23-May-2002
Again. And always. For Chrissy, Sharon, Jay, Maureen, Zort, Bonne, and Tyr. I'm not sure where I would be without all of you.
I put Duo through Hell, I know. And it's going to get worse before it gets better.
I've never seriously considered cutting my hair before, not even when it's gotten stuck in things, nearly choked me in my sleep, and been used way too many times as a leash for a certain Chinese Gundam pilot-cum-medical examiner.
Now, under the stress of Heero's hospitalization and my own almost debilitating fatigue, my head felt about two hundred pounds and my fingers twitched at my sheathed hunting knife, wondering how bad it would really look if I just chopped the whole thing off.
But Heero likes it, a little voice said, my heart pulling painfully. He never actually said that, but I knew he liked it. He would pet it sometimes, without thinking, liked to wrap the end around his fist when he was reading and I was watching television. I could never cut it.
Unless. But I didn't want to think about the unless. Because if the "unless" happened, then I would probably do more with that hunting knife than cut off my braid. And, oddly, that thought didn't scare me. It felt like the most sane reaction I'd had to any of this since it started.
The knife stayed where it was, and I pulled the cap down lower, tucking the stray wisps back under it and behind my ears. No sign yet of Wagner but I stayed ready, balanced on the balls of my feet behind a rhododendron, with a clear view straight down the alley.
It was almost midnight when he appeared, creeping around the alley same as the last time. I held my breath and dug my nails into my thighs, clamping down on the rage again. I had never wanted to kill someone in cold blood before, not really. Every other time had been for survival -- kill or be killed. This time it was just kill. Just for revenge.
Wait, Maxwell, I repeated to myself. Just wait.
He didn't even look around to see if he was being watched and I think that made me even angrier. Smug bastard. I knew he had the same smile painted on his face, glorified, self-righteous.
Breathe. In, out. Just wait.
And then he was gone. Just like that. I didn't blink but suddenly the air rippled and he vanished.
I snarled and leapt to my feet, running into the alley. There was no one there and, goddammit, when was someone going to clean up this fucking bloodstain.
I smashed a fist into the brick wall, welcoming the feeling of warmth trickling from my knuckles. My throat felt strained, like I wanted to scream but couldn't.
But I refused to feel helpless. I'd felt helpless my whole life and a few years ago Heero came and I gave him everything I couldn't carry myself. But now I had it all back and I was going to strap it all on even if it killed me.
So I did the only thing I could think of because I survived on the streets and even if Trowa thought I was a piss poor thief, I was still a fucking thief.
And I found that even a piss poor thief could have broken into this guy's apartment and that my assessment of his disgusting over-confidence was right on the money. He had no security to speak of -- I hardly consider safety locks on the windows security -- and there was practically a giant sign proclaiming "I stalk people and kill them for fun" hanging in his bedroom.
Magazine clippings of women tacked everywhere, a shrine to his fucking mother on his bedside table, decorative knives hanging on one wall... except there was one missing. Not so decorative when you use it to slit people's throats...
I raised a hand to my own throat and suddenly his words from that day at the Preventers came back to me. Best he'd ever had, he said. Only I had never seen him before in my life.
God, you were fucking beautiful as you bled.
My hands shivered with fine tremors and I shook them violently to make them stop.
Pistol, idiot.
I held Heero's pistol -- the one he's not supposed to have but feels he has the right to break the rules about, not that I'm complaining -- tightly, straight in front of me, and crept out of his bedroom into the hallway.
Nothing too out of the ordinary, really, a linen closet on the right, bathroom on the left. I poked my head in and peered at the towels in the hamper. They were stiff with blood and god, don't serial killers usually burn things like this?
They do, unless they know no one will find them.
It hurt to feel so close to something, and I froze, trying to make my thoughts keep going, hoping they would fall into some semblance of order.
No one will find them, because no one will suspect. No one will suspect if no one finds bodies. And no one will even look for bodies if no one knows there are bodies to look for.
"Fuck." My knocked myself in the head with the butt of the pistol. That didn't make any sense, for obvious reasons, unless he was only killing people no one would look for. People with no family.
Out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. I had hoped it would be easier to find something, like it would smell like death or there would be bloodstains on the floor. As it was, there was a lot of evidence, but not enough. Not coming from me.
I got down on my hands and knees and felt the floor vibrating with electricity. The fridge wasn't running, had clicked off while I was in the bedroom. I put my ear to the floor.
People with no family, right. So if he only went after people who wouldn't be missed, why would he slip up and shoot Heero? Everyone would miss him. And he didn't even try to conceal the bod-- Heero. Heero, not a body.
And why would he know me?
There was a white cord running from behind the refrigerator and against the wall, almost under the tiling. I would have missed it if I hadn't been down here. It ran around the corner and back into the hallway, a lump under the carpet where the tile ended.
My hands were shaking again. "Stop," I hissed, gripping the pistol so hard it left marks in my palms.
I followed the wire around the corner and down the hallway. It ran under the linen closet.
Great.
Why would he know me? And why Heero? Poor security or no --
The linen closet looked fairly normal, and there was nothing electric to be plugged in.
--he seemed to be comfortable with his routine, and was confident enough to put himself at the crime scene --
I tugged on one shelf, hoping the whole thing would swing out.
--and he knew my name and was carrying that newspaper clipping--
When it didn't, I felt around for a difference in the paneling.
--and people just don't disappear into alleyways like that and--
The wall was hollow. I pushed, my heart in my throat, and the wall swung back silently, probably left over from during the war, when people would take in rebels. Westside, I remembered Quatre telling me, was one of the only places here that didn't get bombed during the final conflicts.
I didn't want to look in the icebox I found there, a few feet back and fit perfectly into the width of the space. It was about half my height and I knew -- I knew -- there would be something I didn't want to see in there.
But this would have to be the easy part, really. Because whatever was in there couldn't be half as bad as Heero in a coma.
Right.
I lifted the lid and inside...
"Oh, fuck. Oh, God, Jesus."
Inside was Wagner. Broken, bloody, hacked up into pieces. Wagner.
Back to incorrect reactions. Shouldn't my hands be shaking now? Shouldn't I want to throw up or run as fast as I could back to Heero's bed?
I'm not sure I could possibly process this. So instead of doing any of those things, I closed the lid, replaced the wall, clicked the linen door shut very softly --not crazy, right, Duo, no we're not -- and went back into the bedroom.
The women on the walls looked at me with huge, pleading eyes, wanting to get out of there as much as I did. "Sorry," I whispered, and I slid the window open to let myself out.
But one caught my eye and I still was too calm after seeing the fucking hacked up body of the guy I was trying to prove guilty stored in a former hideout for rebels like me, so I figured what the hell. One more minute here won't kill me if it hasn't already.
And I realized that these clippings weren't clippings at all. They were photographs.
I looked closer and found that I recognized two of them. They were women who lived in Heero's building, one right upstairs and one across the hall. Except this one, the one that lived across the hall, had long hair in the picture, when I know she has her hair cropped right against her head. She had always told me she envied me my hair and wished she had never cut hers. And Heero told me--
"Oh. She--"
--when her hair was longer, she looked sort of like me.
All of them. They all had features that made them resemble me in one way or another. This one's hair and that one's almost crooked nose and that one was a close-up of her eyes...
I stumbled back, my ears ringing, and it almost fit, but it didn't make sense because it just couldn't be.
No longer caring if I left the place clean, I ripped out drawers and turned them upside down, tore pictures off the walls and clawed at framed ones, not really knowing what I was looking for but knowing something to make this work had to be here.
And in the end, it was right in front of my face. Hung next to the window, taped very carefully in place, was a newspaper article. My neck prickled and I thought of the clipping about Heero's shooting that was still crumpled in the pocket of a pair of pants tossed across the desk chair in Heero's room.
I looked closer. It was the same article, dated two days ago, except for the headline:
'INTO THIN AIR'
And underneath, a smaller tag:
'One Dead, One Missing in Serial Killer Sting'
I read as quickly as I could:
'Lieutenant Heero Yuy, Preventers Agent of three years, is missing in a bizarre twist to the already bizarre Westside Killings case. Lt. Yuy was last seen in a showdown between Preventers and Thomas Wagner, believed to be the killer that has been plaguing Westside for the past two months.'
There was a creak of metal outside the window that I recognized as the fire escape. I jumped back from the article, my hands flailing to grab it, but I saw fingers reach up towards the window and I knew I wouldn't make it.
I turned and ran, not really knowing what else to do, not sure I could shoot him in cold blood because I didn't want to be that person anymore. I thought about it, stopping with my forehead against the front door, hand still clutching Heero's pistol. I could do it, I told myself, my muscles burning with adrenaline. I could shoot him and so what if I went to jail for it. It would be worth it.
But Heero.
I could hear Wagner laughing in the bedroom, not the hysterics of a madman, but calm, low chuckles, like he knew I was there.
And suddenly I was out in the hallway and down the stairs, leaving Wagner's door open, and I got out onto the street and ran.
All the pieces in my head had fallen together and I could only think of one explanation. An explanation that gave me hope and made my heart feel like it was being crushed by my ribs at the same time. Wasn't that always the way.
I ran faster, the wind tearing the tears from my eyes so I didn't even know if they were ever there in the first place.
End Part 8
(:./sparcck/tracing8)
