01-Jan-2001
Title: Doors
Author: Ravynfyre
Archive: GW Addiction, Darkflame
Category: Introspective Angst
Pairings: 1x2 implied
Standard Disclaimer: All parts of Gundam Wing are Not Mine. It's all Theirs. *sigh* Too bad, but otherwise, I guess I'd never get anything done *happy hentai thought*. Anyway, not makin' any money offa this so dun sue me. You'd only get some college debt, a few dogs, and a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers anyway. Ya know. blood. Turnip. Do the math.
Rating: PG-13
Warning: a few bad words. not much.
Spoiler: Series, Episode 19
Notes: This is the third installment in what I've just now dubbed as my "True Awakenings" arc. I really don't know how far this arc will go. It depends on feedback, my muses, and external RL factors that I shan't bore y'all with. This is Introspective type angst. No pilot death, no pilot rape, however this chapter does inply a little pilot torture... mild. I would, however, not call it dark.
Feedback: Yes, please. All comments welcome (although flames may be fed to my dogs, who, since they have notoriously gassy intestinal tracts, will be spending the night with the flamer afterwards)
The door was closed and locked. Most of the doors in my life are shut, slammed brutally by one force or another. I've quit even looking for new ones. I learned a long time ago that there really is no "door into summer".[1] Okay, I thought I'd learned that. Of course, if I had, then I wouldn't be sitting here contemplating my own torment.
OZ has a lot to learn when it comes to torture. They can break the body as much as they like, but until you dig below to get at the spirit, you really haven't accomplished much. Even if they kill the body, so long as the spirit remains untouched, they fail. Well. as much of the spirit as remains, at any rate.
I'm much better at torture than those idiots are. Just look at me now, sitting here in this dark little hovel of a cell, letting my thoughts get the better of me. Who cares about my broken bones and twisted innards? Hell, those were a downright picnic compared to my thoughts. Most of the only doors left to me are the ones in my own head. The ones I just wish I could shut.
Of course, like always, my brooding turns to him. Wondering, yet again, what it was that I did wrong. What it was that I didn't do right. There's a difference between those two concepts that only the truly skilled in self-castigation can appreciate.
Betcha didn't think I even knew that word, didja superstar?
I wasn't surprised when that door opened bathing me in the bright glare of the light from the corridor beyond. I really wasn't even surprised when the figure standing there heaved that limp OZ body into my dank little cell and stood there glaring down his gun at me. More resigned than anything else. Damned if I'm going out huddled on the floor like some tired little kid. Never mind the fact that I'm only 15. I don't think there's a time in my life I ever really was a kid. I think that's why he and I started.
Don't let your mind wander there. Just let it go and forget. He obviously did.
I bit back the groan of pain as I climbed to my feet, determined to at least stare him down at his own level as he squeezed that trigger.
"Here I am. Whatcha waitin' for? Guess it's my destiny to be killed by you."
After all. you've already managed to pretty much murder what little of my tattered soul I'd managed to hang onto after all these years. You weren't enough to reduce me to nothing, though. Not even you can slam that door closed. Not yet, at any rate.
When they say your whole life flashes before your eyes as you die, they weren't kidding, I guess. Time does weird things between that moment of life and death. It's almost like it totally stopped, because here I am still breathing.
And I take another breath. And another.
Okay, now I know time gets screwy, but it can't be that screwy. I glance back up to meet his unreadable glare. He's just standing there, like he's stuck or something. Or like he's seen a ghost.
That's my song and dance. Only, he hasn't exactly been a ghost since Wing and Heavyarms ripped out my heart that day and then blasted into space. More like a curse.
"You are gonna kill me, right?"
I don't really care if he does or not at this point in time, just so long as he makes up his mind and does something. It hurts to stand, and it hurts even worse just seeing him. God. I can even smell him from here.
Like I said. Oz could learn a lot about torture from me.
"If that's what you really want."
It took damn near every ounce of willpower I had right then not to nod my head. God it hurt so much just glancing up at him. I wondered for a long long moment if I really had anything worth living for anymore.
Then common sense reasserted itself. My partner was still out there, waiting for me to come get him, and the colonies still needed saved. And damned if I was gonna give him that kind of power over me.
"Your right hand still works, right?"
I lost track of how many doors we fled through after that. It was just one endless blur of possibilities streaming past me in a flash. That and a few explosions. He always was fond of explosions.
I will admit that I was kinda surprised by how carefully he settled me in his own bed in his own school dorm. Or rather, that should be MY dorm, since it was registered to my name. That was one door I'd never considered existing. In fact, there he was, practically ordering me to go in his place.
Have I ever mentioned that I don't take orders well? I also don't take this whole delicate baggage attitude he's shoving at me. One second tending me like spun glass, the next telling me I'm a burden and I'll just be in the way. Where does he get off? I'm about ready to take this door of possibility and slam it right in his face, OZ manhunt or no OZ manhunt.
"How? Why?"
I broke off, unable to order my thoughts enough to shove them at him quite yet. He stood there, hovering in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. It was that blank stare of almost indifference that finally galvanized my brain.
"How could you do that to me? How could you. deceive me like that? Did you ever really exist?" I asked weakly, avidly drinking up his face, searching, no, begging for some kind of reaction.
"Duo no baka." he said, shaking his head with impatience as he quirked an eyebrow. The implication was clear even to me. He was standing there, wasn't he? Of course he existed. How could I ask such an idiotic question.
Amazing how easy he still was to read, even after everything. He still thinks he's some big enigma to me. Still thinks he has me fooled somehow. Bullshit. His actions may confuse me sometimes, but his thoughts? Those are as plain as the blade on the end of my partner's scythe.
"Ta hell with you, Yuy. I wasn't asking the soldier. I don't give a shit about the soldier. I was asking the boy. The one I fell in love with. Obviously, I have my answer."
I'll admit. I did derive just the tiniest tickle of pleasure from the almost startled flash in his cobalt gaze. It felt like. payback. I just didn 't have it in me to be malicious though. Even to him. Especially to him.
Before he could answer, I turned over in the bed and rolled up in the blanket, shutting him out. I could feel him still in the room, tightly coiled, but still all the same. Ever the contradiction, my Perfect Soldier.
"Go. You have a mission," I spat out bitterly, "I'm just in your way."
"Duo."
"This is bigger than either of us, Yuy. Just go. Do what you need to do and let me die in peace."
I was tired. I was tired of fighting back the darkness, and I was tired of reaching for the pain. But the pain was the only thing left to me to prove to myself I really was still alive after all. Like I said. if Oz really wanted to learn a thing or two about torture, all they had to do was plug into my brain.
Wonder of wonders. He actually listened to me. I heard the door to the tiny bedroom slip shut with a click. God, how like that first fateful deafening click that flipped my whole existence upside down. There's another area OZ could learn a thing or two from me. Combat tactics. Ya gotta know where to hit the target for maximum effect.
Probably wasn't very sporting of me to use my intimate knowledge about Heero Yuy's emotional disability to my own advantage, but, hey, what can I say? I'm a street rat born and bred. You learn how to survive.
Outside the bedroom, I heard the rustle of a lithe body snatching up a packed duffel. The faint shuffle of footsteps paused at the front door to the cramped little colonial domicile. Then the door cycled open and then closed once more. Just another door shutting away another possibility of fate. The lock clicked into place, and life resumed its trek into oblivion.
~owari~
Note:
[1] "The Door into Summer" written by Robert A. Heinlein. Quite an interesting book about the possibilities of time travel and the implications of chance on our lives and our pursuit of happiness.
RavynFyre
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