen back on L2, but not as Heero had last seen it.
A radio blaring oldies sat next to the sink where Hilde was washing dishes. Not far from her sat a battered wooden highchair, where a baby was happily banging his fist on a food tray.
"Hey, that's me!" Jazz said, awed. "And Ma. Man, I was that little?"
"You were a runt." Duo's voice was choked, his eyes on his late wife. "I was always threatening to call the hospital and ask when the rest of you would be arriving."
"And what is all that noise for?" a voice called out, and Duo watched himself, his younger self, enter the kitchen wearing only pajama bottoms. His feet were bare and his hair was loose. "Huh?" He walked over to the highchair. "What're you doing, munchkin?" He made a face at the baby and Jazz laughed, and handed him an almost empty baby bottle.
"Oh, well, thanks. Just what I always wanted." Duo accepted the gift and sucked on it, finishing off the last of what looked like apple juice.
"MA!" Baby Jazz said clearly, looking over at Hilde.
Hilde snorted at the sink. "Tell Daddy to get his own, Jazzy. Say what's in that bottle is private property."
The music changed and Duo held the bottle up to his mouth like a microphone and began dancing around the kitchen.
Earth angel, Earth angel, will you be mine?
My darling dear, love you all the time.
I'm just a fool, a fool in love with you.
"You're a fool all right." Hilde muttered, but laughed. Jazz clapped his hands.
Duo continued to sing, finally dropping to one knee in front of his wife.
I fell for you, and I knew
The vision of your love's loveliness.
I hope and I pray, that some day
I'll be the vision, the vision of your happiness.Oh, oh, oh, Earth angel, Earth angel, please be mine. My darling dear, love you for all time. I'm just a fool, a fool in love with you.
He finished the song glancing backwards and upside down at her, hair falling over his face. Unable to resist, Hilde dissolved in giggles, holding on to the edge of the sink for balance. Duo stood up and put his arms around her, pinning her there. "Hi." he said finally.
The image faded away into a dark empty room, the between room, as Sheld called it, where people could talk about what they'd experienced without leaving the environment. Duo's eyes were shut, and tears were running down his face.
"That was the day before she died." he said softly. "That must have been Jazz's last really clear memory of us together."
Jazz's hand closed around his own. "I'm sorry, Pops. I didn't mean to make you cry." He hung his head.
"No, baby, don't apologize for that." Duo said fiercely, going down eye-level with his son. "You let me see her again, you let me see how happy we made her. She loved us both and we loved her right back and we were a good family."
"Yeah. She was pretty." Jazz noted.
"Yes, she was. And she loved to tinker with electronic stuff and see how it worked. Now why does that sound just like someone else I know?" Duo teased.
"You know, not all my dreams are bad." Jazz said after a minute. "Sometimes I dream about Ma and those are good ones. She told me she's really happy about you and Ojisan being together. She says he's the only one besides her who could put up with your bad jokes."
Duo started. "You know... she used to say that. That she and Heero must have had some kind of natural immunity. Weird."
"Your mother was an amazing woman, Jazz." Heero spoke up. "She lived with your father all those years, she had to be."
Duo glanced at his maclen, searching for... he wasn't sure what. Jealousy, anger? He was relieved to find none of it. Heero put his arms around his waist and Duo leaned back against him, grateful for second chances.
"Are you ready to move on?" Sheld asked.
"Yeah." Jazz nodded. "Ready."
They were standing near a pond, and the sky above them was a Deran sky, green-tinted. A breeze moved the tree branches overhead.
Two children crouched near the pond. A boy with long brown hair and a girl with long blonde hair. In the distance they could see a large white house. A closer look showed the children were sailing a toy boat in the water.
"If we were smaller, or the boat was bigger, we could climb in and sail away." The girl was saying. "Far away."
"Where would we go?" The boy asked, pushing the boat with a stick.
"I don't know. Maybe Seta." The girl shrugged. "So long as it wasn't here."
"But Sashi, you'd miss your parents." The boy said reasonably.
Jazz blinked. "That's the girl from my dreams, but she's still a little kid here. I wonder if that's..."
"But we'd be together, Sem, and no one could tell us it was wrong."
"Sem." Jazz nodded. "He's who I am when I dream."
"Sashi!" A voice yelled, and the children started. A man walked over to them.
"Sashi, your instructor has been waiting over a half hour!" The man said angrily. "And look at you, you're filthy. Get back to the house, now."
"Bye Sem." The girl waved sadly, and gave him a last, lingering look before she walked away.
"I'll have to have a talk with your master about letting his servants run wild." The man said to Sem, his eyes cold and hard as glass. "Surely he can come up with a more creative way for you to spend your time than filling my daughter's head with nonsense."
"Master gives me 3rd day off." Sem said proudly. "I can do whatever I want."
Slap! The man backhanded the child and Sem went sprawling, almost falling into the water. "You're wise never to step foot on my land, brat. If you ever do, even so much as an inch, I'll kill you."
Sem stood back up proudly, red mark emblazed on his cheek. Heero could well imagine this little boy an ancestor of Duo's. "Yeah, well someday I'm going to take Sashi and we're going to leave here." The boy spat back. "And you won't ever find us!"
The man took a step toward the boy and the child stood his ground firmly.
"What's going on here?" An angry voice asked, and another man approached them. He took in the situation in a glance. "Helar, did you STRIKE this boy?" he asked coldly.
"I'm teaching your servant some better manners." Helar ground out.
"Are you okay, Sem?" The man asked kindly. The boy nodded.
"Go on back to the house. Cook is making Brani bread and she's promised to save you a loaf." He patted the boy's shoulder.
"Okay, Master. Thanks." With a baleful glance at Helar, the boy ran off toward the house. The vision faded.
"Ah, nuts. I wanted to see him rip that bastard another blowhole." Duo sighed.
"If Sem wasn't there, he wouldn't remember it. So neither can Jazz." Sheld explained.
"Jazz, you said that's the person you are in your dream?" Heero asked. The boy nodded.
"We know from what Jazz has said Sem and Sashi were friends as children. Obviously Sashi's parents did not approve." Sheld sighed. "Marti was right. Narrow minds are universal. Okay, we know they continued to be friends once they came of age. And that Sem decided to go to Seta to begin a new life, and he took Sashi with him.
"Jazz, I want to see the bad part of the dream now." Sheld said gently. "Can you show me that? We can do it another day if you want."
"No, it's okay." Jazz nodded. "Cause I'll be watching Sem and not... feeling him."
The between room vanished and hell began.
Duo had been to hell before. He had been only a little older than Jazz. He had stood in the rubble of his home, knowing the only father he had ever known was dead, watched the only mother he would every really remember die, his name the last word on her lips before she joined her god.
He had been to hell again many times since then. Hell was waking up and reaching for your wife, only to feel cold clay beneath your fingers. Hell was a hospital room that smelled of urine and disinfectant and death, where a boy who had barely began to live was fighting for his right to continue that life.
Hell was Jazz's nightmare.
It was impossible to tell what color the floor of the ship had been. It was red now, the blood of the richest Deran's and the meanest servants mingled together in a growing puddle. Flames darted around the control panels of the ship, reflecting off the blood.
Bodies were everywhere. Or what remained of them. Some were whole. Some were missing various appendages. Some had been sliced open neck to belly, and innards spilled out at their feet.
Jazz stood still, watching everything.
"End it, Sheld. Get him out of here!" Duo commanded hoarsely. Get me out of here.
"No, Pops." Jazz shook his head. "I want it to go away for good. If I run, then it won't."
Shamed by his son's courage, Duo nodded but clung tighter to Heero's hand. Sheld was a sickly green shade.
A door opened near the front of the compartment. Or rather, it was forced open and a young man squeezed though.
His hair might have been brown, but it was so thick with blood and filth it was hard to tell. He slipped in the blood in the floor, but righted himself before he could fall down completely. A hand reached for his leg and he jumped away.
"SASHI!" his voice was almost lost over the engine's roar and the crackling of the flames. "SASHI, WHERE ARE YOU?"
"This is where I usually wake up." Jazz offered. "I don't know what happens next." He glanced at his father. "I'm glad I can't smell it here. Cause when you can it smells really bad."
Duo didn't respond, instead knelt down and picked Jazz up, holding him tightly. Jazz put his arms around his father's neck and leaned his head against Duo's chest, still watching Sem look for Sashi in the carnage.
The scene changed and Sem was in a cabin filled with bunks, speaking to someone, shaking his head.
"They... took that nice little girl with them." The man on the bed was saying. A line of blood trickled down into his one remaining eye. "I tried to stop them, but they were too strong. I'm sorry... they took... a lot of women... not all... but most. Not the sick ones... left them."
"Who WERE they?" Sem's fist was clenched in grief, his shoulders shaking.
"Don't... know." The man touched Sem's hand. "She said... make you promise."
"Promise? Promise what?" Sem spat out.
"You'll... keep sailing." The man smiled. "She'll find you. Stay alive." The head lulled back against the pillow. Sem sank to the floor.
The VR ended and they were back in Sheld's house.
"Jazz, you just answered one of our greatest mysteries." Sheld whispered. "The caravan WAS attacked. And not by anyone from Seta or Dera."
Jazz was looking around the room as if making sure there were no bodies scattered about. "Why did they attack it? Why'd they take- the women? Like Sashi?"
"Breeding, maybe." Heero commented. "That would mean they'd have to be genetically close to humans, though. Whoever they are. Or were. That was so long ago it's not outside the realm of possibility that they no longer exist."
"Only monsters could have done that." Duo managed at last. "Oh, Jazz, I'm so sorry you've had to dream about that."
Jazz blew upward, his bangs moving for a moment. "I guess... I wanted Sem to find Sashi and them to be together. But... I don't think he ever did. Just something I feel. In here." He tapped his chest. "Someone took her away and they didn't give her back. But... if he was an ancestor of ours.. " He glanced at Duo. "Then he had to have kids, right? So he must've fell in love again with another woman." The boy shook his head. "But I don't think he would have loved her like he loved Sashi."
"Are you okay?" Duo asked, concerned. Jazz smiled up at him, but there was something different in it. Not bad different, but different. Something a little more mature, perhaps. A little more knowing. A little more grown up.
"Yeah, Pops. I'm okay." Jazz said after a minute. "Just a little sad." Then suddenly he was a little boy again, grinning mischievously. "Nothing an extra piece of cake at dinner won't cure."
"Humm, I guess after that you deserve it." Heero commented. Duo glanced at him, pleased. Heero was trying hard, but he was still a little reserved about telling Jazz what he could and could not do.
"Oh, Pops, I wanted to tell you but I forgot. Tren Vire came to my school today to talk to me"
"Old Slimeball?" Sheld blurted out. "Sorry, but I met him once." She wrinkled her nose. "How Marti has stood working with him all this time is beyond me."
"What did he want?" Duo asked, tensing.
"I don't know. I don't think he knew. He was asking me some weird questions."
"Like what?"
"Well, he said you were going to live on Dera and he wanted to know if I was going to be living with you."
Duo gave an open-mouthed snort of amazement. "And where would you be living? Narnia?"
"Pretty much what I said." Jazz thought back. "He wanted to know if Earth and colony kids lived with their parents. Then he started telling me about his life, how he lived with his father on Seta and his mother lived on Dera away from them."
"Only because she couldn't find a place farther away to go, probably." Heero commented drily. "His father, from what I've heard, was just as charming."
"He's breaking my heart." Duo frowned. "Was anyone else there when you talked?"
"Nope. He said he'd be back in three days to talk to me again." Jazz coughed. "I think I'm going to have leprosy that day."
"You tell Tren Vire that you're not allowed to speak to him without at least one of your fathers present." Duo stated firmly. "He has no business interrogating a child your age and I'll be damned if he'll do it again."
"Thanks, Pops." Jazz relaxed. "He just made me feel... bad."
"He didn't try and touch you, did he?" Duo asked suddenly.
"Nope, he wouldn't even shake my hand. And he kept calling me Jason. He said he didn't like nicknames."
"Well, Ambassador Yuy says he'd better learn to like them." Heero ruffled Jazz's hair. "Your father and I held our own against people who'd make Vire wet his jumpsuit."
"He's right." Duo nodded. "Don't worry about a thing."
"Can I go ride my hoverboard now?" Jazz asked.
"Yes, but only for a little while. We're having dinner with the other guys tonight. Got a lot to discuss."
"Got it. See ya." he raced out the door.
"Well, he's gone." Heero said after a minute. "You can stop pretending now."
Sheld muttered something about going to check on the baby and left the room. Duo sat heavily down on a chair, his head on his hands. He thought he might weep but the tears would not come. Heero's hands were warm on his shoulders, and he clung to that as a lifeline.
And wondered if the nightmares would come to him, and if he would have to smell the blood.
End Chapter Eighteen
(:./lasha/andihave18)
