06-Sep-2002
Title: Entropy
Author: Ravynfyre ( ravyn@famvid.com )
Archive: GW Addiction - elsewhere, ask first please
Category: Angst
Pairings: 1+2 sorta
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 for language
Warning: Duo with a potty mouth
Spoiler: Some for the series. Mild.
Notes: Apologies for the cross-post. Started this little series back a year and a half or so ago. Did the happy ending thing a while back, but never found good inspiration for the *real* way this little angstfest was supposed to go. This is part 5b of the True Awakenings Arc. It may not make as much sense unless you read the other 4 previous parts at http://www.gwaddiction.com . Part 5a, Daybreak, is *not* to be considered a prequel to this piece. You can either take Daybreak as the sequel to Cold Wind Dancing, or you can take Entropy as that sequel. They do not work together, since one is the happy fuzzy everything-works-out-ending, and this is the real bitchy fuck-the-world sequel. There may be more to come for this series in this vein. Depends on if the inspiration strikes again later.
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)
en.tro.py - ('en-tr&-pE) noun 2 a : the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity b : a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder 3 : CHAOS, DISORGANIZATION, RANDOMNESS
- taken from the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary -
Those few days in that cell with Wufei and *him* were the longest, toughest of my life. Not even holding Solo back on L2 when I was a kid had sucked as bad as trying to make nice nice with Mr. Ice-fucking-Prince himself. After all, Oz had our cell wired to a fare thee well, and we couldn't let on how much trouble on the home front there really was.
It wouldn't have been good tactics, or some shit like that.
Swear to God I could hear that in my head in *his* voice, all but a fucking sneer at my incompetence, for all that something like that would have given him credit for having more emotion than that. Fuck that.
It took every ounce of my willpower to not pop that smug asshole in the head when I rolled over and looked up and saw him there. It took even more than that to not break down and just fucking cry. Thought I was past all that melodramatic broken heart crap, but I guess I was as wrong about that as I was mistaken about what I thought I'd meant to him. Or him to me. Nothing more than the distraction of the moment, I guess. The Japanese equivalent of a blow-up-doll, only better cos I could suck him off rather than just lie there, and still be ready to bomb Ozzies at the drop of a hat.
Ya know, once upon a time, after I got bounced back out on the streets after all hell broke loose and the Church went down in flames, I turned tricks for a little while. Just enough to get back on my feet and figure out who best to piss off to get back at everyone who ever hurt me. Alliance, Oz, cheap fucking shopkeepers who would rather starve out a bunch of homeless kids than give them a scrap of leftover food, I was just looking for someone to hurt back. Funny how talkative those Alliance bigshots get when you have their dick in your mouth.
Sometimes I wasn't quite quick enough on my feet though. I'd get roughed up before I'd make em bleed and pay. Funny thing is, not even the most psychotic johns I ever had, the roughest bastards I ever had to drop trou for, the ones who left me bleeding and mugged in the gutter, made me feel as cheap and used as that smug Japanese bastard did. He didn't even have to lay a fucking finger on me. Just that disdainful glare over his manacles as the door shut behind us.
I thought my fucking heart was gonna implode.
Then that was it. Just the odd snort of derision - bet ya didn't think I knew a word that fancy, did ya *Heero* - when I tried to play it cool. I had to give up the act after a while before I lost what tenuous grasp I had on my sanity and just fucking jumped him.
Still not sure if I wouldda pounded the snot out of him or screwed him stupid, Ozzies be damned.
I'm so fucking hopeless.
Plastic and fiberglass crack in my hands and I'm jerked back to reality. Hilde's out there somewhere, getting her butt kicked, and me sitting here brooding isn't gonna do anything for either of us. Well, except let me work up a good head of rage. Might be useful against those fucked up dolls out there. Better using it on them than on my partner's poor, abused controls. I've already had to replace these grips twice this week. Something about being around *him* just brings out the fury in me. I take a deep breath and force my hands to relax a little, wincing as the sticks in my hand groan in protest.
I'm bouncing in my seat, willing Deathscythe to go faster, faster, just fucking MOVE damnit, because I can hear her, transmitting, in my head, behind my fucking eyelids, she's everywhere and I can't drown her out. FUCK! Don't let me lose her. Please let me be in time this time. For once, let me get something right. I'm the only one who should have to die for my fuck-ups. Don't let me fail her like I did *him*.
Where did that come from?
He's the one who failed *me*, right? Right? I mean, I laid it all out on the table, didn't I? Gave him anything he wanted, body, mind, soul. He had me. Any way he wanted, he had me, and it was a given. He knew it. I knew it. And I still wasn't enough to break all that conditioning and teach him how to live. How to be alive.
Fuck. I really did fail him, too.
Just one more in my long line of fuck-ups. One more little black mark in my karmic book. Big black mark. Fucking black page.
Who am I kidding? The book is bound in blood red leather taken from the skin of everyone who's ever tried to love me, and all the pages have been dyed black. No hope for redemption here.
In the distance, there's a flash of weapons fire, harsh against the deep black backdrop of space. The stars, they're like swirling against it all, like water going down a drain, breaking down, going away. Just like my fucking mind.
But no, it's just Deathscythe, barrel-rolling because I've gripped the controls too hard again and I'm tensing up, letting my rage eat me alive from the inside out.
It's still all breaking down, though. The day you're born, you start to die. Break down. Vanish. Forgotten.
Just this once, God, just this once let me get it right. I got her into this with all my brave words about doing this for the colonies and figuring out which side of the line to stand on and shit. Please, just this once let me be the one to cash the check my mouth wrote, instead of someone else.
There's a flutter in my chest, deep down in that hollow little place where my heart used to be once upon a time. It's soft, licking like fire against the lock on the box inside me where I stuff all my anger and hate, like acid eating away at bonds that shouldn't be broken. It hurts and feels glorious all at the same time, like anticipating how good that first shooter of whiskey will taste, even though you know it's going to burn the whole way down. Because, when it's all said and done, you know that the pain will fade to something bearable, something to focus on, and the numbness will come.
I heard about these two dolls. The Mercurius and Vayate. Gundams, programmed with the piloting data sucked right outta the heads of Trowa and *him*. A grim smile lights my face; I see it reflected in my viewscreen and it makes even me shudder a little. Sometimes I wonder just how much Duo is left inside my head.
I never really did properly thank Trowa for blowing up my partner. Yeah, this new Deathscythe is pretty fine, a nice ride, but he's just not. Deathscythe. I call it my partner, I even call it "him" around the guys, but it's not. It's not any of it. Just a skeleton, an empty shell of war and hate and fire carrying me through to the end of the world where I can find the other three Horsemen. It has no soul. It's not me. This ride didn't carry me through a desert where I first danced with fate personified. This ride didn't hold me safe while *he* ripped out my heart and stomped it into a messy red paste on the tarmac. This is just a machine.
But it's got a nice set of scythes on it. Let's rock.
And for the first time in my life, God listens.
I shove Hilde's limping suit behind me and square off, that dark place inside boiling now, the door bowing outward against the power of the fury I've bottled up inside for far too long. I should be getting my ass kicked; these suits are fast and furious, and it's two Gundams against one. More like one and a half, because, yeah, they're programmed with Heero and Trowa's data, but they're still just over-muscled computers parroting out set routines. Can't think. Can't feel. Can't dance.
Fitting. Heero's a fucking robot anyway.
An eerie kinda wail, part laugh, part mourning howl, fills the cockpit, and after a moment of disorientation, I realize that it's me. I don't even recognize that madman reflected in my viewscreen anymore. He's grim and dark, his eyes are like twin pools of sun-hot fury and darkest despair, and his mouth is twisted into a thin, tight-lipped scowl of satisfied self-loathing. There's a stranger piloting my Gundam, and that place inside me has broken open, sucking everything in.
I don't even feel the grips in my hands anymore. Don't even feel the harness biting into my body as this stranger ekes out the last shreds of maneuverability and power from this strange Deathscythe. Suddenly the Stranger laughs, a broken, humourless sound of irony. There's a Stranger piloting a strange Deathscythe.
And they say Fate is a woman. No way. He's got to be an oversexed Adonis, sitting up there wherever personifications of concepts sit, laughing his ass off at me because he can have anyone he wants, and he's made damned sure that I know he's not interested in me. Just to fucking mess with my head even more.
Not that there's much left to mess with these days. That sucking place inside me where the rage used to be has taken care of that. Now it's sucking everything else in, the dolls, the stars, the dark emptiness of space, it's all going away. All I see is fire, a brief flash against nothing, as the last doll winks out into a spray of so much scrap.
Funny thing is beating them wasn't nearly as satisfying as I'd envisioned it should have been. Maybe because I know that *he's* back there waiting, alive, or as close as he can come to that state, and not floating dead in the wreckage of his Gundam doll. Kinda takes the wind out of the sails of my victory.
The day you're born, you start to die.
I can't wait for this war to be over. I can't wait until war machines like this Gundam and like *him* aren't really needed anymore. Then I can crawl off to my little hole of reality and wait and watch. I'm gonna go on. Gonna keep on living, maybe teach myself how to laugh again for real someday. Not because I want to, but because He *can't* I'm gonna go see those smiles I've been fighting for, and gloat, because there won't be one on His face, because he doesn't have the wiring for it. Why would a war machine need to know joy, anyway? Thank you Doc J. The finest revenge you ever could have given me for making him so fucking heartless and unable to learn how to live, was to make him so heartless and unable to learn how to live.
I thought that would warm me, somehow. Make that raw fiery place inside be not so bloody. It only makes it feel cold, though. Not fiery, but burning, because it's so cold, like skin on gundanium, right out of the vacuum of space.
That place inside is empty now. Thought that would feel better now, too, but it doesn't. Nature abhors a vacuum. It all goes away. Through me, into nothing, breaking down.
The day the universe was born, it started to die.
Gotta get Hilde back to the docs. Paste on a smile, fake like I really didn't wish He'd been the one in my sights instead of that waste of Gundanium out there, make nice with the boys.
Wait for my turn to die.
It's coming. Everything breaks down in the end. Just gotta wait my turn.
~owari~
RavynFyre
Please send comments to: ravynfyre@hotmail.com