23-Oct-2003

Title: Die Another Day
Author: CleverYoungThief (series co-authored with Arithion)
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Torture, angst, NCS
Archive: GWA
Pairing: Implied 1+2
Genre: Songfic
Song: "Die Another Day" by Madonna
Timeline: First War
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Don't sue. College kids are like L2 kids; we got nothin'.
Feedback: Please? ^_^
Notes: Thanks ever so much to Arith my most wonderful muse for helping me intensively with my NCS scene. *glomp* It's my first graphic one ever, and I was scared. *heh* Also, this is part of a songfic one-shot series called "Gundam Wing's Greatest Hits."

Gundam Wing's Greatest Hits

Part Two: Die Another Day by CleverYoungThief

Seized.

Heero was shunted so quickly from one world to another that he was unable to tap a reserve of energy and determination to confront the unbridled violence of his capture. He was left almost as defenseless as any normal fifteen year-old.

His hands were quickly shackled behind him, and he was blindfolded. None of them said a word. Blows were showered down on him as they kicked him in the ribs, the kidneys. Someone kicked him in the face, a hard military boot slamming into his cheekbone with crushing, apocalyptic force, and he was knocked flat.

But Heero didn't care.

He was suddenly doused with a bucket of ice-cold water, causing him to gasp in shock despite himself.

They cuffed him to the table. He was blind, panting in the darkness, even though he could almost feel the fluorescent lighting beating down on his body like some kind of hellish white sun. Somewhere he could hear someone reciting:

~~~I'm gonna wake up, yes and no~~~

His eyes, which had been tightly shut behind the blindfold, flew open. His mouth gaped in a silent scream that even in agony he would not release. The shocks rocked his body, making him convulse, his bare heels tattooing a terrible beat on the hard table, hands twitching like speared fish.

Heero slumped back against the table as if all the wires in him had been cut, lying limply, breathing in tortured sobs. An overhead fan was blowing somewhere, causing his naked body to break out in goosebumps. Someone ripped away the blindfold, letting bright light dazzle him.

~~~I'm gonna kiss some part of~~~

Him. Heero concentrated only on him. He imagined a cascade of shining mahogany silk falling over those pale, narrow shoulders, a heart-shaped face above him where the fluorescent lights currently blinding him were.

He felt the aftershocks of violent electricity strum along his bare skin, and he closed his eyes again. He had already tried to pull himself free from his bonds, pulling at the handcuffs until blood welled at his wrists, but it was obvious that the constraints were made for someone as strong as him.

Heero didn't know what he felt. He had never been taught to dwell on such things. He classified it as pain-a familiar pain, those shocks, an agony from his childhood that no amount of war or training could ever make him forget, a pain that made him feel a brief pang of emotion he coldly identified as homesickness.

He pushed the sensation as far to the back of his mind as he could. But it was impossible to avoid. There was nothing but the pain.

And then the questions began.

He was silent. He was always silent. It was what he was trained to be.

The shocks began again.

"Nnnnnnnn....." His body pounded and thrashed against the table, tongue fluttering in his mouth. He caught it in his clenching jaw, blood flecking his face.

Someone jerked his mouth open and shoved a piece of rubber in to keep him from biting his tongue off. Someone with soft hands put a hand over his heart, checking the beats.

There was a brief pause.

It started over again. With insults this time. Another pause. Questions. Brief pause. Words of hope. And then another pause. Then insults. Another pause. The questions again.

The shocks.

Heero felt the scalpel touch his skin with a chilling promise.

Barely hanging on to consciousness, Heero's eyes flew open as the blade bit into his skin again. His eyes. Those violet eyes. Heero concentrated only on that image, blocking everything else with a force of will that superimposed itself on every aspect of his grim, war-torn life. It was the only way Heero held on to whatever could be considered his sanity.

He was still sane. At least, he thought he was sane. But that didn't mean anything. He figured every crazy person believed they were still sane.

~~~I'm gonna close my body now~~~

Heero held his breath, clenched his jaw. He threw his head back hard, and if it had not been for the young soldier's environment, one could have mistaken it for a gesture of extreme pleasure. He closed his eyes as tightly as he could, and pretended he was a little boy again.

He remembered the words of the Doctor, tainting the edge of his hellish consciousness.

He pretended he was home.

The room was freezing. So cold...

But he could feel the warmth of his own blood running across his skin.

And then the shocks again.

"Tell us about it, mein bubele. Tell us, my little brother, and you will not be hurt anymore. It is dangerous to insult our intelligence, bruder, with your silence. So you must tell all. You do not know nothing. You know everything there is to know. It is all in deinem Hübschen Kopf. All in that pretty head. So you know everything. And you will tell everything. Exclude nothing."

The blade sank deeper.

He was a soldier. But he was also a boy. However, he refused to lie there crying, or even silently suffering. The tears were coming up in his eyes, unbidden. He closed his eyes more tightly, gritting his teeth.

And then he laughed out loud.

A rough hand ran along his bloodied skin, running along his bare thigh, terribly intimate, horrifying gentle, tracing a pattern across the cleaved flesh there. Heero's body arched against that touch. His eyes opened, and there was not lust in them, but murder.

The voice spoke over him.

"You make a deal with the devil, mein junger Freund."

~~~I'm gonna break the cycle~~~

Something feral and deadly sparkled in Heero's eyes, the seeds of madness buried in those gorgeous cobalt depths, and he spoke, voice rough with restrained screams as he repeated a phrase he had heard from Duo. He thought of Duo as he said it.

"I am the devil."

~~~I'm gonna shake up the system~~~

Heero heard the Soldier beating through him, throbbing in the rhythms of a bloody waltz that only he could hear. That mysterious, cold inner voice sang to him. Kill him. Kill them all. Escape and kill them all. That voice was icy and insistent. Kill him, kill him, kill him, killhimkillhim...

~~~I'm gonna destroy my ego~~~

But then the blade came down again, and he was only a fifteen year-old boy. He tried to struggle, but the metal cuffs left him powerless. Pain shot through him in a fiery rush, and he bit back his screams again.

"How do you like that, my devil, my little Tuefel? Is Hell hot enough for you?"

The fifteen year-old part of him shrieked in his head, over and over. Just tell them! Tell them! Tell them everything!!! Heero wanted to. The part of Heero that was still a child and not a soldier wanted to do it, so badly. Just to make them stop. Words bottlenecked in his throat, pressing insistently, desperate to pass his lips.

Shuddering uncontrollably on the table, he crushed that voice, pushed it back.

Someone else tied a rubber strap around his upper arm, forcing his vein to bulge. The man wiped away blood with an alcohol-soaked swab.

"I'll fight you," Heero growled.

"If it makes you feel better, boy," the second man said flatly. Heero heard a small ripping sound as the man tore open a plastic packet that contained a hypodermic syringe. His heart slammed against his rib cage. He jerked against the cuffs again, even knowing there was no way he would pull free from them.

The man pushed the needle through the sterile seal on the end of a small bottle of clear liquid. He drew some of it into the syringe.

Heero thrashed against the cuffs, blood flying from his wrists, back arching off the table.

The man that had been caressing his thigh backhanded him across the face, and in the second Heero needed to recover from the blow, the needle slipped into his arm.

"Yarou," Heero snarled in a whisper.

"Do not worry, mein bubele.You will feel better soon. You will get these terrible secrets off your chest, and then you will sleep."

~~~I'm gonna close my body now~~~

Heero wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to look away. But his memory of Odin wouldn't let him. He could almost feel Odin's slap as he tried, ringing in his mind.

Heero looked back into those green eyes, such bright green eyes, like Trowa's, only colder. He stared back into them indifferently, disconnecting his mind from his body, disconnecting his emotions from his mind.

~~~I think I'll find another way~~~

"Who is your superior, boy?"

Heero stared back at him, eyes at half-mast in a look that could be exhaustion or desire. He smiled, his voice dreamy, as if the hours of torture that had come before had been erased from his memory. "Life is a dream, its wakening, Death, gentle shadow of God's wing."
"Who gives you your orders?"

"Life is a dream, its wakening, Death, gentle shadow of God's wing."

The man's eyes widened in realization. "Mein Gott! A block!"

~~~There's so much more to know~~~

Another man spoke from across the room. "Then it's useless. He's too well trained."

The man looked up at him, eyes flashing. "Get out!!"

The room emptied quickly. It was only Heero and the OZ corporal, spotlighted by cold, unfeeling fluorescence.

~~~I guess I'll die another day~~~

Heero's soft laughter echoed through the room. "I'll never tell..."

The furious striking of the man's fists rained down on him. Clinging to consciousness by a thread, he closed his eyes, feeling the impact of the blows shudder through his slender frame. There was nothing more he needed to see here.

The blindfold was replaced across his eyes, blocking out the light.

~~~It's not my time to go~~~

He felt the cuffs released from his wrists and ankles, but before he could even register their absence, he was thrown onto his stomach. The wind was knocked from his lungs in a grunt. He almost slid off the table; it was slippery with his blood. The smell of it hung heavily in the air, like sheared copper.

His arms were jerked roughly behind his back, and there was a minute click as handcuffs snapped behind him.

He was silent and still. He could not fight back. Not like this.

Heero had seen other people tortured, in the Labs where he had grown up. Some fought against being carried to the torture tables. Others begged not to be tortured, while others insulted their torturers. He quickly determined that if one was going to be tortured, it was better to be silent and still. Better to conserve your strength. He could not prevent what would happen to him.

Better to be quiet. Better to be separate and to wait.

At least... that's what he told himself.

That's what the Soldier told him.

~~~For every sin, I'll have to pay~~~

Blinded, his other senses were sharpened. He could hear the rough, angry breathing of the man, the faint dripping sound of his blood hitting the cement floor. Absently, in a part of his mind that wasn't howling with agony or telling the part of his mind that was howling to shut the hell up, Heero wondered what it was that the man had carved into him.

He was pulled off of the table, the movement aided by the slick of his blood, and he hit the hard floor in a pile, earning a kick before the man pulled him up by his hair.

A heavy weight pushed him up against the table, the handcuffs on his wrists disallowing his gut reaction, which was to whirl on the man. Heero could have killed the man in seconds, if his hands were free.

But they were not.

He could feel the intentions of that weight, as hands began to roam across his bare, blood-slicked flesh. The Soldier in him told him to complete the separation of body and mind, skin and heart; the boy in him wanted to scream.

And still, the mantra that he heard ever on, for as long as he had lived and fought. Kill him. He wasn't sure if it was an order or a prayer.

Maybe both.

~~~I've come to work, I've come to play~~~

Heero heard the zipper of the man's pants unzip, and his body gave a small shudder. His mind looked on indifferently. His heart bled. But he would not give them a thing. Not a name, not a number. That was already certain.

The hands were back, prodding and probing at his skin, seeking parts of him that should have been intimate. The man used him like a piece of meat. Fingers dug at his back, inching closer to their goal, gathering blood in their wake.

The mantra was like a lifeline and he clung to it.

He clung to it when the fingers roughly caressed his manhood.

He clung to it when those same blood drenched fingers brushed against the soft puckered opening between the cheeks of his ass.

But it faded into obscurity when the scream of pain tore from his throat when something much larger intruded into his body.

"Hnnnnnn!!" Heero bowed his neck violently as he tried to contain his outcry, head banging against the table. Strangely, the man allowed it. One hand grasped his hip hard as the OZ corporal thrust against him, strong fingers biting into his skin, while the other hand came up to his cheek in a brushing touch that made a mockery of affection.

~~~I'm gonna avoid the cliche~~~

He did not scream again. He would not be a crying, sobbing victim. It was trained out of him, like mercy and empathy. He watched on, as if detached from himself.

He closed his eyes behind the blindfold.

He completed separation.

~~~I'm gonna suspend my senses~~~

The man's breathing behind him was becoming more ragged, like a foul wind in his ear. His own breathing was becoming ragged, not with pleasure, but with soft, almost inaudible gasps of pain as he was torn and gouged.

Ripped sphincter... rectal internal bleeding odds-on, the Soldier droned, tonelessly. Psychological repercussions. Contusions. Concussion. Fractured ribs. Fractured collarbone.

He felt his skin crawl in revulsion as the back of his neck was licked, as foreign obscenities were snarled in his ear. Part of him wished that it didn't have to be this way.

His mind catalogued the sensation. His body howled at him to rebel. If he forgot the sensations and just registered the act as the deed it was corrupting, he could almost pretend it wasn't real.

His heart wished for Duo.

~~~I'm gonna delay my pleasure~~~

While the Soldier listed the ways he was wounded, Heero pretended that the callused hand touching his cheek was the hand that had spent hours rewiring Deathscythe. That the breath against his neck was sweet, like vanilla and gummy bears. That the harsh, violent thrusts against him were a soft, gentle rocking.

He had to pretend. Odin would have called it cowardly, that he could not face up to what was happening to him.

But he was only fifteen.

There was only so much even he could take.

~~~I'm gonna close my body now~~~

The man was getting close. His ragged thrusts were speeding up. He grunted like an animal, grinding his hips into Heero. He could feel the rough material of the man's military slacks as it chafed against him.

"Nnn..." Heero gritted his teeth under the new weight as the man shoved him into the table, agitating already fractured rubs, bruising his chest.

There was a piercing click that Heero could hear from somewhere nearby and away, even over the bestial noises the OZ corporal was making behind him.

Gunfire rocked the room.

~~~I guess I'll die another day~~~

Heero suddenly felt a wet spray against the back of his neck, and the man behind him slumped across his shoulders. He could feel globs of wet flesh and flecks of bone chilling his skin, even though the gore itself was warm.

He slumped to the floor in a drugged heap, blood trickling down his thighs, arms twisted behind his back. He breathed in soft gasps of pain, his mind only able to comprehend one thing.

That voice. That throaty, hoarse, cursing voice.

That was Duo.

~~~I guess I'll die another day~~~

He couldn't see, but he felt knew when his partner came to kneel beside him, pushing the dead man off of him. Out of him. He grimaced, inhaling in a hiss.

"Sorry, bud, sorry," Duo whispered, and it was Duo, delirium or drugs couldn't disguise that voice when it was whispered directly into the shell of his ear. Duo's arms came around him, comforting in their strength, the rough, soft cadence of Duo's lilting American accent a balm for the guttural curses that had been hissed in his ear only minutes before.

"Okay, Heero, I'm pickin' you up. I'm not gonna take the blindfold off, don't want to hurt your eyes..." Duo's voice was calm, soft, no-nonsense, as if he somehow knew that Heero would not want attention brought to the state he had been found in.

He felt himself lifted into Duo's arms, his head coming to rest against the American's collarbone. His head lolled bonelessly there, falling slack against Duo's chest. He had almost succumbed to the darkness when he felt Duo shaking him, firm and gentle all at once.

Duo's hand came up to cup his cheek, making Heero let out his breath in an audible sigh. It was the same cheek. The same touch as before. But not.

It was real, this time.

Duo would never hurt him.

He could feel the Deathscythe pilot's breath against his sweat-dampened face. "No way, Heero. C'mon, pal. You can't bail out on me now, I need you. Stay awake for me. No going into shock on me, all right? I'm getting you outta here."

Heero tried hard to speak, and his voice came as a broken whisper. He was sinking deeper into the well of unconsciousness. "Duo..."

"You have to stay awake, Heero. It's for the mission. Okay? You can do it, pal." There was a desperate note in Duo's voice.

"...Ninmu ryoukai."

Duo squeezed him gently in a quick hug, letting out a relieved sigh. The hug hurt, but Heero didn't care.

As he rested his head wearily against Duo's shoulder, he felt the warm vibrations of Duo's throat as he murmured.

"You're not dying today, buddy."

~~~...Another day~~~

Owari

(:./cyt/hits2)